See You at the Toxteth

by Peter Corris

  ‘Tomorrow, late morning. I’ll call you.’

  That left me with another evening to kill. I went to a fitness centre in Balmain and hung around until someone turned up willing to play table-tennis with me. The deal is, you hire one of the squash courts, a table, net and balls for an hour at an exorbitant price, and play as hard as you can to get your money’s worth. I played against a police sergeant from the Balmain station and let him win, four matches to three. In my business, you never know when a friendly police sergeant might come in handy.

  I went into the office in the morning, paid a few bills, requested payment for the third time from a faithless client and generally waited for Ian’s call. I plugged in a recording device and activated it when I heard Ian’s voice on the line.

  ‘Cliff,’ he said. ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. There’s a patient named Carl Hammond who fits your bill. Aged twenty-three; the contact is his sister, Valerie Ursula …’

  ‘That’s it,’ I said.

  ‘Poor chap’s in a very bad way.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s called kernicterus. This is the most severe case to come the way of the people there, and the worst I’ve ever heard of. Put simply, it’s brain damage caused by jaundice at birth. The baby’s red blood cells are broken down to such a degree that the liver can’t cope with the by-products and this stuff called biliruben is released into the bloodstream. It’s bile, essentially, a sort of stain that causes brain damage. Are you making notes or something?’

  ‘I’m recording it, Ian. Go on.’

  Sangster cleared his throat. ‘Well, as I say, in a severe case a part of the brain is damaged and you get deafness, palsy, loss of coordination. Usually, in a case this bad, the baby is born prematurely and dies. That’s called hydrops fetalis, for your information. Carl Hammond should have died. Some freak of nature kept him alive. A cruel freak, I’d call it. Not everyone would agree.’

  ‘Can he …?’

  ‘To almost any question you can put, the answer is no.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Not around when he was needed. I’m sorry, mate. This is grim stuff. He’s there until he dies which could be tomorrow or ten years away. He requires complete care. The fees must be astronomical. Is that all you need?’

  ‘Yes. No. What causes it?’

  ‘The Rhesus factor.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘God, you laymen are so ignorant. No wonder we get so much money. It’s an incompatibility between the mother’s blood group and that of the foetus. The mother’s metabolism sort of creates antibodies against the foetus, which pass through the placenta and fuck everything up. Get on to it early and you can do a transfusion and avoid the whole mess. Not in this case.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t know. It’s a chance in a thousand sort of thing. Harder to detect twenty-odd years ago than now.’

  I thanked him and rang off. I wound back the tape and played the conversation through again. Then I got out a dictionary and looked up some of the words while I made notes. I had an answer to one question now, at least—what Valerie Hammond did with her money. And, remembering her outcry on the phone, I had inklings of other questions and other answers. I resisted the impulse to go out for a drink before attempting to call Valerie Hammond. The only number I had was at work. Maybe she hadn’t gone in today. I was almost hoping she hadn’t when I heard her voice, crisp and confidence-inspiring, on the line.

  ‘Valerie Hammond.’

  She’d pulled herself together and sounded in better emotional shape than me. But what do you say? How do you tell someone you know their secrets and their nightmares? I tried to keep my voice level and calm, and I spoke very quickly. ‘Ms Hammond, I don’t want to distress you, but I know about your brother and your problem. I’m working for Mr Adamo, but I want to help you. Please talk to me. Please don’t hang up.’

  I heard the sharp intake of breath, could sense the struggle for control. ‘I have to tell you I’m taking Valium which is the only reason I’m able to talk to you like this. What do you want, Mr Hardy?’

  ‘To talk to you for a few minutes, face to face. If what I have to say doesn’t make any sense to you I’ll back off, report to Mr Adamo that I couldn’t find you.’

  ‘Very well. If it’ll get rid of you. I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re a violent man.’

  ‘I’ll meet you outside your office building. We can talk as we walk. Play it by ear.’

  ‘Did you follow me from work yesterday?’

  Uncomfortable question, but it felt like time to play everything straight with her. ‘Yes. I hope I didn’t hurt your friend.’

