Peter Corris: O'Fear

‘Thank God. What?’

‘Almost anything that isn’t sweet.’

She poured hefty measures of a pale liquid into glass tumblers and held one out to me. ‘Sit down.’

I took the chair she had pointed to. Anyone in his right mind would. She dragged one of the chairs away from the table and sat a few feet from me. I sipped the very dry sherry. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘that’s a very civilised drink.’

‘Civilisation’s overvalued.’ She smiled as she spoke and took a swig from her glass. She had light brown hair, straight and shoulder length. She wore a plain blue dress with a few pleats above and below the waist. ‘That’s a bit pompous, don’t you think?’

‘A bit,’ I said.

Her smile broadened. Her eyes were brown and there was nothing special about her face. Her features were regular and pleasing enough but I had the feeling that she could look beautiful in certain moods, or ugly. ‘Well, Mr Hardy. Tell me why I should give you ten thousand dollars.’

‘Is that the way you see it, Mrs Todd?’

‘Give me another way to look at it.’

‘To fulfil your late husband’s wish.’

She grunted and sipped her sherry. ‘Barnes retained a lot of false ideas from his past. Macho fantasies about men standing alone against the odds. I imagine you run on that sort of fuel too.’

I realised I was still holding my licence folder. I shoved it into my pocket and drank some more sherry, which was warming and encouraging. If she wanted to spar over sherry, fine. ‘Not very much. I take jobs, try to see them through to a reasonable conclusion. I know when to stick and when to bail out. Do you think Barnes’ feeling that he might meet with an accident was a fantasy? He didn’t strike me as a fantasist.’

‘How well did you know him?’

Her interrogative style irritated me, like when a sparring partner presses too hard. I was tempted to tell her that I’d known him longer than she had, and had shared experiences with him that went pretty deep. But somehow I got the feeling that she’d have a quick comeback and that I’d lose more ground than I would win. And I was here to win ground. I told her about my acquaintanceship with Barnes.

She nodded; the shiny brown hair bounced on her shoulders. ‘From his boozy days. When his mind was clouded.’

I took a big gulp of the sherry and tried not to say anything too rude. She was a recent widow after all, even if she seemed to be handling it pretty well. ‘You’re right up to a point,’ I said. ‘I only ever saw him in public places or in his office. We weren’t close but he did me a very good turn and if I could have repaid it when he was alive I would have. He never asked me for anything. Not a thing. I’m flattered that he thought well enough of me to write that note to Michael Hickie.’

‘Michael’s a nice young man,’ she said.

‘I’m not as young and not as nice. But I’d still like to repay the favour.’

‘Would you do it without the money?’

I shook my head. ‘It’ll take a lot of work- a lot of checking and talking to people and getting the runaround. I couldn’t afford to do it for free.’

‘Honest and energetic. Good.’ She drained her glass and put it on the floor. I got the feeling there wasn’t going to be any more sherry so I nursed the inch I had left.

She pushed back her hair and stood. The light had faded almost to nothing and she suddenly looked dark and widowlike. Her low-heeled shoes were dark, like her stockings and dress. She was a bit below average height and slim, but there was a force in the way the dark shape moved towards the passageway. For a moment I thought she was giving me my marching orders and I stirred, but she flicked her fingers at me. ‘Stay there. I want to show you something.’

She walked away and I asserted myself by getting up and pouring another belt of the dry sherry. It was sitting warmly inside my empty stomach and, if it wasn’t sharpening my wits, it was making the rest of me feel comfortable. I turned on a light and the room filled with a soft glow that touched the polished wood and the clean glass and metal surfaces. Barnes Todd had left some pretty good animate and inanimate objects behind. I was suddenly aware of another tack to take with the widow.

She came back carrying a stack of enlarged photographs and two framed objects. When she arranged the stuff on the table I saw that one of the framed works was also a photograph. It was a picture of Barnes Todd looking as I had never seen him. His face was much thinner and tanned; his straggly, thinning hair had been clipped away almost to nothing, giving him a hard-edged, no-time-for-that-hair-nonsense look. He was wearing jeans and a loose, dirty sweater and his smile was surprised, spontaneous. He’d just turned away from something I couldn’t make out with the light on the glass. I moved my head and looked closer-an easel. And the smears on the sweater were paint.

‘He looks great,’ I said. ‘Happy inside and out.’

‘He was.’ She moved a photograph and the painting to where I could see them better. The photo was of Bondi Beach, but I’d never seen it looking like that. The photo had been taken at dawn; it was overcast, with the horizon and the sea blurred; there appeared to be a mist and an impression that the sea was rising up to envelop the land. The painting was a version of the same thing. It was mostly in blue and white, but it lacked the devastating, visionary quality of the photograph. I admired both, but the photograph said more to me and held my eye.

‘Christ. They’re good.’

‘Aren’t they?’ Her voice was full of pride. ‘He was an exceptionally talented man. Have a look at these.’

The photographs all had the same alarming originality. They were of buildings, the sea and the rocks, some with people and some without. The images seemed to blend so that the people became part of the physical world around them in a way I’d never seen. Some exhibited these qualities more strongly than others. I was reminded of photographs of Aborigines taken by the early missionaries; in them, the blacks stand and sit and the country around them seems to stand and sit in the same attitude. Barnes Todd’s photographs were urban versions of the same thing. I stared at them and shook my head. It seemed a fair bet that if he had been able to put these things on canvas the art world would have had to sit up straight.

‘What comes to your mind when you look at them?’ Felicia Todd said. ‘What words?’

I was bowled over, but I still had business to conduct. I drank some sherry and turned away from the art display to look at her. ‘I’m a mug when it comes to pictures. Words? Drysdale, visions and dreams. Also original, if that makes any sense.’

‘Yes, it does.’ She collected the photographs and laid them down with their white backs and pencilled inscriptions showing over the painting and the shot of Todd. She was like a magician manipulating the illusions-now you see them and admire, now you don’t. ‘I met Barnes at the State Gallery. I’d gone along to see the Archibald entrants. Didn’t know he was interested in art, did you?’

I shook my head.

‘And photography?’

‘No.’

‘He was. Always had been. But war and booze and women and business had diverted him from it. He had a vocation, but he’d lost his faith.’

‘And you were his redeemer.’

She snorted. ‘Sorry. That sounded very prissy. No, it was all secular. I was a good swimmer when I was young. Later, I was a good photographer and a fair painter. I had a gallery once but I was a lousy businesswoman and I lost it. Barnes was great at business, and you can see what he could do with a camera and a brush. I got him swimming three miles a day.’

She picked up her empty glass and for a minute I thought it was self-pity time, but she stalked across the room to the sink and filled the glass with water. When she got back, she was composed. For no good reason I thought of the kids’ game where you put your hands behind your back and produce scissors, rock or paper. My bet was that Felicia Todd would do rock nine times out of ten. ‘I see you got yourself another sherry. How’s your liver?’