The Butcherbird

by Geoffrey Cousins

  God, she was wonderful. Everyone knew Tony Playford was a pants man from way back, but to pin him like that, on television, it was riveting. And she’d only cried once, at the end, and not in self-pity. She was being asked about some lawyer who was helping them, who’d died, who she’d never met, and she cried when she was speaking of him, let the tears roll down her face, never tried to brush them away. That was the picture the papers ran the next day. And her final line, it was almost Shakespearean, as if someone had written it for her, and yet she’d delivered it from the gut. ‘The world is not cloaked in grey, not stained with soot. There are still those who can distinguish black from white. My husband is one such man.’ It ran as the caption under her picture. It was a triumph.

  But also confusing. Were they now in or out? Prime-time television and front pages, flattering ones that is, were not to be sneezed at, but there was still a lingering odour. Better to wait and see. Anyway, they weren’t here and hadn’t been invited.

  Popsie Trudeaux had been abandoned, temporarily she assumed, by her charming vice president and had scooped up Archie Speyne to fill in the time. ‘You can tell me, Archie dear, what’s really happening with the Biddulph Gallery. You know I’m always discreet.’

  Archie knew something rather different, but then discretion was not a quality he admired in anyone. Where would he be with it, he always thought. However, the question of the naming of the gallery was causing him some concern. He’d argued for naming rights in perpetuity and the trustees had overridden him. Now it seemed they had been proven right. Besides, if the Biddulph name was removed, Mac would hardly be likely to sue. Maybe Archie could sell the rights again and keep the original donation as well. But there were other donors whose names were on galleries who were nervous, upset at any suggestion these could be summarily removed. What did they have to hide, Archie wondered.

  But back to discretion. How much to let slip to Popsie, how much to hold back? Art was all very well in its place, namely in his museum, but these were the dilemmas that sent Archie’s heart racing. ‘You know I can’t say anything, Popsie, but if the trustees did decide to make a change, to preserve the museum’s integrity, not that I’m saying they will, but if they did, where would I find another philanthropist as generous as Mac Biddulph? Or whoever’s money it was. You see what I mean?’

  Popsie did see what he meant. She saw it very clearly. It was a sparkling diamond in a dull crowd, a jewel in a sandbox. How to sift it from the dross, set it in platinum and wear it for the world, that was the question.

  ‘Yes, I imagine it’ll be very difficult for you particularly, Archie, having brought Mac Biddulph in with such a fanfare. A great coup at the time, but things change, don’t they?’ She saw Archie blanch at these remarks and felt pity for the little fellow.

  She should comfort him, help him. ‘I’ve one or two thoughts on a suitable replacement. Perhaps not quite the same money up front, but then you’ve finished the gallery now, the roof is on so to speak. You don’t really need the money anymore, do you? But to have an impeccable name, someone you can put forward to the trustees the minute they decide, if they decide. Don’t you think that would be preferable?’

  When they parted, Archie virtually skipped across the polished boards in search of a bar from which to order champagne, even though he’d promised himself he wouldn’t sniff a bubble before the Matisse was on the block. But of course there was no bar, no bubbles. Sotheby’s wanted everyone sober tonight.

  The room hushed as the auctioneer stepped, or more accurately leapt, to the podium. He was so charming, so athletic, always immaculately dressed, so knowledgeable and likeable, a few had even invited him to their homes, and not only for valuations. He was the manager of Sotheby’s in Sydney and, in an unusual arrangement, would handle the auction jointly with the striking blonde woman standing beside him. She had hair that fell to her wrists and eyes that, once they were locked onto yours in a bidding frenzy, reached deep into your pockets. She would handle the middle section of the vast list, but the manager was their favourite.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, what a pleasure to enjoy your company on such a night.’

  They applauded. They actually applauded the arrival of an auctioneer, as if he were a conductor. The stage was set. It was only a matter of how high the prices might soar. The answer was soon known. The first few items were modest paintings by mid-career artists. They were knocked down for more than double the estimates. The Aboriginal works brought three and four times the highest estimate and the sculptures likewise. The Henry Moore maquette, a small bronze no more than eight inches high, went for a hundred and eighty thousand dollars. Someone bought a marble desk set of vaguely Italian origin, estimated at six to eight hundred dollars, for nine and a half thousand dollars. An ashtray went for nine hundred dollars. By the time a short break was called for the changeover at the podium, the room was abuzz. Sydney had never seen anything like it. It was Jackie Onassis, it was Andy Warhol-it was Mac Biddulph. And he was alive.

