The Butcherbird (3 page)

‘Yes, the last few years have been remarkable. We’ve sold just about everything off the plan, which is unheard of.’

Mac poured coffee from the plunger. ‘Do you have a formula? The one-sheet-of-paper idea?’

‘Pretty much. Always a harbour view or waterfront, always big rooms, huge bathroom somewhere, usually a fireplace, a home cinema, a concierge in the building, forget the gym and the swimming pool since no one ever uses them, always an enormous price. And we never bargain. It seems to work.’

Mac laughed. ‘They made you chairman of the Property Council and you were on the shortlist for Businessman of the Year. It seems to work all right. And you love it, do you? It still gets the adrenalin running? You’ve got to have that, haven’t you?’

Jack eased back and looked out across the rail to the river of his youth. He played with his sugar spoon, tapped it on the cup, placed it carefully in the saucer. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, it has lost an edge for me lately.’ He paused. He barely knew this man and he hadn’t spoken of his feelings to anyone, not even Louise. But no one else had asked, and Mac was leaning forward, genuinely interested in him and his life, and he was sated with the warmth of coddled cholesterol and New Guinea Highlands coffee and the memory of … what was her name? He would have to find out discreetly before she came up for breakfast. Mac said nothing. He knew the art of a good listener.

‘I like what I do and I guess I’m good at it, judging by the results. I suppose this sounds incredibly arrogant, but it’s just become too easy. We design those things, I dream up some absurd price, jack it up another twenty per cent and they generally snap them up before they’re even built. In a way, I enjoyed it more when we had to struggle.’

‘Who’s we? You have partners?’ Mac’s voice was quiet now.

The staff had slid away, they needed no signal.

‘No, I’m a lone wolf, I guess. Louise, my wife, used to be my partner. She’s still my partner, but not in the business. We have two kids so that’s pretty full time.’

‘You like it that way?’ Jack looked up. ‘Being your own boss?’ Mac poured more coffee into both cups. The pelican flew quietly away as the boat eased up on the anchor chain. The tide was turning and the Pacific Ocean was running in to meet the fresh waters of the Nepean and the Colo and the Hawkesbury, running down from the Blue Mountains and the Southern Highlands. With the salt water came the schools of red bream and taylor, flathead, sometimes black fish, and the predators that followed—the Port Jackson sharks, the hammerheads, the ferocious bull sharks. The sharks were all saltwater creatures and yet they’d been found more than thirty miles upstream, way into fresh water, and once, when Jack was only about eighteen, a waterskier had been taken at Sackville, which was thought to be impossible. He had hoped all the waterskiers would be frightened off this river. He’d hated their destruction of the tranquillity even when he was a boy.

He chewed at the question. Did he like it that way? Being his own boss, working with the same circle, half-circle, of colleagues and contractors, lunching regularly with the group, using the same ideas he’d lived on for twenty years, dining out on the same stories he’d told for too long. He hated it when Louise said, ‘I think we might have heard that one, Jack’, but it was always true.

But something made him hold back from opening his cloak to this man. ‘I do. I like running my own race.’

Mac gave him the knowing smile of an old python. ‘So do I.’ He rose from the table. ‘Come on, I’ll show you a few of the other little toys we have on offer. God knows when the rest of these lazy bastards’ll climb out of their pits.’

The two men walked slowly away together, both satisfied with their conversation. Not too much was to be given;understanding would come from what was unsaid. As far as Mac could see, which was further than most, Jack wanted nothing from him except a bit of fun. If so, he was the only person on this boat with such modest desires. And Mac wanted very little from Jack. Sure, he would touch him up for a discount on that penthouse for Bonny and get it, but that was just pigeon shooting. He liked the bloke.

From behind, as they strolled the length of the boat, the contrast in the silhouettes was comic. The one short, square, bandy. The other tall, lean, lithe. The sun was high now above the bridge. The Honey Bear was ready for another day.

The door to number thirty-two Alice Street, Woollahra was a solid block of stainless steel without blemish or keyhole. Set into the facade of a late 1890s terrace in a conservative, manicured street of immaculate ‘restoration’, it seemed to be either thumbing its nose at history or promising relief, depending on your point of view. The minuscule front garden was a sea of river stones rather than the ferns and mondo grass or camellias and azaleas of neighbouring terraces. Apart from these two aberrations, number thirty-two faced the world with wrought-iron and Victorian modesty, just like all the other widows in the row.

