Tiger Men (48 page)

It was just before ten, and he’d been there less than half an hour when Bernie staggered out from the bar. This’ll be an easy job all right, he thought, particularly given the condition of his target.

Bernie had actually come outside to vomit. The barman had suggested he do so in no uncertain terms. ‘Don’t puke in here, Bernie,’ Stan had said, ‘get outside for God’s sake.’ Stan was sick of cleaning up Bernie’s spew.

Grasping hold of a window ledge to steady himself, Bernie heaved his guts out onto the pavement. He felt quite a deal better when he’d finished and, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve, he was wondering whether he’d return to the bar or head for home when a friendly hand clapped him on the shoulder.

‘Hello, Bernie,’ a voice said and Bernie peered into a face he knew. Alf Jordan – he’d played cards with Alf a number of times, Alf was a good bloke.

‘Want to come down to the Esplanade?’ Alf put a comradely arm around Bernie, shepherding him away from the spill of light that came through the hotel’s windows. ‘There’s a poker game on.’

Bernie gave a lopsided grin. ‘I reckon I’m a bit far gone for cards, mate.’

‘Why don’t you join us for a drink then?’ Alf kept walking him on down Kelly Street towards the cut and the steps that led to Salamanca Place. ‘And maybe a bit of a tickle with one of the girls. What do you say?’

‘Yeah, why not?’ Bernie said. I could do with some company, he thought, although he wasn’t sure if he was up for one of the girls. In fact he might even have another spew coming on.

They reached Kelly’s Steps. The cut was narrow and dimly lit and the stone steps were steep. Alf glanced around. There was no-one in sight: the conditions were perfect.

They’d just started down the first of the two flights of steps when Bernie felt himself trip. He didn’t know what had tripped him, but suddenly there he was hurtling head first down Kelly’s Steps. He ended in a heap on the central landing and sat up, shaking his head groggily and puking all over the place, wondering what the hell had happened.

Alf joined him to kneel at his side. ‘You all right, Bernie? That was a nasty fall.’ It was the sort of fall that would have knocked most people out, as had been Alf’s intention, but Bernie had bounced around like a rag doll, inviolable as drunks so often were. Ah well, Alf thought, no matter.

‘Yeah, I’m fine, thanks mate,’ Bernie said and, wiping the vomit from his mouth with his shirt sleeve, he started to struggle to his feet.

But he never got there. An arm locked about his head, a hand gripped his jaw, and the crack of Bernie’s neck as it broke was audible. There was no-one around to hear it though, no-one except Alf.

Picking Bernie up by the belt of his trousers, Alf hurled his body down the second flight of steps like a sack of wheat, watching as it tumbled to the bottom. Then he briefly surveyed the scene. It was a perfect drunkard’s death. The man had stopped on the landing to puke and had fallen down the steps, breaking his neck in the process. No-one could construe it as anything other than an accident.

Alf walked back up the steps to Kelly Street and, circling around via Montpellier Retreat, he returned to Salamanca Place and the Esplanade Hotel. The entire exercise had taken less than an hour.

M
ick hoped that Col would come home. He’d not heard from his son for over a year, but he hoped with all his heart that Col, upon learning of the deaths of his sister and his young brother would return to Hobart, for Col was perhaps the one person in the world who could have eased the terrible sense of loss.

He’d posted his letter with its dreadful news to the Kalgoorlie post office box number he’d had for the past two years, assuming that if Col had moved on from the goldfields he would have informed the family. And in writing to the son he adored, Mick had poured out his grief. He’d told the lie that Shauna had died of a ruptured appendix certainly – it was the story he and Eileen and Mara had agreed to maintain even within the family circle – but everything else had been honest and heartfelt. Shauna’s death had come as the most shocking blow to them all, he’d written, and with Bernie’s drunken accident being only days later, the two had of course been inextricably linked.

