Norton took in a deep breath as little wisps of steam almost began forming around his ears. Price was certainly right about Samuels. He felt like taking him by his narrow, pink leather tie and running a bowline around his skinny neck. But through the shop-front window he could see Georgina looking at him through the windscreen of his car. She caught his eye and gave him a tiny wave and, although he was seething, Les was forced to smile and wave back.
Samuels must have sensed Norton was reluctant to do anything violent and blissfully continued unpacking the carton of ties.
‘Did you hear what I just said?’ he sneered. ‘You do understand English, don’t you?’
Norton nodded sourly. ‘Yeah.’
‘Well go away, will you. There must be other jobs you can do for Galese. Go and throw a widow out of her home — or drown a batch of kittens or something.’
Norton continued to boil quietly, while through the window he could still see Georgina smiling at him.
‘Well, boofhead — what’s your story?’ went on Samuels. ‘Are you just going to stand around here like a battery hen all day? What do I have to do to get it through that big wooden head of yours that I’m busy? Write it down in Braille and shove it up your arse?’
Norton sucked in a breath through clenched teeth. ‘Yeah, I guess you’re right, matey,’ he hissed, folding up the cheque and putting it back in his pocket.
Sensing he’d had a victory, a hint of a smile flickered around Samuels’ eyes as he ignored Les and began unpacking a new carton of ties. Instead of leaving, however, Norton hooked his thumbs in the top of his jeans and started looking around the shop, admiring the clothes and checking out the brands — Biscote, Najee, Uomo Confar, Valentino — and the atrocious prices: $750 jackets; $150 shirts; $200 shoes; even the socks were $75 a pair.
‘I got to admit, mate, you’ve sure got some nice gear,’ he said. ‘I might have a bit of a look around while I’m here.’
‘Please yourself,’ shrugged Samuels, continuing to fold the ties. ‘But I don’t think there’d be anything in your price range. Where do you buy your clothes? The Smith Family? You look like a Polish used car salesman.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind buying a bit of good gear now and again.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet.’
Norton ran his hand along a rack of beautiful wool and mohair jackets, finally pulling out an exquisite Calvin Klein number in dark blue, with padded, quilted shoulders, zippers, straps and various other little doo-dads hanging off it everywhere. The price tag was $800.
He removed the coathanger and with some difficulty managed to get it on; it looked like something belonging to Michael Jackson going onto The Incredible Hulk.
With a strange smile on his face he checked himself out in the nearest mirror, took in a huge breath and hunched his shoulders. The shoulder pads popped straight out and the entire back seam split open with a crack like a rifle going off.
Samuels’ head jerked up to see his expensive jacket hanging off Norton in tatters. His eyes stuck out like a stomped-on cane toad.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he shrieked and came running over as Les removed what was left of the jacket and dropped it casually back on the rack. ‘What do you think you’re doing, you idiot? That’s a bloody Calvin Klein original from Rodeo Drive. It cost $800.’
‘Yeah?’ shrugged Norton. ‘Well you’d better tell Calvin to put some decent stitching in his gear. I think he’s getting it made up in Taiwan.’
While the horrified Samuels looked at what was left of the blue jacket, Norton picked another one off the rack. A Pierre Charbonnier number this time, pink and grey in silk and brushed camel hair: $750.
Before Samuels had a chance to do anything, Norton had it on, raised his arms over his head and brought them together. The jacket split with another audible crack, from the cuffs, through the armpits and half-way down the sides.
‘You bloody great oaf,’ screamed Samuels again. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
‘Just trying to find something that fits, mate. That’s all,’ replied Norton casually. ‘Bloody hard in here, though. Who do you cater for, jockeys?’
Next to go was a pure silk Lubiani shirt: $165. Les jammed his arm straight into the sleeve; it burst open like a wet paper bag.
‘Tch, tch, tch,’ he clucked, taking it off then picking up a $30 silk handkerchief and blowing his nose on it. ‘Gee, it’s hard to find anything I like.’
Samuels’ face was slowly turning grey as he looked at his ruined stock while Norton continued to run his hands along the racks of clothes. Suddenly Les stopped at a rack of full-length leather and suede coats. He turned around and flashed Samuels a positively diabolical grin.
