White Dog

11

Sir Colin Longmore came out of the rose garden, tall and gaunt, big-nosed, like General de Gaulle in stooped old age at Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. A dog, a spaniel, sagging like a sofa, followed.

‘Jack Irish,’ I said.

He walked across the terrace, pulling off a gardening glove finger by finger, and put out a hand.

‘Longmore,’ he said. ‘Good of you to come.’

‘My pleasure.’ I said. His hand felt more like that of a brickie than of the man who owned the brickworks, passed down the generations from Ronald Calway Longmore, mine-owner, grazier, land speculator, founder of Longmore Brick and Tile, whose products built a lot of nineteenth-century Melbourne.

‘Irish,’ he said. ‘Not a name you hear a lot. Had an Irish work here before the war.’

I felt a stiffening in the neck and shoulders, deliberately turned to look at the massive house with its turreted roofs, gables and battlements, mullioned windows, rusticated brickwork and stone quoins. ‘I imagine you had most of Melbourne work here at one time or another,’ I said.

He studied me, old bird eyes under sloping grey thatch, he’d taken my meaning. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said.

I followed him across the rose-brick terrace, down three steps and through an archway of entwined creepers. A gravel path at least a hundred and fifty metres long stretched out between close-planted poplars, yellow leaves hanging on. The eye went to the end, to a stone archway with two iron gates.

We walked side by side, crunching the gravel. His brogues needed polishing, they were cracked over the little toes.

‘I remember these poplars going in,’ he said. ‘We grew them in the tree nursery. We had that then. Associate. What’s that mean?’

It took a second to adjust. ‘I used to be Andrew Greer’s partner. Now we sometimes work together.’

Longmore didn’t respond, a raised eyebrow. I offered nothing.

‘What’s your role in this?’ he said.

‘To help prepare Sarah’s defence.’

‘Defence? Had the gun, she tells me.’

‘Gave it back, I understand.’

He sniffed. ‘Defence’ll need a QC. Team of QCs.’

‘Andrew impressed that upon her. She doesn’t want one.’

Behind us, the spaniel farted, a drawn-out emission.

‘Fire in your own time,’ said Longmore.

We walked.

‘Bad business,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

The poplars’ branches were woven. We were in a sky-roofed tunnel. Colin Longmore stopped. I stopped. He dipped into his jerkin pocket, came out with a stubby pipe, a short-stemmed piece of plumbing for burning tobacco outdoors, a decent hat brim would shelter it from the rain.

I couldn’t remember when last I’d seen anyone smoke a pipe.

Longmore found a lighter, a Dunhill, flared on the sides like a Chevrolet of the 1950s, an item from the golden age of smoking. The lighter flamed. He applied the flame to the bowl, sucking like a calf on a teat.

We walked down the crackling path. A cold day, autumn on the north slope of the hill of Macedon. The hill had early provided Melbourne’s rich with relief from the town in its septic delta, the rivers fouled with tallow and tannin and excrement, the air sallow from the smoke of mills and foundries and smelling of the steam of tanneries and tobacco factories. The Dandenongs, the other hills, the hillocks, were an alternative but the properly rich favoured Macedon. England was home and every kind of European tree their gardeners planted thrived at Macedon — oak, elm, plane, ash, chestnut, holly, medlar, quince, crab apple, linden, hornbeam, hazel, birch, beech, box — box clipped into hedges and box allowed to be trees. It was also the case that you couldn’t get trees to produce their best autumn display in the Dandenongs, the sea was too close, there was a humidity. You needed a crueller climate, one that would make the sugar in the maple and liquidambar leaves turn to fire, convert it to blood in the perfectly heart-shaped leaves of the katsura.

‘A difficult woman, Sarah,’ said Longmore. ‘She was an impossible girl. Nothing like it in her mother. Sweetest nature, her mother.’

‘Impossible how?’ I said.

He seemed not to hear me, walked shaking his head. Then he said, ‘She’s been in trouble. I suppose she’s told you that.’

‘Not the details.’

‘Terrible temper, even when she was little, nine, ten. Then one day she had this… well, not a temper, it’s a madness, a fit. We had her seen by the psychiatrists. Professor Whatsis-name, Bently, Benleigh, something like that, at the university, supposed to be an expert — they’re all supposed to be experts, charlatans, wouldn’t have a clue. Dreams, bloody nonsense, looking for something to blame. Bred in the marrow, that’s what it is. Her mother’s brother had it too.’

