floor. They shattered with an almighty crash. Every head in the room turned our way.
‘Shut up, everybody,’ declaimed the weedy cowboy. He brandished his piece of paper at the upturned faces like he was Lenin addressing the Congress of People’s Deputies. ‘And listen. You’re all being conned. This whole edifice is built on a lie.’
He made a gesture so expansive he had trouble arresting its momentum. And when he took a steadying sideways step, it was immediately obvious that he was drunk. Not legless perhaps, but a good three sheets to the wind at the very minimum. His voice was pitched high with nervous exultation at his own boldness. ‘The people behind this place don’t care about art.’
Backs turned dismissively, and the hubbub of conversation resumed. There’s one in every crowd, the murmur said. Just ignore him.
Seeing his audience’s attention begin to slip away, the would-be Demosthenes raised his voice against the resumption of normality. He succeeded only in sounding hysterical. ‘Listen, everybody,’ he pleaded. ‘This is important.’
I almost felt sorry for him, standing there in all his horrible vulnerability, flapping his skinny arms about, his pearls cast before swine, a teenage barman in a clip-on bow tie tugging at his trouser leg. Not sorry enough to forget my mission, though.
Salina Fleet, drawn by the ruckus, was standing in the doorway observing the spectacle with wide-eyed alarm.
Taking advantage of the waiter’s distraction, I filched the still-unopened champagne bottle, grabbed a couple of glasses and began in her direction. ‘You’ll see,’ the cowboy warned. ‘You can’t dismiss me so easily.’
And, as if to prove his point, and to me in particular, he promptly staggered forward and toppled off the table. He landed on top of me.
It isn’t every day I get strafed. I folded like a cheap banana lounge, flat on my backside, glassware skittering, dignity out the window. The demented speech-maker’s face pushed into mine, flushed with humiliation and too much to drink. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he mumbled, scrambling to his feet and rushing for the door. Salina Fleet, seeing him coming, pursed her mouth into a furious slit and folded her arms in an emphatic gesture of disavowal.
The hands of solicitous strangers dragged me to my feet. ‘Watch out!’ squealed someone. ‘Blood!’
My new-found friends all jumped backwards as if jet-propelled. The offending bodily fluid was mine. The stem of a broken wineglass had nicked my forefinger. The cut was small and there wasn’t a lot of blood, but that wasn’t the point. Who knows what fatal contagion I may have been harbouring?
Whipping a cocktail napkin from my pocket, I hermetically sealed the offending digit. The traumatised bystanders cast me nervously apologetic looks. Fiona Lambert arrived, the scandalised hostess. ‘How ghastly,’ she clucked. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ I said, bravely displaying my ruby-tinged bandage. ‘Who was that guy, anyway?’
‘Nobody important,’ sniffed Fiona, dismissively. ‘These would-be artists, they’re always complaining about something. Are you sure you’re all right?’
Lloyd Eastlake closed from the other side, trapping me in a social pincer. ‘You okay?’
Nothing was damaged but my prospects. Salina Fleet was nowhere in sight.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Eastlake keenly, clamping my biceps. He was quite shaken, a lot more disturbed by the amateur dramatics than I was. He scanned the room as though my inadvertent assailant might be about to launch another attack from the cover of the crowd. ‘People are going across to the Botanical,’ he said.
I’d read about the Botanical Hotel. It was a chichi watering hole and noshery on Domain Road, not far away. Before Fiona Lambert could object, he clamped her arm, too, and marched us out the front door.
Night had fallen over the parkland, filling it with the drone of cicadas and the heady fragrance of damp lawn. A straggling gaggle of exhibition-goers meandered through the trees ahead of us, blending into the twilight in the general direction of Domain Road. To my relief, I could make out the bird-like silhouette of Salina Fleet among them. The tormented artist was nowhere in sight. Perhaps my prospects were salvageable.
Eastlake noticed the way I was gripping my forefinger in the roll of my fist. ‘Wounded in action,’ he said. ‘You need a Band-aid on that. Doesn’t he, Fiona?’
A Band-aid would be useful, I admitted. The cut was small but it was bleeding profusely. I couldn’t walk around all night clutching a bloody cocktail napkin. ‘Fiona’s place is practically on the way,’ insisted Eastlake. ‘You’ve got a first-aid kit, haven’t you, Fiona?’
