GONE: NO ADDRESS
Home page | Floaters | Previous chapter | Next chapter Joanna told me an interesting thing about the phones at Mercury: you don't get beeps on a long-distance call. This is something to do with bulk-buying of phone calls. I don't understand how it happens, but the end result is that if you ring somebody outside Sydney, they think it's a local call.
Today I took advantage of that. I dialled Canberra 397-0989.
After a while, somebody picked up the phone and grunted.
"Helloru," I said in my Russian accent. "Natasha iss speakink. Iss Vince zere, do you please?"
"Come off it, Mum," said Zach wearily.
"How are you doing?" I asked, dropping all pretence. "Keeping up with your schoolwork?"
"Yeah, that's OK. I got this mass new game." He meant a computer game.
"Are you eating proper food, and looking after yourself?"
"We are now. Pizzas and burgers and stuff. Alison only makes salads, and she's always so late home."
I felt as if I'd been hit in the chest: I hadn't expected her to actually move in.
"That's great," I said. I paused, so he could ask how I was doing, and perhaps where I was, and if I'd be coming back. He didn't ask.
"Got to get back to my game. See you later, Mum."
"Are you missing me?" I asked. But he'd already put the phone down.
My little project for this morning was to deliver the postcard to Vince. It looks so authentic, with its fake postmark: COLOMBO 12-6-27. I had a lot of trouble figuring how to get it into the Australian postal system. I could deliver it myself, but I want it to arrive officially - the same way Rajiv delivers my ancient mail.
This morning I lay in wait for Rajiv. The garden around the letterbox is rather wild, anyway, and some bulbs are being choked by creepers.
Sure enough, at around 10 o'clock I heard his little motorbike coming up the street, pausing at a letterbox every few seconds. He didn't notice me, on all fours in the garden. As he dropped something in the Castarinis' letterbox next door, I stood up and stretched my arms, an ancient Rustavi trowel in my hand.
He jammed his brakes on, and cut the engine right back.
"Tash!" he said, getting very familiar.
"Or Nimue."
"I don't understand that, how Tash is short for Nimue."
"It's a long story, Rajiv. Any prehistoric mail for me today?"
"Only a phone bill, I'm afraid." He handed it to me, and prepared to go.
"Rajiv! Can I ask you a question?"
He looked worried.
"About the mail," I added.
He looked relieved.
"My question is, remembering that postcard from Hawaii that came last week, that I didn't have to pay extra for: what if it were delivered to the wrong address by mistake?"
"I never would do that. I am careful. Not like some postpersons."
"But what if a careless postperson delivered it to the wrong address?"
"In that case, the resident at that address must annotate it 'Delivered to wrong address' and deposit in a posting box."
"What if they forgot to annotate it, or didn't know they had to, and just deposited it in a posting box?"
"In that case, it should be re-postmarked, and redelivered to them. Soon they would realize the error of their ways."
"What if it was from overseas, or very old?"
"UPU regulations would apply. Result would be the same. But Tash, why are you asking this?"
"Call me Nimue, please. Tash is a very private nickname."
"I am so very sorry. I do not mean to intrude."
"That's fine," I smiled. "I'm simply wondering why I get such old mail. Tell me, do other people commonly receive letters a hundred years old or more?"
"I'm afraid the service is not as speedy as it used to be."
"You mean they do?"
"The mails are confidential," he said, shaking his head. "I am not permitted to say."
"Unofficially?" I coaxed, stroking my neck and bringing my head closer to him.
He stepped back. "Unofficially, Tash, I have seldom seen such old mail as you receive. In fact, much of the mail in our holding bureau is destined for this very address."
My mind boggled at this: perhaps hundreds of old letters to 87 Boongarre Street, to be delivered over the next four years.
"What on earth could they be about?" I said. "Are they all from Martin? Why don't you deliver them all now?"
"We cannot do that. It would be to break the faith with the sender, who, after all, has paid the postage. Those letters may be to people who will not live here for many years yet."
"How would anybody know who's going to live here in years' time?" I asked, puzzled.
"We simply deliver on the requested date. If the recipient is incorrect, usual remedies apply."
With a benevolent smile, Rajiv went on his way.
This left me with the problem of whether to risk dumping my Ceylon postcard in a mailbox and hoping it would arrive. Despite what I'd understood from Rajiv, I didn't believe it would simply be delivered without question to Vince's Balmain address. The postpersons would crowd around it, saying "Hey, Bert, look at this! Colombo, June 1927, it says. And look, there's a twopenny stamp on it, and everybody knows the postage rate from Ceylon in 1927 was threepence- halfpenny. Pull the other one, mate, whoever you are! Wasting our time!" Rip!
