Rachael's Gift (14 page)

I was being paranoid. Cam usually handled these things and I wasn’t going to get involved now. I pressed the delete button.

Unshowered and unshaven, Mr Brown and I loped down the street to the local shops. We passed my old high school, long since shut down and left abandoned. Apparently it would become apartments. A high fence with barbed wire had been erected but some kids had got a pair of clippers and cut a hole, which they climbed through at night to drink and take drugs and redecorate the building with a sledgehammer. Mr Brown shimmied his way through, sniffing and peeing his way around overgrown weeds.

At the local pub, a bunch of hopefuls stood staring up at the horses on the tellie, white tickets in one hand and beer in the other. I ordered a Resch’s and sat on a stool. Mr Brown sniffed around the troughs hoping for a dropped peanut or chip. I sent Camille a text:
Investigation’s going ahead. Need to speak
.

I heard a wolf-whistle and spun around. ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’

It was Mick Waller. A pink-faced ex-pro surfer who lived in the area and spent most of his days at the pub running bets.

‘Mate, you look like shit. What’s doin’?’

‘You know, been crook.’

We chinwagged about nothing in particular, while his eyes were glued to the races. ‘Damn!’ He screwed up his ticket and threw it on the floor and skulled the rest of his beer. Rumour had it he’d lost all his comp and sponsorship money years ago and his wife had run off with his best mate. He now spent his life trying to get it back on the races. ‘Anyways, I been meaning to get you to carve up another board for me.’ Mick Waller had been saying this for years.

‘No worries, mate, what were you thinking?’

He explained he wanted something fresh to make his comeback. ‘Wouldn’t mind tryin’ a few new tricks, ya know . . .’ He belched. ‘Hey, got a golden ticket on at Gosford – you should go in. G’arn, come in with me. It’s a sure thing. You don’t want to miss out. Come on.’ He roughed up my t-shirt, geeing me up, and almost had me, but the gates sprang open and the horses were already off and racing before I could lay anything.

The race caller’s monotone voice crept louder; Mick started jeering at the telly. ‘That’s it, just sit on the rails.’ He leant sideways. ‘Got this one from the trainer – straight from the horse’s mouth.’ He laughed at his own joke. ‘You know, Susie came to see me the other day. She wants to get back together – can you fuckin’ believe it? Don’t get boxed in!’ he shouted.

I shook my head; no, I wouldn’t.

‘Told her where to stick it. After all these years. Her bloody husband must have left her. As if I was gonna give up the good life – huh?’ The horses huddled against the rails, the caller getting louder. ‘Round the straight, yeah, that’s right, that’s it.’ He went quiet again. ‘You know how many single desperate birds there are in this town? Jeez. How’s that wife of yours, anyway? Always thought you were punching way above your weight there – flash chick like her . . . Go, son. Go, you good thing!’ Mick yelled himself into a frenzy. ‘Come on! Come on, Bombora! You can do it. Go, Bombora!’ He beat his fists in the air. ‘Yes! Yes! Ye – no! No! Fuck!’

He ripped up his ticket. ‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.’

‘Mate, least he came second.’

‘Fuck, mate, are you joking? I had him on the nose.’

I slapped his shoulder. ‘Another one, mate?’

Behind the bar a fresh-faced kid, barely out of school, pulled the beer taps. A big clock on the wall behind him read just after one thirty p.m. He placed the beers on the bar runner and wiped his hands on his apron, waiting for the money; I gave him a tenner. He put the change on the bar; I left it there and so did he. The smell grew – stale alcohol and disinfectant. I looked around and saw the humpbacked shadows of a few blokes sitting on their bar stools, raising their glass to their lips; the white noise of the tellies hanging off the walls and the tinkle of the pokies in the background.

I handed Mick his beer. ‘Cheers,’ he said, and downed it in one hit. ‘Ahhh, thirsty.’ I noted the red in his eyes and his shaking hands. Was this what happened to you when your wife fucked off?

I whistled for Mr Brown. ‘Gotta run, mate. Drop by when you know what you want.’

Mick nodded, already lost in his betting guide. I left my glass half full and as I stepped out of the pub I turned back and saw Mick pick it up.

I grabbed a paper and some milk from the local shop and reminded myself that Camille hadn’t really fucked off on me. All this stuff, this episode, wasn’t about us – it was about Rachael. Camille was scared, that was all. If I wasn’t so pissed off by it all I would have admired my wife’s ability to get what she wanted.

