by Peter Corris
We lay with the sheet half over us, both sweating, with our legs mixed up and our hands still exploring and enjoying what we found. Her hair had come loose and was lying on the pillow around her head in a dark mass. I ran my finger along from her small ear lobe to the point of her jaw, feeling the soft hair.
‘What’re you doing?’ she murmured.
I brushed the hair up and down. ‘What I wanted to do from practically the first minute I saw you.’
‘I thought you didn’t like me. You were so stern.’
‘Me? Stern?
‘Yes. Mr Rock Jaw. Mr Broken Nose. Mr Hooded Eyes. Do you know when I decided to trust you?’
Flippancy and banter had become the common currency in my relationship with Glen Withers. I only realised this some time after she’d gone. Now I resisted the impulse to joke. ‘Tell me.’
‘When you said you wanted to believe me.’
‘I’m glad I said it then. I meant it. And I mean it all the more now, of course. If that’s not pressuring you. Maybe this is just an episode for you, but I’m old-fashioned and…’
‘Next time you allude to your years I’ll hit you in the balls.’
I kissed her and let my tongue play along the gap in her teeth.
‘You like that? My gappy teeth.’
‘It’s wonderful.’
‘Julius wanted me to have them veneered. They could fill it up.’
‘He must have been crazy.’
‘He was worse than that.’ She took my hand and put it on her breast. I plucked at the nipple and felt it stiffen. ‘Are you ready for your surprise, Cliff?’
I grunted. I was getting aroused again and words didn’t seem to matter.
‘I hired Robert Van Kep. But I hired him to protect me from Julius, not to kill him.’
8
Claudia wasn’t into cliches. She didn’t put on my shirt, leaving the buttons undone, or wrap herself in the top sheet. I pulled on my shirt and pants and she wore a black and silver kimono-style dressing gown. With her hair down and her make-up disturbed and her big mouth puffy from our kissing, she looked older and younger, more naive and more experienced, a walking contradiction. She had beautiful feet, shapely with high arches and straight toes. Odd what you notice in a heightened emotional state. My mind was buzzing with warring reactions: I felt that I’d go the distance for her, tell any lies, destroy any evidence, just to get back to where we’d been. Against that was the scepticism of twenty years of handling people with problems, my knowledge of their deviousness, delusions and capacity for self-deception.
We went into the kitchen without speaking and I perched on a stool while she made coffee in a plug-in machine. She spooned the coffee into the filter paper and poured in the water. The suspicious, sceptical Hardy waited for her to speak. An old ploy-first remarks after a dramatic statement can be very revealing.
‘Nothing wrong with your prostate.’
I was totally surprised. I’d had no idea of what she might say and I burst out laughing, totally thrown.
‘What?’
‘You’ve gone about five hours without a piss. A whisky, a couple of glasses of wine, some water. Your prostate’s okay. I’m talking as a woman who knows about older men.’
Well, what do you deduce from that, Cliff? I could feel her taking control. I couldn’t mention age difference, but she could. She’d made me laugh and anyone who makes you laugh is on your side, aren’t they? She leaned back against the bench while the coffee maker bubbled and took her cigarettes from a pocket in the kimono. She lit up, took two deep drags and put the cigarette out in the sink. Then she ran a glass of water and rinsed her mouth, turning away from me to spit the water out.
‘I know it stinks,’ she said. ‘I want you to kiss me but I needed it.’
I went across the smooth quarry tiles in three strides and grabbed her. She seemed to flow towards me and I could feel the need in her, or thought I could. If she was faking this she was a loss to the acting profession. I didn’t care. We kissed fiercely and the coffee maker hissed as the last of the water passed through.
She pressed her head against my shoulder and gripped my ribs in a strong hold. ‘I’ve told a lot of lies,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know if I can… untell them. Can you do that, Cliff?’
Her perfume was overlaid with the smell of sex and smoke and coffee. I rubbed the top of her head with my chin and felt the whiskers snag in her hair. ‘You can do anything,’ I said.
‘I was never in love with Julius, whatever that means. I liked and respected him though. You see, I loved my parents very deeply, too deeply. I thought they were both wonderful. They adored each other and me. It was all a bit unhealthy really.’
We were in the sitting room with our coffee and Claudia was fiddling with a cigarette. She looked at me directly.
‘I don’t mean there was anything wrong,’ she said quickly. ‘No molestation or abuse or anything like that. It was just that we were too exclusive of other people. I measured everyone against them, all relationships against theirs and found them wanting. The couple of boys I went out with and went to bed with in my student days I found pretty pathetic compared with my father. That’s not healthy.’
‘I see.’
‘They didn’t have any family here. The people who’d taken them originally had died or were far away. Like me, they didn’t have many friends either, hardly any. But Julius was one, or at least I thought he was. I had a flat close to my parents’ house and I saw them a lot, so I saw Julius quite often as well. When they were killed he was the one who gave me the news. Losing them knocked the guts out of me for a long time. Julius was there. He was a sort of replacement figure, I suppose. He was kind and strong and he wanted me, so I married him. It was a terrible mistake. He desperately wanted a son. I’m not interested in children and that caused lots of problems. Have you got any children, Cliff?’