  ‘He’s all right. He … he’s just sharing the rent with me. It’s an arrangement. I’m not … oh, what does it matter?’

  This response was my first glimmer of hope; the first indication that she had some awareness of things outside the prison of her problems. ‘In an hour, Ms Hammond?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll see you in an hour, Mr Hardy.’

  She was on time and so was I. I walked up to her and we shook hands. It seemed like the right thing to do. She was wearing the same clothes she had on yesterday. So was I, as it happened. We walked along Bent Street past the government buildings, in the direction of the Stock Exchange. There were very few people about. We walked slowly. She said that she hoped this interview would be brief.

  ‘Were you fond of Robert Adamo?’ I asked.

  ‘Very,’ she said. ‘Very, very fond. That was the trouble. I hadn’t ever allowed myself to feel as much for anyone before. It was a mistake.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Robert wanted to marry me and for us to have children. I can’t possibly do that, and you know why.’ She quickened her pace slightly and spoke more quickly, as if she wanted to get the talk over. ‘Oh, I know he loved me and he might have agreed not to have children. But that wouldn’t have been fair on him. Or I might have weakened, or … or there might have been an accident. Anyway, my first duty is to Carl. I should never have got involved with Robert. He’s too intense, too … good. His hiring you proves how serious he was. It was an awful, cruel thing for me to do.’

  ‘I know this is painful for you, Ms Hammond, but I’d be glad if you could just answer a few questions. Why do you say you can’t have children?’

  Her high heels tapped faster. ‘Because there is severe mental and physical disability in my genes.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘I didn’t have to be told. Take a look at my brother, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘Did you ever enquire yourself about his condition, ask a doctor …?’

  ‘No. I love Carl, strange as it may seem. I just want to make sure he’s as happy as he can be. That’s all. That’s my life.’

  ‘When did your mother die?’

  ‘Six years ago. She left Carl in my charge.’

  We’d reached a row of benches outside a new steel and glass tower. I steered her towards one that was shaded by a tree growing in a large wooden box. ‘Sit down, Ms Hammond.’

  She sat. The tension in her body was visible in every line; also the slight buffer zone created by the Valium between her and the world. On close inspection, she was a little too heavy-featured to be really good-looking, but she was impressive and there was energy and intelligence behind her sadness. ‘I can’t imagine what you have to say to me,’ she said.

  ‘Your mother lied to you,’ I said. ‘I suppose she was afraid that if you led a full, normal life you’d neglect your brother. She told you a very cruel lie. Perhaps she was ashamed.’

  ‘That’s impossible! My mother was never ashamed of anything. She was … was immensely strong.’

  ‘I imagine so. Nevertheless, the disability your brother suffers has nothing to do with genetics, at least as far as you’re concerned.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I had to resort to my notes, but I pride my
self that I gave it to her clearly and accurately. I explained the medical terms and stressed that the whole Rhesus tragedy could be easily averted by today’s technology. She sat perfectly still and absorbed it all. Tears were running down her face by the time I’d finished. She pulled a tissue from her leather shoulder bag and blotted the tears. Through all the distress her mind was razor sharp. ‘If what you say is true, how is it that I was born normal and Carl had this terrible thing?’

  ‘I’m not very sure of my ground here,’ I said. ‘It could be a matter of chance, but if not, I think you know the answer.’

  ‘Different fathers?’

  I nodded. ‘And the reason for your mother’s behaviour. Guilty people can be strong and vice versa. When did your father die?’

  ‘A few years after Carl was born. They were very unhappy, my mother and father. They fought terribly. I was very young and didn’t understand much. I thought it was because of Carl, or the money. But perhaps …’

  She was sobbing now. I put my arm around her shoulders, and she rested her head against me. ‘You’ve got a lot to think about,’ I said. ‘Most of it’s very painful, but not all. You don’t have to think of yourself as cursed or tainted. I don’t want to push things, but Adamo’s a good man. I don’t see many, but I recognise one when I do. I think you’d find him understanding and sympathetic …’

  She lifted her head and sniffed. ‘He’s very smart, too, isn’t he?’