‘Now this I do like,’ he said removing an absolutely beautiful Ermenegildo Zegna, double-breasted, calf-skin coat in light tan with what looked like gold buttons. He paused and checked the price tag. ‘Jesus, $5000 for a bloody leather coat. Oh well, it’s only money, I s’pose. It’s not an arm or a leg.’
He was just about to try and put it on when Samuels ran over and literally tore it out of Les’s hands. Cradling it lovingly, he stormed back to the till and rang up the ‘No Sale’ sign.
‘Here you are, you bloody great oaf. Here’s your thousand dollars. Now get out of the damn shop.’
Norton strolled casually over, took the money from the quivering Samuels and quickly counted it. He was about to leave when a sudden thought occurred to him.
‘Hey. You’re forgetting something, aren’t you?’
‘What?’
‘The 12½ per cent.’
‘What bloody 12½ per cent?’
‘Mr Galese’s new rule. Any debts: 12½ per cent interest.’
Samuels stood there, open-mouthed. ‘Go to buggery.’
‘Okay. Suit yourself,’ shrugged Norton, turning towards the rack of leather coats.
Abruptly the till rang once again. ‘Here you are,’ called out Samuels bitterly. ‘You … you …’
‘Thanks, mate.’ Norton took the $125 and pocketed it along with the other thousand. A pile of shirts in cartons on the counter suddenly caught his eye. Why not, he thought. He picked up the first one he found with XL on the collar — a small red and black check with a button-down collar and something monogrammed on the pocket — then reached over the counter for one of Godfrey Samuels’ exclusive black, silver and maroon plastic bags and dropped it in. ‘Charge it to me care of the Kelly Club, will you Godfrey, old mate.’
Norton turned towards the door then abruptly stopped and turned around. ‘Oh, shit!’ he said seriously. ‘I almost forgot.’ He took Samuels’ worthless cheque out of his pocket, opened it, licked the back and slapped it onto Samuels’ forehead.
‘There you go, mate,’ he winked. ‘Don’t let anyone tell you you haven’t got a good head for business.’ With a last grin he finally turned and left the shop.
‘Well, come on. Show me what you bought,’ said Georgina, almost snatching the bag from Norton as soon as he climbed in the car. ‘Ooh, it’s beautiful. A Charles Jourdan original. $110. God, you do buy the best, don’t you?’
‘It was about the only bloody thing in there that fitted me,’ shrugged Norton.
‘It’s really lovely.’ Georgina put the shirt back in the bag and placed it carefully on the seat.
‘Anyway,’ smiled Les, looking at his watch. ‘What about a bit of lunch. Are you hungry?’
‘I am a little, to tell you the truth.’
‘Would you like to go to Doyles? Over at Watsons Bay?’
‘Well … yes. That’d be lovely.’
‘I’ve heard the Lobster Paella is excellent over there at the moment. And I was also told that fresh mud-crabs and barramundi fillets have just arrived from Cairns this morning. Do you like French champagne? Moët all right?’
Georgina looked at Norton and blinked. ‘God! You are the last of the big spenders, aren’t you?’
‘Georgina,’ grinned Les, slapping her lightly on the knee, ‘when you’re out with D
iamond Les Norton, money is absolutely no object.’
Les started the car and they headed happily for Watsons Bay. The meal and the afternoon were absolutely delightful. And just quietly, the evening didn’t turn out half bad either.
MING THE MERCILESS
‘All right if I have a look at the paper when you’re finished, Woz?’ Norton couldn’t help the sarcastic smile on his face as he asked his flatmate what seemed like an innocent enough request.
Warren smiled thinly back at Les across the kitchen table and looked up from what was left of his Daily Telegraph. ‘That joke’s starting to wear a bit thin now, isn’t it, Les,’ he replied tiredly.
‘Joke? What joke?’ Norton made an open-handed gesture. ‘I ask you a bit of a favour and you get the tom-tits. Jeez, you’re a funny bloke.’
‘Yeah, t’rrific, Les.’ Warren ran his fingers across the tooth marks and rips in his morning paper as he irritably tried to straighten it out and form it into some sort of legible reading matter. ‘And you’re about as funny as a strangulated hernia.’
