Bust!

[satyr]

November 1970
The moon sent a silver pathway over the smooth waters of the bay. It seemed as if one could walk across a moonbeam causeway and ascend into the sky via Goat Island. In the peaceful waters there lurked sharks; they were attracted by the blood washed down the Parramata river from the abattoir at Homebush, but far worse were the dioxins and other pollutants discharged by industry into the harbour. The smell of a frangipani filled the night air with fragrance and the sound of jazz came across the water from one of the ferries. A solitary cicada tried to drown the sound out.
Thrap, thrap. I knocked on the door. Eleanor’s ample figure appeared and gave us each a hug;
“Hi there, come on in, Johnny’s been delayed. How did the performance go? There’s a bottle of wine on the go, or would you prefer coffee?”
“Wine for me please. Lay?”
“Aww, would a cup of coffee be too much?”
“No, just a sec and I’ll make you one”.
We sat down and looked around the living room. There was a tall, very thin guy there, and a girl called Sonny, the daughter of a journalist, who wrote a column about his family every week. She had attended the same North Shore school as Layla, although there was a three or four year age gap between them. She vaguely remembered Lay, but Lay didn’t actually remember her, such is the difference a few years seniority makes.
Lay said “Did you see our old headmistress on TV?”
“Oh, you mean the ads where she says; ‘I wouldn’t do this ad if I didn’t believe in the product’. Isn’t it embarrassing?”
Lay laughed “Well, I hope she got bloody well paid for it”.
I looked the thin guy; “What do you do for a crust, mate?”
“I’m just back from Europe; I’ve been studying and assisting the French mime artist, Marcel Marceau”.
“Oh, I saw him in London. He is very witty and marvellously expressive”. I wasn’t really lying; the fact that I thought the performance went on far too long and was not varied enough was probably due to my lack of culture, or high boredom threshold.

The mime artist, I am sure that Eleanor had introduced us, but I had forgotten his name immediately, replied in his high, light voice; “He is just so marvellous. He is the kindest, nicest man in the world”. Inwardly I decided that the voice was the reason that this bloke had taken up mime rather than proper acting. Lay and Sonny were talking about her tap-dancing now. I just wanted to go home, climb into bed and go to sleep. Probably too tired even to have a shag, although Lay could probably interest me, if she wanted to do so. Eleanor brought us coffees to juggle with the wine.

I excused myself and went to the outside loo. Helena’s house must have been the last in Balmain to still have an outside dunny. She had a modern bathroom upstairs, but I didn’t want to use it in case I disturbed the children, so I went through the big glass door from the kitchen to the garden and walked to the dunny. No light and I hadn’t bothered with a torch. The moon disappeared behind a cloud. I lifted the seat gingerly; hoping that there wasn’t a redback waiting there, ready to jump at me. Funnel webs tend to prefer dark corners and underground nests. Having pointed Percy and sprayed the porcelain, I headed back to the house, tripping over a kids bike that had been left lying around underfoot. I cursed and rubbed my bruised ankle. Opened the glass door and it came off the slider. It was very heavy and I found that it was really a two-man job to replace it. I could hold it upright easily enough, but getting it back into the groove was a different matter. I heard the doorbell go and assumed that Johnny had arrived. I shouted and a large fair bloke, who I had never seen before burst into the kitchen.

For some reason, instead of helping me with the door he tried to push it out of the way and rush past me, into the garden.
“Let go of the door and get out of the way”.
I replied; “I can’t, mate. You help me to get it back in the groove, and you will be able to get through. Jeeze, you must be desperate to get to the dunny”.

At this moment an older man appeared shouting at the fair guy;
“Get into the fucking garden and make sure he isn’t escaping over the fence”.

“Excuse me, but of whom are you speaking?” Stress always makes me become extremely polite, and my grammar to become punctilious. I was still holding onto the door, to stop it crashing to the ground, but was starting to think a gang had invaded the house. The older guy flashed a badge at me, “NSW State Police, Sergeant X. Now let go of the fucking door”.
“I can’t, mate. It’s come off the runner. Give me a hand to get it back in, please”.
Eventually the two of them realised the door really was likely to crash to the ground and helped me to get it back on the tracks. Then the younger one went out to check the garden, I heard him fall over the bike. The older one went upstairs with Helena and checked the upstairs rooms, frightened the kids, thumped around a bit whilst the young one kept the mime artist, me, Les and Sonny in the sitting room.

When the other one returned he sent Sonny up to look after the children. He then started by accusing the mime artist guy of being a “bloody poofter”. I had wondered about his sexuality, but felt it was no business of mine, or anyone else. He then tried to heavy each of us in turn, whereas the young guy was being nice and sympathetic. I worked out that they were playing “Nice cop/nasty cop”, but it didn’t take a genius to see it, it is just when you are caught up in it, it actually works. The young guy found that I had been invited to join Drummoyne Rugby Union Club and that I had trained with Gordon a few times and his friendliness started to seem genuine, as he too was a rugby player. They gave us, the blokes, a very cursory search and asked the girls to turn out their handbags. They couldn’t do a body search on them as they were both male and they didn’t seem too worried about it anyway. In my wallet I had several ‘phone numbers, including my NZ friend Lindsey’s. They pounced on this with shouts of glee; “Is this Lindsey B.?” they shouted.

