But I had every right to ask, and ask I would. Not interrogate, just query. Clear the air and have peace of mind. I opened my mouth to speak as Pockets stood to leave, but I did not have time to form a sentence. I saw something that made my eyes widen and blink and lower to avoid seeing more. I saw Pockets pass beside Jenny and her hand reach out and pat the small of his back, much too intimately to be normal work patting. It was a lover’s touch with quick rubbing included. She didn’t know I saw, but I saw.
I withdrew to my desk for some pondering: what pitfalls existed now? Not for them, for me. I must refrain from any back-stabbing, for instance, that’s for certain—if I wish to slight Pockets I must not let Jenny listen. I did not believe I’d done much of it so far. I had been careful to fit in and co-operate. What if the lovers had a falling out and split? Pockets was married, had two children. A divorce could shred his wealth. Pry could be bankrupted and I would be unemployed. You cannot cash in shares if they amount to worthless paper.
Or could this be turned to my advantage? If Jenny were off the scene I surely would be made editor. I grinned and stroked the sides of my hair at the prospect, then resumed worrying. It was Friday—I did not want my weekend ruined. I’d have Ollie with me and wanted no work trouble distracting my fathering.
So I scripted a play-act, rehearsed it silently for five minutes and went downstairs to perform the show to Jenny. Pockets was in the courtyard on a phone call. I sat in Jenny’s office and began: ‘I was thinking. If Justin is concerned about numbers, we could go after the ABs, include more business copy. Profile people who got crunched in this latest stock-market bother. You know, an inventory of winners and losers.’
‘Crime’s what we’ve nailed our colours to. Won’t help if we confuse everybody.’
I delivered the next line with a jocular leaning back in the chair followed by a grunt-laugh through my nose. ‘Of course, if Justin himself happened to be a victim we’d have to hush it.’
I rubbed my left eye as I laughed and with my right eye watched for any flinch of irony from her, an indication that I’d hit a nerve. I saw no evidence, no change of expression. Unless she’d perfected her own performance in readiness for this kind of probing. She said: ‘Politics has more daily intrigues. But celebrity gossip gets the eyeballs, Words. Celebrities would suit me.’
‘So he is in trouble?’
‘Who?’
‘Him.’
I jabbed my elbows on her desk and squeezed my knuckles till they cracked, the way I do when I’m concerned.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Money.’
‘No.’
‘You can be straight with me.’
‘I am.’
‘It’s definitely no?’
‘Yes. I mean, yes, it’s no.’
‘That’s reassuring.’
I have spent my working life not taking people’s word. In my world all talk consists of riddles. There is no such thing as face value. Trouble is, it spreads to all your judgments. You do not know when to give trust or withhold it. I left her office as worried as when I’d entered.
Two fire trucks flashed and wailed past our building. I did not bother sending anyone out. My lists had been pouted at despite good fraud and a will dispute with enmity. Fire was too petty to warrant consideration.
3
I work alternate weekends in tag team with Jenny. Or rather, Sundays, with Saturdays being the pry day of rest. Nothing happens on Saturdays except sports news so we ignore it. In emergencies—a terror threat or soccer riot—I’ll come in and cobble some pars.
I might as well have come in after the Friday exchange. The no-meant-yes worry was still festering in my system. I tried to smile it off for my East Malvern morning ritual. Fussed in the garden with a whistle as I walked. It wasn’t entirely forced, this artless music. Spring had warmed like an early summer. The wisteria over the verandah was hanging in bunches like burst grapes. Such an aroma! Sweet barbershop smell of old-fashioned hair oil. In competition with that was the garage-wall jasmine, all white lace and creamy breath. The cherry blossoms, the late bloomers of the season, bare-limbed since I’d pruned them in winter, now had buds for fingers. Sparrows were hopping about the lawn. So too blackbirds, their orange-rimmed eyes blinkless and wild. One had the moustache of a worm hanging from its jaws.
