by Alan Duff
‘But pretty basic, right? Would you like your own apartment? I could take out a long lease, or just buy one wherever you wanted. Be more like home with your own stuff and personal touches. You missing home? Missing your family?’ He paused. ‘Missing me?’
‘I always miss you, Dad.’ Her turn to reach out and ruffle his hair, flecked more with grey she noticed, but he was a handsome man in his own way, a very stylish dresser even on a Sunday. He liked Boss for casual wear; it suited him, being tall and lean.
‘I do love Sydney,’ she said. ‘Even staying at a hostel.’
‘I’ll call an agent tomorrow and have him find you an apartment. Just don’t let him rush you into —’
‘I’m okay. Honestly. Got friends at the college, two I’m studying at the conservatorium with and getting close to.’ What happened to the talk on morality? ‘And I don’t want to live like a rich bitch,’ she added.
‘Glad to hear that. But this will be a business deal — we can sell it at a capital gain, split the profit between us. And the word is affluent, not rich.’
‘I do have a sister, Dad.’
‘Then I’ll buy two apartments. One each, for when she comes to Sydney University. And rich — bitch or not — has its moments. Beats being poor any day.’
She bet his next topic would be —
‘Now. No boyfriend — yet?’
Gave him a different kind of grin this time. ‘Nothing to write home about.’
‘And you wouldn’t write if there was.’
‘Guess not.’
‘To your mother?’
She didn’t — couldn’t — immediately answer, not what she truly thought of her mother, their relationship, the depth of it. The trust to share intimate thoughts? No way. Confide? Nope. Someone she could always count on for motherly TLC, of course. ‘Mais oui!’ as her French music teacher would say.
‘Can we change the subject? You are my father.’ And she hated the idea of saying anything even remotely against her mother behind her back.
She could have asked, So who’s in your hotel room tonight? And, Is that why you’re keeping me away when normally you jump at any chance to spend time with me?
‘Fathers don’t like to think of their daughters with a boyfriend,’ he said with just too much gall, might even be hypocrisy if her suspicions were right.
Funny, she could have reminded him that her generation saw sex as totally normal, that growing up seeing their stallion Raimona servicing mares took care of any illusions she might have about the act, even if witnessing the stallion was one astonishing sight for a girl to behold: that massive erect member, the way sex got a stallion in near a frenzy before he plunged his penis into the mare, thrusting violently while biting the leather necklace she wore to protect her neck from serious injury. Anna’d had a date with a boy not unlike that. Of course he didn’t last long. But hell, this was her father and in his mind she would always be his baby. He still called her ‘my baby’ on occasion. She too tactful to ask him to cease.
‘I’m also going back to the hotel for another meeting,’ he said.
She thought, You don’t have to tell me another lie.
‘This client tonight, he got two million for his horse out of Rai. So he’s a happy chappie; wants to discuss a land banking deal we could do jointly in Melbourne, while land sales are in the doldrums.’
‘Don’t blow my inheritance, Daddy.’ She verbalised her text of some weeks ago when he was in New Zealand, as Sydney University came into view. ‘You knew it was a joke?’
‘Or Freudian slip.’
She knew he was just teasing.
‘Which reminds me,’ he said, ‘you’ve yet to come home and see your horse.’
‘Dad, you have two daughters. I’m not interested if it’s going to carry my name and not Katie’s.’
‘Told you: I simply overlooked it. In my excitement at seeing the horse while thinking of you, receiving a text from you moments before the auction started, I quite forgot about Katie.’
Anna looked at her father to make sure he knew how much she adored her sister, difficult and irritatingly immature though Katie was. As each other’s only child companions out on the Widden Valley stud farm they were very close.
‘As to your inheritance —’
‘Dad, the text was a joke.’
‘Sure. But there is an inheritance nonetheless, which I am building. So you never have to worry about money in your lifetime.’
‘And is that actually good for me? For us, I should say. Katie and me.’
