Death in Brunswick (2 page)

 

To Sara and Sarah and Teresa

ONE

Carl was in Sydney when his mother had her first heart attack. He felt uncomfortable in that beautiful city and envied and despised the people he knew there. But after his holiday he felt guilty enough to offer to look after her for a couple of weeks.

Mrs Fitzgerald lived with her daughter and son-in-law in a large pink South Yarra town house. Carl went to his sister's one Wednesday and, rather truculent with embarrassment, repeated his offer. His sister was surprised.

‘No, no, I
want
to!' he cried, disliking her pastel house and her loose expensive cotton clothes.

‘Carl, you know you'll fight with her!'

‘No, I won't, I swear,' he said, hopping in his eagerness to leave. ‘Get her ready, I'll pick her up at four.' He paused. ‘She
does
want to come, doesn't she?'

‘Yes, of course she does, she's so pleased. Now don't let me down, Carl, she's not well, you know. She's only been out of hospital two weeks. And…what about your house…?'

‘Jesus! Look, I'll be here at four, all right? Christ! It's only for two weeks.'

*

Carl, who usually slept late, struggled awake at seven o'clock. A high wind tossed the wattles in his untidy street and he could hear cans rolling in the gutters. It was warm and close.

He got up to find his mother making the first of innumerable cups of strong tea and smoking her first Rothman's Plain.

‘Jesus, Mother, don't smoke!' He stepped down into the small dark kitchen. His mother glimmered blonde and puffy in the half-light. She slipped the cigarette into the sink and said gaily, ‘Ah, sure, one won't hurt me.'

Mrs Fitzgerald thought of herself as a fey, charming Irish gentlewoman.

Carl felt a familiar mixture of disgust and pity.

‘Well, have you taken your pills?'

‘Yes, dear, don't fuss,' and she tottered back to bed carrying the tea. Carl noticed with irritation that she was wearing feathered mules, her hanging buttocks moving coquettishly through her nightie.
Christ! Thirteen more days.

Carl, too tired to piss standing, sat slumped in his outdoor dunny. The door was open; grimy white brick framed grey-green inner suburban bush. Sometimes his yearning for comfort became insupportable. Sighing, he stood, pulling up his pyjama pants, thinking of picture windows, rose gardens and indoor lavatories. And so to shave:
Christ, I look tired—like an ageing blond rabbit.

He marked his receding hairline like a man probing a decaying tooth, and with the aid of a second mirror he examined the progress of the bald patch at his crown. Was it any worse? Maybe. He put the mirror down sadly.
Now, what's today? Thursday. Shit! Work—oh no!

A real stab of fear went through his chest. Three times a week he cooked at a rock'n'roll club. Its atmosphere of sleaze, danger and criminality, coupled with the strain and travail of cooking, carried him in the weekly rhythm of anxiety which only the true neurotic knows.
Still, another seven hours till I need to go; I won't think about it.

He took a last look at his face, thinking of that time in middle age when you are a caricature of your own youth, and went to cheer up his mother.

By four o'clock his irritation and anxiety were intense. Thoughts of his job pressed in on him, and his mother's courage-in-adversity and false gaiety were maddening. By three he had given up trying to stop her smoking and, to make matters far worse, she had found a tape of Mahler's Fifth. Carl hated Mahler. She sat playing it in his cluttered living room.

‘Such lovely music, dear.'

He looked at her with exasperation: there she sat, a fat blonde female Dirk Bogarde facing death, defeated, vain, but brave.
Jesus!

*

At five, Carl dressed to go to work. This was an operation of some skill. The right image was important as he had lowered his age to get the job and had to dress accordingly: a black shirt buttoned to the neck, hanging over tight Levis, and ripple-soled shoes—about right. But his
hair—
now that was a more difficult problem. He combed it forward in the front and back at the sides, fluffed it at the crown with his hair drier, and applied plenty of hair gel. He looked in the mirror—satisfactorily neo-punk.

OK, onward!

‘You will be all right, won't you, Mother? You know where to ring? I'll be home about eleven.'

Don't die on me, you old bag.
Imagine the horror of finding her slumped, those bulging green eyes fixed in accusation, all orifices open
—Jesus!
And what would his sister say?

Mounting his rusty bike, he pedalled through Brunswick. The sky was low and grey. Past melancholy unemployed Turks he went, with their unfortunate wives muffled to the eyes in the thirty-degree heat; past decaying terrace houses daubed with feminist slogans, into Sydney Road, dodging the traffic, past the great white town hall and rows of bankrupt shops.

