by Peter Corris
PETER CORRIS is known as the ‘godfather’ of Australian crime fiction through his Cliff Hardy detective stories. He published in many other areas, writing a history of boxing in Australia, spy novels, historical novels, a collection of short stories about golf, and co-authoring an autobiography of Professor Fred Hollows (see www.petercorris.net). In 1999, Peter Corris was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Crime Writers Association of Australia, and in 2009 the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction for Deep Water. He was married to writer Jean Bedford and lived in Sydney for most of his life.
Peter Corris’s Cliff Hardy novels include The Empty Beach, Master’s Mates, The Coast Road, Saving Billie, The Undertow, Appeal Denied, The Big Score, Open File, Deep Water, Torn Apart, Follow the Money, Comeback, The Dunbar Case, Silent Kill, Gun Control and That Empty Feeling. Win, Lose or Draw, published in 2017, was his forty-second and final Cliff Hardy book.
First published in 2019
Copyright © the Estate of Peter Corris 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.allenandunwin.com
ISBN 978 1 76087 563 3
eISBN 978 1 76087 191 8
p. 221: Illustration by Michael Fitzjames
Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Cover design and illustration: Blue Cork
CONTENTS
Introduction by Jean Bedford
The best of Cliff Hardy, the short stories
Man’s best friend
Silverman
The arms of the law
Tearaway
The deserter
The big lie
The House of Ruby
Meeting at Mascot
Black Andy
Death threats
Last will and testament
Break point
An ABC of Crime Writing
Crime and crime writing, the Godfather columns
On being reviewed
On booze
On the origin of his ideas
On Lee Child
On his editors
On El Dorado
On literary vs popular fiction
On retrospectives
On his swansong
On the Neddies
On writing his final book
List of books
INTRODUCTION
Peter was a born storyteller. He didn’t have to work at it the way many of us writers do, every word blood squeezed out of stone.
As he said several times in interviews, he never really plotted—it was as if he were watching a film unfold before him and he simply wrote it down. (He did make sketchy notes after each writing session to guide himself.) Frustrating to live with, if you’re the blood-from-stone type.
He began writing as an historian. His MA thesis was about Aborigines and Europeans of western Victoria; his PhD thesis examined the Solomon Islands labour trade. Both were narrative histories—as he often said, it was the only sort of history he wanted, or felt able, to write.
He was a modest man. He wrote many books—42 Cliff Hardys, eight Ray Crawleys, eight Brownings (drawing on historical knowledge and interest), three Luke Dunlops and various other specifically historical novels, as well as several ‘as-told-to’ biographies, among others. His short stories were widely anthologised and collected—yet he was never boastful. Self-deprecatingly, he called himself an ‘entertainer’ and never quite understood, or gave credence to, the public and critical acclaim for the place he had carved out as a uniquely sharp, but also appreciative, chronicler of Australia, Sydney and our times. He spoke for a generation that had grown from hope and prosperity to cynicism and social deprivation, from a generous society to a mean and self-protective one. As he also said several times, he never wanted to give solace to religion or to right-wing politics, and he was scathing about both, as well as the exploitative rich, in his books. Hardy was a great conduit for Peter’s own convictions.
His first Cliff Hardy novel, The Dying Trade, was rejected by several publishers who thought no one wanted to read contemporary Australian crime fiction. ‘Why don’t you write a thriller set in the Philippines?’ one asked. Fortunately, he finally hooked up with Lindsay Brown at McGraw Hill and the book was published. (It has since been republished by Text Classics.)
He already had the second one, White Meat, written, and the rest is history.
After his family, writing was the love of Peter’s life. He was never happier than when engaged on a book, and he was bored and depressed when there was nothing on the go. Fortunately, there usually was. He wrote for two short sessions a day, morning and afternoon, but was continuously preoccupied with the story—to the extent that I would sometimes ask, ‘Are you okay?’ when I saw him staring into space, suspecting a diabetic incident. ‘Yes, love. Just thinking about what happens next.’ Only other writers can understand this, perhaps? I often wonder about the non-writing partners of writers. Do they get it? Or do they feel shut out?
He also loved sport. He had been a promising amateur tennis player in his youth and in later life he took to golf. He liked watching the boxing, though his only painful attempt at it left him feeling it was not for him. I hate boxing and would sometimes ask what he saw in it. ‘Great skills,’ he said. ‘And also they’re braver than me. They don’t cry when they’re punched on the nose.’
His interest in boxing had a local flavour, too—he admired the way Indigenous boxers could make their mark and also some money (and keep it, if they were lucky), and this applied to Australian Rules football as well. He was an avid AFL follower—a lifetime Essendon supporter. In years when Essendon wasn’t doing all that well, he would sometimes yell at the TV, ‘More blackfellas! Recruit more blackfellas!’
