Yair, right, I thought. You have given me nothing, mate, and you’re coming on all smug again. A whole plate-load of insinuation was piled into Carter’s remark about my relationship with Jane, legally a minor at the time. I pointed to my note on the business card in his shirt pocket. ‘I’m not the one who is in trouble, pal. I’m a friend of the Applebee family, but none of them, including Jane, needs to know I’m here. They also don’t need to find out about this.’ I tapped his shirt pocket with the card inside. ‘Unless you want to tell them.’ I paused. ‘I don’t think you do.’
Carter put his hand over his pocket. ‘Okay, Mr Hill, we will resolve this matter to our mutual satisfaction. I will look into the bullying, and you can give me one of your real business cards. I will be in touch very soon. Fair enough?’
No, this wasn’t enough. I didn’t budge. Did this vague concession pass for negotiation in the stiff world? Fob a person off and they just take it, saving up the indignation until they get their turn to give the brush-off to someone else. Very different from the robust philosophical and intellectual discussion I was used to on the streets. I summoned up all of my not-inconsiderable height, a great advantage in situations like these. I drilled into him with my eyes. ‘If you want to play it that way, Carter, it’s up to you. But remember, your days of screaming down a megaphone, or yelling at a slack student, or taking home that hefty pay packet, are numbered. You’ll be a zero sooner than you can say maths equation.’
I let him think about that before I continued. ‘I know Bub’s being bullied by some other girls, mainly verbally but sometimes physically. When I leave this schoolyard, you will never see me again. But you will see some other people if I don’t hear, within a month, that the bullying has stopped. I am giving you thirty days, and I can’t be any fairer than that. You got me?’ The last three words I hissed at him, just as I had seen the real toughs do during street altercations. A friend once told me that you focus your gaze behind your adversary’s eyes, to the middle of their head. Just as a karate kick is aimed, not at the knee to be broken, but six inches behind it.
Carter rubbed his hair back with a sweaty palm, and I took this as an acceptable gesture of fear or submission. I rode my luck. ‘And if I find that gangly kid is made to take part in any more sports against his will . . .’ I reached into his shirt pocket, retrieved the business card and pushed it towards his face before putting it back into my wallet.
I had one more under-educated jibe for the road. ‘By the way, wear a hat or a cap out in the sun next time, you prick. What sort of a bloody role model are you?’ I stalked away, leaving the principal to review the lessons of the day that I had set him.
Bub told Natalie that the bullying pretty much stopped after that. Two girls were suspended, and another six students, girls and boys, were threatened with expulsion.
Months later, Jane cornered me in Nat’s flat. ‘I saw you at school on that sports day, Steele. You know everyone thinks I’m a total geek now, getting my big brother to settle scores for me. I keep telling them we’re not related, but they don’t believe me. I even said you were my lover to try to get back cred, but they didn’t believe that either.’
She started to wind herself up, as she regularly does. I wonder is it acting practice, or maybe acting for her is life practice. ‘Did I ask you to put in your two-cents worth? I could have handled it. The bullying only started because I made fun of the cool kids, and they hate that. I could have stopped it at any time.’ Her lovely almond eyes were narrowing, her shoulders rising.
I don’t know whether she could have stopped the bullying, but I believed it when she said she had a hand in starting it, with her sarcasm and refusal to acknowledge her place in the social pecking order.
‘Well, why didn’t you stop it, Bub?’
‘To tell you the truth, I suppose it was getting a little out of hand.’ And off she bounced.
I took that as a thank-you.
___o0o___
A FEW WEEKS after Bub’s sixteenth birthday, I was tonguing for a feed of veal in pyjamas. Nat makes me order parmigiana properly now, though waiters in the past always brought a top serve of veal in pyjamas when I selected it without even a glance at the menu. My order sometimes brought a smile to the waiter’s face, and sometimes a scowl. I never counted whether a smile or a scowl was winning. Nat said my jest was stale and embarrassed her, so I stopped.
I raced past the Iraqi Icicle roses along the front fence, bounded up the steps to My Cucumber’s flat and tested the doorknob, to find it unlocked. Full of joy I burst in. Bub was on the couch, reading a book of the play Romeo and Juliet. Deflated, I said, ‘Oh.’
