The Son (5 page)

‘Just going away for a few days.'

‘Where to?'

‘Just a– I'm not sure. A friend's got a farm.'

‘Should be fun. Got good weather for it.'

I thought about my next question.

‘Anything to do with that group your aunt mentioned?'

‘What did she tell you?'

‘Just that you're mixing with a group that's pretty anti-communist, and she's worried about it.'

‘She has no cause to be.'

Eric directed me towards Fairfield, a nearby suburb. I wondered what was wrong: was it my approach, that was about as subtle as a bull? The generation gap? I did much better when interviewing applicants.

Presently we arrived in another street, lined with apartment blocks this time. We pulled up outside one of these, with a ramshackle gate and newspapers strewn about the stairwell.

‘This is where I have to meet my friend,' he said. ‘Thanks for the lift.'

‘Listen Eric–' I tried one last time. ‘I'm sorry we haven't had much chance to talk today. I'd like to see you again. Maybe I can help, after your aunt goes back to Britain. How long are you going to be away at your friend's farm?'

‘A few days. I'm not sure.'

‘How about coming to my place next Sunday, with your aunt? We could have a barbecue, or go to the beach.'

‘I'm not sure I'll be free.'

‘Think about it. You can bring a friend if you like.' I tried my last card. ‘And I can tell you more about your father.'

He turned, avoiding my eye, then suddenly blurted out:

‘You're not hitting on her, are you?'

‘Who, your aunt? Certainly not! What on earth gave you that idea?' I wasn't sure whether to laugh or feel indignant.

‘Because I won't stand for it, you know. She's a … she's had a hard life, and I won't let anyone hurt her.'

‘I'm glad to hear it! Rest assured, I don't want to hurt her either. I like her too. But if you want to help her, the best thing you can do is listen to her. You know how she cares about you.'

He nodded, half-convinced, and got out of the car.

‘Don't forget next Sunday,' I called out.

He turned and gave me that quick, enchanting smile.

‘If I'm back.'

I rang Hao soon after. She must have been expecting my call, as she came to the phone almost at once.

‘How did it go?' she asked. ‘Have you seen Eric?'

‘Yes. Everything's fine,' I said. ‘I liked him.' Exaggerating a little, on both counts. But there was something there, beneath that prickly exterior, and with luck I'd be seeing him again, which was what I'd been aiming for.

‘Oh good. I'm so relieved.' She gave a small laugh, and I felt a little guilty at my deception.

‘He was a bit wary of me, but that's to be expected,' I went on more truthfully. ‘I've invited him out for next Sunday, if you can come. I thought we could go to the beach, have a picnic maybe. It should be easier to talk then. Will you be free? I doubt he'll come just for me.'

‘Yes – that's fine, thank you very much, Paul.'

‘I have to go out of town, tonight and tomorrow. A family gathering, up in the Hunter Valley, a couple of hours away. I'll be back Monday at the latest. Let me give you the number.'

I gave her the phone number, and my home number as well. I was briefly tempted to ask her along, but pushed the thought aside. Why would she want to go away with me, overnight, a total stranger? Instead I said:

‘Would you like to have dinner with me on Tuesday evening?'

‘Tuesday?' She sounded hesitant.

‘Somewhere in town,' I went on quickly. ‘We can talk more about Eric then. I could pick you up around seven. We could make it another day if you like.'

‘No … Tuesday would be fine. Thank you. You're very kind, Paul.'

Was I? I remembered Eric's warning.

Sunday afternoon saw me sitting with a cup of coffee on the veranda of my sister and brother-in-law's house, halfway between Cessnock and Kurri on the old highway, in the lower Hunter Valley. They owned a small farm there, where Geoff was growing a vineyard in his spare time. He was an accountant, Cathy a retired teacher, and they were celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary, surrounded by friends and children and their first grandchild. I envied them at times their solid happiness, the comfort and friendship they spread about them. That feeling of ease with themselves that happily married people have. I remembered my own marriage, and my chafing in its confines.

‘I had a call from Rachel yesterday,' said Cathy. Rachel was my daughter. ‘She wanted to come up, but she couldn't.'

‘That's right. She's got exams this week.'

‘She sounded well. How's Sandy?'

‘Fine I expect. I haven't really spoken with her for ages, apart from quick words over the phone when I call Rachel. She's thinking of remarrying, did you know?'

‘Rachel mentioned it.'

‘He's a lawyer – a nice man, Rachel says. He's been married before. He should be good for her.'

Cathy, nine years older than me, had watched over me since our parents had died when I was still little, and the break-up of my marriage seven years before had saddened her. She'd liked Sandra, and she'd been concerned about the effect a divorce might have on Rachel, whom she adored. Marriage was sacred to Cathy, at least where children were concerned.

‘And you, Paul? How are you getting on? You seem a bit quiet.'

‘I'm fine. Just a bit of work on my mind.'

