The Tax Inspector

5

The Tax Inspector parked the Colt on a small island of weeds which was more closely associated with the Building Supplies Store than with Catchprice Motors. This was an old Taxation Office courtesy which Maria Takis, alone of all the auditors in her section, continued to observe – you did not humiliate your clients by parking a Taxation Officer car right on their doorstep, not even in the rain.

A wall beside a pot-holed laneway bore flaking signwriting with arrows pointing towards SERVICE DEPT and SPARE PARTS DEPT but there was no mention of an OFFICE or ALL ENQUIRIES. Rainwater spilled over the blocked guttering and ran down the wall, rippling across the signs, and flooded back across the cracked concrete forecourt towards the car yard itself.

Maria Takis walked carefully through the shallow edges of the puddle in the direction of the petrol pumps. Behind the petrol pumps she found an oddly beautiful boy standing like a mannequin in an empty neon-lit office.

He came to the doorway to give her directions. When she thanked him, he reached his hand out through the open door so he could shake her hand.

As she walked through the rain across the car yard towards the old wooden fire escape he had pointed out, she could feel the skin of his hand still lying like a shadow on her own. Had she not been eight months pregnant she might have thought about this differently, but she felt so full of baby, of fluid, such a net of bulging veins and distended skin (she would have drawn herself, had you asked her, like an orange with twig legs) she did not expect to be the object of anybody’s sexual attentions.

In any case: she had more serious things to think about.

She could hear shouting, even here at the bottom of the storm-bright fire escape, above the din of the rain which fell like gravel on the iron roofs of Catchprice Motors and cascaded over the gutter and splashed her shoes. The rain cooled her legs. It made patterns on her support stockings, as cool as diamond necklaces.

The treads of the stairs were veined with moss and the walls needed painting. The door she knocked on was hollow, ply-wood, with its outer layer peeling away like an old field mushroom. The Tax Inspector knocked reluctantly. She was accustomed to adversaries with marble foyers and Miele dishwashers. She was used to skilful duels involving millions of dollars. To be sent to this decaying door in Franklin was not only humiliating, but also upsetting on another level – after twelve years with the Taxation Office she was being turned into something as hateful as a parking cop.

No one heard her knock. They were shouting at each other. She knocked again, more loudly.

Maria Takis was thirty-four years old. She had black, tangled hair and a very dark olive-skinned face which her mother always said was ‘Turkish’ (i.e. not like her mother) and which Maria began, in her teenage years, to accentuate perversely with gold rings and embroidered blouses so that even now, coming to a door as a tax auditor, she had that look that her mother was so upset by.

‘Pop po, fenese san tsingana.’ (‘You look like a gypsy.’)

There was nothing gypsy about the briefcase in her hand – it was standard Taxation Office – two gold combination locks with three numbers on each side, two large pockets, two small pockets, three pen-holders on the inside lid, a Tandy solar- and battery-powered 8-inch calculator, three pads of lined writing paper, six public service Biros, and a wad of account analysis forms with columns for the date, the cheque number, the cheque particulars and columns to denote capital, business, or personal. She had a book of receipt forms for any documents she removed from the premises, a standard issue Collins No. 181 day-a-page diary, a tube of handcream, a jar of calcium tablets, two packets of thirst Lifesavers, and her father’s electricity bill.

Her identification warrant was in her handbag and she was already removing it as she waited for the door to open. It was a black plastic folder with the Australian Taxation Office crest in gold on the front and her photograph and authorization on the inside. In the photograph she looked as if she had been crying, as if she had somehow been forced to pose for it, but this was her job. She had chosen it freely.

‘Yes?’

A plump woman in a chamois leather cowgirl suit stood behind the flyscreen door. Her hips and thighs pushed against her skirt and the chamois rucked and gathered across her stomach. Her bare upper arms fought with the sleeve holes of the waistcoat top. Everything about her body and her clothes spoke of tension. Her plump face reinforced the impression, but it did so as if she was someone sweet-tempered just woken from her sleep, irritable, yes, frowning, sure, but with a creamy complexion and pale, well-shaped, sensuous lips, and a natural calm that would return after her first cup of coffee. She had dense, natural straw-blonde hair set in a soft curl, and small intelligent eyes which stared out at Maria from behind the flyscreen door.

Maria wondered if this was Mrs F. Catchprice. The abrupt way she opened the door and took Maria’s I.D. told her this was unlikely to be the taxpayer’s accountant.

