Torn Apart

From almost the first few minutes it was clear that Moody had the edge. Not that Sullivan was unskilled; he knew how to defend and attack, but, compared to the younger man, he was slow. Not by much, but in boxing split seconds are crucial. His speed advantage by hand and foot enabled Moody to land his punches more cleanly and more often and to avoid most of Sullivan's responses. The crowd urged Sullivan on, but by the seventh round he was tiring and frustrated. He tried a bullocking rush; Moody sidestepped and caught him flush on the ear with a stiff left. Sullivan floundered and Moody, his moment having arrived, drove him to the ropes and landed heavily on his head and body. The referee stopped the fight.

'He's good,' Patrick said as we moved to leave. 'Picks his spots.'

'Have you got a piece of him, too?'

'Hey, come on, what d'you take me for?'

'Sorry,' I said. 'I have a love/hate relationship with the game.'

'I know what you mean. No, I steer clear of the managerial side. Strictly an administrator.'

We went out to where the white Commodore was parked and Patrick said he'd given Kevin the night off and would drive me home. I felt obliged to invite him in for a drink and we talked amicably. He saw For Whom the Bell Tolls lying open and said he was a great admirer of Hemingway. I asked him about the name of his security outfit and he said Pavee was the name the Irish Travellers gave themselves. I'd read that but forgotten.

'You're really into all that, aren't you?'

'I am. Dunno quite why. It's an interest.'

We parted as something like friends.

The next time I saw him was a week or so later at the Victoria Park pool. He swam more laps than me with a slow, powerful stroke better than my surfer's choppy action. We had a coffee afterwards and he drew a line down the centre of his chest with an index finger.

'You're in the zipper club?'

'Yep. A while ago now. I had a heart attack in America. Lousy medical system if you're poor, but probably the best in the world if you're not.'

'That's what killed my dad. Quite young, poor bugger.'

'Mine too. You look fit, Pat. You are fit, but you must be about the same age as me and with the family connection and all it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to have a check-up. I didn't see it coming.'

'I'll do that.'

He rang me a few days later to say that he'd had the tests and they'd found a blockage.

'Not as serious as yours must've been,' he said. 'I have to have this thing called a stent. No big deal. But I'm glad you alerted me. Look, they want me to go into hospital for a day or two. D'you mind if I put you in as next of kin? Just a formality.'

'Sure. I never asked-no wife or kids?'

'Divorced years ago. No kids that I know of.'

'I'll visit you.'

I did. He had a private room in Strathfield Private Hospital. The nurse who escorted me to the room looked at me with wide, startled eyes.

'I know,' I said, 'we're cousins.'

'You look like twins.'

He came through the minor procedure with no trouble but was annoyed to learn that he'd be on a couple of medications for the rest of his life.

'You get used to it,' I said. 'And the daytime ones you can wash down with a glass of wine.'

He grinned. 'Is that what you do?'

'Between us, yes, sometimes.'

'Well, thanks for coming and not bringing grapes.'

I handed over the Hemingway novel, which I'd finished, shook his hand and left. At the nurses' station I heard a man asking where Patrick was. He was pale and ginger-haired and he did a double-take when he saw me.

'I'm Patrick's cousin,' I said. 'He's doing fine.'

'Glad to hear it. God, I thought you were him making a break.' He laughed and stuck out his hand. 'Martin Milton-Smith, a colleague of Patrick's. Good to meet you.'

We shook. 'Cliff Hardy.'

I thought he reacted to the name but I couldn't be sure. He smoothed down a silk tie that nicely matched his suit, and went down the corridor in the direction the nurse had given him.

'Does Mr Malloy get many visitors?' I asked the nurse.

'So far only two-you and him.'

A few days later Patrick appeared at my door in the late afternoon. He had two cans of draught Guinness in a paper bag and the Hemingway book in his hand. He came in and we went out to the back area I'd bricked amateurishly years ago. I could have had it relaid when the other work on the house was done but there was something about it, lumpy and with grass growing through the cracks, I liked. We lifted the tabs on the cans and poured the brew carefully into glasses.

'Cheers,' he said. 'Looks to me as if you're doing bugger-all.'

I drank. 'That's about it, Pat.'

'Me too, more or less. I've got an idea. I'm thinking of going to Ireland to look up the Malloy Travellers. Why don't you come with me?'

3

We flew Qantas business class to London. Patrick had grown a beard and had his hair cut short so that more grey showed. With that and his smarter clothes, we didn't look as much like the Bobbsey Twins as before. We hung around London for a few days. We'd both been there before and we went off separately renewing old memories. In fact we didn't spend much time together. He was a late sleeper and I'm an early riser. I used buses to get around and he used the tube. We had dinner together only one night, but here again our preferences were the same-Indian in Old Brompton Road, with hot curries, plenty of naan and cold beer.

The dollar was fairly strong against the pound but neither of us was economising. We'd arrived in May and the weather was warm, much warmer than I'd known it to be there before.

'They'll be having to take their socks off and just get around in their sandals if this keeps up,' Patrick said.

'When were you here last, Pat?' I asked.

'About twenty years ago.'

'Doing what?'

'Why?'

'Just curious.'

He ate another mouthful before answering with another question. 'How about you?'

I shrugged. 'Twelve years back. Missing persons case.'

'You find him?'

'Her. No.'

'I was dumb,' he said. 'I missed the army when I left. The marriage had finished and I was pretty pissed off. Would you believe I signed up in Sydney with a mercenary outfit?'

'That was dumb.'

'Yeah. A bunch of us came over here. Did some training in Yorkshire and the word was we were going to Angola. I'd wised up a bit by then. It was a gimcrack mob, half pisspots and half psychopaths. I went to Australia House, dug out some newspapers and read up on the civil war in Angola. There was no way I was going to get into that.'

'So what did you do?'

He laughed and took a big swig of lager. 'I fuckin' deserted, mate.'

We took the train to Liverpool and caught the ferry to Ireland. It was a rough, four-hour crossing and we spent most of the time in the bar.

We were drinking Irish whiskey, getting in the mood. After a particularly rough spell I said, 'We could have flown and avoided this.'

'I wanted to make the crossing the way our people coming out to Australia would have done back then. No aeroplanes.'

No Jamesons or hot snacks either, I thought, but let him have his fun.

Patrick read his way through a batch of newspapers he'd picked up and kept me abreast of things in the UK. I liked the response the new Lord Mayor of London made to the standard tabloid interview question 'Have you ever had sex with a man?' Boris Johnson replied, 'Not yet.' Great answer.

I was reading Tim Jeal's biography of Henry Morton Stanley, the man who 'found' David Livingstone. It was interesting, particularly the stuff about the way people in those times could completely reinvent themselves. Like Stanley, like Daisy Bates, like 'Breaker' Morant. Stanley, the American, wasn't Stanley and wasn't an American. And he probably didn't say, 'Dr Livingstone, I presume.' I suppose people can still myth-make, but it must be harder these days. I looked up from the book from time to time to study our fellow passengers. They mostly seemed comfortable, even affluent-had to be to pay the bar prices. The English and the Irish seemed to be on good terms, which would have surprised and angered Granny Malloy.