David Malouf: The Great World

No, Digger thought, I bet he doesn’t.

‘If they get me this time,’ Vic said, and Digger looked up, caught out by something he hadn’t heard before, ‘I’ll chuck the towel in. Do you believe that?’

Is he serious? Digger thought. But Vic had already covered himself.

‘Maybe I should just do that anyway,’ he said. ‘Chuck it in and come up here.’

He laughed at that, and after a moment Digger did too. It was so improbable.

Their lives were as different as any two lives could be that still touched and crossed and could at moments like this move quietly as one.

‘You’ve left us f’ dead,’ Digger used to tease him in the early days. The mockery was of the gentlest sort, but Vic was sensitive on the point of loyalty and would look hurt.

‘What do you mean? Because I’m makin’ a bit of money? That doesn’t make any difference.’

But as time went on he stopped protesting. It did make a difference; not so much the money as the level he moved at, the moves he made there, and the amount of interest people took in him.

‘I see you’ve been in the papers again,’ Digger would say, and Vic, though he was pleased Digger had seen it — he was still hungry for admiration, he could never have enough of it — would make a face. ‘Oh, the papers,’ he’d say. ‘You can’t take any notice of the papers.’ And to make up a little for the gap between them, he began to tell Digger stories, frank, light-hearted ones, of his activities out there among the cannibals, laying it on pretty thick at times and delighting in Digger’s expressions of disbelief, of disapproval too, often enough, and playing when he could for sympathy.

‘Well, I’m glad it’s you and not me,’ Digger would tell him, letting them both off the hook. ‘I dunno how you stand it. I couldn’t do it. Not for quids.’

Digger in fact was being disingenuous. He knew Vic. You could trust him with your life. On the other hand, you couldn’t trust him with tuppence. He had been surprised at first that some fellow he knew, and knew well, should be getting on in the world. But he saw after a time that this was naive. The very qualities he knew in Vic, both sides, took another form out there and were just what was needed. That told you something about the world, and Digger, in his own way, took note of it, but he didn’t let on to Vic what he had seen.

‘I stand it,’ Vic would say, ‘because I’ve got to. I’ve got no option.’ What he meant was that change, risk, action, were essential to him.

He was inclined to look about, when he came up here, and ask how Digger stood it. It was a world, up here, that had no need of you. Everything you looked at or touched, the long strips of bark that peeled back to show glossy colours, the squiggles on a trunk that were little lives, birdcalls that came out of the scrub, ker- whip , ker- whip — all these gave you the same message. Come on in if you like, but you might as well not for all the difference it will make.

It could be a comfort, that, for an hour or two. It took you out of yourself. But any more and he felt ghostly.

What he needed was things that told him he was here. Lucky for him the world was full of them.

But three weeks ago he had changed all this. He had come to Digger and asked a favour of him.

For a day or two after the idea first struck him he had held back. Not because he was afraid Digger would refuse him. He knew he wouldn’t. But because by asking it he was disturbing a balance that had existed between them, sometimes shakily, for more than forty years. He hesitated. Then, just as he knew he would, he went ahead and did it just the same.

‘Listen, mate,’ he had begun, a little shy now that he had come to the point, ‘you know I wouldn’t involve you in anything that wasn’t strictly above board. But the fact is, Digger, I’ve got a favour to ask you. I wouldn’t if there was anyone else.’

‘What is it?’ Digger said straight out. He was surprised. They didn’t ask favours of one another. He wondered what it could be that was not covered already by the friendship between them.

The note of distress in his voice unnerved Vic, but he was in now and what he had said was true: there was no one else. Quickly he laid the thing out, sticking to the plainest terms. Digger heard him through.

‘But what use would I be?’ he said at last. ‘I don’t know anything about shares .’

‘You wouldn’t have to. You wouldn’t even know it was happening. All we’d be using, Digger,’ and he paused a moment before he could get it out, ‘is your name.’ He went on quickly to cover the embarrassment of it. Digger was looking more and more uneasy. He was actually wringing his hands.

‘You see, we need someone who isn’t known, who couldn’t be traced — or not easily. It’s a matter of timing — to get it all done before it turns up in the records. Oh, there’s nothing illegal to it. It’s a bit clever , that’s all. You know what these business fellers are like. You see, the law says I can only buy one and a half per cent of the shares every six months, even if it is my company. It’s a silly law, but there you are, it’s the law. So I need someone else to do it. I put up the money — well, not money exactly, collateral, you know what that is, other companies that I can borrow against. All you would have to do is sign a few papers. Albert, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Digger said bleakly, ‘Albert.’ The unfamiliarity of it was at this moment a relief.

‘You see, mate, someone’s after me, I don’t know who. It could be anyone. Alex, even. All I know is, they’ve started to move. So what I’ve got to do is get in before them. Get the cash together, wait for the right moment, then before the others can do it, zap! we go in and make a bid for the whole show. Or as much of it, anyway, as will give me the whip hand.’

He was sweating. The boldness and danger of it excited him, but there were things too that he needed to keep back. It might scare Digger if he knew the scale of what he had in mind. For instance, the sums that would be involved.

‘The thing is, to get it all over and done with in the shortest possible time. Forty days, that’s the maximum. So you see, Digger, it won’t be for long.’ He could see how pinched Digger looked. He was sorry for that. ‘I’m up against it,’ he said simply. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I had the option. You’re the only one.’

Digger worked his Adam’s apple. The trouble was, he had no point from which he could judge all this, no knowledge, no experience, and there was no one he could ask. Was there an element of madness in it that anyone who knew about these things would see straight off?

‘I’m not imagining things,’ Vic said in an aggrieved tone, ‘if that’s what you’re thinking. I know it sounds dramatic. Paranoia, is that what you’re thinking? Honestly, Digger, this is the way these things are done . It may seem mad to you, but don’t you think I know what I’m doing? This is a game I play every day of the week. Believe me, I’m good at it.’

So Digger had been drawn in, and in the weeks that followed several prime targets, companies, that is, that were vulnerable to take-over, began to pass through his hands, all as Vic had promised, with no trouble on his part; without his even knowing for the most part what had occurred. It was a phantom existence he was living out there.

The companies — Morton Holdings, Cathedral Steel and Concrete, J. & R. Randall were the largest, but there were smaller ones as well — consisted of warehouses in three states, factories, offices with desks and filing cabinets and typewriters and computers, cafeterias, fleets of vans, stacks of cardboard boxes or steel girders; but all Digger saw were papers. And even the papers, it seemed, were just promises, negotiable items of trust, no more to be associated with actual notes or coins than the name Albert Keen was with the man who was signing for him.