‘He’s been overseas I bet.’
‘Yes, he used to travel with his Mum and Dad. It’s been a bit of a joke, his closeness to them.’
‘It’s a cynical world. You said “used to”.’
‘Right. He’s made a couple of trips to Indonesia in the last two years’.’
‘Aha. Anything on Warwick’s sporting triumphs?’
‘Oh Christ yes, tons. He went to half a dozen schools around here, he was always getting expelled, but he cleaned up at sport — running, swimming, throwing things, kicking things — the lot. It grieves me to say it, but he was bright as well; he got distinctions in his last year at school.’ She paused: ‘Yes, here it is — maths, economics, modern history, Italian. He only got a credit for English.’
‘Tough. Went on to uni did he?’
‘Yes, he did two years of Law. He won the iron man in his first year. Do you know what that is?’
‘No.’
‘It’s a race. They run about five miles I think and have to eat things and drink a lot of grog throughout. They get disqualified if they vomit. Warwick holds the record.’
‘Charming. How’d he go at Law?’
‘Tapering off a bit but he got through the first year well enough — the drug bust came in the middle of the second year.’
‘I see. Well that’s terrific work, love, anything else?’
‘Yes, you said you wanted photos, well I’m told there are two in The Canberra Times.’ She gave the dates. ‘I can’t get a look at the file copies on Sunday. You’ll have to go to the National Library. It’s open today. You know where it is?’
‘By the lake?’
‘Right.’
‘Tickets needed?’
‘No, it’s a public utility. You have full rights as a citizen.’
Then her voice changed and the brisk and businesslike tone took over completely. ‘Phone me when you’re finished,’ she said.
‘Look Kay, don’t stand back so far. I’ll come and get you at five. Okay?’
She said it was. I paid a bit on account at the motel; the money was running low but I had the receipts and Lady Catherine was getting value. I felt uppish; the tried and tested procedures were working. I had leads to follow.
Driving across the bridge in Canberra is a very low-key experience: the lake looks and is artificial, placid and blue with no debris. The bridge spans it easily. It all feels planned and controlled and easy, soft. The National Library is a cream and pink copy of the Acropolis on the sculptured shores of the lake. It’s surrounded on three sides by car parks; cars were bullocked up on footpaths and dividing strips and parking tickets flapped on their windshields like bunting. I squeezed into a semi-legal space, grabbed a pad and pen and headed for the portals.
A gaggle of tourists was gasping at the stained glass windows and bronze work; another batch was inspecting a pottery exhibition on the mezzanine floor. I got directions from a succession of attendants and finished up in an airless room in front of a microfilm reader. The PhD students were scratching on cards, scratching themselves, yawning and chewing gum. I stabbed at the automatic button; months of life, marriage, death and world events flashed in front of my eyes and the students frowned as they crept, inch by inch, frame by frame, through their papers.
The Canberra Times is a broadsheet which meant that I had to adjust the machine often to scan the whole page. I got distracted by the headlines and stories at the beginning of the seventies. The rot had set into the Government, the ministers’ speeches were getting sillier by the day and the Opposition was just sitting pat, trying to sound sensible and waiting for its finest hour. A tide was flowing — a three year tide. I found the first picture of Warwick Baudin in an issue for November 1968. He’d competed at the inter-school sports and won all three sprint races and the long jump; he was standing straight and tall in a track suit sucking on a can of soft drink. It was like an advertisement: he had a big, open face with a lot of curly dark hair. He looked sure of himself — so would I if I had a 48.4 440 to my credit. The best I could manage was 52 seconds. But Warwick, the boy wonder of the track, had slid a long way in two years. The next picture, in October 1971, was on the front of a Saturday paper. The crash had occurred on the Cotter Road — two sports cars. One driver was dead, a girl passenger was seriously injured and the other driver was standing unhurt in the photograph by the side of the road. A headlight had hit him full in the face, washing it stark white. They weren’t ideal conditions to be photographed in, but Warwick’s face looked much fuller, almost bloated, and his body was bulky inside the casual clothes. There was talk of charges — driving under the influence, manslaughter — it was a bad business. Staring at the frank, unstudied picture I tried to see a resemblance to the old man who’d handed down the savage sentences in court, or to the softened lines of the face that looked down from the wall in Rushcutters Bay. It was there all right, but oddly stronger in the younger face. Making all allowances for the circumstances, in the later pictures Baudin’s face showed traces of a hesitancy or self-doubt which had never troubled Sir Clive.
I printed out a few copies of the pictures, made some notes and handed the reels back to an attendant who gave me a tired, sceptical smile. The whole operation had taken less than an hour and I hadn’t used a single stick of gum. Outside the air was warm and still; I took a walk along the edge of the lake and tried to think about genetics and blood tests and whether it could be proved that one person was the child of another. I had a feeling that you couldn’t and all the tests could establish was that some people could not be the progenitors of others. Maybe it wouldn’t come to that, maybe it wouldn’t come to anything. It was still a paper chase, the pictures in my pocket were like a talisman but, for all I knew, the man himself could be manacled to a prison wall in Bangkok for heroin dealing.
Wandering around the big, grey complex of government buildings I tried to push the whole thing aside. The letter I’d got from Keir Baudin was calling me to Sydney, to Honey of Darlinghurst whoever she was, but Kay kept breaking in on my thoughts. Ailsa and I had been on and off lovers, a night here, a night there; I tried to think when I’d last slept two nights in succession with a woman — it was a long time ago.
17
It was a good night. I ran the Falcon through a car wash just to kill some time while waiting to pick up Kay. I felt young again, transported back to when cars and girls meant everything. We had a couple of drinks and ate in a restaurant that had once been an old house — we took our own wine and I wasn’t the only man not wearing a tie. Around ten o’clock we were standing in one of the pedestrian malls and her hips were pressing into me and we were kissing like I was leaving for the front the next day.
We broke apart. ‘Come to my place,’ she said, ‘I can’t wear the same clothes three days in a row.’
I smoothed her hair. ‘I often do.’
‘That’s because you’re uncivilised, a predator.’
‘You disapprove?’
‘No.’ She kissed me quickly. ‘The world’s full of desk-sitters who smell of shampoo and soap. You smell of…’
‘Alcohol and sweat?’
‘A bit, not too much.’
Her flat was in Ainslie, close to the centre of the city. It was the top half of a house which we reached down a sideway pushing through an overgrown garden. Inside the colours were cream and brown and there was a comfortable amount of untidiness. I automatically browsed through her books while she showered; there was a touch too much philosophy for my taste, but the novels were sound — Hemingway and Waugh, Keesey and Amis, a sprinkling of Hammett and Chandler. I was reading Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory when she came out wearing a Chinese dressing gown. Her hair was wet and spiky and gave off a smell of apples. We kissed hard and leaned into each other, needing and giving support.
‘Great book,’ she said.
