The Tax Inspector

50

Granny Catchprice had made her life, invented it. When it was not what she wanted, she changed it. In Dorrigo, she called them maggots and walked away. She had gelignite in her handbag and Cacka was nervous, stumbling, too shy to even touch her breasts with his chest.

There was no poultry farm, she made one. There was no car business, she gave it to him, out of her head, where there had been nothing previously. She freed him from his mother. She gave him a yard which he paved with concrete so he could hose it down each morning like a publican, a big man in his apron and gum boots. He was Mr Catchprice. She was Mrs Catchprice. She hired boys and girls in trouble and showed them how they could invent themselves. Little Harry Van Der Hoose – she tore up his birth certificate in front of him. He watched her with his mouth so wide open you could pop a tennis ball inside.

‘Now,’ she said. ‘What are you?’

Years later he wrote a letter from Broome where he had a drive-in liquor store. He said: ‘Before I had the good fortune to be employed by yours truly, I was what you would call a dead-end kid. Whatever life I enjoy here today, I have you to thank for.’

Mrs Catchprice stood in the annexe on Wednesday afternoon and watched them bring the horrid-looking ‘Big Mack’ tour truck right into the yard. It belonged to Steven Putzel, the pianist – a nasty little effort with sideburns and a tartan shirt. They had to move the Holdens and that black foreign car to one side. They made a mess of the gravel doing it.

Her daughter ran out from under the LUBRITORIUM sign, carrying guitar cases.

‘That’s a joke,’ Frieda said. She lit a Salem and folded her arms across her prosthetic chest. It was a bumpy, silly thing and she was sorry she had put it on.

‘What is?’

She looked and saw Mort was standing next to her. This sort of thing happened more and more. She damn well could not remember if she had known he was there or if he had sneaked up on her. She said nothing, gave nothing away. She held out the Salem pack to him. He shook his head.

‘What’s a joke?’ he said. She remembered then – he gave up smoking when he married Sophie.

She looked out of the window at her daughter who was now struggling out into the sunlight carrying a big amplifier.

‘Where’s she think she’s going?’ she said.

‘You know exactly what she’s doing,’ Mort said.

She guessed she did know. ‘She can’t sing.’

‘Jesus, Mum. Give up, will you?’ Mort grinned. She was a tough old thing, that’s who she was.

‘She used to sing as well as you. She used to sing the “Jewel Song” for your father. People would pay to hear that.’

‘Come on, lay off – you know she’s popular.’

‘Is she?’ said Granny Catchprice. ‘Truthfully?’

Mort folded his arms across his chest and looked down at her with a thin, wry grin on his face. ‘You’re not going to get a rise out of me.’

She was not sure if she was taking a rise out of him or not. She knew, of course, that Cathy sang in halls. She was popular enough to sing at a dance in a hall. She could sing for shearers, plumbers, that sort of thing.

‘She’d do anything to get herself written up,’ she said.

‘Our Cath always did like attention,’ he said. ‘It’s true.’

‘And you were always so bashful.’ Cathy was trying to climb into the truck and Frieda felt nervous that she had somehow allowed this thing to get this far. ‘She could be a bit more bashful with that backside.’

At ten years old, you should have seen her – a prodigy. She never knew what Country & Western was. She knew Don Giovanni, Isolde, Madame Butterfly. Her teacher was Sister Stoughton at the Catholic School. 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 Hill-Billy or Rock-a-Billy, she had a checked shirt and jeans with rolled-up cuffs to go and learn square dancing at the Mechanics’ Institute. She did not know anyone with duck-tailed hair or Canadian jackets. She did not like square dancing either, said it was like going fencing with a wireless playing. She was nine years old when she said that.

Frieda said: ‘I suppose she’s got our money entered in her bank book.’

She was trying to enlist him, but he took her shoulder and made her turn towards him.

‘Look at me,’ he said. He held her too hard. It hurt but she did not tell him. ‘Listen to what I’m saying – whatever Cathy is, she’s not a criminal. Now come on, be a good stick, eh? You’ve pushed her this far. You let her go ahead and jump.’

‘I’m not any sort of stick.’

‘Let her do what she wants to do.’

‘I’m going down to talk to her.’

‘You’ve already talked to her.’ He stood in front of her and for a moment she thought he was going to block her way. He was frightening – big, and emotional, like a horse that might do anything.

‘Come with me, Morty.’

He shook his head, but he stepped aside and held the door open. ‘You told her you didn’t need her. That was the message you gave her. If you want my opinion, you are incorrect …’

‘If I’m incorrect, then help me talk to her.’

