The Gilded Madonna, Garrick Jones [best fiction novels txt] 📗

“I’m a rock am I?”

“You know what I mean.”

Ever since I’d turned around into his arms, I’d had my forehead against his chest while we’d been speaking. I looked up into his eyes.

“What makes you think your doctor would be happy for me to be there, Clyde?”

“Because it was her idea.”

“You told her about me on the phone?”

“No, not on the phone, Harry. But I went to talk to her in her office right after I spoke with her. She invited me to come to her rooms for half an hour to discuss what I thought my main problems were. My first appointment is the Monday before Australia Day. Of course I told her about you; you’re as much part of me as I am myself … why wouldn’t I mention the man I was in love with?”

“Oh, Jesus, Clyde, I can’t tell you how much I—”

“Then don’t, Harry,” I said and then kissed him. “Save it for the weekend when we have three days for you to show me how much you—”

“How about now, here on the meeting table?”

I laughed, and we might have gone further, except for Tom, who’d returned from the Bishop’s house.

“I ordered Vienna schnitzy-watsits on the phone before I took the Bishops home. Six this time. Two each,” he called out, giving us just enough time to break apart and to assume nonchalant stances, almost as if we were just leaning against the table and about to have a smoke.

*****

The Bishop’s rented house was not unlike what I’d expected. The suburb was full of these bungalow-style semi-detached houses thrown up on divided larger blocks of land immediately after the First World War. Originally planned as houses for returned soldiers, who, as it eventuated, couldn’t afford the upkeep, they were usually sold on to people with money. Two bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen, and a tiny laundry/bathroom at the back, and the dunny at the bottom of the garden, which backed onto a narrow lane for the night-soil cart.

I’d read there’d been development applications put in to turn all of these small houses along Byron Street into blocks of modern flats. I supposed the apartments were intended to be for families with children that could attend the primary school on the other side of the street.

We’d made a quick detour via my flat. I’d been baking fruit cakes ready for Christmas presents since before we went to Melbourne. I wrapped one in Cellophane and tied a bit of Christmas ribbon around it.

“Why thank you, Mr. Smith,” Margaret Bishop said. “I’ll put this aside for the children when they come home. They love fruit cake. I normally make my own, but this year I’ve been so distracted …”

I was used to crime, both violent and opportunistic. Families of victims, unless they saw the body, nearly always believed there’d been some mistake, that the person who was either dead or missing would just miraculously walk through the door.

It never happened like that. Adults and teenagers that ran away never wanted to be found. After breaking the news of a death, the next most unpleasant aspect of my job had been to accompany family members to the morgue to identify the bodies of their loved ones. In my experience, those who’d protested they didn’t have the strength to accompany their husband or wife never accepted the finality and lived in hope that everyone had made a mistake and their husband/wife/child would walk through the door one day, quite unexpectedly, and with tales of being sorry to have caused so much grief.

One of my first cases had been a young boy, pushed from a moving tram by another spiteful child, who’d fallen under the wheels and had been killed. None of the family had come to formally identify the body and had left the task to a neighbour. Even now, nearly nine years later, they still wrote to me asking if I’d had any news about their missing boy.

The relief on the Bishop’s faces when I told them the “stolen” mannequin had been a prank, perpetrated by local boys who hadn’t thought of the consequences of their actions, was accompanied by tears of relief. They fell into each other’s arms and wept. It made me feel terribly awkward sharing the lie I’d devised, but I could imagine how they must have been feeling. They were of the class of people that were brought up never to discuss anything private, and that included their feelings, with people who were not family. If they were anything like my parents, they probably didn’t even share those things with each other.

I hated the idea of them shuffling around the house, both thinking miserable thoughts, and yet not having the courage to speak them for fear of upsetting the other one. I’d seen it far too many times in the past.

Eventually, I cajoled Mrs. Bishop into cutting into my fruit cake. I explained there was plenty and it would keep for months. There was no doubt they were doing it tough. Everything in the house was as neat as a pin and it was obvious the Bishops didn’t have idle hands. As I looked around the room, almost the first thing I noticed was the sewing machine cabinet in the corner, on it an eleven-shilling radio, of the type one got for turning in tea-packet coupons. The curtains, cushions, and seat coverings were all expertly sewn, but very obviously not shop-bought.

“Did you make that, Mr. Bishop?” I asked, nodding at a beautiful model of a sailing ship on the mantelpiece. “It must have taken you no end of spare time after work and on your weekends.”

Cyril Bishop was six years younger than I. I’d looked him up. He’d been an apprentice in the tramways department as an electrical engineer during the war. Some industries were vital and those that worked in them were exempted from conscription. Protected industries, they called them. My da had worked in the shipyard at Garden Island,