The Doubleman

by Christopher Koch

  She had always been instantly personal; that hadn’t changed. But she couldn’t sustain the meeting of eyes, as she’d once done; hers flitted away, and then came back almost furtively. It wasn’t true flirtatiousness but something else: a new, puzzling evasion. Where was her steady, lucid stare? I had a piercing rush of grief, to see how time had humbled her; if time was what had done this. Then it passed.

  ‘How do you like Major? Isn’t he gorgeous?’ She patted the dog’s head, her voice becoming sentimental. ‘Yes, he’s my gorgeous boy; my best, big friend. Say hullo to Richard.’

  To my amazement, she went on talking about the dog at some length, describing his habits and foibles, while I listened patiently. I had the impression she was starved for company, and would talk like this to anyone who’d listen. I couldn’t stop looking at her, my curiosity unappeased.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do without my Major,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I think he’s the only sane person in our house.’

  I interrupted. ‘Shall we walk?’

  She looked at me quickly, breaking off as though I’d caught her out in a bad habit. ‘Yes,’ she said quickly, and took my arm. Her hand seemed very small and ineffective.

  We walked, moving along the promenade beside the New South Head Road, with its curving concrete wall above the small, sour beach. Yachts swayed and rattled at their moorings; headlights swept us; the ghost of an old Empire Flying Boat rode at the Rose Bay base, and our feet trod the fallen, inedible fruits of Moreton Bay figs — the grey, spreading, banyan-like trees which haunt the streets of Sydney, and whose giant root systems make buttresses and cavities large enough for hiding-places. We stopped by one of these Gothic entrances, mutually attracted to its concealment from the traffic. It was like being in a hollow tree; Deirdre stood looking out at me, Major lying obediently at her feet, and again I had a sense of the illicit, as though we’d found a place to begin an affair. I shouldn’t have met her, I thought.

  ‘So you see, I’m not in a very easy position.’ Having questioned me about my marriage and my career in ABS, she had now begun to tell me about her own life, playing with Major’s lead as she talked. Headlights regularly picked out her upturned face and then let it sink into dimness again, in the doorway of the tree.

  ‘I’ve got a girl of twelve to worry about, and a dying husband who’s totally intolerant of his own son. The strain between them is terrible; I have to mediate. Michael just won’t accept that Patrick’s an entirely different type of man from himself. Patrick’s twenty-seven now — a year younger than you, remember? — and he’s never going to be the sort of Dillon to take over the firm. He’s too sensitive to deal with crass businessmen like his father. He’s a musician. And he loves the Rymers, Richard. He’s passionate about them.’

  She looked at me as though this were significant. The light, clear blue of her eyes was beautiful as ever, but age had changed the line of the top lids, making them coarser, with a cat-like slant that emphasised her Irishness. It was as though some ancestral face had made its way to the surface, and it gave her an attraction of a different kind than before: less maidenly, more overtly sensual.

  ‘He never misses the show on TV,’ she said. ‘He’s studied the group in detail. This may surprise you; he got himself into the audience for every show you recorded at the Loft.’

  I asked her what instrument Patrick played.

  ‘The drums,’ she said. ‘He’s in the King Pepper New Orleans jazz band — they play at a pub in Paddington. Patrick’s a wonderful drummer — everyone says so. He and I love the old trad jazz; we used to spend hours listening to his records and getting tiddly on whisky, when the RFO was at work.’

  ‘The RFO?’ Then I remembered: Red-Faced Ogre.

  ‘And of course, Michael hates all that,’ she said. ‘He threatens to cut him out of his will, for being in the band. Ever since Patrick dropped out of the importing side of the business his father put him into, he’s been paid this miserably small allowance, as though he were still a boy. And of course, the band doesn’t make much. I have to help him out of my allowance.’

  ‘Does Patrick do anything else — besides the drumming?’

  ‘Not really. And it’s just as well, since Michael keeps me so confined. It means I have a companion.’ She’d adopted a parody of formality, saying this; it was the voice of a clever little girl. With a sense of vertigo, the years dissolving, I saw that her face had now become childish too, assuming a blank, wide-eyed solemnity I also remembered: the Dutch doll expression.