And my morning's work would be in vain.
So I've decided not to restrict myself to Vince: I'll create a few more "old" letters. First of all, I'll send a postcard to Sue from Aaron. If I can fool Sue, a practising graphic designer, I can easily fool the Postal Service. I'll pretend Aaron's gone back to Vancouver. I noticed a few Canadian postcards at the postal history shop; I can go back and buy one of those.
Aaron wouldn't write much on a postcard. It would be something like "Hi, Babe. How ya doin'? I'm back here for a spell, on a hush-hush job. Seeya, Aaron."
Mercury was in chaos. Workmen were hammering at partition walls, dismantling them and moving them around.
"We're having a reorganization," Joanna confided. "This is JB's way of keeping people on their toes. He's decided an open-plan office would be better, and the departments are reorganized too. Instead of five, as from today there are only two: the Input department and the Output department."
I looked at her blankly.
"This means you can save time by finding new donors when no orders are coming in," she explained.
"But then the donors might find the phones engaged," I said. "I thought JB was dead against that."
Joanna shrugged. "Sometimes the donors are more important, and sometimes saving money is more important. The emphasis changes every week or two. You'll get used to it. It's called fine-tuning. Don't worry, JB knows what he's doing."
She lowered her voice. "I think the change in walls is to put Mathilde in her place," she explained.
A lot of things go on here that I don't understand yet. Perhaps I never will. Joanna must have seen my puzzled look, so she explained it to me in words of one syllable. "She wants JB, and he don't want her."
"Wants?"
"She's been trying to get him into bed as long as Mercury's been running. She nearly had him the other day. He went into her office, the door got closed, and we heard thumps on the wall. He came out with his tie crooked, and a strange look on his face."
We both laughed nervously. Nobody could hear us, with all the banging that was going on around us.
"Did she try to rape him, or something?" I asked.
"She won't say. But I don't think it's a coincidence that today her office is being demolished. Mathilde's put out with you, too."
"Whatever have I done to deserve that?" I said, amazed. I've hardly spoken to Mathilde.
"She thinks you have some power over JB because of your name. She thinks you picked that name to entrap him."
"That's ridiculous!" It seemed to be as bad as Downer High School, where some teachers didn't speak to each other because of decade- old imagined grudges. "Next time I see Mathilde, I'll tell her I'm not interested in Jacques, in that sort of way."
"Save your breath," Joanna advised. "The more you protest, the less she'll believe you. I keep telling her, she's wasting her time. JB's sworn off women - they've hurt him once too often."
I was given the job of ringing some customers who hadn't ordered anything for a while, to find out why.
I rang Jacky at Borroloola. He didn't appear to have a surname, according to the computer. Any no-name is a friend of mine.
"We're here to serve your needs," I said brightly. "If there's anything you want, we'll try and get it for you."
"There's only one thing I really want right now," he sighed.
"Yes?"
I waited.
"I could do with a really good root." Behind him, somebody was roaring with laughter.
"So could I," I said softly.
"What'd you say?" Jacky was incredulous.
"Nothing. You're on your own, mate."
At tea-time I told Joanna about Jacky.
"They're always saying that," she sighed. "What did you tell him?"
"I told him No - of course."
"Never say No to a donor, Nimue. 'Everysing is possible' is Mercury's motto. We have an arrangement with an escort agency in Katherine."
When I sat down the other day to create a postcard from Aaron to Sue, I realized I had no idea what his writing looked like, and no way to get a sample. I can hardly ask Sue for it; that will give too much away.
Then I thought of that briefcase, or more particularly, its contents. Among the papers Charlie's holding for ransom, there's almost certainly something in Aaron's handwriting. An idea slowly formed. What if I wait for Charlie and his wife to go out, then sneak over and see if I can find it? They don't have a car, and I've noticed that around nine every Friday morning they go off in a taxi, and stay away most of the day. Probably rounding up their gambling debts, or living it up in a Leagues Club. And Friday's tomorrow.
So this morning - Friday - I got up early and drank my coffee in the sitting room, keeping an eye on the road. At twenty past nine a taxi tooted, and a minute later Charlie and Edna came out dressed in their ancient finery, and departed. Charlie had the briefcase in his hand.