Jack climbed somewhat more stiffly than usual from the leather seat of his Aston Martin, stretched, looked up and down the street as if checking for observers, and clicked the remote. A dull thump emanated from the stainless steel and he made his way into the house. He still experienced a frisson of pleasure every time he entered. It was his finest work as an architect, from the days when he really practised his design skills. That was the part of property that lifted his soul. And Louise had used all her skills as a negotiator to convince the local council to allow a conversion they’d never seen before and of which they were deeply suspicious. Two terraces joined together, not side by side but from front to back, with a glass atrium between, opening to a sculpture court in the centre—it might comply with the building codes, but was it ‘right’?

As Jack entered, great shafts of light fell down through the three-storey-high glass roof and lit the yellow sandstone floor in soft pools. In one of these shimmering enclaves stood Louise, smiling at him, relaxed, willowy, tanned, in jodhpurs or some trousers vaguely reminiscent of horses and a cream cashmere vest that set off her shoulder-length blonde hair and brown skin. She was a handsome woman, that was how Jack thought of her; fit, athletic, strikingly attractive, with an aura of confidence and commitment. And she was his wife and he loved her. She came forward to embrace him and ran her fingers up through his hair in a gesture that always affected him. ‘So, the great sailor returns from life on the high seas. Didst thou conquer the waves? Didst thou haul on mighty hawsers and splice the main brace? And hast thou returned to thy safe port and the bosom of a soft woman?’

Jack led her through the sculpture court into the kitchen that ran the entire width of the house. She was always teasing in this way, bringing him to earth or to heel, whichever she deemed necessary, and he loved her for that as well. It had been the same when they were partners together in the business. She’d been a competent architect—not in his creative league, never able to take the leap from a logical solution into the poetry of design, into the shadow puppetry of shapes and light falls—but brilliant in all the practical necessities of contracts and councils. He’d missed her when they started a family and she decided to commit to that. He missed sparring with her when they came together for coffee, when she looked over his shoulder at the sketches on the drawing board, sometimes mildly critical, but more often with, ‘Not just a pretty face, are you, Jack?’ He fed off her approval and the work was always better when they were in tune with one another. But he’d become the architect everyone loved so much he’d stopped being an architect and become a property developer. He’d moved effortlessly from design to building to financing as he collected people, or more as they collected him and his charming talent. But somewhere along the track, the profitable, seamless footpath of success through Sydney’s best suburbs, he felt he’d lost some of Louise’s respect. Not that she ever overtly showed this to Jack or anyone else. But he felt it.

‘It was a motorboat actually, or ship more likely. Enormous great thing. But not much call for hauling on the mainsails. Anyway, how was the literary event?’

She examined Jack carefully. He was a hopeless liar or dissembler, which was one of the things she loved about him, along with a basically good heart, a sound set of human values—capable of eroding at the edges, but in the main sound. An immediate attempt to change the subject usually indicated nervousness.

‘You would have loved it. Locked away in an overheated room in Bowral discussing whether Truman Capote did or did not contribute to Harper Lee’s only novel and whether J.D. Salinger actually exists or is merely a figment of his daughter’s imagination. Or something like that. But tell me more about life at sea. Who was there? What was said? I stand, or sit, ready to be amazed.’

Jack drummed his fingers on the wooden table, unaware he was telegraphing more signals of uncertainty. ‘No one of great interest really, no one you’d know. Oh, except Archie Speyne from the museum. He was swanning about chatting up Mac. And a couple of business people and some broken-down old pollie. You didn’t miss much either.’

‘Really?’ She paused and slowly twisted a strand of hair between thumb and forefinger. ‘And no wives? No women at all? That must have been dull. What is Mac Biddulph, a misogynist or gay or something?’

Jack laughed, not knowing it was the wrong laugh. ‘Hardly. I don’t think he’s gay, that’s for sure.’

