Peter Temple - White Dog

In the car, on the main road, Cam driving, I said, ‘I’m not suggesting that you’d need a reason to take your high-powered legal representative into the frozen wastes with you.’

Harry’s profile appeared around the headrest for an instant. ‘Get a bit of country air in the lungs, Jack,’ he said. ‘Livin in Fitzroy, thereabouts, all that factory smoke, tannin the hides, not healthy.’

‘Getting worse all the time,’ I said. ‘Now it’s also pollution from Cohibas and the PNG Gold. Plus the crack smoke, that can be really bad in the early evening.’

‘Lunch,’ said Cam. ‘There’s a place up the track here does a good steak roll. Local beef.’

‘Get there,’ said Harry. ‘Step on it.’

‘Shame to eat them,’ I said. ‘They’re so nice.’

‘Jack, listen,’ said Harry, ‘this horse, I want to set up a little arrangement, five shares, that’s us three, the lovely wife, Mrs A. Arrange that, can you?’

‘I can arrange that,’ I said, ‘but why?’

‘Bit of fun. Nothin down, nothin to pay. Win anythin, we take off expenses incurred, split the balance five ways. Cam’ll cook the books.’

‘What exactly do you have in mind for this horse?’ I said.

‘Early days. Get him up and runnin, that’s the first thing. Do the arrangement thing then?’

‘What happens if he doesn’t win anything?’

A hand came up, wagged. ‘That’s a little punt I’m havin,’ Harry said. ‘No burden on the rest of you. Where’s this food place? Gettin the weak feelin.’

‘Hang on,’ said Cam. ‘Want to keep you goin till you make us rich.’

I was at Taub’s most days through the heart of winter, getting there early, putting on the radio, firing up the stove, making tea, drinking a mug sitting in the sagging armchair with my back to the light from the dusty high windows.

Charlie grew to expect to find me there, the place warming up. He complained when I wasn’t. One day, he showed me his drawings of a bookcase, a huge break-fronted thing, two metres tall, as wide, twelve drawers, four glazed doors. The drawing was done in an old business ledger, in pencil, hand-drawn lines ruler-straight, isometric views, oblique views, all elevations, annotated with measurements.

I flipped back through the pages: dozens of pieces of furniture drawn in the same detail.

‘You’ve never told me about this book,’ I said. ‘You give me drawings on bits of paper torn off the edge of the Age.’

Charlie was sunk in his chair, drinking two-teabag tea out of a mug made for him by one of his grandchildren. It was a misshapen vessel that spilled liquid if filled beyond a certain level.

‘That’s all you need,’ he said. ‘What, a child doesn’t know the alphabet, you give him that Chomsky?’

‘What Chomsky?’ I said.

He waved the mug. ‘An idiot,’ he said.

‘Right, that Chomsky. Why are you showing this to me?’

‘Make it,’ he said. ‘ Swietenia mahagoni. Get it down.’ He pointed skywards, at the Bank, the priceless collection of wood in the rafters at the back of the building.

‘Make it?’

‘They say I should drink green tea,’ said Charlie, looking into the horrible mug. ‘The girls. So tell me. Green tea.’

‘Forget green tea,’ I said. ‘They’re selfish, they want you to live forever. What do you mean, make it?’

He raised the unholy grail, studied me over its rumpled rim. ‘Jack,’ he said, ‘I wait until you want to take responsibility, I have to live forever. Green tea. What is it?’

‘Hang on here,’ I said, alarmed now. ‘I can’t do this. Not the whole thing. No. I can do bits, yes.’

Charlie drank tea, lowered the container. ‘The glazing bars, that you can’t do. I’ll show you.’

I said, ‘As I see it, this job would need a router. I’ll buy a router.’

Charlie got himself upright, walked towards the back, towards the sink. ‘So,’ he said. ‘You think a person learns something, a little bit. But no. Everything wasted on them, all the time still a puppy dog.’

I said, ‘I suppose it could be done without a router. Improvisation. I could make do.’

‘They didn’t give me lunch,’ said Charlie. ‘The little one’s got a temperature.’

‘I can probably find something for you to eat,’ I said. ‘They do a decent porridge sandwich down the road. Porridge on TipTop white.’

It was going to be a clear morning. The daylight through the high windows was strengthening.

‘The drawings,’ said Charlie. ‘Can’t understand, ask me.’

‘I can understand,’ I said. ‘Pictures I can understand.’

‘So,’ he said. ‘Green tea.’

‘It’s just the raw material of tea,’ I said. ‘Until you make something nice out of it, it’s just a piece raw tea.’

And so it began, with Charlie standing on the ladder pointing out pieces of dusty grey timber. When we’d got them down, he said, ‘From Cuba. 1901.’

‘As old as the Commonwealth of Australia,’ I said. ‘The Boer War, death of Queen Victoria.’

‘Bruckner Symphony No. 6,’ said Charlie. ‘That was the year.’ He began to hum and conduct with both massive hands.

Weeks later, I was dry-fitting the many pieces of the front assembly on one of the low benches when Cam arrived to fetch me. He was in corduroys and a tweed jacket, smoking a Gitane. ‘Jesus, boss,’ he said to Charlie, ‘sure the boy knows which bit goes where?’

Charlie sucked on his dead cheroot, took it out and looked at it, shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘With some people, you can only hope.’

In Elgin Street, on the way to Parkville in a refurbished Kingswood, soft Dolly Parton on eight speakers, I said, ‘What’s this about?’

‘Lost Legion,’ he said. ‘Looks like we’re goin racin. How you been?’

‘Good,’ I said. ‘Did I ever say thanks for the Grange?’

‘Goin bad in the cupboard. You or the Salvos.’

‘Do they accept gifts of alcohol?’

‘Not any old piss. They’ll take the Grange. Saints in the deepest, I notice.’

‘I don’t want to notice. I have enough pain.’

Harry’s garden was a pleasing sight in any season. Now it was stark, bare of greenery except for the old box hedges. The oaks stood in their decaying leaves, sparrows jostled on the two feeder tables, the cold sky was reflected in the stone-rimmed oval pond.

Mrs Aldridge answered the knocker, took my overcoat. ‘Mr Strang’s in the viewing room,’ she said. ‘Watching cartoons.’

She led us to the small cinema, opened the door on near-dark and the smell of a Cuban cigar, it entered the head like a sweet poison.

‘Jack, Cam,’ said Harry. The screen went blank. We were behind him, he was in his seat, the middle armchair. ‘ The Simpsons, that Homer. You watch that, Jack?’

‘On too early for me,’ I said.

‘That’s why the good Lord’s given us the VCR. Sit.’

I walked the three or four steps and sank into the chair beside him. Cam went to the bank of electronic equipment.

‘Never filled you in on this Legion,’ said Harry. ‘That’s remiss. Shareholder should know what’s goin on. Full disclosure. Now this nag, the breedin’s bugger-all to speak of, he comes a bit good at three. Six starts, clocks a win, second, two thirds.’

‘This is where?’ I said.

‘Over there in the west. It’s all sand and cowboys, all low grade, the ore’s all low grade, everythin’s a notch or two down from the rest of the world. Anyway, this Legion, nothin over 1600 metres, only win’s at 1400.’

‘Ready,’ said Cam.

‘These WA palookas, Jack,’ said Harry, waving his Havana, ‘these sandbiters, they give him a long holiday, then they put the little thing in a 2400. Why would you do that? First up and 800 extra? Only the good Lord knows. That or the pricks thought they were havin a laugh.’