The door to number thirty-two Alice Street, Woollahra was a solid block of stainless steel without blemish or keyhole. Set into the facade of a late 1890s terrace in a conservative, manicured street of immaculate ‘restoration’, it seemed to be either thumbing its nose at history or promising relief, depending on your point of view. The minuscule front garden was a sea of river stones rather than the ferns and mondo grass or camellias and azaleas of neighbouring terraces. Apart from these two aberrations, number thirty-two faced the world with wrought-iron and Victorian modesty, just like all the other widows in the row.
Jack climbed somewhat more stiffly than usual from the leather seat of his Aston Martin, stretched, looked up and down the street as if checking for observers, and clicked the remote. A dull thump emanated from the stainless steel and he made his way into the house. He still experienced a frisson of pleasure every time he entered. It was his finest work as an architect, from the days when he really practised his design skills. That was the part of property that lifted his soul. And Louise had used all her skills as a negotiator to convince the local council to allow a conversion they’d never seen before and of which they were deeply suspicious. Two terraces joined together, not side by side but from front to back, with a glass atrium between, opening to a sculpture court in the centre-it might comply with the building codes, but was it ‘right’?
As Jack entered, great shafts of light fell down through the three-storey-high glass roof and lit the yellow sandstone floor in soft pools. In one of these shimmering enclaves stood Louise, smiling at him, relaxed, willowy, tanned, in jodhpurs or some trousers vaguely reminiscent of horses and a cream cashmere vest that set off her shoulder-length blonde hair and brown skin. She was a handsome woman, that was how Jack thought of her; fit, athletic, strikingly attractive, with an aura of confidence and commitment. And she was his wife and he loved her. She came forward to embrace him and ran her fingers up through his hair in a gesture that always affected him. ‘So, the great sailor returns from life on the high seas. Didst thou conquer the waves? Didst thou haul on mighty hawsers and splice the main brace? And hast thou returned to thy safe port and the bosom of a soft woman?’
Jack led her through the sculpture court into the kitchen that ran the entire width of the house. She was always teasing in this way, bringing him to earth or to heel, whichever she deemed necessary, and he loved her for that as well. It had been the same when they were partners together in the business. She’d been a competent architect-not in his creative league, never able to take the leap from a logical solution into the poetry of design, into the shadow puppetry of shapes and light falls-but brilliant in all the practical necessities of contracts and councils. He’d missed her when they started a family and she decided to commit to that. He missed sparring with her when they came together for coffee, when she looked over his shoulder at the sketches on the drawing board, sometimes mildly critical, but more often with, ‘Not just a pretty face, are you, Jack?’ He fed off her approval and the work was always better when they were in tune with one another. But he’d become the architect everyone loved so much he’d stopped being an architect and become a property developer. He’d moved effortlessly from design to building to financing as he collected people, or more as they collected him and his charming talent. But somewhere along the track, the profitable, seamless footpath of success through Sydney’s best suburbs, he felt he’d lost some of Louise’s respect. Not that she ever overtly showed this to Jack or anyone else. But he felt it.
‘It was a motorboat actually, or ship more likely. Enormous great thing. But not much call for hauling on the mainsails. Anyway, how was the literary event?’
She examined Jack carefully. He was a hopeless liar or dissembler, which was one of the things she loved about him, along with a basically good heart, a sound set of human values-capable of eroding at the edges, but in the main sound. An immediate attempt to change the subject usually indicated nervousness.
‘You would have loved it. Locked away in an overheated room in Bowral discussing whether Truman Capote did or did not contribute to Harper Lee’s only novel and whether J.D. Salinger actually exists or is merely a figment of his daughter’s imagination. Or something like that. But tell me more about life at sea. Who was there? What was said? I stand, or sit, ready to be amazed.’
Jack drummed his fingers on the wooden table, unaware he was telegraphing more signals of uncertainty. ‘No one of great interest really, no one you’d know. Oh, except Archie Speyne from the museum. He was swanning about chatting up Mac. And a couple of business people and some broken-down old pollie. You didn’t miss much either.’
‘Really?’ She paused and slowly twisted a strand of hair between thumb and forefinger. ‘And no wives? No women at all? That must have been dull. What is Mac Biddulph, a misogynist or gay or something?’