  Maxwell Newsome felt a hand on his arm and turned to see the Pope standing beside him. ‘Hello, John. I didn’t expect to see you here. This isn’t your sort of scene normally, is it?’

  ‘No. But I’m interested in some of the sculptures. For my son. He’s a sculptor.’

  ‘Is he indeed? Wonderful to have creative blood in the family. I’m afraid all we know how to do is make money.’ Max laughed at his own witticism, but received no encouragement. ‘Sad occasion, though, in many ways. Very sad. Distressing to me, obviously. Mac’s an old friend.’

  The Pope leaned towards him. ‘Yes. I gather you traded for him a good deal?’

  Max’s body stiffened under the cashmere, but his facial expression changed not at all. ‘Occasionally. Mac kept things pretty close to the chest.’

  ‘I’m hearing, Max, that all those shares he sold might have been consolidated into one entity. That HOA might have a new significant shareholder. Have you heard anything to that effect?’

  Max’s smile remained as Madame Tussaud would have wished. ‘Very unlikely, old chap. They’d have to file a notice if that was so. Nothing’s come to light. Certainly not known to me.’

  The Pope nodded. ‘I just thought you might have heard a whisper.’ He turned to leave but Max held him with a question.

  ‘What’s your interest, John? Are you into HOA?’

  ‘No. I just like to keep in touch. Good luck for the rest of the evening.’

  Seats were being resumed for the final session of the auction. It would commence with the Matisse. Even though Archie Speyne was about to spend someone else’s money, even though he wasn’t bidding himself, his legs were shaking, his stomach was hollow, and he was sweating under the light jacket with the ivory buttons-but he loved it. The thrill of the chase, the despair of losing, the fear of winning. It was all around the room. Adrenalin and testosterone, no ice, shaken not stirred.

  But it soared, the Matisse, took flight into the outer reaches of Archie’s budget in five bids, hands flying from the telephone bidders, cards flapping around the room. What would he do? They had to have it, the museum, it was theirs by rights. It should have been gifted, by Mac, by the banks, by someone. He looked to his chairman of trustees in the front row. One more bid? A nod of approval. The museum’s stooge raised the bidder’s card. A responding call from the telephone desk. It was gone.

  He was sickened, gutted. It was indecent. Nouveau riche people throwing money at things they had no real knowledge of, no deep love for. It should have been his; he meant the museum’s. He stumbled into the night in search of sustenance, physical or emotional.

  But no one else left, even though the lesser items were now on the block, even though stomachs were rumbling and not even a hipflask had been sighted. How could you afford to leave? Who knew if something unexpected might spring from a lacquered box?

  ‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to a special item. A rare collection of poetry books. A connoisseur’s item, this one. We have the perfect
audience for it, I believe. All first editions. All signed by the authors. To be sold in one line, ladies and gentlemen. What shall we say for it? One hundred thousand to get started? Do I have eighty? Eighty then. Eighty to get on. Thank you, sir, eighty.

  Ninety? Ninety it is then. One hundred? Thank you, madam. A hundred and ten? On the phone. A hundred and ten. Against you, madam. One twenty? New bidder. Thank you, sir, one twenty. It’s one twenty in the centre here. Against you, madam. Against you, sir, at the front. Do I have one thirty? Are we all done? Any further from the phone? I’m going to sell then. At one twenty, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, all done, all-’

  ‘One fifty.’ The voice rang through the panelled room, ricocheted off the domed roof, seemed to cut the strings of the jerking marionette on the podium so that its arms flopped, its mouth fell open. Every head turned to see where its eyes were fixed.

