by Toni Jordan
‘Well, good evening to you,’ he says. ‘Mr Cleborn. Miss Karlson.’
‘Samuel,’ Charles says.
‘I’m very glad you’re found, Miss Karlson.’
Inga says nothing.
‘This is Miss…’ says Charles.
Lehrer, Rachel tells him.
Inga laughs. ‘Lehrer? Truly? Are you Jewish?’
‘Maybe my father’s grandfather, I think? A long time back. We’re Presbyterian.’
‘Still, how wonderful. Isn’t that wonderful? Don’t you think it’s wonderful, Fischer?’ says Inga.
He smiles, showing all his teeth. ‘I wouldn’t know, Miss Karlson. A pleasure to make your acquaintance, ma’am,’ Samuel Fischer says to Rachel.
Samuel Fischer blinks a lot, and every so often he uses his forehead and the muscles of his cheeks to make a stronger, firmer blink, as though he’s straining to prevent a sneeze. Sometimes he bites his bottom lip, and looks frightened. His busy face makes Rachel think of warm milk in an anodised cup and liverwurst on white with the crusts cut off.
‘I wouldn’t have imagined you here, Fischer,’ Inga says. ‘The band. Look up there. As black as…well, a Schutzstaffel uniform, every last one of them.’
Fischer bows his head and smiles. ‘Germans and Americans, they’re not so different, Miss Karlson. American values are world values these days. The Reich doesn’t aim to fight with anyone except the reds, just like us. It’s true that they think people are best if they keep to their own kind. Much like our own Southern states.’
‘Yet here you are,’ Inga says. ‘Mixing with people who aren’t your kind.’
‘Inga,’ Charles says. ‘Sam’s only here as a favour to me, remember? Because of your vanishing act? Let’s all take the night off.’
‘It’s no trouble, Mr Cleborn,’ Samuel says. ‘It’s good to clear this up. I’m a loyal American, Miss Karlson, first, second and third.’
‘And what are your thoughts about what’s happening in Europe? You’re an isolationist, I’d make a bet.’
‘I think a man ought to look after himself and his family, and I think that’s a good rule for our country too. Yes, ma’am. I think we oughta stay out of it.’
‘Do you think Italy will stay out of it? If Franco takes Spain, will—’
‘Inga,’ Charles interrupts. ‘He’s not running for Congress.’
Fischer bows his head. ‘If I am lucky enough to typeset your book, I’d consider it an honour and a privilege to play my small part in what I am sure will be another triumph, Miss Karlson.’
‘Holy hell,’ says Inga.
‘Now can we put this behind us?’ Charles says, loud. ‘Another round? I’m buying.’
None of them wants to go home, so there is another round, and then another. The music plays on. Trumpets and trombones, sound so rich you could lean on it. The four of them, alive, together, down in that cavern, and Rachel the waitress among them. She doesn’t know much, but she is watching.
21
Brisbane, Queensland, 1986
Caddie clutches her towel, excuses herself and disappears into her bedroom to dress. Philip’s grinning at the sight of her. He strolls up the hall with his hands behind his back like he’s in a museum. She sees him as she crosses the hall back to the bathroom to dry her hair. He’s in chinos and a blue cotton knit. Boat shoes, and sunglasses perched on his head like an American movie star on holidays. He’s fine and neat and bony.
‘I didn’t expect you’d be home. I thought you worked in a bookstore. Retail hours. Nine to five,’ he calls out.
‘It’s Saturday,’ she calls back from the bathroom. ‘Midday closing?’
He laughs. ‘Silly me. You forget that kind of thing when you’ve been overseas.’
When she returns to the lounge she’s reminded of when she was eight and had her tonsils removed and spent days home from school alone. Motes of dust rise in the air. There’s a brown-speckled mango in a timber bowl on the kitchen bench and cereal bowls filled with milky water and the odd floating soggy flake of sugary grain in the sink. On the window ledge, a cortege of three dead flies. The dining table is covered in Pretty and Terese’s embarrassing wedding paraphernalia. She puts the kettle on.