The spaniel came between us, speeding, galvanised for a few dozen paces. Then it stopped and started again, plodding.

‘What happened?’ I said.

Longmore looked at me.

‘When she was in trouble.’

Silence. There was something calming about being confined by tall trees, walking down a narrow path towards a gateway that could be an exit or an entrance to some other confinement.

‘Well, they were living like pigs,’ said Longmore. ‘Take that back, I’ve got some regard for pigs. We had pigs here once, my father thought it would be nice to grow your own bacon, ham, that sort of thing. Not at all dirty, pigs. Humans make them dirty. Bugger up everything, humans, a disgrace, don’t deserve the planet.’

We were nearing the end of the allee. A building could now be seen through the wrought-iron gates, a small two-storey stone building with its steep roof sheathed in copper that was green with verdigris. It stood at the centre of a brick-paved square, perhaps an acre in area, bordered by high clipped hedges. Around it was a narrow moat, stone-edged, brimming with dark water.

‘Lovely little thing, isn’t it?’ said Longmore. ‘Come down here every day, twice in summer.’ He coughed. ‘Just as well, given the limited number of summers left.’

It was a lovely thing, not little but small, perfectly proportioned, with bluestone foundations, walls of dressed sandstone, and sills and arches of granite. It would stand unchanged and beautiful when everyone now alive was dead and forgotten.

We crossed the moat by a short iron bridge. Longmore opened the front door and saw me in: one big square room, the floor of polished pink stone, the slabs butted so tight, the cutting so clean that in places no edges could be seen. In the centre of the room, surrounded on three sides by a horseshoe-shaped bench, a mahogany staircase rose in a tight spiral. I walked to one of the narrow gothic-arched windows on the west wall. A shallow alcove between the windows held a stone cup full of wax. A wick had burnt to the bottom and died.

‘Peaceful place,’ said Longmore. He was standing at the single back window, hands in his pockets.

I joined him. We were looking directly at a long stone rill that fed the moat, a dark line drawn across the paving to the hedge.

‘My mother designed this,’ he said. ‘When she was little, Sarah used to sit upstairs for hours reading. You never think at that age they’ll ever bring you pain.’

‘The trouble Sarah was in,’ I said.

‘They had to take the chap to hospital. Head injuries, collarbone broken, they said he was like someone who’d been in a motor accident.’

‘Who was he?’

‘Damn near killed him. They’d been taking drugs. He said she gave him no warning. Broke a bottle over his head. Full bottle of wine. Hit him with other things.’

Longmore had a coughing bout, recovered. ‘Her mother was always nervous after that if the phone rang, couldn’t answer the telephone.’

I gave up on the victim’s identity. ‘How old was Sarah then?’

He eyed his pipe bowl without pleasure. ‘About eighteen,’ he said. ‘Walked out on school when she was sixteen. We were in the Toorak house. The school was delighted, I can tell you.’

‘She was living at home when it happened?’

‘No. She’d cleared off, met this crowd in Fitzroy, they called themselves artists, just smeared paint around like babies, took drugs. Of course, the public galleries bought the rubbish, they weren’t actually after paintings. Young bum, that’s what they were buying. Taxpayer-subsidised sodomites.’

The spaniel plodded around the corner. It walked to the rill, looked at it hopelessly, turned and looked at us, head on one side, sad. Then it sat down, a slow going down, always looking at us, a sinking of an old bum.

‘Won’t cross the bridge,’ said Longmore. ‘Doesn’t like bridges. A bit like me.’

‘He was one of the artists?’ I said.

‘Who?’

‘The man Sarah attacked.’

‘Oh. Hopeless bugger, not an ounce of talent. Gary Webber. I could have understood beating him up on aesthetic grounds.’

He got out the lighter and applied it to the pipe, sucking, sucking, his eyes on the bowl. Then they turned on me, thoughtful.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘yes, the point of this.’

I followed him out of the front door, the only door. He turned right and we went around the building, inside the moat. On the north flank, the dog side, he stopped and pointed at the wall below the window.

‘There,’ he said, ‘that’s the point.’

He moved on, gave me room. I bent and looked. On a bluestone foundation block, a thin strip was polished to tombstone smoothness. Letters and numbers were chiselled into it. Unless pointed out, you would not notice the inscription. It said:

J. I. Irish. AD 1936.

‘Built this,’ said Longmore. ‘Six of them on the job for the masonry, he was the master. I came here every day, got here early, before them most days, stayed all day. I brought my own sandwiches, tried to help. Got in the way, I suppose. They were rough the young ones, said things I didn’t understand until years later. Still, they tolerated me.’