I remembered when we first got together. It was high summer; we were at a barbecue. An Australian cliché: lamb chops and burnt sausages swimming in dead horse – tomato sauce. It was Boxing Day and we were at the beach, watching the boats flap past, blowing all the way to Hobart – bunch of Toohey’s New and VBs in eskies, West Coast Coolers and some white cask wine for the laydees. The Test match crackled in our ears, beer sang on our tongues – eternal summer.

And there she stood. Pretty as the shimmer on a freshly waxed board, watching those yachts as if she wished she were on one. She sipped water, belonging no more to this debauchery than to the earth itself. I was told she sold art.

The old man had left me a shop in the backyard where I could sandblast a busted-up board, smooth her right down and fix the ol’ holes well and good. Pleased my mates no end. Then we’d light up a fat one and suck real hard, and that was my life – me and my mates and the ocean – until next summer, when I would graduate to plain clothes, finally stepping into the old man’s shoes. Filled with concrete they were. Fucking heavy shit-stirring shoes that used to kick my arse all the way to school and out of the familial home, until he kicked his own bucket. Smoked himself to death and poor mum too. Landed in a hospice – the both of them – their throats ripped out as they exhaled their love for each other and told me to pull my finger out.

‘Terry’s got it sorted for you, son. Don’t you go disappointing your old man, now. Son.’ The word
son
slithered out of his mouth sounding more like sarhn. Sarnie. Sausage sarnie. Best sarnies ever.

‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll be there.’

He lay prostrate in the hospice bed. Tubes ran out of his throat, his nose and his arms. He looked small, a cricket among the medical equipment – part man, part machine. I almost felt sorry for the old bastard. Almost forgave him for the leather strap around his waist and the years of salt water stinging open sores. His eyes wept but they weren’t tears. They seeped into sunken holes where his cheeks used to be, his toughness sucked out by God’s straw. He raised his good arm – the arm not strung up with life-fuelling liquid – and gestured for me to come closer. I bent towards him, the smell of death emanating from the pus-filled boils on his neck mixed with the glycerol he used to flatten his hair, still wet and black, as he had always worn it. I felt my shoulders harden against the softening of my heart and tried to swallow down the lump in my throat. After this it would be just me, the last Larkin.

He reached out with one last fever of effort, his tongue licking the air, and with a ceremonious flick behind the ear spoke his last words: ‘Don’t fuck up, boy, and don’t sell the fucking Lindsay, fuck . . .’ Except the
fuck
was like one long fart, the last wind escaping from the sunken cavity of his chest, never to rise again. Or so I thought. Apparently he’d just passed out. Gone back to morphine land. The old fucker. The doctors said it was pretty normal. They told me not to worry and that the old man still had some ticker.

‘That’s some ticker,’ the doctor had said, slapping me on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry, Mr Larkin, your old man’s a real goer, got some life in him yet.’

As it turned out, he did cark it not so long after; that was just the last time I ever saw him.

I got the house anyway. The old fucker had left me the house. There was no one else.

And I sold the Lindsay.

The old man had come by a Norman Lindsay via the back end of the cop shop – the ‘exhibit room’. Finger to the nose, he claimed no one had come forward, claimed he was looking after it as a ward of the state. I don’t believe it had ever reached the ‘exhibit room’. Those sorts of things never did.

How did I meet her?

She got rid of it for me.

That day it was so hot you could see the heat whistling up from the ground; sweat ran down the backs of our thighs. A fierce black cloud had parked itself above us, opened its mouth and spewed out its guts. Ice-cold drops of a southerly on our skin and we ran for cover, shivering under the lone eucalypt, its sprawling limbs creaking. We huddled there while my mates ran wild in the park, off their heads and crazy. Me, I’d hit a wall. I was no longer drunk and happy; the booze had worn off, deadening my spark but not my pain.

‘I heard you sell art?’

She nodded her head, her lips blue. I gave her my towel.

‘I’ve got something you could sell.’

‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You might find it of interest.’

‘Really?’

‘A Lindsay.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Do I look like a guy who would lie?’

‘All men are liars.’

‘Seriously. I could show you?’

‘I’ve heard that before.’

‘Okay, I’ll give it to someone else.’

*

I unhooked the Lindsay from my parents’ living room wall, where it had hung lifeless all these years. Water dripped onto the canvas as the storm moved over the skylight and darkened the room.