‘I’m Maria Takis …’ She was interrupted by an old woman’s voice which came out of the darkness behind the flyscreen.

‘Is that Mortimer?’

‘It’s not Mort,’ said the big woman, shifting her gaze from the I.D. to Maria’s belly. She said it wearily, too quietly for anyone but Maria to hear.

‘Mortimer come in.’ The voice was distressed. ‘Let Mortimer come in. I need him here.’

Rain drummed on the iron roof, spilled out of gutters, splashed out on to the landing around Maria’s feet. There was a noise like furniture falling over. The woman in cowboy boots turned her head and shouted back into the room behind her: ‘It’s not Mortimer … It … is … not Mort.’ She turned back to Maria and blew out some air and raised her eyebrows. ‘Sorry,’ she said. She scrutinized the I.D. card again. When she had read the front she opened it up and read the authorization. When she looked up her face had changed.

‘Look,’ she said, coming out into the rain, and partly closing the door behind her. Maria held out her umbrella.

‘Jack,’ the old woman called.

‘Look, Mrs Catchprice is very sick.’

‘Jack …’

‘I’m Cathy McPherson. I’m her daughter.’

‘Jack, Mort, help me.’

Cathy McPherson turned and flung the door wide open. Maria had a view of a dog’s bowl, of a 2-metre-high stack of yellowing newspapers.

‘It’s not Jack,’ shrieked Cathy McPherson. ‘Look, look. Can you see? You stupid old woman. It’s the bloody Tax Department.’

Maria could smell something sweet and alcoholic on Cathy McPherson’s breath. She could see the texture of her skin, which was not as good as it had looked through the flyscreen. She thought: if I was forty-five and I could afford boots like those, I’d be saving money for a facelift.

‘This is ugly,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘I know it’s ugly. I’m sorry. You really have to talk to her?’

‘I have an appointment with her for ten o’clock.’

‘You’ll need someone to interpret,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘If this involves me, I want to be there. Does it involve me?’

‘I really do need to talk to her. She is the public officer.’

‘She’s senile. Jack hasn’t lived here for twenty years.’

Maria released the catch on her umbrella. ‘None the less she’s the public officer.’

‘She pisses in her bed.’

Maria collapsed her umbrella and stood in front of Cathy McPherson with the rain falling on her head.

‘Suit yourself,’ Cathy McPherson opened the door. Maria followed her into a little annexe no bigger than a toilet. Dry dog food and Kitty Litter crunched beneath their feet. The air was spongy, wet with unpleasant smells.

The door to the left led to a galley kitchen with hot-pink Laminex cupboards. There was a flagon of wine sitting on top of a washing machine. There were louvred windows with a view of the car yard. Ahead was the sitting-room. They reached it through a full length glass door with yellowed Venetian blinds. For a moment all Maria could see were rows of dolls in lacy dresses. They were ranked in spotlit shelves along one end of the room.

‘Who is it?’ Granny Catchprice asked from a position mid-way between Maria and the dolls.

‘My name is Maria Takis. I’m from the Taxation Office.’

‘And you’re going to have a baby,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘How wonderful.’

Maria could see her now. She was at least eighty years old. She was frail and petite. She had chemical white hair pulled back tightly from a broad forehead which was mottled brown. Her eyes were watery, perhaps from distress, but perhaps they were watery anyway. She had a small but very determined jaw, a wide mouth and very white, bright (false) teeth which gave her face the liveliness her eyes could not. But it was not just the teeth – it was the way she leaned, strained forward, the degree of simple attention she brought to the visitor, and in this her white, bright teeth were merely the leading edge, the clear indicator of the degree of her interest. She did not look in the least senile. She was flat-chested and neatly dressed in a paisley blouse with a large opal pendant clasped to the high neck. It was impossible to believe she had ever given birth to the woman in the cowgirl suit.

There was a very blond young man in a slightly higher chair beside her. Maria held out her hand, imagining that this was her accountant. This seemed to confuse him – Australian men did not normally shake hands with women – but he took what was offered him.

‘Dr Taylor will give you his chair,’ said Mrs Catchprice.

Not the accountant. The doctor. He looked at his watch and sighed, but he did give up his chair and Maria took it more gratefully than she might have imagined.

Mrs Catchprice put her hand on Maria’s forearm. ‘I’d never have a man for a doctor,’ she said. ‘Unless there was no choice, which is often the case.’

‘I was hoping your accountant would be here.’

