Last Drinks

by Andrew McGahan

  Today the town sweltered and slept. The bay shimmered with the heat and on the beach the water was sandy green, lapping against the stones. A few small children paddled there under the gaze of their parents, but there were no crowds. Most of the holiday units had vacancy signs out. The cafe lifestyle of the new Brisbane had not reached as far yet as the peninsula, and the holiday season was weeks away. It was unlikely that Lindsay could really have spent ten years out here unnoticed, but on the other hand, Marvin had been here two weeks, a famous face, an ex-minister wanted by the police, and no one had heard a word.

  Marvin. I was close now, and Marvin was here. What was I going to say to him? After all the police had told me, after reading those two stark passages from his book, I wasn’t sure of the man waiting for me. Not the old Marvin—could the old Marvin have written those words? Had he always thought that way? When I met him now, would the sneering contempt still be there? I didn’t know. Old or new, there was only one thing of which I was still certain. He couldn’t have done that to Charlie. I wouldn’t even have been there if I thought otherwise.

  I turned onto the esplanade and slowed, counting the house numbers. There was a small rocky rise, and the road curled inland for a moment to skirt it. On the rise itself were three or four houses, all of them big, and they were the only ones on the entire strip that had actual beach frontage. I saw the number I needed. It was on a high security gate, the house behind barely visible, set up on the rise and back from the street. I parked across the road, walked over and studied the gate. There was an intercom, and I pressed the buzzer.

  Nothing happened. I looked up and down the street. There was no traffic. Down at the bottom of the hill there was a park that fronted onto a short jetty. An old man slept, nodding on a bench. Another man, his belly protruding from under his T-shirt, was unpacking a fishing rod from the boot of his car, studying the flat glare of the ocean. Heat poured down from the sky and bounced back at me from the footpath. In winter Redcliffe could be cold and dreary, and the winds never seemed to stop. In summer it baked, airless, and even the bay didn’t seem to help.

  ‘Yes?’ said the intercom, and there was no mistaking it.

  ‘Marvin?’ I said. ‘It’s George.’

  ‘Look at the camera.’

  I looked around. Atop one of the gateposts was a small security camera. I stared up at it. ‘C’mon, Marvin, it’s just me.’

  ‘No one followed you? No one’s watching?’

  Jesus . . . but there was no joking in his voice, and the distant chill went through me again. I studied the street. The only visible life was the two men in the park. The old man had woken up and was saying something to the fisherman. It was too far away to hear, but they both laughed.

  ‘Not a soul,’ I said into the intercom.

  ‘All right, come on up.’

  There was a click, and the gate started to roll open. I walked through, a few steps up the drive. It was made of pebbled concrete and was fringed by dense shrubs and bushes. At the top there was a double garage with both doors shut, and above that loomed another two storeys of the actual house. It looked closed and empty.

  Behind me the gate banged fully open. It hummed for a moment and then started to close slowly. On impulse I walked back down the drive and peered out at the street again. I only had a few seconds, then had to step back inside before the gate closed. A car glided by slowly. It was full of teenage boys. They stared at me, vacantly hostile, and rolled on past.

  Then the gate clicked shut and I was locked in with Marvin.

  THIRTY

  He wasn’t the man I remembered.

  The garage door rolled up, and I saw the thick glasses and the wide bulbous eyes that would always betray him, but otherwise . . .

  ‘Christ, Marvin,’ I said. ‘Put that down.’

  It was a rifle of some sort, and the barrel was swung unsteadily in my direction. Behind it swayed a thin old man, barefoot, dressed only in shorts. The big belly of his political days had shrunk to a soft round ball on his waistline, blue veined, and the rest of him was all wrinkles of pale skin. Bony arms and legs. A gaunt, unshaven face under wisps of sandy hair.

  ‘George,’ he said, staring past me. ‘George, get inside, quick.’

  I looked back down the drive, saw only the gate and the empty street, but there was a sense of urgency flowing from Marvin like infection. I backed into the garage, and he rolled the door down, slammed the bolt. He sagged against the wall for a moment, the rifle drooping towards the floor.

  ‘George. Thanks for coming.’

