by Susan Duncan
Ettie Brookbank, the aging hippy co-owner of The Briny Café, is dealing with a long queue of tradies. With Kate en route to the big smoke to sort out her mother’s last will and testament, god help the girl, she’s knee deep in orders without any back-up and everyone in a tearing hurry because it’s Monday and they’re late for work and ferociously hung over.
One-handed, she cracks eggs on the smoking hot flat-plate, checking the whites are firm, the glossy yolks perky – which means the supplier isn’t trying to slip her dud stock while she’s not looking. She lines up ten bread rolls like roundly plump soldiers, loads them with bacon strips and scrambled eggs. Her homemade tomato chutney is spooned on top. She gets a whiff of the spices. Mustard seeds. Cumin. Cinnamon. Fennel seeds. Mixed in with a cayenne pepper kick that would wake the dead. As good a cure-all as her famous chicken soup. For hangovers anyway. Ten bleary-eyed blokes, barely out of their teens, with hair sticking out from their sunburned scalps like corn stalks and wearing groin-skimming Stubbies that only serve to emphasise their knobbly knees, pounce on the food like starving dogs. ‘Thanks, Ettie. Ya saved the day.’ She shakes her head, tempted to warn them about the evils of alcohol but bites her tongue. Not so long ago, the number of mornings that found her with a blinding headache had been turning into more of a problem than a social ritual.
The young fellas exit the café, a ragged platoon, grease running down their sharp young chins. A lone straggler, avoiding Ettie’s eyes, mumbles a request for the price of a buttered roll. He’s broke, she thinks, and he’s ashamed to admit it in front of the others. ‘Yesterday’s are free,’ she says. With her back to him, she reaches for fresh bread, fills it with ham, cheese and tomato. Whacks the sandwich in a white paper bag and twists the corners. ‘There you go. Would’ve had to toss it to the fish so you’ve done me a favour.’ He hesitates. Unsure. ‘Quick, off you go,’ she adds, ‘or you’ll be left behind.’
He nods his thanks. Taking a quick break, she follows him out of the café and watches as he races off towards a small armada of barely seaworthy tinnies, outboards raspy as an old man’s last gasp. The tradies jump lightly on board and ship themselves off to various building sites. Spilling not a single drop of Ettie’s famously frothy cappuccinos.
She makes a mental note to keep an eye out for the straggler tomorrow morning. He has the look of a half-starved dog. Not long off one of the boats, she reckons. And she’s not talking about cruising pleasure yachts.
While he waits for his order, Sam pulls a small book out of the back pocket of the shorts he wears year-round no matter how far the mercury dips, thinking it’s a bloody slim volume to claim it contains The Concise History of the World. Still, Kate told him once that she had a sub-editor who reckoned the bible could be cut back to twelve hundred words if you put your mind to it, so who was he, a bargeman who took his daily cues from the sky and sea, to judge? He silently chastises himself for referring to his beloved lighter as a barge. Habit. Tell people you have a lighter and they think you’re talking about a Bic. He’d always been a matches man back when he indulged in sweet-tasting rollie tobacco. The stuff that gave off a scent – now that he thinks of it – not unlike the candles Kate’d whipped out last night to soften him before giving him his marching orders. He feels his emotions spiralling downwards again. Opens The Concise History of the World to page one to take his mind off the precariousness of romance.
Global cooling around six million years ago wiped out tropical forests in sub-Sahara Africa and triggered the rise of savannahs. The change in environment saw the development of new carnivores and omnivores, including hominines, the ancestors of modern man.
He wonders what global warming will give rise to and quickly decides that on an evolutionary scale of six million years – or six hundred years, which seems to be the equivalent time-frame in the current high-speed world – it’s not going to be his problem. And, looking on the bright side, who knows what amazing creatures will evolve out of the heat and dust? His eyes track the glitter of a plastic bottle floating under the deck. He’s tempted to hazard a guess that wet footprints will be the next significant evolutionary step if the current epidemic of two-legged water guzzlers continues. The bottle emerges into daylight. Sam swoops on it like a hawk and heads inside the café to locate a bin.
Finding the café deserted, he leans on the polished counter and raises an eyebrow in hope.
