Peter Carey - Amnesia

Which was, she understood immediately, his way of making peace.

She said: “I haven’t got a job or nothing.”

“That’s all right.”

“You don’t want a little baby crying all the night.”

“Can I be frank, darls?”

“It’s your house, isn’t it?”

“I’m a deaf old poofter.”

There was nothing in his appearance to show her how to take this—he was like a stick insect, 100 percent camouflage, all dry and wiry, with one brown-papered eye and smoke closing down the other.

“All right,” she said.

“You understand?”

“I suppose so,” she said. Then the old bugger winked at her.

“Don’t let me worry you, Doris.”

“All right.” She guessed he wouldn’t either. He winked again.

“It’ll be nice to have such pretty company. Do you drive?” he asked.

“No,” she said.

He left her then and if he came back she did not hear him. It was hours before she discovered the pot of tea outside her door.

If Doris had been a bag of spuds it would have been the same to Mr. Neville, and her relief at his lack of interest in her body temporarily obscured the quality she would soon learn to treasure—Mr. Neville was a highly effective person.

He ran sixteen hot-dog stands. He did business with those American soldiers who had arrived in Australia months before only to be refused admittance to Port Melbourne because, although they had arrived to save our country, their black skin was not permitted by the White Australia Policy. Once this snafu was sorted out, the negroes turned out to be a big plus. Mr. Neville was soon in partnership with a tailor reproducing their box-backed drape jackets, pants tight at the cuffs but loose along the legs. His “threads” were made to a price and the fabric was what we used to call bodgie, that is, no good. That is how the bodgie gangs got their name.

Mr. Neville resold V-Discs which included sets by Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, Louis Jordan, Benny Carter and Fats Waller dreaming about a reefer five feet long. He had a secret source of butter at Bacchus Marsh which he maintained until 1945 when bodgie rivals burned the dairy to the ground. He had a “working relationship” with the American 4th General Hospital, particularly but not exclusively its quartermasters. And by the second night, after Doris had met an obstetrician (an American captain) and gynaecologist (an American major), she understood that he could save her life.

Inside the Royal Melbourne Hospital, which the Yanks had stolen from the locals, her unborn child was pronounced healthy.

“Would you like to learn to drive?”

She would like it just as much as flying, maybe more.

Mr. Neville shouted her the first Coca-Cola of her life. Then (“quick as a wink,” Doris told me) her name became Baillieux, legally, spelled exactly like she wanted it. A week later she had her driving licence and it read: Mrs. Doris Baillieux. He bought her one black suit and one black dress and she became his driver straight away.

It was not difficult for a man like this to lay hands on almost anything, say a Remington rifle manufactured in 1939. The weapon would later play a part in the bodgie wars but until then it travelled in the back of the van, sufficiently accessible for shooting rabbits or jam tins lined up along a fence.

After Celine was born, and named to match Baillieux, the boss observed how Doris wore gloves to touch her baby. He asked no questions but he made himself the master of the bottle feed and the sixty-second nappy change. He nursed Celine while the mother drove.

Celine grew up with driving, with campfires along the Lerderderg River, rabbit shooting above the warrens at Coimadai, jam-tin targets by the Darley road. She knew the high potato country up by Bungaree and the goldmines of Anakie. All these scenes are free on postcards but you must add the tall stringy man with the baby in his arms and his attendant driver: a woman in a black frock with violent red lips.

Would Celine ever understand how her mother brought distinction to Mr. Neville? She not only drove “without jerkiness,” she could wait for hours on end and never need to sleep or hum or read the Sporting Globe . She was always there, waiting, bright as a button. She was always calm, whether he was in a great hurry or a slightly drunken stumble or, on the occasion that the wars with the bodgie gangs reached their final stage, a little bit of both.

It was a very particular childhood for Celine, providing intense nurture but of a most distinctive kind. As for nature, Celine’s body would turn out to possess an astounding stillness very like her mother’s, and this would one day prove to be one of her most interesting qualities as an actress. This was what made her, Doris told me, a “deadeye Dick. You know what that is?”

“An expert marksman.”

“Don’t print that,” she said. “She’s a real dingbat. She’s got a shocking temper.”

I SLEPT WITH HER, Celine Baillieux, good grief, of course it wasn’t what it sounds like. I couldn’t sleep at all.

Fifteen mg of Temazepam did nothing except dry my mouth so I set off, bare feet on ashy brick, seeking the solace of the vine. She had hidden the Jacob’s Creek but the refrigerator motor drew itself to my attention, and Jesus Christ, there it lay, sweet sleep, Veuve Clicquot, glowing golden from beneath a plastic drawer. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m really sorry. Never steal champagne. I found a tumbler. Seeking privacy, I slipped outside and the damp cold Victorian air washed over me. An owl cried, a mopoke. There was a possum thrashing carelessly around the branches of a blackwood.

As gentle as a safe-cracker, I closed the door. My hands were injured, the pain intense as I levered out the cork, a sweet and sneaky fart.

My feet were ice. I didn’t care. I filled the glass and felt the bubbles bathe the desert of my throat. If I could do this I could do anything. A huge hand clamped itself upon my shoulder.

Celine was later nice enough to say she did not hear me scream. Supposedly she woke to white lights as thin as needles raking the trees and dirty bedroom windows. She thought to herself, I am on their kill list, this moment has been waiting for me all my life. She drew a blanket across her head and slid across the freezing floor and lay hidden, heart pounding. There was a distant motor running, then it died. She crawled into the dark hallway. The air was cold and ashen and she could see through the living-room windows and out to the bush where men with flashlights slashed the dark. Two human figures stood at her open door. One of these was Wodonga Townes.

“Don’t do that again,” he said, and he put his arm around me and pressed me like a lover to his chest. “Jesus, mate. There are people who care about you. Don’t ever disappear like that again.”

“Sorry.”

Woody borrowed my Veuve Clicquot and took a swig. “Christ, Felix. I thought you were a goner.”

Behind him were men with the word POLICE in reflective letters thirty centimetres high. They were thumping around the bush as loud as wombats.

“What in the fuck are you doing here, Felix?” A possibly affectionate mass of flesh collapsed around my shoulder.

“Looking for my source.”

“But that’s my job. I bailed her. You’re the bloody writer. This wastes everybody’s time.”

“You could have just phoned me,” I said. “I would have answered.”

“Yes, yes,” he said, suddenly, typically, distracted by another thought. “You’ve got red wine?”