Authors: Peter Corris
‘Nice room,’ she said.
‘Sleep tight.’
I took a pull on the rum and went to bed with the comforting warmth of the spirit in my mouth and throat.
Before dawn I woke up from a dream in which a man with a bashed-in head was following me round and round an overgrown garden. In the dream I was yelling, and I yelled for real when I stepped over a rusty gate, fell and woke up. Sweat was breaking out on my face as I sat up and instinctively looked to see if I’d woken Helen, but there was no Helen. I was half glad, half sorry for that. I
lay back and waited for the sweat to dry; then I went deep under and slept without dreaming or turning over until 9 am.
The kitchen was filled with grey cigarette smoke when I got down there. Judging by the smoke and the butts, Erica had been up for a few hours. She didn’t look tired as she lifted the coffee pot. I nodded and sat down wondering why I wasn’t looking and feeling as good as her.
She re-charged the pot. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘I was wondering if Chinese people got red-rimmed eyes from lack of sleep.’
She laughed. ‘I got some sleep. I feel all right. D’you want milk? There doesn’t seem to be any.’
‘Black is fine. The cat drinks all the milk around here. Seen the cat?’
‘Yeah, it looked in and left.’
‘No milk, see? Goes next door.’
We waited while the pot did its job. She poured two cups of coffee and took hers across to the sink. She leaned back against the sink and used it for a big ashtray. The morning was cool, and she was wearing a sloppy joe Hilde had left behind. It was about three sizes too big and the message ‘Dentists are people too’ was down around her waist. She saw me looking and tugged at the sweater.
‘Does this belong to your woman?’
‘No. To my ex-lodger.’
‘No woman?’
‘Not at the moment. She comes and goes.’
‘Does that suit you?’
‘Yep.’
‘Why?’
‘Two lives are more interesting than one.’
‘Sounds like Bill’s philosophy. You’re a bit like him, you know. Why didn’t you two get on well?’
He’s more of an extrovert than me; you probably noticed.’
She smiled. ‘Can we go over it all a bit? I’m sorry, I just don’t know what to do.’
‘Suits me.’ I spilled some bread out of its wrapper and inspected it for mould. ‘A talk’d be good. I need to know a hell of a lot more about him. Toast?’
We sat and drank coffee and ate toast and she talked about Mountain at length. A picture formed of a wilful, selfish man, but one capable of great emotional generosity. Erica claimed that he had taught her a lot without ever patronising her or making her feel inadequate. She thought he’d make a good teacher.
‘It sounds like a gift all right, but what he wants to be is a great writer, not a teacher. How about that?’
She shrugged. ‘It’s what he wants, that’s true. He wants it so badly.’
‘Does he want it too much to do it?’
‘How do you tell? I never even write a letter. I don’t know what it’s like to write anything. Do you?’
I shook my head.
‘He reads about writers all the time. Literary biography is probably his favourite reading. He says he does it to find out how a writer should behave. When he’s drunk enough ….’
‘Yes?’
‘He curses television, says real writers don’t have anything to do with television.’
‘Certainly didn’t bother Shakespeare.’
‘Don’t joke; you said you wanted to know about him. Well, this was his obsession. Look.’ She pulled the book I’d brought from Blackheath, and completely forgotten about, out from under the morning newspaper. ‘Why did you take this?’
‘I don’t know. Let’s have a look at it.’
The book was a thick paperback biography of Jack Kerouac. The pages were turned down at irregular
intervals indicating that Mountain had read it in dribs and drabs and possibly more than once. I looked at his big sprawling signature—a firm hand that he’d tried to disguise when he wrote ‘Bruce Worthington’. The date was printed boldly in figures half an inch high.
‘I hope he wasn’t trying to learn how Kerouac lived. He drank himself to death.’
She nodded. ‘Bill wanted to stop. He tried to a few times, but he couldn’t.’ She pushed back her fringe and gave me an unimpeded straight look. ‘Are you going to try Mal again today, Cliff? Can I come?’
I liked the ‘Cliff’, but I was trying to think of a way to say no, when the book came open at a page that had been turned down at the corner more than once and the binding had been strained by being bent back flat. A couple of paragraphs on the page were heavily underlined in fresh-looking ink. While Erica waited, I read the paragraphs: they described the period, late in Kerouac’s life, when he went to live with his sister and tried, unsuccessfully, to stop drinking. My mind flicked back to what Erica had said about Mountain’s alcohol problem.
