The Tax Inspector

55

‘What’s that film?’ the Attorney General said. ‘I forget its name …’

‘Jean d’Aboire,’ Jack said.

‘That’s the one,’ the Attorney General said. ‘It was pure Louis Quatorze. Most of them stuff it up, you know, the Yanks all the time, but the Frogs too – they put Empire and even Chippendale in with Louis Quatorze, but this Jean d’Aboire was spot on. They got the clothes right, everything. They got the little bodices,’ he made small pinching gestures with his big fingers, holding them up near his tailored lapels. ‘Just right,’ the Attorney General said, before returning to his smoked salmon. ‘They got everything right, it was just immaculate.’

Jack was worried about Maria. His view of her was obscured by the return wall with the doubtful Tiepolo on it. All he could see was her shoulder and George Grissenden. Grissenden could be very funny, if he wanted to be.

Across the table Digby was complaining loudly about Sotheby’s who were offering to finance his bid on the New York de Kooning. To his left, Betty Finch had her eyes glued on the Attorney General and Jack had, occasionally, to head off her graceless attempts to bring the conversation directly to the matter of Droit de Suite. Nobody had bothered to brief her on the manners of lobbying.

He saw Maria stand and leave the room. He smiled in her direction, but she did not seem to see him. Then, through the open archway to his right, he saw her use the hall phone.

‘So when you see a movie,’ Jack said to the Attorney General, ‘you’re really more interested in the spoons than the drama.’

It was intended as a joke, but the Attorney General took it seriously. ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘This Jean d’Aboire got it spot on.’

Jack looked towards the hall. Maria had gone. He looked towards her place – George Grissenden was removing smoked salmon from the plate in front of her empty chair.

From the street he heard electronic beeps and a hissing, high-pitched Holden water pump. Maria. He excused himself and walked out on to the street still carrying his damask napkin. The taxi’s tail lights were speeding away in the direction of the cul de sac. He was so confident it was Maria, that he stood in the middle of the road, waving the taxi down with his napkin.

He shaded his eyes, moving round the car towards a window which was already rolling down.

‘Enjoy your dinner,’ Maria said. ‘We can talk tomorrow.’

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing happened.’

‘It was George Grissenden. He’s such a fascist. What happened?’

‘Jack, I’m eight months pregnant. I’m very tired.’

‘I’m driving you home.’ He opened the door.

‘Please, no, please.’

But he coaxed her from the cab, paid off the driver, escorted her to his car, and ran back into the house with his white napkin. He was back at the Jaguar in a moment.

‘I told them you were going into labour.’

She did not smile.

He started the engine. ‘I told them your family all had short labours.’

He could see her in the corner of his eye with her hands across her belly and the high fine nose and curly hair silhouetted against the window. He felt the silence like a screw turning in his throat. He drove quickly, but with excessive care, as if there was some fragile thing in the trunk he was fearful of breaking.

He turned right and headed down the hill towards Double Bay where Maria had left her car parked in front of his house.

‘They’re creeps, I guess,’ he said at last.

‘Yes,’ she said.

He was frightened by the bluntness of her answer. He waited for her to say something else but nothing else was forthcoming.

‘Were they terrible creeps?’ he asked at last.

‘Oh no,’ Maria sighed. ‘Probably not,’ but there was a weariness in her voice that suggested to him that he had already lost her. ‘I’ve admired Phillip Passos for years. It was great to meet him.’

‘What happened then?’

‘Oh, it’s nothing new.’

‘Were they rude to you?’

‘I’m always shocked to hear wealthy people complaining about tax. I should be used to it. I should be very thick-skinned. In fact, I thought I was thick-skinned, but I watch them eating with their Georg Jensen cutlery and I want to stand up and shout and make speeches about poverty and homelessness.’

They had to stop for a red light at O’Sullivan Road. Across the road there were yachts bobbing at their moorings in the moonlight.

‘I knew this was a bad idea,’ Jack said. ‘But I wanted to see you so badly and I was impatient. I was being expedient again.’

‘Is expediency a problem with you?’

She had that edge in her voice, the same as when she asked him about working for money.

‘Not normally,’ he said curtly.

He did not need her to tell him – expediency ruled his life and made it shallow and unsatisfying. He could analyse all this a hundred times better than she could, more harshly too. He was a Catchprice – damaged, compromised, expedient – full of it.

‘Know a man’s friends and you know the man,’ he said, bitterly.

‘You are different?’