‘Bernie’s been a lost man for a long time, Col,
Mick had written,
and Shauna’s death pushed him over the edge. You know how close they were. He drank himself into a state of oblivion. It was the sort of stupid, meaningless accident that’s been waiting to happen for years I have to say, but that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. Shauna and Bernie, both dead, just like that. Young lives snuffed out like candles. God is so cruel. The whole family is bereft as you can well imagine. I wish you were here, son. I really wish you were here.

Mick had stopped short of begging, but his meaning had been implicit, he was clearly saying ‘come home’.

Col didn’t come home, but he did the next best thing. He wrote a lengthy letter, as heartfelt as his father’s, expressing his shock and sorrow upon hearing the news. Then he went on to explain why he couldn’t come back to Hobart, at least not just yet.

Although it was not the letter Mick had hoped to receive – one announcing the imminent arrival of his son – it provided the fillip that helped him through many a sleepless night. I have a grandson called Oscar O’Callaghan, he would tell himself as he stared up into the blackness. He already had three grandsons, one by Mara and two by Kathleen, but none of them bore the O’Callaghan name. And Oscar was Col’s son. It was certainly something in which to take comfort. There was now all the more reason to count the days until Col came home.

Eighteen months later, Col had still not returned, but something else happened to raise Mick’s spirits. In the autumn of 1897, he sold the Hunter’s Rest, and for a very tidy sum, in fact quite a deal more than the property’s market value. It was just as Ma Tebbutt had predicted all those years ago. ‘
You can’t halt progress, Mick
,’ she’d said – he could remember her very words: ‘
. . . you’ll no doubt sell the pub one day to some big businessman or the government or whatever . . .’
He remembered too how she’d waved aside his protestations. Ma had known there would come a day when he’d receive an offer too good to refuse and as always Ma had been right.

Mick had honoured his promise to Ma. He’d long since closed the brothel in favour of the contraband liquor trade that was far more lucrative, but he’d kept the upstairs rooms in operation until the last of the girls was nearing ‘retirement age’, after which he’d employed them in the kitchen. Not one of Ma Tebbutt’s girls had ended up in the streets. And now the Hunter’s Rest was about to be transformed altogether, Mick thought, times are indeed changing.

The offer of purchase had come from none other than Henry Jones. Henry Jones had for some time been acquiring properties and expanding his IXL jam factory. Indeed the massive demolition and reconstruction undertaken by Jones in the expansion and modernisation of his factory’s facilities and warehouses had changed the face of Old Wharf and Wapping forever.

The Hunter’s Rest was the last property to be purchased for inclusion in the complex and as such its acquisition became headline news. Henry Jones and the modernisation of IXL were always a newsworthy topic and
The Mercury
wanted a picture of Henry and Mick standing outside the Hunter’s Rest for its front page. Henry, who never shunned publicity, was only too happy to oblige, and Mick found that overnight he’d become a celebrity.

‘
THE HUNTER’S REST TEAMS UP WITH IXL’,
the headline said, and beneath a picture of Henry and Mick shaking hands and smiling at the camera with the hotel in the background was the caption:
Publican Mick O’Callaghan congratulates business mogul Henry Jones on his latest acquisition.

‘You look so handsome, Mick,’ Eileen said, ‘much more handsome than Henry Jones. Younger too, I might add.’

‘Get away with you, he’s got at least thirty years on me.’

‘Well, it doesn’t look that way in the picture.’ Eileen thought how good it was to see him smile again: she’d worried about him lately. He was not well. She was glad he’d sold the hotel. Their financial situation was now secure and Mick could retire. With the sale of the house in Molle Street and now the Hunter’s Rest, he need never work again. ‘I swear you look as handsome as you did the day I first met you,’ she said.

Mick cut the picture out and posted it to Col.

There were times when Reginald missed Shauna. His world was a lonelier one without her companionship. Shauna had known him as no other person ever had and there was no longer anyone in whom he could confide. He refused to agonise over her loss, however, castigating himself for his weakness instead. He should never have allowed himself to become so vulnerable. He would eschew personal relationships altogether in the future, he vowed. Keeping a mistress was far too dangerous. He’d behaved like a fool. But much as he’d continued to berate himself, it hadn’t stopped him missing Shauna.