  He stood as he’d always stood on the decks of this boat-as if he owned not just the vessel but the ocean it sailed on. The feet were planted wide apart, the face was tanned and healthy, the suit looked as if the tailor had fitted it that evening. There was not a person in the room who couldn’t pick that voice just from a radio interview, there was no one in Sydney who didn’t know Mac Biddulph’s squared-off face.

  The charm of the auctioneer was lying on the floor somewhere under the podium. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way he could accept a bid from Mac Biddulph. He had no money. That was the whole point of the auction, wasn’t it? So the banks could harvest whatever was left on the stalks. But this was an auction. A bid was a bid. He looked around the room, desperate for guidance. He caught the eye of the vice president from New York, who shrugged. He probably didn’t even recognise Mac.

  ‘One fifty then. At the back. Do I hear one sixty? One sixty anyone? Going once at one fifty, twice, I’m selling then, all done at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, sold to… to you, sir.’

  Not a foot shuffled on the boards, not a cough escaped, not a catalogue rustled. For a moment, there was absolute silence.

  And then, slowly at first, but building quickly like a wave flowing around the room, applause rang out. They dropped what they were holding-pens, papers, hats, whatever-and clapped like a crowd possessed. Mac smiled, let his eyes travel slowly over the faces, waved, and walked from the Honey Bear for the last time. chapter nineteen

  They walked arm in arm, bodies rubbing gently, legs swinging in unison, unconsciously wrapped together. The ground was covered with an indigo haze of crushed jacaranda petals. The scent of jasmine and gardenias mingled in the humid air. The faintest brush of a light sun shower drifted about them and the kookaburras were already calling the end of the day.

  They entered the forgotten park through a rusted gate, jammed forever open. No one came here. They’d stumbled on this lost tangle of exotic plants gone wild on one of their long rambles. It was their favourite release now, to wander together along the harbour foreshore, or through the lanes and alleys of Paddington, past the nineteenth-century terraces and the art galleries and bistros, or to discover one of the myriad public pathways or open spaces that led down to the water.

  Their park-it was their park now-had the ruins of a stone building buried in its undergrowth, the huge hand-cut, roughly pecked blocks of the city’s convict past. Sometimes they sat on these tumbled monoliths and ate sandwiches or drank tea. But this evening they made their way to a sandstone shelf jutting out over the cliff, with the harbour lapping virtually beneath, and Jack drew a bottle of white wine and a block of cheese from his small backpack. They sat in the melting dusk, the shadows of the eucalypts falling around them.

  Green and yellow ferries scurried back and forth across the golden harbour. Soon their lights would form rippling columns in the black water, but as yet the sun held to a faint promise. The birds fell silent, even the kookaburras left the stage to the animals of the night. They sipped in the deep congeniality of lovers who no longer needed to fill silences. Suddenly Jack thought he could make out a moving shape in the water. It disappeared. He followed the path that might have been. A great head rose from the swell and then a rounded smaller shape alongside. He stifled a cry and pointed for Louise. The whale and its calf swam calmly beneath them, beneath the houses and apartments of the lawyers and merchant bankers and chief executives.

  ‘I love this city, ‘ Jack said. ‘They say whales won’t swim where the water isn’t clean, but here we are in a working port, surrounded by millions of people and still they come. Somehow it means we haven’t wrecked the world quite yet.’ He turned to her. ‘I want to go back to making beautiful things. Someone else can rule the business world. I want to design houses for ordinary people, houses that don’t cost millions but are simple and functional and elegant. This place has given me another chance and I want to take it.’ He held her forearm. ‘Well, you’ve given me the second chance. No one else. But I’ve learned there are more good people than otherwise and now I’ve met a lot of the good ones. People come up to me in the streets, shake my hand, even shopkeepers-it’s humbling. And, of course, there are the others. But we don’t care about them, do we?’

  They walked along the track by the cliffs and peered into the dark water, but the whales had vanished. ‘Will you work with me again? Just the two of us and a couple of young graduates, the way we used to be? Will you walk on with me?’

  He couldn’t see her face but he felt the arms wrap around him and the breath in his hair. ‘What do you think, lover boy?’

