Peter Corris - The Marvellous Boy

He almost did a skip. ‘Captain of industry mate, captain of industry. Least that’s what he is now. He was a public servant once, just like me.’

‘What was it? Land, rate of the dollar?’

‘I wouldn’t like to say Cliff. He’s big in mining now. Here we are, what’ll you have?’

We’d reached a trestle table covered with bottles, ice buckets, siphons and chopped-up lemons.

‘Gin and tonic,’ I said.

A thin blonde in a pink pantsuit detached herself from a clutch of drinkers by the pool and came over to the table.

‘Let me do your bidding,’ she said throatily. ‘ ‘Lo Tom. And who do you write for?’ She got busy with the Gordons Dry gin and the Schweppes tonic and ice as if she knew what she was doing.

‘The New York Times,’ I said.

‘Stringer or staff? Do introduce us Tom.’

Rose sighed. ‘Cliff Hardy, Billie Harris.’

She smiled and handed me the drink. One of her front teeth was a little yellow but the drink was blue and cold as a good gin and tonic must be. ‘You don’t sound American Cliff, spent much time there?’ Her hands were busy building another drink but her glittering eyes never left me. ‘Are you on politics with the NYT, features?’ She started to move out and around the table towards me.

‘I’m sort of freelance,’ I said desperately.

Someone large fell or was pushed into the pool. The displaced water flew up, women shrieked, men swore and Billie Harris turned to look. I moved fast to the right, lurked for a few minutes, and came out on a landscaped higher level. Tom Rose was pouring beer into a schooner glass from a king-sized can.

‘Still got your pants on Cliff,’ he crowed, ‘what’s wrong with you?

‘Get stuffed, I’m working. Tell me more about the Baudins. What about the wife?’

‘No wife, she died a few years back.’ He drank some beer and dropped the question in casually. ‘What’s your interest Cliff?’

My throat felt dry as I formed the question in my mind; I eased the feeling with gin. ‘What about the son, he around?’

‘Baudin has two sons I think, depends which one you mean. Come on Cliff, what’s it about?’

The professional note in his voice warned me to cover up. Rose was still a journalist, still a news-monger even if he was now a politician’s errand boy. The last thing Lady C would have wanted was for everyone to be reading about her long-lost grandson before she’d met him herself.

‘Baudin’s just a small part of something else Tom,’ I said. ‘How’s your job here working out?’

He told me at some length. I hated to hear it; it was all excuses, excuses for changing a real but uncomfortable job for an unreal one. I only half-listened and kept an eye out for Billie Harris and the secretary. I finished my drink. Rose had got through the beer and he went off for refills. I wandered down towards the pool in which there were now only two people — a man and a woman treading water and talking conspiratorially down at the deep end. The party had moved off towards a section of the lawn where a couple of portable barbecues were going full-blast. I stared down at the pool; in the fading light the water looked like slowly rippling green ink. I turned around to look for Jeeves and bumped into a woman who’d appeared behind me. I apologised and had to look her straight in the eye to do it; she was nearly as tall as me and held her head up. She looked arrogant.

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I should have coughed or something. I wanted to talk to you.’

‘Why?’

‘I haven’t seen you at one of these do’s before for one thing and you were with Rose for another.’

‘Is that interesting?’

‘It could be. I watch his minister.’

‘So you’re a journo. What do you know about this Baudin character?’

She smiled and the arrogance fell away. ‘Me first — got any dirt?’

‘Tons, but not on Tom’s master — sorry.’

‘Oh well, worth a try.’ She leaned closer. ‘You’ve got a hard look to you now I come to notice. Are you a cop?’

‘No, private detective.’

The smile again. I was starting to like her. ‘But you’re not sniffing around Crowley?’

‘If that’s Tom’s boss, no. Why not pump Tom a bit?’

‘He’s pissed,’ she said. ‘He’s over there with a whole box of cans.’ She pointed towards the shadows. I tried to steer her over to the drinks table without doing anything as obvious as taking her arm or dragging her by the hair. She was wearing a dark blue dress with a red tie around the neck like a sailor’s. She had dark, short hair and long, slim legs ending in white, high-heeled sandals. Her eyes were dark and slightly slanted in a wide, high cheek-boned face. We reached the table and she asked for scotch and ice. I made it and put two drops of gin into a glass of tonic.

I gave her the drink. ‘Cliff Hardy,’ I said. ‘Who’re you?’

‘Kay Fletcher. What brings you here, I suppose you’re from Sydney?’

There was a wistfulness in her voice that gained her another hundred or so points with me.

‘Sydney, right. What’s the party for?’

‘Oh it’s all about some deal he’s pulled off, a mine of some kind I think. The government’s put up some money, that’s why the politicos are here.’

‘And the likes of you and Rose.’

‘I had nothing better to do.’

‘That’s hard to believe.’

‘Thanks, but it’s true. I went through all the possible men in this place in the first year, I don’t feel like starting on the rest.’

It wasn’t an invitation and it wasn’t a put-down. I judged that she was ready to be interested in me if I could be interesting — fair enough. I was on a job, though, and despite myself I looked up to the house for the secretary. I saw him out by the wall looking over the guests who were gathered around the burning meat.

‘Look Kay, I’m on a job.’ I pointed out the big dark man. ‘I have to see him and talk to Baudin, it shouldn’t take long. Will you be around?’

She looked at her watch, a big one made for telling the time. ‘I’ll give you an hour,’ she said, ‘maybe a bit more.’

I touched her arm, which made me want to do more touching, and went up to the house. The secretary loomed up over me like a medieval knight surveying invaders from his castle wall.

‘Mr Baudin will see you.’

I vaulted over the wall, showing off for the girl, and was sorry immediately. The knight seemed not to notice and strode off across the flagstones to the house. As I went in through the French windows it occurred to me that it was strange for Baudin to be still living in the same place thirty years later, given that he’d come up so far in the world. Not that it wasn’t a pretty fair shack; the carpet was thick and the paintings on the walls weren’t prints. The secretary showed me into a smallish room that had a bar against one wall and some books opposite. There were four big, velvet-covered armchairs. There were two men in the chairs. One was small and wizened with whispy grey hair around his bald skull. The top of his head was baby pink, incongruous beside the ancient, lined flesh on his face. He was wearing a cream shirt, cream trousers and white shoes, like the Wimbledon heroes of long ago. The other man had on a lightweight suit with the jacket open to show his soft, spreading belly. His face was pale and puffy. He was thirtyish.

Sir Galahad said my name softly and went away. The old man had my card in one hand. In the other was a glass with liquid in it the colour of very weak tea — at a guess it was the weakest of whisky and water.

‘Good evening, Mr Hardy.’ He lifted the card a millimetre into the air as if it weighed a ton. ‘I am Nicholas Baudin. May I ask what you wish to see me about?’ His voice was faint and fell away on the word endings.