by Peter Carey
Some people are good at debt. We were bad at it, and only discovered it in the way people who get seasick learn of their weakness when the ship has left the shore. We were a journalist and a potter thinking they could send their kids to an expensive private school. You get the joke.
Earlier I described how I abandoned these children on the footpath. Abandoned? For God’s sake, they were almost at the end of their investment curve. To listen to their conversation you would never dream that their parents were both third-generation socialists. Did they even remember their father toasting crumpets in the smoky fire? Can they hear their mother’s lovely voice sing “Moreton Bay”?
I’ve been a prisoner at Port Macquarie
At Norfolk Island and Emu Plains
At Castle Hill and cursed Toongabbie
At all those settlements I’ve worked in chains
But of all places of condemnation
And penal stations of New South Wales
Of Moreton Bay I have found no equal
Excessive tyranny each day prevails
She sang that to our little girls? You bet she did.
We had made the awful mistake of sending the girls to school with the children of our enemies. We thought we were saving Fiona from dyslexia. In fact we were wrecking her family by putting it under a financial strain it could not withstand. I would never once, not for a second, have thought to call Claire timid. How could I know that debt would make her so afraid? We got a line of credit for $50,000 and every time I acted like myself she hated it. She had loved me for those qualities before: I mean, my almost genetic need to take risk, to stand on principle, to poke the bully in the eye. I could not compromise, even when I was—so often—physically afraid. A sword hung over the marriage bed and I did not see it. I refused compromises she privately thought a father was morally obliged to make.
And of course the girls had not the least idea of what was at stake. If they paid attention to a newspaper it was only the Life and Style section. I doubt they had read a single one of my words, and had no notion of my work and life. They had never seen the evidence that might have justified my absences. If I allowed Claire’s bond to be the strongest it was because I saw how much she wanted them to be “my daughters.” Only once I bought them clothing (T-shirts, that’s all). Then I learned that this was not my job and I should never try again.
Before this final defamation suit, Claire had been the pillion passenger who closed her eyes and hung on tight but the Supreme Court’s finding was the final straw. When she heard the size of the damages, she quite collapsed.
As a child she had seen the family farm taken by the bank. Was it that? Was it something else? In any case, she did not believe my assurance that “everything will be OK” because Woody had flown up from Melbourne for the court case. He had promised nothing. She was correct to say this, but she could not grasp that this was exactly the sort of situation when you could rely on Woody. Claire could not grasp his influence. She did not care that he had saved me from my burning car. All she could see was that his father had been a slumlord and a thug.
Nor did she trust Nigel QC because she believed, correctly, that he was the prosecutor’s friend. I told her that did not matter. I was right. If only she had trusted me, I would have got back on the bike and taken her hurtling through the bends at a hundred and fifty kilometres an hour. I would have won the appeal. I would have sorted out the legal costs, and we would have celebrated as we had celebrated many times before.
“Everything will be OK,” I said, and it was dreadful to see the fury in her eyes.
I WAS FROM a small town in Victoria, but I had thought of gorgeous wicked Sydney as my home for fifteen years. Yet once I was cast out of Denison Street, Rozelle, I saw I had no home at all. I was pushed up into the heartless traffic of Victoria Road and across the vertiginous Anzac Bridge. I had to admit my mates had all abandoned me. Darling Harbour was below. All of that bright chaotic city lay before me. I had no mobile phone. I had no bed. I was reduced to ringing doorbells in the eastern suburbs. I cannot go into the details of my reception, but so reluctantly was I given refuge that I felt compelled to refuse my host’s coffee in the morning. I certainly would not crawl on my belly to ask to use his phone.
I spent the day at Martin Place, at the post office, searching the Sydney phone books and getting change at the counter.
“Do I know you? You were on TV last night?”
“That’s me, mate.”
This clerk was a pale red-headed fellow with no bum and his sleeves rolled up to show his biceps. He slowly counted out my phone money.
“Felix,” he said.
“Yes, mate.”
“You’re a wanker, mate.”
I took my money down the far end and crouched in the gloom, trying to find someone to take my call. I had expected my colleagues might enjoy a gossip, but they were clearly nervous of what I was going to ask of them. So many people “stepped away” from their desks at the same time, they must have made a conga line, from Pyrmont to Ultimo, from Fairfax to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
I left Martin Place and walked under the gloomy Moreton Bay figs in Hyde Park, down along William Street, past Westfield Tower, an ugly building once occupied by the most exhilarating mix of power, almost forgotten figures such as Gough Whitlam, Neville Wran, Harry Miller before and after his spell in Cessnock jail.
Dusk came early and I really had no heart to test another friendship so I ended up at the inevitable: the Bourbon and Beefsteak in King’s Cross. Why did we always love the B&B? It was an awful place, owned by an American called Bernie Houghton. We all knew that Houghton was an arms dealer with an uncontested CIA affiliation. That never stopped us going to eat there late at night, and even when we discovered Bernie was a partner in Nugan Hand, the same CIA bank that helped finance the events of 1975, we continued to go to drink at the Bourbon and Beefsteak.