I shook my head.
‘Why not?’
I pondered the question while I finished my coffee. The whisky bottle wasn’t far away and I was beginning to feel I’d have to bring it closer soon. ‘It sounds lame,’ I said, ‘but I can quite honestly say that the matter never came up. I was married for a while but she was a career woman and the marriage went bad pretty early. The women I’ve known since then have either had children of their own or not wanted them. My childlessness is circumstantial.’
‘Do you want a drink?’
Observant of her. My eyes must have been straying. ‘Yes.’
‘Help yourself.’
I poured some whisky into the glass I’d used before and added a little of the water produced by the melted ice. She held out her coffee mug and I gave her a healthy slug.
She sipped, then spoke very slowly. ‘I can’t prove any of this, but I believe that Julius had some kind of hold over my parents. I believe that he told them he wanted to marry me and they opposed him. I believe that he worried them to death.’
I was glad I had the Scotch. I drank some and felt it slide down, warm and comforting. I wished that we weren’t talking this way. I wished we were discussing driving up to Medlow Bath to stay in the Hydo Majestic for the weekend, or flying to the Barrier Reef for the snorkelling and sun-bathing and gins and tonic.
‘You think I’m mad, paranoid or something.’
She’d pulled her hair back and caught it behind with a clip of some kind, all except for those strands and wisps that were doing their own thing again. I’ve seen and dealt with a lot of disturbed and delusional people and usually you can spot them. It’s not that the eyes glitter or the lips twitch, it’s more a sense you get that they are not really talking to you at all, that they’re engaged in an ever-lasting, ever-circling dialogue with themselves. I felt nothing of that about Claudia Fleischman.
Against that, she’d lied pretty comprehensively to the police and to Sackville and to me, by omission. If I was going to accept what she told me now I’d have to start from scratch with her story, clear away all the undergrowth and get
to what was left standing. I drank some more Scotch and forced myself to think of the latest turn of events. Women fifteen years younger than me are not generally falling at my feet. I had to consider that Claudia had put on her little black dress and her perfume the way tennis players put on their sneakers and sweatbands-the better to do a job they know how to do. There was no way to come at it gently.
‘Two questions,’ I said. ‘Why did you have these suspicions about your husband and why did you lie about Van Kep?’
‘And if I satisfy you on those two points you’ll fuck me again?’
‘Claudia…’
‘I know how all this must look to you.’
‘No, you don’t. I’ve spent twenty years dealing with things that sometimes weren’t what they seemed and sometimes were exactly that. For better or for worse. I’m sorry if I’m starting to sound to you like a professional investigator and not… something else. I’m a bit confused. Bear with me.’
She lit the cigarette, which looked a bit tired after the work she’d already put in on it. She tried to puff but she’d made a hole in the paper and it wouldn’t draw. She put it out in the glass ashtray and it lay there like a long white worm with its back broken. ‘I inherited the house in Edgecliff. I just let it stand empty for ages and didn’t do anything about it until after I was married. Julius told me to put a professional on the job but I wanted to tidy things up myself. The house turned out to have a big mortgage on it. That didn’t surprise me too much. They’d always lived well, taken trips overseas and they were big donors to various causes-Amnesty International, things like that.
‘But even to a non-accountant like me it was obvious that they’d let the practice dwindle in recent years and my mother had virtually retired. At first I suspected that Dad had stopped charging his patients or something. It wouldn’t have surprised me. But it was more than that. He’d virtually had a nervous breakdown. I found some of the medical stuff. All hidden from me, of course. He was taking lots of pills to keep going, so was she. It was as if something had knocked the stuffing out of them. There were barbiturates and other things in Dad’s bloodstream when he died. I found that out later. The coroner more or less hushed that up. I thought it was a professional courtesy. The doctor who did the autopsy didn’t make much of it.’
‘That happens,’ I said.
‘I know. But my father wouldn’t have driven a car with his beloved wife beside him in a drugged state unless he was almost out of his mind over something. He just wouldn’t.’
‘I can see how distressing all this must have been. But what’s the connection to Fleischman?’
‘My father had kept a journal. It was this thick but tiny book and the writing was minute. The entries were in Yiddish and I’m a real Yiddish dunce. I picked up some along the way from my parents who spoke it sometimes and left notes for each other in it, but I can’t really read it. I just flicked through the notebook. I suppose I was thinking that I’d get someone to translate it for me some day. But as I did that I began to understand a few words and phrases about Julius. I dug out a dictionary and learned the words for “enemy” and “liar” and “demon” and that’s what my lovely, kind humanity-loving Dad was calling Julius. I also knew the words for “afraid” and “daughter”. Dad wrote, “This demon will never have her, never.” Something like that.’
Her hands holding the coffee mug started to shake. She’d lost colour in her face. Her mouth went almost white. I moved forward, took the mug from her and raised it to her lips, cradling the back of her head with my other hand. The tousled hair looked hard and brittle but was actually soft and almost fluffy. Another contradiction. I held the mug to her lips and tilted her head.
