by Mike Safe
Somehow, this brought his wandering mind back to Gordy and he found himself contemplating what might become of his friend. Gordy was vulnerable, anything but a survivor. If dumped on the street and weighed down by his debts and compromised private life, he would have a hard time of it. At least Harcourt had those two bits of his existence more or less in order. Well, at least as far as he knew.
‘Ah, Gordy, you silly bugger,’ Harcourt said to no one but himself and the seagulls. From somewhere above, one of the gulls let go a stream of liquid droppings, a sizeable part of which plopped onto his shoulder.
‘Shit!’ He half smiled. Wasn’t being shat upon by birds supposed to bring good luck?
He walked slowly back home, changed his splattered tee-shirt, made himself a coffee, and sat down at his computer in the cluttered spare room that he used as an office. Among the junk emails and other bits and pieces of minimal interest that he’d received since last checking was a message from Jack in London.
To his surprise, Jack liked the song he’d sent. ‘It’s kind of cool – and we could do with a bit of cool around here at the moment.’
But, apparently, band mate and co-leader, Elmore Bruce, wasn’t so keen. ‘It’s not that he doesn’t like it, it’s just that he doesn’t know if it’s us. Anyway, thanks for sending it and I’ll let you know what happens. We’re now doing two or three pub shows a week, mainly around London or close by, and the crowds have been okay, mainly homesick Aussies from what I can gather. They seem to know all the songs. We’re even selling a few CDs at the shows. I guess the thing with Elmore is he’s had the sunshine knocked out of him a bit since we’ve been here, LOL! I still can’t believe how cold it gets and how grey it is all the time. It can get you down. I’m always checking the web surf reports from back home.’
Harcourt sat and reread the email, its stark black letters standing out against the bright white of the computer screen.
His own father, now dead more than twenty years, followed by his mother a couple of years later, had been a child of the Depression who had believed in a solid job with solid prospects for his only child. He’d made Harcourt sit for a public service compatibility exam, the purpose of which was never quite spelt out even if the tacit understanding was that this could be the path to a job that would look after him for life. It had been his last year of high school and all these years later Harcourt still had a vague memory of being shut up somewhere in an anonymous government office on a sunny Saturday afternoon to take a series of written aptitude tests. The clearest bit of the memory was of looking out the window at a blue sky and wondering what the surf was doing and how long before he could get outside to find out.
The test had never come to anything and he had eventually embarked on a bog standard arts degree, tossing it in after a largely wasted eighteen months when, more by good luck than good planning, he managed to pick up a writing job with a small magazine chain where he had a friend who was a friend of the managing editor. His friend convinced the editor to read a few bits and pieces Harcourt had written for various street press publications and the university paper, mainly on music and youth culture – whatever that had been at the time.
Twelve months there was followed by the stay in London, many young Australians’ rite of passage back then and still today. This journey of discovery turned out to be more about beer drinking and dope smoking than any meaningful insight into where his life was headed.
That was, until a surfing trip to France where he had met Tess, in a bar in Biarritz, the French surf capital on the Atlantic shore. He had spent a couple of days surfing up the coast at a spot called Hossegor, which had the best beach-break waves in the area and indeed some of the best in the world when it fired. Harcourt made the trip with a couple of British friends who had barely caught a wave before, while he hadn’t spent any time in the surf since a dismal weekend down in Cornwall at the start of what was supposed to have been spring. The French trip came in late August, still warm but with the first stirrings of what would become the autumn wave season.