‘No, Mum.’ He shook his head with those big teary eyes, like his father.

‘You don’t know anything about Cathy and me. You never did understand.’

‘You’ve got her like a monkey on a stick.’

‘Rot and rubbish.’

‘You’re very cruel, Mum.’

That hurt her, hurt her more than she could imagine being hurt but she did not show it.

‘You always panic,’ she said. ‘You’re like your father.’

That made him sniff and put his mouth into a slit. ‘You’re the one who should be panicking,’ he said.

She let that pass.

‘Walk me down the stairs?’

‘No,’ he shook his head.

So she walked by herself and left him sulking.

She met her daughter in the old lube bay, carrying a big cardboard box of papers. Cathy brushed past, saying nothing. She passed the box to Steven Putzel and then hurried back across the cracked, oil-stained lube bay floor where Benny had painted the skull and cross bones and the Day-glo no admittance sign. Frieda remembered when that concrete floor was wet and new. You could have written anything in it. Cathy began to go up the metal stairs to the flat. Frieda followed her.

Half way up, Cathleen stopped and turned.

‘Just leave me alone,’ she said.

‘I’m not stopping you,’ Frieda said, but she saw then – in the way Cathy was standing – that it was not too late to stop her. She started feeling better than she had.

‘You’ll fall and break your hip.’

‘I’ve every right to see my house.’

‘It is not your house any more.’

But she had invented it. There had been nothing there before she started. She had chosen that red marbled Laminex, that lemon wall paint. The floors were strewn with newspaper, record covers, sheet music. In the middle of the room was the yellow vinyl chair she had covered for Cacka. He used to sit in that to listen to his records. She loved to watch him listen. His big eyes would fill with moisture – glistening like in the movies when people were in love. Now it was his daughter who stood before her, red faced, her hands on her hips, her lips parted.

‘You know I won’t live too much longer,’ Frieda said.

‘Don’t start that …’

‘We got through this far …’

‘Just don’t, O.K.?’

Howie came into the living-room. He stood back in the corner as if none of this was to do with him.

‘You never had children, Cathy,’ Frieda said. This was not exactly aimed at Howie. She did not mean it this way, but she glared at him when she said it. ‘Unless you’ve been through labour you couldn’t understand.’

Cathy began to give that nervous laugh and shake her head like she had water in her ear. ‘Listen, Ma – it’s not going to work …’

She got that ‘Ma’ from Howie. It was common. Frieda hated it. ‘You’re going to be alive a long time yet, Cathy. You’re the one that’ll have to live with the guilty conscience.’

‘Mrs Catchprice,’ Howie said. He was leaning against the door frame with his arms folded. ‘You’ve got no right to say these things to her.’

He was a no one. She had made him, invented him. He came into her shop with his greasy hair and brothel creepers and a note from the police sergeant.

‘I’m her mother, Howie.’

Cathy said: ‘You never did what a mother should have done.’

‘You mean that business with Mr Heywood’s cat?’

‘You know I don’t mean that. Don’t make me say it. Just don’t make it hard for me to go.’

Howie spoke out of the shadow near the bedroom door frame. It was so dull there you could not even see his eyes. ‘He used to rub her tits,’ he said.

Frieda felt she had missed something.

She looked up. Steven Putzel was there at the doorway next to Howie, listening.

‘How dare you speak to me like that,’ she said, but she was confused by the circumstances and did not speak with her full force.

‘He used to rub her tits.’

‘You little filth.’ She could not believe the language.

‘He’s not a filth,’ Cathy said. ‘He’s a decent man.’

Decent?

‘He is a filth, all right,’ she said. ‘I knew he was a filth when I saw him. I thought I could change him but look how wrong I was.’

‘He used to lie on top of me so I could not breathe.’

‘You were the one who wanted to marry him.’

‘Your husband. My father. He used to lie on top of me so I could not breathe.’

‘He loved to tease you,’ Frieda said.

‘For Christ’s sake, Mother, our father was a creep. He used to touch my tits. He used to lie on top of me. You saw him do it. You used to watch him do it.’

‘I did not.’

‘You did, you old fool. You used to sit there, in the same room. He used to do things to me while you were knitting.’

Cathy had her by the arm, squeezing her, pulling at her, shouting about ten hours of labour, but Frieda had already slipped away. She was running through the ring-barked trees, down the wet clay road. Walking towards her was Cacka, smiling, in his Magpies jacket.

She had the gelignite in her handbag when she met him. She had it in the butcher’s. The detonators clinking around her neck. She had it there from the beginning.