What else did he love? Books, of course. Books, always. He always had at least one book on the go. Usually a novel and something non-fiction as well. His tastes were eclectic, much more than mine. He read a lot of literary fiction. He particularly liked biographies of people who ‘had done something’. This category included other writers, adventurers, politicians, kings and knaves. He liked Stephen Hawking (for his atheism) but admitted he couldn’t quite follow the argument. He loved Orwell and Somerset Maugham. He liked Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, even when I said he was a literary predator on Zelda and he agreed. (But who can argue about The Great Gatsby?) He admired James Ellroy, but thought he’d gone feral in his last few books.
He didn’t read much fiction by women but he liked Ruth Rendell and the Morse series. He read Hilary Mantel, but hated the strange new narrative voice she’d introduced. He preferred C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series about Cromwell.
He was very selective about the crime fiction he read—Michael Robotham, Barry Maitland, Lee Child (until the later books, when he got bored by them), Michael Connelly, Elroy Leonard … I tried to get him interested in the Nordics, but with limited success.
The stories in this collection represent some of Peter’s major interests.
‘An ABC of Crime W
riting’, while tongue-in-cheek, shows his deep understanding of both crime fiction and the art of writing crime fiction, with his own prejudices and preferences clearly showing. He was disappointed that this couldn’t find a publisher—too short, and he didn’t want to rewrite. I think he envisaged a de luxe collectors’ edition, lavishly illustrated with Michael Fitzjames’s wonderful drawings. He would be extremely pleased that it now sees the light of day.
The selection here from his Godfather columns mainly concentrates on writing or reading-related themes. He wrote many more than these, on many other topics, for the Newtown Review of Books (https://newtownreviewofbooks.com.au) over nearly seven years.
In the last few years of his life, Peter’s eyesight deteriorated further, he became deaf and his heart condition worsened, as did his arthritis. He became virtually house-bound, except for doctors’ appointments and occasional—highly orchestrated—lunches with friends and the odd family event. His last book, Win, Lose or Draw, drew the final line under his writing career. He had typed it in 36-point font size and still found it difficult to see what he had written. He was unable to cope with the edits to this book and Angela Handley from Allen & Unwin and Jo Jarrah and I dealt with them, with constant reference to Peter.
He could no longer summon the concentration or energy required to write at any length, though he continued to provide interesting, amusing and knowledgeable weekly Godfather columns for the Newtown Review of Books, usually of 500 words or so, which he could just cope with. A column on golf remains unpublished.
Not having a book on the boil left a huge gap in Peter’s life. Writing had been his main preoccupation for over 40 years and he missed it dreadfully. But as his physical debility increased, so did the range of activities he could perform or work up much interest in, and the gap writing had left seemed to shrink as health concerns grew.
In the last year of his life he did remain interested in politics and sport and always listened to the ABC’s Radio National and watched the footy every week.
In his final few weeks Peter was in a lot of pain from arthritis, which they didn’t think they could alleviate except with stronger painkillers. He was at the end of his tether by then—over-medicated, over-diagnosed, over-doctored. Cliched as it might sound, it was a blessed relief for him to die when he did. Not, perhaps, for those of us—family, friends and readers—he left behind.
But he also left behind a great legacy of pleasure and entertainment for a great many people through his books and he will long be remembered for that.
—Jean Bedford, 2019
What follows is a selection from the Cliff Hardy short stories, published in six separate volumes, from Heroin Annie in 1984 to The Big Score in 2007. These were good ideas that couldn’t be incorporated into a full novel, or they were written for publication in magazines or other anthologies. On one occasion, they accompanied a novella, Man in the Shadows (1988). The stories demonstrate some of Peter’s favourite themes—battlers, sport (especially boxing), his love of Sydney (corruption and all), his concern for and admiration of Indigenous people, as well as politics, local and national. Plus of course, crime.
Re-reading them, I’m struck by his graceful facility with the short story—his instinctive understanding of its shape and his unerring sense of when to finish, sometimes with the case unsolved, but always with some sort of resolution along the way. These stories are clever and humorous, sympathetic and cynical, and they do what all the best short stories do—they open small windows out to a larger world.
—JB
MAN’S BEST FRIEND
From Heroin Annie (1984)
I was walking along Vincent Street in Balmain, down near the soapworks, minding someone else’s business, when a brick hit me, then another brick hit me, then another and I lost count; it felt as if a brick wall had moved out of line and wrapped itself around Cliff Hardy.
When I woke up Terry Kenneally was sitting beside my bed. My first thoughts were that my sheets had got very white and my windows very clean and that I’d finally got Terry to stay the night; and then I realised that I wasn’t at home, I was in hospital. I’ve been in hospital before; the first thing to do is to check that you’ve still got all your bits and pieces and that they haven’t mixed you up with the guy who had gangrene. I moved and wriggled and blinked; everything seemed to work.
‘Don’t move,’ Terry said. ‘They say you’re not to move.’
‘They say that to break your spirit,’ I said. I grabbed at her brown left arm and the movement sent an arrow of pain through my head. I groaned.
‘They’re right, I won’t move. How did you get here, love?’
