Peter Carey - The Tax Inspector

‘Me? Oh no, I don’t think so.’ Mrs Catchprice folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.

‘You didn’t telephone the Taxation Office to say you were worried that your business had filed a false tax return?’

‘You should talk to Cath and Howie. They’re the ones with all the tricks up their sleeves. All this talk about being a professional musician is just bluff. She’s an amateur. She couldn’t make a living at it. No, no – what they want is to set up a motor business of their own, in competition to us. That’s their plan – you mark my words. But when you look at the books, you take my word, you’re going to find some hanky-panky. I won’t lay charges, but they’re going to have to pay it back.’

‘Mrs Catchprice, you do understand – I’m a tax auditor. I’m here to investigate tax, nothing else. You phoned the Taxation Office. Your call is on record.’

Mrs Catchprice looked alarmed.

‘They recorded me? Is that what you say?’

‘They recorded your name.’

Mrs Catchprice was looking at Maria, but it was a moment before Maria saw that there were tears flooding down her ruined cheeks.

‘The terrible thing is,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘the terrible thing is that I just can’t remember.’

8

At twelve o’clock Mort Catchprice returned from the coast with a Volvo trade-in and saw Benny standing in front of the Audi Quattro. He did not recognize him. He knew his son intimately, of course, had held his little body, bathed it, cleaned it, cared for it from the year his wife had run away. He had seen his body change like a subject in slow-motion photography, seen its arms thicken and its shoulders broaden, its hooded little penis grow longer and wider, its toenails change texture and thickness, insect bites appear and fade, cuts open like flowers and close up with scabs the colour of dead rose petals. He knew what his son was like – a teenager with pimples, razor rash, pubic hair – someone who treated his skin as if he wished to make himself repulsive – left it smeared with dirt, ingrained with the residue of sumps and gearboxes. He had rank-smelling hair and lurid T-shirts in whose murky painted images his father could see only violence and danger.

What Mort saw as he drove slowly down the lane-way to the workshop, was not his son but a salesman, hired without his knowledge, against his wishes, a slick car salesman like Jack, neater than Jack, someone they could not, in any case, afford to pay.

He was mad already when he drove in beneath the open roller doors into the large grey steel-trussed space that was the workshop. He parked the Volvo on a vacant Tecalemit two-poster hoist.

He moved an oxy gas stand and began to push a battered yellow jack back against the wall when Arthur Dermott came shuffling over from his work bench rubbing his hands with a rag and grinning under his wire-framed spectacles.

‘They tell you?’ he asked, reaching for the crumpled pack of Camels in his back pocket.

Mort felt hot around the neck. He saw the salesman. He knows I’m weak .

‘They tell me what?’

‘Tax office is raiding you,’ Arthur said, lighting the cigarette with satisfaction.

He saw the salesman .

‘What?’

‘Tax Office is raiding you. The way we heard, it was serious. The boys are a bit stirred up, job-security-wise.’

‘Bullshit, Arthur. Who told you that?’

Arthur nodded towards Spare Parts. ‘Howie come and took Jesse off the fuel pumps to carry all the books up to your Mum’s apartment. They’re doing their raid up there.’

‘All right, Arthur, how about the Camira?’

‘A Welsh plug and some coolant.’

‘You road test it?’

‘It’s an R.T., yep.’

‘O.K., now you can pre-delivery the blue Commodore.’

‘I thought I was going to do the brakes on the Big Mack truck?’

‘Forget the fucking Big Mack truck, just do what the fuck I tell you.’

It was true what Granny Catchprice said – the Catchprices had kissy lips. Mort had the best set of all of them. And although he was a wide and burly man, spilling with body hair, and with a rough, wide nose which had been broken twice on the football field, it was the lips which were remarkable not just for their fullness but also – in that bed of blue-black stubble – their delicacy.

Yet had you seen him emerge from under the roller doors of the workshop you would have seen a fighter, not a kisser. He came up the concrete lane-way beside the Spare Parts Department like a front row forward, occupying the centre of the road. He wore a clean white boiler suit, cut short at the arms and open for two or three press studs so the hairy mat of his wide chest was visible. He walked with a roll to his shoulders and his lips had gone thin and his eyes were looking at nothing they could see.

He knew there was no way he could have been told about the Tax Inspector, but he was still mad about not being told. When he passed the fern-filled window of Spare Parts he was giving them a chance to tell him, but they did not tap on the window or come out to tell him.

Also: they had hired a salesman without consultation.

In any case, fuck them, they made him angry almost every day of his life. Now he was going to piss the salesman off. He did not want to fight. He was sick of fight, sick of his body being a mass of stretching ropes. All he wanted was to be someone with a Garage, not a Service Station, not a Dealership, not a Franchise, but a Garage with deep, wide, oil stains on the floor and a stack of forty-four-gallon drums along his back fence, a Garage in a country town. There was one in the paper this week, at Blainey – $42,000, vendor finance. Blainey would be good enough. You could be the guy who drives the school bus, delivers the kerosene and fuel oil, cuts the rust spots out of the school teacher’s old car, fixes the butcher’s brakes with used parts, is handy with a lathe, is a good shot, a good bloke, a scout master, the coach of the football team, someone who, when looking for a screw or bolt, upturns a drum full of old saved screws and bolts on to the workshop floor and can find – there it is – a ⅜-inch Whitworth thread with a Phillips head.

Instead he had one kid lost to a cult, the other with severe learning difficulties and the belief he was a genius. He had a $567,000 debt to GMAC and a tax audit which, maybe, who knows, would put the lot of them in jail.

He stepped around the puddle on the end of the lane-way and crossed by the petrol pumps. There, twenty metres ahead of him, standing in front of the Audi Quattro, was the striking blond-haired young man in a glistening grey suit, the salesman. He was flexing his knees, holding his yellow-covered guide to auction prices behind his back. When he turned and looked him straight in the eye, Mort felt a sexual shiver which made him speak more harshly than he had planned.

‘Get your arse out of here,’ he said.

‘You promised,’ the salesman said, but he turned and walked away, swinging his shoulders and wiggling his butt like a frigging tom cat. My God, it was an embarrassment, the way he moved.

‘And don’t come back,’ he said. Even as he said it he recognized his son. He wanted to cry out, to protest. He felt the blood rise hot in his neck and take possession of his face. He stood in his overalls in the middle of the yard, bright red.

His phone was ringing – loud as a fire bell. He walked towards it, shaking his head. In any other business of this size, one where the sales director was not wasting half her time trying to be a Country singer, there would be a service manager to answer the phone and soothe the customers. There would also be a workshop manager to co-ordinate the work flow, and a foreman to diagnose the major problems, work on the difficult jobs, do the final road tests and then tick them off on the spread sheet. Mort did all of these jobs. So even while he worried what the hell he would do about his embarrassing son, he also knew that three Commodores on the spread sheet were in for a fuel pump recall. General Motors graded this job as 4.2 which meant they would pay Catchprice Motors for forty-two minutes’ labour, but they made no allowance for the time it took to drain the tank. He tried to cover himself by using Jesse, the first-year apprentice, but each recall still cost the business fifty dollars. That was Howie’s calculation. He had said to Howie: ‘What you want me to do about it?’