At last he chained his bike outside The Marquee. This establishment had previously been a Greek taverna where big-breasted blondes sang to bazouki bands and had extraordinary amounts of money pinned to their dresses; where the police were paid handsomely to ignore gambling and prostitution; where the brandy was seven dollars a glass and a good time was had by all.

But now the club was a rock'n'roll venue where the drinks were still exorbitant but the musicians were paid a pittance and nobody had a good time as far as Carl could see, and as for the rest, the funny business, well what about it?
The less I know the better.

Unlocking the scarred back door he walked down a cluttered passage into the kitchen where he was welcomed by the foul fatty effluvia which enshroud even the cleanest commercial kitchen: that complicated perfume of mouse shit, garlic, leaking gas and the dirty bilge which sloshes round the bottom of bain-maries.

He looked around resentfully. The kitchen had once been well equipped and clean, but that was long ago; now it was squalid and nothing worked very well. There was a large coolroom, but the motor ran spasmodically; there were two big commercial stoves, but they were caked with grease and the burners half choked. The floor was a minefield of loose tiles, and the stainless-steel bench was scarred, its corners broken and dangerously sharp.

And what's on tonight?

He walked through into the empty dark club; there was a heavy smell of stale tobacco. He strained to see the menu chalked on a blackboard: ‘Veg. Lasagne', ‘Beef Curry', ‘Ham Salad'—very Epicure.
Now stop that!
he told himself.

‘A real cook always tries.' This maxim had been drummed into him by an old Scots cook at the hotel where Carl had finished his apprenticeship.

‘Yes, yes, Mrs Wohlst,' the old man would say. (Mrs Wohlst was his straight man during these homilies.) ‘Yes, I well remember in the last war, on the Arakan, making a
Boeuf à la mode avec Bechamel
out of condemned bully and custard powder—and they fucking loved it! Begging your pardon, Mrs Wohlst.'

Carl truly admired the old cook not only for his genuine skill but also for his ability to work with crushing hangovers. Carl's friend Dave had lent him
Down and Out in Paris and London
and Carl had recognized the kitchen philosophy, the ethos:
Se debrouiller
—‘We'll get through!' You have to try. The drunken old Scot had worked like this all his life and Carl, despite himself, always tried.

OK, then, Veg. Las. No. Beef Curry first—let's see what I have to work with.
Unlocking the coolroom door, he crossed his fingers as he always did. No use! A kilo of fatty beef, dark and sinister, a case of pulpy tomatoes and half a packaged ham lay on a crusted shelf. Underneath was a box of limp salad greens. The rest of the coolroom was crowded with bags of heavily preserved potatoes.

God! God! What am I? Fucking Jesus Christ!
‘What do you want? The miracle of the loaves and fishes?!' he screamed through the door into the empty club.

Shakily he sat down and lit a cigarette.

Why is it always like this? God! How I need a drink and more, much more, a few
pills…

Carl, in his youth, had been an ecstatic consumer of every mind-altering drug he could get hold of; but now, flinching from experience like a snail, he craved only the bland delights of tequila and mogadon.

God!
That reminded him, not only did he not have enough food to cook with, but he didn't have any pills to forget tonight's fiasco after it was over. How could he sleep with his mother in the house on booze alone? Mustafa—where was he?

Mustafa was Carl's kitchen hand and pill supplier—a youngish, quietish Turk. Carl didn't know much about him. He had four children and a wife, and he lived in a Housing Ministry flat. Carl realized at times that Mustafa must be pretty smart. What with his job, dope money and the dole, Mustafa must be gleaning at least five hundred dollars a week from the interstices of the black economy. Most of the time, however, Carl hardly noticed him. He was always there.

But where was he?

‘Anybody round?' Carl shouted through the service door.

‘Yeah!'

Carl saw an enormous figure floating towards him through the gloom. A cigarette glowed nearly seven feet from the ground.

‘Ah, Laurie,' Carl said nervously. ‘What are youse doing in so early?'

Carl deliberately roughened his accent, Laurie being a bouncer and liable to be displeased at any sort of ‘poofter' voice.

The huge lout straddled the counter with a vast creaking of black leather pants; gold sparkled on his chest and his blow-waved hair was tipped with silver.

‘So early?' said Laurie, ‘It's nearly quarter to six. You better get fuckin' moving, Cookie, Yanni's not too happy with you already. He reckons he's going to replace you with a pie machine.'