Jack laughed, not knowing it was the wrong laugh. ‘Hardly. I don’t think he’s gay, that’s for sure.’
‘Really?’ Another, longer pause. ‘I didn’t realise you knew him at all. And no stimulating conversation or even gossip for me to share with the girls at tennis?’
‘You don’t play tennis.’
‘Quite so. But if I did, and I might take it up, I’d need gossip to bring with me or I’d be driven out of the group and publicly stoned as a woman of low morals.’ She was smiling broadly at him, no hint of suspicion or condemnation.
‘Well, I sold the penthouse in The Pinnacle, so it wasn’t a wasted weekend. Mac snapped it up, which pretty much closes off the sales for that one.’
Her eyebrows arched up in surprise. ‘That’s extraordinary. It’s a wonderful penthouse, don’t get me wrong, but I wouldn’t have thought it was anywhere near grand enough for Mac Biddulph.’
Jack squirmed in the swivel chair, rose and began to pace. ‘That’s what I said. But he’s bought it as an investment.’
Again the eyebrows shot up. ‘An investment? Either he must have new ideas on how to get a return on six and a half million dollars that we don’t know about or he’s prepared for a long wait for a capital gain.’
Jack opened the see-through refrigerator door, peered into its lighted recesses, closed the door again. ‘I guess that’s up to him. Anyway, I took a bit less than the asking price to get the deal through. No point in being greedy. Bird in the hand.’
She followed him with her eyes, wondering which cupboard he’d open next in his exploration of cutlery and crockery. ‘And which bird did we get in the hand-a sparrow or a goose?’
‘I took six. It’s a fair price and we’ve made an indecent profit on the whole development.’
‘Indeed we have, darling. I’m just a little surprised you decided to grant some of it to Mac Biddulph, who hardly seems a deserving case, when winter is coming and blankets, warm food and thick clothing will be required for less fortunate citizens.’
Jack had reached the atrium and paused as if deliberating whether to disappear into it or circle back towards her. She decided to solve his dilemma.
‘You know best, darling. Come on, I’ll make us a decent cup of coffee, something not available within a hundred kilometres of a literary retreat.’ But as he approached, she couldn’t resist one last shot. ‘Still, I hope you don’t get invited on that boat too often. Half a million dollars makes an expensive weekend.’
A few nights later they sat at dinner together. It was a ritual they all treasured. Considering sixteen-year-old girls were supposed to be rebellious, especially with their fathers, and thirteen-year-old boys to have the attention span of cocker spaniels, it seemed a custom from another time. But any night they were all home, which was often, they ate as a family, with Jack acting as quiz master in another strange Beaumont custom.
‘Who was the King of Spain in 1922?’
‘That’s dumb, Dad. We know they were all called Carlos. Ask a proper question.’
Sarah would be another Louise, he could see that already. She was captain of the hockey team, frighteningly good at maths, and more than capable of instructing her father in the finer points of his behaviour.
‘Yes, well, you may know that but a reasonable percentage of the world’s population is unaware of these mysteries.’
Sarah tossed her head so her long hair shook from side to side, something she had observed many twentyyear-old girls in the coffee shops of Paddington were wont to do. ‘Nonsense, Dad. Everyone knows it. Now ask us something decent and remember you have to know the answer.’
Louise interjected. ‘A family rule which has stifled many a brilliant question in former times.’
Jack observed them all with deep affection. This was the family sport, scoring points off Dad, but he knew it was their way of expressing love and that the day it stopped he would have lost more than respect. He looked across to the dog sleeping quietly on the rug, for support, but received none.
‘All right then, who’s the President of Tanzania?’
‘Where is Tanzania?’ Shane was always ready to answer a question with a question.
Jack smiled at his only son, the prodigal son he always called him, without really knowing the meaning of ‘prodigal’.’I cannot be called upon to give clues in the great game of life.’
‘Meaning he doesn’t know and therefore loses the great game of life.’ Louise raised her eyebrows at him again.
‘A preposterous and outrageous slander. Tanzania is in Africa, situated conveniently near Zambia and Uganda, especially if you live in either of those highly desirable localities. As the atlas will confirm.’
