by Mike Safe
‘What the fuck …’ Harcourt was momentarily lost for words. ‘You’re joking.’
‘I wish I was. I only found out by accident as I was leaving this morning. I didn’t phone you because you were still with Mike Vargas and I didn’t want to distract you from that.’
‘He’s old enough to be her bloody father. How did you find out?’
Tess took a long drink of her gin and tonic and put aside her laptop. ‘I’ll get you a drink as well.’ She returned from the kitchen with a twist top of beer for him and they both drank.
Tess told how Harrison’s appearances at the festival had gone down a treat, and that he had been accommodated in an upmarket townhouse on Adelaide’s parkland fringe. Tess and her assistant had stayed in a hotel closer to the action in the city’s centre as they had other authors to look after.
‘Harrison did everything that was expected of him, it went well with as much coverage as we could have hoped for, and there were no problems at all.’
Despite his agitated state, Harcourt managed to note that Tess had returned to calling Harrison by his surname, not the more familiar ‘Ed’ that she’d started to use before heading off to Adelaide.
Mother and daughter’s paths had barely crossed in what had been a hectic few days. ‘I had no idea where she was staying and there was so much to do that it wasn’t something that crossed my mind.’ To the best of her knowledge, Kirsten had already returned home, as had Tess’s assistant.
‘Well, overnight some legal paperwork arrived from New York, which they wanted Harrison to sign, saying he would cease and desist from any more stunts like the Adelaide appearances and that he would abide by the book’s launch schedule being mapped out by the company,’ Tess said. ‘Why they sent it to me, not to his agent in London, is anybody’s guess but I guess the fuddy-duddies needed to at least look as if they were getting themselves back in charge. They ordered me to present Harrison with the document and get him to sign and return it forthwith.’
‘Sounds like they were having a bit of a go at you as well,’ said Harcourt.
Tess looked into her almost empty glass. ‘Quite probably. Put the uppity girl from the provinces in her place.’ She looked up at him, pushed her fallen dark hair from her face and smiled wanly. ‘But that’s just the start.’
Billy Duane, Tess’s endlessly holidaying boss was also in Adelaide and he had been told to accompany Tess to reinforce the signing order, something he was suddenly keen to do. So on her way to the airport for her flight home the two of them took a taxi to Harrison’s townhouse where they knocked on the door only to have it opened by Kirsten.
‘She was wearing nothing but a pair of lace knickers and what was once one of your Rip Curl sweatshirts that was way too big and hung off her shoulders,’ said Tess.
I always wondered where that sweatshirt got to, thought Harcourt.
‘Her hair was everywhere. Apparently Harrison was in the shower. I’ve never been so shocked in my life and I thought Billy was going to have a seizure. She just looked at me and said “oh, it’s you, Mum.” I said “oh, it’s you, Kirsten – what the hell are you doing here!” Or something like that.
‘Anyway, I grabbed her by the arm and said, “Kirsten, we need to talk, now!” I dragged her through the nearest door and into what turned out to be the bedroom with clothing, hers and what I presume was his, scattered all over the floor, the unmade bed with sheets all over the place and a couple of empty champagne glasses and a discarded bottle. I just couldn’t have a conversation with her in the middle of that and so I dragged her out of there and into what was, thankfully, a second bedroom. Billy was still standing out in the hallway with his mouth hanging open wider than the entrance to the Sydney Harbour tunnel. I presume Harrison was still in the shower. A kind of white noise seemed to have descended on me and I wasn’t hearing anything much at all.’
Tess had closed the door of the second bedroom and asked, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ Kirsten had replied that she and Ed – the daughter now using the more familiar name discarded by the mother – had struck up ‘a rapport, an understanding’, when she had interviewed Harrison on the morning after his media party in Sydney, an encounter that Tess had facilitated. One thing had led to another, so to speak … and they had arranged to ‘hook up’ in Adelaide and so there they were in all their shameless glory.