I said; “No, it is a Kiwi friend of mine, who shares the same Christian name”.

One of them said “But you admit you know Lindsey B.”
“Yes, I have read poetry at a performance when he was playing organ and bumped into him a few times. Interesting bloke but a bit too far out for me”.
“You saying he’s always dropping acid and smoking dope?”
“No, man, he’s possibly a genius, and I’m not. He doesn’t need to drop acid; he’s permanently spaced out on Blake, the Bible, apocalyptic visions and music”. In fact I thought his work too derivative to be judged on its own; the dead hand of Blake inspired everything he did. I quite liked his music, if I was in the right mood. Weird, spacey organ music that sometimes seemed to be individual notes drifting along and sometimes seemed to find a theme. Later he was to open for Pink Floyd in Sydney, when they toured Australia. It seemed that at a concert a few weeks before he had given an impassioned speech about the virtues of turning on and dropping out. I cannot remember if tuning in came into it as well, but as it was very rambling and as the press only reported ‘newsworthy’ phrases from it the whole thing was out of context and exaggerated. From that time on the police had a brief to harass him, when they could find him. He had stayed with Helena at one time and they were still on friendly terms so that was their excuse for raiding the house and turning everything upside down, pulling all the books off the book cases and generally trashing the place and trying to frighten us.

They took Layla and Eleanor aside and questioned them. Lay told me later that they didn't seem too worried about the answers to the questions and switched to suggesting that they could go on the game to earn some money. They seemed to expect Layla to be some sort of a bludger and when she told them that she was an art student and her father was a scientist, and head of part of the CSIRO, they left her alone and just menaced Eleanor, talking about taking her kids away from her. Then they had a go at me, but when they found out that I worked for the Commonwealth government they went quiet on that front too. They did try to get me to admit that I smoked dope but I refused to answer.

After half an hour I thought of challenging them, but was worried that they might take it out on Eleanor and the others if we weren’t there. However, when they showed no signs of going after an hour I decided to call a halt to the farce:

I said; “It is nearly one o’clock. I’ve got work tomorrow. First I’d like to see your warrant to search this house, and then I think you had better decide whether to charge us with something or go. If you don’t I’m calling my solicitor”. They recognised Claudius’s name as that of a very good young solicitor, who would crucify them if they hadn’t dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’. It was very strange, but at first they had been totally in charge, but as time went on the impetus switched.

Within five minutes they went, no argument and no search warrant.

Helena said “This is all my bloody ex-husband’s doing. He is friends with a lot of the police, as he prosecutes for them, and he has been hassling me ever since the divorce”. We said goodnight and went home.

February 1971
I was at my desk working on some tax returns when my telephone rang and a someone, claiming to be a police sergeant, asked if I could get some information from the taxation files.

I replied; “I am very sorry but that is against the law. Tax returns are completely confidential”.

He said; “Look mate, we are all working on the side of the angels here. I just need some information about a scumbag crook so I can nail him. We can make this information tit-for-tat about people that you need to trace”.

I told him; “I cannot divulge confidential details. By law you have to tell me what I need to know, but I cannot tell you anything that appears on a tax return”.

Then I had a brainwave; “Hey mate, I can’t help you, but I have a friend who works with me, who might, on a reciprocal basis”.

He said; “Who’s that then?” He sounded excited.

I gave a name and said; “He is a tax inspector. He is just about to launch an enquiry into members of the NSW police force evading tax on moneys and services received in the course of their duty through corruption. He would be happy to help you, if you will help him.”

There was a gulp and a muffled response in the negative. I was pretty certain that it was the older policeman from the raid. We never did investigate the Police Force. It was stopped from ‘on high’ as politically unacceptable.

August 2005
My wife and I went Sydney to see friends and family. We were invited out to dinner by a barrister friend of the lady who was our host. During dinner he tried to get a rise out of the pommies, especially when he found out that my wife had been a feminist academic. He was incredibly bitter about his ex-wife. I didn’t put it together until I started to write this story. He was the right age, had political connections and had made his reputation as a prosecutor. I am sure that he was a very good barrister as he was articulate and charismatic, but he ranted on about his ex-wife intermittently through dinner.
February 2010
I spoke to my friend on the ‘phone and asked the name of the barrister’s wife; her name was Eleanor.

[wildmountainthyme]

hi satyr,
i liked, good humour, drop of bitterness, very well told tale, sounded like this was a real event? cheers
dan

[satyr]

Pretty much all of it is true Dan. I don't remember the season so the cicada might not have been awake:).

[Suzanne]

35 years!
That is amazing. It is hard to grasp those things, if we saw it on a movie, we would never believe it. Thanks for sharing it was an interesting story.

Suzanne

[calico]

Hello again, I thought there was a lot to follow and a lot going on in too short a space - it could really help if you extended it and made it a much longer story, it covers such a lot of scenes and timescales that could be properly fleshed out, don't you think? You can tell by the way the beginning has a lot more descriptive detail and towards the end it gets a lot choppier, as you race to those punchlines. If it was me I would be very happy to have a great story in place, which you do, with all the characters ready to go, which they are, and great bits of dialogue and detail...and get to work on giving it more space. Nice!