Jane lowered the book slightly and said, ‘Glad tidings to you, too, Steele.’ She continued reading and I asked where Nat was. ‘Natalie had to go to an important meeting. Her big supermarket chain has swallowed a small string of grocers, and the meeting is to decide how they will digest their new acquisitions.’
‘Nicely put, Jane. Shakespeare must be rubbing off. Are you studying that at school?’
‘No, but if my acting career takes off earlier than I have planned, I may be called upon to play Juliet.’
I feigned interest to muffle a laugh. ‘How’s the reading coming along?’
She put down the book to think about it. ‘Quite a few dirty jokes should maintain the audience interest. But he tells them like Uncle Harry.’ I had never met Uncle Harry, but everyone has a relative who tells jokes that way – except for poor orphans like me.
I sat on the couch beside Bub. ‘You and Nat are two peas in a pod. You think too much. I caressed her temples, a remedy which works on Nat. It was a mistake, but I could not stop. It was like that black-and-white horror movie in which doctors graft new hands on a bloke who cannot control them. Jane kissed each of my palms and moved on to my lips. I was shocked to find her lips soft and malleable. My girlfriend’s younger sister was far too adept at foreplay for my liking.
Bub pushed me flat onto the couch and pinned my shoulders. Romeo and Juliet were glued to the back of my shirt. Standing up, she removed her dress to reveal matching black bra and panties. ‘I know where Natalie keeps her condoms,’ she said.
She went to Nat’s bedroom and I followed, thinking I would talk her and me out of this misadventure. The drawback to the plan was my erection, which felt the size of a lobster. I hunched over, stupidly thinking that that might hide the desire in my jeans. Jane was already scrutinising opened packets of condoms in a drawer. She triumphantly raised a pack. ‘Ooh, Steele, Rib Ticklers, I didn’t know you had it in you.’ She looked down at the bulge in my jeans. ‘Obviously you have.’
‘Put those back,’ I said. I was nervous, flooded with visions of Natalie catching us. The whole episode might have ended there, had not my mouth followed the lead of my hands and acted independently of my brain. ‘Use a plain one,’ I said. I was trapped. ‘Only one?’ Bub quipped, as she undid her bra and dropped it on the floor. She had firm, round breasts, eager for action. I remember thinking they looked bigger than her older sister’s, and that did not seem right. Jane leaped on Nat’s bed and rolled onto her back, waving the condom in the air.
I was aghast. ‘On Nat’s bed? We can’t do it on Nat’s bed!’
Jane frowned. ‘I guess not.’ She put the condom in her panties and slid slowly from the bed. She approached and kissed me wildly, undoing the buttons of my shirt at the same time. Satisfied, she took my hand and led me like a horny lamb to the couch.
Regaining a little control, I insisted Bub would be on the bottom this time, and I gallantly removed Romeo and Juliet for her. I need not have bothered. By the time we had taken off all our clothes, amid frantic preliminary screwing, we had fallen to the floor.
Perhaps Bub was destined for the part of Juliet after all, as the book found its way under various parts of her tanned, taut and thrashing body, the upper side of which I explored with my fingers and tongue.
You know the next bit. I put my DH Lawrence into Jane’s DH Lawrence,
and we both made satisfied incoherent noises. I rolled off and we looked at each other sheepishly. I gave her a peck on the cheek to suggest everything was above board.
What she said next was a pleasant surprise: ‘Promise me, you won’t ’fess up to Natalie.’ She slipped on her panties, giving me a parting glance at her abundant alluring pubic hair.
I guess it was down to loyalty to Jane that I never did tell Nat, despite the provocations of love, intimacy, sex or alcohol. I was sure that Bub’s personality would not allow her to keep the secret. Yet Nat never did bring it up. The incident was just another brick of guilt in my knapsack on my journey through life.
I never had sex with Bub again except for two other times and neither was my fault.