My wife said I was a romantic, that the B&B was my idea of noir, with prostitutes and tourists, bludgers and transvestites, well-connected criminals and murdering policemen. She may not have been completely wrong.
It was not dark yet and I got a breezy table near the street from which vantage point I soon saw—approximately forty-five minutes after my arrival—our dinged-up Subaru rise from the street and mount the footpath. Did I cower? Oh probably. But I did not dive under the table no matter what your friends have told you. In fact my wife was carrying nothing more frightening than a plastic bag which would later turn out to contain a mobile phone, a charger, a framed photo of my daughters, and my complete signed set, all six volumes, of Manning Clark’s much loved History of Australia.
The photograph was on the top. It gave me hope. If I had seen my treasured Manning Clarks I would have known this was the coup de grâce, but in my foolish optimism I thought, sweet girl, she knows my life is built upon my family. She came straight at my table. I thought, thank God, I would have died to lose her.
“They cut the jacaranda down this morning.”
She had such a pretty face but her eyes were red-rimmed and her mouth was straight as a knife. What was I to say? Sit down?
“Call Woody,” she said, attempting to hand over the carry bag.
I grabbed at her. She said not to touch her. The charger fell to the floor. By the time I had discovered the Manning Clarks, she was gone.
And who would ever feel sorry for me? Had I not risked my family’s life?
But even then I was an optimist. Woody wanted me to call him and I knew exactly why. He had talked to Claire. He knew I was in the doghouse. Naturally he would find me a place to stay. I called immediately and he picked up.
“You’re in the shit.”
“I am.”
“Where are you now?”
“Where else? The B&B.”
“Fucking Bernie,” he laughed.
“I thought he was dead.”
“Yes mate.” His tone became weirdly serious and I thought, of course Woody would know Bernie Ho
ughton, and probably Frank Nugan too. There were stranger friendships in this town. Shoot me for saying it, but Sydney, our dense dark city, is really very small.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said. I thought, thank God. I could not bear to go begging for a bed.
“You’re a mate,” I said.
“You’re going to have to get your arse down here.”
“Where’s here?”
“Melbourne.”
“Why Melbourne?”
“Jesus, don’t argue with me Feels. I’m about to save your life again. Why Melbourne? Jeez. Don’t be offensive.”
“Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate everything you’ve done.”
Of course Melbourne was where he owned most property, where he would most easily find an empty flat for me. I should be very, very grateful.
“You want this or not?”
“Yes, I want it.”
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow in my office. I’ll take you to lunch at Moroni’s like the old days.”
I could have charged the flight to our joint credit card, but truly, I had seen Claire’s face. It was Thursday night, late night shopping. I took a cab to the distinguished book dealer on Oxford Street where I offered my Manning Clarks. Each one was signed “To Felix with respect.” I argued that they were association copies.
“The association being?”
I was not one of Manning’s many worshippers, but I liked him and he was unfailingly amused by me. “He is Manning Clark,” I said. “I am Felix Moore.”
The bookseller showed no particular reaction, although he did spend an awfully long time staring at the spine of Volume I. He was a gentle, diplomatic young man. He did not call me a wanker or argue about the plunging value of my name. Rather, he indicated, quite correctly, that Vol. I was associated with red wine and biro and Vol. V was foxed. He offered two hundred in the manner of his caste, giving me my books back as if to say, don’t even try to haggle. Of course I took the money and it turned out just enough: $112 for the ticket, $60 for a shitty room I found nearby in Surry Hills.
Sad and sorry on my slippery motel sheets I called my wife.
To my delight she took my call.
“If you do this one more time,” she said, “I’ll have your phone cut off.”
BEFORE EXHAUSTING the last of the birdshit deposits which were the source of its fabulous wealth, before going into business as a detention facility for asylum seekers, the nation state of Nauru destroyed two landmark buildings in Collins Street and erected a 52-floor octagonal monument to its own ineptitude and corruption.
Who would want to have an office on this site? My mate of course.
“If I applied your standards, Feels, I’d be sleeping on the beach. Also,” he said, revealing his true Melbourne heart, “the last time I looked, you lived in Sydney.”
Woody had his office on the fiftieth floor and here he liked to swing back and forth in his fancy chair and gaze up at the violent scudding clouds and down on Parliament House and out to his developments at Docklands. He could see all the way south to St. Kilda and north-east to Collingwood and all that rising damp he had inherited when his father was shot to death.
That murder was not a subject I ever raised with Woody. His personal history resided in the world of “it is said.” It is said that he was a stellar student at Melbourne High. It is said he had wanted to be a literature professor. It is said he had no choice but to pick up his father’s revolver. It is said that he continued that habit long after he employed others to collect his rents. I know this last is true because he once persuaded me to go to the beautiful old Florentino restaurant to pick up “something” he had stupidly left behind. He didn’t say it was a pistol but I noted the blanched face of the unerringly polite Raymond Tsindos when he presented me with a shoebox marked “Mr. Townes.” Outside, on Bourke Street, by the window of that famous bookshop, I lifted the lid. I never told him what I saw.