A few minutes later, trembling a little, I crossed the road, totally incognito. I was carrying no identification (though all I have these days is a library card I found, in the name of Mrs N. K. Rustavi). I wasn't even carrying a key: my back-door key hangs on a twig in the walnut tree.
Instead of my usual baggy, patterned clothes, I wore a cheap green sleeveless dress, which I bought for gardening. In my panties, I tucked an interesting metal tool from the garage. I think it's a tyre lever.
Once, when Bryn and I were living out of Wagga, we managed to lock our keys inside the house. Being the mechanics teacher, Bryn always had a lot of tools in his smelly old car. When he used a tyre lever on our sash window, the screws on the catch popped out, with hardly any pressure.
For appearances' sake, I knocked at his front door. No answer, of course; so I continued around the side of the house, on the narrow pathway between the house and the deserted building site next door. I was in luck: Edna is obviously a fresh-air fiend, and had left the dining-room window open a little. A fussy little wall screened it from the street.
Something inside was preventing the window from opening further, but I applied my trusty lever. Soon there was a delicious crunching sound, and the window gave way. They'd had a wooden rod squeezed between the lower sash and the top frame to hold the window open. My levering had snapped it.
I felt virtuous about that: not damaging the window itself. I hoped Charlie didn't have a burglar alarm, but after living here a month I'd have heard him set it off by now.
"What the hell are you doing, Nimue?" a small voice demanded inside me. "Breaking and entering? Since when were you a burglar?"
I'm being different, that's what I'm doing. In the first half of my life, honesty never got me anywhere. And I've already stolen twenty thousand dollars in cash, so a trivial burglary won't make much difference to my sentence.
There was no sign of life anywhere outside, apart from the odd plane overhead. The window was low; I had no trouble scrambling through it. Inside, the house stank of mothballs: an old people's smell. I wandered through, looking for the briefcase. No trace of it, at first. The smaller bedroom was obviously Charlie's office: it contained only a wooden captain's chair, and a huge desk, topped in dark green leather, which would be the envy of JB. The wall above the desk was covered in framed photos of the same young man: not Charlie, but vaguely similar.
I eyed the eight drawers with interest. Thinking of Simon and his money, I tried the bottom left drawer first. Locked. I tried the drawer above it. Unlocked.
Charlie and Simon should get together: they could teach each other a lot. I pulled the papers in the bottom drawer out through the hole where I'd removed the drawer above it. There wasn't anything that looked as if it might be Aaron's, but there were some interesting newspaper cuttings and photos. It seemed that Charlie's son had gone missing in the Vietnam war: this explained the photo-shrine on the wall. There was a yellowing newsletter folded open at an article about the last known patrol of Private Barry Grubber. He and two other soldiers were crawling in the mud at the edge of a rice paddy when -
I found myself on the chair. I had a terrible taste in my mouth, and a painful bump on the side of my head. It begged me to put my hand to it, but when I tried to rub it, my arm wouldn't move.
This was because both arms were tied behind me. A tea-towel, tasting of detergent, was holding my mouth open. My feet couldn't move either, apart from a wriggle of ankles.
This is what must have happened: Charlie and Edna came home early. Perhaps they'd forgotten something. Hearing an intruder in the study, they crept in and found me with my nose in a desk drawer. Possibly they didn't recognize me in my gardening dress; I hope so. Charlie then picked up a convenient tyre lever and whacked me on the head with it: "in just the right place."
While I was out to the world, they tied me to the chair, by my wrists (behind my back), ankles, and waist. Feeling satisfied with their handiwork, they then went out again, leaving me in their study, to be chopped up and eaten when they returned.
All the desk drawers were neatly closed, and the papers put away. At least they didn't blindfold me.
Despite being gagged, I found I could make quite a lot of noise - though it hurt. Whether passers-by would hear it and act on it was another matter. I wriggled furiously, and managed to free my ankles a little: my feet could just touch the ground. I could move my hands a few inches, but not enough to reach anything.
I discovered that by bending over like a hunchback, I could shuffle along a little. I inched out of the study, into the hallway. At least they hadn't tied the chair down. As I moved, the ropes around my feet became a little looser.
I reached the front door, and tried to turn the handle with my teeth. It wouldn't move: they must have deadlocked it.
I inched back down the hall, into the dining room: the way I'd come in. The window was closed now, with a thicker piece of wood holding it in place.
I tried to get into the kitchen, for a knife, but the door was closed. Being bent over the chair, I couldn't reach the handle.
