Peter Corris - The Washington Club

I dreamed I had a dog named Prince, German Shepherd-Kelpie cross. I’ve never had a dog but if I did it’d be like Prince-lean and wolfish, super-fit, a go-all-day kind of dog. I was throwing sticks into the water at Maroubra and he was swimming out for them and surfing back in. Great dog. Then he disappeared under a wave and didn’t come up. I howled and rushed into the water, swam out, dived for him, still howling…

The phone woke me. I stumbled down the stairs while my spiel was playing and snatched it up when I heard Claudia’s voice.

‘I phoned earlier,’ she said. ‘You must have been out.’

The light was blinking. ‘No, I was here. Dead to the world. What time is it?’

‘Nearly five. You sound funny. Are you all right?’

‘Bad dream. How’ve things been going over there?’

‘OK. The staff weren’t nasty at all. I think they think I killed him but they don’t seem too upset about it. Julius wasn’t a good employer. I’ve actually been having some fun bundling up his clothes for the Smith Family. What d’you think I should do with his golf clubs?’

‘Good ones?’

‘The best, I should think, and scarcely touched. He hated the game, because he wasn’t good at it the way he was with most things.’

‘I’ve got a mate who plays. I’ll ask him. They could make a prize for a junior competition or something. Have you met Gatellari?’

‘Yes, he’s here. He’s very reassuring. I’m going to stay the night, Cliff. I went through a lot of bad stuff here and I want to sort of exorcise it. One night should be enough. Do you understand?’

‘Yup. Did you have the swim?’

‘Yes I did. It was terrific’ She sounded almost bubbly just for an instant there, then she sobered quickly. ‘I found the Katz books too. They’re quite dreadful but I suppose you’ll want to see them?’

I had a flash of Claudia swimming in a twenty-metre chlorinated sandstone pool, landscaped, maybe with a waterfall, and the house seemed shabbier than ever.

‘Cliff?’

‘Yeah, sorry, still waking up. Are you sure you’ll be all right there tonight? No ghosts?’ I was wondering: Where had she fucked Van Kep?

‘Yes, I’m quite sure. Mrs Lindquist is going to cook us something and I’ll be asleep by nine I think.’

Fleischman, Van Kep, Gatellari, Lindquist, the place was a bloody United Nations. Where were the Lees and the Hardys? I struggled to throw off the feelings of jealousy, envy, regret-whatever the hell they were. I had no claims on anyone and the only good thing about that was that no one had any claims on me. ‘There’s a service for Cy at the Sydney Chevra Kadisha tomorrow at ten,’ I said. ‘I’m going.’

‘I’d like to come with you.’

Just those few words dispelled almost all of the murk. ‘That’d be good,’ I said. ‘Get Gatellari to drive you. Have him earn his money.’

‘I was brought up an atheist. I’ve never been to a Jewish service of any kind. Where is it held?’

I’d been to a few Jewish funerals and I told her.

‘What do you wear?’

‘Black,’ I said.

At nine-fifteen the next morning, after listening anxiously to the weather report, I phoned Craig Bolton at the police palace. I told him that I was going to Cy’s funeral service and I inquired if the police had made any progress with the investigation into who had killed him. It seemed like the natural thing to do and Bolton took it that way. He said they hadn’t made any progress at all. Cy had made mincemeat of a few police witnesses and prosecutors in his time and I had to wonder how much shoulder was being put to the wheel. Still playing the part, I allowed the suggestion to enter into my comments. Bolton took offence and shut me out. I thought that Cy would have been pleased by my subtlety, but that didn’t make me feel any better about the morning or the future without him.

I went out into the back courtyard-a fancy name for the badly laid bricks and struggling plants-and sniffed the air. Radio weather forecasts have to be checked against the reality. The sky was clear and the day was certainly going to heat up fast. I had a lightweight navy blue suit, but a suit is a suit, and in Sydney the uniform of jacket, buttoned-up shirt and tie is appropriate to about six weeks of the year, not in December. I packed a change of clothes-drill trousers, short-sleeved shirt, gun-concealing poplin jacket-into one bag and my tennis gear into another. Nothing fancy-a mid-size Wilson racquet, ‘Close the 3rd Runway’ T-shirt, shorts and socks, peaked cap, well-worn Adidas cross-trainers, sunblock. Todd baby or the Washington Club could supply the balls.

The Sydney Chevra Kadisha is an ugly, liver brick building squeezed onto a triangular block between Oxford and Wallis Streets in Woollahra. The best thing about it is Centennial Park over the road. The place was built in the 1950s when nobody seemed to have any taste, and its combination of angles and curves simply doesn’t work. Sign of the times, the high-set, long, narrow windows on the Oxford Street side are covered in wire mesh; the windows and doors on the other side are barred.

I parked in Wallis Street and walked up past the big and small houses, all of which would fetch big figures on the real estate market. There were a few people milling about, dark-suited men like me and women wearing hats. I didn’t know any of them and none of them knew me. Most of Cy’s socialising was done professionally or with members of his wife’s family. He was an only child. Fact was, Cy’s wife Naomi didn’t like me. She thought I was a bad influence on Cy because I’d once brought him home drunk. That’s another story.

Gatellari’s sober, maroon Commodore drew up and Claudia got out. She was wearing a pants suit in a deep olive green that looked almost black, with a hat the same colour and matching accessories. She managed to look suitably funereal and coolly elegant at the same time. She surprised me by leaning forward and kissing my cheek. I felt a surge of lust as I touched her arm and bent down to talk to Gatellari through the car window.

‘Anything to report, mate?’

He shook his head. ‘Nothing. This is a good gig, Mr Hardy. I don’t mind staying in that house one bit.’

‘Call me Cliff. Enjoy it while you can. Mrs Fleischman might want to go back there after this. I’m not sure. Just stick with her, please.’

The mourners started to move and Claudia and I joined in the flow. There were kippahs and more beards than you’d normally expect, but otherwise it was a standard funeral crowd behaving in the standard way, stamping out cigarettes, trying not to talk too loudly, suppressing coughs, staring at the ground. I saw Leon Stratton a bit ahead of us and caught a glimpse of Miss Mudlark and another woman from Cy’s office. Stratton inclined his head to Claudia and ignored me. I had the inappropriate thought that I was going to have to look elsewhere for a new lawyer.

We trooped into the room where the ceremony was to be conducted and I closed down the way I always did. I knew the casket would be open and that people would file past it and I wanted no part of it. I’d seen him dead already with the blood on him and getting on me and I didn’t need to see him again. I registered almost nothing of the proceedings: a rabbi spoke, then several men I didn’t know. I didn’t listen. It’s always bullshit. Who can speak the truth about a man at such a time? The truth is more likely to be something about his drinking habits, or his sexual fantasies, or his sporting aspirations than any of the rubbish that comes out.

I could see Naomi, in black, rail thin, with grief expressed in every line of her body, and Cy’s son and daughter with their partners and children up near the casket. Shoulders were shaking and I wasn’t far from crying myself. I looked sideways and was amazed to see Claudia totally immersed in the whole thing. She was looking around at the trappings, staring at the people, craning forward to hear what was being said.