‘Let me ask you this,’ Granny Catchprice said. ‘Do I look sick?’

Cathy McPherson groaned. A young male laughed softly from somewhere in the deep shadows beside the bride dolls.

‘No,’ said Maria, ‘but I’m not a doctor.’

‘What are you?’ said Mrs Catchprice.

‘I’m with the Taxation Office. We have an appointment today at ten.’ Maria passed Mrs Catchprice her I.D. Mrs Catchprice looked at it carefully and then gave it back.

‘Well that’s an interesting job. You must be very highly qualified.’

‘I have a degree.’

‘In what?’ Mrs Catchprice leaned forward. ‘You have a lovely face. What is your name again?’

‘Maria Takis.’

‘Italian?’

‘My mother and father came from Greece.’

‘And slaved their fingers to the bone, I bet.’

‘Mrs Takis,’ the doctor said. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt you, but I was conducting an examination.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘you can go now, Doctor.’ She patted Maria’s hand. ‘We women stick together. Most of us,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘Not all of us.’

Cathy McPherson took two fast steps towards her mother with her hand raised as if to slap her.

‘See!’ said Mrs Catchprice.

Maria saw: Cathy McPherson, her hand arrested in mid-air, her face red and her eyes far too small to hold such a load of guilt and self-righteousness.

‘See,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She turned to Maria. ‘My housekeeping has deteriorated, so they want to commit me. Not Jack – the others. If Jack knew he’d be here to stop them.’

‘No one’s committing you,’ Cathy McPherson said.

‘That’s right,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘You can’t. You thought you could, but you can’t. They can’t do it with one doctor,’ she patted Maria’s wrist. ‘They need two doctors. I am correct, am I not? But you don’t know – why would you? You’re from Taxation.’

‘Yes.’

‘Well you can’t see me if I’m committed.’ Mrs Catchprice folded her fine-boned, liver-spotted hands in her lap and smiled around the room. ‘Q.E.D.,’ she said.

‘The situation,’ said Dr Taylor, with the blunt blond certainties that come from being born ‘a real aussie’ in Dee Why, New South Wales. ‘The situation …’ He wrote two more words on the form and underlined a third.

‘Put a magazine under that,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I don’t want to read my death warrant gouged into the cedar table.’

A Hare Krishna emerged from the gloom with some newspaper which he slid under the doctor’s papers.

‘The situation,’ said the doctor, ‘is that you are incapable of looking after yourself.’

‘This is my home,’ said Mrs Catchprice, and began to cry. She clung on to Maria’s arm. ‘I own this business.’

Cathy sighed loudly, ‘No you don’t, Frieda,’ she said. ‘You are a shareholder just like me.’

‘I will not be locked up,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She dug her hands into Maria’s arm and looked her in the face.

Maria patted the old woman’s shoulder. She had joined the Taxation Office for bigger, grander, truer things than this. She knew already what she would find if she audited this business: little bits of crookedness, amateurish, easily found. The unpaid tax and the fines would then bankrupt the business.

The kindest thing she could do for this old woman would be to let her be committed. Two doctors attesting to the informant’s senility might be enough to persuade Sally Ho to stop this investigation. Sally could then use her ASO 7 status to find something equally humiliating for Maria to do, and this particular business could be left to limp along and support this old woman in her old age.

But Mrs Catchprice was digging her (very sharp) nails into Maria’s forearm and her face was folding in on itself, and her shoulders were rounding, and an unbearable sound was emerging from her lips.

‘Oh don’t,’ Maria whispered to the old woman. ‘Oh don’t, please, don’t.’

The Hare Krishna knelt on Mrs Catchprice’s other side. He had great thick arms. He smelt of carrots and patchouli oil.

‘What will happen to you when you’re too old to be productive?’ he asked the doctor. His voice was high and breathless, trembling with emotion.

‘For Christ’s sake,’ Cathy McPherson said. ‘For Christ’s sake, just keep out of this, Johnny.’

‘Christ?’ the boy said. ‘Would Christ want this?’

Cathy McPherson groaned. She closed her eyes and patted the air with the palms of her hands. ‘I can’t handle this …’

‘Krishna wouldn’t want this.’

‘Johnny, please, this is very hard for me.’

‘In the Vedic age the old people were the most respected.’

‘Fuck you.’ Cathy McPherson slapped the Hare Krishna across his naked head. The Hare Krishna did not move except to squeeze shut his eyes.