‘Lots of people inherit. In large or modest form. Yours happens to be nearer the large. I inherited granddad Sean’s farm, if you could call his tiny operation with no working capital an inheritance. Depends what you do with it. We would hope you would use it wisely and, hopefully, leave a little bit —’
‘More than you found,’ she completed from hearing it over the years. ‘I do have Mum’s frugal ways, except for clothes, remember?’
‘And I forgot to say how lovely you look today.’
Not this time, Daddy.
‘As for Katie, we do have a concern her personality may lead her to be … careless … with her inheritance.’
‘Katie isn’t seventeen,’ Anna said. ‘And you’re not likely to die any time soon. Let’s say seventy-eight, the average age men live to, a few more for Mum, by which time we’ll both be mothers in our late forties or early fifties. We’ll have children the same age as we are now and we’ll have said to them, “Respect your inheritance, kids. It was made by your grandparents, your grandfather in particular.”’
‘You’ll both be getting a chunk of money on your twenty-first birthdays.’
That alarmed her. ‘I might not want it. Honestly. Think how far apart that would make me from my peers.’
‘You’ll change your mind in the next few years.’
‘Maybe I will. But right now the thought of getting money that I haven’t earned, from a father who brought us up to know there’s no free lunch — no free anything. Really, Dad.’
‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ He sounded lame.
‘I think Katie will change, too. She’ll grow into a real sweetie and be responsible.’
‘You really think so?’ They pulled up outside the campus. ‘I do worry about her.’
Anna got out, went round to her father’s side: he had the window down for her. ‘Then don’t worry. She’s a difficult kid. I wasn’t. Vive la différence. Thanks for lunch.’ She kissed him goodbye. ‘See you at breakfast.’
‘Do you want to catch a cab over?’
‘No. The train is quicker. I’ll walk up from Circular Quay. Bye.’
She watched the sleek black vehicle glide away, hoping she had it wrong that he had a mistress, would soon be in a lover’s arms.
Then the malevolent face of that young woman rose up like a forgotten film image.
The girl was very attractive, in a raw sort of way. Dark hair, couldn’t remember the colour of her eyes for what they were expressing, maybe green, wearing jeans and an everyday top — more a teeshirt — and Nike sneakers.
Was the look, as her father said, just envy? Anna shrugged it away: didn’t matter. Nor did her father’s possible infidelity. She had her own life, her own situation. But it would be no skin off his nose to book her a room at the hotel, even if it did cost five hundred a night, an exception to her rule of frugality if only to keep her father faithful. Poor Mum — poor undynamic Mum, always with her ship on the same even keel, never rocking or changing speed. Anna never wanted to be like her, much as she adored her. You had to have passion, moments of explosiveness even, of ranting about a piece of music that turned you on, expressing a passionate opinion on some moral or political issue. Sexually expressive — yes! One shot at this life and Anna was going to make the most of it.
A food-lover with, thank God, self-discipline, she thought of the chilli and garlic mud crab cooked by Tee, the fish-shop owner. She could presume she’d never see the malevolent
woman again at the fish market, but if she did perhaps a word to her might be in order. She could ask what her problem was. No, that would be provocative. A woman to woman approach: might be she was depressed, had recently lost someone close, been dumped by a boyfriend she thought walked on water and Anna could tell her, No man does. They all boil down to sex, even at my age I know that. ‘Look at the view.’ ‘Oh yes, that’s so nice.’ With his hand creeping up your leg. Men.
Wondering if the woman didn’t have one of those awful composite names like Shalia-Mae or, worse, Fantasia, like out of an escort girl ad.
Oh, forget about her, Anna. Got better things to think about.
Chapter ten
Kept seeing that girl in her mind. So unfair that someone could get it all, life’s blessings and others not anything. Shifting the pity to the streeties under the overpass, in their nooks and crannies throughout Woolloomooloo: what did life give them? Oh, only alcoholism, weakness of character, fears they couldn’t overcome, not even basic qualities enough to make a living, something in their make-up they couldn’t fit anywhere. When a rich bitch Paris Sydney Hilton didn’t know she’d got the lot.
Lu for once feeling sorry for herself, her lot in life, even when she’d long accepted it. Uncle Rick, well, his turn was coming. She had in her mind a vague idea of revenge, this certainty that she had to get him back, just had to. Somehow. Some day.