‘She just brazened her way through it,’ said Tess. ‘I was getting angry and said “don’t you know how this looks as far as I’m concerned?” I’d been the go-between getting him here in controversial circumstances and behind the company’s back, if you like, and now my daughter was fucking him, for god’s sake. None of that seemed to have any effect on her. She just shrugged her shoulders in that awful old sweatshirt and said it was her and “Ed’s” doing and she’d wear any grief that had to be worn.’
By that time, Harrison, a large white towel wrapped around his pallid English winter body, had emerged from the bathroom and was locked in a stand-off with Billy who was still out in the hallway. ‘It was the strangest thing,’ said Tess. ‘Harrison was on one side of the living room and Billy was at the edge of the hallway on the other side. They were looking at each other like a couple of wrestlers. Then Billy just gave it to him – said he was a disgrace, wasn’t a team player, should grow up and start acting his age.’
‘Billy’s hardly the one to be playing the Mr Perfect card,’ said Harcourt.
‘You’re right and writers who put themselves on the line with their work, and maybe others who do so – soldiers, cops, I guess – can too easily carry all sorts of drama back into their personal lives,’ said Tess. ‘God, you’ve only got to look at Harrison’s track record. Maybe I should have seen this coming. Kirsten, for all her supposed grown-up sophistication, can be so impressionable at times.’ She sighed. ‘What a mess.’
Tess went to the kitchen to mix another gin and tonic and also brought back a second beer for Harcourt. ‘So, anyway, Harrison just listened to Billy’s rant, let him wear himself out, and then he turned on the charm. I must say he’s very good at it. He kind of oozes it. He said he was genuinely sorry that Billy and I had found out about their relationship under such awkward circumstances, but he and Kirsten had made a ‘connection’. He said that in coming to Adelaide he’d made his point as far as the company was concerned – the whole thing of him not liking how New York had fought him over the editing of When Brave Men Fail. But now he was willing to do whatever was called for in the run up to its publication. Yes, he’d had his fun and would sign the document we’d brought to him and, apparently, he’d stand up for me throughout any fallout, saying it had all been his idea and so we could all get on with living happily ever after, even Billy.’
She smiled at Harcourt in that sort of weary way again. ‘Then he said he had just one requirement. He was still going to take his Barrier Reef holiday that had been arranged – and Kirsten was going with him.’
‘What!’
‘I said given the circumstances that was probably not a wise thing to do. While he stood there in his towel leering at her like some sort of dirty old man, she said she was coming back to Sydney this afternoon, would clear up a few loose ends at the magazine and then head on up there after him. He’d already bought her a ticket.’
‘So where is she now?’
‘I don’t know. I had to hurry to make my flight back here and now she’s not answering her phone – it goes straight to voicemail and she’s not replying to texts and she’s not even tweeting, which is unusual for her.’
‘She’s been otherwise occupied obviously.’
‘Don’t be crass.’ Tess sighed again. ‘Anyway … she could be anywhere between Adelaide and sitting under a palm tree up on the Barrier Reef.’
Harcourt picked up his second beer and started pacing the lounge-room boards, trying to come to terms with all that Tess had told him while noting in an absentminded sort of way that the scuffed-up wood was in serious need of polishing.
‘What about Silas? Does he know?’
Tess shrugged. ‘I have no idea and I won’t be ringing him to ask.’
‘Good idea.’
ELEVEN
That evening both Harcourt and Tess left telephone and text messages for Kirsten. His were fatherly and somewhat light hearted, or so he thought. Hers were motherly but firm, or so she believed. But they all went unanswered.
Later, as they sat at the kitchen table with a desultory meal of ham-and-cheese toasted sandwiches, he looked at her and asked, ‘Why are we doing this?’
She looked quizzically at him, ‘Doing what?’
‘Leaving these messages. I mean, she’s twenty-six years old. She’s an adult, she’s in charge of her own life, she earns a lot of money –much more than we did at her age – and she’s making her own way in the world, whether we like some of her decisions or not.’
‘Well, yes to all of that but quite simply she’s our daughter.’ Tess sighed as she took the remains of her sorry-looking sandwich from its plate. ‘There are consequences to this beyond what will be the gossip column and paparazzi noise that’s sure to come. We’re both old enough and have been through enough to understand that, aren’t we?’
