The Tax Inspector

34

Cathy, at ten years old, you should have seen her – a prodigy. She’d never heard of Sleepy La Beef or Boogie or Rock-a-Billy. She listened to a Frankie Laine record once and laughed at it like everybody else. She knew Don Giovanni, Isolde, Madame Butterfly. Her teacher was Sister Stoughton at the Catholic School. There was no yodelling there. She sang ‘Kyrie Eleison’ at St John’s at Christmas before an audience which included the Governor General. There was no ‘Hound Dogs’ or ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. The nearest she came to that sort of thing was the jeans with rolled-up cuffs she wore to square dancing classes at the Mechanics’ Institute. She did not like square dancing either, said it was like going fencing with a wireless turned up loud. She was nine years old when she said that.

But she was not spoiled, or precious. Frieda thought how lucky she was, to have this girl, not a silly girl, or a flighty girl, but a girl like her Mummy, a practical girl – pretty as all got out, with tangled curls like a blonde Shirley Temple. She did not have her mother’s build. No one would ever tell her she had sparrow legs. They were sturdy, smooth-skinned. Frieda could not help touching them, feeling the solidity of them. She was her legs – sturdy and reliable.

At ten years old she was up before the alarm clock to make the wet mash for the chooks – wheat, pollard, bran mash and warm water, all mixed up in the same tub they took their baths in. Cathy always knew she was important in the family. She counted the eggs and helped clean them for market. Frieda encouraged her to see what she was achieving.

Mort at twelve was dreamy and difficult, had moods, would want to help one day and then not the next, wet his bed, got head lice ten times for Cathy’s two. He was weepy and clingy one day and gruff and angry and would not even let you touch him the next. He was the one you could love best when he was asleep. You could not guess that he would be the one to care for her when she was old, that he would cook her stew to eat, make sure she had her rum and Coke, sit with her into the night playing cribbage.

Cathy and her Frieda had matching yellow gum boots and they would stomp around the chook yard together, before dawn. They used old kitchen forks to break the ice on the cement troughs so the hens could drink.

It was Cathy who discovered that the light they left on to keep away the foxes also made the hens lay more. She counted the eggs. She was a smart girl, not a difficult girl – you did not need to fear she was plotting some scheme against her family.

And when they moved to the car business in town it was no different. At fourteen she knew how to record the day’s petrol sales, enter the mechanics’ cards on to the job cards, even reconcile the till.

Then Frieda gave Howie a job in Spare Parts, and it was as though she had brought a virus into their healthy lives. Cathy had never even heard of Rock-a-Billy. She did not know what it was. She only knew the very best sort of music, and suddenly there he was playing her this trash, and she was wearing tight skirts which did not suit her build and writing songs about things she could not possibly understand. She paid ten dollars a time to register them in the United States. Australia was not good enough. Everything Yankee was the bee’s knees. She began to argue with everyone. She broke her father’s heart and then she decided she was not happy. She decided it to win the contest. Something came into her eyes, some anger so deep you could not even hope to touch it.

Howie wore pink shirts and charcoal grey suits. He was always so meek-seeming, yes Ma-am, no Ma-am. He could fool you at first. He fooled Frieda. She defended him against Mort and Cacka – his bodgie hair cut, his ‘brothel creeper’ shoes. But they were right and she was wrong – Howie was really a nothing, a little throw-away with no loyalty to anyone.

But he got his way – he married Cathy and a month later he took her to inspect the old Ford Dealership and enquire about renting the premises. Frieda heard that for a fact, from Herbert Beckett down at Beckett’s Real Estate – Cathy Catchprice was ready to go into competition against her own flesh and blood. Frieda never trusted the pair of them after that, never, ever.

When Cathy came up the stairs on Tuesday morning berating her for hiring a new salesman and accusing her of stealing the company books, Frieda Catchprice saw her daughter as you see into a lighted window from a speeding train, saw the pretty little girl helping her paint wood oil on the roosts, screwing her eyes up against the fumes.

Next thing she was a demon, some piece of wickedness with small blue eyes and teeth bared right up to the gum line.

‘The Tax Office doesn’t need the ledgers to lock you up in jail,’ she said.

Frieda hugged her arms across her flat chest. She was wearing brown leather slippers and an aqua quilted dressing-gown. She had a tough look on her face – her little jaw set, her lower lip protruding, but she was scared of what Cathy would do to her, and her hand, when she brought the Salem to her lips, was trembling.

‘I hired the salesman,’ she said. ‘That’s my right, but if you think I pinched the ledgers – you’ve got a fertile imagination.’

But the ledgers were gone and she would not invite Cathy into her living-room to give her the pleasure of seeing this was so. So they stayed all crushed in that little annexe – Frieda, Cathy, Vish – like Leghorns in a wire cage for the train.

‘You’ve got no right to hire an ant,’ Cathy said, tossing her head down towards where Sam the Armenian was making friends with Benny. ‘When Takis sees the books are gone she’s going to go through this business like a dose of salts.’

‘I’m not the one who should be worried,’ Frieda said.

‘Mum, what are you imagining?’

Frieda knew she was at a disadvantage – age – the brain losing its way, forgetting names, losing a thought sometimes in the middle of its journey. She had looked at the ledgers herself and the truth was, she could no longer follow them. She hid her weakness from her daughter, cloaking herself in sarcasm.

‘I can imagine you might find the prospect of an audit frightening.’

‘But you’re the public officer,’ Cathy said. ‘You’re the one who goes to jail.’

Jail! Good God. She sucked on her Salem so hard that she had nearly an inch of glowing tobacco on the end of the white paper. ‘I’ve never cheated anyone.’