‘Yeah, well, where's Mustafa for Christ's sake? How can I work with no kitchen man?'

‘Ah, well,' said Laurie grinning. ‘Sorry, pal, we had to biff the little wog last night.'

‘Jesus! What the hell for?'

‘He reckoned we all owe him, you included, Cookie, and he really started stacking it on an' we just gave him the big fuckin' push, you know? So. You'll just have to do without him—and hurry up! Yanni'll be in soon and he's got the fuckin' rags on.'

‘Why do I work in this shithouse?' said Carl hopelessly.

‘Same as why I do; lurks and perks,' said Laurie, slouching off into the darkness.

Well, fucking great! No kitchen hand, no pills, bugger all food and seventy meals to cook!
Crushing his rising panic he shrugged his shoulders, muttering
‘Se debrouiller'—
‘I
will
get through!'

Beef Curry—right!
He went to the coolroom and fetched the beef and, looking at it with distaste, laid it on a chopping board. He unwrapped his favourite knife, a Portuguese fish filleter, and trimmed most of the fat from the noisome mass.
Boy, it's really high! Still, curry…

He cubed it, washed it with vinegar and fried it quickly, pouring away the resulting grease.

His knife flickering, he sliced half a kilo of onions and fried half slowly with as much curry powder as he dared. In went powdered beef stock, a packet of coconut and a jar of peanut butter—Malaysian Beef Curry! He set this fraudulent stew at a low simmer.

OK! I'll add some spuds later, that'll bulk it out. Right; what's next? Vegetable lasagne—fucking no way.
It was out of the question; he had no vegetables except tomatoes…but wait! Tomatoes, onions and
ham.
Ham…
Spaghetti Milanese!
There was always plenty of spag.

As always, like a soldier going into battle, Carl's panic disappeared as the action commenced. Soon the sauce was simmering on the stove with the curry and Carl was slicing salad vegetables with fair contentment.

He was shaking salad cream into a bowl of boiled potatoes, and as it landed in the bowl with an unpleasant plop the door flew open and Carl's employer waddled into the kitchen. This was Yanni, a gross youth whose pub-owning parents had bought him the club as a sort of apprenticeship to the real world of booze selling. Carl thought he looked like the picture of the young Brendan Behan on the back of
Borstal Boy.
He had the same look of cherubic dissipation, but added to this was a kind of stupid cunning. He wore a tracksuit and fur-trimmed moccasins.

‘Hey, Cookie,' he cried with jovial menace. ‘What's on tonight?' He stuck his fat fingers into the curry and licked them.

‘Jeez, that's a bit strong!'

‘Well, I had to cover up the taste of that rotten meat you bought. What are you trying to do, poison everyone? And shit, Yanni, there wasn't enough food there to feed the
staff,
let alone the poor bloody customers.'

‘Stiff fuckin' shit, Cookie, we only serve munga here to keep the licencing boys happy—you know that.'

Carl did know it and it made his position weaker than a cook's usually is. Normally the management defers to the chef in some degree, cooks being notoriously temperamental and liable to storm out halfway through garnishing the
Julienne of Yabby with Tamarillo Sauce.

So Carl had to whine instead of bluster: ‘What about Mustafa? I got to have a kitchen man at least—who's going to be the slushy?'

‘Don't worry about it, Cookie, one of the girls'll do it—and as for that Turkish sheep-fucker Mustafa! Well, you know what he was doin'? Selling drugs!' Yanni looked virtuously shocked.

‘And yeah, I forgot,' said Yanni with a snigger. ‘We told him you dobbed him in.' He turned heavily towards the door and by the time Carl had worked this out the fat Hellene had gone, leaving Carl to stew with the Malaysian Beef Curry.

*

By seven-thirty the temperature in the kitchen was in the high thirties and Carl could hear rumbles of thunder above the exhaust fans. The first whine of electric guitars told him that it was time to set up the servery. He went out and switched on the lights. On one side was a glass-topped salad table, on the other a bain-marie. The salad table was supposed to be refrigerated but Carl had never known it to work. Dusty plastic vine leaves half hid the rusty pipes. He filled the gaps with mushy watermelon halves, scattered some roughly sliced oranges, and added bowls of potato salad and sliced ham, garnishing the whole with aged parsley. About this moribund smorgasbord hovered the tiny insects which Carl had never seen anywhere else but around rotting fruit. He stepped back and looked at it all.
Jesus! But what can I do?