later. I don’t think I could remember any more.’
She lifted her arms and I pulled the robe up and off. We remembered some of the things we’d done in the night and tried out some new ones.
Later I showered and dressed, and wandered around the flat scratching at my heavy beard. She made a few phone calls, and her movements suggested that it was time for me to be on my way. I helped her pull up the bed; we stood on opposite sides of it and looked at each other.
‘You’re smiling’, she said. ‘You don’t do that all that often.’
‘Wait until you know me better. Sometimes I smile all day. Do nothing else.’
‘I’d like to see that.’
For her, that was a commitment. I felt I could presume just a little. ‘You’ll see it. What’re you going to do today?’
‘Going out-lunch.’
‘What’s a good time to ring you?’
‘No special time. I’m busy being free. Why don’t you give me your number? Let impulse rule.’
I wrote the number down for her. and she let me out of the flat and the building. I could feel myself smiling again as I walked down the sunny street.
I took a good look along Greenknowe Avenue and around a few corners before I approached my car. It was after 10 a.m. and the parking ticket was fluttering on the windscreen. There was no one watching the car that I could see. I drove to St Peter’s Lane and left the car where it costs me ten bucks a week to park rather than twenty-five a night, and went up to my office. I was still smiling and even whistling-something that gives pleasure to no one but me-as I climbed the stairs.
No water view here, no high ceilings with plaster roses and soft, off-white paint. The office has cream- coloured walls which are trying to turn green of their own accord, and a ceiling so stained and dirty it looks as if it could once have been the floor. The filing cabinet has a typewriter sitting on it with a cover to keep the dust out; nothing keeps the dust off the windows or the desk top. You have to pay for a view and plaster roses and clean paint-the dust is free.
I wrote out a cheque for the parking ticket, put it in the envelope provided, and felt virtuous. I entered the fine in a notebook under ‘expenses’ and felt businesslike. There weren’t many entries under ‘expenses’, and I couldn’t decide whether to feel economical about that or non-industrious. I took the spare electric razor from the desk drawer and went down the hall to shave and clean up. A quick wash and mouth rinse, and I was ready to add something to the expense list.
I sat in my swivel chair that has given up swivelling, put my Italian shoes up on the desk and thought about Helen Broadway. I wanted to ask her what part of Sydney she’d grown up in, and what she’d been doing on 11 November 1975. I wanted to know if she played tennis and if she’d read The Great Gatsby. I wanted to know what she liked to eat besides toast, and drink besides coffee and scotch. But right now Paul Guthrie was paying and I’d have to wait until I was on my own time.
Primo Tomasetti, the tattooist who rents me my car-parking space, has a dark room in his place of business. If walls could speak those of his darkroom would tell Z-rated stories. I walked into the tattoo shop, held up the film cassette from the miniature camera and Primo nodded. He was working on the very large forearm of a biker who was watching the work, with his lips moving. The needle buzzed, like a tormented bee.
‘What’s that, Primo?’
He kept his dark head with its wild, uncombable curls bent over the arm. He looked up to a sheet of grubby paper with typing on it and then back to the job. His white coat was spotless as always, he wore Italian shoes too but his were pointed.
‘Rules of his club, Cliff.’
The biker glowered at me and pushed back his thick, greasy hair with his free hand.
‘Good idea’, I said. ‘What’s the first article?’
Primo looked up enquiringly at the customer who gave him a sullen nod and me a look of hostility mixed with suspicion. But he was pleased with what was happening, and it made him half-civil.
Primo tested his handiwork by reading directly from the kin: ‘No member shall use a machine of under 1500cc.’
‘That lets me out’, I said. ‘Everything set up in the darkroom?’
The camera uses a standard 15mm film, and processing these days is child’s play even to the technically handicapped like me. I did the things you do with the solutions and peg’s and fixative and came up with my usual result: two of the four profile shots were blurred, the others were okay. Only one of the almost full-face shots was worth looking at but it was pretty good. You wouldn’t have called ‘the cop’ photogenic, but the camera had caught the full venality of him, the forcefulness of the fleshy face and malevolence of his down-turned mouth. The face stood out clearly against the indistinct background-if you knew him in life you’d know him from this picture.
I ran off a few copies, cleaned up my own mess the way my mother taught me, thanked Primo and went off to phone Frank Parker. He was at home, doing nothing, and invited me over to see him.
‘Bullet-proof vests?’ I said.
‘Tennis gear, we’ll have a game.’
Frank’s place was in Harbord and the suburb looked particularly well on the clear, bright day. The street was middle-income, middle-mortgage territory. Frank’s house was one of the smallest; he must have been one of the few residents without children. Signs of them were everywhere around the other places-bikes, toys and icy pole wrappers trapped at the feet of gate posts.
Frank was already in his tennis clothes; I went inside and changed into the down-market tennis gear I keep in the car-and we walked a couple of blocks to the local courts. Parker’s house had a strange, alien air to it and he seemed glad to be out on the street. He was nervous though, and he bounced the balls continually on the walk.
The three cement courts had good surfaces and clear markings Parker spoke briefly to the manager, who lived in a house beside the courts in what looked like happy semi-retirement. The nets were in a big box; Parker dug one out and we got set up. There was no one else around to play and it occurred to me that Parker was a sitting duck if someone wanted to take him out now. I mentioned this while we were measuring the net.
He whacked the top vigorously. ‘Anyone thinks I’m going to sit around going crazy, they can think again. I’m not sure those go’s at me have been fair dinkum anyway.’ We satisfied ourselves about the net height and Parker nudged his racquet cover with his foot-the shape of his pistol was clear under the vinyl.
It became obvious almost from the hit-up that Frank was about a 10 per cent better tennis player than me. His backhand was confident, mine isn’t. He’d even learned how to impart some topspin to it, a thing unimaginable in the days when I learned to play. Against that, he had a tendency to hit his serve too hard which made him liable to double fault. He had quickness and range at the net, but lobbing was my forte.
It was a beautiful day, and Liam Catchpole and murderous Mazdas and police corruption seemed far distant things as we played. We both had authoritative forehands, and some of our best rallies were of that standard that lifts you out of yourself and gives you a glimpse of what real sporting excellence might be like.
Frank won the first set 6–3; I pegged him back in the second when the double faults began to creep in and I got a good percentage of my lobs over his head and in. At 6-all we decided to play a lingering death tie-breaker, which I won 9–7.
It was good to be walking back with a sweat up, despite the beginnings of a blister on my hand. Frank had stopped bouncing the balls.
‘Kenny Rosewall grew up around here’, he said. ‘Played on those courts.’
‘Yeah? I wonder where he is now?’
‘Dallas, Miami, one of those places.’
‘Ever see him?’
‘Bloody oath. I saw him beat Hoad for the Australian title in 1955. Straight sets.’
‘Remember the score, Frank?’
‘Never forget it: 9–7, 6–4, 6–4. Amazing man.’
‘That’s right. What d’you think of Cash?’
We talked tennis until we got back to his empty house. I showered and changed, and joined him in the
