Peter Corris: The Marvellous Boy

She wasn’t the golfing or gardening type, more the bar and bed type. She opened the door, dropped a hip and eyed me off. She was a tall, heavy woman, a redhead with fine dark eyes courtesy of her mother. There the resemblance ended; Bettina Brain Selby nee Chatterton was a chip off the old block. Her colour was high and her shoulders were broad. She carried her bulk as the Judge had done, as if heavy people were still in style.

I looked at her for just a fraction too long. ‘Mrs Selby?’

‘Yes.’ The voice was furry with liquor, sleep, sex? Maybe all three. She might have a lover there. Awkward.

I gave her a grin. ‘I’m Peter Kennedy, I’m a journalist doing a feature piece on your late father, Sir Clive Chatterton?’ I let my voice go up enquiringly the way the smart young people seem to do these days. I’d shaved close that morning, my shirt was clean, I might make it. She swivelled her hips and made a space in the doorway.

‘Come on in, Peter.’

I went past her into a hall with deep shag pile carpet in off-white and oyster walls. It felt like stepping into a bowl of yoghurt. Mrs Selby slid along a wall and opened a door and we went into a big room full of large leather structures to sit in and polished black surfaces to put things on. She picked up a glass and rattled the ice cubes.

‘Drink?’

‘Not now thanks, perhaps after a few questions?’

She looked bored, sat down and waved me into a chair.

‘ ‘Kay. Up to you.’ She sighed and a lot of big bosom under cream silk went up and down and some Bacardi fumes drifted gently across towards me.

‘You should ask my mother about all this shit,’ she slurred. ‘She’s the one who keeps the shrine, not me.’

‘That could be an interesting angle. Was Sir Clive a harsh parent? He had a reputation for severity on the bench.’

‘I can believe it.’ She sipped. ‘Christ yes, he was tough on me. Course, I’m the same with my kids so I can’t talk. He used his belt on me plenty of times. Can’t print any of this, you know.’

‘Why?’

‘Can’t afford to offend the old girl. She’s got the money. We never seem to have enough.’

‘What’s your husband’s business, Mrs Selby?’

‘Bettina. He makes weight lifting stuff, gym equipment, all that. He does all right but we eat it up. School’s bloody expensive and holidays… Christ, I live for those holidays. Ever been to Singapore, Peter?’

I said I had.

‘Smart man. Great isn’t it? We have a ball.’

‘It’s marvellous,’ I said primly. ‘You were saying something about not offending your mother?’ I had the pen and pad out again.

‘Ah, was I? Well we don’t get along. She knows I’d belt that bloody mausoleum down and sell the land for units. But there’s the kids to consider. I try to keep on the good side of her but there’s that Reid bitch, she’s got her eye on the land. Christ, what a miserable place to grow up in. Look, I’m rambling, you don’t want to hear any of this crap you can’t use. Have a drink.’

‘All right, yes.’

‘Bacardi okay?’

‘Fine.’

Her own glass was lowish, not what you’d call empty but getting that way. Lots of drinkers don’t like to see their glasses one-third full, it looks like two-thirds empty. She was in that league and keen enough to haul all that weight to its feet and take it out to where the booze lived. She drifted out, moving like someone who knows how to move; it was part theatrical, part sheer confidence. It made her hard to assess — like a car that looks and goes all right but is a bit too old and exotic for comfort.

She came back with her own glass full and nice big one for me. The rum had been introduced to some tonic but not too closely. On top of my lunch it made the beginnings of a formidably alcoholic afternoon. I took a pull and she knocked back a good slug. I took out tobacco and cocked my head inquiringly. She pushed an ashtray in the shape of a temple at me — a touch of Singapore.

‘One vice I don’t have,’ she giggled. ‘I knew a writer once who rolled his own. He lived in Balmain. You live in Balmain?’

‘No, Glebe.’

She rolled her glass between her palms. I was sweating despite the air conditioning and started to ease out of my jacket.

‘You don’t mind?’

‘Hell no, it’s hot, take if off, take off your pants.’

I grinned. ‘Business,’ I said firmly, ‘business.’

She lay back in her chair. ‘You’re going to be dull,’ she said petulantly. ‘You didn’t look dull. Everyone’s dull except me.’ She downed half of her drink to prove it. I didn’t want her to turn nasty so I put some away too.

‘We haven’t talked at all yet,’ I said. ‘Back to the judge…’

‘No, not yet — bottoms up. Next drink we’ll really talk. C’mon drink up.’

She tipped her head back and drank the stuff like lemonade. I finished mine in two swallows and she picked up the glasses and ambled off again. I tried to remember why I was there as the liquor rose in my blood and started to fuddle me. I got up — keep moving, that’s the rule, sit and you’re gone — and slid open the doors dividing the drinking room from the next. It turned out to be the eating room; there was a big teak table with six pricey-looking chairs around it and a bowl of flowers in the middle. A couple of nasty prints hung on the pastel walls and a framed photograph stood on a sideboard. I weaved across and picked it up. It showed the lady I was drinking with, a man and two children. Bettina looked a few years younger and a few pounds lighter. I studied the man; he was a heavy character with a round face and receding hair which he wore longish with thick dark sideburns. He was packed into an executive suit with the trimmings and had his arm around Bettina and the girls. But he was smiling as if the camera was on him alone. With him the photographer had failed to achieve the family feel. He was the type to make every post a personal winner. The girls looked to be about ten and twelve, they were round and red like their dad — their mother was right, they’d need the money.

She wandered in and handed me the glass. Her own was full but if she was the drinker I thought she was she’d have sneaked one out by the ice cubes. She stood beside me, close.

‘That’s us,’ she said.

‘Nice family.’ I put the picture down.

She stayed where she was and I was pinned in a corner. In her high-heeled sandals she wasn’t much shorter than me. She tossed back her hair and put her hand on my arm.

‘You know Richard and I have an arrangement when we go to Singapore. Want to know what it is?’

‘Sure.’

I sipped rum and looked at her eyes. The lids were drooping and the pupils were dilated. She was well on the way to her afternoon nap. She had just one thing in mind now and there was no point in pretending to be a journalist or a gentleman. I took hold of her arm to steady her. It was a nice, firm arm. She leaned into me.

‘We give each other two free nights, no questions asked. Understand?’

‘I think so.’

‘I’m a passionate woman.’ She pressed her breasts against me and set her glass down to have both hands free.

‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘No wonder you enjoy your holiday. When’s it due?’

She stopped trying to undo my shirt. She grabbed the drink to help her ponder the question.

‘Must be soon,’ she said slowly. She drank some more and spilled a little down the front of her dress. She wiped at it and the contact with her own body seemed to excite her. I edged back a bit.

She came after me. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want me?’

I didn’t. I’ve got nothing against women older than me. I’d just finished a relationship with a woman almost as old as Bettina and it had been good, for a while. But this lady was skidding and disintegrating and I didn’t want to be part of the wreck. As well as that, I’d have to see her again as the inquiry developed and a boozy bedding now was no way to start. I tried to deter her by passivity but she came on reaching for my head. I noticed that she had long fingernails, almost colourless. She was in close with her hand on the back of my neck when I heard a noise, like something falling to the floor.