  ‘It’s very frustrating for poor Patrick,’ she said. ‘He’d like to work as a professional musician full-time, but there’s so little that’s worthwhile, here in Australia. He wants to go overseas — we both do — but of course the RFO won’t hear of it. Do you know, with all his money, Michael’s only ever let Patrick go to Europe once? He won’t go again himself — the only time he and I went, he said France and Italy were dirty. Dirty! ’ She burst out laughing, and ended in a coughing fit; from her wheezing, I guessed that she still smoked.

  ‘So Patrick went alone to the Greek islands,’ she said, ‘when he was twenty-one. He stayed on Aegina for a month, and he’s never forgotten it — he’s been passionate about Greece ever since; he reads books on Greece and Greek mythology all the time. He keeps saying he wants to take me there. But not much hope of that, I’m afraid.’

  ‘He’s lucky he doesn’t have to work.’ I tried to conceal an unreasonable antipathy towards Patrick; for all I knew, he wasn’t as hopeless as he sounded.

  ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t be telling you all this.’ Her voice had taken on a new and peculiar note of intimacy; of confession. Tilting her head back, she searched my face, her eyes very wide and fixed; and her features had become those of eleven years before, luminous, sad and beautiful in the white beams from the cars. The illusion was so complete that I stared, with sudden fixed attention. She put her fingers lightly on my cheek.

  ‘I was wrong: you haven’t got hard, Richard. You look just like the boy you were at Greystones. But you’ve done so much better than Patrick. He’s been wasted — and I worry about him, you see.’

  ‘Should he be your worry — at twenty-seven? After all, he’s your stepson, not your son.’

  For a moment she said nothing, considering. ‘Sometimes I think he should get away from home,’ she said. ‘But I’ve only a few good friends, I’ve no bloody social life, since Michael got ill — and I’d miss Patrick awfully.’ She glanced across the promenade to where the bare, autumnal masts of the moored yachts swayed in the dark, her eyes fleeing from mine and then seeking them again in the way that was new; then her voice dropped even lower, almost whispering, with an intimacy that approached the sexual.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right: perhaps Patrick depends on me too much. I sleep separately from Michael, I have my own room, and Patrick still joins me there whenever he can. Whenever the RFO can’t walk in on us.’ She looked at me swiftly as though I’d commented. ‘It’s perfectly innocent, Richard. We talk for hours, and drink a bit of grog and listen to music. But I think that Michael’s getting jealous.’ Standing close, she murmured as though we’d been confidants for years, creating unwanted thrills of vicarious excitement. ‘Patrick was wrapped in me as a small boy; we had a wonderful closeness. He’d even help me choose what to wear, and help me dress; I used to call him my page. But he’s still inclined to walk in when I’m dressing, even now, especially when he’s been on the grog — and he does hop on to the whisky, lately.’ Now her voice took on the hushed, old-fashioned tone of gossip. ‘Today I came in from the bathroom with nothing on at all, and there Patrick was, large as life. I had to order him out of my boudoir.’ Now she wore a special purse-lipped smile I couldn’t return. ‘He keeps telling me what a remarkable bosom I’ve got; and the other day he wanted to help me on with my bra. Well really! I wasn’t having that. I’ve become rather large in that department, darling, as you’ll have noticed — and Patrick’s always been impressed with Rubensesq
ue ladies like me. His affairs never last long, and he shows no sign of marrying; he always says no girl he meets compares with me. Sometimes I suspect he’s never been to bed with one — that he’s still a virgin. Do you think I should be worried about that?’

  She looked ingenuous, almost arch; and I looked back as though I’d learned of her death. ‘I think I can see why your husband would be worried,’ I said.

  She didn’t like this. I’d been disloyal to childhood’s compact, and her eyes gleamed briefly with adult annoyance; but she made no comment. Something had made her an infant forever — Dadda’s girl; her rich, dying husband’s middle-aged baby; her stepson’s make-believe mistress, tormenting him with her games. The lights of the cargo ship moved with infinite slowness towards Watson’s Bay; the channel beacons winked in the Harbour’s secret language, and we seemed to be held in the landscape of Limbo. She lit a cigarette; laughed at her own jokes; patted the whining Major; became a sophisticated Point Piper matron; became a small girl again; confided in a voice that still thrilled me in spite of myself. I felt sorry for Patrick now, whom I’d never seen. Cruelty had a baby face, and talk was its instrument, with its endless titillations, promises of nakedness, hints of a consummation that would always be denied. A true fairy nurse, she offered nothing but the thin milk of dream, in which there was no nurture, but merely addiction. Adult love threatened her; she cared only for the callow or the handicapped, and I had been both.

