A Thing of Blood (22 page)

With some time to spare I wandered slowly through the city. It was much quieter than on a weekday but there were still people window shopping — mostly couples, and mostly Americans with local girlfriends or companions. The windows seemed dismal to me, victims of the notion that it was in poor taste and unpatriotic to flaunt luxury. I noticed that there were frequent, low-level displays of unpleasantries whenever a shabby Australian soldier passed a dapper ally. The tension was palpable, and I thought how this made a mockery of the catchy little tune that was current and which insisted that we were all in clover because the Aussies and the Yanks were here.

As I crossed Princes Bridge, and passed Wirth’s Circus, I thought how tawdry circuses looked in daylight. The big top was diminished to grubby canvas and guy ropes by the illusion-shattering blast of the sun. Hobbled camels grazed desultorily, and a shackled elephant swayed with boredom. I kept to the left hand side and walked along the path that James Fowler had called the ‘chicken run.’ I wondered how many pints of semen had been ejaculated the previous evening onto the ground I traversed, and I made a mental note to pause before walking barefoot through any park again.

I mounted the steps of the Shrine and passed into the Sanctuary — a place that had made me a bit weepy on the two or three occasions I’d visited it in the past. The centre was surmounted by a monumental cap, shaped to evoke the great temple at Helicarnassus; but to me it was reminiscent of the inside of a camera’s snout. There were a few people in the Sanctuary, maintaining the silence the space demanded. At the back I turned right and walked down a short flight of steps, then turned right again where a longer flight felt like the approach to a pharaoh’s tomb.

The crypt was dimly lit and smaller than I’d remembered it. Regimental colours hung beneath the ceiling and the air smelt of wet sandstone. I was alone. I could hear the echo of footsteps above, and muffled, subdued voices as people moved around the Shrine. For no rational reason I experienced a kind of panic. The damp, dark, flag-bedraped crypt suddenly became less a place of reflection and more of a trap into which I’d walked. I began to sweat and feel dizzy; the claustrophobia to which I was prone came creeping from my subconscious into the wide open spaces of my susceptible mind.

‘Will?’

James Fowler’s voice was low.

I turned, expecting to see a gun pointed at me. Instead he was standing with his hands on his hips. Even in the poor light, my pale, glistening, panicked face caused him to ask if I was feeling ill.

‘Hay fever,’ I lied. ‘Could we go outside do you think?’

‘That seems a little illogical, Will, but if you insist.’

I followed Fowler up onto the exterior balcony of the Shrine. From here the centre of Melbourne lay before us, and my eyes skipped over the ugly factories on the Yarra River’s bank to collide with the lumpish, failed grandeur of Flinders Street Station, and then onto the true splendour of St Paul’s Cathedral.

‘All these things will I give thee,’ Fowler said, and swept his hand over the vista, ‘if thou wilt fall down and worship me.’

‘That sounds like something you’d hear on the chicken run.’

‘Do you mean me, personally, or is that a more general “you”?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said hastily, ‘it was just a poor joke.’

‘Have you thought any further about what we were discussing last night?’

Without hesitation I told James Fowler that I would do whatever Army Intelligence asked me to do.

‘I’m glad you’re on board,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Clutterbuck thinks that he can rely on you to help him, advertently or inadvertently, in whatever he’s got planned. He’s slippery enough to arrange things so that you’re never told quite what it is you’re being used for.’

I resented, slightly, the implication that I mightn’t be bright enough to know when I was or wasn’t being exploited. Nevertheless, I agreed that it would be satisfying to know that while Clutterbuck thought he was keeping an eye on me, it was actually me who was keeping an official eye on him.

Fowler was anxious to point out that he didn’t expect, indeed didn’t advise, that my role in infiltrating the Order of the Shining Knights would be a very active one. All that was required was that I attend a few of their meetings and pass on the gist of their discussions to him.

‘They won’t tell you anything of real significance probably, but you might be able to tip us off about something.’

‘Both Oakpate and Crocker have been sacking people from their factories. I know that,’ I reported.