‘You’re right. Maybe she needs to learn that.’
‘Well, with Harrison involved she will,’ said Tess. ‘As we now know, it’s how he makes his way through the world – and I don’t want my daughter to be hurt, even for all her impetuousness.’
‘Maybe she’ll be the one who hurts him.’
Tess laughed wearily, ‘Maybe. But I wouldn’t count on it. To be horribly self-centred about the whole mess I don’t trust Harrison for a moment. All his placating talk about taking the heat off me and this morning he couldn’t sign those papers for New York quick enough to take the heat off himself. He’ll do or say whatever suits his circumstances.’
‘Yeah, looking after number one, getting the story and then doing and saying whatever to get out unscathed whether it’s a war zone scoop or a gossip column … it’s the oldest trick in the journalist’s playbook.’
Tess went on to say how she’d met a British publisher’s representative at a Writers’ Week cocktail party, who, after an abundance of whiskey and sodas, had claimed there were rumours swirling through London’s literary circles that Harrison was severely short of cash, having gambled much of it away, a hitherto unknown vice of his, and losing heavily in several speculative stock market plunges. The well-lubricated source had gone on to say the word was that Harrison’s whole Adelaide gambit had less to do with snubbing his New York publishers and more to do with creating his own inevitable publicity storm around the new book to reinforce its sales and put him in a strong position to score a new contract. ‘So he comes out looking like the winner – the still supercool bad boy of the literary world who can always get away with doing it his way.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, who knows who or what to believe?’
‘Yeah, just to be totally cynical for a moment, so much of this Middle Eastern stuff and its consequences, both there and in the West, seems to be old hat now with its inbuilt fatigue factor, no matter how well it’s researched and written.’
Silence descended as they returned without much enthusiasm to their sandwiches and wine. The quiet was broken by the ringing of Harcourt’s mobile. It was Jack.
‘Dad, I’m coming home,’ he said, his voice echoing as it bounced off a satellite. Harcourt switched the phone to speaker so Tess could listen in.
‘We met with the record company guys this morning and it’s been decided to put the whole thing on hold for a while at least. With Elmore’s death they said there were two options – give it a miss for now while we think about regrouping or slot in a new guy immediately and go ahead to cash in on his death. Well, we couldn’t come at the second one at all. We were shocked they even suggested it.’ ‘I can’t believe they’d say that,’ Tess said. ‘Well, I can believe it, but you’re making the right decision.’
‘So Sissy backed you guys?’ Harcourt asked.
‘Yes, a hundred per cent. They said they could pick up someone and give him the sunny beach-boy look, bleach his hair or some bullshit, even pass him off as an Australian, or wannabe Australian, and we’d be off and running in a week. She got pretty angry but it’s just business to them. They’re arseholes. I mean, we’re just a commodity to them.’ He paused before adding, ‘Well I guess I always knew that – but it kind of hits you right between the eyes with Elmore and everything.’
‘What did Elmore’s parents say?’ asked Harcourt.
‘Sissy told them when we got back from the meeting. His father, who’s a real good guy, loves his blues, went spare. He was ready to go to the record company office and strangle somebody, anybody. There’re still no real leads on the murder, or that’s what the cops keep telling Sissy and his parents. The story is still getting a big run in the newspapers and on TV here even though we’re still pretty much a bunch of nobodies with the Brits. Social media has been going nuts, at least from back home. Jeez, we don’t like to leave Elmore’s folks in the lurch, but the truth is I’ll be happy to get out of here, for the time being at least.’
Sissy came on the line and said she would be staying in London to assist Elmore’s parents as well as wrangling further with the record company. Jack and the other band members were still to be interviewed by the police but as they’d not been with Elmore on the night he died that should be little more than a formality. Her plan was to have them on a plane within the next few days.
