Before I left the library, there were a couple more publications I wanted to consult. Veneer: A Journal of Contemporary Cultural Criticism, appeared quarterly. I went straight to the list of editorial credits. Veneer, said the tiniest possible type, acknowledges the financial support of the Visual Arts Panel of the Victorian Ministry for the Arts. I attributed no significance to this fact. I was just interested, that’s all.
The second book I consulted had printing almost as small. It was thick and yellow and lived in a metal bracket under the pay phone in the foyer. Under Art Dealers, between Atelier on the Yarra and Aussie’s Aborigine Art was a listing for Aubrey Fine Art. I dialled the number and asked for Mr Giles Aubrey.
There was a moment’s silence, then a sound that could have been eyebrows being raised. ‘Giles Aubrey has not been associated with us for quite some time,’ said a snooty male voice.
‘You don’t know how I can contact him?’
‘Not really. He sold the business and retired several years ago. This is the current proprietor speaking. May I be of assistance?’ Meaning, can I sell you a picture, and if not piss off.
‘It’s a rather delicate matter,’ I said, ‘concerning the provenance of an item bought some time ago, when Mr Aubrey was in charge. Before beginning legal proceedings, I’d prefer to speak with Mr Aubrey. If, however, that’s not possible, what did you say your name was…’
‘Just a moment, sir.’ After a few seconds, he came back with a phone number. The first three digits, denoting the local exchange, were unfamiliar. Somewhere in the eastern suburbs gentility belt, I assumed.
‘That’s Eaglemont, is it?’ A locale of faintly arty pretence.
‘Coldstream,’ said eyebrows, eager to send me packing.
Coldstream, of course. Eltham, Kangaroo Ground, Christmas Hills, Yarra Glen, Coldstream. Out where the Food Plusses and the Furniture Barns gave way to plant nurseries and pottery shops. A bushland bohemia of mudbrick and claret in whose sylvan glades colonies of freethinking artists once made their abode, sculpting wombats out of scrap metal, listening to jazz, swapping wives and growing their beards. Where shadow Cabinet ministers in turtle-neck sweaters once went to have their portraits painted by polygamous libertarians. Long before art was an industry, when it was a talisman against the triumphant philistinism of encroaching suburbia, these scrubby hills on the urban fringe were its Camelot.
Not a lot of Camelot left out there any more, not since art had decamped to the inner city, gone post-modern, started pleading its multiplier-effectiveness and cost/benefit ratios before the Industry Assistance Commission. Not since the bird-watching suburban gentry had parked their Range Rovers in its driveways and paved its bush tracks with antique-finish concrete cobblestones available in an extensive range of all-natural designer colours. Only the artists’ half-feral children remained, gone thirty, still barefoot and stinking of patchouli oil. And old Giles Aubrey, retired to some bend in the river.
His phone rang a long time, long enough for me to rehearse my approach, long enough for me to think he wasn’t going to answer. ‘Giles Aubrey speaking.’ A voice with rounded vowels and clipped diction, the sort of voice that would once have been called educated, that suggested I forthwith state my business and heaven help me if I was a fool.
Anyone hoping for Giles Aubrey’s assistance would need to play it deferential, keep their wits about them. I apologised for disturbing him at the weekend, inferred that I was calling at the express instructions of the Minister for the Arts, and wondered if he might spare me a few moments of his unquestionably precious time to provide some background on Victor Szabo. ‘The minister is currently reliant on a limited number of sources of expertise. Ms Lambert, Szabo’s biographer, has been very helpful, naturally.’
For all the archness in his voice, Giles Aubrey deigned not to rise to the temptation of petty rivalry. ‘Exactly what is it you wish to know, Mr Whelan?’
‘It’s more the personal aspect. Family details, children, that sort of thing,’ I told him.
‘I’m not sure I follow you.’ His voice quavered with age, but he was following me all right.