Sarah had already leapt up to fetch the reference books. ‘He’s right, Mum, it is in Africa.’
‘Of course it’s in Africa, darling, but it’s a hundred to one your father doesn’t know who the President is and is relying on the fact that none of our books are up to date. Am I right?’
The phone rang. Jack gestured for Sarah to answer it. ‘Why do I always have to get it?’
‘Because it’s usually for you.’
Louise held his gaze. ‘You won’t get away with this bluff, you know.’
Sarah called. ‘It’s for Dad. A Mr Biddulph.’
Jack was startled. Louise watched him. ‘Big Mac strikes again. You are popular. Remember, we can’t afford another weekend away or we’ll go broke-and besides, Shane has rugby.’
Jack took the call in the atrium and they could only hear him mumbling and the occasional word. He returned after a few minutes, running his fingers through his thick hair absentmindedly.
‘You haven’t sold the house and left the family homeless or something, have you? You look somewhat addled.’
‘I am. More than somewhat.’
‘Well, what did he say? We’re all agog. And keen to get back to Tanzania and the leader of that great nation.’
Jack gazed around the room, around the knot of his family, apparently not seeing. ‘He said all roads lead to me. He said he’d been thinking about me ever since the weekend. He said he wants me to come and discuss running his company. That’s about it.’
They were all quiet. The kitchen clock ticked. ‘Why would he do that?’ Jack shot her a look. ‘I didn’t mean it that way. We all know you’re a genius and an MBA and all, not to mention your ravishing good looks. But he’s in the insurance business, isn’t he? You don’t know anything about that.’
‘Or who the President of Tanzania is.’ Sarah tried to emulate her mother’s arched brows.
‘Yeah, it’s strange. I assume he’s talking about the insurance company. He’s in all sorts of things privately, but that’s the big public face. I was too stunned to ask. He cut off any questions and said, come and talk. I was the only one, all roads led to me. He repeated that. Don’t think about it, just come and talk. That was the line.’ Again the fingers ran through the hair.
‘Why would you? You run your own company. Quite well we feel, don’t we, group? Although we may razz you from time to time, you’re a good little earner. Why would you bother to talk to him?’
Jack didn’t answer. He looked up. Shifting clouds and a full moon were visible through the glass roof. ‘Well, are you going to talk?’
He nodded slowly. ‘I’m going to have a chat. Why not? It’s intriguing. I’m a bit bored, to tell you the truth, doing the same thing. I don’t mean I’m going to do this, whatever it is, but there’s no harm in talking.’
‘You’re late, Jack. Just off the nest, I’ll bet. And missing a great story. Start again, Maroubra, this one’s a cracker.’
Jack slid into the only vacant chair at the long table and looked around the room. He loved the old beach house and the ritual of the monthly lunch with this disparate group of prominent citizens, knockabouts and larrikins. The creaking timber floorboards, the roar of the Bondi surf, the smell of fish grilling, of chilli and garlic melting in the pan, jugs of beer on the refectory table, Armando in the kitchen yelling his way into any discussion he chose to join, yarns and stories, myths and fables spinning around the table, sometimes raging arguments about politics or sport-never religion. Tales of women they’d known or wished they’d known, good humour and mateship in the old ironic manner. Armando closed the restaurant for them now, even though there were only a dozen or so in the group and the room seated more than double that number. They’d been coming for years and he was proud to have them-judges and heads of companies, people you saw sometimes on television, other characters you thought you should know but couldn’t place, a few you felt it mightn’t be a good idea to recognise. He just cooked whatever he felt like and served it with his favourite wines; no bill, always the same charge.
‘Wake up, Jack, Maroubra’s in full flight. What are you dreaming about?’
The voice came from the depths of the great lump of a man sitting beside him. It was a voice said to engender fear in the hearts of witnesses who had something to hide as the withering cross-examination of Thomas Wetherington Smiley QC lashed them from six feet five inches. Tom was slouched beside him, schooner in hand, drifts of froth finding their way onto the signature Zegna suit he always managed to make look like a charity cast-off within a month of purchase.
‘Get on with it, Maroubra, or we’ll rule you out of order and tell Armando to ration your grog.’