  To bring the conversation to a close, I asked her what the business matter was she’d mentioned on the phone.

  ‘Well surely you realise,’ she said, and her voice became cool and practical. ‘I’m hoping that Patrick can join the Rymers — that you’ll give him an audition. You haven’t got a drummer — and he has this theory that a drummer would bring something important to the group. He’s absolutely obsessed with the idea. Would you consider it, Richard?’

  For a moment, I said nothing; then I burst out laughing. Her look of hurt checked me; patiently, I began to explain. The Rymers weren’t looking for a drummer — and even if they were, there’d be scores of top musicians knocking on the door. Patrick’s band, as I understood it, played only in pubs. It was hardly a great track record.

  Her head dropped. She didn’t argue. ‘I see,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you. But I’m glad I saw you, anyway. I’ve so often thought of you, Richard. Won’t you give me a kiss before we go?’

  I kissed her lightly on the lips, which tasted of tobacco. Yet even so, the treacherous ghost of desire moved in me.

  ‘You are circumspect,’ she said.

  ‘You must really love that Baltic wife of yours.’

  ‘I do.’

  She said no more; we walked towards my car through the windy dark, Major pulling at his lead. And now I felt ashamed of my bluntness about Patrick.

  I didn’t really think I could do much for him, I told her, but I’d mention him to Darcy Burr. Darcy might be prepared to talk to him, even though there was almost no chance he’d take him on.

  She hugged my arm. ‘Will you? That’s wonderful. And you’ll talk to Patrick yourself, won’t you? You’ll like him, Richard. He’s a vulnerable man, and terribly introverted; he takes getting to know. But he reminds me so much of you.’

  Driving home, I felt like a man who had long believed himself to be suffering from a fatal illness — only to find that no such illness existed.

  3

  A couple of weeks later, when rehearsals had begun for the new series, I found myself looking through the control-room window at Patrick Dillon. Behind his gleaming drum kit, all kitted out in his medieval outfit with its leather jerkin, he bobbed and swayed as though mechanised, cautiously smiling. The Rymers had a fourth member.

  I could still scarcely believe it — even though, as Deirdre had promised, he was a very good drummer. But when I’d told Burr about him, almost as a joke, Darcy had responded with extraordinary enthusiasm.

  ‘A drummer! Do you realise what a coincidence this is? I’d already started looking for one, Dick. A drummer’s what we need, to give us the sound I’ve been wanting.’

  ‘But we’ve got your finger-drums and tabla, Darcy.’

  ‘Stuff those things. How can I work on all my other instruments when I’m doing percussion? It’s always limited our possibilities. What this group needs is a really big beat. I want that Ringo Starr sound underneath. Think of the power! Think of it under “False Knight Upon the Road”, or “The Demon Lover”!’ He radiated that instant exultancy which somewhat resembled a salesman’s. ‘This new series’ll rock them, mate; the last series was nothing.’

  ‘Snares and a bass drum in a folk group? He’ll drown the rest of you.’

  ‘They said that about the electric guitars, remember? It’s all a matter of balance, we can keep him down. You and the sound techs will work it out. Remember, folk music’s only what we use. We can be as big as the Beatles!’

  I knew better than to laugh at this self-generated elation of his. Lately he’d become obsessed with the Beatles, and with the legend of their success, which he actually seemed to imagine could happen to the Rymers; I guessed it to be a fantasy with some private meaning for him. The vital, haunting songs and the coldly cheerful northern voices were ubiquitous now, coming from radios all around the Cross and at every party we went to; and Darcy dwelt half gloatingly, half enviously, on the enormous crowds the Beatles had drawn here eighteen months ago, when they made their Australian tour. Just think, he said, of how fast they’d come up, and where they’d come from; an ill-paid, smelly, Merseyside group living in squalor in Hamburg, playing for a pittance and for gruelling hours in nightclubs in the brothel quarter, high on Preludin; then, a year or so later, touching down at London airport to be greeted by a vast human sea: all for them.