‘Victor Szabo is still largely unknown to the general public.’ I was groping my way here. ‘So naturally there will be a great deal of interest in his background when it is announced that a government-funded gallery is spending six hundred thousand dollars on one of his paintings.’
‘That much? For one of Victor’s? Really?’ Behind the patrician disbelief was something else. Vindication, perhaps. ‘Which one, may one ask?’
I told him. There was a long silence and when finally he spoke it was as if recognising the arrival of something long anticipated. ‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘Oh dearie, dearie me.’
Coldstream was a good ninety minutes away. ‘I’ll be in your area a bit later this afternoon,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I could drop around?’
‘Very well.’ His acquiescence was immediate, total. ‘Some things are better discussed face to face.’ The last house, he told me, bottom of the hill.
But first things first. The fruit of my loins was making his descent. I hiked my purchases up to Parliament House, tossed them into the Charade and made the airport with seconds to spare.
Tullamarine was thick with Italian families, there to meet the Alitalia flight from Rome, cooling their heels while customs frisked their grandmothers for contraband salami. Red’s flight was running ten minutes behind schedule- which gave me a chance to read what the Saturday paper pundits had to say about the Cabinet reshuffle.
Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic was the recurrent phrase. Since these were the same luminaries who’d confidently predicted our defeat at the previous election, I tried not to take offence. We had, after all, won by two seats. The Herald ’s Moat Death Puzzle story ran to five paragraphs, covered only the bare bones and took the anticipated line. A side-bar profiled famous artistic suicides.
All up, I’d been waiting at the gate lounge for half an hour by the time the flight landed and the last of the exiting passengers streamed through the door. Red was not among them.
It was definitely his flight. Definitely. The airline woman at the service counter verified it, ratting her glossy nails across a keyboard, consulting her monitor. Unaccompanied child, Redmond Whelan. Ticketed, confirmed and boarded. Might I have simply missed him in the crowd, she asked? There were quite a lot of families on the flight, returning from holidays. Had he perhaps proceeded directly to claim his baggage?
‘He wouldn’t do that,’ I said, anxiety mounting, and turned with a sweep of my arm to prove my point.
‘Tricked ya!’
Red stood behind me, grinning from ear to ear.
We embraced, his cheek on my sternum, the bill of his baseball cap obscuring his face. It was a solid hug, but brisk. Even a ten-year-old has an image to think about.
‘So,’ I said, holding him at arm’s length the better to examine him. Every time I saw Red, he’d changed in some subtle, inexpressible way. His face still had the same cherubic quality as always, but the body below was whippier, carried less puppy fat. His eventual shape, I allowed myself the conceit, would owe more to me than to his mother. ‘How you been?’
‘Good.’
‘How was the flight?’
‘Good.’
‘How was your holiday?’ Three weeks on the beach at Noosa Heads with Wendy and her barrister boyfriend. I didn’t want the details.
‘Good.’
So far, so good. ‘Good,’ I said.
Quite the frequent flier, Red travelled light. A backpack and a Walkman were his total luggage. Everything else he needed-several hundred comics, a skateboard and a change of clothes-was waiting in his room at my place. Our place, I thought, brimming with the fact.
Back when Red was seven and his mother was in Canberra securing her future in the affirmative action major league, the boy and I had lived together for the best part of a year. Wendy had returned home at regular intervals and phoned frequently, but for weeks at a time it was just the two of us, living the life of Riley. Okay, so we ate out often enough to have our own table at Pizza Hut, slept in the same bed to cut down on housework and missed the odd day of school. But I always ordered pizzas with a high vegetable content, insisted Red brush his teeth at least once a week and kept him relatively free of parasite infestations. And it was only by unavoidable accident that Wendy discovered him home alone one morning when she arrived earlier than anticipated. The olive-skinned beauty in my bed and the Hell’s Angel on the roof with a crowbar had a perfectly innocent explanation, if only she’d stuck around to hear it.