Another towering figure rose from the end of the table and raised its hand slowly in a gesture of silence. ‘Gentlemen. As I was saying before Jack-the-lad graced us with his exquisite presence, reeking no doubt of bodily fluids, the nature of which most of us only dimly recall, an appalling and frightening apparition appeared at the door of number four Cross Street, Maroubra, the family home, at one in the morning last Friday.’ Maroubra paused for effect, glaring around the table, capturing each eye. ‘My son. Yes, gentlemen, the fruit of my loins, my only son, Gordy-rugby player, drinker, rooter-all fifteen stone of muscle and meat, beaten, bleeding. Shirt torn. The shirt his mother gave him for Christmas, five years ago admittedly, but ripped, covered in blood. Gordy, my son. I ask you, gentlemen-’ another pause, ‘who would dare lay a finger on my son and expect a happy life?’
The group nodded, mumbled assent, took long drafts of beer or wine. There was expectation in the air. Maroubra’s stories were always rich with courageous deeds or extreme violence or remote and dangerous locations. Weird characters of dubious origin, often involved in his salvage business, threaded their way in and out of the fabric of the stories. But the pride of the family, beaten by unknown persons in the middle of the night-the wrath of Maroubra (kayak medallist, surf belt champion, mountaineer, stroke of the Olympic Eight), the wrath of this man was terrible to witness.
‘I extracted the details soon enough, gentlemen, as you can imagine. A professional job. Bouncers from New Zealand, Gordy in a club, a few beers more than he should, perhaps, but nothing we all haven’t done. They could’ve asked him politely to leave, but no, they smack him around the head. Bad call.’ Maroubra swung his gaze slowly around the table again and then lifted his eyes to the roof. ‘What was I to do to restore the honour of my family? Sometimes, gentlemen, you receive a sign. I looked up and there on the wall was my most treasured possession. The oar I used to stroke the Olympic Eight. With the crew’s names in gold. What could I do?’
Maroubra lowered his head, sighed. ‘I took down that oar and sawed it in half.’ There was an intake of breath from the table and a shuffling of chairs. ‘I took the butt end, comrades, put it inside my overcoat and walked down to that club. Straight in the door. Past those two ugly thugs before they could stop me and yelled as I went past, If you had a mother she wouldn’t recognise you after I say hello. I was in the toilet before they could wake up to themselves, put the overcoat over the stall door, the butt of the oar inside and started to wash my hands. It didn’t take long. They came in quietly, cautiously, not sure what was going on. And I let them come, just smiling. I was drying my hands until they were in range. Then I grabbed that oar and belted the shit out of them.’
Maroubra nodded almost sorrowfully at his own story. ‘It’s a heavy thing, a racing oar. Even half an oar. It did a lot of damage very quickly, so I grabbed the coat and ran and kept running. Straight to Coogee Oval. I always feel at home there, safe.
Straight to the middle of the oval, dark at two in the morning.
Down on the ground, comrades, spreadeagled, nose in the dirt, not moving a muscle. You could hear the sirens pretty quickly. I suppose they were both police and ambulance-they would’ve needed one. They went on for a long time, lights flashing around for a while, but they’d never see me out there. I didn’t move for two hours, and when it was all quiet I got up and went home.’ There was nodding around the table. ‘I put the oar back on the wall one piece above the other. I like it that way.
You’ve got to look after your own, hey?’
When the thumping of tables and clanging of glasses had subsided and the great steaming bowls of Sicilian fish stew and rice were set down, quiet fell on the group. Jack had felt it an honour when he was casually invited to come to his first lunch. He knew no visitors were ever invited to this informal club. If you were asked once, you were in. And he’d wanted to be in, to be included in this tangle of flotsam and jetsam that washed up on the shores of Bondi once a month.
When Maroubra had rung him three years ago and suggested lunch, he’d assumed it was merely one of their occasional boozy get-togethers. They’d known one another for nearly twenty years, since the day Jack had first signed on at the surf club for his bronze medallion training. There was the massive frame at the end of the line of newcomers, even then a head taller than the rest. And when they came to the surf rescue training with the old belt and reel, Maroubra had picked him as a partner-although even today he swore it was only because Jack was lighter than the rest and easier to tow as a victim. When the roles were reversed and Jack was required to rescue Maroubra, when little or no headway was being made through the rip, he’d felt the hand on his shoulder and heard the deep voice. ‘Don’t worry, mate, I’ll kick underwater. No one’ll ever know.’