Fiona looked like she’d prefer to save her medicaments for a worthier cause. ‘Only if it’s no trouble,’ I said.
Domain Road delineated Melbourne’s social divide. It was the point where the public parkland ran out and the private money began. Marking the border were the playing fields of Melbourne Grammar, a school for children with problem parents. Beyond, were the high-rent suburbs of Toorak and South Yarra. Toffsville.
We crossed the road and walked half a block, turning into the entrance of a pink stucco block of flats. A dog- faced dowager with a miniature schnauzer under her arm was coming out. Eastlake held the door open for her, and the old duck nodded regally but didn’t say thanks. It was that sort of a neighbourhood, I guessed.
We climbed a flight of steps to the second floor, where two doors with little brass knockers faced each other across a small landing. One of them had a Chinese ceramic planter beside it, sprouting miniature bamboo. Fiona began to rummage in her handbag, searching for her keys. The bag was an elaborate leather thing with more pockets than a three-piece suit. After she’d been rummaging for what seemed like an eternity, Eastlake said something about dying of thirst, tilted the Chinese pot, slid a key from beneath it and unlocked the door.
Irritation flickered briefly across Fiona Lambert’s face, whether at Eastlake’s presumption, his casual breach of her security, or merely at the time she’d wasted searching her bag, I couldn’t tell.
Fiona’s domestic style was tastefully relaxed-what Vogue Living would describe as ‘a professional woman’s inner-city pied-a-terre’. The building dated from sometime in the forties and the best of the original features had been retained-the ornately stepped cornices, the matching plasterwork chevron in the centre of the ceiling, the onyx-tinted smoked-glass light-fitting, the severely square fireplace, the rugs-well-worn but far from threadbare, geometric patterns in black, turquoise and dusty ivory. Aztec jazz.
To these had been added a huge box-shaped sofa, heavily cushioned and covered in cream cotton duck, plain and inviting, a dining-table of honey-coloured wood with matching bentwood chairs, and a marble-topped coffee table piled with art books. The only lapse into period was a pair of low-slung tubular-steel armchairs, the kind that look like they’re too busy being design classics to offer much comfort.
‘Make yourself at home,’ she said, her hospitality perfunctory at best. ‘I’ll get your Band-aid.’ Eastlake had charged ahead into the kitchen where he was making ice-cube and bottle-top noises. I crossed to the window. The view was of the darkening expanse of the park, and the lit-up towers of the city centre beyond. A tram clattered by, its wheels chanting a mantra. Location, location, location. Eastlake’s car stood at the far kerb, Spider beside it, his jaw working mechanically.
Eastlake reappeared, bearing iced drinks. ‘Gin and tonic,’ he said. ‘Nature’s disinfectant.’ Fiona handed me a Band-aid. ‘Bathroom’s down there.’ It was perfectly preserved, all green and cream tiles and curved edges, the bathtub big enough to float the Queen Mary. I unwrapped my finger and found the bleeding already stopped.
When I wandered back, Fiona was sprawled on the sofa, almost horizontal. A monochromatic odalisque, bare legs stretched out before her, feet on the coffee table. ‘What a week,’ she groaned. ‘Cheers.’ Ah, the gruelling lot of a gallery director.
The heat of the day had permeated the flat, and an air of lassitude filled the room. We sipped without conversation. Lowering myself into the design-benchmark chair, I faced Fiona across the coffee table. The seat was very low and her toes nearly touched my knees. I couldn’t help but see her knickers. White cotton. She yawned and ran the bottom of her glass over her forehead. Maybe that’s how it works around here, I thought. Averting my eyes, I scanned the title on the spine of one of the art books. A Fierce Vision: The Genius of Victor Szabo 1911-77 by Fiona Lambert.
On the wall behind her, lit to good effect, hung a large painting in an understated frame. A highly realistic bush scene, pared down to the most basic elements of sky, earth, trees. The work of someone who knew his subject and hated it with a vengeance. Above the mantelpiece hung a smaller painting, clearly by the same hand. A reclining nude.
Lloyd and Fiona exchanged knowing glances, expecting me to say something. Let someone else make an idiot of themselves, I thought. Besides which, I’d already seen enough pictures that day to last me quite a while. Art