  The story seemed to fascinate him, like some vision of transcendental joy; it could all happen to the Rymers, he said. Perhaps total fame had dimensions for Darcy I couldn’t imagine, like communication with those spirit entities of his. Obviously, it was a form of power, and on that scale, I thought, it ceased to be vulgar and became a sort of mystery.

  But none of us took him seriously — least of all Brady, who had pointed out to Darcy one night that ours wasn’t a pop group, and never would be, as far as he was concerned. He didn’t like pop any better than he’d ever done; he was a folk singer, and wouldn’t be turned into a monkey on a stick for teenyboppers.

  They’d then become angry with each other, glaring furiously; I almost feared a punch might be thrown, until Katrin intervened. Her soothing, motherly remonstrations made reluctant peace between them, and Darcy avoided the topic with Brian after that; but he still raised it with me.

  I saw now that the addition of the drummer was another step on the way for Burr: an essential part of his plan to give a folk combination a pop group’s dimension of success. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I’m prepared to try it; but what makes you think Patrick will be any good? All he’s ever done is work in a trad jazz band.’

  ‘That’s all I need; a good, solid jazz drummer — if he is one. I’ll shape him after that. And besides — think of the advantages.’ He grinned with a hint of suggestiveness; we were alone in his room at Victoria Street.

  I stiffened. ‘What advantages? What do you mean?’

  ‘Use your head, mate. What about all that Dillon money?’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I’ve got plans for the Rymers to have a crack at London, eventually. We’ll need all the dough we can get, then. Maybe Patrick might like to put some capital into getting us launched, over there.’

  ‘You can forget that,’ I said; and I told him about Patrick’s financial situation, as Deirdre had told it to me.

  But Burr wasn’t discouraged; the sly grin stayed, while he eyed me speculatively. ‘Things can change,’ he said. ‘From what you say, old Dillon could peg out, soon, and then Patrick inherits — or Deirdre does. Fancy you meeting her again, Dick; I’ll bet you’re please
d, eh?’

  Cold caution went through me at this, and I stared him down. ‘I won’t be seeing anything of Deirdre,’ I said, ‘and if I were you, I’d forget the Dillon money. Just take Patrick on if he’s a good drummer — okay?’

  ‘Okay mate, okay, but I know how you feel about her — I remember.’ He watched me as though from out of a cave, leaning back in his armchair, the faintest suggestion of a grin remaining.

  ‘I don’t feel anything, any more,’ I said. I sensed it was important to contradict him. ‘She contacted me because she wants us to audition Patrick. I’ve passed the message on. I’ve also discussed it with Katrin. That’s all.’

  ‘Sure. Don’t get uptight.’ But his grin insisted on knowing my feelings better than I did myself, and for the first time since the Rymers began, I felt I might dislike him, if this were kept up.

  Now Patrick was in the group; and I wasn’t really sure whether that was a good thing or not. I studied him through the glass.

  I don’t know what I’d expected. I hadn’t expected to like him, but I did. We all liked him. He was so eager to be accepted, so quiet, and so pleasantly modest; the opposite of what we’d imagined, and what our prejudices had told us a rich man’s son would be. But then, he had very little money to call his own; he lived always in expectation, poor Pat.

  And I remembered seeing him before. As Deirdre had told me, he’d been among our hand-picked audience at the Loft, whenever we recorded there. He’d always come alone, and had sat in the front row; and his respectful yet insistent gaze would have made him stand out even if his fair good looks and his expensive clothes hadn’t done. He not only examined the members of the group with a sort of fixed and yearning hunger, but his eyes often rested on me as well; and I recalled wondering briefly what he wanted, and who he was. This lover-like examination went far beyond the sort of interest shown by a typical folk fan; only Brian Brady’s female groupies were so devoted, and their interest was in Brian alone. I’d decided that Patrick might be an agent for the club circuit; then, when he didn’t approach us, I’d forgotten him.