‘Don’t I seem different?’

‘Yes, you do seem different.’ It was the first time her voice had softened. When he looked across she was, finally, looking at him.

‘Have you heard me complain about taxes?’

‘Jack, tonight I listened to a very distinguished artist argue against Droit de Suite. In fact, I discovered, that’s what we were there to do.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘We were there because I’ve fallen in love with you and I had to go to dinner.’

She gave no sign of what this declaration meant to her.

‘He was against it,’ she said, ‘because he believed the “funny money” would not go into art if investors had to pay tax on that money first.’

‘You mean I’m taking bread out of the mouths of children.’

He was embarrassed and humiliated. He turned right into Cross Street, swinging the wheel and accelerating so that the Michelins screamed and smoked.

‘I’m pregnant. Slow down.’

He slowed down, until the car was barely moving and then slid into the kerb.

‘That was stupid.’

He turned off the engine and turned in his seat.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘That was reckless. I love you both.’

He felt it himself – it was a false note, but God damn it, it was true. ‘So now,’ he said, ‘you don’t like me.’

‘I don’t doubt you have these feelings,’ she put her hand on his. ‘I just feel odd about you. Jack, I’ve only just met you and I’m very tired.’

‘I want to look after you, and the baby too. It’s all I want.’

She did not answer him. When he looked across he was shocked to see that she had begun to cry. She said: ‘Do you want a baby? Is that it?’ He tried to hold her but she pulled away from him, her face distorted.

‘Maria, please …’

‘I wish you could have it, Jack. I really do.’ She looked like a Francis Bacon smeared with neon light. ‘I don’t want the fucking thing. I don’t want to give birth to anything.’

‘It’ll be O.K.,’ he said, shocked by her language.

‘Don’t you dare say it’s O.K. Christ.’

‘I’m with you.’ He gave her tissues from the glove box.

‘No, Jack, I’m sorry.’ She blew her nose.

‘What if I let you audit me?’

She looked at him with her mouth open, her cheeks wet. Then she started laughing and shaking her head. She blew her nose again, loudly.

‘Is that so funny?’

‘Yes, it’s very funny.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh Jack …’

‘Why?’

‘Jack, please, if you care for me, just drive me to my car so I can go home and sleep.’

‘You can sleep at my house, not the Bilgola house, the one here. You could be in bed in five minutes.’

‘Jack, I’m tired, I’m not interested.’

‘Maria, please, I’m not talking about sex.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not coming to your house.’

He put his hands on the wheel and his head on his hands. ‘I’m getting angry because I feel I’m ruining something very important in my life. We are just getting to know each other and I’m ruining it.’

‘Jack,’ she said. She unclasped a hand from the steering wheel and held it. ‘You’re very sweet and gentle, but you belong to an alien culture.’

He took his other hand from the steering wheel and put both his hands around hers. ‘I can change. Don’t roll your eyes.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m tired.’

‘If no one can change,’ he said, ‘what point is there in anything? If we cannot affect each other’s lives, we might as well call it a day. The world is just going to slide further and further into the sewer.’

She turned away from him. He saw her staring into the brightly lit shop where they advertised Comme des Garçons and Issey Miyake at 50 per cent off.

‘You don’t believe that we can change?’ he asked. ‘We can.’

‘You should have said these things to me when I was twenty. How would you change, Jack? What would you do?’

‘I could become a person you could trust, whom you could rely on totally.’

‘Are you that now?’

‘Not totally, not at all really.’

‘Why me? Why am I so important to the Catchprices?’

He hit the steering wheel with his fist. He did not know his nephew had done a similar thing with a glove box lid. ‘I’ll drive you to the hospital when you go into labour. I’ll come round and do the laundry for you. I’ll make the formula. O.K., you’ll probably be breast feeding, but I’ll do what you need. I’ve got money. I’ll hire help. Maria, please, I’ve done some rotten things, but the only reason I’m sitting here with you is that I’m not going to be like that any more.’

‘You’re going to be transformed through love?’

‘Yes I am.’

She shook her head.

‘Parents die to save their babies through love,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing romantic about it. It’s a mechanism. It’s built into us whether we like it or not. It’s how the species saves itself.’

She was listening to him. She was frowning, but her lips were parted, had in fact been parted so long that now she moistened them.

‘If we can’t change,’ he said, ‘we’re dead.’

He leaned forward to kiss her. The Tax Inspector took his lips in hers and found herself, to her surprise, feeding on them.