The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender

by Marele Day

  The guard was coming back. Coming closer and closer. I was in a worse position than before and the escape routes didn’t look good. There was the road, which was blocked, the harbour, or a moored container vessel lit up like a Christmas tree. A crane overhung it with several flights of metal stairs leading to the top. Someone clambering up those steps would make a noise like the percussionists of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra all playing at once.

  I looked around on the ground for something to throw to divert his attention but the place was as clean as a whistle. Not even as much as a lolly wrapper.

  I had to brazen it out or run. My legs were good but I wasn’t sure they were faster than a speeding bullet.

  Now he was onto me. He was holding a torch in one hand and I was pretty sure I knew what he held in the other. My veins filled with adrenalin. Lots of it. I could smell him, the scent of the stalking animal. My vision was so honed I could see not only the light fanning out from the torch but the source of that light. There was only a corner of metal separating us.

  One more second. One more centimetre.

  Maybe he saw me but it was too late. With one kick both the torch and the gun went flying. The next split-second kick was aimed a little lower, at crutch level. Then rapid punches: head, solar plexus, abdomen. He moaned in a low sort of way, nursing his vitals with one hand and groping for the gun with the other. I kicked it out of reach and brought the side of my palm across his kidneys.

  It would have reduced a normal opponent to a screaming heap. But not this one. Instead of nerves he had muscle, and plenty of it. My leg was poised ready to kick him in the back of the head when he rolled over, swung out with one arm and swept my other leg from under me. I’d never seen anyone so fast on their knees and elbows. He had hold of my leg with one hand and the other was coming for my face. I jerked my head up and away and the fist hit concrete. He still had my leg incapacitated and the smashed fist was coming up for another go. I blocked it and went for the solar plexus again. He moaned and went limp but before I had time to extricate my bound leg the bastard bit into it. And held. A good watchdog, trained never to let go. I sliced at the jugular and the bite relaxed long enough for me to swing the leg out of the way and run in the direction of the ship.

  All hands were on deck and all hands were waving. There must have been hundreds of them—all big, fat and hairy, with faces you could break bricks on. The guard was also on his feet and coming towards me like a robot with a spanner in the works.

  I looked up again at the ship and the sailors. A rope ladder had been extended and they were all urging me onto it. In Russian. I was caught between the devils and the deep blue sea. I took another look at those sailors and opted for the deep blue sea. I felt the oily water slime over me as I dived and when I came up I saw bullets skipping on the surface of the water like stones. I gulped air till my lungs were so full of it they nearly burst. Then I dived under again, hoping the stinging sensation in my leg was only the salt entering the wound and glad that Australia was a rabies-free country.

  ‘GOD, WHAT HAPPENED to you?’

  ‘Is there a doctor in the house?’

  Steve’s house was an old terrace, clean and sparse and Japanese-looking inside. I wasn’t exactly as presentable as I could have been, but if we were going to go beyond square one, he’d see me like this sooner or later. Besides, after the night I’d just had, I didn’t feel like going home and licking my wounds alone.

  I wanted to see Steve, wanted to lie in warm water and be soothed.

  He put his arm around me and despite the mess I was in, the contact was electric. It flowed from the shoulders to the tips of everything. And out and beyond and back again.

  ‘Can I use your bathroom?’

  ‘Looks like you already have.’

  The bathroom had a sunken bath, with lots of tropical greenery growing fecundly around it, and glass doors that opened onto a darkened courtyard. On hot summer nights this would be paradise.

  ‘You want a bath or a shower?’

  ‘Both. Bath first. With Dettol. Then a shower so I don’t smell like a hospital.’

  ‘I’m rather partial to the smell of hospitals,’ he said, turning the taps on. ‘I’ll be in the loungeroom. If you want anything just whistle. You know how to whistle, don’t you?’

  ‘Not as well as Lauren Bacall but enough to make myself heard.’

  When he closed the bathroom door I did whistle.

  A low whistle.

