The Marvellous Boy Read online

  I bought groceries and wine and went home. The house was quiet as usual, lonely as usual. My ex-wife Cyn had never been there and my ex-woman Ailsa very seldom. It was just a place for sleeping, eating, drinking, and thinking. I put on some music, B. B. King, got out my pen and pad and tried to arrange what I’d learned, see what directions it suggested. Nothing came, too early. All I had were male and female signs on bits of paper with names and some bits with signs but no names—like the woman who delivered the baby, if there was a baby. And a bit with a male sign on it and a question mark. I gave up on it, grilled some meat and tossed some salad. The beer and bacardi were old memories and I poured some riesling down on top of them.

  After the meal I used the telephone. All organisations present confidential fronts—especially about their personnel—which can be cracked if you know how. It took me three calls to breach the defences of the City Cab Co. Hilda Bourke was the only woman who’d been driving for the Company two years back and she was still with them, on the road just then. I persuaded the base to get her to call at my place by promising to pay for her time—a taxi ride to nowhere.

  While I was waiting I got my .38 and ammunition out of their oilcloth wrapping and mated them. I put on a shoulder holster and tucked the gun away. A car horn sounded softly outside. I turned off the lights and went out to the cab. The driver was a stocky woman in her forties; blonde hair gleamed in the car’s interior light under her head scarf. She had a strong, tired face devoid of make-up.

  “Hilda Bourke?” I opened the front passenger door.

  “That’s right. Mr. Hardy?” Her voice was pure Sydney, a slightly nasal drawl.

  I got in. “I want to ask you a few questions about a fare you handled. I’ll pay you. I cleared it with your base.”

  “Stuff them, it’s a change. I might not remember anyway.”

  “You should, it was out of the ordinary—a tramp you took up to a big place in Rushcutters Bay.”

  “Jesus, you’re going back a bit.”

  “Yes, but you do recall it?”

  “Mm, pretty well. I waited for him and he gave me a tip—five bucks I think. He was pretty drunk.” She said it apologetically, as if it was against the ethics of the job to take big tips from drunks. “Poor bugger,” she went on, “I’ve thought about him since. I wonder what he wanted up there?”

  “I know what he wanted,” I said. “What I’m interested in is where he came from.”

  “That’s easy. I took him back to where I picked him up, the Noble Briton pub.”

  “At the Cross.”

  “Right, little fare and a big tip like I said.”

  “He hailed you from the street?”

  “No, I think there was a call from the pub. He looked pretty rough but had the street right. Sorry, I can’t recall it.”

  “That’s okay. Did he behave himself in the car?”

  She shot me a look but she had no vanity. “Yeah, no chucking or burning smokes. He was a gentleman really, spoke well.”

  “He went into the pub when you dropped him?”

  “Like a shot.”

  I gave her ten dollars.

  “Thanks, I hope that old codger’s not in trouble.”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “You look like trouble to me, Mr. Hardy. Hey, can I take you to the pub? You’ve paid.”

  I shook my head, thanked her and got out. She u-turned and drove off. I coaxed the Falcon into life and drove off sedately toward the Cross.

  They’ve gutted it of course, the Cross, stripped away nearly everything that made it a unique place. But coming up from the empty city and the quiet park, the Cross still had some glamour. It still reminded you that not everybody lived tidy and safe. There were still bodies for sale, gambling games older than civilisation, men-women and women-men, phoneys and genuine seekers-after-truth.

  The Noble Briton is a survivor; it’s just out of range of the developer’s knife and looks defiant. A few tiles had peeled off the front, exposing the grey pitted cement beneath, but the 1930s beer advertisements were intact.

  The public bar was like a thousand others. There were a few stools around the bar, a clear space near the wall-mounted TV set and some benches around the tiled walls. Two pool tables were tucked in near a dartboard. I ordered a beer from a thin, pale barmaid with an enormous, teased-up blonde hairdo. I sipped and looked the few early starting customers over. None looked like Henry Brain.

