He guided her through the menu and she was amused to find herself enjoying the experience of being pampered until he said: ‘You should have protein, am I right?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you’re right.’ But it made her distrust him and he saw this, she thought, because his smile faltered a second and his mouth seemed momentarily weak and vulnerable. She was immediately sorry.
‘This restaurant is perfect for protein,’ he said, looking at his menu. ‘It is famous for protein.’
If she had known him better she would have laid her hand on his arm and said, ‘sorry’. Instead she did something she had never done in her life – encouraged him to order for her. He chose oysters from Nelson Bay and, for their main course, duck breast with a half bottle of 1966 Haut Brion. It was, admittedly, a little more than one glass each.
Maria sipped the Haut Brion and smiled. ‘I can’t believe this.’
‘The wine?’
‘You,’ she said.
‘What about me?’
‘From Catchprice Motors in Franklin.’
‘From that terrible place, you mean?’
‘I didn’t mean that at all. Although,’ she paused, not quite sure if she should smile or even if she should continue, ‘you seem so totally unconnected with them. You’re Cathy McPherson’s brother. It seems impossible.’
‘I’m like my mother, physically.’
‘But you’re not like any of them.’
‘Well they got stuck there. They didn’t want to be stuck there, but by the time they realized it they had no other choices. The environment affects you. If I’m different it was because I had to get out. If I hadn’t got out, I would have been just like them, different of course, but the same too.’
‘But you got out. That makes you different.’
‘You know why I am sitting here tonight?’ Jack said, wiping the corners of his very nice mouth with the crisp white napkin. ‘It wasn’t discontent. It was because I couldn’t sing.’
She laughed expectantly.
‘If I was musical, I’d still be there. Mort and me, side by side.’
‘But you love music. You have great taste in music.’
‘I love it, but I listen to it like an animal,’ he said. ‘If you want to picture how I listen, think of the dog on the HMV label. Intelligent, attentive, and ultimately-puzzled.’
‘Oh dear.’
‘Oh dear, exactly. No matter how many times I listen to that Wagner, I never know what’s going to happen next. Every second is a surprise to me.’
‘Well I guess we’re all the product of little tragedies,’ Maria said. ‘This wine is amazing. I have never tasted wine like this in my life.’
‘Mort and Cathy have really very good voices,’ he said. ‘Our father loved music, so he loved them. He had them up in the middle of the night to sing, not rubbish – opera. He had them singing Mozart to drunken farmers. He couldn’t help himself. He’d come into the room and shake them and shake them until they were awake. He was like me though – he couldn’t sing. No one ever knew this, but I found him once, in the back paddock, trying to sing. I watched him for an hour. He had sheet music. It was really terrible. One of the worst things I ever saw, like an animal trying to talk. You could not believe all the effort in the face and the terrible noise.’
‘The poor man.’
‘Well it’s worse than what I’m saying, obviously.’
‘I hear lots of bad things,’ she said.
‘You’ll tell me your bad things, too?’
She thought: surely he doesn’t want to go to bed with me. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘if you want.’
He cut a piece of perfect white potato and joined it to a piece of duck which he had already neatly dissected. ‘He messed around with them,’ he said.
‘Oh.’
He tore his bread and mopped up a little gravy.
She drank from her water glass. ‘How horrible.’
‘He was always at them in the night. I don’t really know what happened. Sometimes I think I invented it, or dreamed it. I stood beside Mort in church last Christmas and he was miming the words. He wouldn’t sing out loud.’
‘He told me your father was a wonderful man.’
Jack shrugged.
‘And your mother?’
‘Who would have any idea what goes on in that head? Who would guess what she knew or understood? But it was definitely my father who decided there was no room for me in the business. I was very hurt, at the time. Can you believe it – I cried. I really wept. All the things I’m lucky about, they hurt me at the time.’ He hid his eyes in the depths of his wine glass. ‘Your turn.’
‘I sort of lived with a man for a long time and he had a wife and I wanted a baby and I made a choice and this is it.’
‘You were happy with him?’
‘Yes,’ Maria said, then: ‘No.’ She smiled. ‘I think I was rather depressed for rather a long time. I’m just noticing it. I think I must have got used to it.’
‘Now?’
‘Well, yes, now.’
‘Now you’re what?’
‘I’m not depressed right now,’ she laughed, and then looked down, unable to hold his eyes, aware of the movement of his knee an inch or two away from hers.
‘Do you know who Daniel Makeveitch is?’ she asked.
‘A painter sitting two tables to your right.’
‘You know him?’
‘You mustn’t seem so surprised,’ he said. ‘I know I’m a property developer and I even used to be a second-hand car salesman …’
He was smiling, but his eyes were hurt and Maria was embarrassed at what she had said.
‘I’m sorry. I thought you would have mentioned it.’ She put out her hand and touched his sleeve. ‘When we sat down.’
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I used to spend a lot of time being offended, but I’m not any more.’ None the less his face had closed over and showed, in the candlelight, a waxy sort of imperviousness. ‘When I was a car salesman in the Paramatta Road – I worked for Janus Binder and I started buying paintings because he collected them. People were always amazed – gallery owners, people who should have known better. It was as if there was something ludicrous about car dealers having any sensitivity or feeling. But once I was a property developer, no one was surprised at all. They expect it of me. There’s a great relief, socially, in not being a car dealer.’
‘Like being a Tax Officer.’
‘You don’t even half-believe that, Maria.’
She blushed. ‘In its social isolation, I meant.’
He paused and looked at her and she felt herself seen as dishonest. She blushed.
‘Do you like Daniel Makeveitch’s work?’
He allowed enough space to register the change of subject, but when he spoke his eyes were soft again and his manner as charming as before. ‘Would I seem too nouveau to you if I said I owned one?’
‘Oh please, Jack, do I really seem that bad? Which one?’
‘“Daisy’s Place”,’ he said.
‘I’m impressed,’ she said.
His lower lip made an almost prim little ‘v’ as he tried not to smile. ‘It’s only tiny.’
‘What I hate,’ she told him, ‘is how impressed I am.’ She laughed and shook her head in a way she knew, had known, since she was sixteen, made her curling black hair look wonderful. ‘I hate being happy here with all these people.’
‘With me too?’ he smiled.
‘With you too,’ she said and allowed him to hold her hand a moment before she reached towards her glass of water.
44
At half-past ten on Tuesday night, Maria Takis left Chez Oz to see the Daniel Makeveitch painting at Jack Catchprice’s beach house.
As Chez Oz was on Craigend Street, and as the Brahmachari ashram was around the corner, it was not astonishing that they should, in hurrying out into the night, bump into Vishnabarnu on the pavement, but Maria was astonished none the less.