I don't know if you've ever been shut in like that, but I was terrified. This is what prison must be like: the dreadful knowledge that you're trapped. I got desperate. I don't know how I managed to do it, but I wedged a broom between my elbow and my chair, and knocked away the stick that held the dining room window shut. With my mouth, I managed to lift the lower sash a little. (The tea- towel gag stopped it from hurting too much.) An elbow opened the window a bit further, and with my head I squeezed it open further still.
I tried to dive out. The idea was to go head-first, rolling as I went. With my head on the window-sill, I kicked my feet up and lurched forward. But the window wasn't open wide enough: a corner of the chair hit the pane. With an ear-splitting crash, the glass shattered, and my head was showered in fragments.
I lay there dazed for a minute, my still-throbbing head on the sill. I knew I was still alive only because I was hurting . I could feel fragments of glass in my hair, and tried to shake my head to get them out. It hurt. But at least the glass hadn't stabbed me in the face.
Feet back on the floor, I painfully straightened myself out as much as I could, and heaved the window up a little more.
The second dive worked, and the chair took most of the force as I fell onto the concrete path below. My hip and shoulder were also hurting now, but the back of the chair hung loose, and I could move my hands a lot more - though still not enough to untie anything. I was breathing with funny little grunts, I noticed as I lay there on the path. Slowly I picked myself up and perched on the remains of the chair. A trickle of blood dripped down my cheek: the glass had cut me after all.
I was wondering whether I could use the pieces of broken glass to cut the plastic twine I'd been tied up with, or whether it would be better to hobble home, when I heard the faint puttering of the postman's motorbike.
Frantically I shuffled down towards Charlie's letterbox. As I arrived at Charlie's gate and tried to open it with my mouth, I saw Rajiv on his motorbike, sailing along the footpath on the other side of the street. I let out an unearthly cry. But a plane went overhead at the same time, drowning me out, and Rajiv was looking at my place, over the road.
I realized that if Charlie and Edna weren't getting any mail today, Rajiv probably wouldn't see me. Only my head was projecting over the fairly tall gate. I wanted to go out, but the gate opened inwards. Even though I could undo the catch with my mouth, I couldn't pull the gate in at the same time, because the chair was in the way.
After dropping something in my letterbox, Rajiv zigzagged across the road. He wasn't heading for me, but for the house next door. I tried to wave my arms, but they hardly moved.
I let out an amazing, terrible cry. It sounded like an elephant in pain. Perhaps it was faintly audible over the puttering of his motorbike. He was so close, but not looking. Then he seemed to glance back a little. Summoning up all my resources, I did it again. He looked, saw my disembodied head above the gate, and stopped in amazement.
After a few seconds sitting astride the motorbike, studying this apparition with the blue-checked tea-towel tied through its mouth and blood dripping down its face, he figured out what it might be.
"Tash?" he asked, dismounting, a letter in his hand.
"Rnhmhmhmh!" I said, waving my head around enthusiastically.
"And what are you doing here, in this sorry state?" he asked. A sort of patriarchal disapproval was evident in his tone.
I couldn't tell him.
He tried to open the gate, but I was in the way. I shuffled my chair back; its good back leg caught on a step, and I had to heave myself up. The movement brought agony to my head, and I almost fell over.
For the first time, Rajiv noticed the chair. Over his normally smiling face, emotions were crossing like clouds in a gale. He backed away.
Surely he's not going to leave me here? I thought. "Aarrrhhhh!" I wailed, dog-like.
"Stop it, Tash," he commanded. He went over to his idling motorbike and lifted the seat. After rummaging around in the compartment under the seat, he pulled out a Swiss army knife.
"You are lucky that I'm well equipped," was his stern comment, as he squeezed through the half-open gate. He chose the tiny scissors to cut the rope around my ankles, which he did without laying a finger on me. The dress, which is short, had ridden up around my thighs. He took great care to look away.
When he cut the string around my hands, I knew the lightness a prisoner must feel on release, as she walks out of those grim gates, a free woman at last. I stood up in relief, stretching my legs for the first time in an hour or two. At least I tried to: I was still attached to the chair by my waist. I looked at Rajiv: he was leaving, putting the knife back under the seat.
"Rwhmnnnn!" I called, wriggling my waist to demonstrate its captivity.
"You must do the rest, Tash," he said. "It is not entirely up to us postpersons." He buzzed away down the street.