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘I want to hear it all. Drink a bit of this, you’ll feel better.’
She sipped the spiked coffee and some colour came back into her lips and cheeks. When she spoke the words tumbled out.
‘As I say, the journal was hard to follow but I matched it up with the financial and medical records and the change in my parents’ behaviour and health and everything dated from very soon after they met Julius. Very soon! I was freaked. Really crazy. This was right when the baby-having stuff was going on. Julius could tell something was wrong. I got sick. I was vomiting all over the place. I was afraid of him and I told him I thought I was pregnant. He was kind again for a day or so. Then I got really sick. A doctor came and I was out of it for a few days. I’d put Dad’s journal in a filing cabinet I had in my study in the Vaucluse house. I’d locked it in. But when I recovered from this bout of whatever it was, the journal was gone. Julius told me that he’d put an accountant onto the job of sorting out my parents’ affairs.’
I took her hands and we moved across to a two-seater couch. I fetched the drinks and we rearranged ourselves. She was leaning against me now, her head on my shoulder, rubbing against it slowly as if the movement comforted her. Despite all the distress she was documenting, or maybe partly because of it, I was becoming aroused again. I moved to keep the evidence from her. Her kimono opened and I could see her breasts, white, full and firm, nestling inside the black fabric. I stared at the ceiling rose.
‘Go on, Claudia. I’m listening.’
She sucked in a deep breath and a tremor ran through her. ‘I’ve thought about this for so long and in such a Crazy state that I’m not sure any more of what’s true and what I’ve imagined. Do you understand?’
‘I’m a bit of an imaginer myself,’ I said.
‘Have to be in this game. Sometimes, what you imagine can turn out to be as true as what you know, or think you know. I understand.’
‘I believe that Julius was deeply suspicious of me. I think he knew what was in Dad’s journal and how damaging it was to him. He knew I didn’t understand Yiddish very well but he didn’t know how well. I think he had a doctor keep me in a sort of stupid state while he thought about what to do. I’ve got no evidence for any of this.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m basically a very strong person physically. I’d hardly ever been sick before this. Nothing much worries me-antihistamines, antibiotics. I’ve drunk a lot at various times and I’ve never had a hangover. I can drink strong coffee at midnight and still get to sleep. I took the pills and things but somehow I came up out of the bog they were trying to keep me in. I surfaced one day and I heard and saw Julius abusing Van Kep for some minor thing he’d screwed up. Van Kep didn’t like it. And at the same time Julius had to leave Sydney on business. He didn’t tell me, but I picked up an extension phone in the house and heard him make the arrangements. I pretended to be as dopey as I was supposed to be and he left.’
Her body was warm and yielding against mine and I wanted to tell her that she had nothing to worry about, that I’d solve all her problems and… I jerked back from this nonsense and forced myself to put a sensible question to her, one that would anchor us in harsh reality.
‘How long before he was shot was this?’
She tensed a bit and then relaxed. ‘It must have been a couple of days. A week at most. He went to Adelaide. The next bit’s hard to tell you. Do you want to hear it?’
‘I have to hear it.’
‘I seduced him, Van Kep. I fucked him four times in one night and I gave him five thousand dollars to protect me from my husband.’
9
‘What’re you thinking?’ Claudia said. ‘Tell me the truth.’
‘There’s so many questions. What did Fleischman have on your parents? Why was he so worried about you getting hold of the journal? And the big one-if Van Kep killed him, for whom?’
‘Are they your only questions, Cliff?’
I knew from the tone of her voice what she meant, but I was concentrating now, focused, as the sports commentators say much too often. ‘Christ, no. Who was watching you and who tried to blow me apart? But those are the primary ones, the ones that need to be answered to get a grip on this. Did you look for the journal after Fleischman was killed?’
She nodded,
but she was frowning. ‘Everywhere. No sign of it. I’ve assumed whoever killed him took it.’
‘You’ve got no idea who this other man might be?’
She went rigid and the gentle rubbing of her head against my shoulder stopped. ‘How could I? I didn’t have anything to do with.. ’
‘I know. I know. I just thought Van Kep might have mentioned needing help. Something like that.’
‘No! No! All I asked him to do was to keep an eye on Julius, make sure he didn’t hurt me or try to take me away or anything while I got things together to leave him. That’s all! He said he’d do it. He said he hated Julius, he…’
She didn’t cry much and she didn’t actually collapse, but letting all this loose drained her. She’d been holding it in for a considerable time, telling no one, rehashing it over and over until it was like a permanent thread through her every thought and action. She’d called on her wits and reserves of nervous energy to see her through the police investigation and the charging procedure and the meeting with Cy Sackville and the first encounter with me. She told me she’d devised little mental games and pretences to keep her courage up, and now it was as if the props and supports had fallen away. Her hard drinking days must have been well behind her because, together with the emotional turmoil, the laced coffee on top of what we’d had before seemed to slow her down and bring her to a stop.