Peter Corris - The January Zone

‘Thirty-eight,’ she said, ‘and we cross here.’

‘Eh?’

‘When men look at women that way they’re totting up years and wondering…well, that varies.’

‘You got me.’ We steered each other across the road, judging the speed of the on-coming Kombi van exactly right. ‘What varies?’

‘Smart men wonder if the woman has read a book in the last ten years and if she liked Manhattan; dumb ones wonder if her tits flop and how tight her cunt is.’

‘Uuhh,’ I cleared my throat against the fumes and the confusion. We went through an archway that celebrated the fallen into a decent-sized park that had too much grass and not enough trees but was otherwise okay.

‘Which are you?’ Trudi said.

‘Bit of both I suppose. Bench or grass?’

‘Bench.’

We sat on a bench close to a rose garden. The bushes were stubby and bare and I only knew it was a rose garden because a sign said so. We munched on the sandwiches, swigged the mineral water and didn’t speak for a full minute.

‘Did you like Manhattan?’ I said.

‘Loved it, and I read Lonesome Dove last month.’

‘You’re doing better than me. I had this eye operation last year and got side-lined from reading a bit. I read some Ken Follett and I watched Ustinov on Russia on TV.’

‘I don’t get the time for TV. Peter keeps me haring after one thing and another.’

I brushed away the crumbs and capped the mineral water. ‘So, let’s talk about Peter the Great.’

Trudi was a slower eater. She still had a mouthful and she motioned for me to wait until she’d finished. It was the sort of moment that a smoker would fill in with a cigarette and an ex-smoker filled in with the memory of a cigarette. Even my light cotton jacket was too warm for the spring sun. I took it off and rolled up my sleeves. My arms were pale and the skin looked old; there were grey hairs on my forearms.

Trudi decided she didn’t need the last third of her sandwich. I probably hadn’t needed mine either. She re-wrapped it and put it back in the bag. ‘Peter is a maverick,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t fit into any of the categories, not even into the factions and Christ knows they’re flexible enough.’

‘So how does he get to be anybody? Why isn’t he on the outer?’

‘He is, more or less. He can’t make any real noise in Cabinet or the party meetings. He’s got as far as he has on charm.’

‘Come on.’

‘Plus hard work, plus good staff, plus not stepping on toes. And he’s shrewd. He was in the front line on abortion when uranium was the big issue and… vice versa.’

‘You make him sound like an opportunistic shit.’

‘He’s a politician. You have to understand the breed. They don’t come in black and white like puppies, they come in shades of grey.’

‘I’m sorry, Trudi, all this just makes me impatient. Can we get to the hate mail? I want a lead on a mad bomber.’

‘Impatient is right. You need the broad picture or you’ll be wasting your time. I could be wrong, Peter could’ve been targeted by some right-to-lifer or some Middle European who lost out in the Family Court, but I think think the stakes are bigger than that.’

‘Meat exports?’

She didn’t want to laugh and she almost didn’t. ‘You’re an idiot. Is this how you tackle everything? How do you make a living?’

‘Barely. I’m sorry. I like one joke per hour, minimum. Tell me about the high stakes.’

‘Peter thinks in terms of the Pacific south of the equator and between latitudes…shit, I forget. It’s a sort of grid. No bases, no nuclear ships, no arms sales and lots of swapping-fish for pharmaceuticals. ‘

‘God, no wonder he’s got enemies. What’re his ideas on the bases?’

‘Charge rent. Top dollar and back-dated to Day One.’

‘None of our parties would even look at it.’

‘The Yanks don’t know that. Peter’s thinking…sort of globally. Everybody knows about the missiles but what about the sensors on the sea bed that trace all the ships for every second of every year. Costs trillions and does nothing. Has to go, says our Peter.’

I swallowed and looked out across the grass, over the road and up over the roof tops to the west. A lot of humanity out there, most of the races and languages of the world would be represented within a few miles of this park, but somehow, January’s ideas seemed too big for the setting.

‘Biggish notion, isn’t it?’ Trudi said. ‘What he says is that you have to start somewhere, like…’ She cast around for a hook to hang the idea on. Across the road some workmen were tearing at the front of a terrace house. She pointed. ‘Like getting the render off that place. It’s a big job, but you have to start somewhere.’

I nodded. ‘There’s nothing more dangerous than trying to stop people making money unless it’s trying to stop them making love. Tell me what you think about the mail. Then we’ll go and photocopy it. Then we’ll have a cup of coffee at the Bar Napoli’.

She was suddenly very business-like. ‘The photo-copying’s a good idea. At least you’ll be one up on the police.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘They’ve only got photocopies-haven’t seen the originals.’

‘Were they happy about that?’

She shrugged. ‘Didn’t seem to care. I think a lot of people only expect to see photocopies these days. Pretty soon it’ll be screens-birth, marriage and death certificates-all on screen.’

‘Your cynicism distresses me. Coffee?’

‘I’ll skip the coffee thanks, Cliff. I have to go back to work.’

We copied practically the whole of Trudi’s hate mail file at a quick printing place a few doors from the health food store. I made some notes on her view of things-how the fringe conservationists who threatened to bury politicians in the middle of a rainforest stacked up against the anti-nukes who claimed to have some yellowcake they were going to feed to the enemy, literally. She was cool which puzzled me after the good time we’d had. Her goodbye was a nod and I watched her walk away, head up and striding almost, a solid purposeful figure in white. I shook my head and went to the Bar Napoli.

The file made me feel sick, angry, disappointed, a whole range of negative feelings. I went through it slowly while I drank coffee in the sun in the leafy courtyard behind the cafe. It was mid-afternoon and I had the place to myself apart from a few butterflies. Most of the stuff could be discarded straight away as sheer lunacy-religious ravings about second comings; outright Nazi propaganda quoting from Mein Kampf, racist diatribes of one kind or another. There was a lot of sick sex material -from pedophiliacs who’d raided the Greek and Roman classics for support, to lesbian separatists advocating the castration of everything from the Prime Minister to Michelangelo’s ‘David’.

The anti-smoking brigade was getting pretty wild too. They called nicotine a ‘deadly poison’ and likened passive smoking to the death camps of Belsen and Auschwitz. The pro-pot people were the only ones to display and humour: ‘the Huxley-Hash Society’ had some Riverina heads guaranteed to make anyone laugh within 10 minutes of inhaling; they said they had special blends that would treat constipation and diarrhoea. A ‘90% effective’ impotency-correcting hash oil was available from ‘Mary John Mountain Pty Ltd’ as well as a Thai grass that would help you to increase your reading speed.

‘Another coffee?’ The son or nephew or nephew’s son of the proprietor was at my elbow. He was wearing shorts for the springtime and when he grinned his two chins turned into three. His grin sold a lot of coffee. He looked healthy and happy which was welcome after the file.