‘Give me five,’ Ettie says, still looking frazzled, even though the pressure is off. ‘I’m having trouble getting my head sorted this morning. Monday, eh? Bugger, where did I put the oven mitt?’ She spins full circle. Wipes her brow. Goes bright pink.
‘No rush, love. Take your time. Er, the mitt’s in front of you. There.’ He points. Ettie snatches it up. ‘Bloody hell. Must be going blind,’ she says, crossly, her face beet-root now.
Sam grins, joking: ‘Senior moments compressing, eh?’
Ettie gives him a look that shrivels his kidneys.
In Bertie’s day, Sam recalls, the counter was a dusty mess of tins of antique baked beans, melted globs of sweets and green-fringed bread. Cantankerous old bastard that he was, he’d done the right thing by selling The Briny to Ettie for a knockdown price. Understood money wasn’t much use to a dying man and he might as well do something useful before the rock-hard knobs that had latched onto his lungs cut off his oxygen supply forever.
The community had rocked in shock when Ettie announced she was taking on Kate as a partner. The woman was newly arrived and more inclined towards loner than joiner, so everyone – him included – thought Ettie was nuts and that once again her instinct to nurture was over-riding her common sense. Kate couldn’t cook and even wearing jeans (ironed, razor creases) and a T-shirt (ironed, blinding white) she looked more corporate than café. For Ettie’s sake, they’d all given Kate the benefit of the doubt and she’s done a good job, he admits. Slipped into dishes, mops and waitressing without a quibble. Even learned a couple of failsafe recipes (her spaghetti Bolognese with finely diced celery and carrots was right up there with Ettie’s). But skills are really just window dressing. Personalities – their hard core – might broaden but do they ever switch gears completely? Truthfully, if he had to put money either way, he still wouldn’t know how to place his bet.
‘You heard the news?’ Ettie asks, lining up two white china mugs, punching the espresso machine and plating up a raspberry muffin in one fluid movement that’s as much about instinct as practice.
‘What news?’ he asks, his neck twisted sideways so he can read the newspaper headlines without bothering to pick up a copy from the stack under the counter.
Ettie turns off the steam, wipes the spout: ‘They’re going to build a bridge to Cutter Island then plonk a flash resort in the middle of Garrawi Park.’
‘Eh?’ Sam jerks up from the headlines so quickly pain shoots up his neck to his head. ‘You’re joking, right? Setting me up for some shocker community job like carting Portaloos to the next big fundraiser so it looks good in comparison.’
‘Serious as,’ Ettie says. ‘Check out the development notice in the Square. Found it there first thing this morning. Thought someone was having me on but Fast Freddy says he ferried two dark-suited blokes with a fistful of posters and pamphlets around the public wharves in the dead of night. Looks like it’s a fact all right.’
‘Where’s Freddy now?’
Ettie slides Sam’s mug across the counter and picks up her own. Takes a long sip, shoulders rounded, hands circling the hot creamy brew like it’s winter instead of midsummer outside. In a dry voice, she says: ‘Think about it, Sam. He’s a water-taxi driver who comes off a twelve-hour night shift at first light. He’s where he is every morning by nine o’clock. Racking up the zzz’s.’
Kate finds the address she’s searching for located between a fast-food joint and a (borderline) porno lingerie shop. Limp hamburgers and even limper sugar-coated fries (to turn them golden instead of brown, according to a story she once wrote about the hidden ingredie
nts in fast food) alongside fire-engine red frilly knickers, shiny black boots with metal stiletto heels, rubber aprons (not the kitchen clean-up variety), and lacy corsets. She checks the scribbled note in her hand to make sure she’s not mistaken and pushes open a dirty glass door. She wonders how on earth Emily, who revered glitz and glamour and judged everyone and everything by appearances, managed to put aside her prejudices to engage the services of Mr Sly. This is low-rent territory at best, slum territory at worst. Without the shadowy existence of a brother she’s hoping to either confirm or deny, she probably would have done a runner. She tells herself to expect nothing, a lesson she learned early to avoid the disappointment of forgotten birthdays, worthless promises and – at best – an abstract acknowledgement of her existence. Out of the blue, she has a sudden and completely uncharacteristic compulsion to whitewash the facts – or did she mean acts? – of the dead. Dead. Not passed, which seems to be the new, dreadfully twee and slightly ambiguous euphemism for an essentially unambiguous state. What is, after all, uncertain about lying six feet under a marble slab? Emily hasn’t passed by, she hasn’t passed the salt and pepper, she will never again sail past in a froth of floral chiffon and a cloud of complicated millinery and heavy perfume. Kate angrily wipes a tear off her cheek. Surely she doesn’t feel guilty for outliving her volatile mother. It is, after all, part of the natural order. Emily is dead. Move on. Survival of the fittest. It was ever thus. Law, according to Emily. So why the empty hole in the centre of her chest? The dull ache that constricts her throat? Why the awful, tippy feeling that nothing is quite in alignment any more?
