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by Robert Barnard

  Eve was about to proceed further with the papers, trying to trace her father’s career in the Australian newspaper world, however long it had lasted, when a thought occurred to her. She made her way to the inquiries desk, where, unusually for librarians, she found a helpful face.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “I wonder, is there some kind of directory for journalists, and other people who work for the papers?”

  “I believe there is. Let me see, as I remember it, it’s mainly an internal one put out for journalists, editors, managers and so on. To make contact easier if there is a news story breaking in Cairns or Broome or Woop-Woop. I think we’re allowed to buy copies, because it’s been used by other newspaper researchers.” She had been tapping on her computer and now took Eve to a shelf in the far recesses of the library. “There you are. Seems to come out every three or four years. You’ll probably find what you want in one of these.”

  Eve looked at the series of volumes, going back to dusty and rather homemade editions from the thirties, then on to more businesslike editions from recent years. Feeling greatly daring she took out first the 2005 version, the latest, and then one from 1979. She stood, alone, against the shelf and opened the recent one. There was no entry under McNabb. Her heart sank. Then under Pomeroz, Peter, the volume referred the reader to Coltroon, Steven. Hurriedly she flicked back, and was rewarded by the opening of the entry:

  COLTROON, Steven (1935–)

  Eve clutched at the shelf to steady herself. He was alive! Or was in 2005. It was a wonderful revelation. Or more accurately, a confirmation. Because she was conscious that this was only what she had come to believe: her mother, who was by nature and conviction a truthful woman, had nevertheless thought it worth lying to her on this vital matter.

  She read on:

  Born UK, emigrated to Australia in 1973. Began his Australian career with the Canberra News, producing a weekly cartoon, usually with a political theme. The distinction of his artistry and the accuracy and humor of his caricatures was soon recognized, and in 1979 he became one of the cartoonists on the Australian Guardian. His career there was long, and by the time he retired, his Saturday cartoon was relished not only by the paper’s far-flung readership but by the whole population. Exhibitions of his paintings, usually figures against very Australian landscapes, were held in Sydney in 1987 and 2001, and in Melbourne in 1997. His retirement has not meant the end of his cartoons, which appear from time to time in the Guardian and elsewhere. Addresses: flat 97, Manly Heights, Sydney (tel. 9257 4075) and 25 Bay St., Maconochie Harbour (tel. 2665 9721).

  The 1979 edition added nothing to this, though it did say under Coltroon that he was “one of our most promising cartoonists, with sharpness of wit as well as of pencil.” Eve thought it rather impressive that after only six years in the country, he was thought of already as “our.” The Directory of Australian Journalism obligingly included a map, and she looked up Maconochie Harbour. It was midway between Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour. Neither name meant much to Eve, but it looked like a day’s drive.

  When she got back to her hotel in the King’s Cross district, she rang the Sydney number the directory had given.

  “Could I speak to Mr. Coltroon please?”

  “He doesn’t live here anymore.”

  “I see. Does he live in Maconochie Harbour?”

  “Yes, try there. Sorry to be a bit abrupt, but we get an awful lot of calls for him. He’s a very popular person.”

  So that was that. Eve went down to the hotel lobby and ordered a hire car for the next morning. Rather than gain her first impressions from a voice, she now had a chance to meet him face-to-face, judge him from expressions, eyes, demeanor. At the very worst, if he was away, she could talk to his neighbors. Maconochie Harbour did not sound, somehow, as if it was a massive jungle of surfies and boaters.

  The next day, early, she managed the escape from Sydney, which seemed to straggle to infinity, then pointed herself in the direction of the north coast of New South Wales. She stopped for lunch and a small beer at a modern-looking hotel, then took to the road again in a journey that involved to her right fabulous sea and beach vistas, and to the left sun-bathed but still grim-looking mountains. She slowed down, both to take in the landscape—which would never be her landscape, but was worth absorbing—and also to feel less of a frazzle when she finally arrived. It was late afternoon when she first saw signs directing her to Maconochie Harbour, and she pulled into it half an hour later.

