“Everything is peculiar about this,” he said. “Being shadowed by my mother-in-law is very weird behavior. I’m twenty-three. I’ve got a marriage to think of, not to mention the Olympics.”
“I’m too old for you now, is that it? And I’m weird!” She began to weep. “You lead me on, and now you prefer your teenage sluts.”
He groaned. “They’re not... I don’t... Jesus, I’m calling a halt for the good of everyone.”
Dulcie wiped her eyes and sighed theatrically. “Sure you are, you monster. Come and sit down for your dinner then.”
She spun on her heel and he followed her swimsuited backside and bare thighs toward the kitchen. In the doorway she turned abruptly and kissed him hard, and pressed her body against him, and he followed her upstairs once more.
Afterward, she said to him, smugly, “I bet those girls aren’t as good at this as I am.”
Speechless, he just shook his head. His shoulder blades had left spots of blood on the sheets.
Brian and Judy walked hand in hand through Old King Cole’s monstrous mouth. Luna Park was Sydney’s traditional Saturday-night entertainment magnet for young couples: for boys treating their girlfriends to a night out, and for both sexes hoping to meet someone. It was so close to home yet this was their first visit there since moving to Lavender Bay.
It was Brian’s idea. So was leaving the house quietly, without involving Dulcie. “We need some time alone,” he’d said.
They strolled along the boardwalk past the Wild Mouse, the Spider, and Dodgem City. The roller coaster rumbled overhead, the night regularly punctuated by customers’ screams. A breeze from the bay ruffled girls’ skirts and blew ice cream wrappers across their path.
Outside Dodgem City, four young sailors were chatting to three women. The sailors were egging each other on with nudges and winks, and smoking flashily, with tough-guy hand gestures. They wore their caps so jauntily far back on their heads, behind waves of pomaded hair, that the caps seemed to defy gravity. Sparks flew over the dodgem cars and the air smelled of electricity.
Brian felt Judy’s grip tighten and her shoulders stiffen as she urged him away.
“What ride would you like to go on?” he asked her. “The Big Dipper? The Ghost Train?”
“Did you see those girls?”
“The girls with the sailors? Yes, why?”
“What did you think of them?”
“Prostitutes, probably.”
“Attractive? Your sort of girls?”
“Hardly! What’s this about?”
“I’m trying to work out what sort of women you go for.”
“Your sort. Jesus, Judy!”
“Come home then, and show me how you really feel.”
As they walked back through Old King Cole’s mouth, two incoming teenage girls, heavily made up and no more than fifteen, elbowed each other, giggled, and the bolder one called out, “Hey, aren’t you Brian Tasker?”
He nodded in polite acknowledgment, but Judy glowered at them, her mood worsening when she heard the girl mutter, “The lucky titless bitch!”
At home, Dulcie was sitting in the dark garden. She looked pale and jumpy and her hair was awry, as if she’d been pacing in the wind. She was underdressed for the cool night and had a frangipani flower stuck behind an ear.
“There you are!” she said, too brightly. “The two lovebirds!” She raised her voice over the rumble and screams of the roller coaster. “I’m having a sherry. Will you join me?”
“Not in the mood, but thanks, Mum,” said Judy. “We’re off to bed.”
When Judy returned from Mass the next morning, Brian was sitting in his bathrobe in the garden again, sipping a cup of cocoa and staring sleepily across the bay.
She pulled open his robe. “So you’ve shaved down again!” she said, and slowly shook her head.
“I need to be transformed,” he replied. He reached a languid hand out for his cup but misjudged the distance and his hand fell short. “Sit down and have some cocoa.”
Dulcie was watching from the kitchen window. “There’s no more cocoa, Judy,” she called out. “I’ll make a pot of coffee.”
Brian looked toward his mother-in-law. “I’d like a coffee too — thanks, Dulcie. Everything’s a bit blurry this morning.”
Judy said, “I’ve been worried about your cuts and scratches. Sitting out here among the oleanders. They’re highly poisonous, you know.”
It was during his next 1,500-meter time trial on Monday that Brian Tasker collapsed at the 1,350-meter turn and became tangled in the lane ropes.
Still holding his stopwatch, Don Wilmott jumped fully clothed into the pool, disentangled him from the ropes, and held his head above water. But by the time Brian was hauled from the water, laid on the pool deck, and resuscitation was attempted, he was dead.
At the inquest the city coroner found that, tragically, repeated severe exertion had further damaged the clearly genetically defective heart of a gifted athlete.
His grieving widow attracted wide public sympathy after the Telegraph’s pictorial coverage of the funeral service at St. Francis Xavier, attended by top athletes from a wide range of sports, including the up-and-coming swimming star Murray Rose.
Two years later, Judy Tasker, only twenty-three, married the Telegraph’s young police reporter, Steve McNamara. By this time, after winning three gold medals at the 1956 Melbourne Games at the age of seventeen, Murray Rose was a national hero.
In April 1958, when CPO Eric Kruger and the Warramunga left for six months’ exercises with the Far East Strategic Reserve, it was convenient for all concerned for Dulcie to move in with her daughter and her new husband.
Part III
Criminal Justice
Rip-Off
by Tom Gilling
Sydney Harbour
It was Haklander who gave me the passenger’s name: Ramirez. He told me Ramirez was flying in from the States and would need a ride into the city. Usually I sat on the airport rank with the other drivers, but Haklander said I could make a bit extra by picking up Ramirez in person.
“You don’t have to go looking for him,” he said, tossing me the keys to the taxi. “Just hold up a sign with his name on it. He’ll find you.”
Haklander was Dutch, or maybe Belgian. You had to listen hard to catch the accent. He owned half a dozen taxis. Four times a week I paid him $120 for the privilege of spending twelve hours in a Ford Falcon with illegal tires, a clapped-out gearbox, and nearly 200,000 kilometers on the clock. I drove days: three in the morning until three in the afternoon. The money and traffic were worse but there was less chance of being beaten up. Haklander must have paid a quarter of a million each for the plates, but thanks to Uber they were practically worthless. Haklander already had his eye on other ways to make money and upgrading his taxis wasn’t part of his business plan.
“Is this guy Ramirez a friend of yours?” I asked.
“No,” said Haklander. “One of the other drivers told me about the job. He couldn’t take it himself so I’m giving it to you.” He paused. “If you’re not interested I can give it to someone else.”
The details sounded vague — deliberately vague. It wasn’t exactly a dream job: forty dollars max. I was probably better off taking my chances on the rank. But I spent too much of my life sitting on ranks. I told Haklander I’d do it.
“Ramirez. R-A-M-I-R-E-Z,” he said. “The commonest name in Mexico.”
“Someone told me Rodriguez was the commonest name in Mexico.”