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

“Those kids are still missing. Someone stole one of the mannequins from outside your old workplace.”

I pulled down the top of the newspaper. The Sydney Morning Herald was the only newspaper in our town that still published in broadsheet format—the rest were tabloid—and it covered his face.

“What?” he said.

“What kids, what mannequin?”

“Clyde, you need to read more than your own articles in the newspaper, you know—the Bishop kids.”

“Has some new clue come to light? I thought those children had been missing for months now, and the police had done everything humanly possible to find them.”

“They disappeared in late September. It’s not that long ago.”

“Sorry. Yes, I remember reading about it when it happened, but it wasn’t long after we’d got back from Tasmania, Ray Wilson had arrived from Singapore at the same time, and we’d started working on the evidence for the Special Crown Prosecutor, and, as you’re so fond of telling me, I’m no longer with the police force, so—”

“They dressed two mannequins in copies of the clothing the children were wearing when they left the house to go to the shops for their mother. It’s to jog people’s memories. Well, the model of the young boy was stolen from outside the police station.”

“When was this?”

“Day before yesterday, on Saturday. They put the mannequins outside on the street at nine in the morning and then a woman reported to the desk sergeant that she’d stopped to have a look at them on the way to the greengrocer, and when she’d passed by on her way home twenty minutes later, she noticed the boy’s statue had gone.”

“That’s odd.”

“Yeah, why would someone only take one statue? I don’t get it, Clyde.”

“No, that’s not what’s odd, Harry. Why would she report it missing? I mean, they could have been doing anything with it inside—adjusting a piece of clothing for example. Did they mention the woman’s name?”

Harry shook his head at me over the top of the newspaper and at the same time gave me “that” look. The one I was now used to that said, “keep your nose out of this, Clyde, you’re not on the police force any longer”.

I went back to reading my reviews, double-checking the copy editor hadn’t slashed and burned the best parts of my prose, but I couldn’t get the strangeness of the reported incident out of my mind. I’d bet a fiver the desk sergeant hadn’t bothered to ask the woman for her details. My old workplace had gone to pot since I’d left, and after that, more recently, when Sam Telford, my ex, had put in a transfer request and had gone to work at the station in Double Bay, no one seemed to be running the shop.

I was about to ignore Harry’s unspoken reprimand when the station master blew his whistle right outside our window, his flag in the air. The train gave a small lurch and then we started to roll out of Spencer Street station.

“Bye, bye, Melbourne,” Harry said. “Hope to see you again soon.”

He peered out the window, waving to a small group of children who must have been on the platform to bid farewell to someone else on the train.

“Now, breakfast, Clyde. You coming or what?”

He was almost out the door before I could answer.

*****

I ran through my diary, checking I had my dates right for the movies, the plays, and the sporting events we’d seen while we’d been away.

The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll—I’d missed seeing Ray Lawler’s play when it had opened in Sydney and I’d only read good things. But as an Australian man who’d grown up during the Depression and then who’d fought afterwards in the war, what I hadn’t been prepared for was how close to the bone it had been. The nostalgia had been bittersweet, and not in a good way. Harry and I, although we’d had completely different experiences during the war, had both felt the same. It was a cracker of a play about us, we Australian men of the same vintage as the protagonists in the story, and it hurt like buggery—but I’d loved the pain because of its truth.

“Still gloating over your review?” Harry teased.

“Nah, I was just checking my notes. The food at the Hungarian restaurant was better than what we made at night school. The fish soup, the … what’s this, Harry, I can’t read my own writing.”

He smiled when I handed him my diary. I’d written “I love you” with my red pencil next to the name of the soup: Halász Leves.

“I hope you can find the recipe. Mother would love it. There must be an Hungarian community in Sydney … we had so many refugees from eastern Europe after the war. Leave it with me, Clyde. I’ll put finding the paprika and some of that spicy sausage for the layered egg and potato dish on my list.”

I held out my hand for my notebook, but he read out my phonetics for rakott krumpli in a way that sounded pretty spot on. He had a better ear for languages than he let on.

“Did you know that one of the queens of Hungary was Italian?” I asked.

“No I didn’t. That’s something else I’ll look up when I get home.”

“I read somewhere she was responsible for all the tomato and paprika in Hungarian food. I tell you what, though, my friend, I’m going to miss all of those amazing Italian restaurants in Lygon Street. Just a tram ride from the hotel and the best authentic food I’ve had since I left to come home in forty-six.”

“The highlight for me, other than the oxtail stew you said was too rich for you at the hotel, was lunch nearly every day at Pellegrini’s in Bourke Street.”

I smiled. He’d been so understanding. I’d been in my element, chatting with waiters and customers in Italian. I missed that regular connection with a country that, despite the terrible times I’d had in the P.O.W. camp, I’d adopted as my second home. He’d