  The bathroom was filling up with steam and I wondered how much of it I was contributing. I took off my foul boots and black tights, easing them over the purple and red lump that was oozing out of my leg. On the way I discovered a few more bumps and grazes. I tipped up the bottle of Dettol and watched it swirl milkily into the water. Then I stepped in gingerly, waiting for the sting that would cleanse the wound.

  There was a knock on the door and before I could answer it opened.

  ‘Thought this might help,’ said Steve, handing me a glass of champagne. ‘Cheers.’ And our glasses clinked.

  ‘How did you get that?’ he said, looking at my bite.

  ‘Mad dog. There is a longer story but that can wait till later.’

  ‘Let’s have a look at it.’ He put his glass down on the timber surrounding the bath and I showed him my leg. ‘Hmm,’ he murmured professionally, ‘contusions and laceration but I think you’ll live. Keep a hot pack on it.’ He took another sip of champagne and I took a gulp. ‘Would you like me to wash your back?’

  This time I sipped instead of gulping. It wasn’t my back that needed washing, although that was as good a place as any to start. ‘You might get wet.’

  ‘I’ll take off my clothes.’

  ‘What if your flatmate needs to use the bathroom in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Amanda works nights. She won’t be home till about six.’

  He’d already started getting undressed, pulling his T-shirt up from the back of the neck like men do and breathing in and unzipping his jeans. This was always a moment of truth for me, the first time I saw the naked body. Sometimes the shape looked all right in clothes but the skin wasn’t right, or there were rolls of fat, or too well-developed pectorals that made them look like they had breasts. But if angels had bodies they’d look like this. He was long and graceful, with skin that shone like copper. I took another sip of champagne and looked at the greenery. Things were getting decidedly languid. He stepped down into the bath and I moved my legs aside. The bathwater lulled over the sides but no-one seemed to mind. I didn’t give Archimedes a second thought.

  ‘Turn around.’

  I turned. He cupped water and dribbled it down my back. Then soap in circles and hands massaging the shoulders, then the vertebrae, all the way down. ‘Lean back,’ he said.

  He poured water on my floating hair. Then shampoo. Then water again to rinse. I closed my eyes and floated on bubbles of champagne, unable to wipe the grin off my face. I felt no pain.

  He kissed me on the forehead.

  ‘Hmm.’ I was aware of the water level going down a little, and the door softly closing.

  I decided I didn’t need the shower, stepped out of the bath and dried quickly but tenderly, lightly dabbing the sore spots.

  His bathroom cupboard was full of hospital stuff: surgical gloves, creams, elastic bandages and adhesives that didn’t tear your hair out when you took them off. No syringes, thank God, or white powder in unmarked jars. There was also the other side of things: the bath oils, herbal preparations and vitamins.

  I put some vitamin E cream on the minor bruises and cuts and a thick wad of bandage on the bite and wondered how the security guard was getting on.

  ‘Steve?’

  ‘In the kitchen. Come and give me a hand to take some of this stuff out.’

  He looked me up and down, mostly at the area the towel was covering.

  ‘Would you like to slip into something a little more comfortable or would you like to eat naked?’

  I’d tr
ied that once before. It was nowhere near as erotic as it sounded: your bum kept sticking to the chair.

  ‘I’ll slip into something a little more comfortable.’ Like your bed.

  ‘Here, take these,’ he said, handing me two plates with perfect bacon and mushroom omelettes, chipped potatoes and watercress salad. ‘I’ll get you a kimono.’

  It was midnight blue with silver things on it that bounced light. I slid into it, and felt the soft caress of silk.

  He popped the cork on another Veuve Clicquot: the fumes swirled up and the popping bubbles swirled down into the glasses.

  ‘Where did you get the name Angell?’ I asked, digging into the omelette.

  ‘Where does anyone get their name? From my father. My grandfather was Angelo. He anglicised it: not Angles but angels, to quote St Augustine.’

  ‘Do you often quote St Augustine?’

  He grinned. I liked his quiet manner and crinkly eyes. ‘Only in answer to that particular question.’

  ‘Oh, I see it’s not the first time you’ve been asked.’

