Babylon South

by Jon Cleary

  Walter Springfellow was being buried in the family vault. The first Springfellow had been buried here ninety-nine years ago when the cemetery had first been opened. It was called the Field of Mars and Justine thought it an ideal meeting place for the warring family. She hoped that, for the sake of the father she had never known, there would be no battle today.

  An old jacaranda stood just behind the vault, its blossom lying like purple snow on the white marble. Two magpies sat in branches carolling a warning to the humans below: don’t hang around or you’ll be dive-bombed. A bulbul, as cocky as its red crest, sat on the cross atop the vault. A blimp drifted by overhead, tourists in its gondola busily snapping the grieving ants far below. Edwin Springfellow had used his influence and the media photographers had been stopped at the gates. Some of the more enterprising, however, were perched like magpies in distant trees. Cameramen hate to see grief kept private, especially if it is moneyed. The public, while t’ch, t’ching in disgust, never turns its eyes away from the pictures.

  Malone and Clements were also there, though standing well away from the mourners; looking, indeed, like visitors to another grave. Venetia had asked that the burial be kept as private as possible, but at least fifty mourners had arrived, most of them elderly. Malone recognized several retired judges; Fortague, from ASIO, was there too. There was one surprise mourner: John Leeds, Commissioner of Police.

  “What’s the boss doing here?” said Clements.

  Malone was watching the neat-as-always Commissioner standing in the background, making no effort to approach those gathered around the vault. Malone was too far away to see the expression on Leeds’s face, but the Commissioner did not seem to have his usual stiffly upright stance. It was hard to tell whether he was grieving or suffering from lumbago.

  Venetia turned away as the door of the vault was closed until another day, another death. Edwin stood in front of her, looking at the closed door as if expecting it should have been left ajar for him. She touched his arm. “Not yet, Edwin. Perhaps you’ll be next, but not now.”

  “What a cruel thing to say!” Emma had come up behind them.

  Edwin, recovering his focus, shook his head; he wanted no scene today. “No, Venetia has hit the nail on the head. As usual.”

  “There’s a time and place for hitting nails on the head.”

  The three of them were slightly apart from the crowd of mourners. Their voices were low; good manners were everything in front of non-family. Emma and Edwin came of an old school where even murder, if committed, would be in a low key; Emma’s behaviour yesterday in the boardroom had been an aberration, something for which Edwin had berated her, in well-mannered terms, on their way home. She had not welcomed the admonition, had secretly enjoyed being bad-mannered and outspoken.

  Edwin said, still in a low voice, “Let’s behave ourselves. We still have to come back to your house, Venetia. We’re still welcome, I take it?”

  “Only for today.”

  “I shan’t be coming,” said Emma.

  “Yes, you will,” said Edwin quietly but firmly. “We keep up appearances today. Out of respect for Walter.”

  Emma said nothing. She glared at them both, then turned and walked away, stumbling in her blind anger over a nearby grave. As she passed the other mourners she managed to produce a smile that sat on her face like a slice of thrown pie. Justine, hurrying by her towards the Bentley, gave her aunt a look of hatred that only the more elderly, dim-sighted bystanders missed. Accustomed to hypocrisy at funerals, some of the women were shocked. The retired judges and the ASIO chief, more accustomed to hypocrisy, wondered what the man they had just laid to rest would have thought of this enmity.

  Venetia left Edwin, who had been joined by Ruth, his wife, and moved amongst the crowd as it began to straggle away with that lack of direction that affects mourners at a funeral, as if for a moment they have lost their grip on life. Everyone treated her warily and none with affection; these were Springfellow family friends. All except Roger Dircks and Michael Broad, who were wary but not cool.

  “You must be glad that’s over,” said Dircks, stating the obvious yet again. As axeman, he would have told Anne Boleyn the same thing.

  “It’s not over, is it, Venetia?” said Broad solicitously.

  “Not really. Did you sleep well last night?”

  “No. I don’t know what we’re going to do about your sister-in-law.” He looked worried, even slightly creased. “Did you look at the messages this morning?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve had this—” she waved a hand back at the vault “—on my mind.”

  “The New York market crashed last night, five hundred and eight points. That means the local market will go down today.” He looked at his watch, “It’s probably already started.”

  “Jesus, of course!” Dircks looked at his own watch; the dead man was forgotten, he had never known him anyway. “We’d better be going. We’ll call you later, Venetia. Nice funeral.”

  He moved off, not waiting for Broad. The latter looked after him. “We’ll have to get rid of him. He’s bloody embarrassing. What do we do if the worst comes to the worst? I mean our share holdings?”

  “Call me as soon as you get back to the office and see what’s happening. Who knows? This may be our salvation. If prices do drop, we may be able to buy up enough to drop the bucket on Emma and Edwin.”

  He looked at her admiringly, though there was still strain in his lean face. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Never.”

  She turned away from him and pushed her way through the mulga scrub of polite hostility; these mostly elderly conservatives had never taken to her. She was surprised when she came face to face with a sincere, if restrained, smile. “John! Oh, it’s been so long—”

  “Hello, Venetia. I had to come—I felt it was time . . .” John Leeds opened his hand in what, in a less self-contained man, might have been mistaken for a helpless gesture.

