For Everyone Concerned (9 page)

The next month the Halvorsens take out a mortgage as security on the loan. As if, says Billy, as if. Billy has all of his house on the line but the Japanese are behaving with a new friendliness following their brief visit.

They took the Japanese to a Japanese restaurant. The fish bits arrived on a slab of marble. You put one in your mouth, said Billy to Dr Halvorsen who had ordered a safe rice dish, you need another. Chasers. The Japanese chef came over to their table and started killing things in front of them. Cutting tails, stripping veins, beheading. All that death made them drink more. One of the Japanese fell asleep with his head on the table.
Jet rag,
they told Billy and Dr Halvorsen.

Dr Halvorsen’s granddaughter’s dream about Pinkie. The mouse has become a cruel millionaire. It keeps little girls in cages under harsh lights and she has to plead on their behalf, polishing the pink button of Pinkie’s nose with her index finger in a gesture of supplication.

Another quarter went by. Billy has divided the year like this so that he can produce neat projections for the bank. The company again failed to meet its own graph. The projection increasingly had the look of a grand fiction, a series of sweetly timed denouements, of recognition and trial, of growth and realisation and quiet though emphatic triumph. Billy faxed the charts to Doc. Barbara looked at them and laughed. ‘Do you ever regret meeting Billy
Hart?’ she asked her husband.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Are you joking? Yes.’

‘Really?’

‘No.’

In truth he regretted meeting Billy Hart in the same way that he regretted his sister losing her leg to that drunk, or his brother his kidneys and him once such an athlete. He regretted the homosexuality of several of his idols. He regretted never having heard Feodor Chaliapin in the flesh doing
Boris
Godounov
under Max Steinman at Paris in 1931—a record he treasured. He regretted giving up on the piano and not being a better son. And he regretted wishing out loud once that he regretted never having had a son to make up for his own father’s mistakes.

‘Well, you know,’ he said to his wife, ‘idle regret.’

‘Oh well,’ she said, sensing his sudden vulnerability, ‘you never know. It was worth a shot. We could have made it.’ Then, correcting the past tense. ‘We still
might. As long as the fax keeps humming. Billy Hart loves that machine.’

‘Billy Hart,’ Dr Halvorsen says to his wife when she has put those awkward, fair questions of hers to him and then retreated with a gentleness which makes him think of that moment when he first understood she loved him and what that might mean and how the laboratory that day seemed like a stadium at night flooded with the light from hundreds of unearned, affectionate gestures, flaring like matches and giving off their odour of magnesium, ‘does love that machine. You’re right.’ They take each other’s hands. ‘I think Billy’s wife has left him,’ he says.

‘Good,’ says Barbara. ‘Do you blame her?’

‘No,’ says Dr Halvorsen.

‘Not even a little bit?’ she asks.

‘Of course a little bit,’ he says.

‘That’s okay.’

‘Why?’

‘Because that means you really blame yourself a little bit.’

‘Oh. And is that a good thing?’

‘How do I know. But—’

‘What?’

‘It makes me think well of you.’

‘And that’s a good thing?’

‘Yes.’

Ken and his daughter visit Megan. She’s been staying at her sister’s place all week. It’s not big enough for the four of them.

‘Libby,’ says Ken to his daughter, ‘say hello to Megan.’

‘Hello to Megan,’ says Libby.

‘First you take things away from me,’ says Megan, ‘now you bring me things. You’re a great evener, aren’t you.’

‘I’m your shadow,’ says Ken.

Finally, Megan’s sister has to go out. Out of her own house! She crosses the street to her friend’s place. A man answers the door. He is wearing her friend’s white dressing-gown.

‘I’m looking for Elizabeth.’

‘Well, you can stop looking,’ says the man, ‘because she’s here. Would you both like to come inside?’

‘Both who?’

‘You and your girl.’

Behind Megan’s sister, Libby comes forward into the light.

Squeaky. Porky. Max. Dopey. Boris. Sissy. Nippy. Ossie. Alice.

Where’s my dinner? thought Billy. Where’s the food? He walked into the kitchen. He mopped up some ants with his thumb and ran the water. Funny, ants being
around. He went to pour himself a predinner drink, only he couldn’t find the gin or the tonic. He couldn’t find the fridge. There was a white space marked by a ring of fluffy dirt where the fridge used to be. Billy had a predinner water. He had another. And a third. Pretty soon, he thought, he’d have to urinate.

The woman of the Household stood before him, her bags and suitcases and boxes all around them.

‘Was that you knocking?’ she said.

‘Yes, madam,’ said Gregory.

‘I was in the bath.’

‘I’m sorry, madam.

‘I’ve flooded the bathroom.’

‘Oh, no, madam.’

‘On purpose. I did it on purpose. Don’t call me madam. I’m no madam.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Gregory.’

‘Were you asleep out here, Gregory?’

‘I was waiting.’

‘How long can you wait for? On a good day, what’s your limit?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Where’s Ken?’

‘Sick.’

‘Really? Ken?’

‘His daughter is.’

‘He’s sick or his daughter’s sick?’

