The Tax Inspector

7

‘Yes, but do we have milk?’ Mrs Catchprice used her walking stick to flick a magazine out of her path. ‘It’s very clever,’ she told Maria. She hit the magazine so hard the pages tore. ‘The roof leaks right into the kitchen sink. It washes my dishes for me.’

‘Mrs Catchprice,’ Maria smiled. ‘It’s nearly eleven.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘I really need to start our meeting.’

‘You sit down,’ Mrs Catchprice said.

‘There are questions I have to ask you, or your accountant.’

‘Vish will get you a glass of milk.’

Mrs Catchprice struck the magazine again. Vish crossed from the kitchen to the plastic and paper confusion of the annexe, holding out a carton of milk at arm’s length. He gently lowered the milk carton into a green plastic bag.

‘You take my chair,’ Mrs Catchprice told Maria. ‘It’s too low for me.’ She pushed the magazine with the rubber tip of her stick and slid it underneath a bookcase.

‘Gran, the milk was off.’

‘Be a dear,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘Go and see Cathy. They’ve got milk in Spare Parts for the staff teas.’

‘I can’t ask Cathy. Cathy won’t give me milk.’

‘You don’t understand Cathy,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She pulled free a dining chair, turned it on one leg so it faced away from the bride dolls, and then sat down on it hard. ‘Ask her for milk,’ she said. ‘She won’t kill you.’

Maria thought: she ‘plonks’ herself down. She is pretty, but not graceful. She is full of sharp, abrupt movements which you can admire for their energy, their decisiveness.

She looked to see what the Hare Krishna was going to do about his orders. He had already gone.

‘Bad milk!’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I’ve got old.’

‘We all get old,’ Maria said, but really she was being polite. She had an audit to begin. She wanted to make it fast and clean – a one-day job if possible.

‘One minute you’re a young girl falling in love and the next you look at your hand and it’s like this.’ She held it up. It was old and blotched, almost transparent in places.

Maria looked at the hand. It was papery dry. She thought of bits of broken china underneath a house.

‘I can see it like you see it,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘I can see an old woman’s hand. It has nothing to do with me. I think I’ll have brandy in my milk. Did he take an umbrella?’

‘I guess so.’

‘I know he looks peculiar but he’s very kind. He looks like such a dreadful bully, don’t you think?’ She leaned forward, frowning.

Maria had worked in the Tax Office twelve years and had never begun an audit in such a homey atmosphere. She opened her briefcase, removed a pad and laid it on her lap. ‘He’s got a nice smile,’ she said.

‘Yes, he has.’ Mrs Catchprice fitted a Salem into her mouth and lit it without taking her eyes off Maria Takis’s face. ‘The Catchprices all have kissing lips. Actually,’ she said, as if the thought was new to her, ‘he’s the spitting image of my late husband. Did you meet his younger brother, Benny? Vish’s been looking after Benny since he could stand. They told you about their mother?’

‘I haven’t talked to anyone,’ Maria said. ‘I thought my colleague had talked to you to set up this interview. I …’

‘Did you talk to Jack? Jack Catchprice, my youngest son.’ She nodded to a colour photograph hanging on the wall beside the doorway to the kitchen. It was of a good-looking man in an expensive suit shaking hands with the Premier of the State of New South Wales. ‘Jack’s the property developer. He tells everyone about his funny family. He tells people at lunch – Benny’s mother tried to shoot her little boy.’

Maria closed the pad.

‘It’s no secret,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘Benny’s mother tried to shoot him. What sort of mother is that? Nice, pretty-looking girl and then, bang, bang, shoots her little boy in the arm. Benny was three years old. I’m not making it up. Shot him, with a rifle.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? God knows. Who would ever know a thing like that?’

‘What was she charged with?’

‘Oh no,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘We wouldn’t report it. What would be the point? She went away, that’s what matters. We wouldn’t want the family put through a court case as well. Everyone in Franklin gossips about it anyway. They all know the story – on the Sunday Sophie Catchprice was confirmed an Anglican, on the Monday she did this … thing. Confirmed,’ said Mrs Catchprice, responding to the confusion on Maria’s face. ‘You’re a Christian aren’t you? Your mother still goes to church I bet? Is she a Catholic?’

