High Beam

by SJ Brown

  Roger snorted. “God, no. Decent wages for decent work. Proper services for everyone provided by the public system. Keep the shysters out. Reasonable taxes, reasonable mind, to give people the basics of housing, transport, schooling and health services. That’s government work. Keep government out of business and business out of government.” He polished off his coffee. “And get the idiots and the time-servers out of government.”

  This was a reasonably compelling argument if put a little baldly. Still the academic decided to push a few quibbles. “What about the democratic rights we currently enjoy?”

  “Wasted on most people.” He looked directly at Cartwright. “Look, I know I’m sounding a bit like the Tea Party. That’s coz this is just a basic chat. You’d need to put some meat on the bones of what I’m saying for it to make sense. The guts of it is that while democracy is a good system in theory it just doesn’t go well with capitalism which is the most efficient system of running the economy to give the best for everyone.”

  “And people should sacrifice freedom to escape poverty?”

  “There you go again. Wrong end of the stick, son. I know you’re being provocative but you’re the one making this simplistic with your Socratic stuff.”

  Cartwright was chastened, not least because his technique had been rumbled. He knew from close observation that the body politic was in a mess. Knew there must be a better way. Having made an assumption about Mister Stocky, he’d begun to make an ass of himself. He lifted his hands in mock surrender. “You’ve got me. What you’re essentially saying is very much out there provocative but there’s a lot to it. Civil libertarians would have a field day with you but our current system isn’t fulfilling the electorate’s needs. Maybe a bulldozer approach is the way to go. Tweaking the formula doesn’t seem to do much good.” He thought a bit more positive reinforcement would help. “I’m pleasantly surprised you seem to believe in redistributive taxation.”

  “As in those doing OK should help a bit with those doing it tough?”

  A nod. “I guess that’s a good way of putting it.”

  “Yeah well, despite the fact there will always be scroungers, a lot of people start life on Struggle Street and it’s not that easy to move out.” After a pause there was an edge to his voice. “And the squattocracy don’t like them so I do.”

  A bemused Cartwright asked, “Taxes or strugglers?”

  “Both. Once a month I’m in a lunch group at the Colonial Club. Just about all the men that go would call themselves successful. And in most cases where does that so-called success originate? In daddy’s testicles, that’s where. You get a good start in life then it’s not too hard to maintain it. Start behind the eight-ball and it’s much, much harder to get going. Simple logic and history proves it time and again. Yet these numpties in their suits all pat themselves on the back and bray about their attainments as if they’re 100% self-made. Idiots. And then they dump on the poor buggers who are stuck on the other side of the tracks. So they’re hypocritical idiots.”

  Cartwright thought ‘Thomas Paine’ but said nothing.

  “And whinge and moan about taxes. Lordy! The graziers take thousands in subsidies yet do everything they can to minimize their tax bill. The doctors manipulate every possible deduction yet they’ve gotten their exorbitant degree courtesy of the public healthcare system. One bloke, an accountant, said to me at one lunch we should have really low income tax levels like Hong Kong. 15% or whatever. I told him if he wanted to only pay that he should fuck off to Honkers then. Get crutch rot in the 90% humidity of their summer. Clown. And it’s not as if they’d all become great philanthropists either. Just want bigger boats at the Marina.” Most of the steam was spent. He smiled at Cartwright. “So you could say I’m in favor of paying my fair share of tax, yes.”

  “Am I right in guessing you’re not too keen on the plethora of taxes government still places on business?”

  “Too right. A reasonable company tax is fair enough. The Goods and Services Tax was needed as a consumption tax. But the bastards promised to get rid of rubbish ones like payroll tax. If that’s not a disincentive to employ people I don’t know what is. Kinda proves my point that the politicians are liars and idiots, doesn’t it?”

  Some more soulful nodding from Cartwright. “Yes, yes it does.” Both men looked at the view for a time. Then Cartwright stood. “I’d better be off then. It was good to talk to you.”

  “Yeah mate, same. Much planned for the rest of the day?”

  “Oh, you know, some stuff around the house than off to dinner this evening.”