‘Stop it,’ said Maria. She struggled to her feet.

‘I think you should stop it,’ the doctor said, pointing a pen at Maria. ‘I think you should just make your appointment for another time, Mrs …’

‘Ms,’ Maria told the doctor.

The doctor rolled his eyes and went back to his form.

‘Ms Takis,’ said Maria, who had determined that Mrs Catchprice would not be committed, not today at least. ‘Perhaps you did not hear where I am from.’

‘You are a little Hitler from the Tax Department.’

‘Then you are a Jew,’ said Maria.

‘I am a what?’ said the doctor, rising from his seat, so affronted that Maria burst out laughing. The Hare Krishna had begun chanting softly.

‘Oh dear,’ she laughed. ‘Oh dear, I really have offended you.’

The doctor’s face was now burning. Freckles showed in the red.

‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

‘I meant no offence to Jews.’

‘But I am not a Jew, obviously.’

‘Oh, obviously,’ she smiled.

‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.’

‘Shush darling,’ said Mrs Catchprice, who was straining towards the doctor so that she might miss none of this.

‘I meant that if I were a doctor with a good practice I would be very careful of attracting the attention of the Taxation Officer.’

‘Hell and Tommy,’ exclaimed Mrs Catchprice and blew her nose loudly.

‘I have an accountant.’

Mrs Catchprice snorted.

‘I bet you do,’ said Maria. ‘Do you know how many accountants were investigated by the Taxation Office last year?’

‘Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna.’

‘I’ll report you for this,’ said Cathy McPherson to Maria Takis.

‘And what will you “report” me for?’

‘For interfering in our family, for threatening our doctor.’

‘Mrs McPherson …’

‘Ms,’ hissed Cathy McPherson.

Maria shrugged. ‘Report me,’ she said. If Sally Ho ever heard what Maria had just done, she would be not just reprimanded – she would be drummed out. ‘They’ll be pleased to talk to you, believe me.’

The doctor was packing his bag. He slowly put away his papers and clipped his case shut.

‘I’ll phone you later, Mrs McPherson.’

‘Would you like one of my dolls?’ Mrs Catchprice asked Maria. ‘Choose any one you like.’

‘No, no,’ Maria said. ‘I couldn’t break up the collection …’

‘Jonathon,’ said Mrs Catchprice imperiously, ‘Jonathon, fetch this young lady a doll.’

‘Could I have a word with you?’ Cathy McPherson said.

‘Of course,’ said Maria, but Mrs Catchprice’s nails were suddenly digging into her arm again.

Cathy McPherson obviously wished to talk to her away from her mother, and Maria would have liked to have complied with her wishes but Mrs Catchprice’s nails made it impossible.

Maria did not feel comfortable with what she had just done. She did not think it right that she should interfere in another family’s life. She had been a bully, had misused her power. The child in her belly was made with a man whose great and simple vision it was that tax should be an agent for equity and care, and if this man was imperfect in many respects, even if he was a shit, that was not the issue, merely a source of pain.

Cathy McPherson stood before her with her damaged cream complexion and her cowboy boots. Maria would have liked to speak to her, but Mrs Catchprice had her by the arm.

‘Not here,’ said Cathy McPherson.

Mrs Catchprice’s nails released their pressure. Jonathon had placed a Japanese doll on her lap.

‘It’s a doll bride,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘Bernie Phillips brought it back from Japan. Do you know Bernie Phillips?’

‘This is my mother,’ said Cathy McPherson, her eyes welling up with tears. ‘Do you have the time to look after her? Are you going to come back and wash her sheets and cook her meals?’

‘No one needs to look after me,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘You are the one who needs looking after, Cathleen, and you’ve never been any different.’

‘Mother, I am forty-five years old. The cars I sell pay for everything you spend.’

‘I don’t eat any more,’ Mrs Catchprice said to Maria. ‘I just pick at things. I like party pies. Do you like party pies?’

‘I’ve got a whole band about to walk out on me and steal my name because I’m trying to care for you,’ Cathy said. ‘You want me to go on the road? You really want me to leave you to starve?’

‘Bernie Phillips brought it back from Japan,’ said Mrs Catchprice, placing the doll in Maria’s hand. ‘Now isn’t that something.’

‘Fuck you,’ screamed Cathy McPherson. ‘I hope you die.’

There was silence in the room for a moment. The noise came from outside – the rain on the tin roof, Cathy McPherson running down the fire escape in her white cowboy boots.