“I’m looking for Stan Livermore,” I said. “Does he live here?”
She poked a yellow arthritic claw out from the greasy, turned-back sleeve of the cardigan. “Five dollars.”
“What?”
“I ask everyone who knocks at my bloody door for five dollars. You’d be surprised how many pay up.”
I paid up in coins. She waited patiently while I collected the amount. She stuffed the money in a pocket of the cardigan and shuffled back. “Just a minute,” I said. “I asked you about Mr Livermore.”
“Old Stan?”
“That’s right.”
“Silly old bugger.”
The idea of this crone emphasising the fact of someone else’s age struck me as funny and I smiled.
“What’re you laughing at?”
Even with her head turned like that, dry, moth-eaten hair hanging in her face and the skin around them warty and puckered like a toad’s, the eyes were still serving her. “Nothing,” I said. “Look, madam, it’s terribly cold out here. Could I come in?”
“You might rape me.”
“I won’t, I assure you.” I showed her my licence as if a piece of paper was some kind of guarantee against rape.
“Hardy,” she said, reading the licence from a distance of a couple of feet. “Knew a woman named Hardy once. Silly bitch.”
“Mrs…?”
“Tracey, Betty Tracey. Have you got live dollars?”
“I already gave you five dollars. They’re in your pocket.”
I was suddenly aware of sounds around and above me. A door had opened in the next house, and a couple of the louvre windows had been operated. I guessed what was going on-old Betty was putting on her show for an always-appreciative audience. It was called ‘Make the stranger look like an idiot’ and it ran for as many acts as he was dopey enough to allow. I didn’t feel like playing. I took out a twenty-dollar note and waved it in front of Betty’s forty-five-degree face. Suddenly she was the bit player and I was the lead. I snapped the note. “If you want this, invite me in.”
She stepped back and let the door open wide enough to let me as well as my money pass through it. But that was as much as she was willing to concede. She let the door sit ajar and moved only a few feet down the hallway. There was almost no light; I had an impression of narrow, steep stairs at the end of the passage and one room off to the right.
“Are you going to give me the money or rape me? Did you see that Lady whatshername got raped? She was older than me.”
She was referring to a wealthy titled north shore woman whose life had ended the way no one’s should-raped, robbed, bashed to death. The recollection made me disinclined to any kind of coercion. Risking the chance that she’d suddenly stand up straight and waltz away up the stairs, I handed her the twenty. “I want to talk to Stan Livermore. I was given this as his address. Does he live here?”
“Old Stan?”
Oh, Christ, not again, I thought. “Yes, old Stan. Is he here?”
“No.”
“Does he live here?”
She folded the note three times and put it in the pocket along with the coins. “Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
She sucked in a deep breath and sniffed. Slowly, she swivelled her head around in a ninety degree turn so that instead of looking up with her head cocked towards her right shoulder, it was cocked towards her left. The manoeuvre seemed to take a full minute. When she was ready she sniffed again and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “What’s the time?”
Here we go, I thought. I looked at my watch. “Nearly half-past four.”
“You’ve got about three-quarters of an hour to catch him, then.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I know where he’ll be till quarter past five, after that it’s anybody’s guess. Might come back here tonight, might not.”
“Right. Understood. Where will he be until five fifteen?”
She paused and I waited for more sniffs, more citations of rape cases or more requests for money. Maybe she considered all three but she settled for a sniff. “He’ll be in the Botanic Gardens, watching the bloody sun go down behind the bloody bridge. Does it every day it isn’t pissing down rain. Silly old bugger.”
“So he’s still the secretary of this Veterans of the Bridge thing?”
“‘Course he is. All he thinks about. Him and a couple others just as mad.”
“Where in the gardens?”
She shrugged, which in her case was more of a horizontal movement than a vertical one. “Anywhere he can get a good view. Could be Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, could be closer to the Opera House. Anywhere. Took me to see it once. Silly old bugger. Sun goin’ down behind the bloody bridge. So what?”
I was moving towards the door, calculating time and distance. “How will I recognise him?”
“Old Stan? Easy, only one of his kind in captivity. White beard down to here.” She bunched her cardigan together at the waist. The coins fell out on the floor. Well, she didn’t have far to go to pick them up. I hit the footpath running.
Getting a cab in the Rocks at half-past four in the afternoon is no easy matter, especially when a cold wind has started to blow. That’s how it was as I ran along Pump Street towards the nearest corner. No luck; a bus and some private cars threw muddy water from the recently passed street sweeper over my feet. I ran in the direction of the nearest set of lights and moved from one corner of the intersection to the other, trying to second-guess the traffic stream. It took ten minutes, but I finally grabbed a Legion cab which was stopped at the lights. I overcame the driver’s reluctance with another twenty-dollar note-Louise Madden was spending some serious money now.
As well as muggers and drunk vomiters, taxi drivers dislike passengers who don’t know where they’re going and passengers who do know and tell them street by street how to get there. I wanted the Botanic Gardens, and the only instruction I could give was, “The nearest gate”.
He dropped me opposite the old State Library building, and I battled the wind past the fountain, which wasn’t spurting, and through the gate. A newish sign inside told me that this was the Morshead Fountain gate and that the gardens this month were closed to the public at 5 p.m. I took the first path that seemed to promise a view of the bridge, almost fell on the first long set of steps and dashed past another fountain and several statues of Greek gods doing godlike things.
The sky was clear and rapidly turning pink and orange in the west as the sun sank-a good bridge-viewing sky. I had no idea of where the best vantage points would be, and the bridge itself kept disappearing behind trees as I hurried along the paths. A few people straggling up towards the south gate looked at me oddly as I bustled along. The light was fading fast, and the wind’s cutting edge seemed to get keener by the minute. I kept heading towards the higher ground, and some instinct or memory told me that keeping the duck pond and kiosk on my right was the proper thing to do.
An avenue of thick, high-reaching palms blocked my view of everything and brought visibility low to murky. Ever since an eye accident a few years ago I’ve had trouble adapting quickly to changes in light level, and the sudden brightness of direct sunrays that hit the gardens as I emerged from the avenue almost blinded me. I stopped, shaded my eyes and scanned the lawns and flower beds. For a moment I thought that a rotunda up ahead might provide a good view but then I realised that a stand of trees was in the way. I moved to the left and got a clear view through a gap in the trees. A path a little further along led towards a rise in the land and a garden bench. From the bench there would be a clear view through the trees west to the bridge. There was no one on the bench, but a shape lay on the ground beside it. I hurdled a plot of native something-or-others and ran across the grass to the bench.
He was lying on his back, very still, a thin, frail figure with a big overcoat spread out around him. The long white beard hung down below the V-neck of a torn and darned red sweater. The beard was red too, in the places where blood from the gash on his forehead had splashed onto it. His old, pale blue eyes were open and so was his mouth; a bottom denture had fallen out and the lower part of his face had a puckered, eroded look. I bent down and felt his thin wrist and put my watch face near his nose and mouth, but there was no pulse and no breath. People say things like “the body was still warm”; that doesn’t make much sense on a cold night. His hands and face were as cold as mine. I looked up and saw the bridge etched clearly against the sunset. It was the first time I’d ever seen it but Stan Livermore would never see it again.