  In the warmth of the garage I smelled sweat and alcohol. He was so small. His glasses barely clung to his head. Where had it all gone? The girth, the massive charisma, Marvin the Magnificent . . .

  ‘I’ve been looking for you,’ I said. ‘So have the police.’

  ‘Not any more. I rang the housekeeper, said I was on holidays, said I just forgot to tell her, you know. Fucking stupid of me. Told her to call off the cops.’

  ‘Um . . . I don’t know that the police will just forget about it, not now.’

  ‘Well . . .’ His eyes darted here and there, huge through the lenses. ‘So what? It’s not the fucking police I’m worried about. Come on, come upstairs.’

  We crossed the garage. Four cars could have fitted in there, but it was empty now. At the back there was a door and stairs heading up. We passed through and Marvin latched the door behind us. Then it was one flight up into the main body of Lindsay’s house. I was ready for glass walls and ocean views, but instead we entered a dark space that seemed to have no windows at all. The air was heavy with stale cigarette smoke and the smell of scotch. Lamps glowed dimly in the corners. I could see that the entire lower floor of the house—kitchen, lounge, dining area—was one open room. The wall facing the bay was indeed all of glass, but there was a system of exterior storm shutters and they were pulled down tight. It could have been midnight in there. Midnight, and hot.

  ‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘How can you stand this?’

  ‘Air-conditioning’s gone.’ Marvin had propped the gun up against a couch and was pouring a drink, scotch and ice, the ice coming from a bucket that was mostly filled with water. ‘Can’t open the windows, though. The house is supposed to be empty. Just take your shirt off. You’ll be okay. Here, have a drink.’

  ‘I don’t drink any more.’

  He blinked up at me, seemed to wince. ‘You gave up?’

  ‘Years ago.’

  ‘Oh. Oh shit.’ His mouth worked, at a loss. ‘I was hoping we could have a few. For old times’ sake. You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘It’s no fun drinking alone, George.’

  Sweat was beading in my armpits. ‘I’ll have some water then.’

  I went to the kitchen. It was a mess of dirty plates and frozen-dinner containers. My fingers felt grime wherever they touched. I found a glass, cleaned it out and filled it. There were empty ice trays in the sink. I tasted warm water, went back to the living room. Marvin lifted his glass to me and grinned. He must have lost forty kilograms. The scraggles of hair on his chest had gone grey. And he was drunk. Woefully drunk.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said.

  ‘Marvin, I’m here because I wanna know about Charlie.’

  The grin collapsed. ‘I don’t know anything about Charlie.’

  ‘C’mon. I know you and him met up in St Amand’s. The police know too.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘They think you killed him.’

  He goggled. ‘Me? They think it was me? I never touched him.’

  ‘Who did then?’

  ‘No . . . George, you don’t want to go into that. Please.’

  ‘Why are you even here, Marvin? Who are you hiding from?’

  ‘Fuck, George. Stop. Slow down. Just fucking sit a minute. I haven’t even seen you in ten years. Sit down, sit down.’

  I sat down. It was a white couch, streaked with cigarette ash.

  The grin flickered again, desperate.
‘What’ve you been doing all these years, anyway?’

  ‘I’ve been working. In Highwood. Where Charlie died. Don’t you already know that?’

  ‘I . . . I’ve never been up there.’

  ‘But Charlie has. He came up there, looking for me. Right?’

  ‘George . . . are you really sure you don’t want a drink?’

  It was almost pleading, his eyes magnified a hundred times. I thought of Marvin in his prime, big and loud and confident, hectoring journalists at his press conferences.

  ‘Just tell me,’ I said.

  He hung for a second, agonised. Then something in him gave up. He fell into a chair. ‘All right, then, all right. But shit, George, what’s the rush?’

  ‘You and Charlie were in that ward?’

  ‘Of course we were.’

  ‘Why? How did Charlie even get in there?’

  ‘I was trying to help him.’ He gulped from his glass, stared into it. ‘I felt terrible, you know, about all that stuff years ago. I didn’t mean it to go so bad for him at the Inquiry. It was Lindsay’s fault, not mine. I thought he’d get a suspended sentence at most. Really.’

  But that deep compelling voice he’d possessed of old, the voice that could convince you of almost anything, was long gone. I didn’t believe him. I’d read those pages from his book.