With my hands now free, it was easy to get the tea-towel off my head. I tried to untie the rope around my waist, but the knot was under the seat where I couldn't reach it. In the end, doubled over like a cripple, I staggered home across the road, dragging the broken chair behind me. As I reached the far kerb, a car drove past, throbbing with raucous music. The young hoons inside shouted something at me. It didn't sound at all sympathetic.
Today's letter to the Rustavis was an unpleasant one, from the Oatley Marina. Person/s were believed to be living on the Rustavi yacht, in contravention of rule 51. Get them off, the manager ordered, or there will be trouble.
Not liking its tone (specially after my ordeal) I threw it straight in the rubbish tin. The marina manager can solve his own problems.
While I soaked my numerous aching parts in a hot bath, washed by the soothing music of Siegfried, I devised fiendish ways of taking revenge on Charlie. I also reflected that I'd gone to far too much trouble to get a sample of Aaron's writing. A flash of inspiration came to me: Aaron would not normally write at all, unless desperate. He would only telephone. Sue would never have seen his writing, and all I needed to fool her was a half-convincing postcard and a few words like "babe".
The phone rang, and I hobbled out of the bath.
"Hello," I said, cautiously. It was Vince.
"Greetings to the beautiful Natasha. How are you doing? Still can't shake that cold off, eh? What's that racket in the background? Didn't know you were into opera. Look, I promised to give you a tinkle if I heard from Martin the Spartan."
"Yes?" I was trying to dry myself, without putting the phone down.
"I got a postcard from him." He paused. "But, Tash, it's got to be a fake."
"Why?" I whispered, disappointed. I went to so much trouble. Did he suspect me?
"For a start, it's from Martin to Vince."
"So?"
"Have you forgotten your husband already? Sometimes you sound like a different woman."
"Which of my husbands are you referring to, Vince: Bryn, Simon, or Martin?"
"How did you think up those names so fast?" Vince laughed. "Anybody else would have said Tom, Dick, or Mars. See what I'm getting at now?"
"I've got a terrible headache, Vince." That was true.
"If Martin sent me a postcard, it would be from Mars to Venus."
"Of course," I murmured, not wanting to admit I didn't have a clue what he was talking about.
"Is your postcard from him handy? Take a look at it."
"Hold on, it's on the mantelpiece." I fetched it.
"Now, who's he addressed it to?"
"To me," I said puzzled.
"But Dear who?"
"Ahhh! I get it!" I lied. "'Dear Tash!' "
"Now do you see?" Vince asked. "Instead of getting one from Mars to Venus, I get the formal treatment: Dear Vince, Love Martin. It really doesn't sound like him."
"Weren't the Victorians more formal?" I was furiously racking my brain, trying to figure out what could be short for Vince.
"That doesn't sound like you, Tash. This isn't Victorian, it's from Ceylon, 1921 or maybe 27, I can't quite read the postmark."
He muttered on a bit more. He knew something was wrong, but couldn't work out what.
"Another thing," he added. "As well as the original postmark, this has a brand new Sydney one. Yesterday."
"Sometimes they do that," I blabbered. "If they find something that's been lying around a long time, they'll postmark it again so the foreign side will be blamed, not our local postpersons."
"Hmmmmph!" said Vince, not very convinced. "Postpersons, indeed. All in all, this has an inauthentic ring. Nothing I can put my finger on: the writing's definitely his, but I don't see how he could have suddenly got to Ceylon in 1927. Tell me," (his voice dropped) "do you think he might have got somebody else to send it for him. Somebody who was in Ceylon in 1927."
"But how could they do his writing?" I asked. "It's very distinctive. It would be impossible to copy." (In fact, the more distinctive handwriting is, the easier it is to copy. It had been simple.)
"I suspect he's having me on, somehow," said Vince darkly. "He's not there at home with you, is he?"
I laughed. "Actually, he's hiding in the broom cupboard right now."
"If he is, I'm going to sneak over there and catch him out one day. Hey, you know, that Mercury place of yours is great. You saved me six hundred bucks last week on that software, getting the Indian version instead of the American one. It is legal, I hope."
"They call it grey market," I said. "It's identical, but the international guarantee applies, not the Australian one. If there's a problem, return it to us, not the local agent." (I'm learning fast.)
"OK then, if you can come up with the goods on software, here's my next question: can you research where Martin is? Do you do that sort of work?"
"I'm not sure I'm the best person for that," I said. "I'm not exactly unbiased."
"All the better. Nobody knows more about Martin than you do - except maybe Pyotr."
"I think there are researchers we can farm it out to. Do you mean things like shipping records from Ceylon in 1927 and Hawaii in 1896?"