The day after their arrival, the surf jumped from next to nothing to a couple of metres of long-range bombs, the waves coming from a storm brewing far out in the Atlantic. Hossegor, like most of the French coast, was notorious for its tidal shifts and Harcourt, being somewhat out of shape and off the pace after too much London good life, paid the price. While his two English friends remained on the beach, he paddled out on what was a dropping tide and rising swell. There were some experienced surfers out there, including a couple of Australians, and they were scoring spitting, churning tubes. Harcourt managed to catch a couple of smaller ones and did okay on them, but was nailed on a bigger wave that dredged over the shallow sandbank on the lower tide and drove him to the bottom. He was bounced off the sand as if a chair had been pulled out from under him and a sharp pain stabbed through his tailbone and momentarily up his spine. After being rolled by the tumbling white-water, he came up gasping for air, his ears, nose and hair bunged up with sand. As well, his leg-rope had snapped so he had to swim to the beach, where he found the board washed up on the sand but otherwise undamaged. His two British companions might have been impressed by his bravado, but he was left with a tailbone ache that made it difficult to sit down.
They had driven their hire car back to Biarritz, his friends laughing all the way at his expense. Late in the day, the two English learners found a gentler, protected wave on the town’s crowded beaches to practise their ordinary surfing skills while Harcourt retreated to an open air beachside bar to nurse his wounded pride and sore rear end. He sank a couple of frothy beers as the sun settled and a gentle twilight descended on the tourist strip busy with families out for an early evening promenade, tourists and locals alike enjoying one of the last long days of summer.
Then there she was. A red scooter screeched to a halt, driven by a young French-looking guy – or the kind who back then Harcourt would have considered French-looking – with a Gauloises hanging from his bottom lip and a look of self-ordained intellectual authority that suggested Jean-Paul Sartre by way of Albert Camus. On the back of the scooter sat a slim girl with long, dark windswept hair that she constantly and casually flicked away from her face. She wore tight white Capri pants, a blue-and-white bold striped top and casual slip-on flat shoes. She was gently tanned and looked even more French than the scooter’s driver – again, in a way that back then Harcourt had considered all young French women should look, sort of Françoise Hardy in her most fetching pop star prime. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her as she and Sartre/ Camus came into the bar and two more scooters pulled up. Their drivers and passengers – young guys with girls on the back – also dismounted and made their way inside. They all sat down at the only vacant table, near where the sore-bottomed Harcourt was standing, and ordered drinks from the harassed waiter.
At first the Françoise Hardy lookalike, Sartre/Camus and the other two men conversed in French but then she talked to the other women in English and Harcourt was surprised to hear her Australian accent, while the other females sounded English. Sartre/Camus, who Harcourt managed to work out from the convoluted conversation that jerked from French to English and back again, was upset about something or other. He and Françoise Hardy, whose name appeared to be Tess – but Sartre/Camus, whose name was Gerard, kept on calling her Tessa – ended up in an argument, with her giving as good as she got. This went on for ten minutes or so until he stormed out, climbed on his scooter, revved the living daylights out of it, and rattled off into the all-but-faded light. For the next fifteen minutes or so the rest of the group said little, the English women offering some sort of consoling words every now and then, until they also rode off into the night. This left Tess, or Tessa, alone at the table with a glass of Bordeaux red at her elbow and an unlit cigarette in her hand.
‘I’d light it for you but I don’t have a match,’ Harcourt said, unable to resist this semblance of a chance to talk to her.
At least she smiled. ‘I don’t need it an
yway. It stunts your growth, you know.’
Such were the words on which their thirty-years-and-counting relationship had been founded. Yes, she was Australian and only a couple of weeks before had completed an exchange program in French literature and language at a university in Lyon. It was part of her arts degree and had been organised through Melbourne University’s Language and Linguistics School. The other girls were English travellers she had met in a Lyon bar the week before embarking on this holiday – a farewell moment, as she was about to return home to complete her studies. And Gerard and his pals? Well, she and her two new girlfriends, with whom she was realising she had little in common, had met them in another bar here in Biarritz – and she was now fast running out of tolerance with Gerard. ‘Too pushy,’ was her take on him.
One thing led to another and Tess and Harcourt spent the next week more or less together, him falling in love with her and her thinking about doing the same with him, sort of. There was an easy charm between them – he made her laugh and she made him think. In best summer romance tradition, there was even a confrontation with pushy Gerard, who was reluctant to take ‘non’ for an answer, especially with his pride hurt from having this Australian upstart arrive out of nowhere. At one excitable point Harcourt thought it might come to blows, until Tess verbally saw the spurned one off with an angry volley of French and a few choice Australianisms, such as ‘bugger off.’