  I remembered Adamo’s firmness of purpose, his confidence that he could set things right if he just got a little help. ‘Smart enough to run a small business profitably,’ I said. ‘I’m here to tell you that’s tough. And smart enough to be in love with you and to hire me. Yes, I’d say he’s pretty bright.’

  THE HOUSE OF RUBY

  From Burn, and Other Stories (1993)

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ the woman behind the table said. ‘My name is Marcia. Do you want someone in particular, or a special service?’

  ‘In a way,’ I said. ‘I’d like to see Ruby.’

  Marcia was a nice-looking woman, thirtyish, with short curly hair and a humorous expression. The fact that her ruffled blouse was open almost to the waist and her make-up would have looked garish out of the dim orange light was to be expected. This was the House of Ruby, massage parlour and relaxation centre in Darlinghurst Road, Kings Cross, and the woman behind the table wasn’t selling raffle tickets. She pressed a red button on the desk. The blue button, I knew, summoned two or three women in various states of undress. The red one, appropriately, summoned Ruby.

  ‘Cliff, my love, you came.’

  ‘Once or twice, Ruby,’ I said. ‘It’s good to see you looking so well.’

  Ruby is about fifty, and carries a lot of flesh on a large frame, but she carries it with style. Her hair is red and luxuriant, like her lipstick. She was wearing a purple silk dress that outlined her charms rather than displayed them. The dress was short, however; Ruby has great legs and those she displays. She reached for me with her ruby-ringed fingers and red-painted nails. ‘Just you come in here, love, and I’ll give you a drink and tell you a story that’ll make you weep.’

  ‘Private eyes don’t weep,’ I said.

  Ruby burst into laughter, and I heard the woman behind the desk snigger a little too. Definitely the place to go to be appreciated for your wit, Ruby’s. She took me through a door and down a short passage to her private suite, which is fitted out like an erotic dream—silk and velvet hangings, black and red decor, pornographic paintings and photographs. Ruby poured generous measures of Scotch into tall glasses and added ice. ‘Put you in the mood, Cliff?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘But it’s just a bit overdone. I kind of get out of the mood from having been put in the mood, if you follow.’

  She nodded. ‘Me too, but it’s what the punters like.’

  I lifted my glass and drank down some good, nicely iced Scotch. ‘How’s Kathy?’

  ‘Fine. Two kids.’

  Kathy was Ruby’s daughter, who I’d found one time after she’d run off on learning that her mother was a whore and a madam. Kathy was a convent-educated teenager at the time, and I’d taken her back to my place, where my tenant, Hilde Stoner, and I had talked to her for several days about life and the world. I’d shown her a bit of it, in the Cross and around Darlinghurst, and she got a different perspective on things. She’d been her mother’s greatest supporter ever since, and Ruby was a friend of mine for life. I could’ve fucked my brains out for free forever if I’d been that way inclined. As it was, I’d availed myself of Ruby’s services but twice, in moments of distress.

  ‘So, what’s the problem, Ruby?’ I said. ‘The girl out front looks nice—you seem to be keeping up your usual standards. Are you still catering to the taste for older women?’

  Ruby drank deeply, which was a worrying sign; she usually sipped for a while and then forgot she had a drink. ‘Of course. Best decision I ever made. You get a better class of client and a more mature employee—less trouble all round. And Marcia out there? She’s the best. Professional woman, in the true sense of the word. She’s a doctor, would you believe? Runs a small practice part-time and does an elegant job here as well.’

  ‘So what is it? AIDS? Fred Nile picketing you?’

  She waved her hand dismissively; the red stones in her rings glittered. ‘AIDS. Nonsense. As safe here as in Turramurra. Safer. Not that it hasn’t hurt business. All the publicity, I mean. But no, nothing like that. Sammy Weiss’s trying to put the squeeze on me.’

  ‘Sammy? Never.’

  ‘Can you believe it? He owns the building, or most of it. I know that, and he knows that I know. So I pay him rent, on a lease. Fine.’

  ‘He’s putting up the rent?’