‘Careful,’ she said.

I waited for her to comment, but instead she was silent and ran her fingers across the top of the frame and along the side, where my hands were.

‘Turn it over,’ she said.

I did as I was told; the owner history was scribbled over its back. The painting slipped from my sweaty grip and slowly I lowered it to the ground. ‘Sorry.’

She knelt down, placed her palms to the floor and pressed her nose to the canvas; nymphs frolicked, naked, beneath a waterfall. She smelt the paint and without touching it examined each brushstroke. I was about to say something, when she looked up at me and smiled. ‘It’s beautiful.’

I knelt down beside her. A slideshow of memories revolved projector-style in my head; my parents’ living room with its peeling sofa, the vacant space above the television.

‘I’ve been away,’ I said. ‘You forget about . . . stuff.’ I wiped some drops of sweat from my face with the back of my hand and then wiped my hand on my trousers. Suddenly I had this urge to tell her about the old man and before I could shut my trap, it just spilled out. ‘Bernie’s law, they used to say down at the cop shop. Had to do things according to
his
way. He was a senior detective before they let him go. Cracked a few cases in his time. He came home early one night and he placed this painting on top of the telly. Said it was a present for Mum. She’d stopped asking questions a long time ago. “Now, take a look at some real art, Wolfe,” he said.’

I laughed. ‘I couldn’t wait to tell the guys at school how Dad had put up some boobs in the living room.’

She laughed too.

I continued, ‘I think he had ideas, you know – ambitions. He wanted promotions. Worked hard. No one could hold that against him. It’s not really a family kind of picture, though, is it?’

‘Not really.’ She shook her head and then her eyes lit up. ‘I can sell it for you.’

‘Dunno that you can.’

‘You said you wanted to sell it.’

I leant back against the legs of the old sofa. She settled down next to me and stretched out, smoothing down her skirt. The rain pattered on the roof, barely breaking the heat.

‘He stole it,’ I said at last. ‘Said some dirty crooks got caught trying to flog it with some illegal stuff. Couldn’t find the rightful owners.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why don’t you just take it? I don’t care what you do with it.’

She caught a drop of moisture off my cheek. I kissed her finger. She smelt like hot grass in the summer.

And that was how I met Camille.

*

When I got home from the shops I saw the red light bleeping on the answer machine again: ‘
Hello, Mrs Larkin, this is Mrs Tomlinson, Rebecca’s mother. I’m calling to see if you and your husband will be attending the RPA meeting tonight at the school? We’ve received some disturbing news that they’re trying to cover up a sexual misconduct incident. There will be questions. I hope to see you there
.’

A sick feeling spread from my guts. They’d said everything was confidential. They even had a name for it – protected something or other. They hadn’t even begun the investigation. How did everyone know? And how much did they know? My finger pressed down on the delete button; the message disappeared.

The metro vibrated around winding tracks. I was on my way to the Pompidou Centre – my request for access to the archives had been granted. I took out my iPad and continued reading one of the reference books, but found it hard to focus with so much going on in my head. Francine had come through for us: the Beaux-Arts would see Rach for an informal interview on Friday – but only because we had come so far . . . and because of Francine, which I was reluctant to admit. She had also teed up a meeting with Lucien and we were taking Rachael to meet him the next morning. God, I thought, we would have to give her blood in return. And then there was Wolfe’s text. How could they go ahead with the investigation without Rachael? I put off speaking to him again.

I tried to reabsorb myself in the book. It would forever be a shock to me how much art was stolen or moved during the Second World War, so much of which was still missing. I came to an interesting quote recounting a conversation between an art dealer and an unnamed French expert, about a visit he had made to the Jeu de Paume:

. . . one couldn’t begin to imagine such greatness in a single room: Goya, Holbein the Younger and Vermeer, hanging side by side. ‘One ought to pay a visit as soon as possible,’ he said. ‘After this they will be sent to Germany and we will never see them again.’ Then he whispered conspiratorially, ‘If you’re lucky you may spot some strays for sale at the next Hôtel Drouot auction.’ I wondered how he knew this, and remembered he was regularly employed as an expert to give valuations at the establishment. I said to him, ‘My dear fellow, it all seems rather surreal. Amazing how these masterpieces have just “fallen” into their hands, no?’ My poor friend looked truly stricken and emptied his glass of wine.