‘You said he wanted to give up the grog?’
‘Yes, but he was worried that he wouldn’t be able to write without it. And you know how it is, all his social contacts were drinkers, they met in pubs … he’d have to give up almost everything he did to stop drinking. It was just too hard.’
‘Does he have any relatives?’
She thought about it, which meant lighting another cigarette. ‘A sister, but they’re not close.’
‘Doesn’t matter. Did he ever talk about her?’
‘Mm, not much. She lives in Melbourne and she’s pretty straight. Bill called her something strange, something old-fashioned. A wowser.’
‘Wowser is old-fashioned?’
‘Is to me. Why? What’s his sister got to do with it?’
I showed her the passage in the book about Kerouac
drying out with the dried-up sister. It seemed too thin and fanciful to even be called a lead, but if I followed it I could at least get off on my own and do some investigating in my own style. My old mate Grant Evans was currently nudging his way up the police preferment ladder in Melbourne, and I could have a quiet word about stolen hire cars with him without alerting Bernsteins and Woodwards. I’d have preferred a trip to Byron Bay but you can’t have everything.
‘What’s the sister’s name, d’you know?’
‘I don’t know, but I know where she lives—place called Bentleigh. I remember Bill said there was no-one bent in Bentleigh.’
‘Witty. She married, this sister?’
She shook her head and blew smoke over my shoulder. ‘Don’t think so, no.’
‘That’s a help. Can’t be too many Mountains in Bentleigh. Is that witty?’
‘Not very.’
‘A terrible thought just occurred to me, Erica. His name really
is
Mountain, isn’t it? It’s not his nom de plume or anything?’
‘God, that’d screw it up. No, I’m pretty sure it’s Mountain, but I don’t know why I say so.’
‘I’d better go down there and see her.’
‘And what am I supposed to do?’
‘Why did you go to his house the other night?’
‘To work through all his stuff really carefully to see if I could come up with anything. I don’t know what — diary, letters—anything.’
‘That’s still well worth doing.’
‘Meanwhile you go off doing the interesting stuff.’
I looked at my watch. ‘You can come with me when I visit Mal. That’s in about twenty minutes; want first shower?’
* * *
We were preoccupied and not cheerful on the drive to Woolloomooloo. The weather didn’t help; the sky was overcast, with only pale, yellow breaks in it, and there was a swirling cold wind. The water had an ugly grey sheen, and the high buildings looked dirty against a dirty sky. I snapped at Erica when she lit her umpteenth cigarette for the morning.
‘Can’t you cut down on those bloody things?’
Her Oriental eyes widened, the frown line in her forehead deepened and the corners of her mouth turned down. I felt like a bully and was sorry I’d spoken, but she looked calmly at me and took a puff.
‘I’ll quit when you find Bill,’ she said.
We walked across the street, with the wind whipping at us, to the entrance to Mal’s block of flats. The building had had a sort of seedy glamour at night, but in the grey light of day it looked faded and tired. We went into the small lobby and I wondered what sort of image Mal would present in the morning. Dressing-gown? He was hardly the track-suit type; that’d be more Geoff’s style.
I knocked, but there was no response. Another knock brought a slapping of slippers on the stairs behind us.
‘What the hell do you want?’ Glad stuck her head around the corner of the stair, looked down on us, and began an imperious descent. Her multi-coloured hair was up in curlers; she wore a violet dressing-gown with a pink sash and huge, fluffy green slippers. Splashes of high colour showed in her cheeks and her second chin quivered.
‘Go away.’ She looked at me with pale, watery eyes across the top of a pair of half-glasses. ‘And take the little Chink with you.’
‘Easy, Glad. We’ve come to have another talk with Mal.’
‘Don’t you Glad me. If you want to see him you’d better ring up the bloody hospital.’
‘What?’
‘He’s got a broken leg and a broken arm, poor devil.
He’s in St Vincent’s.’
‘What happened?’ Erica said.
She came to the foot of the stairs and gave us the whole show—hair, dressing-gown, sash and slippers. ‘They came and did him over in the early hours. I thought it mighta been you from the way you was chuckin’ punches last night.’