‘I’ve been doing this for a long time and have had to deal with my share of disasters – drugs, drink, brawling, breakdowns, any number of assorted mishaps – but this is the worst of it, the worst by far,’ she said. ‘There’s no intention to sack the two idiots who took Elmore out that night and abandoned him. They say they had nothing to do with the drugs that were found on him – pure as the driven snow apparently. But I’m still on their cases. Anyway, Jack is okay, but to get him and the others out of here for the moment is the best move.’
Afterwards, Harcourt cleared the dishes from their makeshift meal while Tess sent a series of explanatory emails to her higher-ups in New York and a terse one to Edmund Harrison’s manager in London. She also left another voicemail message for Kirsten.
‘At least one of our kids is speaking to us,’ deadpanned Harcourt.
Tess almost grimaced as she headed for the bathroom in preparation for going to bed. ‘I know we live in an age where, apparently, there’s no such thing as bad publicity and everyone can be an instant star with five minutes on Facebook or Twitter, but I don’t like where this could go.’
‘You’re usually her biggest supporter,’ said Harcourt, who had followed her to the bathroom. ‘Isn’t she an emancipated young woman and all that long-live-the-sisterhood stuff?’
‘Don’t be so clever. This has nothing to do with that – it’s about her knowing what she’s getting into and realising what the consequences could be.’ Tess looked back at him before loading toothpaste on to her brush. ‘You can’t get away with being everybody’s favourite dad on this one.’
‘I don’t feel like anybody’s favourite dad at the moment,’ he said. It was a lame comeback, but about the only placating sentence he could come up with after a long day. God almighty, wasn’t Tess supposed to be the great conciliator in this family? He turned his back, went to the living room, put on the TV, slumped on the couch, flicked through the channels and found an old Clint Eastwood movie with lots of Mexican bandit types being gunned down. Tess went to bed.
The next day, after still no word from Kirsten and with Tess leaving early for the office, he walked down to the beach to share coffee and bacon-and-egg rolls with Carpark and Brown. The three of them were dressed in their usual shorts, sweatshirts and battered sneakers, even though the weather had developed an autumnal edge.
There was bemusement, if not stifled amusement, among them when Harcourt told of Kirsten’s running off to the Barrier Reef with a man d
ouble her age and counting. Neither Carpark nor Brown had read any of Harrison’s books, but they were aware of his reputation as a lady’s man and hell-raiser through the tabloid headlines he’d left in his long wake.
‘Well, at least her life’s not boring,’ said Carpark. ‘Don’t worry, Johno, she’ll wise up quickly enough. She’s a smart girl.’
On his way home, Harcourt stopped off at the lifeguard tower where Cruz Jones was on duty. Small waves dribbled onto the low-tide sand and only a handful of surfers were bothering with them on what was a cloudy, uninspiring day. With the book project to be decided, Harcourt was now keener than ever to talk to Cruz’s father, Ralph, the former head lifeguard, about his memories of Vargas as a young surfer knocking about the local beaches.
‘Yeah,’ said Cruz, ‘I told him you were interested and he said he’d be happy to talk to you. He didn’t say much, but I got the impression he has some stories to tell. As you said, he knew everyone back then.’
Cruz punched a number on his phone and had a brief conversation. He smiled as he finished the call. ‘That was him,’ said Cruz. ‘He said to come over this afternoon – the old family house up on the hill. Mum will let you in. He said he’ll tell you what others have forgotten, whatever that means.’
Ralph Jones’s faded blue eyes looked down the hill towards the beach and its wide sweep of water, grey and ruffled in the cooling afternoon wind. He was in his wheelchair sitting by the big picture window with its perfect view. There was a wistful look on his craggy face, etched as it was with his chief lifeguard’s legacy from decades of sun, surf and sand, a place of never-ending movement, colour and light.
‘I still like the change of seasons,’ he remarked to Harcourt who sat nearby in a well-worn wicker chair. ‘You get a different perspective when the colder months come along. In a way, I like it more – less people, but more happening with the wind, water and sky. In summer, there are those hot, still mornings and then sea breezes in the afternoon. In autumn and winter, there’s more of everything but the people – sunny days, cold days, wild and wet days.’