The Gulliver Fortune

by Peter Corris

  "Wherever did you get such an idea, Georgia?" Trudie felt she was replaying the scene with Stephen and she knew she had to go carefully.

  "From reading papers and magazines." Georgia smiled and ran her fingers through her thick dark hair. She had grown into a tall, strongly built young woman with an arresting face. She was not beautiful but nothing in her features was unsatisfactory. Her smile, which seemed to have thought behind it as much as amusement, enlivened her face. "To tell you the truth, Grandma, I like them more than books."

  Trudie sipped her coffee and thought about it for a few minutes. Jack had known a few journalists—seedy, down-at-heel men who smelled of beer and cigarettes and dropped the names of important people. "It's such a shabby life," she said.

  "Ain't it the truth." Tess had fortified herself perhaps more generously than she intended and she felt reckless. She dropped back into her chair and lit a cigarette. "As you know, I'm an orphan. I could be the illegitimate daughter of . . . somebody important. But most likely not. But don't you think it's time Georgy found out something about your side of the family, Gertrude? Now that she's embarking on a career?"

  "I want to go to uni first," Georgia said. "Then take up journalism. C'n I have a cigarette, Mum?"

  "Georgia!"

  Tess smiled lopsidedly and lit her daughter's cigarette. "Bad blood will out, Gertrude. I don't think Stephen ever smoked a cigarette in his life."

  "Your father was a gentleman, Georgia," Trudie said.

  Georgia waved her cigarette. "What about his father?"

  "He was a businessman."

  "What about my great-grandfather? You must've known him, Grandma."

  Trudie recalled the burly commanding figure of John Gulliver striding around the deck of the Southern Maid. She remembered his beard and the force of his manner which softened when he was dealing with his wife and children. What had Jack told her about him? Precious little. Had Jack been afraid of him? No, Jack had never been afraid of anyone. He had not been afraid of her and that was a mistake. She raked back through her memories, searching for a phrase, a word.

  "He was a . . . publisher," she said.

  "There you are, kid," Tess said. "You're going into just the right game. Maybe you'll end up a publisher, like your great-grandpa."

  11

  Georgia entered the University of Sydney in 1963. She lived in the women's college in her first year and shared a house with other students in Paddington after that. She had a Commonwealth Scholarship and Trudie gave her a generous allowance. She worked sufficiently to earn good honours marks but her real passion was the university newspaper. She wrote on all subjects from sport to theatre, edited the letters page, attended university meetings that concerned the paper and became a well-known name and face on campus.

  Three successive editors of the paper—one of them a woman—attempted to seduce her and failed. Georgia drank with her mother on her increasingly rare visits but not otherwise, especially not at parties. She was too busy for sex, and too careful.

  She went into her final year at twenty, still a virgin and with a fair prospect of getting a First. In April a batch of national servicemen left Australia for Vietnam. By May more than five thousand Australians were fighting in Vietnam, one-quarter of them conscripts. By August Georgia had lost her virginity to Paul Lucas, a radical lecturer in politics, who helped her to organise anti-Vietnam activities. She was deputy editor of the paper; she smoked forty cigarettes a day and drank flagon wine from noon to the early hours on most days. She ate nothing.

  "Georgia, you're ruining your health," her grandmother told her when Georgia squeezed out some time to pay a visit and to extract some money. Trudie was resolutely anti-war although her sympathies for all things American caused her some pangs over this one.

  "I'm strong, Grandma," Georgia said. "I'll be all right. The men are getting killed, the women can take some chances with their health at least."

  Trudie remembered Jack and the white feathers. "Your grandfather was a pacifist," she said.

  "Was he? Good for him. I suppose it was different for my father. A different sort of war."

  "Yes. Why do you wear those dreadful clothes? What's wrong with a nice frock?"

  Georgia was wearing black trousers and boots, a long black sweater and dark glasses. Her hair was twisted into a greasy knot. "I have to go, Grandma. Thanks for the tea and the money and everything."

  "What would you like for a graduation present?"

