Geoffrey Cousins - The Butcherbird

But it soared, the Matisse, took flight into the outer reaches of Archie’s budget in five bids, hands flying from the telephone bidders, cards flapping around the room. What would he do? They had to have it, the museum, it was theirs by rights. It should have been gifted, by Mac, by the banks, by someone. He looked to his chairman of trustees in the front row. One more bid? A nod of approval. The museum’s stooge raised the bidder’s card. A responding call from the telephone desk. It was gone.

He was sickened, gutted. It was indecent. Nouveau riche people throwing money at things they had no real knowledge of, no deep love for. It should have been his; he meant the museum’s. He stumbled into the night in search of sustenance, physical or emotional.

But no one else left, even though the lesser items were now on the block, even though stomachs were rumbling and not even a hipflask had been sighted. How could you afford to leave? Who knew if something unexpected might spring from a lacquered box?

‘Now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to a special item. A rare collection of poetry books. A connoisseur’s item, this one. We have the perfect audience for it, I believe. All first editions. All signed by the authors. To be sold in one line, ladies and gentlemen. What shall we say for it? One hundred thousand to get started? Do I have eighty? Eighty then. Eighty to get on. Thank you, sir, eighty.

Ninety? Ninety it is then. One hundred? Thank you, madam. A hundred and ten? On the phone. A hundred and ten. Against you, madam. One twenty? New bidder. Thank you, sir, one twenty. It’s one twenty in the centre here. Against you, madam. Against you, sir, at the front. Do I have one thirty? Are we all done? Any further from the phone? I’m going to sell then. At one twenty, one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, all done, all-’

‘One fifty.’ The voice rang through the panelled room, ricocheted off the domed roof, seemed to cut the strings of the jerking marionette on the podium so that its arms flopped, its mouth fell open. Every head turned to see where its eyes were fixed.

He stood as he’d always stood on the decks of this boat-as if he owned not just the vessel but the ocean it sailed on. The feet were planted wide apart, the face was tanned and healthy, the suit looked as if the tailor had fitted it that evening. There was not a person in the room who couldn’t pick that voice just from a radio interview, there was no one in Sydney who didn’t know Mac Biddulph’s squared-off face.

The charm of the auctioneer was lying on the floor somewhere under the podium. This couldn’t be happening. There was no way he could accept a bid from Mac Biddulph. He had no money. That was the whole point of the auction, wasn’t it? So the banks could harvest whatever was left on the stalks. But this was an auction. A bid was a bid. He looked around the room, desperate for guidance. He caught the eye of the vice president from New York, who shrugged. He probably didn’t even recognise Mac.

‘One fifty then. At the back. Do I hear one sixty? One sixty anyone? Going once at one fifty, twice, I’m selling then, all done at one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, sold to… to you, sir.’

Not a foot shuffled on the boards, not a cough escaped, not a catalogue rustled. For a moment, there was absolute silence.

And then, slowly at first, but building quickly like a wave flowing around the room, applause rang out. They dropped what they were holding-pens, papers, hats, whatever-and clapped like a crowd possessed. Mac smiled, let his eyes travel slowly over the faces, waved, and walked from the Honey Bear for the last time. chapter nineteen

They walked arm in arm, bodies rubbing gently, legs swinging in unison, unconsciously wrapped together. The ground was covered with an indigo haze of crushed jacaranda petals. The scent of jasmine and gardenias mingled in the humid air. The faintest brush of a light sun shower drifted about them and the kookaburras were already calling the end of the day.

They entered the forgotten park through a rusted gate, jammed forever open. No one came here. They’d stumbled on this lost tangle of exotic plants gone wild on one of their long rambles. It was their favourite release now, to wander together along the harbour foreshore, or through the lanes and alleys of Paddington, past the nineteenth-century terraces and the art galleries and bistros, or to discover one of the myriad public pathways or open spaces that led down to the water.

Their park-it was their park now-had the ruins of a stone building buried in its undergrowth, the huge hand-cut, roughly pecked blocks of the city’s convict past. Sometimes they sat on these tumbled monoliths and ate sandwiches or drank tea. But this evening they made their way to a sandstone shelf jutting out over the cliff, with the harbour lapping virtually beneath, and Jack drew a bottle of white wine and a block of cheese from his small backpack. They sat in the melting dusk, the shadows of the eucalypts falling around them.

Green and yellow ferries scurried back and forth across the golden harbour. Soon their lights would form rippling columns in the black water, but as yet the sun held to a faint promise. The birds fell silent, even the kookaburras left the stage to the animals of the night. They sipped in the deep congeniality of lovers who no longer needed to fill silences. Suddenly Jack thought he could make out a moving shape in the water. It disappeared. He followed the path that might have been. A great head rose from the swell and then a rounded smaller shape alongside. He stifled a cry and pointed for Louise. The whale and its calf swam calmly beneath them, beneath the houses and apartments of the lawyers and merchant bankers and chief executives.

‘I love this city, ‘ Jack said. ‘They say whales won’t swim where the water isn’t clean, but here we are in a working port, surrounded by millions of people and still they come. Somehow it means we haven’t wrecked the world quite yet.’ He turned to her. ‘I want to go back to making beautiful things. Someone else can rule the business world. I want to design houses for ordinary people, houses that don’t cost millions but are simple and functional and elegant. This place has given me another chance and I want to take it.’ He held her forearm. ‘Well, you’ve given me the second chance. No one else. But I’ve learned there are more good people than otherwise and now I’ve met a lot of the good ones. People come up to me in the streets, shake my hand, even shopkeepers-it’s humbling. And, of course, there are the others. But we don’t care about them, do we?’

They walked along the track by the cliffs and peered into the dark water, but the whales had vanished. ‘Will you work with me again? Just the two of us and a couple of young graduates, the way we used to be? Will you walk on with me?’

He couldn’t see her face but he felt the arms wrap around him and the breath in his hair. ‘What do you think, lover boy?’

It took them over an hour to walk back to Alice Street. It was a long while since they’d been so relaxed. They chatted occasionally about the good times to come, the black times past. The landscape had transformed before their eyes when the press articles ran and the other media picked up the story. It was as if a breeze had blown thick fog from the hills and suddenly it was clear the sun had always been warming the valley ahead. They’d heard nothing from ASIC or any other authority, although Mac had been charged, as had Renton Healey. Louise stopped him at one point and said, ‘I told you the good guys always win.’ Jack laughed and held her to him.

As they entered the small front garden through the wrought-iron gate, they didn’t notice the man standing beneath one of the street trees until he spoke.