  A twinkle in his voice alerted Roger to the possible nature of the meal. He laughed briefly without humor. “Good luck with that. All I’d say is don’t take everything at face value. You with me?” The tone was melancholic.

  “Yeah, know what you mean.” Cartwright hadn’t a clue what had abruptly turned his new mate into a morose contemplative. He wasn’t sure what the last bit of advice meant so he said his farewell and walked back to his bike. The evening promised much for him no matter what old sad sack felt about romance.

  CHAPTER 6

  Saturday 6th March 9pm

  James Cartwright had pushed the boat out. No doubt about it, he intended to make sure his date for the evening was suitably impressed. He had agonized over the choice of location. He thought she would be the sort of girl who would drink, eat and party at Metz, the Sandy Bay venue that was enjoying a burst of popularity with svelte twenty-somethings. Trouble is he might stand out as an old-stager in that crowd and he did not want Amanda to be distracted from his charms by her peers. The same proviso applied to the ever more crowded bars down on Salamanca Place. For his purposes he required somewhere classy, contemporary and intimate.

  As they perused the menu at Vue d’Amour in Battery Point, he assessed that his selection had been spot on. One of the best restaurants in the state yet not snootily pretentious. And, thanks to a late cancellation, they were seated at the prized window table on a Saturday night. Someone was looking benignly upon him. And Amanda was definitely regarding him favorably at this early stage. She was dressed in a black satin cocktail dress that showed plenty of her toned legs, hugged her hips and revealed a sufficiently tantalizing view of her breasts. It was enough to make a dead man sit upright and pay attention.

  Cartwright was pleased to note that she sat her curved derriere back in her chair and leaned forward on her elbows to converse. It had a marvelous effect of opening more of her breasts to his surreptitious gaze. And when she leant back slightly to run her fingers through expensively cut blonde hair Cartwright was tremendously grateful he was seated at the table.

  As the evening steadily progressed and they moved through the delicacies of the degustation menu, Cartwright was becoming more relaxed and increasingly confident of his chances. The food was adventurous yet remarkably delicious and the service was solicitous and professional. The conversation was not unlike the excellent Shiraz: pleasantly spicy. By the second bottle they had even ventured onto the topic of favorite sexual positions. When she told him hers resembled a certain canine maneuver it wasn’t just his heart that leapt. To defray his eagerness to kidnap her there and then, he rolled out a droll aphorism he had heard the writer Kathy Lette use. “What, I sit up and beg while you roll over and play dead?”

  This was greeted with genuine throaty laughter. Amanda had really loosened up and just dessert to go. She ventured off on a bit of a tangent. Ever so slightly slurring, she said in a low voice, “Thank you for this beautiful meal, James. My last boyfriend seemed to think I found Ching food a treat. I don’t like dogs that much. To be honest, I’m not all that keen on your Asians per se. Funny bunch. Slopping and slurping their food in the refectory. And the nose-tunneling. One guy in your lecture was up to his middle knuckle. Gross!”

  The normally circumspect Cartwright, courtesy of plenty of vino, blundered in. “I know. They come down here and make s
tuff-all effort to fit in. At least the Indians can talk about cricket but your yellow peril make no connection. Just jabber away in their native tongue and have the gall to complain that I speak too quickly in lectures. I mean, get with the program. At least learn the fucking language.” As he spoke he felt slightly uneasy. Knew he wasn’t thinking with his brain but if this was getting him closer to bedding her then what was the harm.

  “Yeah. And they spend all day on their mobiles rabbiting on or playing games. They’ve all got the flashiest phones.”

  “That’s because they’re all so bloody well off. That’s why they’re here. Not because they’re bright or hardworking or anything. Ma & Pa Wong in Honkers have forked out big bucks to get them in here as private students and the uni gets to put more in the coffers. It’s a cash cow. It’s just the poor bloody academic staff who have to deal with all the collateral damage. They don’t understand the set texts, can’t decipher the lectures. And the essays! It’s like alphabet soup. But they expect to pass with flying colors. They’ve paid, after all. It’s criminal, a bloody joke. And the Board hasn’t got the balls to do anything about it.”