  Once upon a passion she had been at the point of falling in love with this honest, conscience-stricken man. He seemed hardly to have changed, except for the grey in his hair and the few lines in the square-jawed face. He was as neat as she remembered him: everything about him was neat, including his pride and his conscience. It had been that in the end that had stopped her from falling completely in love. Someone else’s conscience was harder to live with than one’s own. Or was for her.

  “You’ve avoided me all these years. I looked for you at some of those official functions, but you always looked the other way.”

  “It was best, Venetia. I’ve been married for years—it’s been a happy marriage—”

  She nodded, understanding; but half her lovers had been married men. She looked past him and saw Justine coming towards them. “You’ve never met my daughter, have you? Justine, this is John Leeds, the Commissioner of Police. He was an old friend of your father’s.”

  “His protégé,” said Leeds. “He persuaded me to take a law degree, said it would help me in the Force. It did, so I have him to thank. Hello, Justine. I’m sorry we should meet on such an occasion.”

  “I never met my father. At least now I’ve met one of his old friends.” She said it naturally, without any apparent effort to say the right thing. She was surrounded by her father’s old friends, but, as with her mother, they had never been hers. She liked this quiet, sober-faced man at once, aware that her mother, too, liked him. “We’re ready to go back to the house, Mother. Will you come, Mr. Leeds?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t.” He watched her as she went off and Venetia watched him. “She’s a beautiful girl. Walter would have been proud of her.”

  “Would you have been?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She could have been your daughter.”

  “Is she?”

  But she didn’t answer that, merely said, “Why did you come, John? After all these years. Did you feel safe?”

  “Straight and to the point, still.” He smiled, though it did
not appear to come easily. “No, it’s you I’m concerned for.”

  “Me? Well, yes, I have some problems—”

  “The takeover? No, I didn’t mean that. You probably read about this man Dural who was released from prison a couple of weeks ago . . . I could have sent someone to warn you, but I thought I should come myself.”

  “Warn me?”

  “I looked up the reports on the case after Walter increased his sentence—I wasn’t on the case myself. He threatened he would some day kill Walter. It’s too late for that . . . The man’s a psycho, Venetia. He could switch his revenge to you. For some years he continued to rant against Walter while he was in gaol. I think you could do with some protection.”

  “Not police protection, John, please. The media would get on to it and that might only make this—this psycho worse.” He had to admire how quickly her mind could see a problem. “I have my own security men. I’ll just double them. But thanks . . .” She looked at him steadily. “That wasn’t the real reason you came, was it?”

  “No,” he said after a long moment; an old love, no matter how fleeting it might have been, is hard to relinquish. He was happily married, had been for eighteen years, but one can’t help wondering what might have been. We create our personal mysteries, sometimes, out of nothing. “But there’s no answer, is there? Goodbye, Venetia. Take care.” He meant there were more dangers for her than a vengeful psycho.

  Venetia watched him as he departed, also wondering what might have been. He had been one of half a dozen lovers in that last year of her marriage, but he had been the only one with whom she wanted to lie after the love-making. That had always been her test of men. She sighed, then straightened herself and walked briskly across towards the Bentley.

  “Time to go,” said Malone, still standing beside the distant grave.

  “Do you think the Commissioner saw us?” Clements watched the Commissioner’s car drive off.

  “He saw us, all right. He never misses anything.”

  “So why was he here? That was a personal little talk he had with her ladyship.” Clements, discreetly, had been using small binoculars to scan the crowd of mourners. “I wish I was a lip-reader.”

  “You might have read more than you wanted to know.” Malone had the greatest respect for the Commissioner. He had cleaned out the Force and at last it also had regained some respect, from the voters.

  “Well, where do we go from here?”

  “I’m buggered if I know. I’ve got a feeling this one is going to go into the Too Hard basket.”

  They walked across to their unmarked car and drove away. Though he had had little hope of solving the case, Malone was disappointed. He had found himself wondering about Venetia Springfellow, what made her tick. He had seen the uses of power by powerful men; he wondered at its uses by a powerful woman. Most of all, he wondered about her as a woman. He would not mention his wonder to Lisa.

  III

  The driveway and the street outside were lined with cars: Mercedes, Jaguars, Volvos; the two or three small Japanese cars looked shamefaced, like queue jumpers. The security guard walked up and down them like a parking officer, frowning at the occasional passer-by who stopped to stare up at the Springfellow house.

  Inside, Venetia glided amongst her guests. At last she came to a stop beside Edwin, whom she had once, for Walter’s sake, tried to like. It had not been easy.

  “It’s like old times,” he said, doing his best to be friendly; he was not by nature an aggressive man. “So many old faces.”

  “Old is the word. I find it hard to believe—if Walter were still alive, he’d be seventy-two.”

  “I’m seventy. It’s unavoidable—getting old, I mean.”

  “I’m doing my best to avoid it. I still feel young.”

  “Is that why you started this fight?” He hadn’t meant to bring up the subject.