I’d bought four bags of compost from the plant nursery to scatter around the hibiscus. They say hibiscus struggle in chilly Melbourne but I’ve grown a flaring red row against the boundary fence. My secret is sugar-mulch cover all year round. I patted sheaves of it into place after the compost then sat with my eyes closed, the misty sun prickling my face as if treating me to a little extra shining, a personal homecoming.
My plan for the day was a drive to Merricks Beach. It was the sixth anniversary of my father’s death and I felt the need to mark it with my son beside me. Doubtless my life’s insecurities were the underlying reason. I’d not been to Merricks since the evening we scattered Dad’s ashes, right where Mum’s were scattered three years earlier. It felt important to do so now, to assert blood kinship. We had no churchyard with headstones but we had seawater to treat as sacred. We had no liturgy—who does these days?—but I could explain to him how this beach provided my best childhood holidays. I could lament my not keeping up the family tradition. Too humdrum was my complaint about the place. I thought proper holidays now meant swank resorts at Noosa where you sunbake in banana chairs with poolside service.
Visiting the dead or their imagined spirit would, I expect, inspire a father-to-son talk from me. A moral lesson to Ollie about making sacrifices for others, especially your loved ones…‘Your grandparents worked damned hard to afford a good school for me. Just as I am doing for you. Just as, when you have children, I hope you do the same. They won’t appreciate it until they’re older, then they’ll thank you.’
I washed myself at the laundry tub. Scratched butter onto toast and boiled coffee for taking to Emma. There was faint squeaking in the walls—the bathroom shower was running, making the pipes complain. I presumed it was Ollie not being his sleepy-head self but up early to embrace the day. I sighed a hopeful thought that he was excited to be partnering his father—the two Smith males—on a commemorative outing. But it wasn’t Ollie under the water, it was Emma. I presented the breakfast tray to an empty bed. A made bed, and just made going by the dust motes swirling in the window. The blue doona was dented where she’d swiped the puffiness smooth with her palm.
Her two favourite dresses were laid out near the pillow end. One red, one yellow. Both with floral patterns. Her green plastic belt was looped beside the yellow. A plaited leather belt, black, a belt I’d not seen before, was beside the red.
I put the tray on the floor. Four pairs of shoes—three of her old black pairs, slip-ons with high heels, were arranged near her bedside table, close together in an arc formation as if for inspection. A fourth pair of the same type but with a black-and-white check pattern were out front of the arc as if the leader in selection. I failed to place it in my memory. Must be a new pair, I thought.
The wardrobe doors were open and the door with the full-length mirror on it was smudgy the way it goes when your fingers work it back and forth to catch the best light. Beneath the hanging clothes Emma’s jewellery box was lid-up, its contents exposed—necklaces, silver and gold and pearl, which neglect had gathered into knots. Some were spilled out and I presumed they were in the process of being unthreaded into usefulness. I recognised a bracelet, Emma’s late mother’s, a gold chain with a studding of sapphires. A brooch, her grandmother’s, Scottish-themed with a tiny thistle shield, was hooked over the box’s front.
I knocked on the bathroom door. ‘I’ve brought you breakfast.’
‘Be there in a sec.’
A soapy lemon fragrance was strong enough to be smelt through the opaque glass. She was washing her hair—I could tell by the way the water spattered, cascading from her as she swayed and hummed.
Had she decide
d to invite herself on the Merricks trip? Yes, that must be what she’d done. It was a leap forward in our reconciliation. I had figured the process should not be rushed and here was my vindication.
I gave a few taps on Ollie’s door and called, ‘You getting set?’
There was a mumbly answer. I opened the door, just an inch to let my voice through. ‘I said, you getting ready?’
‘I heard. I heard.’
I opened the door further. There was sunlight in the room. The boy was up and active, not bundled in bedsheets. He was puff-eyed with sleepiness and his fringe was pointy from the pillow. He was putting on clothes, one slow leg at a time. T-shirts, underpants and socks around his feet like discarded rags. He was trying to clasp a sock with his toes to save bending. Wrong sock, he decided. He poked his toes out for another.
‘Looks like mum’s coming,’ I said.
‘Huh?’