___o0o___
BY THE WAY, you are probably wondering what I wrote on the back of the business card I gave to Principal Carter. I didn’t know what it was going to be myself, even when I was fishing the card from my wallet. I had a scantily formed notion that I might say a couple of heavies would break the principal’s legs, or kneecap him, or something else gross along those lines.
As I took out a pen, I thought of how heavies reshaping limbs could be an occupational risk for someone like me. It was not worth tempting karma by making such a threat.
Instead, I wrote: ‘The most embarrassing thing in your life. I have the witness.’
If you run near the edge, as I do, your brain would be spinning, trying to recall which of half a dozen escapades the note might mean. But I figure stiffs zip themselves inside a straitjacket most of their social lives, until the booze or drugs or just plain randiness turns them into Houdini one night.
If I do say myself, writing I had the witness instead of a witness was the clincher. Not only was Carter replaying the most embarrassing moment in his life, he was imagining who the one witness was and how I had run into that person. It had to be the stuff of nightmares for weeks. He probably did not get a decent sleep until he or his good luck stopped the bullying.
4
Brisbane, summer, December 1989
WHEN BUB’S FELLOW FIRST-YEAR acting student Suzanne Lu dropped dead in a La Boite production of Waiting for Godot, I thought it was in the script. Even when Jane screamed, it seemed to fit. More astute theatrical punters near me in the first row of raked seating picked up on the discordant vibes and a Mexican scream started, washing out behind us.
Godot star Alison Kahn pitched a plea to the assembled crowd above the cacophony. It’s funny how in crisis we seek comfort in clichés.
Without a hint of irony, Kahn raised her arms like Atlas and asked, ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’
A bag of fruit swept passed me, as I eased out of my seat to see if Jane was all right.
As I passed Kahn, she touched my shoulder and asked, ‘You’re a doctor, too?’
She turned to the suit. ‘Maybe he should handle this, Efram.’
I shook my head and Efram agreed with me.
‘I see no problem with my assisting, dear,’ he said.
I didn’t either, what with such an ingratiating dead-side manner, calling Kahn ‘dear’ and all.
I relinquished any pretence to medical qualifications. ‘I’m not a doctor. I’m a friend of Jane’s.’
Bub made the introductions. ‘Alison Kahn, this is Steele Hill. Steele, this is Efram Kahn, Alison’s husband. Efram’s a doctor.’ How nice, a fresh corpse giving the Kahns an opportunity to work together.
Only a tiny grimace at the corner of her mouth gave any hint that Suzanne Lu was disappointed at her passing. Overall, her unlined face looked serene.
There was living panic on the faces of sundry staff of La Boite, roughly ushering the audience outside. Caitlin Meares, a living actor from the play, was in a state. I moved towards her, holding out my arms into which she reeled.
‘It could have been me,’ she kept repeating, trying for just the right delivery, as the room emptied.
Our turn will come soon enough, I thought.
I looked across to a face from the program. It belonged to the director, Sandra Blaine, deep in conversation with Efram Kahn.
‘Was Suzanne on medication, Sandra?’
‘Not that I know of, Efram, except for some herbal concoction she was into.’
‘I’ll have to have a look into that,’ Kahn said with grave professionalism. ‘What about water?’ he added. ‘Did she drink a lot of water?’
‘I guess so. Why?’
Efram frowned the concerned doctor’s frown. ‘Could she have been on that new drug the papers are talking about: ecstasy?’
‘Before a performance, I wouldn’t think so. Kelvin Grove is a professional training ground, as you well know.’
Efram Kahn ignored the advertisement for the college. ‘What do the rest of you think? Jane? Caitlin? Alison?’
The young women shrugged. I shrugged. I was no expert on eccie, having only had the new party drug a few times. Eccie was for jumping around to a relentless dance beat, hugging people you don’t like and processing muddled thoughts about living in a wonderful world. I’ve never had the urge to drop a tab or two before a hard afternoon’s work, punting on the ponies in the TAB.
I only had to start thinking about the nags to conjure up those cranky brumbies, Detective Sergeant Frank Mooney and Constable Bill Schmidt. The last time I was within worm’s length of a dead body, these coppers tried to fit me up for murder.