  Jesus, graduation, Georgia thought as she hurried for the train. I haven't been to a lecture or opened a book for weeks. Paul Lucas came to the rescue; he helped her organise the random notes she'd made for her thesis on Australian women and the Spanish Civil War and he fended off interruptions while she dashed off a draft. This he took away, polished and had typed. As the exams drew closer he took her through an intensive course in her subjects, reading aloud to her, forcing her to study the introductions to the texts and throwing questions at her while she got on with her newspaper and Vietnam work. Georgia fortified herself with wine and cigarettes.

  Underslept, overstimulated by wine, coffee, tobacco and sex, Georgia stumbled through the examination fortnight. She presented for each paper, although she failed to complete several of them. Twice she fell asleep. Her thesis, somewhat fraudulently attested by Georgia to be 'my own independent work', was submitted on time.

  "A Third at best," she said to Paul in the pub after the last exam.

  "A First for sure," Lucas said. He was worried about Georgia's appearance—she was pale and thin with hollow eyes—especially as he was considering leaving his second wife for her. But he had to spend Christmas with his family, and Georgia lived on her nerves waiting for the exam results. She visited Trudie and Tess but was driven away by their exclamations of horror at her thinness, the nicotine on her fingers and her nervous twitches. She suffered through the early months of a very hot summer, became ill, took massive doses of aspirin and tried to wean herself off wine with marijuana.

  This brought Georgia into her first contact with the law as an individual. She'd been arrested after demonstrations but there was solidarity in the paddy wagons and holding cells. She and the others sang songs and shouted slogans at the uniformed police. When the drug squad detectives knocked at her door in Paddington she was alone in the house. One of the cops waved a folded paper.

  "Warrant, miss. We have reason to believe there are illegal drugs in this house."

  Georgia was stoned and giggled. The cops exchanged looks and tried to push her aside. Georgia stood her ground. "Let me see the warrant."

  She examined it but could not focus on the print. The police moved quickly through the house. They found the grass Georgia kept in a Chinese jar in her room, the plants growing in the backyard and those curing in the bathroom.

  "Big bust," Georgia said. "You'll be hero pigs."

  Georgia was arrested, charged with the cultivation, possession and use of Indian hemp and released on bail put up by Trudie. At the end of January the examination results came out. Georgia had been awarded Second Class Honours, division one. She spent a weekend with Lucas in a Kings Cross motel drinking and smoking dope. On the Monday morning she collapsed and was taken to the hospital. She was diagnosed as suffering from malnutrition. She was also pregnant.

  The climb back was long and hard for Georgia Gee. She miscarried and had to be drip fed. She was totally dependent on Trudie financially and this added guilt to her despair. She refused the offer to become Mrs Paul Lucas III, a decision she later regarded as the first smart thing she did in the sixties. The court proceedings dragged on, much adjourned on account of Georgia's ill health. Eventually her solicitor received word that the police might have trouble producing the evidence. He made application to see the confiscated Indian hemp and when the police could not comply, the charges were dropped. Tess brought her the news in hospital.

  "Can't see anything in that stuff myself," she said. "Never did anything for me."

  "You're to
o pickled."

  "Probably. How're you feeling?"

  Georgia considered. "Better," she said. "How're you and Grandma?"

  "She'll outlive me," Tess said.

  This was prophetic. Tess's lung and liver cancer was discovered a few days later and she was dead within two months. Georgia left hospital and moved in with Trudie. Here, at first, she did nothing but read novels, lie in the sun and try to eat. She gained weight slowly and her looks improved. The gloss returned to her dark hair; her teeth, which had been smoke-stained and had turned a greenish grey during her illness, whitened. She enjoyed her grandmother's company and spent hours talking to the alert old lady about the Sydney of fifty years before.

  "The air smelled different," Trudie said. "The water tasted different and the harbour was wonderful. There were places you could go in a boat and look over the side and see the bottom."

  On impulse, Georgia wrote an article she called 'A Day in Sydney, 1917' which was based on Trudie's incredibly precise memories of transport, shopping, prices and the details of domestic life. Georgia sent the article to the Sydney Morning Herald, where it was accepted. Seeing her name in print in the most authoritative newspaper in Australia thrilled her and revived her old ambition. By June she was working for the paper as a graduate cadet; she weighed nine stone, drank Scotch and water and smoked ten thin black cigarillos per day.

