It was nearly noon. I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t shaved. I was tired, hungry, dirty and I stank. The day was cloudy but hot and I sweltered inside my sweat-stained clothes. I drove down to the foreshore, dug out a towel, and walked over some grassy dunes to the beach. The tide was out and the sand stretched clean and white in front of me. I walked as far from the other people on the beach as I could; they were a couple necking under an umbrella and two sagging mothers with about ten kids between them. A mile away the bridge looked like a spider’s web thrown across the estuary; a collection of small boats tossed up and down in the deep blue water out beyond a line of gentle breakers.
I stripped to my underpants and went into the water. It was cold; I went down under a wave and swam hard for the boats with short, choppy strokes. I got past the breakers but was still a long way short of the boats when my breath ran out. I floated on my back for a while looking up at the sky which was cleaner and closer than in the city. Then a plane ripped across it leaving a thin white streak behind it. I flipped over and swam back. The waves were no good for body surfing but I couldn’t have caught them anyway — the speed just wasn’t there.
After a walk along the beach and a cold shower in the toilet block I felt revived enough to contemplate the drive to Canberra. I got petrol and some salad rolls in Blackman’s Bay. It was still a nice town but my memories of it would never be quite the same. I bought a couple of cans of beer for company; I still looked rough but I felt fine.
From the coast to Canberra isn’t the worst drive in the world. The road is good for most of the way, a bit narrow in parts and some of the bends are hairy. I’ve never done it in a good car; for me, if I make it over the mountain without the radiator boiling, it’s a good trip. I made it and pushed on through the flat farming country at a steady fifty-five. The academics and public servants have moved into the cottages in the small towns and the main streets now have restaurants and shops full of pottery and raw wool.
The traffic thickened near Queanbeyan and held me down to a crawl. The city seemed to have its own patch of blue sky resting neatly above it. After the freshness of the hills and farms the air tasted of exhaust fumes and tyre rubber. I found a medium-price motel on the south side and checked in. I washed my shirt in the handbasin, took a swim in the pool and had a nap after asking to be called at 7 p.m. I came out of the sleep fairly fresh and shaved with an old blade and the motel soap. It hurt. I washed my hair with the same soap and thought of Ailsa, my ex-woman, my rich ex-woman, who’d bought me soaps and shampoos and shaving creams and kept me smelling nice. Then I thought of Cyn, my ex-wife who didn’t give a damn after a while how I smelt or what I did or thought or said. Funny thing was, I missed them both.
At eight o’clock I was wearing a freshened up shirt and a clean face and was ready to go calling. I got directions to Red Oak Road from the motel office and negotiated the circles and crescents they have in those parts to take the cockiness out of strangers. The neighbourhood looked like Professor and fat-cat territory; the gardens were wide and deep in front and the houses featured a lot of timber and glass and weren’t short on stone walls and terraces. The Baudin place didn’t let the street down. It had half an acre of garden out front and the trees seemed to have been specially chosen for their cumulative effect of taste and order. I could see a big garage at the end of the drive which held a brace of European cars. A few more of the same were standing out in the street.
I parked and went through the open gates towards the house. It was a well set-up affair in white brick with ivy or something growing on it. Splashing and the strains of jollity from behind the house took my attention and I kept on the drive towards the back. A gate in a white trellis fence gave on to a flag-stoned patio with a low wall around it. Beyond the wall was a swimming pool and a lot of smooth lawn. There was still some light and enough warmth in the air for fun, fun, fun; water splashed up from the pool and glittered like quicksilver. There were about ten people in the pool and three times that many out of it. The dry people were wearing casual clothes and drinking drinks. The sexes seemed to be about equally represented. I took a few steps across the patio and a big man in a dark suit came quickly out of the house and barred my way.
‘Private party sir,’ he said quietly.
‘This is the Baudin residence?’
‘A private party,’ he repeated. ‘By invitation.’
‘The night is young. I hope they enjoy it. I’m not here for a party, I want to see Mr and Mrs Baudin.’
‘What’s your business?’
I handed him a card. He read it and then looked me over carefully; he was poker-faced but his eyes told me he was wondering how anyone could sink so low. I felt resentment.
‘Who’re you by the way — the caterer?’
