Peter Carey - Amnesia

“Sorry.”

He released me from his lock.

“Dobbo,” he called. “Go back and see our mate, the licensee.”

As he gave orders to the policeman his voice was clear as ice. I observed the flash of paper money as he peeled it off a roll. I was confused, but not at all ungrateful.

“Buy a case of Château Nasty,” said Woody Townes. “That should wake the bugger up. See if he’ll sell you some steak. I’m hungry.”

I attempted to get back into the house but found my way blocked.

“Get those people off my land,” Celine said, not to me, to Woody who was hard behind me. “Do they have a warrant?”

“My pretty Celine.” His tone was wheedling, creepy in conjunction with her injured eye. “They’re police, my love.”

Celine tugged her blanket hard around her. “Put my champagne back where you found it.”

“I was worried something bad had happened to you.” The Big Fella handed me the bottle and took her hand. “God knows who might have grabbed you.”

Celine folded her arms across her chest.

“Sweetheart,” Woody said, “you are in a vulnerable position.”

“So you explained last night.”

There was a silence. What was going on between them? Celine stared right at him, fierce in her injury.

“Good,” he said at last. “Then we’re clear on that.”

Another silence, then she blinked and looked away. “I’m sorry, Woody.” Only then did it occur to me: her daughter was very close nearby. “Come in,” she said.

In the generous kitchen Woody peeled himself a banana, drank water from the tap, wiped his red mouth with paper towelling which he left crumpled on the draining board. From inside a cocoon of blanket, Celine watched.

“Darling, you’ve got a public road grown over. You must know that.”

She dropped his garbage in a tidy. “I’m at the end of the road,” she said carefully. “No-one comes here but me.”

“This is fire country. There is no direct access to the house.”

“They shouldn’t be here,” she said.

“Why would you be pissy about them? They’re here because I was worried about your personal safety.”

Celine snatched her champagne back from me. “You’re pathetic,” she told me, en passant. I watched with interest as she attempted, and failed, to stand the bottle inside the fridge door. Woody winked at me. “You inherited this mansion from Lionel Patrick?” he asked.

“It’s not a mansion,” she said and I understood that she had got involved with the long forgotten Lionel Patrick, a conservative attorney-general. She had been one of Lionel’s girls.

Woody began shining his flashlight on her artworks, edging his way along the walls, around the corner. “Lionel was a bit of a collector,” he said and I heard a door open and then close behind him.

Celine glared at me: “Don’t say a bloody word.”

Woody returned, holding a small canvas.

“Cliff Pugh,” he said. “Cliff Pugh painted this.”

“For Christ’s sake.” Celine poured her champagne down the drain. “Will the pair of you stop touching my things.”

“Great artist, Cliff, bit far left for Lionel though. Didn’t Cliff live up the road at Cottles Bridge?”

“Yes, he did. In a moment you’ll reveal that you own his work yourself. It’s a portrait of Jim Cairns isn’t it?”

“Cliff was a big fan of the Deputy Prime Minister. Mate,” Woody said to me, “will you rehang this painting for me. Sorry.”

By the time I returned, Celine was nowhere to be seen and Woody was affecting to read a book. I took my shoes to the dining table where I could sit and lace them.

“You know she isn’t stable,” he said.

Was he explaining why he punched her? I stared at him. “I don’t blame you getting all shitty and sarcastic,” he said, not looking up.

“I wasn’t.”

“Yes, that’s what you’re like. But you’ve never known her like I have.”

“How exactly would that be, mate?”

His book made a good loud thwack as it hit the slate.

“Don’t fuck with me, Felix. You wouldn’t be that stupid would you?”

“I’m a coward, you know that Woody.”

He brought his crocodile eyes to bear on me. Then he sighed and picked up a copy of the Melbourne Age . “I wish to Christ you were that simple.”

I waited as he rolled up the pages, tying them in what I know as “granny knots.” I watched as he heaped these on the ashes and assembled the remnants of the old fire and threw in some kindling. I was standing in front of it, warming the back of my legs, when the cops returned with a case of wine and a small soft parcel which would turn out to contain butcher’s sausages.

Woody was now immediately active and you would have thought he was Rupert Murdoch who always liked to cook breakfast for his “boys” down at his farm at Yass. He was jovial, generous, benign. He set the snags to cook and cracked a lot of eggs into a bowl and addressed the gas cooker with one hand on his fleshy hip. When Celine did appear, in jeans and plaid shirt, she was not pleased to see this alien food invade her table. She stood before it, arms folded across her chest.

“Jeez, cut me some slack,” said Woody.

“You can’t say the words?”

“You want me to apologise?”

“Take your fucking plates outside,” she said.

“These men have been up all night on your account,” said Woody.

“On your account, I think.”

I felt him stiffen, the whole weight of his body inclining towards her. Then he snorted, and picked up his sausages and scrambled eggs and led his men out of the house.

The magpies were carolling and the sky was cold and yellow. The intruders gathered on the terrace juggling plates and drinks like footballers at a barbecue.

I finally got some red wine only to have Celine grab it back. “Later,” she said. “You’re meant to be a good guy. Please be a good guy. Please don’t fuck up.”

“What can I do? I don’t know anything.” I thought, what had she done with Woody? How had she inherited a house from Lionel bloody Patrick? “You shouldn’t piss off the cops. You know that.”

“OK, OK, go and eat with them. Tell them what a bitch I am. If they start poking around, just keep them away from the east.”

“Where’s that?”

She closed her eyes, and squeezed them shut. It is a credit to her character that she was smiling as she opened them.

“Where the sun comes up,” she said. “Boofhead.”

DET. SGT DOBBO CLUTCHED a handful of plastic bags, for what reason no-one said, ditto the matt-black equipment the others strung around their necks. Woody Townes carried a flashlight and a fresh-peeled stick, still slippery with sap, which he swung enthusiastically as he headed towards a slab-sided corrugated shed. His heels glowed fluorescent orange in the rising sun.

“I’m worried about her, Felix.” He whacked at a prickly Moses, slicing it in half. “If you want to think about it, she was never good with stress.” He came upon a pale blue Cootamundra wattle, twenty-five centimetres high, planted just last spring. He whacked that too.

“Jesus. Don’t do that.”

“You think she should grow more bloody trees? People get burned to death out here,” he said. “I thought I knew Celine, very intimately, mate. But she has always had the great capacity to surprise. Did you know she had been bonking Lionel Patrick?”

“No.”

“But how does she seem to you? What’s her state of mind?”

“Anxious, obviously.”