Cathy and I had always been close, but I'd never been good at explaining myself, even to her. Ironic, for a man who'd lived by prying out other people's secrets. That had been one of my problems with Sandy – we hadn't communicated enough. Cathy understood me most by signs and implications, after the event.

‘Why do you work so hard? You've got enough money, you could afford to ease up, or do something else.'

‘I think of it sometimes.'

‘Ever think of remarrying?'

‘Sometimes. But I haven't found anyone I really care enough about.'

Until now, I thought, as Hao's face suddenly swept into my mind. Stop it! I told myself sharply. You're getting carried away like a teenager. You've just met the woman, you hardly know anything about her, for all you know she has another man in her life, or else she's still grieving for her late husband. You'll help her sort out her problem, and give her adopted son a hand, and then she'll go home and that will be the last you'll see of her. But I couldn't get the look of those eyes out of my mind, nor that lithe figure, and those legs. Cathy looked at me curiously, but said nothing.

In the early evening I drove back to Sydney, after the festivities and the hugs and the fresh country air had cleared the last of the champagne fumes. Through Cessnock, Kearsley, the old mining towns changeless over the decades, the pubs and the banks still the dominant buildings, a little neater nowadays and more self-conscious with the coming of the tourists to the wineries. Hobby farmers splitting up the old dairy farms. Brunkerville with its name like an American Civil War battlefield. Pretty country still, mostly unspoiled. Over the Heaton Pass and down the toboggan run to Freeman's Waterhole and the freeway junction.

Two days before I saw Hao again, a week until I had another chance to talk to Eric, if he hadn't taken fright. Time going by, before long she'd be back in Britain.

I'd better not waste any of it.

Nghiem was the first person I went to. He was a gentle, frog-faced man I'd first met in Saigon in the last weeks of the
ancien régime
, and recontacted later in Sydney in the early eighties, when he'd resettled there and I was trying to set up some access to the Vietnamese target. An engineer by training, and a former Colombo Plan student in Australia, he had been one the first to be allowed in after the fall. Nghiem had looked askance at my attempts to draw him into the net – not everyone welcomes an approach from a spy – but we had remained friends, though I hadn't seen him for years. I guessed he'd retired.

I still had his number and rang him the next morning in Lindfield, where he lived with his Australian wife Ann and the youngest of their four children. He sounded glad enough and didn't object when I invited myself round after work.

‘I'm doing some consultancy work and I need your advice.'

A cover works best mixed with the truth. I thought it best not to reveal my true purpose at this stage.

‘It's about the Vietnamese community,' I explained that evening in his sitting room. Ann had offered me a peck on the cheek and a cup of tea and discreetly withdrawn. I wondered how much Nghiem had told her of my past approach.

‘I have a client who wants to do business in Vietnam, and needs to recruit some talent locally. People he can trust, whose heart is in Australia even if they were born in Vietnam. But I've lost touch, and I don't know where to start. Can you give me a few clues? Who to talk to, who to avoid, that sort of thing?'

‘I don't have much to do with them any more,' Nghiem said.

‘Maybe some basic information, for a start. What's the community these days? A hundred thousand?'

‘In Sydney? Oh less than that. Eighty at most, if you include the Chinese from Vietnam as well. Maybe he should look at those, if he's interested in business.'

‘Maybe. But not counting them? Just ethnic Vietnamese?'

‘I don't know. Maybe fifty thousand.'

‘Where are they mainly? In Cabramatta?'

‘There, and Fairfield. They're mostly southerners there, and Buddhist, and a lot of the Sino-Vietnamese have settled there too. The northerners and the Catholics congregate more around Marrickville, and you've got Bankstown as well, which is a bit of a mixture.' Nghiem paused to think. ‘I'd say Cabramatta's your best bet. That's where there's the most business activity. Have you been there lately? It's amazing how the place has grown.'

‘You read some alarming statistics in the press, all that unemployment.'

‘I know. That's worrying.' Nghiem's kind face wrinkled in concern. ‘But that's mainly the uneducated, the ones who came here without their families, the farmers and the fishermen. Some of them have a hard time assimilating, so they stick too much together.'

Nghiem came from what used to be called the mandarin class: his father had been a senior official in the north, under the French, there were lawyers and doctors in the family. People like Hao. I remembered the refugees I'd met in the camps, queuing up to be interviewed by immigration and UN officials (and by more devious types like me, masquerading as humanitarian do-gooders). Many of them had been simple folk, straight from their villages, with little education and no concept of the outside world. And the youngsters, the draft-dodgers, ducking the new war which the communist Vietnamese were now waging in Cambodia, after driving the Khmer Rouge out in 1979, or who were simply sent out by themselves, as young as twelve or thirteen sometimes, to serve as spearhead, an anchor for a family to follow. You could see there the seeds of some long-term problems. Yet many of those had done well, some becoming millionaires, and not all the former mandarins had been so successful.