And no one ever had. Just as they’d never seen the same hand take Jack’s pack when they were portaging in the Franklin River and it was all he could do to scale the cliff, let alone manoeuvre a twenty-five kilo pack. But Maroubra came to him for advice, for support, once for money when he was starting his business.
They were joined, if not at the hip, somewhere near.
The group had been formed this way, all from different backgrounds, not a collection of school friends or sporting mates, just one link binding to the next, but a chain forged from a series of found pieces, each as strong as the next. Over the years they’d helped one another with tragedies and traumas, jobs and joyous occasions, funds and faith.
The only other member Jack had known before he joined that unexpected day was the Pope, who’d been at university with him, but even then was an exotic, distant figure. He seemed to have money when no one had money. It was said he made it by selling fur jackets fashioned from rabbit skins, but this seemed so unlikely it was dismissed by most. When Jack had jokingly asked at his first group lunch if it was true, the Pope had simply nodded and said, ‘So what?’
There were people around this table whose intellect challenged him. He looked across at Murray Ingham sitting opposite, dipping a chunk of bread into his bowl. The face was a block of pitted granite with two thick, black slashes above the eyes. How did he grow those brows like possums’ tails? Were they groomed and fertilised and cut like hedges? Jack looked away before the hooded eyes could catch him staring. Murray had written two critically acclaimed novels-both of which Jack had tried to read but which were still in the drawer by his bed with bookmarks a few chapters in-as well as a biography of an obscure artist that had won him awards and prizes and a year in some garret in Paris. And then there was Murray’s apparent disdain for Jack’s facile brain and purposeless life as property developer to the semillon set. At least Jack perceived this contempt from the occasional sardonic remark that was thrown his way.
Beside him was the imposing figure of the Hon. Mr Justice Norman Crosby, Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales, connoisseur of rugby and rum, Latin scholar, collector of Picasso ceramics, author of an unpublished play of considerable vulgarity. The Judge, as he was always referred to in the group, was examining Jack with great interest, much as a taxidermist stares at a potential subject in order to define its precise attitudes.
‘Mr Beaumont. Always a pleasure when you grace our table.’ For some reason-and it made Jack nervous, as if he’d committed an undetected felony-the Judge always referred to him as ‘Mr Beaumont’, whereas all the others received their nicknames or given names. ‘What news upon the Rialto? What do you bring us from the real world, the world of commerce, of glamour, of intrigue and money and success, of failure and suicide, or indeed of fraud and jail and terrible penalties, of the ruin of families, the dissipation of great fortunes piled brick upon brick over generations and then dashed to the ground in one lifetime of excess, of gambling, of drink, of illicit sex? What of all this, Mr Beaumont? We wait with bated breath.’
Jack tossed off a glib response. He knew he could never strike the right note with people like the Judge. Jack Beaumont, the great salesman, ask anyone, look at his record, look at the money he’d made. Why he could buy anyone around the table, pretty well-except the Pope, perhaps, but then nobody knew exactly what the Pope owned or did, just the way he lived-but all the rest. He could buy or sell them all, but as good as he was at selling, sometimes he felt challenged. There was no reason for it. He’d graduated with honours and been second in the year, tacked on an MBA for good measure. They all liked Jack-the-lad, were always happy to see him, welcoming. But with just a few, like the Judge or Murray Ingham, he sensed another level of activity in their brains that he couldn’t reach.
It hadn’t been like that with Mac Biddulph when they’d met in Mac’s office earlier that morning. There was an immediate rapport. Seated in the vast, gloomy space with two life-sized paintings of brumbies above the desk there should have been an initial feeling of uneasiness. That was the intention of the design, if design was a description that could be applied to a room where the furniture seemed to be built for giants and one unrelenting colour pervaded, a sort of early mineshaft brown that appeared to soak up all the available light.
