Felicia Todd heard my stomach rumbling. She laughed and offered to make a herb omelette. I accepted. She also made conversation about a range of subjects as she was cooking and as I was hunting for plates and forks. I told her what Michael Hickie had said about her doing Mensa puzzles, and she smiled.
‘That was just a joke. Barnes and I were having him on. I’d looked up the answers.’
‘It impressed Michael.’
‘Michael’s easily impressed.’
‘He made a good impression on me. I think he’s honest and has your interests at heart. And his own, of course. He doesn’t want to work out of that little office for the rest of his life. Can’t blame him for that.’
‘No. I think he has a future. Has he still got that pretty secretary?’
‘Yes, but I think she’s hanging by a thread. I know the signs. I had a secretary once, then I had to put her on part-time and then…’ I mimed a wave goodbye.
‘What sort of an office do you work out of now, Cliff?’
We were Cliff and Fel by this time. I told her about the St Peter’s Lane situation and the Glebe situation, which is, essentially, that the house needs repair but is worth a lot of money as it stands. ‘I’ve got an offer of a place in Hastings Parade, in Bondi. A lot of my business is in the eastern suburbs anyway. I could combine the house and office and have a better water view.’
She shoved the pan under the griller. ‘Have you got a water view now?’
I put plates on the bench near the oven and took the forks across to the table, also the salt and pepper and some crumpled paper napkins.
‘Blackwattle Bay,’ I said. ‘If I stand on the fence.’
I pointed out the window to where the ocean was a dark rippling mass, white-flecked and stretching away forever. ‘Nothing like this.’
She pulled the deep pan out; the omelette had risen to the full height of its sides. ‘This costs, but it’s worth the money.’
Over the meal we talked mostly about Barnes but some about her. She was thirty-five, born and raised in the Blue Mountains. Dux of Katoomba high school and runner-up in the a under-eighteen New South Wales 100 and 200 metres freestyle in 1970. She studied Fine Arts at Sydney University for three years before switching to an art course at Sydney Technical College.
‘That’s a big switch,’ I said. ‘Must’ve shocked the professors.’
‘It did. They had me lined up to do a PhD on Gainsborough and the pastoral tradition. I preferred Frida Kahlo, but there was no interest in her. Do you know about her?’
‘I saw a programme on SBS,’ I said. ‘Mexican. Tortured stuff.’
‘Right. I’ve got a back problem that comes from weight training for swimming. It’s nothing like the agony she suffered after her accident, but it’s pretty bad sometimes. I related to her and I wanted to learn how to do, not teach. Understand?’
‘I think so. I’m a practical man myself.’
She finished the art course, painted, had no success, inherited some money and opened a gallery to display adventurous work. ‘Not mine,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t ready. I was still scraping them off and doing them again.’
I thought of the early cases I’d had; the ones where I muddled through, missed things, half got there. Our plates were empty by this time; we had finished off the French bread and were slicing bad bits from a few elderly pieces of fruit with the knives we had already used.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m a lousy housekeeper.’
‘So am I,’ I said. ‘I call a plate you can brush the crumbs off clean. If they stick, it’s dirty.’
She laughed. ‘If I’d met Barnes a few years earlier, I probably wouldn’t have lost the gallery. I just didn’t know how to do things right, money wise. D’you want some coffee? You look as if you need it. Were you up all night?’
‘No. Why?’
She plucked at her chin and I laughed. ‘Just careless shaving. Coffee’d be good.’ I followed her across to the kitchen and rinsed the plates. We hadn’t drunk anything with the food and I really wanted the coffee. She put a kettle on the gas, spooned coffee into a glass pot and set the plunger.
‘No milk,’ she said. ‘I’ve neglected the a shopping.’
‘What have you been doing?’
‘Reading. Going for walks. Feeling randy. We had a great sex life, Barnes and me.’