She wondered what the girl’s name was. Thought of rich girls at her high school in Vaucluse: Sarah and Kate and Rachel, Becky for Rebecca, Virginia — now that was a lovely name — Emma, Rosie. Kept their names within this select few even if every one was so predictable. For the period she and Sarah were close, what with Sarah going on how ‘striking’ she was — well, a girl actually started to believe it. I’m striking. Means I’m beautiful. Till Rick’s next instalment on how ‘ugly’ she was.
Turning up at the rail overpass just on dusk, when the homeless had come out like tired old reptiles soaking up the last of the sun, curled up in sleeping bags, under large cardboard cartons, old blankets, talking their own reptilian language, slugging back grog, pulling at cigarettes like hard tokes on a bong, with a strange defiance, as if the life and fight hadn’t gone out of them after all, in constant outbursts of swearing and adamant statements and animated gestures. A train thundering right over the top.
Lu and Jay over from buying ciggies at Nick’s Till Midnight.
‘Guys, this is an old mate back from Brizzie,’ Bron introduced. ‘Deano. Deano Clark.’ Of a wiry guy with tight curly hair, like a Dago’s, till Bronson said the surname. ‘Deano, this is Jay. And Lu.’
Introducing someone as a friend meant the dude was suitable to run with the tight little group. First thought Lu got: this guy was troubled, which might make him dangerous, not flash temper like Bron or a mean knife-hand like Jay when he had to. Just someone if you crossed him — no, hurt him — you’d regret it, the hurt he’d give back in double dosage. Something vulnerable about him too, and Bron had better understand the clan rule: no shit gets in. No infected beings. No virus. Vulnerable could mean infected.
Lu said, ‘Brisbane, eh? What were you doing up there?’
‘Hanging out, you know?’
‘No. Why I asked.’
‘Bit of this and that.’
‘How much this, how much that?’ Jay wanted to know.
‘Give the bloke a break,’ Bron defended. ‘He’s still swatting off the giant Queensland flies. Getting over one of them cane toads having a chunk of him while he slept.’
‘Didn’t know even their frogs had teeth,’ Jay said. ‘Or maybe he was in the outback?’
‘Mate, I’m no blackfella. Not that I got nothing against them,’ Deano said, and Lu saw those brows knit together. ‘But I wasn’t in the queue when Kevin Rudd said sorry.’
A bit of a wit mentioning the Prime Minister, his official apology to the Aboriginal people for the oppression and injustices they’d suffered. Said this Deano had a brain, to Lu it did.
‘Just ended up in Brizzie. Like, wandered up there. Left when I was fifteen, didn’t I.’
‘Now you’re back,’ said Lu. ‘’Bout six, seven years later.’ She figured his age similar to theirs. ‘To home round the corner, if you know Bron. Makes you a Cross boy, right?’
Bron shifted a bit uncomfortably at his pals giving Deano the once over.
‘Like I said, I been away, lost touch.’ Deano looked at Jay first then at Lu. ‘That’s all the Cross is now, a fuckin’ junkie graveyard.’
Which kind of relaxed them a bit, though he might have been coached by Bron on that.
‘Came into a bit of dough,’ Deano said. ‘Thought I might buy you guys a beer up at the Old Fitzroy, get to know you.’
Not so much the invitation put her back on her heels as realisation they never actually went to pubs. They bought from liquor stores and drank — well Lu not much — in one of the many abandoned buildings on their circuit, or in little spots round the hood where people left them alone, including the cops, as they weren’t into drugs or much more than petty crime, and Lu excluded from that, she had a job.
Yet Lu had once gone into the Old Fitzroy, saw the open door at the bottom of the three-level pub further up this same street, popped her head in. A kind voice said softly, ‘Hey. Come on in, no charge, it’s halfway through.’ What, a movie?
Groped her way to a seat in the tiny tiered black-painted gloom, hit by the most fragrant perfume and different ones, couldn’t see any faces, just a whole lot of shapes. And down there, on the stage, this lone woman under a spotlight with blackness all around. Sheez. What was this? A play? In Woollo? Though she had heard they had a theatre at the pub. Just hadn’t meant anything.