‘Really?’ Another, longer pause. ‘I didn’t realise you knew him at all. And no stimulating conversation or even gossip for me to share with the girls at tennis?’

‘You don’t play tennis.’

‘Quite so. But if I did, and I might take it up, I’d need gossip to bring with me or I’d be driven out of the group and publicly stoned as a woman of low morals.’ She was smiling broadly at him, no hint of suspicion or condemnation.

‘Well, I sold the penthouse in The Pinnacle, so it wasn’t a wasted weekend. Mac snapped it up, which pretty much closes off the sales for that one.’

Her eyebrows arched up in surprise. ‘That’s extraordinary. It’s a wonderful penthouse, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t have thought it was anywhere near grand enough for Mac Biddulph.’

Jack squirmed in the swivel chair, rose and began to pace. ‘That’s what I said. But he’s bought it as an investment.’

Again the eyebrows shot up. ‘An investment? Either he must have new ideas on how to get a return on six and a half million dollars that we don’t know about or he’s prepared for a long wait for a capital gain.’

Jack opened the see-through refrigerator door, peered into its lighted recesses, closed the door again. ‘I guess that’s up to him. Anyway, I took a bit less than the asking price to get the deal through. No point in being greedy. Bird in the hand.’

She followed him with her eyes, wondering which cupboard he’d open next in his exploration of cutlery and crockery. ‘And which bird did we get in the hand—a sparrow or a goose?’

‘I took six. It’s a fair price and we’ve made an indecent profit on the whole development.’

‘Indeed we have, darling. I’m just a little surprised you decided to grant some of it to Mac Biddulph, who hardly seems a deserving case, when winter is coming and blankets, warm food and thick clothing will be required for less fortunate citizens.’

Jack had reached the atrium and paused as if deliberating whether to disappear into it or circle back towards her. She decided to solve his dilemma.

‘You know best, darling. Come on, I’ll make us a decent cup of coffee, something not available within a hundred kilometres of a literary retreat.’ But as he approached, she couldn’t resist one last shot. ‘Still, I hope you don’t get invited on that boat too often. Half a million dollars makes an expensive weekend.’

A few nights later they sat at dinner together. It was a ritual they all treasured. Considering sixteen-year-old girls were supposed to be rebellious, especially with their fathers, and thirteen-year-old boys to have the attention span of cocker spaniels, it seemed a custom from another time. But any night they were all home, which was often, they ate as a family, with Jack acting as quiz master in another strange Beaumont custom.

‘Who was the King of Spain in 1922?’

‘That’s dumb, Dad. We know they were all called Carlos. Ask a proper question.’

Sarah would be another Louise, he could see that already. She was captain of the hockey team, frighteningly good at maths, and more than capable of instructing her father in the finer points of his behaviour.

‘Yes, well, you may know that but a reasonable percentage of the world’s population is unaware of these mysteries.’

Sarah tossed her head so her long hair shook from side to side, something she had observed many twentyyear-old girls in the coffee shops of Paddington were wont to do. ‘Nonsense, Dad. Everyone knows it. Now ask us something decent and remember you have to know the answer.’

Louise interjected. ‘A family rule which has stifled many a brilliant question in former times.’

Jack observed them all with deep affection. This was the family sport, scoring points off Dad, but he knew it was their way of expressing love and that the day it stopped he would have lost more than respect. He looked across to the dog sleeping quietly on the rug, for support, but received none.

‘All right then, who’s the President of Tanzania?’

‘Where is Tanzania?’ Shane was always ready to answer a question with a question.

Jack smiled at his only son, the prodigal son he always called him, without really knowing the meaning of ‘prodigal’.’I cannot be called upon to give clues in the great game of life.’

‘Meaning he doesn’t know and therefore loses the great game of life.’ Louise raised her eyebrows at him again.

‘A preposterous and outrageous slander. Tanzania is in Africa, situated conveniently near Zambia and Uganda, especially if you live in either of those highly desirable localities. As the atlas will confirm.’

Sarah had already leapt up to fetch the reference books. ‘He’s right, Mum, it is in Africa.’

‘Of course it’s in Africa, darling, but it’s a hundred to one your father doesn’t know who the President is and is relying on the fact that none of our books are up to date. Am I right?’