  She looked at him, not wishing to fight him. They were out in the garden, away from the others. She looked at him and then up at all the other old men on the wide verandahs. Once they had been young boys; where had all their energy gone? Why hadn’t they stored some of it for days such as they had to live now? If Walter had lived, would all his energies have gone, would she have been far too young for him in bed and out of it? She looked back at Edwin, saw he had no energy for a fight.

  “It wasn’t meant to be like that, Edwin. It was meant to be a rationalization. You’ve just said it yourself—you’re old. So is everyone on the board, except me. You should talk to Justine, she works amongst the young people in the corporation. Ask her what they think. In the foreign exchange section of the bank we have 22-year-olds earning a hundred thousand dollars a year.”

  “They’re not worth it!”

  “They think they are.”

  “The young people aren’t the ones who have to find the money for all you want to do. You’re too ambitious, Venetia.”

  She nodded, “I know. So is Justine.”

  He had always found difficulty in arguing with her; she seemed to mock him by agreeing with him. But then Emma came up as a reinforcement.

  “We’ve done our duty. We can go now, Edwin.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” said Venetia. “I’m not finished yet.” Michael Broad had called her only a few minutes after she had reached home; he had sounded panic-stricken, told her the market was plunging like a broken dam. “We’ll be back to you.”

  For a moment Emma looked uncertain. “None of this would have happened if Walter had still been alive.”

  “No, that’s true. If Walter were still alive, I might still be the dutiful wife. Which is what you would have wanted me to be.”

  “You were never that.” Emma couldn’t control her venom; like cancer, it had got worse with time. “Walter was fortunate he never learned the truth about you. I saw you today with one of your old boyfriends—”

  “Emma, that’s enough!” Edwin’s usually mild voice was unexpectedly sharp.

  For a moment it looked as if Emma might turn her venom on him. She stared at both of them; Venetia would not have been surprised if she had pointed a finger at them and called down a curse. Then abruptly she turned and stalked stiff-legged across the lawn and up into the house. At the top of the steps that led up to the wide verandah she was confronted accidentally by Justine. They stood face to face, something was said that made the guests on the verandah turn their heads, then Justine stepped round her aunt and almost ran down the steps and across the lawn to her mother.

  “What’s the matter?” Venetia had never seen her daughter so upset.

  “What’s the matter with that woman?” Justine was on the verge of tears. “In front of everyone she asked me did I know whose bastard I was!”

  There was a gasp from Edwin. He put his hand on his niece’s arm, the first time he had touched her in years. “I don’t know what’s come over her lately, since the discovery of Walter’s . . . Take no notice of her, my dear—”

  “That’s not easy,” said Venetia, looking up towards the house; Emma had disappeared inside and now all those on the verandah were gazing down at the three of them. “Taking no notice of her, I mean. You will have to do something about her, Edwin.”

  “I’ll try.” But he sounded as if he had little hope that he would.

  Venetia took Justine’s arm and walked her towards the garden’s back boundary. The garden had once been a local showpiece, thrown open every year by the Springfellows for charity; Sir Archibald had been one of the nation’s more famous camellia growers. There were flowers and shrubs that had been brought from all over the globe; the natural world had been brought to order in these couple of suburban acres. Venetia no longer opened the garden to the public, not even for one day; instead, the Royal Blind Society got a cheque but no invitation. She knew that, though the day was for the benefit of the blind, those who had paid to come were as keen-sighted as Aboriginal hunters, missing nothing, especially her. She had been more on display than any camellia, rose or rhododendron.

&nbs
p; “Darling, Emma is a sick woman—”

  “What did she mean—whose bastard am I?” Justine herself felt sick. She was thoroughly modern, didn’t believe marriage was necessary if two people wanted to live together, saw no shame in an unmarried mother; yet she felt as if muck had been splashed all over her when her aunt had asked that question in front of all those stuffed shirts, male and female, who were her mother’s enemies. She had never thought of herself as a bastard; to be accused of being one with no known father shattered all her up-to-the-minute attitudes. She was more Mosman than she had realized: there are degrees of illegitimacy that are unacceptable. She wanted to be a Springfellow.

  Venetia looked out past the rhododendrons towards the harbour. A lone yacht fluttered its sails, like a pariah gull; a Manly ferry hooted for it to get out of the way. Walter, she said to the man she hadn’t spoken to in years, what do I tell her? But Walter, for all his kindness, had never been a forgiving man: lifelong standards had propped him up like callipers.

  “I’ve never thought of anyone but Walter as your father,” she said at last.

  Justine looked sideways at her. “But you’ve had your doubts?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, but you’re thinking it. You’ve puzzled me sometimes, but not always. You and I think alike. That’s how I know you better than you think I do. So someone else could have been my father?”

  Venetia hesitated, then nodded. “It’s possible.”

  “Who?”

  “No, it wouldn’t be fair to them. It was all so long ago and they’re leading other lives now.”

  “What about being fair to me?” Justine’s anger was being switched from her aunt to her mother. If she was a bastard, she wanted to know whose. She felt lop-sided. “You said them. God, how many were there?”

  Venetia shook her head. “No, I’m not going to tell you that. I wasn’t any angel, I never have been—you know that. We’re alike, Justy. We can’t do without men.”