  Amanda had been listening particularly attentively, nodding all through the diatribe. Just then her own mobile caught her attention. “Sorry. Didn’t realize it was on. I’ll just get this text. It’s from Mum.”

  Cartwright magnanimously agreed with a wave of his hand as she got up and walked to the foyer. He could easily afford to appear relaxed. His chances were looking good. No doubt about that. The train to Pleasureville was boarding: he was not intending to give up his seat.

  Amanda’s return promptly put the brakes on. “James, I’m so sorry. Bit of a crisis with the olds.” She waved her phone. “Dad’s been picked up at a random breath test and Mum’s in pieces. I’ll have to head home and try to be a phone counsellor.”

  Cartwright managed to hide his disappointment rather well he thought. “No, no, of course. That’s fine. Needs must. Do what you have to and we’ll catch up soon.” It was a struggle but the words were delivered in just the right tone of genuine sympathy. Not a bad little performance really.

  “Oh, James, thank you. It’s been a lovely evening. First of many, I hope.” With her brightest smile she blew away any chagrin Cartwright felt. She got up to leave. “I’ll grab that taxi outside the pub and call you tomorrow. Thanks again.” A delectable kiss on his right cheek and she was gone. Onwards and upwards, thought the ever so slightly frustrated academic.

  CHAPTER 7

  Monday 8th March 8pm

  As the March long weekend drew to a close, Cartwright sat quietly in his lounge room. If anything, he felt content. His article on Tasmanian politics had been syndicated over the weekend through the Murdoch press nationwide, with a commensurate lifting of his profile. The producer of the ABC’s 7.30 Report had called proposing an appearance on the program during the coming week. If this momentum was maintained, he could feasibly be offered a regular opinion column in The Australian, the national broadsheet. His fifteen minutes may be drawn out. Ego was not a dirty word.

  Also pleasing, perhaps even more so than professional developments, had been Amanda’s response to their dinner. Although their evening had been truncated by the distress call, she had phoned, not texted, the next day: waxing lyrical about the date, apologizing for having to dash off and then accepting Cartwright’s offer of a home cooked meal that Tuesday evening.

  So his weekend had been very fulfilling and augured very well for the coming weeks and months. That day he had even genuinely enjoyed the company at his sister’s birthday barbecue at her Lindisfarne home. Given she was a secondary humanities teacher, he had expected a bunch of light green lefties but was pleased to discover a disparate assembly of people whose opinions covered much of the spectrum.

  Even the old stallion of the local political scene, Hodgman QC, was present. Ill health had prompted recent retirement from Parliament but he maintained his devilish humor as he regaled one group with anecdotes of racing appeals and legal cases. One particularly entertaining yarn centered on how a magnifying glass was used to examine documents in court to convince the jury it was vital material. He brought a touch of Rumpolian theatricality to a fairly staid Supreme Court.

  Cartwright was now sitting placidly in his lounge room. He had not needed to worry about an evening meal: grazing on the plethora of offerings cooked up on the barbecue had filled him and all the guests rather well. Listening to the book show on Radio National, he reflected on the nature of Australia’s public holidays. People enthusiastically enjoyed them but they seemed to have become increasingly divorced from their original intention. Australia Day was a jingoistic booze-up that alienated the indigenous population who could see little point in supporting what was, after all in their opinion, a commemoration of the European invasion of their land. Anzac Day had drifted into a celebration of militarization instead of a somber remembering of the grievous losses caused by war.

  Good Friday, in his youth the quietest day of the year, now saw cafés open and bursting at the seams. Sports fixtures were scheduled in the afternoon and it was mooted that a priest would deliver an Easter homily at half time in a local football match. Cartwright’s view was that if such a parody should occur and the day went forward like a normal Saturday then the holiday should simply be abandoned. Too much had been commercialized. As for the very holiday they had just been celebrating, he doubted very much if many people would know the significance of the declaration of the eight-hour day. The land of the long weekend. Bread and circuses.