  12

  London, September 1986

  Ben Cromwell looked glumly at the telex Jamie Martin had received from Perth, Western Australia. "The upshot is," Jamie said, "that while Peel and Rooney are on record, there's no sign of a Gulliver. We know from the medical officer's journal that John Gulliver junior got off the boat in Fremantle with Hester Peel and Clive Rooney. Peel and Rooney later married in Perth and had a few children, but that's no help."

  "Bugger all," said Ben. "What d'we do now?"

  "If we had unlimited time and money we could go out there and do the research. Australian records are pretty good, they tell me."

  "I need a drink," Ben said. They were in the sitting room of Jerry's flat. He got up and went into the kitchen. Jamie could hear him pushing things around, opening the refrigerator. After a few minutes Ben was back, dark-faced and swearing. "Bloody woman's run out of drink, or poured it down the sink. We'll have to go out for a drink."

  Jamie struggled against a wish to tell Cromwell that he loved Jerry Gallagher and didn't want to hear a word said against her. But he'd made no approach to Jerry. His situation, he felt, was absurd. "Coffee'll do me," he said.

  Ben reached for a coat hanging on the back of the door. "Well, it won't do me. This is a real bastard. Monty's not going to be pleased."

  Jamie nodded, but his training had accustomed him to disappointment and patience. "I'd really like to get a look at the picture, Ben."

  "Why?"

  "I'm interested, and we're going to a lot of trouble to locate these people so the painting can be handled properly. Isn't that what this is all about?"

  "Fuck the picture."

  "Steady on, Ben."

  "That's all I ever hear, 'Steady on, Ben'." Ben took the coat and threw it on the chair. "Look, this is a farce. Old Gulliver cashed in a hundred-and-twenty-odd years ago. We don't need to track down every Tom, Dick and Harry descended from his nephew. We need to find one fucking colonial who fills the bill. That's all. Wake up!"

  Jamie Martin turned slowly away from his contemplation of one of Jerry's bookcases. He'd never seen so many short story collections on one shelf before. "What d'you mean?" he said.

  But Ben was rummaging in a cardboard box. He lifted out a bottle and crowed, "Hiding it, the bitch! I knew there was some Irish around. Make some coffee, Jamie old boy, and we'll toast Collins an' O'Casey an' all those other idiots!"

  Jamie went to the kitchen and made the coffee. Alarm bells were ringing loudly in his head. He wished that Jerry was there to add balance to the situation. It looked as if the Cromwells were bent on short-circuiting the inheritance process. The historian in Jamie rebelled. He took the coffee into the living room and watched Ben pour Irish whisky into the cups.

  "Cheers," Ben said. "You'll catch up with someone."

  "Someone?" Jamie said.

  Ben drank his coffee in a gulp. He poured the whisky into his cup and drained it. "Bound to be a crook, isn't he? Tainted genes."

  Jamie said nothing.

  "Anyway," Ben said, "I've accelerated the process. We'll soon get some results." He punched the air like a boxer and poured more whisky.

  Jamie wanted to punch back. He wanted Jerry to understand the dark places that were forming around the piece of research they were both following so closely. Not yet, he thought. He poured more coffee for himself and added a few drops of the whisky. "What're you up to, Ben?"

  "We c'd keep sending messages off to Australia—Victoria an' Queensland—all the other godforsaken places —'n' get the same results, right?"

  "Yes."

  "We need the media," Ben picked a newspaper up from a chair and displayed the headline. "Look, everyone in the world knows that Reagan and Gorbachev are going to have a chat in Iceland."

  "Yes," Jamie said. "Whether they care's another thing."

  "Doesn't matter. We've been too low-key." Ben drank more whisky and picked up the paper. He folded it back clumsily, fumbling with the sheets. "Look at this. I gave the interviews the other day. Now we'll get some action."

