‘It’s not Jack,’ shrieked Cathy McPherson. ‘Look, look. Can you see? You stupid old woman. It’s the bloody Tax Department.’
Maria could smell something sweet and alcoholic on Cathy McPherson’s breath. She could see the texture of her skin, which was not as good as it had looked through the flyscreen. She thought: if I was forty-five and I could afford boots like those, I’d be saving money for a facelift.
‘This is ugly,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘I know it’s ugly. I’m sorry. You really have to talk to her?’
‘I have an appointment with her for ten o’clock.’
‘You’ll need someone to interpret,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘If this involves me, I want to be there. Does it involve me?’
‘I really do need to talk to her. She is the public officer.’
‘She’s senile. Jack hasn’t lived here for twenty years.’
Maria released the catch on her umbrella. ‘None the less she’s the public officer.’
‘She pisses in her bed.’
Maria collapsed her umbrella and stood in front of Cathy McPherson with the rain falling on her head.
‘Suit yourself,’ Cathy McPherson opened the door. Maria followed her into a little annexe no bigger than a toilet. Dry dog food and Kitty Litter crunched beneath their feet. The air was spongy, wet with unpleasant smells.
The door to the left led to a galley kitchen with hot-pink Laminex cupboards. There was a flagon of wine sitting on top of a washing machine. There were louvred windows with a view of the car yard. Ahead was the sitting-room. They reached it through a full length glass door with yellowed Venetian blinds. For a moment all Maria could see were rows of dolls in lacy dresses. They were ranked in spotlit shelves along one end of the room.
‘Who is it?’ Granny Catchprice asked from a position mid-way between Maria and the dolls.
‘My name is Maria Takis. I’m from the Taxation Office.’
‘And you’re going to have a baby,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘How wonderful.’
Maria could see her now. She was at least eighty years old. She was frail and petite. She had chemical white hair pulled back tightly from a broad forehead which was mottled brown. Her eyes were watery, perhaps from distress, but perhaps they were watery anyway. She had a small but very determined jaw, a wide mouth and very white, bright (false) teeth which gave her face the liveliness her eyes could not. But it was not just the teeth – it was the way she leaned, strained forward, the degree of simple attention she brought to the visitor, and in this her white, bright teeth were merely the leading edge, the clear indicator of the degree of her interest. She did not look in the least senile. She was flat-chested and neatly dressed in a paisley blouse with a large opal pendant clasped to the high neck. It was impossible to believe she had ever given birth to the woman in the cowgirl suit.
There was a very blond young man in a slightly higher chair beside her. Maria held out her hand, imagining that this was her accountant. This seemed to confuse him – Australian men did not normally shake hands with women – but he took what was offered him.
‘Dr Taylor will give you his chair,’ said Mrs Catchprice.
Not the accountant. The doctor. He looked at his watch and sighed, but he did give up his chair and Maria took it more gratefully than she might have imagined.
Mrs Catchprice put her hand on Maria’s forearm. ‘I’d never have a man for a doctor,’ she said. ‘Unless there was no choice, which is often the case.’
‘I was hoping your accountant would be here.’
‘Let me ask you this,’ Granny Catchprice said. ‘Do I look sick?’
Cathy McPherson groaned. A young male laughed softly from somewhere in the deep shadows beside the bride dolls.
‘No,’ said Maria, ‘but I’m not a doctor.’
‘What are you?’ said Mrs Catchprice.
‘I’m with the Taxation Office. We have an appointment today at ten.’ Maria passed Mrs Catchprice her I.D. Mrs Catchprice looked at it carefully and then gave it back.
‘Well that’s an interesting job. You must be very highly qualified.’
‘I have a degree.’
‘In what?’ Mrs Catchprice leaned forward. ‘You have a lovely face. What is your name again?’
‘Maria Takis.’
‘Italian?’
‘My mother and father came from Greece.’
‘And slaved their fingers to the bone, I bet.’
‘Mrs Takis,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I was conducting an examination.’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘you can go now, Doctor.’ She patted Maria’s hand. ‘We women stick together. Most of us,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘Not all of us.’
Cathy McPherson took two fast steps towards her mother with her hand raised as if to slap her.
‘See!’ said Mrs Catchprice.
Maria saw: Cathy McPherson, her hand arrested in mid-air, her face red and her eyes far too small to hold such a load of guilt and self-righteousness.
‘See,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She turned to Maria. ‘My housekeeping has deteriorated, so they want to commit me. Not Jack – the others. If Jack knew he’d be here to stop them.’
‘No one’s committing you,’ Cathy McPherson said.
‘That’s right,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘You can’t. You thought you could, but you can’t. They can’t do it with one doctor,’ she patted Maria’s wrist. ‘They need two doctors. I am correct, am I not? But you don’t know – why would you? You’re from Taxation.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well you can’t see me if I’m committed.’ Mrs Catchprice folded her fine-boned, liver-spotted hands in her lap and smiled around the room. ‘Q.E.D.,’ she said.
‘The situation,’ said Dr Taylor, with the blunt blond certainties that come from being born ‘a real aussie’ in Dee Why, New South Wales. ‘The situation …’ He wrote two more words on the form and underlined a third.
‘Put a magazine under that,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I don’t want to read my death warrant gouged into the cedar table.’
A Hare Krishna emerged from the gloom with some newspaper which he slid under the doctor’s papers.
‘The situation,’ said the doctor, ‘is that you are incapable of looking after yourself.’
‘This is my home,’ said Mrs Catchprice, and began to cry. She clung on to Maria’s arm. ‘I own this business.’
Cathy sighed loudly, ‘No you don’t, Frieda,’ she said. ‘You are a shareholder just like me.’
‘I will not be locked up,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She dug her hands into Maria’s arm and looked her in the face.
Maria patted the old woman’s shoulder. She had joined the Taxation Office for bigger, grander, truer things than this. She knew already what she would find if she audited this business: little bits of crookedness, amateurish, easily found. The unpaid tax and the fines would then bankrupt the business.
The kindest thing she could do for this old woman would be to let her be committed. Two doctors attesting to the informant’s senility might be enough to persuade Sally Ho to stop this investigation. Sally could then use her ASO 7 status to find something equally humiliating for Maria to do, and this particular business could be left to limp along and support this old woman in her old age.
But Mrs Catchprice was digging her (very sharp) nails into Maria’s forearm and her face was folding in on itself, and her shoulders were rounding, and an unbearable sound was emerging from her lips.
‘Oh don’t,’ Maria whispered to the old woman. ‘Oh don’t, please, don’t.’
The Hare Krishna knelt on Mrs Catchprice’s other side. He had great thick arms. He smelt of carrots and patchouli oil.
‘What will happen to you when you’re too old to be productive?’ he asked the doctor. His voice was high and breathless, trembling with emotion.