‘Not yours, I hope?’ Philip says, nodding at the table.
She flips two cups draining on the sink and drops teabags in them. ‘You’ll be the first to know.’
They take their tea and go out to the back garden and she wipes down the rusty iron furniture that Pretty found in a skip. It’s unkempt out here. Ferns and a wild bougainvillea and what was once a row of red hibiscus all throw shoots towards the sky. The table is rickety, not to be trusted, so they rest their cups on the cracked cement.
‘Your hair’s longer now, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘It suits you.’
Did Philip have opinions about her hair when they were together? In all those burning months, she can’t remember one comment about it. Or about her face, or her eyes, or her skin or her clothes. She looks down at her hands, neat and unremarkable, folded in her lap, to reassure herself that she is visible, that she does exist in his company.
‘You didn’t come over here to discuss my hair.’
‘Straight to the point. Classic Caddie. I need you to tell me what you know. About the woman.’
She remembers sitting in his office like a postulant, babbling foolishly. Confident that he was a tamed part of her past. She won’t make that mistake again. Now she smiles, thinly, to bite down what she feels, which is close to rage. She thinks it might be at herself.
‘What woman?’
‘You want to keep it for yourself. I can understand. But think about the level of interest. The worldwide tour of the fragments, all those people, all the publicity. Now is the time.’ He pauses. ‘I’ve just come back from New York, where I found something very interesting.’
It takes an act of will to stop her knee from bouncing. ‘Oh yes?’ she says. ‘What did you find out in New York?’
He smiles, sheepish, and runs his hand through his hair. That familiar gesture, it jolts her. He’s warm and solid and he’s Philip. Hours of her life when she should have been learning spent gormlessly in lecture halls, leaning on one elbow, watching him run his hand through his hair.
‘After our conversation I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility of someone else having read The Days, the Minutes. Someone who could remember it. My thought was this: all that Karlson publicity must be translating to serious sales for All Has an End. Serious royalties. “Follow the money”, that’s what I thought. All Has an End is still in copyright. The royalties must go somewhere. Right?’
It’s not something she has thought about, but yes.
‘Right. So I fly all the way over there. The trouble, the expense, I can’t tell you. But I go to the publishing house that holds the copyright—Greenbridge Press, it’s called. I still have a few contacts over there, you know, from my post-doc. Anyway. I make the acquaintance of someone in the accounts department who has this information.’
‘Let me guess—this someone in the accounts department. A woman?’
‘Caddie.’ He smiles. ‘That little green-eyed monster. Yes, it was a woman, but believe me it was a sacrifice for the sake of higher knowledge. You’ve got nothing to worry about there. Let’s just say a woman who works at the house that publishes Karlson felt well disposed towards me. She gave me the details of the person who gets the cheques. Decades now. We’re talking a fortune.’
‘She just handed this information over?’
‘It wasn’t exactly a secret. Other people have asked the question over the years, of course, but it was never a big deal: a distant cousin or something. Only living relative, never even met Inga. That’s what it says in the file, from way back when.’
‘But that’s not what you think.’
‘I think—and you, also, you think—that quite possibly there’s more to the story. And here’s the kicker. You’ll never guess where this person lives.’
‘Yes,’ says Philip.
‘She lives here in Brisbane.’
It’s only a hunch, but it would account for Philip’s naked enthusiasm.
He slaps his knee and jumps to his feet. ‘There we go. You’ve got a lead, haven’t you? That thing about female typesetters—this mystery woman was Karlson’s typesetter, wasn’t she? Or someone else, maybe someone in Charles Cleborn’s firm. You think she’s actually read The Days, the Minutes. Don’t you, Caddie? Could you absorb the actual text by typesetting it?—you asked me that. That’s what you think, isn’t it? Otherwise why would you have come to see me?’
‘Maybe I just wanted to,’ she says. ‘Maybe I thought enough time had gone by.’
‘Sweetie.’ He smiles like she’s a child.
A waft of eucalyptus from somewhere. A top note of something else; maybe a small dead creature. She shouldn’t have gone to see him.
