‘You’ve got the equipment.’
My next call was to Roberta Landy-Drake in Vaucluse. A sometime client, Roberta has an inexhaustible knowledge of Sydney society and its workings-at the top end. She said she’d be delighted to see me. No-one can say ‘delighted’ quite like Roberta. She was in the garden when I pulled up outside the massive double front gates later that afternoon. I touched the horn and it let out a deep bellow. Roberta lifted her head from what she was doing and gazed calmly at the gate. I got out and waved. She was thirty metres away with another thirty metres to the front of the house-a long, sandstone structure that seemed to have grown out of the earth, bringing up lawns and trees and garden beds with it. Roberta returned my wave, reached into her gardening basket, removed something and pointed it in my direction. The gates slid apart like two lovers who had done all they were going to do for now.
I drove up the gravel drive and stopped near the rose bed where Roberta was working. She wore a straw hat, a white silk shirt, tight trousers and black spike heels. Only Roberta would wear heels to prune roses.
‘Cliff,’ she said. ‘That truck thing is so very you. So masculine. How are you, darling?’
She advanced towards me, arms outstretched, the basket hanging from the right wrist. Roberta is tall, thin and very strong from all the exercise she does to stay looking forty-five when she is actually ten years older. Dark, auburn-tinted hair and expert make-up help the illusion. She wrapped the left arm around me and held on too hard to a burnt spot. I tried not to flinch but she felt the movement. She kissed my cheek. ‘What’s wrong, darling? Are you hurt?’
‘I was. I’m OK now. You’re looking as good as ever, Roberta.’
‘It’s a struggle,’ she said. A spot of rain fell and she looked up at the grey sky. “Thank Christ. Now I can get out of this bloody garden. Come inside, you poor wounded man, and tell Roberta your troubles.’
We went up the drive to the massive porch that ran the breadth of the house-a sixty-metre sandstone dash. Roberta dropped the basket with its secateurs, meagre rose clippings and remote control gate-opener on the top step and marched into the house. Roberta’s house has at least two rooms for every kind of activity you can think of and, for some things, five or six.
She threatened to sue a magazine that said she lived alone, insisting that she lived with six other people who happened to be her servants. It was typical of Roberta that she forced the magazine to publish their names and photographs in the retraction. She was the only filthy rich person I’d ever really liked and, as far as I know, the only person in that category who ever liked me.
We went into a room where there were books, a TV set and CD player, comfortable leather chairs and a bar.
‘What do men who drive those sorts of cars drink?’
‘Beer,’ I said.
She flicked open the fridge. ‘Light or… dark, is that what it’s called?’
I laughed. ‘Let me get it Roberta. You’ll have…?’
She glanced at the tiny diamond-studded watch on her wrist. ‘Low calorie tonic with lemon and ice, fuck it.’
Roberta has trouble swearing with fluency. I made her drink, opened a twist top of Cooper’s Light and sat opposite her in one of the thousand dollar leather chairs.
‘Wilberforce,’ I said. ‘What can you tell me?’
‘Phillip? Oh, yes, I’ve heard about what happened to him. Tragic. A wonderful man. I once almost… but that’s no great distinction.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘No woman under sixty was safe, darling. He must have been married at least three times and you could multiply that by ten, if you see what I mean.’
‘I’m interested in the wives and children. Particularly Paula. Now, she was the daughter of…’
Roberta sipped her drink and settled back to thoroughly enjoy herself. Two of her husbands had been industrialists and the other was a banker. Like the man we were speaking about, she had been an active sexual player in the social stakes where information is the basic currency. ‘Nancy Barlow. Bit of a mouse as I recall. Not up to Phillip’s standard at all.’
‘Or her daughter’s?’
‘Dreadful child. Ran them ragged, positively ragged.’ Roberta smiled, showing her fine white teeth. ‘A bit like me when I was young, actually.’
‘I’ll come back to her. I want to hear it all. For now, other wives, other kids?’
‘Darling heart, you’re asking rather a lot. Let me see. There was Lyndall Crosbie. She was an Abercrombie before she married Alistair Crosbie, the pharmaceuticals man. She had two brats by him but none, I think, by Phillip. Whatever are you doing?’
‘I’m making notes. This is important. What were the names of the children?’
Roberta’s high forehead wrinkled as much as she would allow it to. ‘Robert Crosbie and… Nadia.’
‘You’re amazing. Go on.’
‘Phillip was married to Selina Livermore about the same time as to Nancy. A bit after, I think. Scandalously soon. I think there might have been a suggestion of bigamy, actually.’
‘Children?’
‘You haven’t touched your beer. This must be exciting, though I can’t quite see how. Now, there was Clara, no Karen. Awful name. Sounds like someone who might work in a nightclub selling cigarettes, don’t you think?’
Roberta crossed her long slim legs, which were still good enough to sell cigarettes as she very well knew. She plucked the piece of lemon from her glass and sucked on it. ‘Cliff, why are you looking at me like that? I can’t help it if all these people were playing musical chairs and swapping children backwards and forwards.’
‘More on Karen’s mum, Selina,’ I said quietly. Roberta had pronounced the name Kah-ren which I couldn’t bring myself to do. ‘Any previous or subsequent issue?’
‘I know legal language. It’s made me so much money over the years. Yes, I’m sure there was. A girl again, by Livermore, the husband before Phillip. Poor Phillip always seemed to have females around him, like a pasha.’
‘Her name, Roberta, if you please.’
Roberta sighed and looked around the room for inspiration. Nothing she saw helped and she moved her head to look out the window at the water far below. The harbour was dark under the sullen sky. Roberta’s finely plucked brows drew in and a minute line appeared between them. Then she laughed and clicked her fingers. ‘Verity,’ she said. That’s it, Verity. I believe Verity and Karen hyphenated themselves for a time-Livermore- Wilberforce, if you please. Verity married that dreadful Patrick Lamberte.’
‘Paula Wilberforce is a step-sister to Verity Lamberte and Karen Livermore?’
‘Yes. I believe Patrick’s lost all his money.’
I stared at her. ‘Paula Wilberforce, Verity and Karen Livermore-Wilberforce,’ I said. ‘Nadia and Robert Crosbie. Jesus, this is complicated.’
Peter Corris
CH15 — Beware of the Dog
‘Are you looking for a wife, Cliff? I can find you one ever so much more suitable than any of them.’
I picked up the beer and drank it in a couple of long swallows. I’d been probing for something about Paula- some incident or association that might explain why she acted the way she did or predict what she might do next. Instead, I’d come up with a firmer connection between the two cases. It threw me. I sat in the leather chair as the light faded in the big window. Roberta looked at her watch again, clicked her tongue and went over to the bar. She made herself a big gin and tonic and sat down with it contentedly.
‘Will you please stop staring out the window. It’s not at all amusing, darling. Now, d’you want to scribble down all this dirt or not?’
I forced myself to pay attention and take notes as she talked in between sips of her drink. I heard about the likelihood that Phillip Wilberforce had briefly been a bigamist and about the hippie step-daughter Nadia who’d run away to save a Queensland rain forest and had ended up in gaol for drug smuggling.
‘Only for a little while,’ Roberta said. ‘Phillip got her out quick smart. You could do things like that up there in those days, I understand.’