He’d turned his mind to the home front, determined to concentrate upon his wife: it was imperative Evelyn remain happy. Indeed he could hear Shauna’s voice telling him so. Her advice remained with him, a constant reminder. ‘
You must be kind, Reginald
,’ he could hear her say, ‘
it is difficult for a woman to conceive, I am sure, if she lives in fear of her husband.
’

Shauna’s advice had once again proved sound. Evelyn, content in his love, had not only conceived with ease, she had carried the child without difficulty and now, barely one year after the birth of Rupert, she was just weeks away from delivering a second child.

Again it was Shauna’s voice that kept Reginald in line. ‘
Be attentive and loving
,’ he could hear her say. ‘
Evelyn must avoid stress at all costs
.’ He’d continued to follow Shauna’s advice throughout the pregnancy, although for the past two months he had found it exceedingly difficult.

‘I’ve been afraid that something like this might come to pass,’ Dr Harvey had said.

The doctor called in regularly to check on Evelyn. One visit, after he announced he was satisfied with her condition, she had asked him to examine Rupert. The child did not seem to be making the progress she had expected. He was a very contented baby, she told the doctor, in fact, she added, he was almost too contented. He very rarely cried or wailed to be fed, and he seemed to lack interest in his surroundings. Even her attempts to capture his attention failed. Nothing she did could hold his interest for more than a few seconds. Surely this was unusual for a child of twelve months.

‘Since Rupert’s birth I’ve been hoping this moment would not arrive,’ Dr Harvey had said after his examination, ‘but now it has and . . . well . . .’ he coughed uncomfortably. ‘I’m afraid Rupert may have suffered damage due to deprivation of oxygen during his birth,’ he said.

‘What sort of damage?’ Reginald hadn’t waited for Evelyn’s response. He’d leapt straight in demandingly.

‘I fear there may be some intellectual impairment, although at this stage –’

‘Are you telling me my son is a simpleton?’

Dr Harvey was not the only one startled by the hostility of Reginald’s sudden outburst. Evelyn’s look to her husband was fearful. This was the Reginald of old.

‘I am telling you, Mr Stanford,’ the doctor said in carefully measured tones, ‘that at this stage it is impossible to predict the degree of impairment. Only time will reveal that. Rupert may well grow up capable of leading a normal life. Meanwhile it would be to everyone’s advantage if you were to practise patience.’ He glanced meaningfully at Evelyn: he’d seen the look of fear in her eyes. ‘As time goes on your son will respond well to affection, and his progression will be speedier if he is in a peaceful environment.’

‘Of course, Dr Harvey, I quite understand.’ Reginald backed off immediately. ‘Just came as a bit of a shock, that’s all.’ He did not like being talked down to in such a manner, but he’d definitely got the message. He put a comforting arm around his wife. ‘We’ll keep little Rupert happy between us, won’t we, my love?’

‘We will indeed.’ Evelyn smiled, thankful that the storm had blown over.

‘He
is
a happy little boy, my darling,’ she said when the doctor had left. ‘Whatever happens he is the dearest child, so loving and sweet-natured –’

‘Yes, yes, of course he is.’ Reginald did not wish to discuss the subject.

‘And Dr Harvey said he may well grow up to lead a normal life –’

‘He did, my dear, he did. We shall just have to wait and see what happens, shan’t we?’

Since that day, Reginald had found it increasingly difficult to be attentive and loving towards his wife. He detested Evelyn for having given him an imperfect son. Whether the boy grew up capable of leading a normal life or not, he was damaged goods and Reginald had no wish for a son who was damaged goods. Sometimes, when he looked at the two of them, the little boy seemingly normal and chortling happily as his mother bounced him on her knee, he would have to leave the room. He hated them both.