And so after the week she went home to complete her degree while he returned to London and what had been a boring but otherwise easy job writing for a trade magazine. Within three months he was also back home, in time for the southern summer as it turned out, and they had picked up what was to be a long-distance relationship – him in Sydney, her in Melbourne. He made several trips south in an attempt to win her over. Then, by pure good luck, the bits fell into place when Tess on graduation received an offer of a trainee editor’s role at an international publisher’s Australian headquarters in Sydney and he landed a start on a daily newspaper as a relief reporter over the summer months. In the end, it was a chance that became a fulltime job. And, after Tess had dismissed various former boyfriends from Melbourne who had also pursued her with zeal, Harcourt had finally won.
Afterwards, there had been stints in London and New York, the return to London instigated by his appointment as a correspondent for his newspaper and the New York posting by her change of publisher to the one she now worked for, which meant time at head office to be schooled in the company way – something that hardly seemed to be resonating with Tess as far as the impending Edmund Harrison visit was concerned. The overseas appointments had enjoyed a sort of ragged symmetry – their different work commitments somehow fitting together without any great ructions.
Hah, good memories, he thought, expense accounts and a time when there was such a treat as a free lunch. Tess had been the driver, the one who pushed for that bit extra, while he had been more likely to let it just happen, the ‘go with the flow’ guy.
Now, all these years on, as he sat at his desk, Jack’s email having been replaced by the screensaver image of a monster wave breaking across a reef, Harcourt thought of his son living out his own form of the dream on the far side of the world.
SEVEN
His mobile was ringing, but he couldn’t find it. Harcourt had been in the bathroom, scraping four days of stubble from his face. Wiping what was left of the shaving cream from his chin, he finally located the chirping piece of plastic buried under the morning’s newspaper on the floor in his office.
‘Is that John Harcourt?’ asked a female voice.
‘Yes.’
‘This is Montacue Publishing calling. Could you hold please for Amanda Peers?’
Amanda Peers? The Mike Vargas book. His heart didn’t exactly skip a beat but his attention was focused, even if his mobile now had a smear of shaving cream across its display.
‘Hello, John. Amanda Peers.’ It was a crisp to firm voice.
‘Hi, Amanda. I think we’ve met once or twice before, when I was at the paper.’
‘Yes, I heard you’d gone from there. That’s a shame, you were one of their better talents, but that doesn’t seem to matter much in the newspaper business anymore.’ She paused and then asked, ‘How’s Tess? I’ll be seeing her down in Adelaide at Writers’ Week no doubt.’
‘Oh, she’s fine and, yes, no doubt you’ll see her there.’
‘John, to get down to the business of my call, it’s about Mike Vargas and his autobiography that we’re to publish and because of Mr Vargas’s Australian links our office here is handling some of the initial negotiations for our parent in the States. I believe you had a discussion with Max Millbank about the book. He shouldn’t really have been mentioning it to you or anyone else for that matter, but, well, there’s now been some development and I’d like to talk to you about that if you’re available.’
‘Sure, I’m happy to do that.’ Harcourt thought for a moment before adding, ‘Can you tell me what’s happened?’
‘I’d rather not say too much on the phone, if you don’t mind. There are a few strands to discuss and I’d rather do that face to face.’
They made a time for the following morning at Montacue’s office.
Harcourt rang Tess at her office and managed to be put straight through to her.
She was momentarily silent at his news.
‘Well, what do you think?’ he asked. ‘You’re not exactly bubbling over with excitement.’
‘No, it’s not that – I hope it comes to something,’ she said. ‘I know you could do it and do it well. But you know what I think of Amanda. Still, Mike’s had quite a life and if he’ll lay it all out and doesn’t pull his punches any book with his name on it could be a big seller, a massive seller maybe.’ She fell quiet for a moment before adding, ‘So there’s going to be a lot at stake.’
