Wootton was quivering like a retriever waiting for the gunshot. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Booked you into the Sofitel. Everything you want. I’ll come around myself…’
She ignored him, maintaining her disquieting hold on my eyes. ‘Can’t you take care of that?’ she said, wickedness in the tilt of the Hepburn head.
I did the professional smile. ‘Love to but I have to take the children to their school concert.’
She smiled too. ‘Lying. Still, hookers scare some men.’
‘Scare them rigid.’
‘I wish,’ she said. She put out her right hand, suddenly businesslike. ‘Enjoy the concert.’
We shook hands. Our palms made a shell. Then she did a terrible thing: she scratched my palm with the nail of her longest finger. A gentle, sharp stroke of a scratch. An erotic frisson went through me, I fell through time, years dissolved, my legs felt unworthy of my weight.
My mother had a friend, much younger, Jane Beacham, a tall and slim woman, married to a stockbroker. I was sixteen. I have no idea how old she was. We were standing next to Jane’s car, the BMW without door pillars, on the broad driveway of my grandfather’s Brighton mansion. Late afternoon. I remember Jane’s strong blonde hair, roots dark with sweat after tennis, the gleam that lay on her light-brown skin, that she didn’t look at me, that she was looking at my mother, laughing, punching me gently on the upper arm with her left hand, holding my right hand playfully, her palm upward, not letting go.
Then she said, ‘Oh God, the time. Off, off. Lucy, darling, lovely afternoon. Jack, you’re my mixed partner for Portsea. Knock their socks off. People coming for dinner. Boring brokers. Nothing done, absolutely nothing. Neil will be livid.’
I remember the smell of juniper on her breath.
And I remember something else: her eyes locked with my mother’s, she drew a fingernail down the inside of my hand, from the callused flesh at the base of the fingers to the centre of the palm.
And there, in that tender delta, her long nail scratched.
Wanton. Exquisite. Unbearable.
‘Changing your mind?’ Sylvia said, still holding my hand.
I broke the clasp. ‘Another time perhaps,’ I said unsteadily. ‘Cyril, a word.’
He followed me onto the landing.
I gave him a card with Gary Connors’ name on it. ‘The favour,’ I said. ‘Just the most recent spending. Anything with his name on it. Might not be on his plastic. Might have paid cash.’
Wootton didn’t look happy. He didn’t like to use his expensive network of underpaid credit-card, airline and car-hire clerks when he wasn’t making anything out of it. ‘I’ll ring you after 9 a.m.,’ he said. ‘Once.’
‘Thank you. I leave the witnesses in your capable hands. In a very loose manner of speaking. Mind you don’t put it on Bren’s bill.’
Outside the bar door of the Prince, hand raised to push, I paused. Raised voices within. I hadn’t heard the Fitzroy Youth Club so animated since the night it became clear that the Fitzroy Football Club was going to be given to Brisbane. Given with a bag of money.
I pushed, looked straight across the room into the publican’s eyes. Stan was leaning against the service hatch between the bar and what would be called the kitchen if what came out of it could be called food. He gave me a resigned nod.
I sat down on the right flank of the club. No-one paid any attention to me. Norm O’Neill was saying, voice deep and dangerous, hands flat on the bar, heroic nose aimed at the dim, tobacco-dyed, fly-specked ceiling, ‘I suppose, Eric, I suppose, it’s off with the old and on with the new. Easy as that.’
‘Well,’ said Eric Tanner, looking a little shrunken, ‘can’t see the bloody fuss. Always bin me second team.’
‘Second team?’ Wilbur Ong said. ‘Second team? Since when did a man have a second team? Can’t recall you tellin us you had a second team. Bit of news. Bit of a shock. Takes a bit of gettin used to, that idea. Second team. Raises a question or two. How does a man get the proper spirit when his first team’s playin his second in a final? Got an answer to that? Got an answer, have you?’
‘Given the sides,’ said Eric, ‘that’s a bit hyperthetical.’