‘I’m Mr Baudin’s personal secretary.’
‘And bouncer?’
‘If necessary. There’s been no call for it so far.’
If it was an invitation I was prepared to pass it up. He had a couple of inches and many pounds on me and none of it looked soft. He held himself well and he’d put the card out of sight so fast I hadn’t followed the movement. His hands were free again.
‘I don’t want any trouble, just a minute or two with the host and I’ll be on my way — I won’t even dirty a glass.’
Our encounter must have looked intense because it had attracted the attention of some of the drinkers. A couple of them ambled across towards us. The secretary made a motion of his arm that suggested my dismissal, possibly by force, when one of the onlookers spoke up.
‘Hey, Cliff Hardy, Cliff.’ He lifted his glass. I recognised him as a reporter I’d known in Sydney. I’d heard he’d joined the staff of a cabinet minister. I raised my hand and my mind searched for his name. We shook hands.
‘How’s tricks Cliff?’
‘All right.’
‘Do you know Mr… Hardy, Mr Rose?’
Tom Rose.
‘Yeah sure, from my Sydney days. Still enquiring privately Cliff?’
‘Right. Still a fiercely independent voice?’
He laughed. Rose is a short, broad man and his laugh sounds like someone pounding on an oil drum. The laugh did for the secretary. I was in. He leaned forward and dropped a few discreet words between us.
‘Mr Baudin has been indisposed. I’ll take your card in and mention that you are acquainted with Mr Rose. He might see you.’
‘Thanks Jeeves,’ I said. He went off athletically into the house and I turned my attention to Rose. ‘You carry a little weight in this town, Tom?’
‘Just a little. Come and have a drink. Look Cliff I’d like you to meet Richard…’ He swung around to where his companion had been but the man had drifted away. ‘Shit, he’s gone. Never mind, come and have a drink, there’s gallons of it — the best.’ His voice was a bit sloppy. It wasn’t his fault there were still gallons. I fell in beside him as he moved towards the throng.
‘Who’s this Baudin anyway?’
He almost did a skip. ‘Captain of industry mate, captain of industry. Least that’s what he is now. He was a public servant once, just like me.’
‘What was it? Land, rate of the dollar?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say Cliff. He’s big in mining now. Here we are, what’ll you have?’
We’d reached a trestle table covered with bottles, ice buckets, siphons and chopped-up lemons.
‘Gin and tonic,’ I said.
A thin blonde in a pink pantsuit detached herself from a clutch of drinkers by the pool and came over to the table.
‘Let me do your bidding,’ she said throatily. ‘ ‘Lo Tom. And who do you write for?’ She got busy with the Gordons Dry gin and the Schweppes tonic and ice as if she knew what she was doing.
‘The New York Times,’ I said.
‘Stringer or staff? Do introduce us Tom.’
Rose sighed. ‘Cliff Hardy, Billie Harris.’
She smiled and handed me the drink. One of her front teeth was a little yellow but the drink was blue and cold as a good gin and tonic must be. ‘You don’t sound American Cliff, spent much time there?’ Her hands were busy building another drink but her glittering eyes never left me. ‘Are you on politics with the NYT, features?’ She started to move out and around the table towards me.
‘I’m sort of freelance,’ I said desperately.
Someone large fell or was pushed into the pool. The displaced water flew up, women shrieked, men swore and Billie Harris turned to look. I moved fast to the right, lurked for a few minutes, and came out on a landscaped higher level. Tom Rose was pouring beer into a schooner glass from a king-sized can.
‘Still got your pants on Cliff,’ he crowed, ‘what’s wrong with you?
‘Get stuffed, I’m working. Tell me more about the Baudins. What about the wife?’
‘No wife, she died a few years back.’ He drank some beer and dropped the question in casually. ‘What’s your interest Cliff?’
My throat felt dry as I formed the question in my mind; I eased the feeling with gin. ‘What about the son, he around?’
‘Baudin has two sons I think, depends which one you mean. Come on Cliff, what’s it about?’
The professional note in his voice warned me to cover up. Rose was still a journalist, still a news-monger even if he was now a politician’s errand boy. The last thing Lady C would have wanted was for everyone to be reading about her long-lost grandson before she’d met him herself.
