Peter Corris - Beware of the Dog

She threatened to sue a magazine that said she lived alone, insisting that she lived with six other people who happened to be her servants. It was typical of Roberta that she forced the magazine to publish their names and photographs in the retraction. She was the only filthy rich person I’d ever really liked and, as far as I know, the only person in that category who ever liked me.

We went into a room where there were books, a TV set and CD player, comfortable leather chairs and a bar.

‘What do men who drive those sorts of cars drink?’

‘Beer,’ I said.

She flicked open the fridge. ‘Light or… dark, is that what it’s called?’

I laughed. ‘Let me get it Roberta. You’ll have…?’

She glanced at the tiny diamond-studded watch on her wrist. ‘Low calorie tonic with lemon and ice, fuck it.’

Roberta has trouble swearing with fluency. I made her drink, opened a twist top of Cooper’s Light and sat opposite her in one of the thousand dollar leather chairs.

‘Wilberforce,’ I said. ‘What can you tell me?’

‘Phillip? Oh, yes, I’ve heard about what happened to him. Tragic. A wonderful man. I once almost… but that’s no great distinction.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘No woman under sixty was safe, darling. He must have been married at least three times and you could multiply that by ten, if you see what I mean.’

‘I’m interested in the wives and children. Particularly Paula. Now, she was the daughter of…’

Roberta sipped her drink and settled back to thoroughly enjoy herself. Two of her husbands had been industrialists and the other was a banker. Like the man we were speaking about, she had been an active sexual player in the social stakes where information is the basic currency. ‘Nancy Barlow. Bit of a mouse as I recall. Not up to Phillip’s standard at all.’

‘Or her daughter’s?’

‘Dreadful child. Ran them ragged, positively ragged.’ Roberta smiled, showing her fine white teeth. ‘A bit like me when I was young, actually.’

‘I’ll come back to her. I want to hear it all. For now, other wives, other kids?’

‘Darling heart, you’re asking rather a lot. Let me see. There was Lyndall Crosbie. She was an Abercrombie before she married Alistair Crosbie, the pharmaceuticals man. She had two brats by him but none, I think, by Phillip. Whatever are you doing?’

‘I’m making notes. This is important. What were the names of the children?’

Roberta’s high forehead wrinkled as much as she would allow it to. ‘Robert Crosbie and… Nadia.’

‘You’re amazing. Go on.’

‘Phillip was married to Selina Livermore about the same time as to Nancy. A bit after, I think. Scandalously soon. I think there might have been a suggestion of bigamy, actually.’

‘Children?’

‘You haven’t touched your beer. This must be exciting, though I can’t quite see how. Now, there was Clara, no Karen. Awful name. Sounds like someone who might work in a nightclub selling cigarettes, don’t you think?’

Roberta crossed her long slim legs, which were still good enough to sell cigarettes as she very well knew. She plucked the piece of lemon from her glass and sucked on it. ‘Cliff, why are you looking at me like that? I can’t help it if all these people were playing musical chairs and swapping children backwards and forwards.’

‘More on Karen’s mum, Selina,’ I said quietly. Roberta had pronounced the name Kah-ren which I couldn’t bring myself to do. ‘Any previous or subsequent issue?’

‘I know legal language. It’s made me so much money over the years. Yes, I’m sure there was. A girl again, by Livermore, the husband before Phillip. Poor Phillip always seemed to have females around him, like a pasha.’

‘Her name, Roberta, if you please.’

Roberta sighed and looked around the room for inspiration. Nothing she saw helped and she moved her head to look out the window at the water far below. The harbour was dark under the sullen sky. Roberta’s finely plucked brows drew in and a minute line appeared between them. Then she laughed and clicked her fingers. ‘Verity,’ she said. That’s it, Verity. I believe Verity and Karen hyphenated themselves for a time-Livermore-Wilberforce, if you please. Verity married that dreadful Patrick Lamberte.’

‘Paula Wilberforce is a step-sister to Verity Lamberte and Karen Livermore?’

‘Yes. I believe Patrick’s lost all his money.’

I stared at her. ‘Paula Wilberforce, Verity and Karen Livermore-Wilberforce,’ I said. ‘Nadia and Robert Crosbie. Jesus, this is complicated.’

Peter Corris

CH15 — Beware of the Dog

‘Are you looking for a wife, Cliff? I can find you one ever so much more suitable than any of them.’

I picked up the beer and drank it in a couple of long swallows. I’d been probing for something about Paula-some incident or association that might explain why she acted the way she did or predict what she might do next. Instead, I’d come up with a firmer connection between the two cases. It threw me. I sat in the leather chair as the light faded in the big window. Roberta looked at her watch again, clicked her tongue and went over to the bar. She made herself a big gin and tonic and sat down with it contentedly.

‘Will you please stop staring out the window. It’s not at all amusing, darling. Now, d’you want to scribble down all this dirt or not?’

I forced myself to pay attention and take notes as she talked in between sips of her drink. I heard about the likelihood that Phillip Wilberforce had briefly been a bigamist and about the hippie step-daughter Nadia who’d run away to save a Queensland rain forest and had ended up in gaol for drug smuggling.

‘Only for a little while,’ Roberta said. ‘Phillip got her out quick smart. You could do things like that up there in those days, I understand.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘I’m still trying to make sense of it. Paula has two step-sisters, Nadia and Verity, and one step-brother, Robert. Also one half-sister, Karen.’

‘Just so. That is, if the scuttlebutt is right.’

‘Scuttlebutt?’

‘You’re hopeless.’ She got up and walked over to where I was sitting. She took the notebook and pen from me and sketched in a family tree, pairing Phillip Wilberforce up with his wives. She drew a straight line to Paula and a wavy one to Karen. ‘It was said by certain malicious tongues that Phillip was the father of Karen although Selina was married to someone else at the time. Not a long marriage, I might add. Possibly of convenience, hmm?’

‘Go on.’

Roberta dropped the notebook into my lap and went back to her chair. ‘Do you know, darling,’ she said. ‘I get the distinct feeling that you’ve lost the thread. I thought you wanted all the goss. And there’s lots more, believe me. Phillip is a most interesting man. Have you noticed how interesting people tend to attract interesting people around them? Natural, I suppose.’

‘Roberta’s notoriously weak head has been the saving of her face, figure and brain cells. She was towards the bottom of a single stiffish gin and she was well away. She waved her glass jauntily. ‘You, for example. How’s the delicious Helen Broadway?’

The name, with all the old pleasurable and painful associations it carried, jerked me out of my daze. ‘I haven’t seen her for a couple of years.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. Who is it now?’

‘A policewoman.’

‘Cliff, I’m disappointed. But I must meet her. Does she have flat feet and a flat chest?’ Roberta giggled and pushed out her own shapely, high-slung bosom.

I felt myself responding to what Roberta was putting out-a highly-charged essence of need and desire. We had never touched except in a stylised, play-acting kind of way-she the gushing socialite; me, the strong, silent pleb. I dropped my notebook and stood. She stretched in the leather chair, a slim, lithe figure. Her black trousers were tight across her flat belly and crotch. I bent over her and she hooked an arm up around my neck. We kissed and I could taste the gin and smell her perfume and the other womanly smells that are a part of it. Her hot tongue pushed into my mouth. I sucked on it and closed my hand around the hard mound of her right breast. She thrust up at me, giving me her mouth and her breast and wanting me to take everything else. I wanted to take it.