‘Dexter Dupont.’
‘Yes. Mr Dupont. He was most surprised at my knowledge of French. Not what he expected from a little old biddy by the bay.’
I couldn’t help thinking there was a song in that — ‘The Little Old Biddy by the Bay’.
She told me of her extraordinary life, writing for many years for local newspapers under a male pseudonym; drawing the inmates at the hospital on Peel Island where she worked as a nurse; travels throughout Europe and the United States.
But I needed to know about Fairweather.
‘I met him, yes,’ she said, smiling and looking down at her hands. ‘There was talk for years that we had become ... Well, romantically attached. But we all know Mr Fairweather was not inclined towards the fairer sex. Nor the other, in fact. It is my belief he was the only completely sexless man I have ever met. Excuse my language.’
He had stayed in one of the abandoned shacks for eleven days. He ate little. He sat quietly with several of the patients of Peel Island. Then he went away.
‘And the paintings?’ I asked, almost impatiently.
‘Ah, the paintings.’
‘Were there any?’
‘You may not believe this, but when he left the island I went to his shack. Out of curiosity, I suppose. A bit of a stickybeak I was. They were draughty, the huts. Shocking in winter, and in a storm. And he did what he had always done, or so I read. He had stuffed every crack in that place with canvasses.’
I had indeed been told about this habit of Fairweather’s by Igor the Russian taxi driver. Once a painting was done it meant little to the master. It was the act of creation that was important. The finished work was the detritus of that process.
‘Do you remember how many there were? What they were of? Can you
‘I retrieved them, of course. Some were not salvageable. There were twenty-two that I recovered.’
I swallowed loudly. ‘And ... you ... where are they now?’
‘I stored them in the hospital. I tried to get in touch with Ian but he seemed to have vanished. He had an assistant, a foreign gentleman. He told me he looked after all of Mr Fairweather’s business.’
‘An assistant?’
‘A large gentleman with a shaved head. I didn’t think much of him. He wore thongs and smelled of diesel. Then my work on the island ended. I went back to the mainland, got married and had children. I returned to civilian life, as they say.’
‘And that was it?’
‘That was it.’
‘Oh.’
‘They were horrible pictures. Beautiful, but horrible. I never saw them again. I never wanted to.’
I studied her across the table. Was I being conned? Did she know more than she was telling me? Did she have the Fairweathers stashed in an air-conditioned vault?
And who was the agitated young man who had come to visit? Was it the doomed James Fenton Browne? As for the thonged assistant, it appeared I had more to discuss with Igor the Terrible.
‘I hope that helps you,’ she said.
‘Yes, thank you.’ I sipped the dregs of my tea, which had gone stone cold.
~ * ~
13
It was time to go sailing.
But first I had to see my old friend Igor once more. He was holding back on me like the good retired KGB agent that he probably was. I planned to hold him down in his recliner rocker armed with his dusty bust of Lenin until he talked. Once upon a time I had ways of making people talk. Brandishing a plaster revolutionary had not been one of them.
I towed Pig Pen all the way up the highway, over the Gateway Bridge and on to Bribie Island. I could feel my little tin dinghy pulling at the tail of the Peugeot. I fully expected the steering column to smoke.
En route to Bribie I thought of Rosemary Pentimento, the Little Old Biddy by the Bay, and how there were so many people in every city in the world, sitting quietly in their homes, whiling away the years, with so much of the past in their heads. So many stories of life and loves, of great encounters and historical moments. All of this history, enough to fill countless volumes, but ebbing towards oblivion. Stories that were the invisible connecting tissue to recorded history. And who was collecting it? Nobody. It seemed to me we no longer cared about our stories. Our own heritage. Even our own antecedents. People had enough personal data in their own backyards to occupy and entertain them for a lifetime. And nobody seemed to care any more.
My son is an IT boffin. You can’t tell him anything because he always has those iPod earphones in his ears. You can’t show him anything because he’s already seen it on the internet. How quickly things have changed. I filled the cabin of the Peugeot with the gloomy clouds of my introspection all the way to Igor the Terrible’s house.
I pulled into the old man’s driveway. It was eerily quiet. As quiet as Red Square in the dead of winter. (Not that I’d been there, but a quick call to Jack and no doubt he could produce reams of paperwork on the subject.)
From the veranda I could hear someone sobbing. It was Manya — I could see her in the kitchen, her head in her hands. I tapped on the flyscreen door.
‘Manya?’ I said timidly. I tapped again. She looked up, startled.
‘Manya, it’s me.’
She put on her glasses and craned towards the door.
‘OHHH,’ she said, waving me in.
‘Manya. What’s happened?’
‘It’s IGOR,’ she said, her face red, her eyes puffy and tear-filled. ‘He have a HEART ATTACK.’ I walked her from the kitchen and into the lounge. I was about to lower her into the big brown rocker, then thought better of it, and steered her towards the couch.
‘POOR IGOR,’ she said.
‘Manya. Tell me what happened.’
It had been a heart attack all right, early that morning, but not your usual act of God. It took me an hour to extract the truth.
‘They come in here with GUN,’ she howled. ‘They put to IGOR’S HEAD and say, “TELL US, TELL US, or we PUT YOUR BRAINS ALL OVER WALL.’”
‘Calm down, Manya, it’s all right. Who was it?’
‘How do I know? MEN WITH GUN. They make him draw on piece of paper. Write down. I was in shock. I couldn’t SPEAK. They say, “Don’t move or we BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT TOO.” I see Igor go pale, and sweating, then when he finished drawing of island he GRAB HIS CHEST and the men go. I never forget their faces. NEVER. Ohhhhh, POOR IGOR.’
‘The island? He drew an island?’
‘WHAT?’
‘IGOR DREW AN ISLAND?’ I shouted back at her. I was getting a headache with all the shouting. Every time I was around these people I seemed to get a headache.
‘Yes, EE-arn’s island. He dead thirty year, EE-arn, and still he haunt us. I must get back to HOSP-EE-TAL.’
‘Manya, Manya, slow down. Have you called the police?’
‘I no call police.’
‘Why not?’
‘Igor don’t like no police. Every little tap on the door, Igor, he worried. He been worried about the tap on the door half his life. First in RUSSIA and now BRIBIE ISLAND. It all EE-ARN’S FAULT.’