Peter Corris - Master's mates

Viv Garner, my long-suffering lawyer, had lost his wife six months earlier to a runaway cancer. They’d been very close and had no children so Viv was taking it hard, although he kept working and was as effective as ever. Saturday mornings, when he and Ros had done the shopping and played tennis, were bound to be desolate and he picked up the phone quickly when I rang.

‘It’s Cliff Hardy, Viv.’

‘Cliff, good to hear from you. What’s up?’ The note of cheerfulness in his voice was forced, but maybe in time it would become natural again.

‘Well, I want to pump you for information of course, but I thought I’d do you a favour and let you drive me out to the airport this arvo. I’m off to New Caledonia. Occurred to me you might like to share in the glamour and excitement, vicariously, like.’

He laughed. ‘You bastard. Okay, you’ll shout the drinks.’

‘My client will gladly pay. How’s an hour from now for you?’

I checked in and was told the plane would be leaving on time. Viv and I went to the bar and I ordered two double scotches. We hadn’t spoken much on the drive, mainly about Ros and how Viv was coping. He seemed to be stronger than the last time and a lot better than the time before that. He told a few stories about times they’d spent together and his smiles were genuine.

He added a measure of water to his scotch and we clinked glasses. ‘Okay,’ Viv said. ‘You’ve got about half an hour before you wing off to paradise. What gives?’

I filled him in, trying to give him a sense of the ways things had worked out at Master’s trial. Viv is a solicitor but he’s spent a good bit of time in the courts and he asked a few questions I could have answered better if I’d had the transcript, but he got my drift.

‘Sounds funny,’ he said. ‘But trials are funny things anyway. What did you want to ask me?’

‘What do you know about John L’Estrange?’

Viv drank some scotch and fiddled with a coaster. I noticed that his hands were shaking slightly and I wondered if he was on some medication. Maybe bringing him out here and putting scotch into him wasn’t a good idea. ‘John L’Estrange,’ he said. ‘Universally known as Jack the Odd. Successful barrister. Not in the top flight, as they say, but doing well. Said to have very strong political ambitions.’

‘Jesus, that’s all I need-state and federal police and politics thrown in.’

‘You live in interesting times. But then, you always did, Cliff…’

‘Yeah. Which party?’

‘Oh, I think that would all depend.’

‘Any rumours? Boys, girls, gerbils?’

‘I’m a bit out of touch, but I don’t think so. Just the politics.’ Viv ran his hand over his bald head. ‘He’s got the looks-the figure, the hair and all that.’

That was enough for me to think about. We had another drink and chatted about nothing much until it was time for me to go. He gripped my hand and shook it solidly. No tremors. ‘I’m glad you did this, mate. I love planes. I’m going to sit and watch them land and take off for a while.’

I browsed through the tourist guide as the Air Calin jet spent the usual waiting time on the tarmac and then seemed to taxi interminably to its take-off point. Courtesy of my client, I was in business class with leg room. Economy, where I sit when I’m paying myself, looked to have the usual cattle-truck crowding. I spared them some pity as I leafed through the guide.

It seemed ridiculous for the islands to be named after Scotland by Captain Cook, but I suppose if we colonise Mars we’ll do much the same. The French got hold of the place in the middle of the nineteenth century and have never really let go. A useful dumping ground for convicts, like Australia, it seems to have later become a source of timber and minerals for the home country, like Australia, and has ended up a tourist destination, like Australia. Without making the comparison, the guide told me that the Melanesians, the Kanaks, like the Aborigines, have battled for their rights against the French and made some headway.

I couldn’t be bothered following the politics. There were accords and votes and plebiscites, which means money was spent and lies were told. It sounded like a tricky place to find your feet in but full of possibilities when you did. The same names kept cropping up and there was talk of ‘development’. You could sniff yacht deals, silent business partnerships and no-questions-asked investment opportunities. I turned over the leaflets and maps the airline provided without great interest. A restaurant named Le Gaugin sounded intriguing but I was pretty sure I could bypass Palm Beach Curios.

The flight took nearly three hours and they served a good lunch with as much free wine as you could drink. French, too. I gave it a judicious sampling. Read the papers and a couple of the Maugham stories. The weather in Noumea, mild when I checked it in the paper a day or so before, had become hot and sticky in the interim. I had only one bag and nothing to declare other than the scotch I bought at the duty free, and I was through the bureaucracy pretty quickly. No language problems so far, although ‘passport?’ is much the same anywhere.

Peter Corris

CH26 — Master's Mates

The Kanak woman at the car rental desk spoke good English and if she had doubts about my battered, non-gold American Express card she didn’t let them show. Before very long I was in an air-conditioned Peugeot 307 with my jacket off and my T-shirt was starting to detach itself from my back. The rental had set Lorrie Master back quite a few thousand Pacific francs but I wasn’t worried. For the moment, I concentrated on re-learning to drive on the wrong side of the road. I’d done it before in Europe and the US but not for some time and it’s a freaky feeling reserved for Brits and colonials, as if the world has suddenly turned itself inside out. Noumea was fifty kilometres away, with other drivers to contend with, hills to climb, roundabouts to negotiate and crossings to survive. I reckoned that I’d have it programmed in by the time I arrived.

The drive wasn’t bad once I’d relaxed into the road rules. The flat country gave way to hills which looked green in the distance and dry up close. Trees are trees to me, but most of these had a familiar look. I could’ve been in Australia except that every second car was a Renault, and those that weren’t were Citroens, Peugeots and Fiats. A toll gate extracted some of the change I’d got by tending miserable Aussie dollars for the scotch, and when you start parting with money you know you’re on the way to the big smoke. At a guess, an ugly structure in the near distance was the nickel smelter. The guide book had told me that the island was solid iron with lots of nickel. Good for them.

The city streets, with their roundabouts and intersections, were a test, particularly as I didn’t really know where I was going, although the woman at the rental desk had tried to explain things to me. Not to worry. My plan in new places is to give myself plenty of time and basically get lost and get found and get lost again and so on. Eventually you get a sense of what’s where. I knew that the hotel was at Ansa Vata and that was beachside. I found it by following half-understood road signs and by sniffing the air. Australians are mostly coast dwellers and have a feel for it. A few tourists with towels in hand helped to point the way.

The hotel was a big sprawling affair just across the road from the beach. The people at the desk spoke enough English for us to get by. No porters, which I like. Palm trees galore as you’d expect, good pool, ‘fitness gym’, and my room had a glimpse of the water. It was air-conditioned and perfectly okay. No mini-bar, which isn’t always a bad thing, temptation-wise. Besides, I had the duty free scotch. I unpacked my few belongings, had a quick instant coffee with ‘creamer’, made a mental note to buy some milk, and headed straight for the pool.