  The barmaid teetered up and down behind the bar like a colt in a stall. She had on a see-through blouse, skin-tight black jeans and enormous heels. With the fairy-floss hair she must have topped six feet. I watched her with interest and she caught me watching.

  “You want something else, mister?” Her voice was like a noise from a sheet-metal shop. I spun two fifty cent pieces on the bar.

  “Have a drink.”

  “Ta.” She grabbed one of the coins in mid-spin and dropped it into a glass by the till. I spun the other coin and she plucked that up and dropped it into the Help the Blind tin. Charm having failed I fell back on professionalism. I showed her my licence to investigate.

  “I’m looking for a man. I understand he drinks here, or did.”

  Her pencil-line eyebrows shot up. “Ooh, it’s like a movie, isn’t it?”

  “Not really,” I said. “This is just a legal matter, nothing exciting. But I’m on expenses . . .”

  “What’s that mean?” She flapped her hand impatiently at a customer at the far end of the bar who was holding up his glass.

  “Serve the man,” I said. “I’ll tell you when you get back.”

  I put the licence away and drank. The barmaid came back and leaned over me like a crane.

  “You was saying?”

  “I’m going to describe a man to you. See if it fits anyone you know.”

  She nodded, dead keen. The hair flopped dangerously forward and I could see light through the top six inches. I put together the descriptions I’d been given and delineated Henry Brain. She let me finish, then bared her small, even teeth in a triumphant smile.

  “Got him, that’s Perry.”

  “Perry?”

  “Perry Mason, you know, the lawyer on TV? That’s what he’s called in here. He reckons he was a lawyer once and he can do the talk—gentlemen of the jury and all that. Course, the only way he’d get in court now would be to get thirty days. Yeah, Perry Mason, you remember.”

  I did, on black and white television, played by Raymond Burr who bought an island in Fiji that I coveted. There was irony in it. Here, where there was a dream in every glass, Henry Brain was given high rank.

  “That’s the man,” I said. “He was a lawyer. Will he be in tonight?”

  “I reckon. I’ve been here five years and he’s never missed except when he’s sick. He’ll be in around eight.”

  I separated ten dollars from the thin roll and pushed it towards her. She made a pushing-back motion.

  “Keep it. Give it to Perry. He needs it more than me.”

  “I’ll have another beer then. You like him—Perry?”

  She pulled the middy. “He’s okay. Doesn’t get stroppy and goes when it’s time. He’s okay.”

  I sat over the beer and smoked a couple of cigarettes. It was just after eight when Brain came in. It was a warm evening but he was wearing the derelict’s overcoat. With some of them it’s their cupboards, their shelter, their address. The pub was half-full, with darts and one pool game going. Brain cranked himself up onto a stool and thrust an arm into his overcoat pocket. It disappeared to above the elbow. I went around and stood behind him.

  “Good evening Mr. Brain. Can I buy you a drink?”

  He lurched around and almost fell off the stool. I steadied him. The cloth of the coat was greasy with years of dirt, the arm felt like a broomstick wrapped in rags. I held him until he was firm on the seat.

  “Thank you sir, you are a gentleman.” His voice was a ruin, a desecration of what had been a fine instrument. I ordered two double scot
ches from the barmaid. Brain raised a finger to her skinny back.

  “No ice, Eunice.” He got his tongue around the words with difficulty.

  “Right Perry.”

  Brain winced. “My nom de bar,” he croaked. I smiled and we examined each other. I saw a gaunt wraith dressed in other people’s clothes. There was a feeling of incompleteness about him set up by the thinning hair and missing teeth. The hair had gone in patches giving him a piebald look and a few yellow stumps of teeth still sat stubbornly in his mouth. His faded eyes were watery and there were deep wrinkled pouches like walnuts hanging under them. The skin of his face was leathery and it wrinkled and sagged its way down his slack jaw and grizzled neck into the top of a dirty, collarless shirt.

