Who Sings for Lu? (6 page)

‘Say gidday to her, I dare you.’ Lu reversed it on Jay.

‘I would if I could but I won’t. And don’t ask me why,’ the words streamed from Jay. He could see the gulf between the girl and them.

Lu glowering until the girl got close and then looking away.

‘Watch ya don’t trip and fall in the drink.’ Muttered some steps after the girl and her father had passed.

Then to her male buddies, ‘Whaddaya lookin’ at me like that for?’

The guys grinned.

‘Let’s go round the back of De Costi’s,’ Jay said. ‘Bloke there sometimes wants a hand lifting sacks of oysters or trash moved. He gives you a feed of prawns, fries. I’m starved.’

Trailing behind, Lu wondering why she felt so suddenly miserable. Surely the chick hadn’t done it to her?

Anna wondering if to say anything about the disturbing look the girl gave her back at the fish market. Her father would say something like,
If we reacted to every look we get from strangers we’d be forever distracted and likely reading it wrong, anyway
.

So she was supposed to go around with her eyes closed?

A daughter understood a certain predictable pattern to her father’s voiced opinions: he often gave homilies which, much as they made sense, were also irritating. Even from a father she loved. Genetically, to use Daddy’s most frequently used word, she was close to him in looks, attitude and outlook; nonetheless she was her own person. And for starters, without the slightest intention of following in his
horse-breeder
footsteps — hoof-prints. Soon, no more talk of bloodlines and conformation, head and wither, the endless permutations of mating up this quarter bloodline with that half-sister-to, no more pretending to love it with near his passion. The animals themselves, yes, but not the business. Too complex and everything to do with winning and
out-thinking
the other breeders. Close to a crowing contest even if her father did not crow in public nor, even, much in private; just a quiet little comment at the dinner table, given he could find time to sit down and eat with his family, the human one.

Turning and grinning, him the same back. They didn’t have to
exchange words, though he did reach out a hand from the steering wheel to run it over her hair and say, ‘I love you, my darling.’

He needn’t. ‘You too, Dad.’

‘Next time at the fish market let’s have a muddie each, Singapore style’ — a large mud crab cooked with garlic and chilli. ‘We’re not allowed to leave until each has finished. Okay?’

‘You’re on.’

The stereo system in this new hybrid Lexus 600 perfect for two music lovers, engine whisper-quiet, Anna just old enough to remember not having such luxury. Still, no less appreciative. Eva Cassidy, the singer who had died of cancer, was on. Anna always thought of the tragic loss: who wants to die young? But at least the beautiful singing voice was alive. Her father said there was a pull-down television screen in the back seat. Anna didn’t say she thought that a bit over the top. More for younger kids. Feeling not at her usual ease.

Wondering if that glaring girl back there might have got her emotions stirred up. Why would she look at a perfect stranger with such hatred?

‘Did you notice a group of three by the boats, a girl about my age and two men who looked like hoods?’ she asked.

‘I did.’ The look he threw said the homily might be about to follow. ‘Why?’

‘Oh, nothing. Just she gave me the real evils.’

‘As she would.’ Her father surprised her.

‘Why would that be if I don’t know her?’

‘Envy. Something you’ll have to get used to. One of the seven deadly sins.’

Like lust, she thought but would hardly say. Knew her father had an eye for the women, didn’t like it one bit, though no hard evidence to say he actually crossed the line. Just clues here and there like wafts of perfume not her mother’s. How he would step away to take certain cell phone calls. Certain her mother had no idea.

‘Envy of what?’

‘Surely you know how striking you are?’

Not something she thought about. Blessed with looks, guess so, but growing up in a rural setting surrounded by testy, highly strung if delightful animals, living in view of a national park and a minor
but beautiful mountain range, the bush trilling and cawing with birds and loudly competing insects, minimal human company when not at school, the mirror was last place one went to. Just as country living took her out of the image contest which she saw, once it dawned on her, as a female treadmill she had no intention of jumping on.

‘Dad, while I have nothing to complain about, I hardly go around thinking of myself as striking. I’m just me.’ Her father did have a thing about looks — in women. As if they had little else to offer.

‘Life is unfair,’ Riley said. ‘So get used to it, as the saying goes.’

‘Whatever turns you on, Father dear.’

‘That wasn’t intended with edge, was it?’

‘No.’ She turned her best smile to him. He knew.

‘Is greed a deadly sin?’ she asked, almost flippantly but it was on her mind.

