Geoffrey Cousins - The Butcherbird

Hedley stood at the workbench like ‘an old stone savage armed’, as Robert Frost described the neighbour in the only poem Jack could ever quote from memory. He looked like the picture of Robert Frost on the dust cover of Jack’s copy of Collected Poems, and seemed to Jack to speak with the voice of a prophet, not a lawyer.

‘Anyone can work a machine, son, anyone can follow a pattern, but only the chosen can see the shapes in the wood before they’re revealed and release them into life. Would you like to try now? I can set this piece for you; it’s beautiful mahogany but only an offcut, you can’t do any harm. Sit here. Take the master’s chair.’ He felt the strong hands holding his shoulders and guiding him onto the stool. As much as he hated the machine, he wanted to try for the man.

Later, when they sat with tea and documents, only the sounds of the pages turning and the scratch of the thick pencil interrupting the Sunday peace, Jack waited for the leonine head to lift and the judgement to be delivered.

After some weeks of his material being dismissed as inadequate, he was hoping for approval.

‘Hmm. This is good stuff. We nearly have him on breach of director’s duties and related party transactions. We can’t prove he controls Beira, but the authorities, even with their limited intelligence, could track that down relatively easily. But on the big one, falsification of accounts, we’re still lost in the jungle. I’m going to write a list of questions for you, and you need to put them to that chief financial officer, Renton Healey-in person and without warning. Just turn up in his office when you know he’s there, put the questions to him and demand the relevant documents on the spot. Don’t leave without them. And take a witness, someone you can trust.’

Jack nodded doubtfully. ‘He’s as slippery as they come. He’ll try to put me off, say he doesn’t have them-anything. And who’s this witness? There isn’t anyone inside the company I can trust, and he’ll clam up completely if I turn up with an outsider.’

The old lawyer shrugged. ‘You figure it out, son. You’re the genius running the biggest insurance company in the universe. Get on with it. The document I want has to be there. It’s an addendum, a side letter, an email, something attached to this reinsurance contract that effectively removes any transfer of risk. So it makes it just a piece of financial manipulation, in order to artificially boost the profits. And no doubt the share price. Find it and I’ll nail these bastards.’

They talked of other things for a while-sport and books and what made men great and what diminished them. Finally Jack said, ‘How can these people live with themselves when they do these things? It can’t just be about the money. Mac’s a wealthy man, Renton Healey is paid a fortune. How can they look at themselves and know they’re stealing people’s money and breaking the law?’

‘They never think that. People like this never break the law-in their minds. It’s a stupid law, or it doesn’t apply to them or there’s another reading of it-or any other rationalisation you can think of. Everyone does this sort of thing, it’s not just me. It’s like insider trading in the share market. We all do it, all of us big businessmen. We built the companies, we’re entitled to the spoils. All those poor dumb shareholders sitting at home shrouded in cardigans and ignorance can pick up the crumbs we leave, if they’re lucky. If they want to play with the big boys, they can’t cry foul if they get hammered.’

He rose and walked to the workbench and took the piece of wood from the lathe. ‘They remove themselves from reality. They look down on the world from the sixtieth floor of an office building or some hotel where a two-hundred-dollar meal has just been delivered and maybe the thousand-dollar hooker will arrive in an hour, and all the suckers in the street below look like prey that’s there for the taking. It’s not immorality, it’s amorality, which is much more dangerous because there’s no gate into the garden. No opening where you can say, That’s the wrong path, this is the way through the trees into the paddock. They lose touch with families, with kids, with old people falling down and struggling with their memories, with splitting logs, lighting fires, cleaning shoes, with cooking their own food or cleaning up for the one who did, with dogs or horses or whatever pets they had when they were kids, with life. Their world is all slick and shiny and easy, it’s deals and limousines and boats called ships, and whatever is good for them is good.’

Hedley paused. ‘You hadn’t expected this, had you, son? Someone taught you we’re all fine citizens in the end?’ The younger man nodded. ‘Who was that?’

‘I’m not sure. Strangely, probably my mother-and certainly my wife.’

‘Ah, yes. The women who see beyond the competition.’ They sat together quietly, while the leaves of the birches rustled on the windows above the workbench. ‘It’s going to get difficult very soon, I’m afraid. You need to know that, son. We’re almost at the point where we have to take our material to the authorities. Some would say we’re there already. Certainly if we find that side letter, you’ll have to inform the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Then all hell breaks loose. Are you ready for it?’

Jack stood and held out his hand, smiling, and then walked into the night. As he was heading out the gate he tripped and almost fell on a dead branch, and was shaking and collecting himself when the soft voice came and a hand touched his arm. He turned with a start and nearly tripped again, on the gutter. He could barely make out the figure in the dark, but it was a woman’s voice and shape.

‘I’m so sorry to startle you, Mr Beaumont.’ The use of his name and the softness of the voice was reassuring, but he was nonetheless unsettled by being recognised in a lonely street while leaving a supposedly clandestine meeting.

‘I’m Marjorie, Hedley’s wife. He’s never wanted us to meet, and I’m not supposed to know you come to the house. But I’m not entirely lost to the world of bowls and books. I need to speak to you. Is that all right?’

Jack could see her more clearly now as a shaft of light filtered through the canopy and struck her head. It was a lined, sad face capped with a halo of dense hair, permed in a way he remembered from his youth. But behind her glasses, sharp, intelligent eyes were anxiously awaiting his response. ‘Of course. I wasn’t expecting anyone out here and you used my name. Perhaps we should talk in the car, it’s just around the corner.’

He led her gently to the car, opened the door for her, and held her arm as she lowered herself, painfully it seemed, into the soft leather. Somehow he immediately felt protective of her. She even smelled like his mother in the intimate interior of the sports car.

‘What a lovely car.’ She laughed nervously at her own remark. ‘What a stupid thing to say. You don’t want to hear me talk about your car at this time of night. Or any time, I suppose.’ She looked around wistfully. ‘It is lovely, though.’ Her hand stroked the leather and then pulled away quickly as if she might damage it. ‘I shouldn’t be here at all. He’d be furious if he knew. But even he needs looking after. And I’m the only one. Everybody else just wants something from him, even though they pretend otherwise.’ She looked at Jack. ‘But he likes you, really likes you. I know, even though I’m not supposed to know anything.’

Jack reached across the gearstick and held her wrist gently for a second or two before drawing his hand away. ‘Please tell me why you want to talk to me.’ Then he added, ‘I really like him, too. He’s a great man.’