‘Looks like all three of us will be going to Merricks.’
‘Thought she had a film.’
‘Film?’
‘Film she was going to.’
‘What film?’
‘A friend or something. The guy.’
‘What do you mean, guy? What did she say?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She must have said something.’
He rubbed his eyes and shrugged.
‘Ollie, what did she say?’
‘Just said a film.’
‘What else? Who’s this guy?’
‘I don’t know. He, like, owns a charity or something.’
‘You don’t own charities.’
‘He’s, like, rich or something. Owns nursing homes and has a charity.’
He fell backwards onto the bed to pull his socks on. I sat beside him and pressed my hand over his hand.
‘Just stop a minute,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me this?’
‘I just did.’
‘I mean before. I’m your father, I rely on you. To keep your eyes open. So, tell me about this film business.’
‘She, like, got off the phone last night and said she was going to a film with this Gordon guy.’
I let his hand go and put my arm around his shoulders and kissed his temple. The odour of sleep mixed with growing-boy smell is like mouldiness and sticky undergrowth. It is not pleasant to breathe but I breathed it deeply to bring Ollie closer in to me.
I stood up and asked him to tidy his room, his floor mainly, and to get into the habit of doing it more regularly. I advised him to have a solid breakfast because beaches make a boy hungry, the trudging through sand and having the wind jostle you.
The wall’s squealing was over. Emma would be clinking her way through the oils and lotions her skin needed for the day. I went into the bedroom, still my bedroom as far as I was concerned. I sat on my side of the bed and waited.
When Emma came in her towel was wrapped sarong-style across her torso. Her hair was brushed and flattened back over her head, a manly look. She had cut her fringe shorter, and done something to the colour, darkened it more deeply yellow than usual, and with lighter yellow stripes at the sides.
She was uncomfortable having me sitting, watching. Her skin was going goosey from the damp towel but she didn’t let it drop as once was normal between us. She held it shut with one hand and with the other tugged the bottom like a too-short skirt.
I acted ignorant of her film plans.
‘How ’bout you come with us to the beach?’
‘No, you two have a good time. It’s a nice thing to do, commemorate people.’
‘Be better if you were there.’
‘No, you two do it. That’s been your plan.’
I nodded at the laid-out dresses.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve got a film.’
I glanced at my watch.
‘It’s early in the day for a film. Having lunch afterwards?’
‘I expect so. Shouldn’t you deal with your laundry?’
‘Not doing any today because of Merricks.’
‘Shouldn’t you get on the road, then?’
‘We’ve got time.’
‘Do you mind, I’m getting cold.’
‘All these years and now you’re shy.’
‘Come on, you know things are different now.’
Different now. I wanted to take her fingertips in mine and draw her beside me and have her lie down with those dresses pushed aside and the Merricks trip cancelled.
I needed to know who this Gordon was. That there was no ‘boyfriend’ element involved, just someone to see a film with who happened to be a man.
Emma tucked the towel tighter under her armpits and took a step backwards. Then sideways to give me clear passage to the door. She didn’t ask ‘Please leave’ but that was the indication—she bit her top lip into a harelip of impatience and turned her face towards the door. I had no option but to bunt my hands on my knees to display impatience of my own, then stand and try not to flare my nostrils too angrily. I stood there hoping for tender direction from her, a hand to beckon me to embrace her before I go. Not for sex—that was clearly not about to happen. More the comforting connection of two bodies that for years had shared a home.
No hand was offered. I managed a hurt smile and bowed my head, conceding to her wish to dress alone.
‘Enjoy your film, then.’
Emma nodded.
‘Enjoy the beach.’
She closed the door behind me as soon as I was in the hall.
When I think of dispossession I think of land, something that happens to others—the bankrupted or Aborigines. But there is dispossession when it comes to losing people. Losing loved ones to others is losing the core of yourself. Not just one loss, in my case. Not just Emma if she discarded me, but Ollie as well, to a new man in her life. Someone the boy might value more than he values me. Or someone he hated, a hatred mutual between them. Seldom do you hear happy tales of stepfather heroes. You hear of horrors where the boy is beaten senseless… You’re getting way ahead of yourself, Words. Way ahead. Slow your mind down. Slow it down.