  He switched from the radio to the television. The psychic detective was on one of the commercial channels: a guilty pleasure. Part way in during the ad break, there was the nightly live switch to The Mercury newsroom to provide a taster of notable items in the next day’s edition. It would probably have been a quiet news day so he wondered what would be the lead item. The young reporter concluded, “And in a sensational development, evidence that Tasmania’s political pundit, Dr. James Cartwright, has made a racist attack on overseas students at UTAS. More in The Mercury tomorrow.”

  Cartwright was too stunned to move. He sat still, merely blinking a few times. How? Where did that come from? What to do now? He breathed deeply and reached for his phone. It had been switched off all day: he had wanted a break from being contacted. He ignored the messages and speed-dialed the one man who could possibly help.

  CHAPTER 8

  Tuesday 9th March 10am

  Rory Fotheringham was a fixer. Standing comfortably over six foot with broad shoulders, large hands and a swarthy block head, he had the look of a woodchopper. If dressed in a shirt, jeans and boots, he would merge into a public bar easily. However, that was unlikely.

  The middle son of prosperous Midlands graziers, he had seen the rougher side of country life in his teenage years. During the long summer break from boarding school in Launceston, the Man O’ Ross Hotel of a Saturday night was a good place for him and a few of the lads to go on the tear. Following his final year of school and toughened by weeks of fence building on the property, he had got into his first decent brawl. It had been a stinking hot day on the back of a bloody warm week and Rory was necking quite a few Boag’s stubbies with his Dad’s farmhands.

  About 8pm a trio of blow-ins sauntered into the front bar. They were obviously three sheets to the wind and looking for some action. Tatts, moeys, loud voices; the works. The locals tolerated them for about an hour: boofheads wanting to take over the jukebox and feeling free to ark up the bar staff was par for the course on a Saturday night. But there was a limit. The shortest one of the threesome with his rat’s tail hair and gap-toothed grin was calling the shots. After a period of leering at the pert barmaid, Alison, he suddenly wanted to know if the “stuck-up bitch was on heat tonight”. Brian Turner tolerated much in his hotel but this was just a bit much. Service was refused and the ‘gang of ratbags’ was told to clear off.

  Next th
ing, a steel toe boot went straight into the front of the jukebox and fists were flying. Rory had reigned supreme in the odd dust up at school but this was something else. In the space of seconds it was like the brawl at the start of every episode of the classic TV comedy series F-Troop but the crashing chairs were genuine wood and the thwack of knuckles on bone was all too real. The young fella tore in. Already his full adult size and bloody tough, he was more than a match for all three. All it took for the first to fall was a savage right cross while the bigger bloke took all four punches before keeling over. The rat slid out the door before his caning. For the rest of the night it was open bar for Fothers and the Bundaberg Rum flowed freely.

  From then on Rory walked just that little bit taller, not just in the Ross Hotel but any room he walked into. He discovered that by simply holding himself in a certain way when he strode in a room drew people’s attention: there was a sense of latent power to his stature. Rarely did he ever need to actually assert his authority in a physical manner. Those who knew him respected his potential and those who did not sensed that this was a man not to be messed with. He progressed through his tertiary studies because he was intelligent and knowledgeable but he instinctively knew that people increasingly used him professionally because they regarded him as shrewd and ruthless.

  Having qualified with a Bachelor of Business from Charles Sturt University in NSW, he returned to Hobart to work as a property valuer. By the age of thirty he was a partner. The established rural families, ex-students of private schools in business and all the contacts he made through sport turned to him for advice and his reputation as a straight-down-the-line broker grew. The logical step into property development beckoned and he took it. Southern Tasmania may have been slower to follow the trends of the populous mainland regions but it surely would.

  Rory saw his chance in the property recession of the mid-1990s. Urban and rural land was available. He swooped. He bought up a few grazing and timber properties on the East Coast that were no longer operating profitably and were grossly devalued. Prices for wool and wood may have fallen but the essential worth of the land was still high if someone with vision could see it. He could, and by subdividing the land for future holiday homebuilders, made the sort of money his male forebears would not have thought possible.