  ‘You didn’t seem very worried about Charlie at the time,’ I said.

  ‘But later, George, I thought about it later. It was a long time there in jail. A fucking long time. And a lot harder than I thought it was gonna be.’ He looked at me, his restless body going still for a moment. ‘You know what I’ve been doing since I got out?’

  I knew, but shook my head.

  He puffed himself up, almost recognisable for a moment. ‘I’ve been writing a book, can you believe that? A book! I’ve been putting it all down. Everything! Well no, not everything. That’s the whole point, after all. Not everything. But enough. And it’s fucking good. I can write, I can really write. I should’ve been a writer from day one. I could’ve made a packet.’

  He deflated again, sank back in the chair.

  ‘But it’s hard. Writing’s hard. You have to bring it all back. All the old memories. I’d need a drink to get me through. A lot of drinks.’

  I said, ‘The police know about the book.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘They’ve read it. They know that the last bit you wrote was about meeting Charlie in prison.’

  ‘They know that?’ He giggled, a strangled sound. ‘That’s right, that’s as far as I got. I was stuck, George, stuck right there, meeting Charlie in prison. I can still see the way he looked at me, his face all blown in. He was never gonna forgive me.’ He brooded for a moment, looked up. ‘I read a lot in jail. I did a course. Literature. I read all the greats. I read the Odyssey. That’s me, I thought, that’s us. We got the gods angry, George. Too high, too fast. So they destroyed us and sent us away and now there are trials, trials to overcome, if we ever wanna get back home.’

  And truly, only someone like Marvin would have the nerve to see those tawdry days of ours in Homeric terms.

  ‘All we did was break the law, Marvin.’

  ‘George, we made the laws.’

  I let it be. ‘What about Charlie?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying. I was stuck on Charlie. I had to get Charlie out of my head. He was like a curse, that face of his. Fuck Charlie, I thought. That’s what I wrote down. But it didn’t work. I couldn’t get out of it that easy. It’s a trial, George, it’s all a trial. So I start drinking, the drinking works sometimes, you get ideas, beautiful ideas when you’re drunk. So I drink and drink and drink. I get some girls in and we drink some more. And then, fuck, I’ve got it. I’ve gotta help Charlie. That’s the answer. It’s a penance. I’ve gotta put it all right. All I gotta do is find him. Find poor old Charlie, how hard can that be?’

  ‘So where did you find him?’

  ‘That’s the weird thing, that’s the fucking uncanny thing. I’ve got no idea where to look. I’m drinking with these women and I’ve got no idea. So I think, hey, I’ll go back to the little place Charlie used to own over at Paddington, that first restaurant of his. I dunno why. I was drunk. I was remembering how much fun it all was back then, boozing on with Charlie and Jeremy and shit, even with you, you were there all the time, and that fucking amazing Maybellene . . .’

  He stopped, peered at me.

  ‘You heard anything about her?’

  ‘No. Not for a long time.’

  ‘No,’ he pondered, ‘I suppose not.’ He brightened again. ‘But we were all friends, right?’

  I thought of the pages from Marvin’s book. ‘Sure. We were all friends.’

  ‘That’s what I told the girls. I told them all about it. I say, we’ll go to Charlie’s old place for a meal. Same as always. So me and the girls go, but can you believe it, I can’t find the place. The cab drops us off, and I’ve got all this alcohol, and we’re wandering around Paddington, and the girls are getting pissed off at me ’cause they’re hungry, and we’re going down all these little streets, and I can’t find the fucking place.’

  ‘It’s gone, Marvin, long gone.’

  ‘Is it?’ He laughed. ‘Of course it is.’ He fumbled around on the floor for something, came up with a pack of cigarettes. I watched while he lit one. In the old days Marvin had smoked cigars. Now the ashtrays held only thousands of cigarettes, burned all the way down to the butts. He sucked at the nicotine like he could never breathe in enough.