‘The employer’s son,’ I said and regretted it.

He didn’t look at me, chewed his pipe stem. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Be a fool not to consider that. Anyway, they were kind to me and I was happy.’

The spaniel barked at us, aggrieved, cut off from his friend by a border he could not cross.

We walked around the building.

‘Always happiest here,’ said Longmore. ‘We had all the summer holidays here, my mother and I. My father came up sometimes. She didn’t like the sea, not a sea person. Nor am I.’

‘Do you remember him?’ I said.

‘My father?’

‘No. The stonemason.’

Longmore took the blunt elbow joint out of his mouth. ‘There’s a photograph my mother took,’ he said. ‘A big man. Big shoulders, big hands.’

We left the beautiful building anchored in its calm quadrangle and walked back down the avenue of trees, the spaniel holding station behind us. A breeze had come up, it was worrying the poplars, challenging the tenacity of the last leaves.

‘Was Sarah charged for the assault?’ I said.

He took the pipe out of his mouth and spat sideways, not successfully. He wiped a sleeve with the side of a hand. ‘It didn’t come to that. Things you can do.’

Twenty metres on, he said, ‘I married late, y’know. Well beyond forty when we had Sophie.’ Pause. ‘Seems young enough from here, though. Got any yourself?’

‘A daughter.’

‘Rather had a boy?’

I was unprepared. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t feel I’ve had anything. I didn’t bring her up. Her mother left me when she was tiny.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I didn’t feel I’d had anything till their mother died. Always too busy. And she took care of everything. When I had to deal with them they were almost grown up. Then I wished they were boys.’

He blinked rapidly, seemed to be trying to expel something from his eyes. ‘Never was any good with girls,’ he said, ‘I suppose that’s why I married so late.’

‘Do your daughters depend on you for money?’

‘They didn’t for a while after their mother died. She had her own money and she left it to them. They spent it at speed, of course, both of them. Profligate is the term.’

We walked in silence, just the chewing sound of our feet on the gravel, the scrabbling noise of the dog behind us. Near the house, I said, ‘I’m told you’re on the list of creditors for the Seaton Square project.’

He didn’t reply, his eyes on the gravel. After a while, I tried again.

‘I heard you,’ he said. ‘The backers were calling in six mill. He was battling with objections, the usual mess. I said no but Sophie pestered me.’

‘How long ago was that?’

Longmore raised his eyebrows. ‘Three or four months, I suppose.’

We walked up the steps to the terrace. On the level, he stopped, gave me a quick look. ‘You’ve seen those metal things she makes?’

I nodded.

‘Clue to her mind there, don’t you think?’ he said. ‘To what’s wrong with her.’

‘Apart from the desirability of a QC, is there something else you’d like me to convey to Andrew Greer?’

He was patting the dog. ‘Get her to plead guilty to manslaughter. She’s not a murderer, she’s not well. She doesn’t remember these episodes. To this day she denies what she did to Gary Webber.’

The wind was moving the ivy on the facade, the red and yellow leaves trembling, the wall seemed to be alive.

‘I’ll pass that on,’ I said. ‘My understanding is that she won’t. I’d like to talk to Sophie. It’s important.’

‘I’ll tell her. She’s gone off somewhere.’

‘Thank you for showing me the building,’ I said.

Longmore nodded. ‘Anything to tell me, Greer’s got the number. No, you’ve got it, you rang. Or come out, I’m always here, pretty much. Redundant now.’

‘The stonemason,’ I said. ‘J. I. Irish. That’s my grandfather.’

As I said it, I felt that I should not have completed the circuit to join us across the years.

‘Yes,’ he said, not looking at me, no expression in his voice, ‘I knew that when I saw you.’

‘Well, goodbye,’ I said. We shook hands.

I was walking away when he said, ‘What school’d you go to, Jack?’

I turned, reluctant. ‘Melbourne Grammar,’ I said, resenting having to say it.

He was looking at the bowl of his pipe, raised his arm and wrist-flicked. A yellow stream of tobacco juice caught the light as it laid a stripe in front of the prone spaniel’s nose.

‘Happy there?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t blame the school for that.’

‘Loathed it, myself,’ said Longmore. ‘Still, funny old world. Not as random as it seems, eh?’

I nodded, carried on down the path and I felt his eyes on me even after I’d turned the corner.