‘Nasty but not illegal. But we have had some vague intelligence about an attack of some sort which may be planned. We don’t know where or when, or even if, really. That’s what I need you to keep your ears open for.’

As Fowler was outlining the job he wanted me to do, I waited for an opportunity to raise the issue of bringing Brian in on all this. The more he spoke, the more certain I became that the less he knew about my plans for Brian the better. Army Intelligence was all very well, but there was something to be said for Power Intelligence. It always pays to have something up your sleeve.

James Fowler and I parted on excellent terms. I was tempted to mention my conversation with Nigella. I didn’t, because such an intimacy was at odds with the professionally distant relationship I wanted to maintain with him, at least until the whole Paul Clutterbuck issue had been resolved.

‘I have to get back to my cubby-hole,’ he said. ‘Be careful, Will. Don’t take any risks or you’ll give yourself away.’

We shook hands.

‘I’m an actor James. I can play the wide-eyed naïf. I won’t be giving anything away.’

It was very late in the afternoon when I returned to Mother’s house. The football season had finished so the hoi polloi wasn’t milling about in Princes Park. There was a baseball game in progress, watched by a handful of locals and quite a number of grunts from Camp Pell. I assumed that Darlene and the father of her unborn foal would have left. They hadn’t. The living room door was closed but I could hear Darlene’s flat, penetrating voice through the wood. I found Mother in the kitchen and she told me that they’d been talking for hours, the three of them. They hadn’t even stopped for a cup of tea. Voices had been raised, but generally it had been a civilised affair. I said that I thought it was extraordinary that Darlene could be so deaf, dumb and blind to decency that she would bring her adulterous gigolo to the very house that had welcomed her as my brother’s wife.

‘He’s not a gigolo, Will, and you’ve certainly never been guilty of welcoming Darlene.’

‘How can you defend her?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’m not defending her, but I have no patience for that tone of yours. It’s most unpleasant and unhelpful.’

It’s remarkable how one’s childhood can be summoned by a single, sharp reprimand. Conversation was now impossible. I’d grown out of the sullen silence with which I used to meet correction, obviously, but I didn’t feel I had anything to apologise for so I simply made myself a cup of tea. I put the teapot on the table without offering to pour Mother a fresh cup. I hoped she’d appreciate this gesture as a pointed riposte to her short-tempered reaction to my perfectly reasonable question.

‘I’m going upstairs to write to Fulton,’ she said. Before leaving the kitchen she added, ‘When you speak to Brian try to keep the awful note of glee you sometimes get, out of your voice.’

I ran my hand over the stubble on my face in lieu of a rejoinder.

‘You really are frighteningly like your father sometimes, Will.’

With that, she went upstairs, and I was left to ponder whether this observation was a compliment or an insult.

The door to the living room opened — I could see it from the kitchen — and the American came down the corridor towards me.

‘I’m after some water for Darlene,’ he said.

I hadn’t really had the chance to examine him closely the night before. I noticed he was a captain, though without his uniform he would have been Darlene’s equal in colourlessness. If I were casting him in a play I’d put him somewhere down the back, his only use to ‘swell a progress.’

‘You’re the guy I slugged last night. Darlene’s brother-in-law. I guess I should apologise for that.’

He put out his hand. I ignored it.

‘OK,’ he said and withdrew it. ‘Darlene warned me that you were an asshole.’

‘Darlene has specialist knowledge in that area, and I see she’s exercised it in her choice of lover.’

‘You talk like a homo.’

‘You Americans have never really got the hang of English have you.’

‘Water,’ he said, and nodded in the direction of the tap. He found a glass and filled it.

‘Darlene’s usually more comfortable with a trough,’ I said.

‘You’re a funny guy. You could get hurt you’re so funny.’

He returned to the living room and only a few minutes later he re-emerged, this time with his arm through Darlene’s. I was standing in the kitchen doorway and watched as she pulled gloves over her trotters and pointlessly attempted to improve the way her hat sat before going into the street. It was pleasing to note that her pregnancy was wreaking havoc on her appearance. She wasn’t glowing; merely swelling and sloughing. She saw me and curled her lip. She said nothing, words as usual failing her.

