The Tax Inspector

48

The first thing Sarkis saw was the dolls lined up in a way you might expect, in an Australian house, to find the sporting trophies. They occupied the entire back wall of the apartment, in a deep windowless dining alcove. They were lit like in a shop.

Only when Benny turned the neon light on, did Sarkis notice Mrs Catchprice sitting, rather formally, in the dining chair in front of them. She looked like an old woman ready for bed or for the asylum. Her long grey hair was undone and spread across the shoulders of a rather severe and slightly old-fashioned black suit. An ornate silver brooch was pinned to her artificial bosom. The skirt was a little too big for her. Her slip showed.

Sarkis clasped his knife in his fist. The air was close.

‘You like my dolls?’ she said.

He smiled politely.

‘I never cared for them,’ she said. ‘Someone gives you one because they do not know you. Someone else gives you a second one because you have the first. It’s so like life, don’t you think?’

‘I hope not.’

‘I do too,’ she said, and winked at him. ‘That’s why I like to have young people working for me.’

‘It’s Granny needs a hair-do,’ Benny said.

Sarkis tightened his jaw.

‘Not me,’ Benny said. ‘I said it wasn’t me.’

When Sarkis lived in Chatswood, his mother’s friends would sit around beneath the picture of Mesrop Mushdotz and pat their hair a certain way and curl their fringe around their fingers. When they asked outright, he said to them what he now said to Mrs Catchprice.

‘I don’t have my scissors.’

‘She’s got to have a hair-do,’ Benny said. ‘It’s an occasion.’

‘All my gear’s at home,’ Sarkis said. ‘You should go to a salon. They have the basins and sprays and all the treatments.’

‘But you’re a hairdresser,’ Mrs Catchprice said, ‘and you work for me.’

‘I thought I was going to be a salesman.’

‘You will be,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘When you’ve cut my hair.’

No one offered to drive him – Sarkis walked, first to his home for his plastic case, then to Franklin Mall to buy the Redken Hot Oil Treatment. The air was hot and heavy, and the low grey clouds gave the low red-brick houses a closed, depressed look.

When he returned to Catchprice Motors he washed the disgusting dishes in Mrs Catchprice’s kitchen sink and scrubbed the draining board and set up basins and saucepans for the water. He could see Benny Catchprice in the car yard below him. Benny stood in the front of the exact centre of the yard and he never shifted his position from the time Sarkis began to wash Mrs Catchprice’s hair until he’d done the eye-shadow.

There were people, old people particularly, so hungry for touch they would press their head into the washer’s fingers like a cat will rub past your legs. Mrs Catchprice revealed herself to be one of them. You could feel her loneliness in another way too, in her concentration as you ran the comb through her wet hair, her intense stillness while you cut.

Sarkis stripped the yellow colour from her grey hair with L’Oréal Spontanée 832. When he applied the Hot Oil and wrapped her in a towel she made a little moan of pleasure, a private noise she seemed unaware of having made, one he was embarrassed to have heard.

He did not ask her how she wanted her hair done. He styled it with a part and a french bun set a little to one side. It did nothing to soften the set of her jaw or the effects of age, but it gave her, in this refusal to hide or apologize, a look of pride and confidence. It was the same approach as you might take with a kid with ear-rings in her nose – you gave her a close shave up one side of her head, declared her ugly ears, did nothing to soften the features, and therefore made her sexy on the street.

He softened Mrs Catchprice a little with her make-up – some very pale blue eye-shadow and, from among all the grubby, ground-down Cutex reds she brought him, one Petal Pink.

‘How’s that?’ he asked, but only because he had finished and she had said nothing.

‘I look like a tough old bird,’ she said.

He was offended.

‘It’s just what the doctor ordered,’ she said. She opened her handbag and uncrumpled a $20 bill which she pushed into his hand.

‘Thank you,’ he said, although it was not enough to cover the cost of the Redken and the Spontanée 832. He brushed off her shoulders and swept up the floor and swept her hair on to a sheet of newspaper and put it in the rubbish. He folded the sheet he had used for a cape and placed it on top of the yellow newspapers on top of the washing machine. Then he let the dog out of the bathroom.

He came back into the living-room with the dog skeltering and slipping around his feet and found a pregnant woman with a briefcase, Benny Catchprice and Cathy McPherson all pushing their way into the living-room.

‘It is true?’ Cathy’s voice was tremulous. ‘Just tell me?’

Haircuts can alter people and this one seemed to have altered Mrs Catchprice. She led the way to the dining-room table and sat with her back to the row of brightly illuminated dolls. She looked almost presidential.

‘What are you dressed up for?’ Cathy asked.

The pregnant woman with the briefcase sat next to Mrs Catchprice. Benny sat opposite the pregnant woman.

Cathy took the big chair facing the dolls’ case, but would not sit in it. She grasped its back.

‘What are you dressed up for? Is it true?’ she asked her mother. ‘Because if it is, you really should tell me.’

‘The investigation,’ Mrs Catchprice said, ‘has been stopped.’

Sarkis did not know what investigation she was talking about but when he saw her speak he saw her power and thought he had created it.

‘Mrs Catchprice …’ the pregnant woman said. ‘How come you’re dressed up?’ Cathy asked.

‘How come you know?’

‘She doesn’t know,’ the pregnant woman said. ‘There’s nothing to know. Mrs Catchprice, Mrs McPherson, you can all calm down. The investigation has not been stopped. Once a Tax Office investigation starts, it has to go on until the end. Not even I could stop it.’

‘It’s been stopped all right,’ said Benny in a thin nasal voice that cut across the others’ like steel wire. He was trying to smile at the pregnant woman. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He used her first name, ‘Maria.’

Maria was pushing at the pressure points beside her eyes.

‘We like you,’ Benny said. He used her first name again. ‘We don’t blame you for what you did …’

‘Maria’ coloured and tapped on the table with her pencil.

Mrs Catchprice held the edge of the table with her hands. She seemed to spread herself physically. Sarkis thought of Bali, of Rangda the Witch. She had that sort of power. The whole room gave it to her and she threw it back at them. It was not the haircut. It was her.

‘Can I remind you all,’ Maria said, ‘that I’m the one who’s from the Tax Office.’

Mrs Catchprice gave her a smile so large you could think that all her teeth were made from carved and painted wood. ‘You’d better phone your office,’ she said. ‘Use the extension in the kitchen. It’s more private.’

The Tax Inspector hesitated, smiled wanly, then left the room. Mrs Catchprice turned to her daughter.

‘So now you can go, Cathy,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘You want to go square dancing, you go. I’m taking the business back for safekeeping.’

‘It’s not yours to take back.’

‘That’s irrelevant, Cathy,’ said Benny. ‘You get what you want. We get what we want.’

‘The business isn’t hers. It’s not her decision. She’s a minority shareholder.’

But Mrs Catchprice did not look like a minority of anything. Her jaw was set firmly. Her face was blotched with liver spots and one large red mark along her high forehead below her hairline. She looked scary.

The Tax Inspector, by contrast, looked white and waxy and depressed. She had not come all the way back into the room, but stood leaning against the door jamb with her hand held across her ballooning belly. Her hands were puffed up, ringless, naked.

‘I’ve been called back to the office,’ she said.

‘How lovely,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘You’ll be closer to the hospital. What hospital was it? I forget.’

‘George V,’ said Maria Takis. All the colour had gone from her wide mouth.

‘It’s a lovely hospital.’

‘My mother died there.’ The Tax Inspector clicked shut her briefcase.

‘Let me,’ Benny said. He took the briefcase from her, smiling charmingly. ‘I’d like to walk you to your car.’