‘Well that’s one thing you’ll never get, mate,’ intoned Norton. ‘Because to get a hernia, you have to lift something, or at least move.’
‘Yeah, righto, Les. Whatever you say, you Queensland Dubbo.’
What had been the bone of Warren’s contention for the last six weeks, and the object of Norton’s scarcely concealed mirth in the kitchen that Tuesday morning, was Warren’s paper. Or moreover, the condition it was in. Although they only lived barely five hundred metres from the newsagency, Warren still got the paper delivered. This annoyed Norton no end. He accepted that Warren loathed training of any description, but to think that someone was so lazy they couldn’t even walk five hundred metres to pick up a newspaper was decadence according to Norton on a par only with the fall of the Roman Empire. However, no amount of roasting or sarcastic remarks could get Warren to change his mind.
‘You are a lazy little bastard, Warren,’ Les would say. ‘I reckon the only reason you get out of bed of a morning is because you can’t take it with you. You’re the only bloke I know that gets winded during a game of chess. They couldn’t get your blood to circulate if they strapped you to a dialysis machine for a fortnight.’
But all these jibes and insults were like water off a duck’s back to the fair-haired advertising executive. Bondi, despite the sewerage, heroin dealers, Westies coming down for gang fights on the weekends and innumerable house break-ins, was according to Warren now moving into a yuppie-class suburb. A sort of Paddington with seagulls. And what could be more becoming for an upwardly mobile advertising executive than to be able to stroll out to the front of one’s house, retrieve one’s paper and flick casually through it while one ate one’s croissants and sipped one’s cappuccino first thing in the morning.
This yuppie decadence got to Les. The mornings he didn’t sleep in it annoyed hell out of him to walk into the kitchen and see Warren in his Yves St Laurent dressing-gown and a smug look on his face flicking through his paper like Noel Coward scanning a play before he’d go off for a hard day’s slog at Wirraway Advertising. Another thing that annoyed Les more than somewhat was Warren, although he’d read the paper at least four times, would take it with him when he left, making Norton walk down to the newsagency if he wanted one.
‘What are you beefing about, Les?’ Warren would breezily ask, as he’d tuck the paper up under his arm when he strolled out of the kitchen. ‘It’s only a two minute walk down to the paper shop. Don’t be such a lazy big turd.’
So Norton devised a plan to thwart Warren’s little early morning luxury. And an unsuspecting third party was brought in to help in Les’s heinous, insidious scheme.
The third party was old Menzies, the dog that belonged to Mrs Curtin, one of the pensioners from across the street, or ‘Ming the Merciless’ as Norton used to call it.
It’s hard to imagine Menzies as being even remotely cross let alone merciless. It’s even harder to imagine old Menzies as ever being a pup, which must have been around the same time Captain Phillip sailed the First Fleet through the Heads. He was a sort of fat, brown and black, cross-Kelpie Labrador. Most of his fur was gone — what wasn’t was greying and moulting and fast being replaced by patches of black, wrinkly skin. His old, brown eyes were starting to ruby and he had about half a dozen worn-out teeth in his head that looked more like a handful of rusty drawing-pins. They seemed to give him a permanent, lopsided, senile grin as he’d drag his arthritic old legs up and down Cox Avenue. Mrs Curtin had called him Menzies because above his eyes were two thin, yet bushy, black patches like a pair of thick eyebrows. She reckoned he looked like the one-time Prime Minister of Australia Sir Robert Menzies. By rights, old Ming should have been dead twenty years ago, but he was a survivor with a happy nature and had outlived half the dogs in the street. However, good judges round the area, Mrs Curtin included, all agreed that it was only a matter of time before old Menzies went to the big boarding kennel in the sky.
Norton couldn’t help but like old Menzies and got to be good mates with him. He’d always pat his bony old head and scratch his spiny back near his stump of a tail and he’d give a happy asthmatic whine while one arthritic leg would start to shake with delight. A lot of times Menzies would hear Les come home late in the morning and he’d wobble across the road to sort of say, ‘G’day, Les’ and get a friendly pat in return. Which was where and when the devilish plan formed in Norton’s head to thwart his mate Warren.