Terry showed her nice white teeth. ‘Someone found Dad’s cheque in your pocket and phoned him. I came, he sends his regards.’
‘I’m glad you came and not him, waking up to his face would be a shock. I wonder how your mum stood it.’
‘Shut up.’ She was holding my hand now, and it didn’t hurt a bit.
‘Did they find anything else? I mean my wallet …’
‘All that,’ she said. ‘And your bloody gun; there’s a policeman outside who wants to talk to you. I made them let me in first but I can’t stay, I have to get back to work.’ She leaned forward to kiss me and then pulled back.
‘Possible fracture, they said.’ She backed away and blew the kiss. ‘Be back tonight, Cliff.’
She went out, the door stayed closed for ten seconds and then fourteen stone of plain-clothes copper walked in. His name was Detective Sergeant Moles and, although he didn’t have much of a bedside manner, I told him all I could. I told him that I was a licensed private investigator, fidelity bonded and all, and that I was working for Pat Kenneally, who is a greyhound trainer. I didn’t tell him that I was trying to find out who was doping Pat’s dogs. I had a bit of trouble remembering what I’d been doing in Vincent Street, but it came: I’d been going to see the Frenchman. Moles nodded at that, he knew the Frenchman. Pierre Cressy knew all there was to know about racing greyhounds in New South Wales, he’d know who stood to win if Pat’s dogs lost.
‘Did you see the Frenchy?’ Moles asked.
I had to think about it. ‘No, I was on my way when the wall fell on me. What’s your interest?’ Moles scratched his ear and fidgeted, the way cops do when you ask them something. They figure ten of their questions to one of yours is about the right ratio. ‘Bloke who found you saw your weapon, and called in. The boys who answered the call poked around a bit and asked a few questions. Seems people saw a man hanging around that spot before you came along.’
‘What about the poking?’
‘The wall didn’t fall, Hardy, it was pushed. Someone tried to hurt you. Any ideas?’
I said, ‘No,’ and lay there with my possibly broken skull, thinking about it. Moles had talent, he read my mind.
‘The Frenchy’s okay,’ he said. ‘That all you’ve got to say?’
I said it was and he shrugged and left. I didn’t tell him that I was in love with Pat’s daughter or that I was afraid of greyhounds; I didn’t think he’d be interested.
Doctors and nurses came and went and the time passed slowly. They told me I didn’t have a fractured skull, just a lot of bruises and abrasions. I was grateful to them. Terry came back in the evening and we did some more hand-holding.
‘Dad’s worried about what happened,’ she said. ‘He’s thinking of calling in the police.’
‘He can forget about half his income if he does,’ I said. ‘You know what the greyhound people are like, Terry, any whisper of trouble at Pat’s place and they’ll pull their dogs out. Most of ’em anyway.’
‘I know, but if someone’s trying to kill you …’
I squeezed the upper part of her arm where she has a long, hard muscle under the smooth skin. ‘I’ll be careful,’ I said. ‘I’m used to it. Tell Pat to give me a few more days.’
‘All right.’ She kissed me the way you kiss invalids, as if they’re made of feathers. Terry is tall and brown, as bef
its a professional tennis player. She has a terrific serve and aced me three times the day we met. She was overseas a lot reaching the finals of tournaments; we packed a lot into the time she was in Sydney, but I came a distant third in her life after her father and tennis.
They let me leave the hospital the next morning and I went home and read books and drank a bit and slept. Pat phoned, and I convinced him that I was fit to go on with the enquiry; Terry phoned, and I convinced her that I was fit to see her the following night. In the morning I took off some of the bandages and admired the deep blue bruises on my arms and chest. I’d been keen enough on the job in the first place on account of Terry, and now it had got very, very personal.
It was hot when I got to Vincent Street and a sweet, sickly coconut smell was coming up from the water, as if the bay were full of copra. I parked and walked up to the Frenchman’s place; the crumpled wall had been tidied back on to the empty lot behind it, and soon the grass and weeds would be creeping up to the bricks and covering them like a winding sheet.
The Frenchman’s house is a tumbledown weatherboard on rotting stumps; developers and trendies eye it greedily, but Cressy has some kind of protected lease and will die there. I walked up the overgrown path, brushing branches aside and wincing as the movement hurt my head. A tattered brown paper blind moved in the window of the front room; I reached through the hole in the wire screen and knocked on the door. It opened and Cressy stood there in slippers, pyjama pants and a buttonless cardigan. Pendulous breasted, toothless and with long, wispy white hair, he looked like a witch. But the thing in his hand wasn’t a broomstick, it was a shotgun. He poked it through the hole so that it almost touched my chest.
‘Go ’way,’ he said.
I backed off a step. ‘Take it easy. I just want to talk to you. My name …’
‘I know you. Go ’way or I shoot you.’
I looked at the gun; the barrel was acned with rust, it was green around the trigger guard and the stock was dusty; but that didn’t mean it couldn’t kill me.