‘Yes—his daughter.’

‘How confusing. Are you okay?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell you what, Gregory. I’m going to do you a favour.’

‘Thanks.’

‘If you do me a favour, I’m going to do you one back. Can you help me with my things? Can you carry these things to the car for me? You pack my things in my car and I’ll help you out, Gregory.’

‘Madam?’

‘Yes?’

‘I have to repossess the car.’

‘The car, no.’

‘And these bags and things, Madam.’

‘No, Gregory. Not the bags.’

‘Because of
the weight and the … shapes. I’m going to have to examine the contents of these bags.’

‘No.’

‘To ascertain their status—’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘—on the inventory.’

‘You’d go through a woman’s private bags, her personal effects? You’d search my luggage, my things, Gregory? In the street? Here? On
my front porch? Personal things all strewn all over my front porch?
You’d actually go through with that sort of behaviour, Gregory? You? I don’t believe it. Not you.’

‘Well—’

‘Not you. Not when there are bigger fish to fry. Not the hand-luggage of a woman who is in the process of losing the life she has gathered around her over a period of eleven years of marriage, all the things she’s worked for. I don’t see that in you, Gregory. I don’t believe it.’

‘But I have the inventory—’

‘Don’t be a fool, Gregory. Don’t throw it all away.’

‘How—?’

‘Don’t be an ass standing out here. Don’t spoil things for yourself so soon. Think for a moment.

Think of yourself. Consider your own hide for a moment. Don’t do it, Gregory.’

‘I am—’

‘Don’t.
Don’t start it here in broad day light on this porch. Don’t let it happen to yourself. Do you want that? Let it all go like that? Do you really want that to happen?’

‘No.’

‘No. Exactly. Now help me with these boxes, Gregory. Put all these things in my car. I’m going to give you the key to the house. Understand? I’m going to give you full and free access to the house here.’

‘Ingress and egress,’ said Gregory.

‘Exactly. The house you’ve been waiting to have
all this time. Now load up. And please be gentle with those. It’s all I have. You’re handling my life here, Gregory. I’m handing it over to you. Good. Good boy, Gregory.’

Billy went into the cruelly titled master bedroom, lifted a section of the floorboards inside the wardrobe and pulled out the fax machine. Then he walked across the street to his elderly neighbour’s, Jack. Jack told him there’d been men around Billy’s house all week. Coming and going. It wasn’t good news. The Neighbourhood Watch people were going crazy. A house had to be in order. Billy said he was sorting that out and Jack was not to worry. Was there a drink in the house? he asked. There was, said Jack, and two glasses besides. When Jack went into the kitchen, Billy plugged the machine into Jack’s phone and sent a fax to Dr Halvorsen. It said: Had an idea. Market through sports clubs. Get star to promote. Will investigate. Suggestions? Cheers, Bill.

Dr Halvorsen’s wife read the fax to her husband. Dr Halvorsen was in the bathroom applying ointment to his possum bite.

‘Why doesn’t he use full sentences?’ she asked him. ‘Why does he think it has to sound like a telegram?’

‘Ouch,’ said Dr Halvorsen. But later, while lying in bed listening to his wife’s lovely, manly snores, the doctor is finally grateful to the possum for nipping
him before he dropped the chloroform pellet into the water tray and tied the sack. The poor, hateful animal had been trying to tell him something prior to entering his death throes. Things bite. Everything bites. We live in the dark. Avril lives in the dark. Works and Services. The departmental secretaries. The VC lives in the deepest dark along with all the rest of us.

The Japanese send many faxes but, alas, they are incomprehensible. It would be necessary for Doc to fly to Tokyo and speak to their scientists, using an international language of hands and test tubes and mathematics. Billy can come up with an economy one-way fare. Dr Halvorsen’s wife tells him he is not going one-way to Tokyo. ‘You’re technical,’ she tells him. ‘Not a playboy. Not a marketing lackey. You don’t meet people. You wouldn’t know what to say. You have no tactics. You don’t meet people, John.’

‘I could learn,’ said Dr Halvorsen.

‘No you couldn’t, darling.’

‘I’ve learned an amazing amount in my life.’

‘Not this, darling. You could never do it. Trust me.’

With Billy sleeping in the lab, the fax under his pillow, the house on the market, the Australians sending whole books of federal regulations … Dr Halvorsen has a Japanese dream. It all ends so neatly
and ceremoniously. The giant mouse which has been eating the buildings sits down with the doctor for tea, folding its enormous, hairy legs under the little table. Dr Halvorsen rubs the suntan lotion between the mouse’s toes. Suggestions? says the mouse. The bank now has a claim in on the Halvorsens’ mortgage, which Hart says is preposterous. Preposterous, he writes on the fax. Underlined.

‘What is this we’re drinking now, Jack my friend?’ says Billy.

‘Vermouth,’ says Jack.

‘Vermouth,’ says Billy. ‘Really.’

‘And raspberry cordial.’

‘Which explains it.’

‘Tell me something, Bill.’

‘Shoot.’

‘Why aren’t you going home now? I don’t mind us sitting up. I’m just curious.’