  13

  Sydney, September 1986

  Georgia Gee was forty years of age when her grandmother died. She had been a newspaper reporter for twenty years. She had been engaged twice but never married. She had had two abortions and no children. She had worked in Britain, China, Argentina and the United States. Her book, Experiencing Argentina, in which she told the story of her two years in the country passing as an Argentine by virtue of her dark appearance and near-perfect Spanish, had been a minor bestseller. Her reports on life in the country during and after the Falklands crisis had won her a coveted Walkley Award, the highest prize for excellence in journalism.

  After a stint as foreign correspondent in Beijing she was back at the Herald as a leader writer and editor of foreign news. Her contract with the paper allowed her to freelance in certain areas. She was in demand on radio for commentaries on South American politics and literature. Her reviews of the fashionable writers—Borges, Marquez, Puig—regularly appeared in newspapers and magazines.

  Through it all, through the heady days of following Whitlam on the campaign trail in 1972, through the let-down of 1975, through the overseas postings and the lovers, foreign and domestic, her grandmother had remained Georgia's truest friend. Trudie was critical only of superficial things; Georgia could sense that she held the old lady's unstinting approval deep down, and she responded with loyalty and affection. She suspected Trudie of an instinctive feminism and once accused her of it.

  "I think you must have known Emily Pankhurst back in England. Go on, admit it. You went to suffragette meetings."

  "Never," Trudie said. "I was too young."

  Georgia laughed; she was not quite sure how old her grandmother was and she was too polite to ask. Trudie stood straight and walked easily, if slowly. Her face was crisscrossed with tiny lines which she concealed with makeup. Her eyes had faded to a very pale blue but they remained bright and alert. Her white hair was thick and expensively cared for.

  "I don't really trust women," Trudie said once. "We're too emotional. We let ourselves and each other down."

  "What about men?" Georgia asked.

  "They let everybody down."

  This conversation took place at a time when Georgia was able to repay Trudie for some of her support. Trudie's investments had dwindled and the North Sydney house required expensive repairs. Trudie sold the house when Georgia was in China and, through bad financial advice, lost a good deal of the proceeds. When Georgia next saw her, she was appalled to find the normally calm and composed old woman in a state of high anxiety. She overcame Trudie's pride,
teased out the story of mismanagement and put her affairs in the hands of a trustworthy accountant. In the end, Trudie's capital had dwindled but she was comfortable, and grateful.

  "I never gave you that graduation present."

  Georgia laughed. "I never graduated, not really."

  "That's right, you didn't. You were working, you said. You were always a rebel."

  "I wasn't, Grandma. Not really. Look at me now. How respectable can you be?" Georgia wore tailored jackets and trousers, silk blouses and smart shoes to work. She relaxed in sweaters and jeans. Her wardrobe contained two formal outfits for rare ceremonial occasions. Her current, undemanding lover was a safely married TV newsreader.

  "You've done well. I always thought you would. You're your father's daughter, although you look like his father."

  "Mum said you thought that. She couldn't see it."

  "She never met Jack."

  "Jack. Was that his name? You never talk about him,Grandma."

  Trudie sighed and Georgia afterwards wondered how her ears could have played such a trick on her. She could have sworn she heard her grandmother say, in the sighing expulsion of breath, "I murdered him."

  This conversation was on Georgia's mind the next time she drove her Honda Civic from her Mosman flat to the unit in Kirribilli where Trudie lived, still independent and caring for herself. She did not expect to hear anything so dramatic over the tea and cakes this time, but lately Trudie had been more than usually inclined to ramble about the past. The television set was on when Georgia arrived, showing pictures of the yachts off Fremantle preparing for the America's Cup defence. Usually Trudie switched the set off immediately she had a visitor but this time she gazed at the blue and white images, bathed in fierce sunlight.

  "Jack and I got off the boat at Fremantle," she said.

  "Did you?" Georgia paused in her tea making. "Were you married in England? For some reason I thought that wedding picture looked like Australia."

  Trudie looked at her and a smile came slowly to her pale, carefully preserved face. "We weren't married on the boat. But we should have been."