Dilemma. Jon Cleary
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called lesbians, Dad. Or dykes.’
It was Con’s turn to shrug. ‘Who cares? The cases get you down sometimes?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘What d’you do then? Hand ’em on to someone else?’
‘It doesn’t work like that. Not like on the wharves.’ He grinned when he said it; he’d better or his father would be on his feet, two fists up. The wharves had been Con’s parish, the union his religion.
‘So you’ve never walked away from a case?’
‘Not so far. But …’
‘Here comes Mum. Pious as hell. She’s just been talking to God or the Pope.’
Brigid Malone smiled as she approached, but she didn’t put out her hand or turn her cheek to be kissed. She kept that sort of affection for her grandchildren; she too belonged to the nineteenth century. A long while ago she had been a handsome woman, maybe even close to a beauty; but that, too, somehow seemed as distant as the nineteenth century. Like Con, she had shrunk over the past six months. Lately she had begun to talk of Ireland, of her girlhood: but only to her grandchildren. To talk like that to Scobie, her son, would be too difficult. With him she was still trapped in the tight corset of her earlier feelings. She loved him, he knew that, but if she shed tears for him he had never seen them.
‘How are Lisa and the children?’
‘Fine. How’s the Pope?’
‘I’ll ask him next time he writes. You coming in for a cuppa tea? I’ve made some scones.’
‘Date scones?’
‘What else?’
He followed them into the house. The safe house, where they had protected him as securely as he tried to do with his own children. Where crime, when it entered, could be handled with the simple logic of a cricket bat.
2
Ron Glaze had gone to the house, their house, but she had not been there. It was a Housing Commission home, built in the 1960s, improved by the garden he had built around it. Brick veneer, tiled roof, three bedrooms, one bathroom, living and dining rooms combined; three years ago, when things had been going well for them and between them, they had taken out a mortgage and bought it. They had grown up in this area, they were both Westies, and they had felt comfortable with it as a starting point. They occasionally dreamed of a house in one of the seaside suburbs, on a northern beach, say Collaroy or Narrabeen; but that was for the future, when they would have more money, even have kids. The future that had never come within coo-ee of them.
The light had been on in the hallway and he had pressed the doorbell. There had been no answer and after the second ringing of the bell he had taken out his key and let himself in. He had kept the key in his pocket, prepared to let her ask him in, not just barge in as if he owned the place. Which he still did – or anyway, half of it.
She had not been there. He had gone slowly through the house, as if looking for reminders of her and himself. He had been gone three months, but now it seemed like only yesterday. He was not a reader, but somewhere he had read a proverb or something: What was hard to bear was sweet to remember. Wrong: like so many proverbs. The last fight with her, when she had thrown him out of the house, had been hard to bear; there was no sweetness in remembering it. That fight had been right here, in the kitchen. He had been standing there, in his hand a Coke that he had taken from the fridge. He had looked around, then put down the Coke and walked out of the kitchen quickly, as if she were chasing him again, throwing things at him. He had walked into the bedroom, their passion pit, and lain down on the bed, his side, put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling, wondering if the effort to reconcile with her was going to be worthwhile.
He was of medium height, with thinning blond hair (a major worry) and a round cheerful face that hovered, like an image in water, between good-looking and plain, depending on the light. What appealed to women was his smile, wide and white. But he was not smiling now. He tried to remember the passion here in this bed, but it was just cold ashes. The gap between them had been growing over the past year; he had seen it widening and been unable to stop it. Maybe it had been his fault (the women) or maybe it had been hers (the ambition). He was not a chauvinist (so he thought), but women undoubtedly didn’t understand men. But he would not tell her that, not tonight.
He had lain there for almost an hour, waiting for her to come home. But she hadn’t, and then he had got up and gone looking for her, knowing for certain where he would find her.
They had been members for ten years of the Golden West Club; it was there they had met. It had been one of the first of the clubs that had sprouted in the western suburbs and it had grown and grown. It now had 60,000 members, all of whom, fortunately, did not attend on the same night; it had 1000 poker machines, all of which were genuflected to by the congregation each night. It had four restaurants and put on floor shows almost every night. It could afford overseas performers: Tom Jones had done his best to dislocate his hips here and John Denver had sung songs of places far away from the flat plain of the western suburbs. The Chippendales had performed here on Ladies Night Only; orgasms had erupted like an epidemic of wind. The women went home and sexually attacked their husbands. Those lucky men, more K-Mart than Chippendale, hadn’t been able to believe their luck.
Now they were sitting at a table in the club, as stiff with each other as on a first date.
‘Ron, it’s no use. It’s all over. Finished. What was it you used to say about the politicians and the union officials, you used to laugh about? At this point in time. That’s it, Ron. At this point in time it’s all over.’
Norma Glaze was thirty-one, a year younger than her husband. She had been a hairdresser ever since she had left school; even doctors did not need the ear and tongue that successful hairdressers had to have. Buzz words and phrases came and went like hairstyles; mode was the latest, but she had heard them all. Her clients picked them up from their husbands and boyfriends, though she could see none of them on a level playing field. Ron, a car salesman, had the tongue but not the ear; the latter was not necessary in the motor trade, he had often told her. At any point in time, on a level playing field or wherever. Talk was action …
‘Don’t you miss the fucking we had?’
‘Don’t start talking dirty, Ron. It’s not gunna get you anywhere.’
‘Okay, okay.’ He had three feet tonight, kept putting the wrong one forward. Selling himself to her had never been easy; maybe that was why he had sold himself so easily to other women. A Holden Caprice with low mileage: that was how he had sold himself and the women had laughed and bought him, if only for a demonstration run. ‘Miss you, hon. Really. Not just the sex bit …’
She looked around, glad they were at an isolated table; she had chosen it and led him to it as soon as he had walked in the door. They were a fair distance from the long bar, but close to the nearest bank of poker machines. Players were at the machines, but their backs were to the Glazes; their eyes, minds, every sense concentrated on the bright faces of the machines. This was Monday night, always a slow night. Two hundred people maximum, she thought, every one of the bastards looking at us out of the corners of their eyes or through the back of their heads. A hairdresser, she knew that gossip hung in the air like legionnaire’s disease.
She was attractive, too heavy in the jaw to be beautiful; she had large dark blue eyes and a mouth enlarged by careful makeup. Her black hair was cut in a bob with a fringe; a ninety-year-old customer had told her she looked like Louise Brooks, whoever the hell she was. She was as tall as Ron, with a good figure that needed careful dieting and two sessions a week at aerobics. All that was exterior: the interior, not even Ron had come close to knowing. Though, to tell the truth, she was not even sure she knew herself.
‘Ron, try and get it through your head—’ She shook her own head; the black hair moved, throwing off lights like a black mirror. The way he had always loved it … ‘We’re incompatible—’
‘Oh,