‘So I asked myself: what could possibly have tempted you back to my office, the scene of such fun times in the past, unless it was something worth putting aside your feelings for?’ He holds up his hand. ‘I know how you feel, darling. I could tell how difficult it was for you to be in the same room with me.’
He plucks a leaf from one of the hibiscus and shreds it to ribbons, then looks around the garden as if appealing to an audience. ‘Look, there’s not much time. This woman’s old. She could drop dead any minute. Life can be cruel like that. So here it is: the name of the woman who’s been getting the cheques from the Karlson estate for the best part of fifty years is Rachel Lehrer.’
Caddie’s heart thuds. ‘Rachel Lehrer. Is that so?’
‘I’m going to find her, Caddie.’
‘You don’t even know what she looks like,’ Caddie says.
He narrows his eyes. ‘What does that mean? That you do? Do you know what she looks like, Caddie?’
She thinks of the real-life woman. The photos of her, inside Caddie’s bag on its hook near the door. By her feet, her cup of tea is cold, or as cold as room temperature gets here, and there are drowned fruit flies floating in it. She should throw out that sad mango inside before the house is full of them.
Philip is hers now. All she needs to do is stretch out her hand and take him. It was inevitable, him being here in her house, close enough to touch. Her life has been in limbo, as if she has spent seven years in a hurricane’s calm, dead eye. What happened last year? The year before? How did she spend her last birthday, for instance, and every hour when she wasn’t at work? She’s been waiting for him to come to her, all this time.
She nods. ‘Yes. I’ve met Rachel Lehrer. I’ve spoken with her.’
‘You gorgeous girl,’ he says. ‘You star. You little beauty. Do you understand what this means? The implications? What if she remembers parts of it? It may even be possible to reconstruct some of the fragments.’
‘It’s a long shot. It’s almost fifty years.’
‘Yes, but think what would happen to the researcher who breaks this story—like the Hitler diaries, but real. You know how much that guy got? Over three million dollars, Caddie. Three. Million.’ He leans towards her. ‘This could be the discovery of the decade.’
‘The odds of this woman that no one’s heard of having read the manuscript, and remembering it for fifty years, is about three million to one.’
‘Caddie. I’ve told you everything I know. Now you need to tell me. What makes you think she’s read The Days, the Minutes?’
‘I can’t be sure.’
‘I’m not asking you to be sure. What’s your theory?’
She thinks of Jamie, on the phone. This is the kind of idea that can change your life, is what he said. Philip has already begun work. If she wants to stay involved, there’s only one way.
‘If I tell you what I know about Rachel Lehrer, what’s in it for me?’ she says.
He’s not expecting this, she can tell from his face. ‘What do you want?’
‘I can help you find her, but I have something else in mind. Another project, one that I want to work on. I want a job as a research assistant, and I want to publish from it, and I want to write it up for my thesis.’
He laughs and leans his chair back on two legs. ‘Two projects? Caddie, darling. I’m not a magician. I can’t just click my fingers and produce funding from thin air. Something like that would need the approval of the head.’
‘That’s a shame,’ she says. ‘Because I’m pretty sure I know who killed Inga Karlson. And I think there’s a way to prove it.’
She wishes she had a camera trained on Philip’s face. What are the five stages of grief? Denial (You can’t possibly, that’s ridiculous), anger (There are people who’d give their right arm for this, me included), bargaining (Why don’t you just let me to do both projects? Look for Rachel and investigate this arson theory?). Depression and acceptance should come next, but Philip just gets more and more excited. Grinning, pacing, punching the air.
‘You help me look into the arson,’ she says, ‘and I’ll help you find Rachel Lehrer. I know what she looks like. I’m the only one who does.’
‘Your project, this arson project,’ he says. ‘It’s better odds than finding Rachel. Like you said: the chances of an old lady, even if she’s read the book, remembering anything? Three million to one. On the other hand, your theory. Every few years, a new Karlson murder book pops up. Even if it comes to nothing, your career will be on track.’