"Absolutely." (This is the word Sydney people use instead of Yes.)
"I'll get some quotes for you," I promised.
Research question number one: who the hell is Pyotr?
The sky this morning was a pure blue, without the usual haze. And the air smelled so good I thought I'd go for a walk, heading away from the Hurstville shopping centre for a change. I'd hardly got around the next corner before I saw a deli. This might explain a few times how I've seen Charlie or Edna over the road walk out with a shopping bag, and come back only a few minutes later.
I went into the deli. I needed some more milk, anyway, to feed the starving cat. The woman serving was old and frail: her skin was so worn you could see through it. When I handed her a $20 note to pay for the milk, she looked most alarmed.
"I'm sorry," I said. "It's the smallest note I have."
"I wish you wouldn't do this," she grumbled. "It gets us really confused when you pay cash for some things. Why don't you pay off your account with that note, and put the milk on tick?"
"Account?" I said. "What account?" She must be getting me confused with somebody else.
"Rustavi," she said in a monotone voice. "87 Boongarre Street. Of course." She looked at me as if I were a fool.
"About time you paid it, too," she added. "You're two months late. Just as well it hasn't been much lately."
I was horrified. How could she know where I lived? I asked her as much.
"I've often seen you," she said.
"What's my name, then?"
The bell on the door rang, and another customer came in: a man in a dark blue driver's uniform, who bought a meat pie and put it on his account, all without noticing I was there.
She must have walked or driven past, I realized, and noticed me in the front garden. Perhaps Charlie has talked about me. I didn't like that thought, and tried to suppress it. Still, this shop was much handier than the others near the station.
"OK, what do I owe?" I asked.
She made a great show of adding up dockets.
"Twenty-nine sixty," she pronounced finally.
I demanded to see the dockets. I was curious to see what Martin and Natasha had been buying. Of course, there'd be nothing after mid-October, when I'd moved in.
They'd bought a vast amount of milk in the first week of October - perhaps Onuphrius had held a party for his friends. After that were two entries from November, for cans of soft drink and a pack of cigarettes.
"Who bought these?" I demanded, waving the final dockets.
She looked at it, bored. "Probably that girl, Maisie, whatever her name is."
"I don't know any Maisie. You must have put this on the wrong account."
"We never do that - too much fuss. Big tall girl, wavy blonde hair, maybe it's some other name like Adele."
"No, no, it can't be that," I said, feeling afraid.
I tried to remember back to the third of November, about three weeks ago. Then I remembered my visit from the girl with the insatiable thirst. The little sneak! Buying things under my name, on an account I didn't know I had. But I was so relieved she wasn't Adele that I forgave her instantly.
"Masha?" I said, remembering.
"That's her. She often drops in, and always charges it. She's been doing it for years. It is OK, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's fine," I said wearily, paying up. As I opened the door to leave, tinkling its bell, the woman tossed me a piece of gratuitous advice.
"Watch out for that Charlie. Wouldn't tangle with him if I was you. That's a really nasty little man."
At work this afternoon, I went and asked Jacques about Vince's request: did we offer a sleuthing service, which could track down Rustavis who'd re-entered the past?
Normally this request would go to Mathilde, but her ridiculous jealousy annoys me.
While I described the problem to him, Jacques chewed a pencil. He's a great pencil-chewer: half a dozen badly bitten ones were lined up in front of him. I suspect a pen would leave too permanent a record for his liking.
"Interesting," he said. "I'm sure there are researchers we can commission. I'll ask Mathilde to find some. But do you sink this man Vince believes that Martin has gone to the past? It could be very expensive, this research, and it may not find an answer. Tell me, what answer do you sink Vince expects?"
I thought hard for a minute.
"What I think he'd most like," I said in the end, "is something ambiguous, that left the way open for a return to the past, but without upsetting his skepticism. Why do you ask?"
"Mercury prides itself on meeting its donors' needs. If that's what Vince needs - and I sink you are wise to guess it - we should work in that direction."
"But that's terrible! He wants the truth."
"I don't sink he'll ever get it. And many sings are true, you know?"
I love the upward inflection that Jacques sometimes adds to the ends of sentences; in other people, it irritates me.
"The solution you suggest is natural for researchers," he added. "'On the one hand this, but on the other hand, that.' I can already imagine the report."
"You're terrible, Jacques," I laughed.
"Is it so terrible to please our donors?" He laughed back, displaying his immaculate teeth.
Mathilde poked her head around the door to see what was going on. She saw me, and a thunderous look came over her face. She left.