  What he saw didn’t seem to interest him and he fidgeted waiting for the liquor. His hands shook violently and attracted my attention. They were long and thin with blue veins showing through translucent skin. Unlike the rest of him they were scrupulously clean; the nails were trimmed and pink as though a scrub with a hard brush was part of his regular toilet. Otherwise he was battling to stay out of the gutter. A struggle was going on. There were signs of attempts at parting the sparse hair and his heavy, broken shoes had been rubbed up to a dull shine. But he was losing the fight, day by day.

  Eunice put the drinks on the bar and I paid her. Brain lifted his glass to the light and smacked his lips.

  “Neat quality whisky,” he rasped. “It’s the only way to drink. Cheers.” He put half down in one swallow and carefully cupped his hands around the rest.

  “I didn’t catch your name, dear boy.”

  “I didn’t give it. It’s Hardy, Cliff Hardy.”

  “Why are you hastening me toward the grave, pray?”

  He sipped, still not looking at me. He must have known this day was coming. He’d held out a juicy bait to top people. Maybe he didn’t care or perhaps his brain was so eaten out by alcohol that he’d forgotten. Two years is a lot of booze in his league. I spoke quietly and carefully, striving for some intimacy in the noisy bar.

  “I want some information you were once prepared to sell, Mr. Brain. I might be buying or I might be just asking.”

  He looked at me shrewdly as if judging how much drink I’d be good for; nothing else mattered to him, his whole being seemed focused in on the glass in his shaking hands.

  “You talk in riddles, dear boy.” He took a sip. “I can’t claim to be a busy man, the desk is not littered with briefs, but please come to the point.”

  “You were married to Sir Clive Chatterton’s daughter Bettina,” I said close to his grimy ear. “The marriage broke up, childless. Sir Clive’s widow claims you called on her two years ago. You spoke of a grandson and requested money . . . I don’t hear an objection.”

  “Ah.” The sound came out slow and easy, oiled by the whisky. “So that old piece of carrion has sent you on an errand. You are an operative.”

  The old-fashioned word touched me somehow, off-set the impatience I was beginning to feel. I showed the licence.

  “I don’t want to cause you trouble, Mr. Brain, but Lady Catherine has developed an obsession about the child. I mean to find him, if he’s real.”

  “He may be dead,” Brain said quietly and tossed off his drink. The words were my first firm evidence that the story was true. They had a quality, a substance, that convinced me.

  “I want to know, one way or the other.”

  “Is the noble lady prepared to be generous?”

  “To you? No, I shouldn’t think so. She’s not a generous or forgiving woman. For the man the sky’s the limit.”

  He didn’t seem interested; he was concerned with his own sentiments and prospects. If the child was dead it wouldn’t touch him, nor did the old lady’s need. His own life was a tatter and to small rents in other people’s lives he was indifferent. Mending them didn’t signify.

  “Could you make the next an Irish whisky,” Brain was saying to me. “I haven’t drunk Irish whisky in eons.”

  The bar was nearly full. A few people were showing some interest in Brain and me, unwelcome interest.

  “I’ll buy a bottle of Irish if you like,” I said quickly, “and we can continue our discussion somewhere else.”

  He looked around the bar as if he was seeing it for the first time. Desire for the whisky shone in his reddened, bleary eyes like a beacon through fog.

  “I am tempted by your offer, intrigued you might say. I promise nothing, however.” He looked squarely at me for practically the first time. “I don’t suppose you could stretch your funds to the extent of two bottles of Australian whisky?”

  I signalled to Eunice. She tripped over and took orders while looking down on the old man.

  “Is he treating you right, Perry?”

  “Like a prince, dear Eunice. It’s been a long time since a handsome young man paid attention to me.”

  “Now, now, none of that. What’ll it be?”

  “Get me two bottles of Irish whisky,” I said. “Jameson’s.”

  She finished pulling the beers and dispensed them, then she leaned close to me. “I know youse can get them anyway,” she said gratingly, “but will you do something for me?”

  I was impatient: “What?”