‘So?’
‘So, you take over finding Rachel,’ he says. ‘I’ll do the research on the arson.’
‘No deal. Finding Rachel is your project. I’m doing the arson.’
A wave passes over his face, and for a moment he seems a different man. ‘You broke my heart.’
Her breath catches. ‘You broke your own heart.’
He stretches his neck from side to side, then from back to front. He grips his chair from the back and adjusts it two inches one way, then the other.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘I’ll go to the head now. I’ll go to the dean, if I have to. I’ll call my agent about a book deal. You’ll have everything you need. If your theory about who killed Inga pays off—well. You’ll be on your way.’
He offers her his hand. She shakes it.
‘Well?’ he says.
So she tells him about meeting Rachel outside the gallery, the extra words. She tells him about Charles Cleborn and the typesetting, the newspaper clipping of Samuel Fischer’s death, the letter from Marty and their conversation, the Bund. She tells him everything. Almost everything. The photos in her bag, taken without Rachel’s knowledge, she keeps to herself. The flowers too. She remembers Marty Fischer, on the phone. Private business should stay private. Until she knows more, the personal life of Marty’s parents is none of Philip’s business.
Jamie Ganivet, also, she keeps to herself.
‘This idea of yours might just be something,’ Philip says. He holds up three fingers and mouths the words three million bucks. ‘Look, this is why we need to work together. You can start work on the arson research. I know where they send the cheques—it’s a PO box in Woolloongabba. You can identify her. Together, we can catch her. If she remembers any part of that book, if she even knew Karlson in any capacity at all, we’ll be famous. She’s a rat in a trap.’
‘She’s an old woman. What if she does remember but won’t co-operate?’
‘Then she’ll regret it. There’s a story to sell, with or without her input. The woman who remembers parts of The Days, the Minutes and refuses to share them? Karlson fans from everywhere will hunt her down. Photographers will lie in wait. She’ll never have another day’s peace as long as she lives.’
‘You’d do that?’
‘It’s not my first option, obviously. I like old people, in general. But she needs to see that we mean business. If she tells us everything she knows, we can protect her. Worse comes to worst, I’ll sleep out the front of the post office and wait for her to collect
her mail.’
‘What happens now?’
‘Now? Now you quit your job and start working for me. Immediately, if not sooner.’
‘I’ll have to give notice.’
‘Will you? It’s only retail. OK, fine, just make it short. Bagging the old girl will be the first step. We’ve got to see if there’s anything in it. After that, there’s a stack of work to be done. More background, and a proper book proposal. Some chapters written—you can do that, you know my voice. And your project, the arson project. Of course.’
‘And if everything works out? If Rachel knew Inga, and remembers some of the book?’
‘Then we’ll need publicity. We better get a pro. Expensive, but an investment. A press conference, maybe, for when we unveil her. Or an exclusive. Sixty Minutes. “Aussie researchers’ world scoop”.’
‘I thought you were all about serious research?’
‘I am, Cads, I am. But that populist nonsense, it’s part of the game these days, the university eats it up. And my responsibility as an academic is to bring my work to the widest possible audience. Taxpayers are the bosses, they pay our wages. And I can just see it. Can’t you? Jana, in front of that ticking clock; that gorgeous little frown she gets when she’s concentrating.’
She can see it. ‘I’ll tell Christine tomorrow,’ she says.
‘Good.’ He jumps up again. ‘And give notice here as well.’
‘Pardon?’
‘No sense paying rent when you’ll be spending all your time at my place anyway.’
‘Why would I be spending all my time at your place?’
‘I’m not running this out of the office, no way. We’ll get you a desk but we’re not keeping anything important there.’ He drops his voice to a coarse whisper. ‘Academics sniff around, you wouldn’t believe it. Is your name on the lease? They’ll find someone else, no problem. It’s a good house, this.’ He leans one hand against the doorjamb, as if to reassure it that Caddie’s imminent departure is nothing personal. ‘For a share house, I mean. It doesn’t have that usual share-house smell.’