In the living room Brian was standing by the bay window, staring at them as they walked down Garton Street.

‘How could she this fair mountain leave to feed and batten on this moor?’ I said.

‘She’s a cunt, Will.’ His tone was dramatically inexpressive, as if he was repeating a bland truism. He wasn’t upset; exhausted perhaps and showing none of the agitation I’d expected.

‘I won’t have you using that kind of language in my house, Brian,’ Mother said. She’d come in silently behind me. On any other occasion Brian would have stammered an immediate apology — I’d never heard him utter so powerful an obscenity before — but he must have been numbed by his lengthy negotiation with Darlene, because he paid no heed to Mother’s injunction.

‘I’ll give it some thought, Mother, but for the moment “cunt” is all the English language has to offer to describe her.’

He spoke slowly and deliberately. He’d entered emotional territory he’d never been in before and he was taking careful steps.

‘Sit down,’ he said to both of us. ‘I’ll give you the short version and I don’t want to answer any questions. Darlene has been seeing Captain Spangler Brisket — yes, that’s his real name — for six months. They met at one of the Comfort Fund do’s that Darlene attended. Darlene and I hadn’t been intimate for a while — I suppose we were going through a bad patch, like any marriage. She and Spangler — that name — hit it off and she became pregnant. As soon as she discovered this she had sex with me, just to cover herself until she decided what to do. Spangler wasn’t going to be in Melbourne forever, although he’d managed to stick around for longer than most of them. He’s got a cousin on Macarthur’s staff who pulled a few strings.

‘Darlene freely admits that the kidnapping stunt was appalling, but she only decided to do it after she found out about my affair with Sarah Goodenough in Maryborough. Sarah did ring her, just as the police said, and told her everything, and with stunning hypocrisy she took offence, said I was my mother’s son, whatever that means, and that she wanted to punish us all.’

He paused, and I know both Mother and I were tempted to fill the pause with questions. With disciplined reticence neither of us did so. Brian could see us straining at the leash but went on:

‘Darlene’s been unhappy here for a long time. She said that she never felt comfortable; that Mother always made her feel clumsy, and treated her in the off-hand way she might treat a servant. Will, of course, she detested.’

I thought that ‘of course’ was a bit much, and I could see from the aggrieved look on Mother’s face that Brian’s words had come as something of a shock.

‘She wants a divorce and she intends to marry this Spangler Brisket and move to the United States with him. She wants nothing from me except the divorce. Anyway, given her pregnancy it would be ludicrous for her to make any demands. Spangler, by the way, is happy to replace the crockery Darlene smashed. He didn’t entirely approve of her kidnapping scheme.’

Mother finally interrupted.

‘The crockery is irreplaceable, as Darlene very well knows. It was a wedding present from your father’s family.’

‘At any rate, he’s going to replace it. Now I’m tired of talking. I’m going upstairs to lie down and think about things.’

‘Of course, darling, you were in there with Darlene and this Spangler person for hours. You must be exhausted. We’ll sort it all out later.’

‘It’s sorted out, Mother. I’m giving Darlene her divorce and she’s going to America. Simple.’

Brian left the room. I hung fire, not wishing to attract any further criticism for misheard tone.

‘Well, that’s that,’ Mother said. ‘I hope Mrs Spangler Brisket will wear her name with all the pride it calls for.’

‘And I’m sure Spangler Junior will be the child they richly deserve.’

‘Let’s have a whisky, Will, and you can tell me about this private detective business. When Brian told me I must confess I thought the strain had made him silly.’

There was nothing to be gained by telling Mother all the details of my recent investigations. I sketched a rough picture and left her with the impression, I think, that in a very short time I’d become as fine a detective as I was an actor. Never one to lavish praise and approval on her children, she acknowledged that finding Darlene had been a coup, and she congratulated me on doing so.