‘Would you happen to recall the renovation we claimed on the showroom?’ Cathy said.

‘I don’t know what lies you’ve been telling.’

‘Oh come on!’

Frieda could feel her chin begin to tremble. ‘All they’ll find when they investigate is who is fiddling whom.’

‘It wasn’t the showroom. It was your new bathroom.’

‘I asked Mrs Takis to keep an eye out for me. I’ll be very interested to hear what she finds out.’

‘Please,’ Vish said.

‘You might think this Takis is cute,’ Cathy said.

Frieda did not think Maria Takis was cute at all. She imagined she would turn out to be an officious bitch. That was why she took so much trouble to be nice to her.

Cathy said: ‘She’s a killer.’

‘Good,’ said Frieda. ‘That’s just what I want.’ She jabbed out her cigarette into the plastic garbage can – it made a smell like an electrical fire. ‘I want a killer.’

‘You look at her eyes and nose – that’ll tell you. She’s one of those people who can’t forgive anyone. Mummy,’ Cathy said, ‘she’s going to destroy everything you spent your life making.’

The ‘Mummy’ took Frieda by surprise. Cathy was smart. She saw that. She saw how it affected her. She pushed her advantage. ‘You might not be able to believe this, but I’m trying to help you.’

‘It’s true,’ Vish said, nodding his head up and down. He was acting as though she was a horse he had to calm.

Cathy was the same. She held out her hand towards Frieda. She might have had a damn sugar lump in it, but Frieda whacked the hand away.

‘Why did you do that?’

The answer was – because you think I’m simple. She did not say it. She was not entering into any arguments. You could lose an argument but it did not affect the truth. She folded her arms across her chest.

‘There’s something you think I did,’ Cathy said. ‘That’s it isn’t it?’

Frieda gave Cathy an icy smile.

‘Why do we keep hurting each other?’ Vish said. It was the scratchy broken voice that made his grandmother turn towards him. His mouth was loose, glistening wet and mortified. Tears were oozing from his squeezed-shut eyes, washing down his broad cheeks. ‘All we ever do,’ he bawled, ‘is hurt each other.’

Cathy put her hand on his shoulder. ‘Johnny,’ she said, ‘you’re better staying in your ashram. You’re happy there, you should just stay there.’

‘He came to see me,’ Frieda said. ‘If you don’t like it here, Cathy, why don’t you go?’

‘I want to go,’ Cathy said. ‘I want to go away and have my own life, but I have to help you first. I have to get it straight between us.’

‘You’ve helped enough already,’ Frieda said. ‘Vish will help me back inside.’

As Cathy ran down the fire escape, Vish walked his grandmother back into the decaying darkness of the living-room. He sat her at the table and brought her ashtray and a glass of Diet Coke with Bundaberg rum in it. He blew his nose on a tight wet ball of Kleenex.

‘You don’t want to let Cathy upset you,’ his grandmother said.

‘Everybody is miserable here, Gran. There’s no one who’s happy.’

She brought the full focus of her attention to him and he had the feeling that she was, finally, ‘seeing’ him. ‘You think we should all be Hare Krishnas?’ she asked.

Vish hesitated. He looked at his grandmother’s face and did not know what things he was permitted to say to it.

‘You want me to say what I really think?’

She made an impatient gesture with her hand.

‘Let the business go to hell,’ he said.

He waited but he could read no more of her reaction than had he been staring out of a window at the night.

‘It’s making Benny very sick,’ he said. ‘If you let the business go … I know this will sound extreme … I really do think you’d save his life.’

‘I never wanted this business,’ she said. ‘Did you know that? I wanted little babies, and a farm. I wanted to grow things.’ She had a slight sing-song cadence in her voice. It was like the voice she used when praying out loud in church and he could not tell if what she was saying was true or merely sentimental. ‘It was your grandfather who wanted the business. I never liked the smell of a motor business. He worshipped Nellie Melba and Henry Ford. They were the two for him, Nellie & Henry. I never liked the music, I admit it, and I never gave a damn about Henry Ford, but he was my husband, for better or for worse. It was Henry Ford this, and Henry Ford that, and now I look out of the windows and I see these cars, you know what I see?’

‘It’s a prison,’ Vish said, then blushed.

‘I was perfectly right not to like the smell. My nose had more sense than a hundred Henry Fords. They’re pumping out poison,’ she said. ‘Our noses told us that, like they tell you if a fish is bad or fresh. Who ever liked the smell of exhaust smoke?’

‘Benny.’

‘Do you know we put concrete over perfectly good soil when we made this car yard? There’s concrete underneath all the gravel in the car yard. Your grandfather liked concrete. He liked to hose it down. But there’s good soil under there, and that’s what upsets me. It’s like a smothered baby.’

‘Then let them have it,’ Vish said, ‘Let them take it …’

‘I’d rather blow it up,’ she said. ‘With her and Howie in it.’

‘No, no …’

‘I mean it.’

‘I meant the tax. If the Tax Department wants to fine us …’

‘I didn’t work all my life to let the Tax Department take everything I’d built up.’

The telephone began ringing in the kitchen.

‘You’ve got to,’ Vish said.

‘I don’t “got to” anything.’ His Granny did not seem to hear the telephone. She looked at him in a way she had never looked at him before, more in the way she looked at Cathy, but never at Vish. It produced an equivalent change in him, a toughening of his stance, a stubbornness in the muscles of his thick neck that made his grandmother (so used to thinking of his gentleness, of seeing him chant, light his incense, say his Krishnas, bless his prasadum) see his physical bulk, his great muscled forearm, his squashed nose and the big fists he was now clenching stubbornly upon her dining-table.

Someone began knocking on the door.