  It was, as she had expected, no aquatic superbowl, but merely a long stretch of main street just above the beach, with little streets going off it in the direction of the mountains. All these streets had small- and medium-size houses—bungalows, as she thought of them—some weatherboard, some more substantial looking. It was just what she had expected her father to retire to, though she couldn’t have said why. At either end of the principal street, there was a motel, with two hotels in the middle. She had been warned to be careful of hotels, so she chose the newer-looking of the motels. No point in cutting corners.

  “You don’t happen to know a Steven Coltroon, do you?” she asked the receptionist when she had registered.

  “The artist bloke?”

  “He’s a cartoonist, yes.”

  “Yeah, we know him here. Comes in once or twice a month for a meal. He mostly paints now. Down by the harbor, on the beach, or sometimes in the mountains. You could have passed him as you drove through the town.”

  “No, I think I’d have noticed.”

  “He lives on one of the small streets—Jacaranda Street, I think, though I couldn’t swear to it. Maybe Bay Street. Ask anyone. He’s a well-known local character—quite a national celebrity, people say. Has a lot of visitors.”

  “I’ll see if I can make contact when I’ve freshened up. I’m not used to the heat.”

  “Heat? It’s only the beginning of spring. You stop here till Christmas and we’ll show you some heat!”

  Eve kept her thoughts on a hot Christmas to herself. She showered, put on light, clean clothing—blouse and skirt, which seemed right for the climate—then left the Ocean View Motel and began walking along the main street, with its view, between the small shops, down to a sort of promenade, more like a stone edging to the beach. There was no artist on the street, but when she got a good view between two shops, she glimpsed a man with an easel at the other end of the harbor.

  She slowed down to a dawdle, wondering how she was going to approach her father, if it was him. She looked in shop windows without finding inspiration. Eventually she had to come to an opening where she could see the man, but she found when she came to it that she could see only his back. The one photograph she had seen of him was of little use with only a back to go on. This man was of middle height, with most of his hair, wearing short-sleeved shirt, light-colored slacks and sandals on bare feet. He was looking out toward the sea—lightly misted, with dusk not far off. On the easel in front of him was the beginning of a painting. Her heart in her mouth, she took the little path down to where he was sitting, on a small stool a few feet up from the promenade. She stopped, and stood a short way away.

  “Do you mind if people watch you?”

  “Not at all,” he said, in a still-rather-English voice. “Though I suppose I would if you stopped here an hour or two. There’s not a great deal to do in Maconochie Harbour.”

  “But plenty to paint?”

  “Enough. The problem is the light. It’s so bright and complete, like an early Technicolor film—as if everything was lit by giant kerosene lamps. I can’t do with it. I prefer to wait for poor weather, or till what passes for twilight in Australia.”

  “You prefer mists and halftones and blurred edges.”

  “Yes, particularly the blurred edges. The sun gives everything an edge so hard and definite. Though sometimes in the shadows of the rocks you can see wonderful wildlife, and capture them in sketches. The wild things here are so cocky and confident. They think they own the place,
and I guess they do, most of it.”

  “I suppose it feels as if the people have just hired it for a century or two.”

  “Exactly. Well, be my guest.” He turned and continued painting. Eve moved forward to get a better look at him.

  His hair, though thinning, had been abundant, and what was left of it was at an intermediate stage between fair and gray. His eyes were sharp and quick, formed to take immediate impressions and fix them on paper. His was not a powerful body, though capable enough, and the expression on his wide mouth was one of gentleness. By his trade he must have encountered much that he hated or despised—political chicanery, hypocrisy, opportunism. These would all be basic to the art of the political cartoon in Australia, as they would have been in Britain. But Eve felt that in his personal relationships, his instinct would have been gentle, tolerant, forgiving. There must have been tension between his two sides, unless she was misreading that sunny, accepting face.