The Tax Inspector’s mother was dead, but she said, ‘Greek Orthodox.’

‘How fascinating,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘How lovely.’

It was not the last time Maria would wonder if Mrs Catchprice was sincere and yet she could not dismiss this enthusiastic brightness as false. Mrs Catchprice might really find it fascinating – she brought her Salem to her lips, inhaled and released the smoke untidily. ‘I always told them here in Franklin,’ she said, ‘that if they went in with the Presbyterians I’d switch over to the Catholics. We never had a Greek Orthodox. I never thought about Greeks. But now I suppose we have. We have all types here now. The Greek Orthodox is like the Catholic I think, is it not?’

‘The service is very beautiful.’

‘Oh I do like this,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘It’s so lovely you are here. Has Johnny gone for the milk?’

‘Mrs Catchprice, do you know why I’m here?’

‘You mean, am I really ga-ga?’ said Mrs Catchprice, butting her Salem out in an ugly yellow Venetian glass ashtray.

‘No,’ Maria said, ‘I did not mean that at all.’

‘You are a Tax Inspector?’

‘Yes. And I’ll need an office to begin doing my audit.’

‘They’re up to something, all right.’

Maria cocked her head, not understanding.

‘You met her?’ Mrs Catchprice said.

‘Your daughter?’

‘And her husband. I don’t like him but I’ve only got myself to blame for the fact she even met him.’

‘And you feel they are up to something?’

‘There’s something fishy going on there. You’ll see in a moment. They’ll have to give you access to the books. They won’t let me look but they can’t stop you. I think you’ll find the tax all paid,’ said Mrs Catchprice, folding her hands in her lap. ‘We’ve always paid our tax. It’s not the tax I’m worried about.’

Maria felt tired.

‘People always expect car dealers to be crooks, but you try buying a car from a classified ad and you’ll see where the crooks are. When my husband was alive, we always worked in with the law. We always supported the police. We always gave them presents at Christmas. A bottle of sparkling burgundy for the sergeant and beer for the constables. I would wrap up the bottles for him. He’d take them down to the police. They thought he was the ant’s pants.’

‘Mrs Catchprice,’ Maria said, patting the old woman’s hand to ease the sharp point she was making, ‘you weren’t bribing the police?’

‘It was a small town. We always supported the police.’

‘And now you’re supporting the Taxation Office.’

‘I wonder where that boy is with the milk.’

‘Mrs Catchprice. Are you Mrs F. Catchprice?’

‘Frieda,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I’ve got the same name as the woman who was involved with D. H. Lawrence. She was a nasty piece of work.’

‘There’s no other Mrs F. Catchprice in your family?’

‘One’s enough,’ she laughed. ‘You ask the kids.’

‘So you are the public officer and also the one with the anomalies to report?’

‘Me? Oh no, I don’t think so.’ Mrs Catchprice folded her arms across her chest and shook her head.

‘You didn’t telephone the Taxation Office to say you were worried that your business had filed a false tax return?’

‘You should talk to Cath and Howie. They’re the ones with all the tricks up their sleeves. All this talk about being a professional musician is just bluff. She’s an amateur. She couldn’t make a living at it. No, no – what they want is to set up a motor business of their own, in competition to us. That’s their plan – you mark my words. But when you look at the books, you take my word, you’re going to find some hanky-panky. I won’t lay charges, but they’re going to have to pay it back.’

‘Mrs Catchprice, you do understand – I’m a tax auditor. I’m here to investigate tax, nothing else. You phoned the Taxation Office. Your call is on record.’

Mrs Catchprice looked alarmed.

‘They recorded me? Is that what you say?’

‘They recorded your name.’

Mrs Catchprice was looking at Maria, but it was a moment before Maria saw that there were tears flooding down her ruined cheeks.

‘The terrible thing is,’ said Mrs Catchprice, ‘the terrible thing is that I just can’t remember.’