Hotel.
‘Is this a business call?’ I said. ‘My office hours are nine to five.’
‘Hah hah,’ said Wootton, unamused. ‘You’re easier to find at that scungepit pub you frequent than you are at the hole you call your office.’
‘That’s pretty comprehensive, Cyril,’ I said. ‘In one sentence, you’ve insulted two of the things I hold most dear.’
‘Moving on,’ said Wootton, ‘I gather Greer’s coached you on the project’s parameters.’
I sighed. ‘Cyril, the management seminars in Mount Eliza. You promised to stop.’
In the background, I heard Mrs Wootton shouting something, not the dulcet tones of a loving spouse calling her partner to the candlelit dinner table. I thought I heard the words ‘little prick’.
Cyril coughed. ‘Prelim scan in forty-eight, that’s from twelve today,’ he said. ‘Updates every twenty-four. Face-to-face. We have a high confidentiality threshold.’
‘You have something,’ I said. ‘Something worrying. Hearing voices? Often feel dizzy, feel that the floor slopes away from you?’
‘Terminating contact,’ said Wootton.
‘Before you slip back into domestic bliss,’ I said, ‘the recorded income needs a look.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Goodbye.’
I replaced the receiver. The telephone rang.
‘This number does not accept frivolous calls,’ I said.
‘Talk to the person?’ said Drew.
‘I did.’
‘And?’
‘Well. Seen the works of art?’
‘No. Why?’
‘You should. Open a window into the mind of your client.’
Drew made a noise of acceptance. ‘She’s an artist. They don’t have the normal circuit board. Take the cunt from Eltham who stole my wife.’
‘I see she’s a painter now.’
‘Well, it’s the mimic thing. Budgie behaviour. These artistic charlatans trigger mimicry in their conquests. Doomed, of course.’
‘She’s having an exhibition.’
‘Why are you telling me this? I don’t give a fuck whether she exhibits herself at Flinders Street station at peak hour.’
‘The mother of your children, I thought you’d be interested.’
‘The children yes, an interest not often reciprocated. Ms Longmore. Tell me.’
‘Just a preliminary conversation. She gave me a German beer.’
‘And the feeling?’
‘Unease. With tinges of lust.’
‘Any chance of you approaching this in a professional manner?’
‘Pass,’ I said. ‘I’m seeing her again. Today, she had to break off for an engagement with her father. Lord Longmore. Baron Longmore.’
‘Made another date?’
‘Drew,’ I said, ‘it’s me, not your plumber. I’m tied up tomorrow, then it’s total focus on Franklin, dawn to dusk and beyond, deep into the night.’
‘You’ll tell me directly?’
‘The prelim scan result, yes.’
‘The what?’
‘You really need to speak to Cyril about management courses.’
‘Cyril,’ said Drew. ‘Jesus. We might eat out tomorrow. I’m sick of in.’
‘I stand at the onset of sick of in. I’ll ring.’
Thoughts of food again. I got out a sheet of frozen puff pastry and put it on an oven tray. I unsheathed the Japanese knife, too heavy, bevelled only on one side, soft steel blade taking a vicious edge but prone to chipping. It also rusted in hours if not oiled after washing. In all, a dangerous and temperamental implement. I liked it very much. I used it to chop three cloves of garlic to insignificance, sushi slice a Spanish onion, and cut strips of red pepper. Then I samuraied a dozen mushrooms, put them in a pot on low heat with a big piece of butter, the garlic, half-a-dozen pitted olives, torn up, and three anchovy fillets. I put the glass lid on and left the stuff to sauna for a minute while I poured a glass of the night before’s red wine.
Put on oven. Tomato paste? A search turned up a small tin of double concentrated, the best. I spread a thin layer on half the thawing pastry. Time to stir the mushroom pot.
Making something is always good for the soul. There is a therapy in making anything that is little remarked upon, probably because the world cares mostly about planning and results. The bit in between, the making, that doesn’t rate much mention.
Cheese? No shortage. Linda was out of control at a cheese counter. I grated parmesan, crumbled a little fetta, cut two slices of mozzarella. Smash time. I emptied the contents of the pot into the machine and gave it the chop. Then I scraped out the mixture and spread it over the tomato paste, tastefully arranged strips of prosciutto and the onion and red pepper slices on top, added the cheeses. Last steps. Fold over pastry, trim edges, pinch over, slash top, dot with olive oil and spread with finger, slide the tray into the oven.
Ten to fifteen minutes would do it. I poured wine and went back to the sitting room to listen to Schubert and to think positive thoughts about my life. The second part was not easy but I made the effort, soon aided by the wine and the cheering smell of the pie thing.
I ate, read, watched the late news on television. To bed, sliding between clean sheets, laid that day, heavy cotton sheets, survivors of the blast, unironed, stiff as the linen napkins at the Society restaurant long ago. I sipped Milo, the warm drink that passeth all understanding, and returned to the new book. Marcel, the French protagonist, was in hiding in Istanbul, hunted by four intelligence agencies because he knew too much. I read some pages, not concentrating, and I lapsed into the half-world, thinking that knowing too much was not a condition with which I was familiar. Knowing barely enough, yes, I could be hunted down for that. Too little, yes, but you’d be safe knowing too little. Except that it presented its own problems. My fingers lost their purchase on the book, it fell away from me.
I put the book on the table and switched off the light. There was music playing downstairs, I hadn’t noticed it or it had just begun. Too low to identify, just a soothing undertone. Bluesy. The new tenant, not yet seen, driver of the BMW Mini. Promising. I drifted. On the edge of sleep, Sarah Longmore’s metal horror came into my mind, the humanoid hunting pack. I pushed the thought away; the world dissolved.
7
‘The breedin,’ said Harry Strang. ‘People talk like they know what they’re gettin. Breedin’s a lottery, thank the Lord.’
‘Better than pulling the parents out of a hat,’ I said. ‘I suppose.’
‘Dunno,’ said Harry. ‘That can work. Take Steel Orchid. He comes of a mistake, sendin the wrong mare to the stud, ends up winnin a couple of big ones. Could’ve been much more, broke down at Rosehill. When was that?’
‘Seventy-four,’ said Cameron Delray.
‘Right. Knew it was around when Whitlam got the arse.’
We were in deepest Gippsland, on a road climbing the front slope of the Dividing Range, a wet morning, trees dripping, the world green, a feeling of being under water. Cam was driving the four-wheel-drive, a machine designed to encourage men’s fantasies of power and domination. So what if I was once Vernon the School Weed, pinned beneath the buttocks of bigger boys in the playground, crushed and starved of air, farted upon? When you look up at me now from your lowly conveyance, you will know that I am Vernon the Omnipotent, the Breaker of Worlds aka