  ‘Anyway, the next thing I remember, I’m alone and sitting in a park somewhere. The girls are gone and it’s just me and this little park, I don’t even know where I am, it’s the middle of the night. So what, I think, it’s as good as anywhere. The wine’s all gone but there’s still a whole bottle of scotch, so I think, what the hell, I’ll knock that off. I get drinking and that’s it for the night, as far as memory goes. When I wake up I’m coughing blood and I’m in this little detox ward that I’ve never even heard of. Some place for fucking derelicts.’

  ‘The Uniting Church Dependency Hostel.’

  ‘That’s it. Turns out someone found me on the footpath just a few doors down from the place. It was just luck. Somehow I’d wandered all the way down into Bardon. Not many bums on the streets of Bardon. Maybe they thought I came from the hostel. So they dragged me in there.’

  ‘And Charlie was there too.’

  He nodded, eyes shining. ‘That’s the damn thing, I wake up and in the bed right next to me, coughing his own guts out, is fucking Charlie. It’s like a miracle. I went looking for Charlie and bang, there he is. I mean, it’s like a sign from the gods, it’s some sort of answer. Can you see? Can you see what I was thinking?’

  ‘Yes. I can see.’

  ‘Charlie, I say, we gotta talk. We gotta sober up both of us and talk. And Charlie looks terrible, he looks like an old man, he looks about seventy. Why should I talk to you, he says. He hasn’t forgiven me. But this is the chance I’ve been waiting for. I can fix things. So I talk him round. I really can help him, after all. I’ve got money. I’ve got friends. We can get out of that little dump and go somewhere proper, where everything is the best, where we can get our lives straight. And I can see him thinking, maybe, maybe . . . there’s still that little bit of . . .’

  He ran out of words, looked at me wearily.

  ‘Okay, George, so you don’t drink any more. But do you remember what it’s like? That little bit of hope you have, that one day you’ll kick it and get your life back again, all the bullshit aside. I had it that day, for real. And I could see Charlie did too. You only need one friend to help. We could’ve helped each other, gone through it together.’

  He sighed, got up and poured another drink.

  I said, ‘I talked to the psychologist at that ward. He said he didn’t really think there was any hope for Charlie.’

  ‘Maybe not, but you know how it is. That first bit of sobriety and you think, just for an hour
or two, that maybe you could make it.’

  He sat down again, swallowed fresh scotch, long and hopeless.

  ‘Anyway, I can’t stay at that place, so I leave and book myself in at St Amand’s. I’ll send for you, I tell Charlie, and that’s what I do.’

  ‘Did you pay for him?’

  ‘Who else would?’

  ‘The police said Charlie paid with cash. And you paid with a credit card.’

  ‘Christ, I didn’t want Charlie crawling in there like a charity case. I sent him round the money. Fuck, I got money. That’s not the problem. But I wanted him walking in there under his own steam, like he had the right.’

  ‘The police will be interested to hear that.’

  But Marvin didn’t care about the police, he was back in the detox ward. ‘So there’s me and Charlie in the lap of luxury, we’re gonna do this together. A couple of days go by and we’re feeling better. Charlie, well, Charlie was never gonna be completely okay again, you know, but at least he’s talking to me. Shit, we’re going through detox together—in detox you gotta talk to someone, and me and Charlie are it for each other. I’m telling him about my house over on the river, I’m telling him about how nice the kitchen is, what a shit cook I am, and Charlie’s saying he hasn’t cooked in years. There’s a gleam in his eye. I mean, who knows? It might’ve worked.’

  Cigarette smoke curled in the air, stinging my eyes. I thought, fleetingly, about ironies. That it would be Marvin, of all of us, who would think of taking Charlie in and giving him a home.

  ‘So what happened?’

  Marvin was staring inwards, back into the past.

  ‘We might have made it,’ he whispered. ‘It was such bad luck . . .’

  ‘Marvin, what happened?’

  He considered me sadly. The blue of his eyes was washed out now almost to white.

  ‘We weren’t alone in there,’ he said.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Marvin was up out of his chair, filling another glass. He was already so far gone. For all I knew he’d been sitting in this room drinking continuously for the last fourteen days. He looked like he had. He smelled like he had. I could see at least twenty empty scotch bottles, just in a glance. And yet it hadn’t prostrated him or knocked him out. He seemed beyond simple inebriation, as if he’d found some ecstatic sort of drunkenness without end or unconsciousness.