  ‘First time I’ve been asked by a Valentine.’

  ‘Touché.’

  He was a neat eater, putting his knife and fork down every three mouthfuls or so. He had a patience and calmness that would either soothe or irritate the hell out of me. I was aware that my plate was empty and nibbled bread to keep time with him. And slowly sipped the widow who must have been some woman to have a champagne named after her.

  ‘What sort of electronics work were you doing in Germany?’

  A laugh popped out of him like a jack-in-the-box. ‘It’s funny a private investigator asking me that because what I was doing was illegal: phone tapping.’

  So his wings were tarnished. But it didn’t put me off, it made him more interesting. Pure white can be deadly boring.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I was doing it for the good guys. I was working for the Green Party.’

  ‘And no-one heard you cough?’

  ‘The methods are so sophisticated now there’s no way of telling if you’re being bugged. Not like the old days when you couldn’t even breathe. Telecom does it all the time. To check on their operators and . . . whoever else may say something interesting. Perhaps I could be of service to you sometime,’ he said, inviting me into his eyes.

  ‘Perhaps you could,’ I said, inviting him into mine. ‘Perhaps you could tell me more about pacemakers now that you are off-duty. Are you sure they’re impeccable?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said, laying his knife and fork side by side and taking up the glass.

  ‘Would an autopsy be able to tell if there was anything wrong with a pacemaker?’

  He grinned. ‘I bet you were the sort of kid who when your mother said “Don’t touch!” you did anyway.’ He partook of the widow, pursing his lips together afterwards. ‘First, an autopsy examines the flesh-and-blood body only, and second, when the heart dies the pacemaker goes into standby mode. A blank screen so to speak.’

  ‘But you said at the hospital Mark’s was programmed. How would you know if it was still the right program?’

  ‘By putting it into action. You want me to run a test on it?’

  ‘No, not really. Besides, it’s too late now. He was cremated. I doubt they’d give Mark’s family a box of ashes with bits of pacemaker in it.’

  He put his glass down and looked surprised. ‘Didn’t you know? When the patient dies the pacemaker doesn’t. They’re taken out and used again. Particularly if the patient’s cremated. The pacemaker would explode. Mark wasn’t the first recipient of his pacemaker.’

  ‘What?’ My head reeled, making quantum leaps. Technical immortality and human mortality. And when we burn our dead we cut out their hi-tech hearts. Their exploding hearts.

  ‘So while we live and die the manufactured parts go on and on.’ Science fiction had become science fact. ‘I once read a Jorge Borges story about these talking, thinking metal boxes. They were people who’d had all their bits replaced. They had achieved immortality and all they wanted to do was die. They couldn’t: it was a nightmare.’

  ‘If you like reading, have a look at this,’ said Steve, placing before me a book entitled Are Computers Alive? ‘It puts forward the view that computers are the new life form, the latest stage in evolution.’

  ‘That’s a bit far-fetched, isn’t it? Isn’t the ability to reproduce the definition of life?’

  ‘Computers can make other computers.’

  ‘Yes, but they need electricity, and the components, surely.’

  ‘How far do you think organic life would get without air, and sunlight and water?’

  ‘Yes, but they have to be programmed.’

  ‘What makes you think we’re not programmed?’

  It was starting to sound like the Borges story. ‘I won’t buy it.’

  ‘That’s only because you’re set in a human way of thinking, that we are the be-all-and-end-all, that our so-called creations are subservient to us. Maybe we are witnessing the evolution of a new species without really understanding the implications of it. Like the chimps watching homo erectus run on two legs across the savannah, holding a stick between his fingers and opposable thumb and chattering away with his freed mouth.’

  ‘Oh God,’ I said, sinking.

  Steve crinkled his eyes and grinned. ‘No, not quite. Look, there’s nothing sinister about it as far as the pacemakers are concerned—a new pacemaker costs something in the vicinity of $4000, whereas refurbishing it costs $600. The metal bits are cleaned in a chemical solution and the plastic bits changed. It’s a question of money, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all it ever is, isn’t it?’ I said grimly.

