23. I notice taking money.
25. Talks money.
26. More money talk.
36. Mean streak exhibited again.
39. Caught him lying.
43. Rattish face, quite different.
This last description could be made (uncharitably) to des-cribe not only David but Harry's own handsome face, which the Indonesian Consul had once favourably compared to the god Krishna in the Javanese Wayang Kulit. Krishna, the Consul said, had an almost identical aquiline nose and the same finely chiselled chin.
There he is now, locking himself in the toilet to make more observations, and it looks comic, the way he crouches so earnestly over the book, crabs his fingers around that little stub of pencil, holds his head to one side, sticks out his tongue, and gives a number to his latest piece of evidence. He is in torment. If he shits it will be watery-thin and black.
His family, in moments of clarity, saw and sensed his pain. They did the most absurd things to please him. David, who was fastidious enough to be repulsed by the black hairs that grew on Harry's big toe, cut his father's toe nails while Lucy, simultaneously, began to read him an amusing story about Don Camillo which, from an ideological point of view, she strongly disapproved of.
But he withheld his love – his vast, blind, uncritical love – from them, and they were like children withdrawn from the breast. When their love was not reciprocated they punished him with a fury that puzzled them and left them guilty and shaken, offering apologies that could not be accepted, the rejection of which, in turn, produced greater hurts, ripped scar tissue before it was healed, and ended in scenes of such emotion and frenzy that the neighbours turned off their lights and came out into their gardens, where they stood silently beside fragrant trees.
They were like heavy cigarette smokers suddenly denied their drug. They raged at the slightest rejection. They saw no light in Harry's eyes, and got from him no talk, no story, no smile. Depression spread like an insidious fungus through the whole family. The depression interacted and created a synergistic effect, each amplifying the other, and one can see, here and there, traces of quite mad behaviour in those members of the family whom one might expect to be sane.
Lucy was fifteen years old, a dialectical materialist, rational, sensible and, of all of them, the least given to hysteria. Yet it was she who decided that Harry had been given the wrong operation.
'Don't be absurd,' Bettina said when Lucy confided in her.
'It's true. I know.' They were whispering in the kitchen. In the next room Harry was recording 'mutterings' in his notebook.
'Lucy, stop it. You can see the scar on his chest.'
But Lucy exhibited the tenaciousness of the truly desperate. 'When I was rubbing his head, I saw a mark.'
'Nonsense.'
'It's true. They did something to him. You don't know what happens in hospitals.'
'Rubbish.'
That evening, as they sat around in the living room, Bettina got up and rubbed Harry's head. She stood behind his wing-backed chair and went through it as thoroughly as native women look for nits. As she worked you could see, if you were looking for it, the temper building up in her smooth round face, which became, as rage approaches, smoother and smoother.
'You silly bitch,' she screamed at Lucy who was sitting on a big cushion in front of the television. 'Why do you make up stories?'
Harry sat very still in his chair while inexplicable things happened around him. Lucy wept and hugged his legs. Bettina threw her favourite Royal Doulton jug across the room. It slammed into the plaster wall, left a hole, and dropped to the floor without breaking, DID NOT BREAK. Lucy left his legs and picked up the jug.
'You harlot,' she screamed at her mother.
Bettina danced up and down. Pranced. Stamped her small feet. 'You little slug,' she screamed at her daughter. 'Slug, slug, slug.'
Harry sat very still and made mental notes while 'Lucy' and 'Bettina' acted out their roles in Hell.
David leaned indolently across the front-verandah rail and watched Joel waddle as he walked up the drive. He did not acknowledge the chubby wave (delivered at the flower beds) but silently criticized the display of bad taste as it crossed the front lawn: the poisonous green cravat, the ostentatious ring, and, worst of all, Gucci slip-ons accompanied by white socks. David winced. Joel was someone, he thought, who should never be allowed to escape the safety of a conservative dark suit, and whose ties and socks should always be purchased for him once a year, in advance, by someone with enough love and concern to stop him committing outrageous errors.
'Where's your father, Davey?'
He pointed downwards, towards the garage.
'In here?'
David nodded, that cold, distant, masculine nod with which older boys had once so intimidated him. He retired from the edge of the verandah and sat on a wicker settee while, beneath him, Joel banged on a door which would be opened to no one, him least of all.
Later Joel ran the gauntlet of David's disdain before scurrying into the house, where Lucy would make him coffee while Bettina had her shower. Joel was trying to talk to Harry about business. Harry did not wish to discuss business.
David, hearing a creaking door, leant across the edge of the verandah, and saw Harry emerge from the garage and slip silently down the side of the house.
It wasn't until just before lunch that Joel caught up with him just as he was making a run for the toilet. Harry, in tracksuit and sneakers, sped softly along the back verandah whilst Joel struggled along beside him like a reporter trying to grab an important 'no comment'.
'I've brought balance sheets, Harry.'
'Uh-huh.'
What do you want me to do?'
'Just continue.'
'Come on, Harry, I can take advice.'
'Continue,' Harry said, 'that is my advice,' and the last half of the sentence was uttered from behind the snibbed safety of the toilet door.
It had become very obvious that Harry did not wish to go back to work. Just as it also became quite obvious that the business needed him. In this climate of upset and emergency, with everything threatening to crack and collapse around him, David decided it might be safe to sacrifice his famous medical career before it began. The pressures had built up on him, year after year since he was ten, and now he saw his chance to slip sideways, and away to freedom.
He approached Harry on the subject, waiting until he was securely ensconced in the hammock, which stretched from the red flaming poinciana to the side fence.
'Daddy.'
Harry, making a rare entry in his notebook, started, and shoved it stupidly up his shirt, in full view of his son.
'Don't creep up on me.'
'Sorry.'
The air was so fragrant that day, one could have imagined that the grass was perfumed. It was about twenty-eight degrees and their backyard was thick and glossy with the luxurious semi-tropical vegetation people fly half-way round the world for, but neither of them noticed it.
'Daddy': he swung the hammock for his father, 'I want to go into business.'
His father's dark eyes frightened him when they came to bear on him like that. They recalled, too sharply, those recent scenes of hurt and confusion, 'And I thought I might go and help in the agency. It'd be interesting work,' he said, 'I guess.'
'You guess?'