‘Now that
is
aimed at me.’

‘Sometimes you’re guilty of it,’ she said. Blushing slightly, as if she had betrayed her father. ‘I don’t mean in a really bad way. Just you get that look when you come home from the sales.’

‘As I would. I make millions each time. A lot of it on behalf of my clients, sure. But an awful lot sticks. So I’m allowed to indulge. The rest of the time I’m working too hard to think greed. Half the money goes to you, remember.’

‘If I want it.’

‘As you surely must.’

‘No, I don’t. Some Vatican bishop came out with a pronouncement on the new deadly sins. One of them is being obscenely rich.’

‘But we’re not Catholics. Nor that rich.’

‘It’s a moral code. And we are rich.’

‘Hardly obscenely so. The men who invented Windows and the iPod are obscenely rich. The Murdoch and Packer families are only filthy rich. And that’s fine by me. This bishop, do you think he wants to redistribute the wealth? Why would anyone bother to invent anything if some bunch of moralists — envy mongers more like it — took their rewards away? Perhaps to employ more bureaucrats, increase their undeserved salaries and pensions? Never mention of the tax-free status of the Church, note.’

Hardly time to digest that when he added, ‘The service fee our glorious stallion Raimona gains us is an obscene amount for just one bonk. Eighty grand for a few minutes’ work, times more than two hundred a season. But should man or institution try and take that from us? Well.’

Well what, Father?

‘I’d defend it to the death,’ he said with surprising force. As if he was truly capable. ‘It’s a principle.’

‘You know what I mean,’ she said with more pout than she intended. ‘I said obscene wealth, like billions.’

‘Wealth doesn’t have to be obscene. Only to those who envy and can’t get it. Anyway the Catholic Church, of all institutions, has made billions off the backs of the poor. And all this mass hysteria about global warming has become the latest morality imposed on the world. From the bio-fuel con to nuclear power generation not being good for us. Socialist bullshit. Now the world hates bankers.’

‘As we should.’

‘I agree. But greed is good because it’s human nature.’ This was his moral-high-ground voice. ‘It feeds more of us than morality does.’

‘I’m talking principles and moral standards,’ she said, ‘They’re part of human nature too.’

‘Sure. But those things were neither invented nor practised by the Catholic Church, I assure you,’ he said to his windscreen. ‘Governments use those exact same words to cover up their complete absence of —’ he threw her a look — ‘morals. And principles.’

‘A sole bishop made this statement.’

‘With tacit backing from the Church. Using him, I’ll bet, to send out a feeler for the people’s moral pulse.’

‘Sometimes you are so cynical, Dad.’

‘No. Just older.’

‘Another of the new deadly sins he mentioned is paedophilia.’

He looked at her.

She shrugged. ‘Just telling you what he said.’

‘And no Catholic priest ever sexually abused a kid? Anna.’ He turned down the music. ‘Just live a good life is all I say.’ The engine of this Lexus so quiet she could hear her father’s mind ticking over.
Questioning how clear his own conscience? Then again she might have it wrong; she hadn’t exactly seen him philandering, just picked up on the clues, little signs that didn’t quite add up.

‘Shall I join you at your hotel for dinner tonight?’ Try him on that.

Not a blink. Turned fully to her with genuinely apologetic look. ‘Sorry, honey, wish we could. But I have a business dinner tonight.’

‘Where?’ She pushed him.

‘One of my clients’ homes.’

She looked away. ‘Just a thought.’

‘But we could do breakfast together, before I drive home.’

‘At the Stamford?’

‘Sir Stamford, not be mixed up with Stamford Plaza hotels. And they still do the best fresh kippers in town.’

And right across from Anna’s music school, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

‘Maybe I could stay the night?’ She pushed it. ‘You can have your meeting, I’ll have room service —’

‘The college accommodation not working out?’

Not what she meant. But since he raised it. Her facial expression did the shrugging. ‘It’s all right.’

‘But pretty basic, right? Would you like your own apartment? I could take out a long lease, or just buy one wherever you wanted. Be more like home with your own stuff and personal touches. You missing home? Missing your family?’ He paused. ‘Missing me?’

‘I always miss you, Dad.’ Her turn to reach out and ruffle his hair, flecked more with grey she noticed, but he was a handsome man in his own way, a very stylish dresser even on a Sunday. He liked Boss for casual wear; it suited him, being tall and lean.