We, Ollie and I, were southbound now on the peninsula freeway and I couldn’t help but reach over and pat his forearm protectively, such a skinny limb and pale. But sprouting dark ginger hair these days, a proper crop of it, like a little teenage man.
He said, ‘What?’ as if my touch was bothering him.
‘Nothing.’
Then I said, ‘So, this Gordon fellow. Sound like a nice bloke, does he?’
Ollie shrugged. ‘I guess.’
I confess I did not feel noble starting this conversation, but I started it anyway.
‘Have you met him?’
‘Once.’
‘When was that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Think.’
‘I don’t know. Last week. He came round.’
‘He came round? To home? To our place? What for?’
‘I don’t know. It was business or something.’
‘Any idea what business?’
‘Nursing-home stuff or something.’
‘You said he owns nursing homes?’
‘That’s what Mum said. She does work for one of them.’
I did not want to pressure the boy. I went quiet and pointed out some fancy vehicles in the traffic. An E-Type Jag sparkly in the chrome as if fresh from the restorer. Porsche and Audi SUVs towing jet-skis and catamarans beachward. The Honda Accord I leased didn’t feel seventh-rate beside them but I said, ‘Me, I’ll go for an Audi when my pry ship comes in.’
‘Sweet,’ said Ollie, and pulled his sunglasses down to look at a black Hummer passing us. He said his friend Finn Richards owned a Hummer, or rather, Finn’s father did.
I said Hummers were much too military. Ollie said Audis were much too gay.
‘We’ll argue that out when the time comes. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’
I turned the radio on for the 10 a.m. news. I didn’t listen to it. I just wanted
the noise to fill up empty minutes until I resumed my line of questioning.
‘This Gordon person, did he stay long?’
Ollie yawned to himself from the dreamy state of car motion.
‘I asked, did he stay long?’
‘Not really. Can’t remember, really.’
‘But you met him.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What was he like?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Was he tall? Fat? Bald?’
‘He seemed old.’
‘Old?’ I was so delighted I let out a snorty laugh. ‘Older than me?’
‘Oh yeah.’
I glanced across to check he wasn’t joking. He wasn’t. He was yawning again.
‘Much older?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Then guess. Was he fifty? Sixty?’
‘More like sixty-plus.’
‘Sixty-plus!’ I snorted again. ‘Not a handsome type then?’
‘Just ordinary.’
‘Better-looking than me?’
‘No, he looked sixty-plus.’
‘Did you shake hands?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And? Good handshake? Strong or one of those limp fishes?’
‘Um. In between. Average.’
‘He doesn’t sound like much of a catch. Men like him, I know the type. They’re predatory. They’re out for what they can get. They see a woman like your mum, nice-looking, they see there’s no husband in the house at present and they think they’re in. I want you to look out for your mother. You let me know if this old sleazebag, this Gordon, starts coming round too often. Don’t be too matey with him.’
He nodded okay.
‘And this is just between you and me, this chat. All right?’
Another nod.
‘Because your mother’s a bit naive, and she’ll be thinking: Oh, Gordon is such a nice man. And I don’t want to appear an ogre to her.’
Another nod.
‘Good boy.’
So much for commemoration. The Merricks trip was an insult to it. Gordon, Gordon—I could not concentrate on anything else. I rushed our solemn proceedings in order to google the bastard on my phone. I said to Ollie, ‘Here’s the spot,’ so the lad could imagine his grandparents’ ashes scattering on the tide, and I didn’t chastise him for dragging up kelp and waving it like sacrilegious pompoms. I was too busy stepping over sand ridges and tapping Gordon, charity, nursing homes on the keypad. No local businessman fitted his profile. It occurred to me, hubristically, that poor Gordon wasn’t significant enough for a profile. Such a paltry individual that the internet had overlooked him. It hadn’t overlooked me—I had twenty-three Callum Smith pages!
Off the Record Page 3