Mac had immediately asked him to run his company, HOA, the biggest home insurance company in Australia, as chief executive. It was an absurd notion, he’d felt at first, because he knew nothing of the insurance industry except that it was complex and required sophisticated assessments of risk and pricing. But Mac swept these doubts aside.
‘And what do you think I know about risk assessment and pricing a book? What do you think I know about coefficients of variation and central estimates and all the other jargon and palaver the actuaries go on with? That’s why we have actuaries, Jack, so people who create businesses like you and me don’t have to spend our lives crawling around a pile of papers. Did you ever meet an actuary who built a business? And there are the regulatory authorities like APRA and ASIC and the ASX and every other alphabet coven of bureaucratic witches who pore all over the stuff. You wouldn’t believe the truckloads of documents we pack off to these leeches. So you don’t have to worry about everything being kosher-that’s the one benefit of all this crap. But who brings the business in? Who creates the revenue instead of just reporting where it’s kept? Isn’t that what a business is really all about? And that’s where you come in, Jack. You’re a genius at selling. Don’t tell me you’re not. I’ve checked. And the banks love you; you’re the only major property developer who’s never missed an interest payment through all the market’s peaks and troughs over the last fifteen years. They trust you, Jack. Do you know what trust’s worth in this business? Think about it. For ninety per cent of our customers we do nothing every year except send them a bill-only about ten per cent make a claim. They renew because they trust us to pay out if that fire ever comes, or the burglar ever breaks in. Trust. It’s what insurance is all about. You have it from the people who matter, the guys with the money, and you’ll build it with the customers. And you know everyone in the building industry and all the associated services, and particularly in home finance. We insure homes, Jack. More than half of all the homes in this country. But how do we increase that share, get the new business, the first-time young buyers? Jack Beaumont gets it for us, with his contacts and his salesmanship. You can push us forward, instead of treading water while the weight of regulatory bullshit tries to pull us under. You’re a visionary. We need you.’
What words that tug at the core, he thought. Not we want you, but we need you. Jack was already partly lost with those words, he knew it even though he wouldn’t yet allow a decision to form. He certainly wouldn’t voice one to Louise, to anyone.
‘So what’ve you been up to with Mac Biddulph? Out on the floating girlie palace and all, I hear?’
He started at the stentorian tones of Tom Smiley. How could Tom know he’d been seeing Mac Biddulph? Was this city the glass bowl people said it was, where a thousand eyes watched every time the orb was shaken and the fake snow fell on a different branch? He tried to change the subject, to laugh off the question with a Jack-the-lad response, but if Louise could detect dissembling, the professional antenna of Thomas Smiley caught the false notes as clearly as bellbirds calling in a forest.
The barrage that followed pinned him with its forensic intensity and before he was aware of the prising open of his soul, he was spilling details of not just the weekend’s capers but the conversation in Mac’s office, his initial doubts, even the possibility, the possibility he hadn’t admitted to himself, that he might take this challenge. Yes, it was a challenge-a stretching of his abilities, a leap from being the charming property developer to the leader of a major business, a critical business for the average Australian, a business people depended on in crisis, a complex, intellectually demanding exercise that he could drive forward better than anyone else. Mac had said so. Before he knew it, all this had tumbled forth into Tom’s waiting arms where so many witnesses had relieved themselves unsuspectingly of their burdens in the past.
‘Be careful, Jack.’ The shrewd eyes assessed the rush of adrenalin sitting beside them. ‘These blokes are tough customers, Mac Biddulph and his cohorts. Have you met the chairman, Laurence Treadmore, sometime member of my esteemed profession? Very subtle character, if I can put it that way. Quite deep. You need to know what you’re getting into, Jack, if you’re really thinking about this. It would be quite a stretch from a number of points of view. A big stretch.’
Jack flashed him an angry glance. ‘Too big for me, you think?’ ‘I didn’t mean that, old fellow. It’s just that there are a lot of very complex issues in that industry and you need to work with people you can trust a hundred per cent. I’m not saying you can’t with this gang, but how well do you know them?’ He paused and saw the resentment on Jack’s face. ‘Talk to the Pope if you’re really contemplating this. He knows a bit about it. Don’t rush into anything is all I’m saying. Beware of hubris and flattery lest you slip on their greasy surfaces.’