  ‘No. He wants a percentage of my earnings, and he wants it to appear on the books as rent. He’s negatively geared all over the bloody place. It’s no skin off his arse, but I simply can’t afford it. Not a hike of two hundred per cent.’

  I’d been sinking down in my velvet chair a little, lulled by the Scotch and thinking the story wouldn’t have much bite. Now I sat up. ‘You mean double?’

  ‘No, I do not mean double.’ Ruby finished her drink in a swallow. ‘I don’t know what I mean. All I know is he wants the rent to go up this month by as much again as it is now and by that much again next month. What’s that? He calls it two hundred per cent.’

  ‘I’d call it treble,’ I said.

  ‘I call it ruin. Will you talk to him, Cliff? I pay that and I’ve got to run this place like a cattle yard—use kids, junkies, all that shit. I’d rather close up, and that’d put some decent women out of work. And I’m helping Kathy’s husband get started as a nurseryman. I’ve got commitments. You know Sammy. I can’t think what’s got into him. He used to be a reasonable guy. Will you talk to him, Cliff? Please? I’m asking as a friend, and I’m paying. This is a business expense.’

  I didn’t like to see Ruby knocking back the Scotch as if she needed it, or the desperation in her eyes, so I said I’d talk to Sammy. That night I had nothing much else to do after I’d finished escorting a big gambler from the club in Edgecliff to the night safe in Woollahra, so I went looking for Sammy. Night is the only time to see him; that’s when he eats dinner at the Jack Daniels Bar ’n’ Grill and pays visits to several strip-joint nightclubs in which he has an interest. What he does in the daytime I don’t know—sleeps or counts money, maybe both.

  I found him in the Skin Cellar, a sleazoid hole in the wall around the corner from one of his classier joints in the Cross. The place was crowded, and the clientele was drunk and rowdy and giving the pre-owned blonde on the pocket-handkerchief stage a bad time.

  ‘Get ’em off!’

  ‘If I can’t touch ’em, I don’t believe ’em.’

  ‘Shake it, gran’ma!’

  The music howled deafeningly, a clatter of drums and electric machines. Through the smoke I spotted Sammy sitting at a table with two other men. This was normal. Sammy has a wife named
Karen, pronounced Kah-ren, who keeps him on a tight, monogamous leash. What wasn’t normal was the reaction of one of Sammy’s companions as I pushed my way through the smoke and the drunken lurching that passed for dancing. He pushed back his chair and stood—thin and dark like me, but 188 centimetres, giving him that uncomfortable two and a half centimetre advantage and with an acne-eaten face to back it up.

  ‘This guy’s carrying, Sammy,’ he grated.

  Observant. I had my licensed Smith & Wesson .38 under my arm, the way the nervous winning gambler liked it. I nodded at Sammy, hoping to bypass the heavy, but he wasn’t buying it. I saw the fist just before it hit me and ducked. I hadn’t had a drink since mid-afternoon at Ruby’s, or I might have been too slow. As it was, I had the adrenalin edge: I let the punch go past and hacked at the guy’s shins with my right shoe. I connected and he yelped. He was reaching inside his jacket for something serious when I clipped him on the chin with a half-serious left hook. He was moving the wrong way, into the punch, and it snapped his neck back. That kind of pain makes you think about giving up, and he did. He slumped to the floor and I reached inside his coat, expecting to find a gun. Instead, my fingers closed over the handle of a chunky flick-knife held in a spring-loaded holster. I pulled it out, sprung the blade and dropped the knife on the floor. I brought my heel down hard on it.

  ‘Sammy,’ I said, ‘what the hell d’you think you’re playing at?’

  ‘Don’t move a muscle, shithead,’ a heavily accented voice said close to my ear. I smelled sweat and aftershave. The other man at the table had slid away and come up behind me while acne-scars had been doing his thing. I stood very still because I could feel something digging into my right kidney and I knew it wasn’t a broom handle. He dug the gun in some more and then moved it away. Professional. You know it’s there, but you don’t know precisely where. And it was no good thinking, He won’t kill me, not in a public place. Above that racket a shot from a small calibre pistol wouldn’t be heard, and a bullet in the leg is not a laughing matter.