‘I do love Sydney,’ she said. ‘Even staying at a hostel.’

‘I’ll call an agent tomorrow and have him find you an apartment. Just don’t let him rush you into —’

‘I’m okay. Honestly. Got friends at the college, two I’m studying at the conservatorium with and getting close to.’ What happened to the talk on morality? ‘And I don’t want to live like a rich bitch,’ she added.

‘Glad to hear that. But this will be a business deal — we can sell it
at a capital gain, split the profit between us. And the word is affluent, not rich.’

‘I do have a sister, Dad.’

‘Then I’ll buy two apartments. One each, for when she comes to Sydney University. And rich — bitch or not — has its moments. Beats being poor any day.’

She bet his next topic would be —

‘Now. No boyfriend — yet?’

Gave him a different kind of grin this time. ‘Nothing to write home about.’

‘And you wouldn’t write if there was.’

‘Guess not.’

‘To your mother?’

She didn’t — couldn’t — immediately answer, not what she truly thought of her mother, their relationship, the depth of it. The trust to share intimate thoughts? No way. Confide? Nope. Someone she could always count on for motherly TLC, of course. ‘
Mais oui
!’ as her French music teacher would say.

‘Can we change the subject? You are my father.’ And she hated the idea of saying anything even remotely against her mother behind her back.

She could have asked,
So who’s in your hotel room tonight
? And,
Is that why you’re keeping me away when normally you jump at any chance to spend time with me?

‘Fathers don’t like to think of their daughters with a boyfriend,’ he said with just too much gall, might even be hypocrisy if her suspicions were right.

Funny, she could have reminded him that her generation saw sex as totally normal, that growing up seeing their stallion Raimona servicing mares took care of any illusions she might have about the act, even if witnessing the stallion was one astonishing sight for a girl to behold: that massive erect member, the way sex got a stallion in near a frenzy before he plunged his penis into the mare, thrusting violently while biting the leather necklace she wore to protect her neck from serious injury. Anna’d had a date with a boy not unlike that. Of course he didn’t last long. But hell, this was her father and in his mind she would
always be his baby. He still called her ‘my baby’ on occasion. She too tactful to ask him to cease.

‘I’m also going back to the hotel for another meeting,’ he said.

She thought,
You don’t have to tell me another lie
.

‘This client tonight, he got two million for his horse out of Rai. So he’s a happy chappie; wants to discuss a land banking deal we could do jointly in Melbourne, while land sales are in the doldrums.’

‘Don’t blow my inheritance, Daddy.’ She verbalised her text of some weeks ago when he was in New Zealand, as Sydney University came into view. ‘You knew it was a joke?’

‘Or Freudian slip.’

She knew he was just teasing.

‘Which reminds me,’ he said, ‘you’ve yet to come home and see your horse.’

‘Dad, you have two daughters. I’m not interested if it’s going to carry my name and not Katie’s.’

‘Told you: I simply overlooked it. In my excitement at seeing the horse while thinking of you, receiving a text from you moments before the auction started, I quite forgot about Katie.’

Anna looked at her father to make sure he knew how much she adored her sister, difficult and irritatingly immature though Katie was. As each other’s only child companions out on the Widden Valley stud farm they were very close.

‘As to your inheritance —’

‘Dad, the text was a joke.’

‘Sure. But there is an inheritance nonetheless, which I am building. So you never have to worry about money in your lifetime.’

‘And is that actually good for me? For us, I should say. Katie and me.’

‘Lots of people inherit. In large or modest form. Yours happens to be nearer the large. I inherited granddad Sean’s farm, if you could call his tiny operation with no working capital an inheritance. Depends what you do with it. We would hope you would use it wisely and, hopefully, leave a little bit —’

‘
More than you found
,’ she completed from hearing it over the years. ‘I do have Mum’s frugal ways, except for clothes, remember?’

‘And I forgot to say how lovely you look today.’

Not this time, Daddy.

‘As for Katie, we do have a concern her personality may lead her to be … careless … with her inheritance.’

‘Katie isn’t seventeen,’ Anna said. ‘And you’re not likely to die any time soon. Let’s say seventy-eight, the average age men live to, a few more for Mum, by which time we’ll both be mothers in our late forties or early fifties. We’ll have children the same age as we are now and we’ll have said to them, “Respect your inheritance, kids. It was made by your grandparents, your grandfather in particular.”’

‘You’ll both be getting a chunk of money on your twenty-first birthdays.’