"Poor woman," Jacques whispered. "She thinks I am somesing that I'm not."
Heterosexual? I wondered.
"I'd never think that," I said, with an enigmatic smile.
"The master can have no secrets from the pupil, Nimue."
Joanna came in, and I went back to my desk.
A few minutes later my phone rang.
"Mercury Foundation," I said. "Nimue here. Can I help you?"
"Good afternoon. Sank you for bearing with me. My name is Merlin. I'd like to talk with you some time after work. Will that be possible?"
It was Jacques. He must have dialled an outside line, then called my number directly. What a roundabout way to talk to me, I thought. Later I realized that, this way, nobody else in the office would know we were talking to each other.
"Yes, that's fine," I answered, feeling flattered. "Any night's OK."
We agreed on tomorrow night. Eight fifteen, at the El Bruce Restaurant, which I've never heard of before, but is only five minutes' walk away. I can't wait, though the name doesn't exactly suggest great Spanish-Australian food. What does he want to talk about that can't be said in the office?
The Elbrus Restaurant was long, narrow, and gloomy. It had polished floorboards, stained almost black, matching the tables and chairs. The walls seemed to be dark blue, apart from the back one, covered by a huge painting of a mountain. I arrived at ten past eight, a little breathless after rushing from work. A gloomy-looking man came up to me.
"You haff booked?" he asked, in a thick accent.
"I don't know," I admitted. "I'm meeting somebody here. Mister Bertrany." (They say he hates to be called Monsieur.)
The man shook his head. "No booking under that name."
"It doesn't matter," I said, waving at the tables - most were empty.
"It is compulsory to book," the man insisted. "The cooking must be planned."
I was about to tell him that every other restaurant seemed to manage without compulsory booking. If I hadn't been meeting Jacques, bold Nimue would have walked out.
"Why don't you check your bookings for eight fifteen?" I said in the end. "There can't be too many. Maybe he booked under another name. Mercury, perhaps?"
From a dark doorway, an older man emerged, notebook in hand, to solve the problem.
"No worries," said the new man, smiling. "We book in your name, then. So your name is...? Mrs...?" He had his gold pen at the ready.
"Rustavi," I said. (I'm tired of having to spell out Nimue, and of being called Mrs Nimue. I should have called myself something like Joan. Joan Jones? At least people would have been able to spell it.)
Both waiters seemed to suck in their breath.
"Rustavi?" they recited in unison.
Shit, I thought. What have I said?
The older waiter, the sadistic-looking one, came up and took a closer look at me. The light was dim.
"Are you a Rustavi?" he said - as if he couldn't believe it.
"Yes!" I said, fumbling in my handbag for Natasha's library card - my only documentation.
"You don't look so like one," he said. "Forgive me. You must have married the family."
I nodded faintly, hastily concocting a story about the Uruguay Rustavis, totally unrelated to any Rustavis he might know.
"For a Rustavi, our table of honour."
He led me to a table which looked identical to all the others.
I sat there for a while, feeling vulnerable. I sensed the waiters looking at me, amused. Any moment now they'd come over and quiz me on my ancestry. I'd have to forestall them, I knew - but how? Possibilities raced through my mind. Ask for the toilet? To use a phone?
And now, one of them was coming over. Deliberately coming from behind me, so I couldn't see what he was carrying. A machine- gun, perhaps.
It was a bread roll on a plate. I gasped my thanks. But he hadn't finished yet. "Which wine?" he asked. Rustavis obviously don't drink water.
Inside, I was panicking. Should I ask for a wine list? What if I couldn't read it? Luckily, I had an inspiration.
"Akhasheni would be perfect," I ventured (hoping I'd pronounced it right).
His stern face blossomed into a smile. "Perfect!" he said. "Mrs Rustavi, your taste is ooooooh."
What does that mean? I wondered. I've seen plenty of empty bottles, but I've never tasted the stuff.
By quarter to nine, I was wondering if I had the wrong night. Perhaps Jacques had meant tomorrow. At least the wine was good - though strong. I had another glass. Just before nine o'clock, when I was wondering about leaving, the morose waiter came to me bearing a silver tray. On the tray was a piece of paper.
"And you are a friend of JB, too," said the waiter, handing the piece of paper to me with great respect. I took the piece of paper from the tray. FROM JB - SORY WIL BE LATE, it stated, in crude letters.
Jacques is the sort of person who's always late. I'm the sort who's always early. I was resigned to a long wait. At last, Jacques burst in, all apologies, with two waiters tripping over each other to help him find me.