‘Oh it is, is it? Here’s an example: 1913.’
‘Hang on,’ said Eric, ‘that’s before the first war.’
‘Oh right. Thought it was hyperthetical. Depends on bloody when then, does it?’
Eric sighed, made a gesture of dismissal. ‘Stuck in the past, you blokes. Can’t bring the Roys back, everythin’s moved on. Well, it’s round five and I’m not sittin around here anymore lookin at your ugly mugs on a Satdee arvo.’
Norm O’Neill took a deep drink, wiped his lips, didn’t look at Eric, said at a volume that bounced off the ceiling. ‘Yes, well, off ya go. What’s a lifetime anyway? Saint Kilda’s waitin for you. Club’s holdin its breath. Whole stand’ll jump up, here’s Eric Tanner, boys, welcome Eric, three cheers for Eric Tanner, hip bloody hip, bloody hooray.’
The whole bar had gone quiet. I looked around. Charlie was shaking his head, always a sign that something needed doing. I took a deep breath, cleared my throat. It felt like preparing for my first utterance in court, defending a burglar called Ernie Kyte, a nice man but invasive.
‘Time someone raised the matter,’ I said. It came out loud. ‘Either we go with Brisbane or we go with someone else.’
In the silence, you could hear the screeching complaint of a tram braking on Smith Street, then a match scratched against a box. I was rehearsing back-down strategies when Wilbur Ong let out a long sigh that turned into a low whistle.
‘Jack’s right,’ he said.
Another long silence, Norm stared straight ahead, tugged at a hairy earlobe. I signalled to Stan for a round. He took his time over it. When the last glass was put down, Norm said, ‘Well, bloody Brisbane it’s not. Never. Nothin much against the Saints. Few things but not much. Don’t mind that little Stanley Alves, gets a bit extra out of the lads. Shoulda won the Brownlow in ’75 when they give it to that Footscray bloke.’
‘Not averse to the Sainters,’ Wilbur said. ‘Put me mind to it, I could follow the team. Not the same but I could.’
‘Jack?’ said Norm. ‘Recall your old man used to have a few crafty ales with that Bray bloke, now he was a useful player for the Saints.’
‘Pick of the bunch, the Saints,’ I said.
There was a moment of indecision, then Norm said, ‘Give us the fixtures there, Stan. Let’s have a squiz at the order in which we meet the mongrels.’
Stan went off to his office and came back with half a dozen fixture cards. ‘Well, well,’ he said. ‘Saints. Well, well. This mean I can sell the photos?’
All eyes nailed him, slitty eyes, pitbull eyes.
‘No? That’s no, is it? It’s no.’
‘So,’ said Eric, studying his card. ‘It’s the handbags from Geelong. That’s full marks.’
In the office, the phone rang. Stan went in, came to the door, pointed at me.
With considerable trepidation, I entered the undusted, uncatalogued and unclassified museum to fifty years of pub mismanagement. Only a limited number of people called me here. I wanted it to be Linda and I didn’t.
‘Jack, it’s me.’
Linda. No leap of the heart. Nothing good was coming of this. You always know.
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘the weekend isn’t going to happen, everything’s in fucking freefall here. I have to be in Queensland tomorrow, this pollie Webb who’s resigned, his wife could just possibly be persuaded to go on camera: “My reluctant threesomes with hubby and Brisbane hookers.’’’
She was speaking at twice her normal speed.
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Devote yourself to it. Stories like that, it’s not an occupation, it’s a calling.’
Silence. ‘Jack. I don’t have any choice about these things.’
‘I understand. I’ll just say goodbye then. We’re pretty much falling freely around here too. Floor looming up.’
I put the receiver down, regretted it instantly, waited for her to call again, waited, waited, dialled the studio, gave the producer’s extension. A polite woman answered. Everyone was gone for the day.
Home to the old stable, no prospects but frozen food and uneasy sleep. I sat in an armchair with a glass of
