‘You need to keep up with things in my line of work,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said, disbelief in his tone. ‘When you going to finish that table, Mr Walking Telephone?’
‘Friday. Well, Sunday.’
‘Got a big job yesterday,’ he said. ‘Man wants me to make him a library in Toorak. Panelled. Carved. Don’t know if I’m up to it anymore.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you’re not up to it. Play bowls instead. Give the work to somebody who can do it.’
‘I just might,’ Charlie said. ‘Or maybe I’ll get an apprentice, hey? Smart girl. Strong. Not afraid of work. Reliable even.’
‘Good idea,’ I said, heading for my bits of table. ‘Anyone would want to spend five years making mortice and tenon joints and finding out about the finer points of lawn bowls.’
Charlie finished his planing and took the boards over to the steam box. It was a length of glazed sewerage pipe, eight feet long, sixteen inches in diameter, plugged at both ends. The steam went in at one end and escaped through a hole at the other. He gave it an appreciative smack with a huge hand. ‘You want to know something?’ he said. ‘You can give a schmuck a walking telephone. But what you got then is a schmuck with a walking telephone.’
‘Gee, you can learn a lot around here,’ I said, ‘just by listening.’
The workshop was warm from the steam box and the rest of the afternoon slipped by. At quarter to six, we called it a day and went around to the Prince. What Charlie called the Fitzroy Youth Club was in position at the bar.
‘Jack, my boy,’ said Wilbur Ong. ‘Did I tell you I tipped eight out of eight three weeks in a row now? In me granddaughter’s tipping pool, round this place she works. Hundreds in it. I give her me tips Thursday nights when she comes for tea. Me daughter’s girl.’
Norm O’Neill’s huge nose came around slowly, like the forward cannon on the USS Missouri swivelling to speak to Vietnam. ‘You can only get eight out of eight, Wilbur,’ he said slowly and with menace, ‘if you tip against the Lions.’
Wilbur gave him a pitying look. ‘Norm,’ he said, ‘if you was forty years younger I’d take you outside for jumpin to that conclusion. ’Course I don’t tip against the Lions. It’s the girl. She takes all me other tips and changes that one. She reckons tippin against the Lions is the only sure thing left in the footie.’
‘I don’t think you brought your daughter up right,’ Eric Tanner said.
Stan came out from behind the bar and switched on the television set on the wall in the corner. It was news time. When the set was first put in, Stan tried to keep it on all the time but the Youth Club kept switching it off. Now it went on for the news and football.
The news opened with a helicopter view of Dr Paul Gilbert’s health centre with at least ten vehicles parked outside the front gate.
‘Two men have been found shot dead at an isolated property bordering on the Wombat State Forest outside Daylesford,’ the woman newsreader said. ‘One of the bodies was in a hot spa bath. Police said the men might have been dead for as long as a week.’
The helicopter went in for a closer look. I could see two men in plain clothes standing outside the house. They looked up at the helicopter and the one on the left’s lips said, ‘Fuck off.’
‘Police said the bodies had been identified. Their names are expected to be released later this evening. The property is owned by Dr Paul Gilbert, a Melbourne general practitioner who was permanently barred from practice in 1987 after being found guilty of a variety of drug offences. He served two and a half years of a six-year sentence. Dr Gilbert lived on the property. He has not been seen in Daylesford for more than a week.’
The news went on to other things. I finished my beer and drove home. The streets seemed to be full of white Holdens. Had a white Holden followed me to Daylesford? My neck hair prickled.
20
When I got home, I rang Linda Hillier. She wasn’t at her desk, said a man. He took a message. I was looking sadly into the near-empty fridge when the phone rang.
‘We need to talk,’ Linda Hillier said.
‘Endlessly,’ I answered. Then I went for it. ‘Can you come around here? No. Will you come around here?’
‘What’s the address?’
I walked around the corner to Papa’s Original Greek Taverna and bought some bread, olives, dolmades and an unidentified fish stuffed with thyme and basil from Mrs Papa. Menu price less fifteen per cent, that was our deal.
I was just out of the shower when the bell rang. I pulled on underpants, denims and a shirt.
‘Well, hello,’ she said. There was rain on her hair.
‘You’re wet,’ I said.
‘So are you. At least I’ve got shoes on.’
She had changed since this morning. She was wearing a trenchcoat over grey flannels, a cream shirt and a tweed jacket. I caught her scent as I took the coat and jacket. It was, in a word, throaty.
‘This is nice,’ she said, looking around.
We stood awkwardly for a moment, something trembling in the air between us. I looked around at the books in piles on every surface, the CDs and tapes everywhere, the unhung pictures, seeing the place for the first time in years.
‘It’s sort of gentlemen’s club mates with undergraduate student digs,’ she said.
I cleared my throat. ‘Come into the kitchen and I’ll give you a drink. What would you like?’ The kitchen was respectable. I’d cleaned it recently.
‘Whisky and water if you’ve got it.’
She had a good inspection of the contents of the open shelves while I got the drinks, watching her out of the corner of my eye and telling her about my visit to Father Gorman. I poured myself a glass of Coldstream Hills pinot noir from a bottle I’d started on the day before.
‘Cheers,’ I said.
‘Cheers. I’ve met Gorman a couple of times. He’s a walker for high-society hags. Something slimy about him.’
‘A walker?’
‘Takes them to the theatre, to parties. When their husbands are too busy fucking the secretary.’
‘You’re very knowledgeable,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a fish. If you’re hungry.’
‘A fish,’ she said thoughtfully. Our eyes were locked. I couldn’t look away. I didn’t want to look away.
‘It doesn’t have to be fish.’
She bit her lower lip. ‘What else have you got?’
I wanted very much to bite her lower lip. ‘There’s some steak,’ I said. ‘Sirloin. Frozen.’
We had somehow got closer. I couldn’t remember moving. She put out her left hand and touched the hollow in my throat with one finger.
‘Sirloin,’ she said. She put her glass down on the counter and slowly folded her arms under her breasts. It was somehow a hugely erotic gesture. ‘Anything else?’
‘Dolmades?’
We looked at each other in silence. I wanted to move my erection to a more comfortable position but I was paralysed. She looked down at it.
‘Have you got a condom?’ she said.
I swallowed some wine with difficulty. ‘I suppose you’ll think I’m predatory if I say yes?’
She nodded. ‘Possibly.’
I put my glass on the counter. She put a fingertip against my lips. I kissed it. As her mouth came nearer I could smell the malt whisky. I put my hands on her buttocks and pulled her close. I could feel the elastic of her panties under my thumbs.
Our lips came together. Her right hand moved between us and cupped me. I thought I’d swoon.
‘I’m going to swoon.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you should lie down.’
I took her hand and led her into the bedroom. We undressed with the urgency of people shedding burning clothes.