  It took them over an hour to walk back to Alice Street. It was a long while since they’d been so relaxed. They chatted occasionally about the good times to come, the black times past. The landscape had transformed before their eyes when the press articles ran and the other media picked up the story. It was as if a breeze had blown thick fog from the hills and suddenly it was clear the sun had always been warming the valley ahead. They’d heard nothing from ASIC or any other authority, although Mac had been charged, as had Renton Healey. Louise stopped him at one point and said, ‘I told you the good guys always win.’ Jack laughed and held her to him.

  As they entered the small front garden through the wrought-iron gate, they didn’t notice the man standing beneath one of the street trees until he spoke.

  ‘Mr Beaumont? Mr Jack Beaumont?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I have a subpoena for you, sir. And Mrs Beaumont, is it? One for you also, madam.’ He disappeared into the night as quickly as he’d emerged and they were left staring blankly at the documents in the half-light.

  The whales had left the bays and coves of the eastern harbour now and were swimming slowly outside the shipping lane towards the heads. The mother nudged the calf gently to one side if it strayed towards the marker buoys. They felt the currents of the incoming tide and pushed on into the open sea, turning to the north to join the migration to warmer waters. Just five hundred yards from the shore, but well outside the surf line, they made their way past Manly and Harbord, edged out to sea to clear Long Reef, resumed their line by Mona Vale and Bilgola and Whale Beach, and then swam through the punctuated flashes of the Barrenjoey Lighthouse, leaving Sydney and its sleeping citizens well behind.

  Maroubra set the cruise control on the steering column and let his mind, too, slip on to autopilot as the heavy frame of the four-wheel drive ploughed into the air currents. The course was set for Bowral, more than an hour’s drive south-west of Sydney, a place he’d never visited before or even considered for a wet weekend. He thought of it vaguely, if at all, as the retreat of those who rode horses early in the morning-or at least wore clothes that looked as if they rode horses-and then spent the remainder of the day in vast gardens cluttered with daffodils and other colourful objects that sprang unexpectedly from bare ground. Maroubra disliked horses, at least horses that were groomed and cosseted and pranced about in arenas, ridden by people in tight jackets and ridiculous helmets. If they were afraid of falling off, why did they get on? He felt he might appreciate w
ild horses if he saw a herd of brumbies thundering down a gorge, but this wasn’t an experience that had passed his way.

  Yet here he was in the land of leather-patched elbows, searching for a name on a gate. At least you couldn’t miss the gates here. They were all enormous structures of stone and wood or wrought iron, with English names emblazoned on them that sounded as if the Duke of Barwick Feld had slipped away to the colonies for a short break and was taking tea, and a muscular serving wench, just up the garden path. He pushed the accelerator down hard as the engine struggled up the thousand-foot climb through the dense eucalypt forest on the slopes of Mount Gibraltar. The towns of Bowral and Mittagong lay below, but Maroubra’s eyes were searching for the name BLACKBUTT LODGE on a fence or gatepost.

  It had been a curious, disturbing call that had brought him here. Late at night, on his home phone, his wife asleep, him dozing, asleep but awake as he often was now, jerked into consciousness by the night call that always rang of disaster. He hadn’t recognised the voice at first. He was attuned to voices, always knew if a friend was sick or troubled from the voice, or if a lie was sliding down the line, or a hand reaching into his pocket. And there were few words to decipher; just ‘Come tomorrow. Bowral, on the mountain, look for Blackbutt Lodge. Be there at eleven.’ But it was the Pope’s voice, flat and strangled and lifeless, nothing like the steady, calm tone he’d heard for so many years-there was no mistaking the timbre underlining the half-whispered instructions.

  He saw it now, the name, not on a pretentious assemblage of inappropriate grandeur, but on the cross-pole of a simple frame of undressed trunks. He drove slowly down the steep road of crushed granite and parked in a turning area. No buildings were visible but he could make out strange shapes hiding in the dense copses, organic shapes or twisted, contorted metallic-looking objects. The view through the clearing was a hundred kilometres or more across to a hazy mountain range with honey-coloured escarpments. He stopped to drink in the colours and shapes. Suddenly he realised he was looking through the Jamison Valley to the Blue Mountains, without a structure or a road or any sign of human presence, other than the ghosts lurking in the trees, to interrupt his view.