"So hard to get away from work," said Jacques. "Always problems with deliveries. And then Shirley (my ex-wife) was making such a fuss about baby-sitting for Emile (that's my son). She said I had promised tonight, and I had tomorrow in my diary. I am doomed to be wrong, you see. I had to find a baby-sitter on the spot."
As we ate, we talked about all sorts of things, except why we were meeting in a restaurant. Reluctant to bring it up, I let Jacques talk. The waiters knew him, and were fawning around us. I could see them exchanging glances: an established customer dining with a pseudo- Rustavi. Uneasily I imagined the gossip in the kitchen.
I told Jacques about the gradual unfolding of the Rustavi mystery, and my experiments with ancient postcards. (I didn't mention the episode in Charlie's house.)
"You are slowly becoming a Rustavi," he observed.
With one eye on the waiter, who was standing at a discreet distance, I told Jacques I didn't seem to have a choice.
"Do you think it could be true, that Martin could travel into the past?" I asked.
"If he can," said Jacques, suddenly excited, "imagine our opportunities. Mercury can set up a division to sell modern goods to the past. Just imagine: a refrigerator in the middle ages."
"They didn't have electricity," I pointed out.
"We can sell them generators too."
"They didn't have much money, in the past. Weren't labourers paid about a penny a month in the middle ages?"
"No problem - gold is worth the same. And they can open accounts. People in the past would be very trustworthy. We'll give them a thousand years' credit." He laughed.
"But," I said, "It will upset the historians. If there were fridges in the middle ages, it would already be in the books."
"Nonsense," said Jacques dismissively. "Historians don't write about such mundane things. And Nimue, please don't be negative about this. It's not our philosophy. I was sinking you could be head of our Past Division."
I laughed. "That's kind of you, Jacques, but I don't think I have enough experience of the past. Yet."
I felt proud of myself, adding that last word: Nimue can conquer.
"Of course, there's still a lot of work to do," said Jacques in his flight of fancy. "We need to establish communications. Obviously they won't have telephones, so we'll use mail order. I don't know how we can send the goods back, but if Martin can take his yacht, it must be possible to send fridges and generators."
"I know!" I said. "We can sell them phones, so they can ring their orders through. But they'll have to be mobile phones, because there were no power poles or wires."
He grinned at me. "Sometimes from these crazy ideas a good one leaps out."
Still grinning, he put his hand over mine.
The unexpected touch felt like an electric shock. I was terrified, but pleased. I didn't dare move or think. Nobody had touched me for weeks. (I didn't want to think about Charlie and Edna.)
"Why did you want to meet me here, instead of at work?" I asked.
He slid his hand off mine. "I wanted to know you better. You are so mysterious, Nimue."
"I'm not mysterious at all," I protested. "Thousands of women are doing this, all over Australia. Its very fashionable, to leave your husband and family, and start again."
"Also: perhaps, as an enchantress, you can help me escape from Mathilde. Sometimes she is like a grateful dog."
"That won't be easy," I said, toying with the sugar bowl and wondering what he meant.
When the restaurant closed, some time after 11, he offered to take me home.
His car surprised me. I expected a sleek modern one, but it was an old Citroen: the frog-like type that slowly rises in the air when the motor starts. On the front passenger seat was a plastic dragon.
"These old cars have such character," I offered.
"Emmeline is my lucky car," he said, "All the time I've been in Australia, 15 years, I've had her. When I went to New Caledonia a few years ago, I sold everything else, but a friend kept Emmeline for me."
"Why Emmeline?"
"After an old girlfriend of mine; she had the same expression. When my son was born, I named him after the car. I told Shirley it was an old family name. But when I told her the truth, years later, she was furious. I sink that's the main reason she left me." He laughed and laughed.
I guided him to my house. We were there in a few short minutes. Should I ask him in? I thought. And what might that lead to?
"The baby-sitter must go home soon," he said, reading my mind. "Thank you for being so charming tonight."
He walked to the front door with me, admiring the ivy jungle. "The ancient forest of Broceliande was so thick with vines that people and their horses were lost in it for ever," he commented.
At the door we faced each other for a moment; he quickly kissed my cheek as he said goodbye.
I can still feel it tingling. It was a polite gesture, not a sexual one. Part of me knew that, but another part, like a disobedient pet, refused to acknowledge it. I had to discipline that other part. Even though I used a carrot rather than a stick, it remained unconvinced.
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