  “That’s enough,” he said suddenly. “If you try and get things down in a race with the light, you often ruin the whole picture. It’s better to bring it home and try to fix your impressions there.” He bent down and began to pack up the canvas bag that had been lying beside his small, collapsible seat.

  “You’re Steven Coltroon, aren’t you,” Eve said.

  “Steve,” he answered automatically. “‘You’re Steve and like it here. We’re a friendly country.’ That’s one of the national jokes which maybe you haven’t heard, young lady. I take it I’m right—you come from ‘the old country,’ and the northern half of it.”

  “That’s right. I was brought up in Crossley, near Halifax.”

  “Cr—” He stopped suddenly.

  “My name is Eve McNabb.”

  He had turned to look at her, and now stood up, standing there as if he had just been punched.

  “Eve!” he said, with only half his voice. “I’ve often wondered whether something like this could happen. Dreamed about it, if the truth be known. Come and let me kiss you, love. If I haven’t forgotten how to kiss as a father.”

  She ran to him and he threw his arms around her and held her very close to him as he kissed her, then kissed her again and again. As the third and fourth kiss rained on her, Eve realized that his cheek was wet, then she heard him choking.

  “Oh dear, that was good,” he said at last. “Let me look at you properly. You’re a sight for sore eyes—for old ones too. I always saw you as favoring May, and you do. But I think there’s a little bit of me there too.”

  “I think so too,” said Eve. “I found an old snapshot of you at home that gave me some idea, and I thought I could see a lot of me in your face.”

  “Come along, young lady—by the way, you said you were Eve, didn’t you? Not Evelyn.”

  “Eve.”

  “I prefer that. We always called you that when you were a baby. But it’s Evelyn on your birth certificate, so I thought you might have had the notion of changing how people spoke of you. Lots of young people do. Feel like helping me with my stuff? You can take the easel, I’ll take the rucksack. You’ll come home with me, won’t you? I can find something for dinner, or we can go out for a meal.”

  “I think I’d like to eat with you, something you like.”

  “Yes, we’ve got a lot of catching up to do on little and big things—particularly you, who thought I was dead.”

  “Oh, you knew that?”

  “Yes, May informed me, in a brief note.”

  “So you kept up communication with each other?” said Eve, very surprised.

  “For a short time, occasionally, in staccato sentences.”

  “I wish she hadn’t lied to me.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to, or we think it is. I wonder what I can find in the freezer. And I can make up a bed for you, if you’re not fixed up.”

  “I’m booked into the Ocean View, and I think I’ll stick with that. I’ll need somewhere I can be alone, collect my impressions, just lie on the bed and think.”

  “Sure. I understand that. I often need to collect my impressions too. You see some of the politicians here, speaking on television, or deigning to stop here and electioneer, and you think: what is the essence of this shit? Or: how is this old crook developing, which way is he going? And how is my sketch of him going to develop to keep him recognizable and relevant.”

  “You chose a wonderful profession.”

  “It chose me. All those people in pubs and places like that—people who looked at me sketching faces and bodies and used to say how good they were. I could have been a pavement artist, and I’d have been happy. But the weather in northern England and Scotland didn’t encourage that choice of profession . . . Here we are.”

  The house was one of the more substantial in a cul-desac off the main street, built in brick. Probably it offered more relief from the summer sun than a weatherboard house would have done. It sprawled over a garden of dry grass and the occasional shrub. John McNabb was not a gardener, then, or had had too little time since he became an actual resident here to make a difference. Inside there was substantial old furniture with, in the kitchen, a basic cooker and a large fridge-freezer. Beyond those two rooms there were doors leading to two more, both bedrooms. It all looked simple but comfortable.

  “Do I call you John or Steve?” Eve asked as he put together a long concoction of fruit juices. “Dad would come rather unnaturally at first, but I expect I’d get used to it.”

