It was after ten and the Toxteth Hotel was open but I walked resolutely past. I don’t always keep to my pledge to stay off the grog until six p.m. but mostly I do. The backpackers were swarming on the footpath outside the hostels on the other side of the road — tiny Asian women with packs nearly the size of themselves, pale Poms with wide shorts and skinny legs and huge Scandinavians of both sexes who looked as if they could cross the road in four strides.
Putting off the clerical work, I sat on a bus bench and watched them as they piled into hired Kombi vans and four-wheel drives to take them to Darling Harbour, Bondi, the Blue Mountains, wherever. The Olympic wave, which had turned out to be less than a tsunami, had passed over us and we were into the new millennium for real. The city was back to what it had been — a mostly sun-bathed place where people came to see the sights, rather than for cheap drugs and underage sex. Still the lucky country, just, despite all the economists, wowsers and politicians trying to change it.
2
I was putting the finishing touches to a report on a small-time insurance fraud I’d investigated and casually watching the clock hands crawl towards six p.m. when the phone rang. I let the answering machine pick up the call, thinking that tomorrow would probably do for whoever or whatever it was. When I heard Tess Hewitt’s voice on the line I sighed and picked it up. Our affair of a little over a year had ended a couple of months back. It just ran out of steam and on my last visit to Byron Bay we’d quarrelled over small things and agreed to call it a day. She’d wavered a few times since; I hadn’t.
‘Who’re you trying to avoid?’ she said.
‘Hordes of people. How goes it?’
‘Okay for me,’ she said. ‘You?’
‘Yeah. You’re delaying my first drink till after six — kind of you. I’m fine. A few things on hand. A dollar or two in it. You coming down? The room’s there.’
That was an arrangement we’d agreed on — that Tess could stay at my place when she came to Sydney. It hadn’t happened yet.
‘No, not for a bit. At least I hope not.’
‘Come again?’
‘Well you know I’d been thinking about doing this naturopathy course at the uni up here? Well I’ve taken the plunge. I’m going full-time and they keep us at it with essays and everything. It’s got a lot of chemistry and biology in it — pretty tough course.’
‘And you’d be trying for first class honours,’ I said.
‘You’re behind the times. It’s called an HD now — High Distinction.’
‘Okay.’
In just that exchange we’d touched on two of the bones of contention — my drinking and Tess’s need to be the best at everything she did.
‘Cliff, I’m calling on account of Ramsay, and don’t you go all quiet on me.’
Ramsay was Tess’s younger brother. Their parents died in a car accident when he was a kid and she wasn’t much older, but she brought him up just the same. They’d got too close sexually at one time and it’d messed Ramsay up more than it had Tess, who was the stronger character. Ramsay was a conservationist almost to the point of not stepping on ants, but he lacked judgement in almost everything he did and thought. Hated me, for example.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘He’s missing. I haven’t heard from him for over a month and he usually rings just about every week.’
For money, I thought. ‘Well, he could be just off in some forest somewhere, up a tree.’
‘No. The last time I heard from him we talked about him studying. He was going back to finish his Agricultural Science degree. I paid his fees.’
I was glad she couldn’t see me. The way things were going she’d have to cough up to get Ramsay into an old people’s home. I tried to keep my voice neutral. ‘So that was the beginning of the term?’
‘Semester.’
‘When was that?’
‘It’s nearly two months, to be honest. I’m worried. But I swore I wouldn’t go around nurse-maiding him like I used to and I meant it. This course is important to me. I don’t want to fuck it up.’
‘Right. What was his last address? Did you phone?’
‘It was in Strathfield. No phone. I sent a card there a while back but there was no answer. Not that Ramsay was much of a one for letters. I know you’ve always got things to do but I…’
‘It’s okay. Give me the address and I’ll see who’s there and what they know. Where was he supposed to be studying?’
Tess was understandably touchy about her brother and I instantly regretted the ‘supposed to be’. After a pause she gave me the address and told me Ramsay was enrolled at Lachlan University.
‘I rang the faculty,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t tell me anything except that he was enrolled — wouldn’t tell me the names of any teachers or whether he’d submitted work.’
‘All right, Tess. I’ll poke around and see what I can find out. He’s a big boy and something’s probably just sort of deflected him for a bit. Try not to worry. Get on with your massaging. I’ll call you as soon as I learn anything.’
‘Or if you don’t.’
‘Right. Do students have photo ID cards these days?’
‘We do.’
‘That could help. Look, I realise I don’t know him very well. Does
…’
‘Or like him.’
‘I’ve found lots of people I haven’t liked. Doesn’t affect the process that much. Does he have any medical problems, anything like that?’
‘He’s as healthy as a horse… physically. No vices either to speak of. An occasional joint.’
‘Girlfriend?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘What’s his enrolment number?’
She gave it to me. We repeated ourselves the way you do — her apologising for asking for my unpaid help and me reassuring her that it’d work out all right. Meaningless but apparently necessary. Hearing her voice made me miss her, and after I’d hung up I sat staring out through the dusty window wondering whether I should use this as an opportunity to see if we could start again. But I knew that the differences were still there. A little alcohol was in order.
I went over to where I have a big map of Sydney taped to the wall. It serves two functions — to help me move around the city in a more or less logical fashion, or at least as logical as the bridges, water, freeways and one-way traffic streets will allow, and to cover a crack in the wall. It should really be backed by a cork board so I could stick coloured pins in it like they did in such films as The Dam Busters: ‘Now, chaps, we’re coming in heah, heah and heah…’ But I just make marks on it in texta. I put black dots for Ramsay Hewitt’s last known address in Strathfield and Lachlan University before I realised I was putting the pro bono work first. I added red dots for the addresses in Lugarno and Bankstown and stepped back. A lot of territory to cover.
It was after seven p.m. but daylight saving was still in operation and the office was gloomy rather than dark. Still, I switched on a light and squatted on the edge of my desk staring at the map. The city had provided me with my living for a long time now but I occasionally thought of leaving it, never more than after one of my trips up north to stay with Tess. But on the drive back I’d started thinking about how I’d earn a living up there. That led logically to thoughts of selling the Glebe terrace for a bundle, investing the loot and moving in with Tess. By Coffs Harbour I’d convinced myself that this was the intelligent thing to do. By Port Macquarie I was having doubts and by Newcastle I was thinking with horror of sitting around doing nothing or taking up fishing and the impulse had well and truly passed. Tess hadn’t been pleased.