  ‘Life’s not that tough, is it Claudia?’ his voice soft as down.

  The pores opening like flowers to the sun, even after he’d finished speaking and sat with his elbows on his knees, one hand dangling and one holding the glass.

  I shifted close to him, put my arms around him and found the soft secret parts round the neck where the curls fell down. Butterflies shimmered madly and ‘No’ I murmured, ‘No.’

  UP HERE IS the postcard view of Sydney. I glide effortlessly along streets, jump from building to building, and finally arrive at the harbour, the brief green parks with the distance-neat Moreton Bay figs. Moreton Bay was a penal settlement, the tree it’s named after buttressed and dark, providing shade for the city heat. I soar over tall buildings, columns of glass and concrete, the flat roofs with air conditioning units, some of them dripping Babylonian gardens.

  Nothing is ever still in this city, not even the buildings. Whilst one tumbles to the ground another climbs into the sky. Isostasy. Crane drivers in hard yellow hats eat sandwiches, their legs dangling down the concrete canyons. I could reach out and touch them. They do not see me, nor do they know I put them there. Pawns arranged in a pattern. I have always taken a special interest in the development of this city. Its growth and mine are inexorably linked.

  When it was nothing but tents and muddy tracks the Governor had wanted ‘a healthy city, with sunshine and air’. The streets were to be 200 feet wide, edged with big allotments. But the city grew of its own accord, along the bullock track that was George Street, its tentacles reaching west into a great forbidding land. The governors have always tried to impose a shape on Sydney, a clean ordered mirror image of the upright citizens they purport to be. But the city has a life of its own and grows its own shape. To stand at the top in this city you need to recognise the shape and grow with it. To see the shape of the future, to slip through the interstices and occupy the vacant spaces, to know what will become weeds and end up as dead wood, what will be nurtured and thrive.

  Up here I trace out the shape of things and mesh my plans. Then I go down into the streets and execute them. To sketch the mountain, view it from the valley. To sketch the valley, stand on the mountain. To see the shape of the street, stand above the city.

  The people in the street never look up. If they raised their eye
s just a little they would see the history of the city. Just above the glass facades are older facades. Mouldings, chimneys, gargoyle faces, dates, carved out of stone, the history is visible if you know where to look. The overview does not miss detail: behind the blatant signs are secret hidden things. Beneath the concrete and glass there is a stream. The early colony’s only supply of fresh water. Convicts built a bridge across it. It was paid for in rum. This pattern has continued: the currency is no longer rum but derived from the euphoric flowers of Asia. The bridge has disappeared but the sign of it remains: Bridge Street. The bridge now has the shape of government buildings, whose dusty basements get damp with the push of water from below. A heavy layer of bitumen and stone to keep the memory of convicts and rum at bay. But these things have a way of seeping through the interstices of the city, the chinks in the armour through which I too seep.

  There is more hidden from view: following the course of the stream are the sewers of Sydney, the labyrinthine underbelly, the city of the night.

  Incise the tegument with a needle-sharp knife. Expose the viscera, the veins, the roadlike veins, the transport of deadly cargo, the bloodstream of the city’s body.

  There are more subtle ways to kill than bullets.

  SOMEONE HAD BEEN in my room. Nothing was missing, nothing rearranged, but the smell was there, the smell of intrusion.

  I’d come home in a dream, wanting to lie on my bed and dream it all again. We’d slept finally, Steve and I, slept in each other and woken at the same time, like one body, touching and caressing and making love again and sleeping, as if we’d been doing this all our lives. We had watched the dawn spread its colours like some shy elusive bird, watched the city come alive with it. We saw shafts of light as Amanda tiptoed through the house, and pressed silent fingers on each other’s lips to seal off any intrusion.

  But intrusion was right there in my room and I could smell it.

  I went over everything. Opened every drawer, looked in the pages of books, my clothes and lacquer boxes, dragged everything out of cupboards, the fridge, looked in the oven, the phone, the cassette recorder, lifted the carpet, squashed a cockroach looking for bugs.