No, muttered Rufus as I helped him lift the Boss. He’s just beyond himself, poor lad.
There was a sour, acrid smell about the Boss as we carried him inside, where thank heavens the girls didn’t follow us. He was not heavy, slight as a kid, really. Such a big personality you forgot he was a squirt. Very sinewy, but very thin legs and arms. If they weren’t so brown, we would have called them Pommy legs.
We ended up in the primitive bathroom of the beach house. Two wobbegong spiders watched us from the ceiling. It was the sort of place the fauna were always going to invade – possums and insects.
Hold him tight, Rufus ordered me as we lowered the Boss to the floor. He’s been on the opium pipe and it always does weird things to him. You’d think it’d make him docile, but he goes haywire.
Well, I thought, opium! Of course. Singapore. These two fellows had a shared history and knew each other well in places where you pick up exotic habits.
While I held on to the Boss, he had a fair bit to say. He said, Come to the wedding, colonel. Come to the wedding you fucking fat bigot! He adopted a pompous voice. Doucette’s done it now. Wants to marry some Belgian tart from Macau!
That fit passed and he yelled over my shoulder at Rufus, Malaria, you say. Good for you, doctor! Malaria! And blood poisoning. Went crazy, took four damned orderlies to hold me down. Remember that one. Four fucking orderlies!
Rufus began to fill the bath with the cold tank water which was all that was available here. He cried out above the noise of the tank water splashing into the zinc bathtub, Yeah. I remember that time, Boss. The tropical ulcer went septic. Lucky you lived, you mad bugger!
The Boss writhed and began crying, and that and the sweaty and shitty stink of him made me feel embarrassed as I held him fast. I was discovering he was more human that I wanted him to be. I hoped I could forget the raving, stinking imbecile he was at the moment. I took comfort from the fact all this didn’t seem to shock or come as a surprise to Rufus.
The Boss began to work his jaw where Rufus had hit him. Well done, old chap! he screamed. But watch out for Round Four. I’ll eat your guts hot.
Okay, Boss, said Rufus, turning the tap off. Are you going to be good for me?
Can you imagine, the Boss asked weeping, they take her blankets away?
No, I think you’re dreaming that, Boss, said Rufus, taking his uniform jacket off and rolling up his sleeves. Grace knocked on the door to tell us she and Dotty had started on the lunch and a clean-up in the kitchen. Are salmon sandwiches okay?
I called out, Yes, and we’ll be out to eat them soon.
Ah, cold blankets, said the Boss as we stripped him off and smelt the full staleness of his opium and whisky sweats and his urine and shit, and lowered him into the water. The cold water did not seem to worry him, but he argued with himself and the Japanese and God and Rufus and me as we washed him down with soft cloths. As he began to cool off and shiver he started abusing Belfast weather, blaming another country for what he was feeling in Australia’s cold tank water.
When the bath was over, we towelled him and dressed him in a fresh singlet and shorts I got from his kit in the melee and fug of the Boss’s bedroom. As he briskly dried the Boss’s under-groin Rufus dared to make a joke about the Boss’s penis, saying, You don’t exactly own a love truncheon, do you, Boss? For such a charmer?
Get fucked yourself, Mortmain. Women don’t want a bloody elephant.
Ah, said Mortmain. It speaks!
In the kitchen, Rufus sat him down and hand-fed him salmon off a spoon, as Grace and Dotty and I looked on, awed and frowning. After getting a little food into him, Rufus and I put him into bed, and then we ate our own sandwiches and drank our tea. Hearing an occasional yell from his bedroom, we knew we couldn’t leave him alone, and Rufus asked if Grace and I would like to drive into the seaside village of Flinders and call Foxhill at the office – he was waiting there all day for a report – and tell him the Boss was still a little indisposed and Rufus would stay with him here overnight, but he should send a car and driver for the rest of us. Rufus would bring the Boss home to Melbourne the following afternoon.
You’re not staying alone with that maniac, said Dotty.
My dear, no need for you to spend a night here.
I bloody will. If he comes at me with a bloody machete, I’ll shoot the fucker dead.
Grace and I were pleased to get away from the house and drive amongst the melaleucas and she-oaks on the sandy road to Flinders. I was not an accomplished driver, but Grace wanted me to drive. This was a little adventure we both could cherish. She was silent for a while. It was almost superstitious. We both wanted to get well away from the house before we started talking full voice, as if we were afraid of waking the Boss, though I knew that wasn’t it. I was edgy about what impression everything we’d seen had had on Grace.
The sandy back road met some bitumen and took us into the village of Flinders. I got out and made the call to Foxhill, who said, Oh dear! and promised to send another car the next day.
I got back in the car and started the engine. But Grace put a hand on top of mine as I reached for the gear-stick.
Will you be going on any more operations with that man? she asked.
I said, He’s just a bit ill at the moment. He’s not like that when we’ve got something to do. They’re just messing him about, that’s all. The Americans and the desk boys.
It seems as if he ought to be in hospital.
No, I said, look, he’s found out about his wife and the little boy, and he feels pretty powerless about that too. I know how he feels. I have the occasional bad dream about my old bloke. And as well as that everyone’s been frustrating him, trying to scale things down…
Grace grabbed my hand harder. But it wasn’t in her nature to be sharp like Dotty. She said, I hope they scale him down all the way, to be honest. I don’t like sending you off far with a man like that.
I begged her to suspend judgement. I told her that he was a different man when we had something on. His face shone. He never touched liquor then, even if it was available. It was the first time though that I thought I’d need to go along next time, whether it was Memerang or the Great Natuna plan, to keep an eye on the Boss, instead of doing things under his gaze.
10
As Rufus and Leo had promised, Doucette came back to his best. Charming at parties, he was again forthcoming with the ukulele, and sang ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’ in a range of regional accents. Uncertainty was over for him now, and a course had been set. Leo devoted a lot of energy to persuading me that what came next would be the climacteric of clever endeavours, beyond which we would have earned the right to breed children and live tranquilly.
One Saturday that winter, Leo was given two tickets to the stand at the Melbourne Cricket Ground for an Australian Rules game between Carlton and Collingwood, which the newspapers said would be the game of the season. Under a severe Melbourne sky we went off on the tram, carrying all that had happened and what was to come on our shoulders with apparent ease. I was unversed in Victorian football, and so to an extent was Leo, but he reacted to the contest between leaping and kicking men with an excitement that flowed into me when he grabbed my shoulder as if to protect it against the cold at moments of high sporting tension.