The woman’s voice like from a dream except she was real, nice looking, acting and yet she wasn’t. Her voice rang out, it went quiet, she sobbed, buried her face in her hands. Said something about ‘undue suffering’ in a voice that seemed to ring down from the ceiling, even from the heavens. Down on the stage a person and yet the way she was lit she seemed to define something else, something more.
She made this kind of speech, the actress, to a brother who was crippled and she wanting him to die to end his suffering; of love so great for him she wanted death for her own brother.
Seventeen Lu was then. Well hardened to life and yet there she was — thank God it was dark when she stumbled out — in such a state she could barely contain the sobbing from turning into hysterical. But that was then. And she’d never been back since.
‘What,’ she said now to Bron’s mate, ‘your old aunty died and left you a fortune?’ Close to sneering — no one was enticing her or Jay with free drinks. ‘’Spose you’re gonna tell us she lived in America?’
‘Nah. Stole it,’ Deano said. ‘Off a tourist lying drunk in the street. I think he was English. Knew he was gonna drop so followed him till he did. Nine hundred in his wallet. I owed people and pay rent at a big crash pad in the Cross. Got a couple hundie left over.’
‘The Cross,’ Lu said. ‘Like we said, your hood.’ The bloke might be a virus, start off nothing wrong then whammo. They’d all be sick. But he didn’t have sly eyes, he looked right at you.
They settled for six packs of ready-mixed bourbon and Coke, vodka and orange, for the hit better than beer for the guys, Lu indifferent; went up to an abandoned business premises behind William Street, got in by walking over some parked garbage skips and by a not very well secured rear door. Jay had candles; it was pitch black inside.
Under the scrutiny of fluttering candlelight, the newcomer fielded every question put in the air, took every nasty and unexpected tackle, even the big-hit questions, like a good rugby league player. Plied with his own purchased drink to see if he went on the turn when pissed. He hardly even slurred.
A few more bonding sessions like this and Deano the leano was in, one of the group, a mate.
Sure, he’d move in with Jay and Bron, no worries. Meant they could take the whole upstairs, Deano and
Bron could share the main room, Jay move into the storage room. Not as if there were job hours to juggle the sleeping arrangement, all three drew the unemployment, and sometimes they slept wherever they ended up, in summer they did.
Chapter eleven
Big Sandy Tulloch was waiting at the hotel, his enormous bulk of too much good living, big frame on a French period sofa, when Riley knew it was used to sprawling out on a modern leather one. Tulloch had them all over his plush offices. In his splendid Vaucluse house.
He hefted his weight up at Riley walking in. ‘You’re late, old mate.’
Shoved out a giant paw that crushed — or tried to — Riley’s hand, but he knew Sandy’s tricks. Riley ready with his own powerful handshake as it would be from years working with difficult animals ten times stronger than a man, not to mention the endless physical work, from hand-driving post holes to helping heft the weight of a sick animal. He let Sandy grumble about not being able to smoke a cigar, the damn do-gooders spoiling all the doers’ lives. Riley detested smoking, if less so cigars as the aroma was rather pleasant.
‘What’s the grub like here?’
Of a five-star hotel? You want ‘grub’ go to a kebab shop. ‘Five star, Sandy,’ he said.
‘Didn’t ask about its astronomy. And I’ve seen better.’ Sandy looked around imperiously, the son of a very rich man who’d inherited his dad’s money — all those hundreds of millions.
‘So have I but it has the personal touch.’
‘So does everything if you throw money at it.’
‘I’m fine for lunch. Had prawns and fries with my daughter down at the fish market.’
‘You’ll eat a little something to keep me company. It’s been a whole three hours since I had a large cooked breakfast,’ Tulloch grinned. ‘Big man’s curse: I want it all.’ Gave Riley a strange look before saying, ‘Funny, when you can buy it all it’s just not the same.’
‘My grandfather used to say, always appreciate the simple things and consider the rest bollocks.’