I shook my head. ‘Not me. What about Geoff?’
‘Him too. In the hospital.’ She nodded her head as she spoke and her glasses fell off. It had happened a thousand times before and she caught them deftly, without looking. Erica took out her cigarettes and went over to the stairs with the packet extended. Glad hesitated, then she took a cigarette and bent her head to the lighter.
‘Ta. I’m a bit shaky.’
‘Did you talk to Mal? Before he went to hospital.’
‘Couldn’t talk, they broke his teeth. He didn’t think I knew he had false teeth but I knew.’
‘I’m sorry, Glad.’ I said. ‘We’ll try to look in on him.’
She nodded, pushed up her glasses and slapped her way up the stairs.
‘It’s hotting up,’ I said.
Erica was getting the idea. She looked both ways before stepping out onto the pavement. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said. ‘Can you drop me at Bill’s place?’
We drove through the tight, late morning traffic, and I thought of broken bones and hospitals, of which I’d had a bit of experience, and of Australian Chinese families, of which I knew nothing. We passed a restaurant where Helen Broadway and I had eaten, and I thought about her being physical on the farm or talking wittily on the local radio where she had a part-time job. I wondered if she’d smoked her one Gitane a day yet, or was saving it for after dinner. I wondered if she was thinking about me and thinking, as I was, that six months is a short time to have
something you want and a long time to be without it.
There was a mist still hovering over the park when we reached Mountain’s place. The air was nearly as cold as it had been up at Katoomba, but it had a very different flavour. Erica didn’t have to use her key on the front door: it had been jemmied open and pushed roughly back. It was held half-shut by the splinters.
I pushed past Erica into the front room. The furniture looked as if it had been attacked with a chainsaw—the couch had been up-ended and disembowelled. Stuffing and fabric lay around everywhere and broken ornaments and torn curtains littered the floor. Erica gave a little gasp and darted to pick something up off the floor. She clasped it in both hands and wandered through to the next room.
The chaos continued through the house and was worst in Mountain’s study, where books had been dismembered and papers torn and scattered like losing betting tickets. The search hadn’t been professional and the destruction looked to be the result of frustration and failure. Erica skirted around the messes—tumbled-out drawers, shredded clothes and torn photographs.
‘What’s missing?’ I said.
‘Not much. The shotgun and the car keys. Not kids?’
I shook my head. ‘The TV and the VCR rule that out.’
‘So it’s
them
?’
‘I guess so. Can we make some coffee?’ We rummaged in the kitchen and found two more or less intact cups. I put on the water and spooned in the instant. Erica sat at the table and lit a cigarette. She opened her hand and let a small, gold wristwatch drop onto the pine table. The glass was shattered.
‘It was mine. I left it here. Why’re you looking like that?’
‘Like what?’
‘Scowling.’
I poured the water into the cups and added a slug to each from a bottle of Suntory that had been opened and knocked on its side so that only an inch remained. ‘Bloody
uninquisitive neighbours,’ I grunted. ‘This must have been noisy.’
Erica reached for her cup. ‘Never heard them when I was here. Walls must be thick or else they’re out a lot.’ She sipped and made a face. ‘That’s not what’s on your mind, Cliff.’
I drank some of the laced coffee thinking that it was a while since I’d done any spirits drinking in the morning. ‘You’re right. I just don’t understand this. I can see the car mob wanting to get hold of the Audi. They make an investment, and it has to pay off. But this leg-breaking and house-trashing looks like something else.’
‘You mean they might have found out about the man at Blackheath?’
‘Doesn’t seem likely. No, he must have done something to threaten them. Must’ve played a card of some sort.’
‘What?’
‘God knows. I’ve got to talk to Mal again.’
She nodded. She seemed to have lost drive and interest suddenly. She’d been disappointed at the pub, at Mal’s flat and Blackheath, and maybe she didn’t have the mule-like stubborness it takes to keep going. Maybe it was the first violated house she’d seen; that experience takes some people hard.
‘Look, Erica. There’s still a job for you to do here, and I don’t just mean cleaning up. Someone was looking for something and they didn’t find it.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘I can read the signs. The destruction goes right through the place—they were angry to start with, they got angrier and they never got happy. That means they didn’t find it. Your Dad can spare you from the exporting business for a while, can’t he?’