‘Of course there is.’ He paused before asking, ‘So what do you really mean by there being a lot at stake?’
‘Well, I can only say there’ll be a lot of parties and egos to be satisfied in a lot of different ways. There’s the publisher, of course, and Amanda will want to throw her not-inconsiderable weight around for sure – god, I’m a bitch too, aren’t I? Then there’s Vargas and his management and whatever they want. But he’s the prize and Amanda and Montacue need him more than he needs them. He must have more money than he knows what to do with as it is. So I guess, initially at least, a lot will come down to Vargas and how you, or whoever might do it, hits it off with him. There must be some kind of interest in you or Amanda wouldn’t be organising this meeting.’
‘As simple as that?
‘As simple as that, I guess.’ Tess sighed and added, ‘Hey, don’t forget. I’ve got my own star and his ego to deal with this evening – the drinks party for Edmund Harrison I told you about before we go down to Adelaide for Writers’ Week. I’ll see you there at seven, okay? All the usual suspects and A-list types will be there along with the self-appointed intellectuals who like to be seen in the presence of an esteemed international author. They like to think they give the occasion a bit of gravitas.’
‘Jeez, you really can bitch it up at times.’ Harcourt laughed.
‘Yes, but only in the nicest of ways, I hope. Don’t be late. Kirsten’s coming. I would have had to barricade the doors to keep her out and tomorrow she’s got an interview with Ed for her magazine as well as a video piece for online.’
‘Ed?’
‘That’s what he said to call him. He’s a bit of a charmer to say the least. He’s had lots of practice.’
They said goodbye. Harcourt found his wallet and fished a crumpled piece of paper from it on which Mudguts Millbank had scrawled his phone number. After an inordinate number of rings, Mudguts finally answered. Harcourt told him about the meeting with Amanda Peers.
‘Sweet as,’ said Mudguts. ‘See, I said I’d come through for you. Is Vinnie Vincenso going to be there?’ Harcourt recalled Mudguts saying Vincenso was Vargas’s long-time local fi
xer.
‘Amanda Peers never mentioned him. As far as I know, it’s just her and me.’
Mudguts laughed. ‘Vinnie will be there for sure. He’s a crafty old so-and-so and if Vargas’s interests need looking after he’s front and centre. You have to remember that this is the Vargas show – and the book won’t happen unless he’s happy with every last detail.’
‘Yeah, I see where you’re coming from,’ said Harcourt. ‘I presume that this Vinnie character is the one you spoke to about me having a shot at doing the book?’
‘You’re on the money. Like the magazine piece I did with Vargas up at Noosa, Vinnie keeps himself in the local action. So he obviously had a word to Vargas who, I guess, told him to have a word to Montacue and so here you are. Vargas will enjoy mucking Montacue around, that’s for sure. Just like in his movies, he revels in playing the outsider, the rebel who gets his way against the big guys even if in real life he’s richer than Bill Gates – well, not quite.’
‘Talking of getting his way,’ said Harcourt, ‘and thinking back to when I went to Vanuatu to interview him, I have memories of this black guy, he was an ex-Navy Seal or something, Vargas’s constant eyes and ears. He did anything that needed taking care of there and then. Cool and calm, just hung in the background, looked like he could karate chop a brick in half.’
‘Yeah, that’s Dexter Dutton – he’s still there. Like you say, he’s Vargas’s on the spot man, does everything from putting him through this mad exercise routine every morning to logistical stuff – people to see, places to go, stuff to be checked, covers all the bases.’
After a few more exchanges, Harcourt thanked Mudguts. ‘I appreciate it. I’ve more or less talked myself around to hoping something comes of this now.’
‘My pleasure,’ said Mudguts. ‘But if it does happen watch out for yourself. From my brief Noosa encounter, Vargas loves to play up the boy-from-nowhere side of his story and how even after all these years and millions of bucks he’s still an outsider in Hollywood, blah, blah, blah. But quite simply, the main thing to remember is that it’s always about Vargas.’