Peter Corris: O'Fear

‘Okay. I don’t drink as much as I used to. How was Barnes in that way?’

‘Getting more civilised. Oh, shit. I just said that was overvalued, didn’t I?’ She smiled and her whole face seemed to lift and catch the light.

She had good cheekbones. Some fine down along her jaw showed in the light giving her a softer, more strokable look. I wondered if Barnes had got around to painting her.

‘Did he ever paint you?’

She shook her head. ‘He said he wasn’t ready. God, I didn’t want to get into this. I thought you’d be some grasping thug who’d settle for a thousand and go away.’

‘I won’t. I want to know what happened to him.’

She looked at me and didn’t speak for a long time. When she did her voice seemed to be coming from a long way off. ‘He sold a few paintings. He was getting an exhibition together, but he wanted to stay in business for a bit longer to finance a real throw at being a painter.’

I nodded. ‘That makes sense. Did he talk to you much about his business?’

‘Not a lot. I got some idea of it. I know he had plans to expand but that there was some pretty tough competition. He used to say that trucking and flogging pictures weren’t all that different.’

‘What did he mean?’

‘He didn’t get on with the gallery owners. Some of them actually threatened him. He laughed about that. I suppose he made enemies. They must have seen what he could be worth.’

‘Are you saying someone in the art world could have killed him?’

‘A dead genius is worth more than a live one.’

‘Come on.’

‘Don’t sound so surprised. It’s a dirty world, believe me. The people who run it are greedy, snobbish crooks.’

I knew what she was talking about. ‘I had a bit to do with it once, but from the other end- forgeries. Did he do enough work for an exhibition?’

‘Certainly. I had a break-in a week or so ago. Someone tried to steal the lot. I’ve moved it since.’

‘You’ve got a good alarm system here. I noticed it before.’

She nodded. ‘It worked. You should say, “You owe it to him to find out what happened. You need help, Mrs Todd.’”

We were standing by the table; in her low shoes her head came to just above the level of my shoulder. I was behind her: the light threw our shadows forward onto the wall, long thin shadows, close together, almost the same length.

‘You owe it to him to find out what happened. You need help, Mrs Todd.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do.’

Felicia Todd heard my stomach rumbling. She laughed and offered to make a herb omelette. I accepted. She also made conversation about a range of subjects as she was cooking and as I was hunting for plates and forks. I told her what Michael Hickie had said about her doing Mensa puzzles, and she smiled.

‘That was just a joke. Barnes and I were having him on. I’d looked up the answers.’

‘It impressed Michael.’

‘Michael’s easily impressed.’

‘He made a good impression on me. I think he’s honest and has your interests at heart. And his own, of course. He doesn’t want to work out of that little office for the rest of his life. Can’t blame him for that.’

‘No. I think he has a future. Has he still got that pretty secretary?’

‘Yes, but I think she’s hanging by a thread. I know the signs. I had a secretary once, then I had to put her on part-time and then…’ I mimed a wave goodbye.

‘What sort of an office do you work out of now, Cliff?’

We were Cliff and Fel by this time. I told her about the St Peter’s Lane situation and the Glebe situation, which is, essentially, that the house needs repair but is worth a lot of money as it stands. ‘I’ve got an offer of a place in Hastings Parade, in Bondi. A lot of my business is in the eastern suburbs anyway. I could combine the house and office and have a better water view.’

She shoved the pan under the griller. ‘Have you got a water view now?’

I put plates on the bench near the oven and took the forks across to the table, also the salt and pepper and some crumpled paper napkins.

‘Blackwattle Bay,’ I said. ‘If I stand on the fence.’

I pointed out the window to where the ocean was a dark rippling mass, white-flecked and stretching away forever. ‘Nothing like this.’

She pulled the deep pan out; the omelette had risen to the full height of its sides. ‘This costs, but it’s worth the money.’

Over the meal we talked mostly about Barnes but some about her. She was thirty-five, born and raised in the Blue Mountains. Dux of Katoomba high school and runner-up in the a under-eighteen New South Wales 100 and 200 metres freestyle in 1970. She studied Fine Arts at Sydney University for three years before switching to an art course at Sydney Technical College.

‘That’s a big switch,’ I said. ‘Must’ve shocked the professors.’

‘It did. They had me lined up to do a PhD on Gainsborough and the pastoral tradition. I preferred Frida Kahlo, but there was no interest in her. Do you know about her?’

‘I saw a programme on SBS,’ I said. ‘Mexican. Tortured stuff.’

‘Right. I’ve got a back problem that comes from weight training for swimming. It’s nothing like the agony she suffered after her accident, but it’s pretty bad sometimes. I related to her and I wanted to learn how to do, not teach. Understand?’

‘I think so. I’m a practical man myself.’

She finished the art course, painted, had no success, inherited some money and opened a gallery to display adventurous work. ‘Not mine,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t ready. I was still scraping them off and doing them again.’

I thought of the early cases I’d had; the ones where I muddled through, missed things, half got there. Our plates were empty by this time; we had finished off the French bread and were slicing bad bits from a few elderly pieces of fruit with the knives we had already used.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m a lousy housekeeper.’

‘So am I,’ I said. ‘I call a plate you can brush the crumbs off clean. If they stick, it’s dirty.’

She laughed. ‘If I’d met Barnes a few years earlier, I probably wouldn’t have lost the gallery. I just didn’t know how to do things right, money wise. D’you want some coffee? You look as if you need it. Were you up all night?’

‘No. Why?’

She plucked at her chin and I laughed. ‘Just careless shaving. Coffee’d be good.’ I followed her across to the kitchen and rinsed the plates. We hadn’t drunk anything with the food and I really wanted the coffee. She put a kettle on the gas, spooned coffee into a glass pot and set the plunger.

‘No milk,’ she said. ‘I’ve neglected the a shopping.’

‘What have you been doing?’

‘Reading. Going for walks. Feeling randy. We had a great sex life, Barnes and me.’

We went back to the table and sat quietly over the black, bitter coffee, looking out at the sea. In the old days, I would have smoked and told myself the ritual and the nicotine stimulated thought. Now I just stared across the road and the randomly parked cars, past the stained concrete buildings and the faded brick ones, to the water. It was the sort of view that was desolate but could be comforting and warming if you had someone to share it with.

‘So, d’you want me to look into it, Fel?’ I said.

‘What does it involve?’

‘Raking things up. Talking to people about t things they don’t want to talk about.’ I drew a deep breath. ‘Like this. Was Barnes faithful to you? Were there any other women? Could he have got out of his depth? You must know that he used to hang around with some…’

‘Glamorous women,’ she said. ‘I know I’m not glamorous.’