Kate finds the office of Sly & Son easily. So absurdly Dickensian, she thinks, wondering whether names go hand in hand with careers or vice versa. She wonders if Emily was attracted by the irony of hiring a firm with a title that accurately summed up the dodging and weaving that made up the fabric of her existence. Probably not. Emily was never a deep thinker. Devious, yes, but not deep. Kate swallows, clenches her fists and angrily wipes away another tear, appalled by the see-sawing going on between her head and heart, reminding herself of the pointlessness of regret. Death changes everything, she thinks, and nothing.
She knocks lightly. Opens the door swiftly and decisively without waiting for an invitation. ‘Hello,’ she says brightly to the aged receptionist who points her index finger at a seat without a word of acknowledgement.
After a while a tall man, probably in his early forties, wearing a well-cut charcoal suit – Armani or a good copy that’s lounge-lizard sleek – emerges from an office. Kate assumes he’s a client on the way out. More well-heeled than she would’ve expected given the location. An observation, she reassures herself, not one of Emily’s snap judgments.
‘Ms Jackson? Neville Sly. My father looked after your mother’s affairs until he retired a few months ago. On the face of it, it all seems pretty simple. Would you like tea? Coffee? No? OK, let’s proceed then.’
‘Great.’
‘It’s not a complicated will,’ Mr Sly adds. ‘She’s left everything to you.’
‘No mention of anyone else?’
He looks surprised. ‘No. It’s quite clear. Just you. As soon as outstanding debts are paid and probate is cleared, the estate will be settled.’
‘Thanks.’ Kate gets up, holds out her hand politely.
‘Aren’t you going to ask about the value of the estate?’
Mr Sly sounds less smooth, more shocked, which makes Kate wonder how most of his clients respond to the news they’re sole beneficiaries. ‘There can’t be much. Enough to pay your fees, I hope, but if not, don’t worry, I’ll settle the account.’
Mr Sly is thoughtful. ‘I see. Odd then. After everything is taken care of, our fees included, there should be a balance remaining of about $70,000.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ It’s got to be a cock-up, she thinks. He’s muddled her up with some other client. ‘Are you sure? We’re talking about Emily Jackson, right?’
‘We don’t make mistakes, Ms Jackson,’ he says tersely.
‘Sorry, I’m in shock.’
The idea of Emily hoarding cash when she had a lifetime history of scatterbrain financial profligacy that consistently involved running up debts and then stepping back until first Kate’s father and then Kate bailed her out is baffling. Emily was a born squanderer. Unable to resist the sparkle of pretty trinkets, the lure of a silken fabric. Kate, who thought through the long-term ramifications of even the smallest purchase – an instinctive mechanism to counter her mother’s extremes, in all probability – frantically scrabbles back through Emily’s history, trying to find a possible source for this kind of windfall. As far as she is aware, the family fortune, such as it was (her father’s small country grocery shop wasn’t worth much in the days before they morphed into trendy bakeries serving exotic teas and a mind-boggling range of flavoured coffees), was frittered away in one failed Emily-inspired business venture after another. To put it mildly, money turned to dust in her hands. At least that’s what she’d thought until now.
‘As far as I knew, Emily never had two coins to rub together.’