  “I’d prefer Steve. I’m always called that, and it’s what I’m used to. John doesn’t exist, but you can call me that in your mind if you like. Dad would seem unnatural to me too: I’ve never performed the functions of a dad—or not for thirty-odd years.”

  “And of course I thought you were dead.”

  “She had her reasons for telling you that, I suppose, and if she decided to do something, that was usually the end of the discussion. I take it she is dead.”

  “Yes, a couple of weeks ago.”

  “I assumed that must be the reason for your turning up. May telling you I was alive on her deathbed perhaps.”

  “No, she never told me.”

  John McNabb seemed to wish she had. He turned away.

  “Of course she probably didn’t know about me, one way or the other . . . Now, I wonder what you’d like to eat. Are you a big eater? I was intending to start with prawns—frozen, but straight from the boat to the freezer—then spag Bol, or lasagna or some such thing.”

  “It sounds ideal.”

  He went off to the monster fridge-freezer and began rummaging for foil boxes and plastic buckets. Eve noticed there were boxes for two meals as well as for one. Steve had a lot of friends. As he straightened and began to put things together, he threw questions at her.

  “So what do you do?”

  “I’m in PR. Rather boring and not very useful. I’m thinking of a job change.”

  “Oh good. What into?”

  “Actually, with PR, but much more useful PR.”

  “Married, with children?”

  “Neither. Relationship recently broken up. Hints and possibilities of a future relationship, but nothing definite.”

  “More promising than the old one then?”

  “Much more. Something different, genuine, challenging. Unfortunately, he is married, with a child.”

  “Does anyone bother themselves with that these days?”

  “In the Indian community they do.”

  “Oh ho-o-o. But I must stop inquisiting you. Tell me about May’s death. I’m really sad. She was too young to die.”

  “Cancer. I was with her at the end.”

  “Cancer isn’t the surefire killer it used to be.”

  “This one was.”

  “Was she a good mother? A friend as well as a teacher?”

  “Absolutely. I couldn’t have been more lucky.”

  “I knew she would be,” said John, with unbounded enthusiasm. “She was a cracker. Even when I married her, when we were both quite young, I knew she was s
omething exceptional.”

  “So what went wrong then, Steve?”

  He came back into the living room and sat down opposite her.

  “What does go wrong with early marriages? The obvious things: you regret giving up your freedom, you try regaining it in little ways, and then—”

  “Are you thinking of yourself, or Mother?”

  “Both, my darling . . . Your mother was a manager, you know.”

  “Oh, don’t I know,” said Eve, smiling but without rancor.

  “She would consult, adapt her ideas in little matters, but in the end she got her own way in ninety-five percent of the things that were being discussed. And all the people involved in the consultation went away thinking she was a wonderful listener and very open to other people’s ideas.”

  “Agreed. I had an advantage because I grew up with her, I understood her methods, and sometimes I could circumvent them . . . I bet you developed ways of doing that too.”

  “I’m not sure I did. Maybe I’m just a bit slow. I remember when the job came up in Crossley we discussed it, I said maybe I could do my job just as well away from Glasgow: the McTavish cartoons would not be affected, and the political ones were more often on national matters rather than more parochial Scottish ones. Then one evening we were at a party at the Tribune offices and she dragged me over to where she was talking to the proprietor and said it was all settled. I’d be a freelance with special connections to the paper and a commitment to be in Glasgow two days a week.” He grimaced. “All miraculously arranged—and without me!”

  Eve raised her eyebrows, but not in surprise.

  “And did it work?”

  “It seemed to at first. I was reveling in being back in Yorkshire, not so far from where I grew up, and where I loved the scenery and the small towns. But there’s no substitute for being in the thick of the action. If something important happened—like the three-day week in Heath’s premiership—you needed to be in your newspaper’s office, with journalists, in touch with the general reactions of the people who were going to read your paper, you had to judge by their letters, phone calls and so on. Sitting in my home office in 24 Derwent Road, Crossley, trying to judge things through the BBC coverage was nowhere near as good.”