It is not common for people in Melbourne to carry guns. Indeed it is a criminal offence. So it may seem odd that, rather than stain his good name, my friend’s idiosyncrasy brought a certain frisson to his reputation. Patron of the arts, collector of first editions, street fighter, champion of the left, also, of course, most of all, a property developer. In a different society Woody Townes would have been a player in nothing grander than a city council, but in our dry sclerophyll country his species nests very high indeed.
“I’m going to save your arse, young Felix.”
“That’s very noble of you, mate.”
He stared at me and I, like a drunk who realises he has caused offence, was confused and hurt and dared not look away. This was not Woody in the Wentworth but Woody in his office. My mate had scary moments.
“Thanks for this,” I said.
“Ah, comrade,” he sighed, “you know I am not noble.”
“In your fashion, mate.”
“You thought you were fucked,” he said. “You were up shit creek again.”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“Now you’re going to be top dog.”
Oh fuck, I thought, as I sat down opposite him, he is offering me one of his disgusting penthouses on the Yarra. It would be impossible to refuse.
“Just a place to stay till I get started.”
“But what would you possibly start on? Workwise.”
“Jeez. I’ve just arrived.”
“Maybe you’ll be working sooner than you think. You know who the Angel’s mother is?”
“Yes. And so do you.”
He raised his big eyebrows, grinning, withholding.
“You’ve been in touch with her,” I suggested.
“Mate, I’ve never stopped being in touch with Celine.”
The innuendo was not prettily expressed, but I wanted to believe what he was hinting at. “You got me a gig?”
“You write the bloody story, mate. Exclusive. Felix Moore. The defendant won’t talk to anyone but you.”
“Bullshit.”
“I bailed her. Five hundred k,” Woody said, as if he’d purchased a Dobell portrait. I did not judge him for his vulgarity. I admired him. Who else in Australia would have stepped up in his place? “While you were packing shit in the park in Sydney, I was on the phone. I bailed the bloody Angel before the US could touch her. What about that? She’s yours.” He was grinning at me like a wide-mouthed frog. I didn’t have to tell him I was already on her side.
“And she wants me to write her story? That’s what you’re saying.”
“Mate, she never heard of you.”
I didn’t believe him for a second, and in any case I did not care.
“No newspaper’s going to run this,” I said.
Wodonga threw his sandwich in the bin and I recalled I had heard his stomach had been stapled and that when you ate with him at Florentino he would vomit discreetly into his handkerchief. He sat more formally now, his awful elephantine hands clasped gently above his stomach.
“Book,” he said. “Big advance. You can lose your court appeal and pay your damages and still buy Claire a sexy nightie. The contract is being written now. But if you don’t want the job, just say so.”
As it turned out the money was terrific, although his company would own the copyright and I would have no royalty, ever, and no recourse if my name was, without consultation, removed from the title page. Nor did he tell me that he did not control the source at all. For many weeks I would be tormented by the subject’s unavailability. If he had warned me? It would not have changed a thing. I saw myself accept a fat brown envelope that I imagined contained a paperback. Woody said it was $10,000 and I did not even count.
“A good-faith deposit,” he said. “Buy yourself a suit.”
“Fair enough,” I said, thinking, fuck the suit, I can pay the school bills.
Woody slipped into his jacket and took a dainty umbrella from his drawer.
“You’re going to write about a traitor,” he said, watching me stuff the envelope into my jacket. �
�Being the mug you are, you will fall in love with her. The only problem is: she will most likely be put to death.” I was about to remind him that Australia had no death penalty but he retreated to a private bathroom in the office and peed so long and loud I knew he was showing off his prostate operation.
“I’ve got the table at Moroni’s,” he said when he emerged. “Do you need a comb?”
“Certainly not.”
I did not need a comb to gain admittance to Moroni’s. I had eaten there a hundred times, with Gough Whitlam, John Cain—that is, a Prime Minister and a State Premier whose speech I had once rewritten in that very restaurant, assisted, it might be added, by Moroni’s lethal grappa.
The maître d’ was named Abramo. He was always the same, like a benign James Joyce with perfect vision. Abramo had good reasons to be fond of me as he shortly demonstrated by ignoring Wodonga and warmly welcoming my slovenly self. He showed me to a corner table where there sat an unusual individual. First, she was a woman, the only one in all the hushed besuited room. She was wearing a charcoal silk Shanghai Tang jacket with a brick-red lining and her haircut was a million-dollar job, by which I mean short and simple and sustained by strong, almost springy, silver hair. I was wrong about her age, and so would you have been. She had all those looks that come from great cheekbones, the sort of structured beauty a hundred years of Gauloises could not corrode.
As I approached she stood to shake my hand. She said her name but I did not catch it. I assumed she was the publisher.