Sharon,’ she said when she put down the tray holding the Cholesterol Supercharge: eggs, bacon, sausages, fried tomato. ‘The cook says you’re Jack.’
‘So what do you do?’ I asked her when she brought the coffee. It was assumed in Brunswick Street that waiting on table was not one’s vocation.
‘I’m an actor,’ she said. ‘In the theatre. Don’t you recognise me?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but I don’t get to the theatre much these days.’
‘What about you?’ she said, wiping the table.
‘I’m a bishop.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Is that a crook you’ve got in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
I could see she was going to be an asset to the place. Not as religious as one would have liked, but an asset.
I didn’t have anything in the legal line to do, so I put in five hours at Taub’s. Charlie was making the boardroom furniture for a Perth mining company’s new Melbourne office. It was what the business pages call an ‘emerging miner’. Usually, your emerging miner wants a table shaped like Australia minus Tasmania, chairs like breaking waves. This outfit hired a decorator who convinced them that big business in Melbourne favoured a more traditional look. A Charlie Taub look, in fact. The decorator was married to Charlie’s grandson: the extended family has its uses.
I spent the early part of the day trying to get Charlie to tell me what I was doing. He’d got out of the habit of doing drawings. ‘What for do I need drawings?’ he said. ‘I don’t make anything I haven’t made before.’
‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘I haven’t made this table before. All I’ve got is some measurements on this piece of paper torn off the side of the Age. I’d like to have some idea of how what I’m doing fits into the plan you’ve got in your head. That’s a lot to ask?’
He went off grumbling to the office and came back in ten minutes with several school exercise book pages. On them were detailed working drawings of an armoire designed to contain bottles, glasses and television and video equipment, a boardroom table, very severe, and a chair, equally spare.
‘You want drawings, I give you drawings,’ he said.
I went around the corner to Flash Advanced Telecommunications, prop. G. Bertoli, former telephone-repair person, and made two copies.
Barry Tregear rang at noon while I was reading the Age and eating the corned beef and gherkin on rye sandwich I’d brought from home. He couldn’t find any trace of a Ronald Bishop.
I knocked off at 1.30 p.m. and drove around to the address in Clifton Hill, no more than a few kilometres away. Morton Street was close enough to Collingwood Football Ground to hear the sobbing when Carlton beat them. Fitzroy used to beat them once upon a time but it would take divine intervention these days.
The bourgeoisie had long since occupied most of this once deeply working class area pinched between two main roads and a freeway. Morton Street, however, had the unloved look of a trench fallen to the rentiers.
Ronald Bishop had once lived at number 17. But not even the house still lived at number 17. It had been extracted like a tooth, its earthly remains some blackened broken bricks where a fireplace had stood and a mound of damp ashes that had saved the demolishers the trips to the tip. I knocked at number 19. No-one was home or admitting to it. I trudged off to number 15.
The bell didn’t work. I tried tapping and then gave the door a couple of thumps. The door was wrenched open and a large red-faced man in his sixties glowered at me. He was wearing a dirty blue nylon anorak zipped up to the neck and black tracksuit pants with a stripe, possibly white once, up the side.
‘Don’t fucken hammer my door,’ he said. ‘Whaddafuck d’ya want?’
I apologised and gave him my card.
‘So?’ he said, not noticeably impressed.
‘I’m trying to find out about someone who used to live next door,’ I said. ‘About twelve years ago. Were you
‘So what do you do?’ I asked her when she brought the coffee. It was assumed in Brunswick Street that waiting on table was not one’s vocation.
‘I’m an actor,’ she said. ‘In the theatre. Don’t you recognise me?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘but I don’t get to the theatre much these days.’
‘What about you?’ she said, wiping the table.
‘I’m a bishop.’
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Is that a crook you’ve got in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?’
I could see she was going to be an asset to the place. Not as religious as one would have liked, but an asset.
I didn’t have anything in the legal line to do, so I put in five hours at Taub’s. Charlie was making the boardroom furniture for a Perth mining company’s new Melbourne office. It was what the business pages call an ‘emerging miner’. Usually, your emerging miner wants a table shaped like Australia minus Tasmania, chairs like breaking waves. This outfit hired a decorator who convinced them that big business in Melbourne favoured a more traditional look. A Charlie Taub look, in fact. The decorator was married to Charlie’s grandson: the extended family has its uses.
I spent the early part of the day trying to get Charlie to tell me what I was doing. He’d got out of the habit of doing drawings. ‘What for do I need drawings?’ he said. ‘I don’t make anything I haven’t made before.’
‘Charlie,’ I said, ‘I haven’t made this table before. All I’ve got is some measurements on this piece of paper torn off the side of the Age. I’d like to have some idea of how what I’m doing fits into the plan you’ve got in your head. That’s a lot to ask?’
He went off grumbling to the office and came back in ten minutes with several school exercise book pages. On them were detailed working drawings of an armoire designed to contain bottles, glasses and television and video equipment, a boardroom table, very severe, and a chair, equally spare.
‘You want drawings, I give you drawings,’ he said.
I went around the corner to Flash Advanced Telecommunications, prop. G. Bertoli, former telephone-repair person, and made two copies.
Barry Tregear rang at noon while I was reading the Age and eating the corned beef and gherkin on rye sandwich I’d brought from home. He couldn’t find any trace of a Ronald Bishop.
I knocked off at 1.30 p.m. and drove around to the address in Clifton Hill, no more than a few kilometres away. Morton Street was close enough to Collingwood Football Ground to hear the sobbing when Carlton beat them. Fitzroy used to beat them once upon a time but it would take divine intervention these days.
The bourgeoisie had long since occupied most of this once deeply working class area pinched between two main roads and a freeway. Morton Street, however, had the unloved look of a trench fallen to the rentiers.
Ronald Bishop had once lived at number 17. But not even the house still lived at number 17. It had been extracted like a tooth, its earthly remains some blackened broken bricks where a fireplace had stood and a mound of damp ashes that had saved the demolishers the trips to the tip. I knocked at number 19. No-one was home or admitting to it. I trudged off to number 15.
The bell didn’t work. I tried tapping and then gave the door a couple of thumps. The door was wrenched open and a large red-faced man in his sixties glowered at me. He was wearing a dirty blue nylon anorak zipped up to the neck and black tracksuit pants with a stripe, possibly white once, up the side.
‘Don’t fucken hammer my door,’ he said. ‘Whaddafuck d’ya want?’
I apologised and gave him my card.
‘So?’ he said, not noticeably impressed.
‘I’m trying to find out about someone who used to live next door,’ I said. ‘About twelve years ago. Were you
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