‘No ice, Eunice.’ He got his tongue around the words with difficulty.
‘Right Perry.’
Brain winced. ‘My nom de bar,’ he croaked. I smiled and we examined each other. I saw a gaunt wraith dressed in other people’s clothes. There was a feeling of incompleteness about him set up by the thinning hair and missing teeth. The hair had gone in patches giving him a piebald look and a few yellow stumps of teeth still sat stubbornly in his mouth. His faded eyes were watery and there were deep wrinkled pouches like walnuts hanging under them. The skin of his face was leathery and it wrinkled and sagged its way down his slack jaw and grizzled neck into the top of a dirty, collarless shirt.
What he saw didn’t seem to interest him and he fidgeted waiting for the liquor. His hands shook violently and attracted my attention. They were long and thin with blue veins showing through translucent skin. Unlike the rest of him they were scrupulously clean; the nails were trimmed and pink as though a scrub with a hard brush was part of his regular toilet. Otherwise he was battling to stay out of the gutter. A struggle was going on. There were signs of attempts at parting the sparse hair and his heavy, broken shoes had been rubbed up to a dull shine. But he was losing the fight, day by day.
Eunice put the drinks on the bar and I paid her. Brain lifted his glass to the light and smacked his lips.
‘Neat quality whisky,’ he rasped. ‘It’s the only way to drink. Cheers.’ He put half down in one swallow and carefully cupped his hands around the rest.
‘I didn’t catch your name dear boy.’
‘I didn’t give it. It’s Hardy, Cliff Hardy.’
‘Why are you hastening me towards the grave, pray?’
He sipped, still not looking at me. He must have known this day was coming. He’d held out a juicy bait to top people. Maybe he didn’t care or perhaps his brain was so eaten out by alcohol that he’d forgotten. Two years is a lot of booze in his league. I spoke quietly and carefully, striving for some intimacy in the noisy bar.
‘I want some information you were once prepared to sell, Mr Brain. I might be buying or I might be just asking.’
He looked at me shrewdly as if judging how much drink I’d be good for; nothing else mattered to him, his whole being seemed focused in on the glass in his shaking hands.
‘You talk in riddles dear boy.’ He took a sip. ‘I can’t claim to be a busy man, the desk is not littered with briefs, but please come to the point.’
‘You were married to Sir Clive Chatterton’s daughter Bettina,’ I said close to his grimy ear. ‘The marriage broke up, childless. Sir Clive’s widow claims you called on her two years ago. You spoke of a grandson and requested money… I don’t hear an objection.’
‘Ah.’ The sound came out slow and easy, oiled by the whisky. ‘So that old piece of carrion has sent you on an errand. You are an operative.’
The old-fashioned word touched me somehow, off-set the impatience I was beginning to feel. I showed the licence.
‘I don’t want to cause you trouble, Mr Brain, but Lady Catherine has developed an obsession about the child. I mean to find him, if he’s real.’
‘He may be dead,’ Brain said quietly and tossed off his drink. The words were my first firm evidence that the story was true. They had a quality, a substance, that convinced me.
‘I want to know, one way or the other.’
‘Is the noble lady prepared to be generous?’
‘To you? No, I shouldn’t think so. She’s not a generous or forgiving woman. For the man the sky’s the limit.’
He didn’t seem interested; he was concerned with his own sentiments and prospects. If the child was dead it wouldn’t touch him, nor did the old lady’s need. His own life was a tatter and to small rents in other people’s lives he was indifferent. Mending them didn’t signify.
‘Could you make the next an Irish whisky,’ Brain was saying to me. ‘I haven’t drunk Irish whisky in eons.’
The bar was nearly full. A few people were showing some interest in Brain and me, unwelcome interest.
‘I’ll buy a bottle of Irish if you like,’ I said quickly, ‘and we can continue our discussion somewhere else.’
He looked around the bar as if he was seeing it for the first time. Desire for the whisky shone in his reddened, bleary eyes like a beacon through fog.
‘I am tempted by your offer, intrigued you might say. I promise nothing however.’ He looked squarely at me for practically the first time. ‘I don’t suppose you could stretch your funds to the extent of two bottles of Australian whisky?’
I signalled to Eunice. She tripped over and took orders while looking down on the old man.
‘Is he treating you right Perry?’
‘Like a prince, dear Eunice. It’s been a long time since a handsome young man paid attention to me.’
‘Now, now, none of that. What’ll it be?’
‘Get me two bottles of Irish whisky,’ I said. ‘Jameson’s.’
She finished pulling the beers and dispensed them, then she leaned close to me. ‘I know youse can get them anyway,’ she said gratingly, ‘but will you do something for me?’
I was impatient: ‘What?’
‘Buy him some food too, I’ll give you a cut on the whisky.’
‘All right, all right, I will. Just get the whisky will you?’
She stalked off and came back with the bottles in brown paper. I paid and helped Brain off his stool. He never took his eyes off the bag and followed me like a dog. There was a fast food place a few doors from the pub and I bought him a pie and some roast potatoes. His skin was grey under the neon and he used his beautiful, white hands to shield his ruined face from the light. He eyed the food with distaste.
‘Muck, dear boy. You can’t expect me to eat that.’
‘You’ll eat it,’ I said grimly. ‘We’ve got talking to do and I don’t want you passing out on me.’
‘I thought it was altruism,’ he muttered.
‘No, pragmatism if you like.’
He looked sharply at me. ‘Are you intending to be pragmatic here?’
The mild night air was gritty with exhaust fumes and dust. The Cross was just getting into stride. The footpath was rippling with people, some buyers, some lookers.
‘No, we can talk in my car or my office. Both are close by.’ Something, some shred of dignity still clinging to him, made me go on: ‘Or at your place if you like.’
‘It so happens that I have a room, a modest place you understand, but my own. We might be more comfortable there. We will need glasses,’ he pointed at the bag. ‘Whisky like that needs glasses.’
‘Okay, where is it?’
‘In Darlinghurst, not far. We could take your car, I haven’t ridden in a car for some time.’ He scratched at the brown paper. ‘Perhaps… perhaps a small promise of things to come?’
‘No, the car’s this way.’
He trudged along beside me with his hands in the pockets of the too-large coat, holding its skirts in to him. The sound of his brogues scuffling the pavement depressed me. The thought of his room depressed me. I was riding a small wave of hope that he could point me to the heir to the Chatterton millions, but it was only a small wave. I was looking forward to the Jameson’s, too.
7
He ate the food as we drove. For all his protests he wolfed it and I heard him masticate and swallow every morsel. We were in Palmer Street when he spoke through a mouthful of potato.
‘Here, dear boy, just here.’
I pulled up outside a tumble-down terrace. We got out of the car and I locked it. Brain watched me.
‘Very wise,’ he said drily. ‘There’s no respect for property around here.’