‘Baudin’s just a small part of something else Tom,’ I said. ‘How’s your job here working out?’
He told me at some length. I hated to hear it; it was all excuses, excuses for changing a real but uncomfortable job for an unreal one. I only half-listened and kept an eye out for Billie Harris and the secretary. I finished my drink. Rose had got through the beer and he went off for refills. I wandered down towards the pool in which there were now only two people — a man and a woman treading water and talking conspiratorially down at the deep end. The party had moved off towards a section of the lawn where a couple of portable barbecues were going full-blast. I stared down at the pool; in the fading light the water looked like slowly rippling green ink. I turned around to look for Jeeves and bumped into a woman who’d appeared behind me. I apologised and had to look her straight in the eye to do it; she was nearly as tall as me and held her head up. She looked arrogant.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I should have coughed or something. I wanted to talk to you.’
‘Why?’
‘I haven’t seen you at one of these do’s before for one thing and you were with Rose for another.’
‘Is that interesting?’
‘It could be. I watch his minister.’
‘So you’re a journo. What do you know about this Baudin character?’
She smiled and the arrogance fell away. ‘Me first — got any dirt?’
‘Tons, but not on Tom’s master — sorry.’
‘Oh well, worth a try.’ She leaned closer. ‘You’ve got a hard look to you now I come to notice. Are you a cop?’
‘No, private detective.’
The smile again. I was starting to like her. ‘But you’re not sniffing around Crowley?’
‘If that’s Tom’s boss, no. Why not pump Tom a bit?’
‘He’s pissed,’ she said. ‘He’s over there with a whole box of cans.’ She pointed towards the shadows. I tried to steer her over to the drinks table without doing anything as obvious as taking her arm or dragging her by the hair. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a red tie around the neck like a sailor’s. She had dark, short hair and long, slim legs ending in white, high-heeled sandals. Her eyes were dark and slightly slanted in a wide, high cheek-boned face. We reached the table and she asked for scotch and ice. I made it and put two drops of gin into a glass of tonic.
I gave her the drink. ‘Cliff Hardy,’ I said. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Kay Fletcher. What brings you here, I suppose you’re from Sydney?’
There was a wistfulness in her voice that gained her another hundred or so points with me.
‘Sydney, right. What’s the party for?’
‘Oh it’s all about some deal he’s pulled off, a mine of some kind I think. The government’s put up some money, that’s why the politicos are here.’
‘And the likes of you and Rose.’
‘I had nothing better to do.’
‘That’s hard to believe.’
‘Thanks, but it’s true. I went through all the possible men in this place in the first year, I don’t feel like starting on the rest.’
It wasn’t an invitation and it wasn’t a put-down. I judged that she was ready to be interested in me if I could be interesting — fair enough. I was on a job, though, and despite myself I looked up to the house for the secretary. I saw him out by the wall looking over the guests who were gathered around the burning meat.
‘Look Kay, I’m on a job.’ I pointed out the big dark man. ‘I have to see him and talk to Baudin, it shouldn’t take long. Will you be around?’
She looked at her watch, a big one made for telling the time. ‘I’ll give you an hour,’ she said, ‘maybe a bit more.’
I touched her arm, which made me want to do more touching, and went up to the house. The secretary loomed up over me like a medieval knight surveying invaders from his castle wall.
‘Mr Baudin will see you.’
I vaulted over the wall, showing off for the girl, and was sorry immediately. The knight seemed not to notice and strode off across the flagstones to the house. As I went in through the French windows it occurred to me that it was strange for Baudin to be still living in the same place thirty years later, given that he’d come up so far in the world. Not that it wasn’t a pretty fair shack; the carpet was thick and the paintings on the walls weren’t prints. The secretary showed me into a smallish room that had a bar against one wall and some books opposite. There were four big, velvet-covered armchairs. There were two men in the chairs. One was small and wizened with whispy grey hair around his bald skull. The top of his head was baby pink, incongruous beside the ancient, lined flesh on his face. He was wearing a cream shirt, cream trousers and white shoes, like the Wimbledon heroes of long ago. The other man had on a lightweight suit with the jacket open to show his soft, spreading belly. His face was pale and puffy. He was thirtyish.