Peter Corris: The Marvellous Boy

He didn’t seem interested; he was concerned with his own sentiments and prospects. If the child was dead it wouldn’t touch him, nor did the old lady’s need. His own life was a tatter and to small rents in other people’s lives he was indifferent. Mending them didn’t signify.

‘Could you make the next an Irish whisky,’ Brain was saying to me. ‘I haven’t drunk Irish whisky in eons.’

The bar was nearly full. A few people were showing some interest in Brain and me, unwelcome interest.

‘I’ll buy a bottle of Irish if you like,’ I said quickly, ‘and we can continue our discussion somewhere else.’

He looked around the bar as if he was seeing it for the first time. Desire for the whisky shone in his reddened, bleary eyes like a beacon through fog.

‘I am tempted by your offer, intrigued you might say. I promise nothing however.’ He looked squarely at me for practically the first time. ‘I don’t suppose you could stretch your funds to the extent of two bottles of Australian whisky?’

I signalled to Eunice. She tripped over and took orders while looking down on the old man.

‘Is he treating you right Perry?’

‘Like a prince, dear Eunice. It’s been a long time since a handsome young man paid attention to me.’

‘Now, now, none of that. What’ll it be?’

‘Get me two bottles of Irish whisky,’ I said. ‘Jameson’s.’

She finished pulling the beers and dispensed them, then she leaned close to me. ‘I know youse can get them anyway,’ she said gratingly, ‘but will you do something for me?’

I was impatient: ‘What?’

‘Buy him some food too, I’ll give you a cut on the whisky.’

‘All right, all right, I will. Just get the whisky will you?’

She stalked off and came back with the bottles in brown paper. I paid and helped Brain off his stool. He never took his eyes off the bag and followed me like a dog. There was a fast food place a few doors from the pub and I bought him a pie and some roast potatoes. His skin was grey under the neon and he used his beautiful, white hands to shield his ruined face from the light. He eyed the food with distaste.

‘Muck, dear boy. You can’t expect me to eat that.’

‘You’ll eat it,’ I said grimly. ‘We’ve got talking to do and I don’t want you passing out on me.’

‘I thought it was altruism,’ he muttered.

‘No, pragmatism if you like.’

He looked sharply at me. ‘Are you intending to be pragmatic here?’

The mild night air was gritty with exhaust fumes and dust. The Cross was just getting into stride. The footpath was rippling with people, some buyers, some lookers.

‘No, we can talk in my car or my office. Both are close by.’ Something, some shred of dignity still clinging to him, made me go on: ‘Or at your place if you like.’

‘It so happens that I have a room, a modest place you understand, but my own. We might be more comfortable there. We will need glasses,’ he pointed at the bag. ‘Whisky like that needs glasses.’

‘Okay, where is it?’

‘In Darlinghurst, not far. We could take your car, I haven’t ridden in a car for some time.’ He scratched at the brown paper. ‘Perhaps… perhaps a small promise of things to come?’

‘No, the car’s this way.’

He trudged along beside me with his hands in the pockets of the too-large coat, holding its skirts in to him. The sound of his brogues scuffling the pavement depressed me. The thought of his room depressed me. I was riding a small wave of hope that he could point me to the heir to the Chatterton millions, but it was only a small wave. I was looking forward to the Jameson’s, too.

He ate the food as we drove. For all his protests he wolfed it and I heard him masticate and swallow every morsel. We were in Palmer Street when he spoke through a mouthful of potato.

‘Here, dear boy, just here.’

I pulled up outside a tumble-down terrace. We got out of the car and I locked it. Brain watched me.

‘Very wise,’ he said drily. ‘There’s no respect for property around here.’

The gate was missing and a makeshift plywood panel in the front door was flapping loose. The entrance hall stank of cooking and neglect. Brain started up the stairs then stopped and turned. He leaned over me like a gallows.

‘Don’t let the bottles clink,’ he whispered, ‘or we’ll have every denizen of this low house knocking on the door.’

I took a tighter grip on the bag and followed him. We went up two flights and down a passage to the back of the house. He dug into the coat and produced a key with a safety pin attached. He moved to put it in the lock, then drew back.

‘Open,’ he said. ‘Odd, I could swear I locked it.’ He said something in Latin. ‘Ovid,’ he informed me.

‘Open the door,’ I said.

He flicked on the light. ‘My God!’

The room was a mess; it couldn’t have been much to start with but now it was uninhabitable. The mattress on the old iron bed had been ripped apart; bits of stuffing were all over the room and tufts still floated in the air like grey snowflakes showing that the damage was recent. A few hundred books were part of the ruin. They were ripped and torn and strewn over the floor, bed, wash basin and chest of drawers. The drawers were gaping open; a couple had been smashed to matchwood. A wooden box about a foot square and six inches deep was lying upside down on the floor. Brain bent painfully and picked it up; the lock had been broken and the top hung crazily from a fragile hinge. Brain swore and poked around in the mess. He came up with a roll of moth-eaten paper.

‘My degree,’ he said.

I took a quick look at it. Henry Winston Brain had graduated with honours in Law in 1934 from the University of Sydney. Brain put the document carefully on the bed and began picking up books. He shook his head.

‘Ruined,’ he muttered, ‘ruined…’

I looked at some at random. There were legal works but also novels, poetry, drama. A nice old dictionary with a thumb index had been savagely dismembered. The search hadn’t been expert but looked ruthless and furious enough to have turned up anything hidden in the obvious places.

‘What were they after?’

Brain placed a long, thin finger beside his nose. ‘As you said, Mr Hardy, we have talking to do.’ He groped among the rubbish by the wash basin. ‘The glasses!’ He held up two streaked and stained glasses and examined them against the dim light. ‘One is cracked,’ he observed. ‘I shall drink from that, it’s only fitting that I should.’

I hauled up one of the bottles, opened it and poured.

‘Aren’t you going to clean up a bit?’

He accepted the whisky. ‘Many thanks. No, I shall move.’

That might have meant the searchers had what they came for or it might not. Perhaps what they wanted was in his head and he could see that they wouldn’t ask gently. I picked up the nearest book while I thought about it — an omnibus edition of Conan Doyle bought in the Charing Cross Road. Brain’s initials and surname were written inside in flowing purple ink — better days.

Brain raised his glass. ‘You bring me ill-luck Mr Hardy, only this compensates.’

‘Does anything else matter to you?’

‘Not much, not any more.’

‘Well it does to me. Your story about the child matters. Is it connected with this, do you think?’ I gestured at the mess.

‘Bound to be, dear boy. Nothing like this has happened to me for a quarter of a century. I’ve drunk in peace.’

‘You’ve done a good job of it. Why?’

He finished his drink and held out the glass. ‘I lost my calling, my vocation. I lost everything when I married that slip of a girl.’

‘She’s no slip now.’