‘Jack, you’re a hell of a mixer of drinks.’

‘Thank you, Bill.’

‘You could patent this doozy.’

‘It’s what I always drink.’

‘You have a recipe or something?’

‘Vermouth and raspberry cordial.’

‘You said.’

‘Half and half.’

‘Keep it under your hat, Jack.’

‘I make them for everybody.’

‘Just a little more sparing then.’

‘It’s all that’s in the cupboard.’

‘Just ease back on the communal approach, Jack. Save it up.’

‘Who cares?’

‘I’m telling you that maybe you’re on to something, Jack. I’m advising you. Be very wary.’

‘Bill, my friend, tonight you speak with crapped tongue.’

‘You need to own everything, Jack. Slap a patent on the way you walk, how you shave. Don’t care if it’s what you do every day of your life. Own it, Jack. Be in first.’

‘Be in first my arse.’

‘Beat the other guy to it, Jack. Start proceedings.’

‘Go home now why don’t you.’

‘Secure, secure, secure.’

‘Behave yourself when you’re in some one’s house, Billbo.’

‘Have you ever seen the tugs, Jack?’

‘Don’t be filthy.’

‘The tugs bringing the big ships into the harbour?’

‘Sit up straight. You’re screwing up the cushions there.’

‘I’m talking about the future, Jack. Take a leap into the future.’

‘Take a leap yourself.’

‘Within the individual lies the universal.’

‘What happened to your wife, Bill?’

‘You have to be on it, Jack. You have to be there to get there.’

‘She run off?’

‘Project. Project yourself.’

‘She get tired of it all, Bill? Is that what happened?’

‘Imagine yourself there already.’

‘Don’t you ever stop?’

‘I’m a ball of energy.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘I’ve supped with scholars.’

‘I bet.’

‘Up high in the University Staff Club.’

‘Up high is right.’

‘Jack, old buddy, I need some more Vermouth. I need some Vermouth in my
mooth
.’

Jack goes across to the window. ‘Will you look at that,’ he says. ‘Come and look at this, Bill. Hey, Bill. Excuse me, Mr Energy Ball. Mr Patent. Come and look at this. Wake up. You can’t go to sleep on my cushions. Wake up. Project this. Wake up. Mr Universal. Bill, there’s a young guy carrying your furniture out of your house on his head. That vain. vain sofa. The kid must be an ox. Look at him go.’

Every morning that summer I ran past a guy on the waterfront who was jogging with his mountain buggy. The sun hit the harbour and the guy came around the corner. He was something of an athlete; he wore a heart-rate counter strapped to his bare chest. An athlete or a patient escaped from the cardiac part of hospital. And he was always checking his watch, as if he had running times to meet. PBs. He also had on the serious runner’s shorts which flapped around his trim backside. Underwear cut high. Hairless. Waxed?

I ran with Max, my golden retriever. I was in trackpants and an old teeshirt. If you stop running you can pretend you never were. You’re just walking the dog. Retrievers don’t like to run; they like to retrieve. Whenever we passed, the guy gave me this great smile; he had the teeth for it too. Then we started saying
things like, hey and beautiful morning and you again. I got myself into some shorts.

Once he called out, what’s his name? And I said Max. Beautiful, he said. The dog had heard his name and he lifted his head, looked back at us, then he was searching everywhere for the thing to retrieve.

We never stopped to talk because he was always checking his watch and pushing on.

Then the summer turned rotten. Wind, rain, hail, wind. We stayed in for a few days but Max was going crazy so we set off again on our run. I was walking. The dog went after leaves and brought them back and I wouldn’t even try to get them off him. I was looking particularly ugly. Nylon jacket. Who do we meet but the guy, with his mountain buggy. A baby out in that weather! He was insane. His chest was still bare, his shorts were plastered on. He greeted me with the same smile. What a day, he said. The rain tore at us. And I stopped, making him stop too. I said, what are you
doing
out here? And he said, they make you go, don’t they? Who? I said. Then he lifted the canopy on the mountain buggy and there, propped up on a pillow and covered in a tartan shawl was the hairiest baby in the world, bearded, hideous.

Actually it was a dog, a terrier. Baby looked at me
and he looked at Max and he strained forward to allow us to touch his wet nose.

Then the guy said, I think he’s in love. He’d begun to fiddle with the monitor, as if I was screwing with his PBs.

What is that exactly? I said, pointing at the thing strapped to his wet chest. Without really meaning to, I’d touched it, stabbed at it. I’d hit a button on the thing. It blipped loudly and gave us both a fright. What’d I do, I said.

We both looked at the monitor, its spasms.

You just killed me, he said. Or it.

Max growled, a leaf in his chops.

He’d worked for seven years as an airline steward, it turned out. With obnoxious passengers there were several things they did. Used the tongs for everyone’s warm face towels to stir some prick’s tea. Or this: he’d take off his shoes and slide around the cabin on the nylon carpet, building up as much static energy as he could. Then he’d bend down to the offending passenger, who would now be asleep, and suddenly grip an arm. Turbulence, sir. That was always fun.