Mr Sly remains silent, uninvolved in family drama. He closes the file. Folds his hands on top of it, signalling there’s no more business to be done. Kate glances at her watch. The wrapping up of the final details of Emily’s life has barely taken ten minutes. Her mother would have been outraged by the lack of flourishes and rigmarole, the rigorous attention to details unembellished by colourful asides. She would have said yes to the coffee, refused a biscuit and requested cake. Chocolate was her preference. It made her feel happy, she said. She would have taken two small bites. Left the rest. Then she would have embarked on a long account of the deceased’s life, or more accurately, her role in the deceased’s life. The reading of Gerald’s will had turned into a circus, Emily giving an award-winning performance of a grieving widow, switching on tears as easily as a light. By the end of it, Kate, who never uttered a word throughout the whole shabby show, saw that the solicitor couldn’t work out whether to applaud or commiserate.
‘By the way, you don’t happen to know how Emily came to use this firm, do you?’ she asks.
‘We’re one of three recommended by the retirement village. Does it matter?’
‘Not at all,’ she replies quickly. ‘It’s just … I was wondering … Well, if there’d been a long association. Whether she kept old documents here, you know, such as birth and wedding certificates. For safekeeping, I mean.’ She is tempted to tell him about Emily’s deathbed (as it turned out) confession. How somewhere deep in a past that Kate, and presumably Gerald, knew nothing about, Emily had given birth to a son and then – for all she knew – abandoned him. Her mother’s periodic disappearances, which she’d put down to illicit affairs, could have been about the boy. Maybe he’d been institutionalised for some reason. Perhaps if Mr Sly searched Emily’s file one more time, he might find a clue so Kate could nail the ghost and move on. Her thoughts remain unuttered.
‘This probably sounds odd, but there are huge gaps in my knowledge of my mother’s life. I’m trying to unravel a few, er, complications she left behind. You’re sure there’s not another file lurking out there in one of those huge stacks …’
‘We have the current will and a copy of her earlier will. Nothing else. Is it possible your mother used the services of two solicitors at some time?’
‘I doubt it.’ Emily would resent paying one bill, forget two. How rude, she’d explode whenever one popped up in the mail. Queen Emily. Bestowing favours. Her fingers holding the request for money like a bag of dog poo before flicking it towards her husband.
‘Yeah, well, it was a long shot.’ Kate reaches for her handbag. ‘So it’s all a mystery then.’
‘Lawyers tend to be incurious. It’s often a mistake to know too much about your clients.’ He smiles to show it’s a joke. ‘Probate usually takes from one to three months, if anyone wants to challenge the will …’
‘Challenge?’ Kate asks, to
o quickly.
‘As a general rule, only children and grandchildren have grounds, although theoretically anyone can challenge. In your case, there shouldn’t be any problems. Expect a cheque around late April. Sorry I can’t be of more help.’
Kate turns back at the door, her hand already on the knob. Now is the time to mention a half-brother, she thinks. ‘I’m curious. When does time run out on challenging a will?’
‘Once probate is settled, it’s very difficult to revoke the terms.’
On a street thick with exhaust fumes and rushing lunchtime crowds, the noonday heat hits Kate like a blow. She leans against the gaudy underwear shop window, her eyes adjusting to sharp sunlight. Feeling frazzled and confused, she ducks into a dimly lit and smelly basement pub next door, compelled by a force she can’t define. She orders a cognac for the first time in her life. A tired barmaid, either drug or alcohol affected, pours what Kate recognises as a cheap brandy into a shot glass and slams it on the counter.
‘Fifteen bucks, love, on the nose.’ The woman sways slightly. Kate fishes in her bag, looking around the room. Furtive men in raincoats – or the equivalent.
‘Oh hell.’ She pushes a twenty over the counter, sculls the drink and flees. Outside on the street, she puts together the lingerie shop and the bar. If it’s not a front for a brothel, her name’s not Kate Jackson. Her stomach feels like it’s on fire. Her mouth is raw. Too late, she realises she’s just done exactly what her mother would have done in the same circumstances. Feel good? Order a brandy? Feel bad? Order a brandy. Feel hot, cold, happy, sad – order a brandy. Does anyone ever travel a long way from their original DNA?
She thinks: Seventy thousand dollars? There’s got to be a catch. Nothing to do with Emily is ever clear-cut. There’ll be a debt somewhere. An Emily-created catastrophe that will emerge one day – probably quite soon – and take every penny, and probably more, to put right. She grabs hold of anger like a lifeline, burying what she doesn’t even realise is grief and loss under a blanket of rage and confusion.