We went back to the table and sat quietly over the black, bitter coffee, looking out at the sea. In the old days, I would have smoked and told myself the ritual and the nicotine stimulated thought. Now I just stared across the road and the randomly parked cars, past the stained concrete buildings and the faded brick ones, to the water. It was the sort of view that was desolate but could be comforting and warming if you had someone to share it with.
‘So, d’you want me to look into it, Fel?’ I said.
‘What does it involve?’
‘Raking things up. Talking to people about t things they don’t want to talk about.’ I drew a deep breath. ‘Like this. Was Barnes faithful to you? Were there any other women? Could he have got out of his depth? You must know that he used to hang around with some…’
‘Glamorous women,’ she said. ‘I know I’m not glamorous.’
We had stopped sparring long ago, but I felt I was on the ropes again. ‘I didn’t mean anything like that. Glamour mostly just scrapes off. But…’
‘Men are attracted to it. Active, successful men in particular. No, I’m sure Barnes had given that life away. I expect he would’ve painted it, later.’
‘Mm. Well, you seem to be able to handle that side of things. What about the implication in the news story that he was drunk?’ This was the line I had been saving and I watched her closely to get her reaction.
She brushed back her hair; it was a plain, forthright gesture but it did good things to her face. ‘No chance. He wouldn’t have had more than a couple of light beers at that party, or a glass of wine. Two at the most. It wasn’t a problem for him.’
‘I’ll have to talk to everyone who was there. Ask. Insinuate.’
‘Sure.’
‘Fel, I have to ask you about the hospital. You saw him before he died?’
She nodded. She wasn’t going to make it easy for me.
‘Spoke with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did he say?’
‘Not much. He was terribly badly injured. He barely had the breath to speak.’
‘Was his mind clear?’
‘I hope not. He’d have been in terrible pain if it was.’ She sipped at the cold dregs of her coffee. ‘They rang me at the beach house from the hospital. I suppose it was about two a.m. I drove straight in. They’d been going to operate but they decided there was no point, so I knew he was going to die when I went in to see him. Have you ever talked to a dying person?’
‘Yes. Not someone I loved, though.’
‘We’d talked so much in the time we’d been together… stayed up all night talking sometimes, and now there was nothing to say. I couldn’t tell him to fight or anything. It was hopeless. He was all broken inside. I just held his hand, really, and waited.’
‘But he did speak. What did he say?’
‘He said…’ Her voice caught. For a moment I thought all the careful control was about to rupture and spill, but she put the coffee mug on the table and laced her fingers together. ‘He said, “Oh, oh, oh”, like that and then a word I don’t think I understood.’
‘What word?’
‘It sounded like “fear”, but I don’t think it I could have been. I mean, I doubt that he knew what was happening to him. And Barnes wouldn’t talk about fear. He knew me, knew who I was. But he just made these sounds and then he gave a sort of shudder and he was gone.’
I mouthed the sounds, imitating her deep tone. ‘Oh, oh… oh… fear.’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Like that.’
‘O’Fear,’ I said. ‘I understand.’
‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘What?’
‘It’s a man’s name, or a sort of nickname. Kevin O’Fearna his name is, but he’s called O’Fear. I didn’t know Barnes knew him, but he could have. They’d be much the same age and O’Fear’s been around. Come to think of it, I believe he was in Korea.’
‘That again. Bloody Korea, I don’t like to think that he was meandering on about that bloody shambles.’
The female view of war again. It looked as if Barnes Todd and I had had some marital as well as war experience in common. But it was a side issue now. I shook my head. ‘I doubt it. He left the note for Michael Hickie about me and then he mentioned O’Fear. There has to be some kind of connection.’
‘You mean this O’Fear could have… killed him?’
‘No, no. O’Fear’s not a killer. Barnes could have meant that he knows something, or could help in some way.’
‘You evidently know him, Cliff. Would he help?’
‘O’Fear’s a funny bloke. He might help you for the price of a drink or he might not even if you offered him a thousand bucks.’
‘Will you ask him?’
‘There’s a snag.’
‘What?’
‘The last I heard, O’Fear was in gaol.’