Peter Corris - Matrimonial Causes

Lawrence ‘Chalky’ Teacher. The name was familiar but not too familiar. If Maxwell had simply nominated one of the well-known thugs about town I would have had my suspicions. But Chalky Teacher was a more dubious and shadowy figure. I’d heard of him for years, as an associate of criminals, a probable police informer and a man to be careful of. But, as I approached Rockdale and got the first glimpse of the city high-rise, I realised that I had no idea of what Teacher was like physically-big, small or in between. And I couldn’t connect him with a single event, organisation or individual. I couldn’t recall reading about him in the tabloids or a reference to him on television. It was all word-of-mouth stuff, rumour and innuendo.

I had some thinking to do and the hot inside of a not very comfortable car, with my shirt sticking to my back and my head aching from the roughhouse of yesterday and the tension of today, wasn’t the place to do it. I needed a cool, shady beer garden with Nina Simone playing in the background and the ice tinkling in a double scotch. It was Sunday and the nearest thing to that was thirty miles away, outside the metropolitan area. The Balmain-Rozelle RSL Club wouldn’t do and I didn’t want to go home to the empty house. I found myself turning off the highway and taking the road to Sydenham and then to Petersham.

Going to visit an old girlfriend in the condition I was in was a risky move. I knew it, but, after the distasteful Maxwell, I was in need of congenial human contact. Besides, Joan Dare was a journalist and might know something about Chalky Teacher. If she told me he was six-foot-three in his socks, I’d have a simple choice to make-go along with Loggins’ plan to use me as bait or catch the next flight to Cairns.

Joan’s house overlooks Petersham Park. It’s a double-fronted cottage, free-standing with a deep backyard. Joan is a passionate gardener and she bought the place because of the space. I jack-hammered up hundreds of square feet of concrete for her during our brief affair which took place while Cyn and I were having one of our separations a few years back. I knew Joan had plans for a prize-winning garden; I’d promised to haul the topsoil. Then Cyn came back and it was over between me and Joan.

Someone else had carried the topsoil. When I pulled up outside the house I had trouble recognising it. In two years the concrete wasteland had been turned into a small jungle. Creepers grew all over the front fence and twined around a pergola between the gate and the veranda. The green-painted concrete slabs in the front yard had been replaced by small-leaved ground cover, flower beds and vines growing out of tubs. I could see shrubs and small palm trees growing along the side of the house and something bushier and taller sticking up at the back. The colours were reds and greens and white and, in the late afternoon, the garden was humming with insects. The place reminded you of how quickly the whole 600 square miles of Sydney would revert back to bush if it was allowed to.

I rang the front doorbell but there was no answer. I wasn’t discouraged. Joan didn’t sit about inside on fine days. I went around the side of the house, pushing my way through fronds and leaves and noting the new paint job on the weatherboards, new plumbing, wiring, the works. Joan earned good money as the editor of the ‘City Life’ section of the Sydney News, and her only vices were red wine and her garden. I found her working on a terraced part of the steeply sloping backyard. She was wearing shorts, tennis shoes and something with red and white spots tied around her chest. It made a thin stripe across her narrow back, suggesting that it was worn more for comfort than concealment.

‘Joan.’

She turned slowly, digging tool in hand. She wore neither sunglasses nor hat and had to shield her eyes against the low sun.

She said, ‘Who’s that?’ and I experienced a jolt, remembering her poor eyesight and her husky, intense voice.

‘It’s Cliff Hardy, Joan.’

She straightened up to her full five-foot-six. She was as lean as I remembered, very tanned with short blonde hair. Thin features, pointed face. She was a few years younger than me and had worn better. She dropped the trowel, pulled off her gardening gloves and wiped sweat from her face as she edged closer. ‘So it is. Looking like a truck just hit him. Has she pissed off again, Cliff? That it?’

‘No, Joan,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to see you. Have a drink and maybe pick your brains. I’ve gone into the private inquiries game.’

‘I heard.’

‘The garden looks… amazing.’

She snorted. ‘What would you know? You can’t tell a bougainvillea from a banksia.’

‘I busted up the concrete.’

‘So you did. How could I forget? You drank a can of beer for every square foot.’

I laughed. ‘It was bloody hard work. How are you, Joanie?’

‘I’m good.’ She brushed her hands together. ‘Well, I was about to knock off anyway. I’ve got a couple of bottles of rose chilled. How’s that sound?’

‘Great.’

She stepped quickly forward and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Don’t be so stiff. I’m over you a long time, sport. It’s good to see you.’

There was a wooden garden setting on some flagstones near the back of the house under another pergola. Ferns hung in baskets from the cross beams and creepers trailed around the uprights. I plonked myself down in one of the chairs and rolled a smoke while Joan went inside. A shower ran very briefly-Joan was one of the few women I’d ever known to have quick showers-and then she was back carrying a bottle and two stemmed glasses. She’d changed into a long flower-patterned skirt and pale blue T-shirt. Her small, pointed breasts moved as she opened the wine. She poured two glasses full, another attractive habit of hers, and sank into a chair with a sigh. From the accuracy of her pouring I knew she’d put in her contact lenses. Without them, when it came to close work, anything was possible. She once told me she liked to garden without them and that when she surveyed what she’d done the effect was like looking at an impressionist painting. Then she’d put them in and get details right.

‘Cheers. It does look pretty good, doesn’t it?’

I drank some of the cold, slightly spicy wine. ‘It looks terrific. Is it finished?’

She laughed. ‘That’s what you have to understand about a garden. It’s never finished. It’s never over. And it never lets you down.’

‘Joan, I…’

‘Forget it. We were both in the mood at the same time. You got out of the mood first, that’s all. It would have been me a bit later. Roll me one of those filthy fags of yours and tell me all about it.’

I made her a cigarette, lit it and talked for about ten minutes. She smoked, drank her wine and listened. I could tell from her expression and nods that she knew about Meadowbank, and had heard of Andrew Perkins and that the name Bob Loggins wasn’t unknown to her. I toned a few things down, didn’t tell about Loggins’ scheme and left out Richard Maxwell’s name. When I got to the politician and the doctor, Redding and Molesworth, her interest really picked up.

‘Bruce Redding,’ she said, ‘and Dr Leo Molesworth. Well, well.’

‘I’ve heard of Redding. He’s a cabinet minister, isn’t he? Who’s Molesworth?’

‘Redding’s a junior minister, not actually in the cabinet but getting there. Molesworth’s what they call a fashionable Macquarie Street surgeon. He’s a hip replacement man for the rich.’

‘Both with good motives for arranging quiet, smooth divorces?’

‘Redding, certainly. Big Catholic population in his electorate. Molesworth, I’m not so sure about. Do society doctors have to watch their p’s and q’s? I wouldn’t have thought so. Your informant suggested there were others involved?’