Seeing it was summer, Price was keeping the casino open a little later, so by the time they got the place closed up, the money in the safe and had a few staffies, Les was getting home after 5 a.m. At this hour and with a few Fourexs under his belt, the big Queenslander’s stomach would be rumbling like Mount Vesuvius, so he’d stop off at one of the Lebanese greasy spoons at the bottom of Bondi Road and get a couple of steak sandwiches to throw down his screech before he’d hit the sack. Six times out of ten old Menzies would come over to say g’day when he’d pull up and to get his back scratched and a pat. After being either stuck inside the smoke of the Kelly Club or outside in the hassle of Kings Cross arguing and more than often coming to blows with idiots, it was always nice and quiet out the front of the house. Les would sit on the fence, eat his steak sangers with a carton of Orchy and get the cigarette smoke out of his hair and clothes and try to get a bit of fresh air into his lungs while he and old Menzies would have a laugh and talk about old times. Menzies had originally been coming over about six times out of ten, but when Norton started giving him pieces of his steak sandwiches, Ming the Merciless soon began coming over ten times out of ten. They didn’t make a bad quinella either. Menzies doing his best to chew the bits of steak sandwich with what teeth he had and Les doing his best to try and find a bit of peace and sanity in the big city.
Being barely five hundred metres from the paper shop, Norton’s house was one of the first on the newsagent’s delivery list. The newsagent going past in his mini-moke was about the only sound that ever disturbed Les and old Menzies’ early morning tete-a-tete. He’d toss the rolled-up Telegraph into Norton’s front yard, get a wave from Les in return and continue on his way. Les wouldn’t even glance at the newspaper on principle. Nor would he pick it up and take it inside the house; even if it had been raining. Warren mightn’t have enough energy to walk down to the paper shop, but he was at least going to walk to the front bloody gate. Which was how the light bulb above Norton’s big red head lit up.
He’d give Menzies a few pieces of steak sandwich to get his appetite going, then smear grease, sauce and pieces of fried onion all over Warren’s newspaper. Ming would get the scent, Les would offer him the paper and the dog would immediately start giving it a ferocious gumming with what few good teeth he had. Ming the Merciless might have been old and his jaw muscles had definitely seen better days, but it didn’t take the old bloke long to gnaw away the headlines and the first ten pages of Warren’s paper. Being a simple Queensland country boy, this turned Norton
on no end. He’d go inside laughing like a drain as Ming the Merciless would be left in the front yard salivating all over and gnawing pieces out of Warren’s Daily Telegraph. Yes, enjoy your morning’s read, you lazy little bludger, Norton would chuckle to himself as he’d walk softly past Warren’s bedroom. Though how long this was going to last Les wasn’t quite sure, because old Menzies’ shuffle across the road to meet him seemed to take longer and longer each night. It took Warren about three weeks to twig to who was responsible for the damage to his paper.
‘I know what’s been happening to my paper,’ said Warren, one Tuesday morning as Les walked into the kitchen after having a run down Centennial Park.
‘You do?’ replied Norton innocently.
‘Yeah. It’s bloody Menzies. That stinken, mangy old thing that belongs to your girlfriend from across the road — Mrs Curtin.’
‘Hey, don’t talk about Ming the Merciless like that: said Les. ‘He’s me mate.’
‘Mate or bloody not,’ Warren jabbed a finger at his Daily Telegraph, which was now being gummed regularly irrespective of whether Les smeared it with food or not. ‘It’s him all right. I sprung him when I got home from that all-night pool party on Monday morning. Just as I was going in the gate, that moth-eaten bludger of a thing was coming out. And here’s the evidence.’ Warren jabbed his finger at the paper again. ‘Tooth marks everywhere. Exhibit A.’
‘Nahh. I won’t have that, Woz. Old Menzies couldn’t lift up a nightie, let alone chew up a newspaper.’ Norton went to the fridge and took out a bottle of mineral water. ‘I hate to say this, Warren, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree.’
‘It’s him all right. And the next time I catch him, I’ll put one right up his date. Stinken bloody thing. Christ! Have a look at my paper.’
‘Now turn it up, Woz. You wouldn’t hurt old Ming, would you? He’s just about ready to put his cue in the rack as it is.’
Still Riding on the Storm Page 6