  “Buy him some food too, I’ll give you a cut on the whisky.”

  “All right, all right, I will. Just get the whisky will you?”

  She stalked off and came back with the bottles in brown paper. I paid and helped Brain off his stool. He never took his eyes off the bag and followed me like a dog. There was a fast food place a few doors from the pub and I bought him a pie and some roast potatoes. His skin was grey under the neon and he used his beautiful, white hands to shield his ruined face from the light. He eyed the food with distaste.

  “Muck, dear boy. You can’t expect me to eat that.”

  “You’ll eat it,” I said grimly. “We’ve got talking to do and I don’t want you passing out on me.”

  “I thought it was altruism,” he muttered.

  “No, pragmatism if you like.”

  He looked sharply at me. “Are you intending to be pragmatic here?”

  The mild night air was gritty with exhaust fumes and dust. The Cross was just getting into stride. The footpath was rippling with people, some buyers, some lookers.

  “No, we can talk in my car or my office. Both are close by.” Something, some shred of dignity still clinging to him, made me go on: “Or at your place if you like.”

  “It so happens that I have a room, a modest place you understand, but my own. We might be more comfortable there. We will need glasses,” he pointed at the bag. “Whisky like that needs glasses.”

  “Okay, where is it?”

  “In Darlinghurst, not far. We could take your car, I haven’t ridden in a car for some time.” He scratched at the brown paper. “Perhaps . . . perhaps a small promise of things to come?”

  “No, the car’s this way.”

  He trudged along beside me with his hands in the pockets of the too-large coat, holding its skirts in to him. The sound of his brogues scuffling the pavement depressed me. The thought of his room depressed me. I was riding a small wave of hope that he could point me to the heir of the Chatterton millions, but it was only a small wave. I was looking forward to the Jameson’s, too.

  7

  He ate the food as we drove. For all his protests he wolfed it and I heard him masticate and swallow every morsel. We were in Palmer Street when he spoke through a mouthful of potato.

  “Here, dear boy, just here.”

  I pulled up outside a tumble-down terrace. We got out of the car and I locked it. Brain watched me.

  “Very wise,” he said drily. “There’s no respect for property around here.”

  The gate was missing and a makeshift plywood panel in the front door was flapping loose. The entrance hall stank of cooking and neglect. Brain started up the stairs then stopped and turned. He leaned over me like a gallows.

  “Don’t let the bot
tles clink,” he whispered, “or we’ll have every denizen of this low house knocking on the door.”

  I took a tighter grip on the bag and followed him. We went up two flights and down a passage to the back of the house. He dug into the coat and produced a key with a safety pin attached. He moved to put it in the lock, then drew back.

  “Open,” he said. “Odd, I could swear I locked it.” He said something in Latin. “Ovid,” he informed me.

  “Open the door,” I said.

  He flicked on the light. “My God!”

  The room was a mess; it couldn’t have been much to start with but now it was uninhabitable. The mattress on the old iron bed had been ripped apart; bits of stuffing were all over the room and tufts still floated in the air like grey snowflakes showing that the damage was recent. A few hundred books were part of the ruin. They were ripped and torn and strewn over the floor, bed, wash basin, and chest of drawers. The drawers were gaping open; a couple had been smashed to matchwood. A wooden box about a foot square and six inches deep was lying upside down on the floor. Brain bent painfully and picked it up; the lock had been broken and the top hung crazily from a fragile hinge. Brain swore and poked around in the mess. He came up with a roll of moth-eaten paper.

  “My degree,” he said.

  I took a quick look at it. Henry Winston Brain had graduated with honours in Law in 1934 from the University of Sydney. Brain put the document carefully on the bed and began picking up books. He shook his head.

  “Ruined,” he muttered, “ruined . . .”

  I looked at some at random. There were legal works but also novels, poetry, drama. A nice old dictionary with a thumb index had been savagely dismembered. The search hadn’t been expert but looked ruthless and furious enough to have turned up anything hidden in the obvious places.

  “What were they after?”