Mooney was a 197cm – six-foot-five in the old lingo – son of an Irish family. The Irish are generally known for their wit, their fists, their commitment to causes and their carrot tops. Black-haired Mooney was known for his fists. I once told Mooney that he was as cunning as a water rat and as thick as a wharf plank. You would never have thought a fifty-something pudgy cop could hit, not to mention kick, so hard. When I got out of hospital, the magistrate was kind enough to suspend my sentence for assaulting Mooney. I never did like Detective Sergeant ‘Bull’ Mooney after that, or before that, really.
Bill Schmidt was an over-achiever in his late twenties. Drunk one night at a card table, Schmidt told me what he would do if he was Police Commissioner. He might just be Police Commissioner one day. If he was, he would do what he was told to do, and then get drunk and tell anyone who would listen what he would do if he was elected Police Minister. Schmidt was only a fraction shorter than Mooney. He was better looking, if you didn’t mind those crazy-as-a-headless-chook eyes, with sandy-blond hair cut in military style, and pale skin stretched across a square jaw and jutting cheekbones. Schmidt was the bad cop. Mooney was the even worse cop, and a smirk broke out on his big red face as soon as he saw me.
‘I should have known, Hill,’ he snarled. Mooney was as out of place at La Boite as Oedipus on Father’s Day, as Nat likes to say about me during some of our cultural outings, funnily enough the ones she chooses. I got the joke once she explained it to me.
Mooney was not here for the culture ‘Another day, another corpse,’ he said to me. `What did you do to this one?’
Efram Kahn answered for me. ‘Heart failure, I suspect.’
‘Drugs,’ Constable Schmidt declared, as if a post-mortem was but a formality.
Schmidt was a uni graduate. He enjoyed barking monosyllables as rehearsals for his destiny as a no-frills police commissioner, the boss job in the Queensland police force. As unlikely a partnership as they were, Mooney and Schmidt were the best of mates at work and at play.
Schmidt’s drug proposition sounded reasonable to Sergeant Mooney, but, of course, I had to be in the frame. ‘What did you sell her, Hill, that new craze, ecstasy?’ As he always does he berated me for being a clown.
We played cops and killer for half an hour. It took Mooney only a couple of minutes to realise I had not known Suzanne Lu from a bar of soap. The cops used the other twenty-eight minutes to remind me again and again that, one day soon, they were going to put me in jail for life, and a bit more.
I did not have the chance to talk to Jane. The cops asked me to leave after our
chat.
Mooney whispered in my ear, ‘Get lost, Clown.’
I did.
It was a week before I saw the cops again. They tried to kick down the door of my flat, which is on the floor below My Cucumber Natalie and not 800 metres from my beloved Brisbane racetracks. I was listening to the latest Go-Betweens album, 16 Lover’s Lane, and letting the sound vibrate through me as I sat in my armchair. The album was more than a year old, no album from the band in 1989. A bad sign? Distracted from the rock/pop magic, I had to get up, or risk the two detectives breaking my door down and claiming I had assaulted their feet.
I invited the dees in and offered them cups of rat poison. Mooney and Schmidt exchanged meaningful glances. They didn’t worry me. Meaningful glances come as easily as breathing to coppers; they mean nothing.
I did open my eyes a little wider when Constable Schmidt barked, ‘Cyanide.’
Mooney supported his junior. ‘But you already know that, Hill.’
Cyanide had killed Suzanne Lu.
Mooney and Schmidt knew I had not murdered a complete stranger with a poison I would not know from Vegemite. I decided to stop this nonsense. I looked straight at Mooney, into those hateful eyes.
‘It’s a fair cop, Senior Sergeant.’
Mooney would love to be a senior sergeant, come pension day, so I could always get a bite with that one. I saw the blood rise in his eyes and I pressed on. ‘After you have proved that one, you can start on the Theory of Relativity.’
The Sergeant growled back at me. ‘You’re a smart-arse clown, Hill, too smart for your own good. But you’re in this up to that long hair at the back of your neck. Seven-thirty, tomorrow night, La Boite. The others already know about it. Be there, or we will kick down whatever door you’re hiding behind and then start on your face.’
‘I’m there,’ I said.
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