Beneath the Southern Cross (66 page)

They smiled at each other. ‘I do care,' Bruce said. ‘I love Mum very much and I care a great deal.'

‘I know you do.' She patted his hand; perhaps the old Bruce Hamilton was there underneath. And she had been pushy. She'd grown cantankerous of late. Arturo's illness hadn't helped. Nor the fact that he'd wished her to keep it a secret. He didn't want people's sympathy, he'd said.

Caroline was the only person she'd told. Artie had undergone a series of radiation treatments, and the cancer was currently in remission, but nothing was certain and they lived on the knife-edge of hope.

She got out of the car. ‘I know you love her, Bruce,' she said. Before she closed the door, she bent down and added through the open window, ‘Just spare a little more time for her, that's all I ask.'

Bruce had shaken his head as he'd driven off. Kitty Farinelli just couldn't bloody help herself.

‘It's an eyesore, an absolute eyesore. Wallace should be shot for such desecration.'

And here was Kitty, going on again.

‘He's bought the property next door, you know,' Bruce said just to shock her.

‘The pretty one with the terraces down to the water?'

‘Yep.'

‘Oh well, that's tasteful enough.'

‘He's going to mow it down and build a three-storey mansion with a helipad on the roof.'

‘A what?'

‘A helipad, so that he can land his helicopter on top of his home.'

Kitty's face was laughable, a picture of horror, and Caroline smiled at Bruce, aware that he was baiting her.

Bruce grinned back at his mother, but he shook his head as he said, ‘It's no joke, Mum, it's a fact.'

‘My God,' Caroline laughed, ‘the man's a megalomaniac.'

‘What do his neighbours have to say about this helipad thing?' Kitty demanded to know.

‘Oh there'll be complaints, I'm sure, and they'll try to stop him, but Wallace has the council in his pocket, I reckon he'll pull it off.'

That wasn't quite true, there was one councillor who was proving a lot of trouble. Bernard Williams couldn't be bought, and he was heavily on the side of the local residents. Bruce secretly admired the man for his stance, but Jason had said he'd look after it, and Bruce had no doubt that, through whatever nefarious means he chose, Jason Bruford would do exactly that.

‘Wallace is a very powerful man now, Kitty,' Bruce continued, ‘very powerful and very wealthy.'

Kitty refused to be impressed. ‘He's still a vulgarian. Like I said, money doesn't buy good taste. What he's done to that beautiful property's downright disgraceful, and now it appears he's going to repeat the exercise. Somebody must stop him. The harbourside should belong to the people of Sydney, not to the rich vulgarians who want to desecrate—'

‘I have to go,' Bruce interrupted, kissing Caroline on the cheek. ‘Bye, Mum.'

‘No, no,' Kitty insisted, rising from her chair, ‘you stay, I can always come back tomorrow. I have plenty of time to share with your mother …'

Was that a deliberate dig, Bruce wondered.

‘Kitty,' he saidfirmly, ‘I've been here for an hour and a half, I have to go!'

‘Oh all right.' Unperturbed, Kitty sat down again. An hour and a half, well that was better than ten minutes.

‘He's a good son,' Caroline saidpointedly when he'd gone.

‘Yes, I know.'

‘And you're a bugger of a friend.' Caroline never found Kitty offensive, brittle and aggressive as she could be. The poor woman was a bundle of nerves, and who could blame her? Caroline wished she could have told her son the truth about Artie, but she'd been sworn to secrecy. ‘You'll frighten the poor boy off the way you carry on,' she smiled. ‘Honestly, Kitty, if there was one poor sheep alone in a paddock, you'd worry it to death, I swear you would.'

 

Fifty-year-old Bernard Williams was a man with a conscience. Not only had he never accepted a bribe, he had never made use of privileged information to gain or sell a property, as many of his colleagues had, nor had he ever traded information for favours. Bernard was scrupulously ethical.

A devoted Rotarian and tireless charity worker, he was an unprepossessing little man in appearance. Grey-haired, bespectacled and somewhat colourless. But he was not meek when challenged and, over the years, he had achieved quite a reputation in the press. Unintentionally of course, he did not seek headlines, but one bright journalist had called him ‘the mild-mannered tiger' and the name had stuck.

He was voicing the views of local residents when he opposed Wallace Kendall's monstrous three-storey mansion, and the helicopter landing pad, which guaranteed noise pollution for all. Over his dead body, Bernard said in an interview with the local
Went worth Courier
.

‘Which could be arranged,' Jason muttered to Wallace with such deadly humour that Wallace wondered whether perhaps he was serious. ‘But there are other ways,' Jason added.

‘Whatever,' Wallace said. ‘Just do it.'

 

Mike Lowe, talkback radio king and darling to the millions who hung on his every insincere word, had opened his breakfast programme with the subject of Sydney's Gay Mardi Gras.

‘Should it be banned?' he demanded, as if he cared. ‘Should it be encouraged?' The voice of command had just the right edge of concern and query; Mike was keen to hear his listeners' views, he said. Then the patronising ploy (he could afford to be patronising, few of his fans were poofters): ‘And, should it, I ask you, be called ‘Gay and Lesbian'? Why not just ‘Gay'? Surely ‘gay' means homosexual persons of both gender?'

Mike was pleased, the Gay Mardi Gras was a nicely controversial subject to get the morning up and going. People were bound to ring up and complain about Sodom and Gomorrah, as they had for the past eight years since the parade's inception. He'd booked the Reverend Fred Nile for eleven o'clock. Fred'd have a lot to say about such unnatural, deviant behaviour, which would get the militant poofters riled. It promised to be an exciting morning.

‘I'm ringing about Councillor Bernard Williams,' the male caller said.

‘Yes, what about him?' It was an hour and a half later and, with the exception of one lesbian caller who had taken offence at Mike's suggestion that lesbians be labelled ‘female gays', all the calls had been one-sided. ‘Have the thing banned'; ‘It makes me ashamed to be a Sydneysider,' ‘Bloody disgraceful, that's what it is'. The show was becoming boring. Mike had expected a bit more feedback from the militant homosexuals out there; maybe he'd cancel the interview with Nile.

‘It's his duty,' the male caller said. ‘His duty to stand up and be counted.'

‘Counted as what?'

‘Gay, that's what.'

Mike glanced up at his producer on the other side of the recording booth's glass panels. They shared a brisk nod and the producer dialled Mike's investigator; they'd need to do some research for Mike to back up the story in his weekly newspaper column.

‘Ummm …' ponderous tone, ‘… may I ask who's calling?'

‘I'd rather not give my name,' the voice with the effeminate
twang replied, ‘but I can promise you I have my facts straight. And, for the sake of we, the gay minority, people like Bernard Williams should come out of their closets and back our cause.'

‘Why?' Mike adopted the voice of concern whilst he incited the caller. ‘If indeed your claim is correct, and of course it may well be slanderous, why should Councillor Williams expose his private life for public examination?'

‘Because we, the gay minority, will never win social acceptance whilst there are those like Bernard Williams who hide their homosexuality as if it was something to be ashamed of.'

‘I see, I see,' Mike said, delighted with the turn the show had taken. The switchboard was lit up with incoming calls. ‘Well, if you'd like to stay on the line, we'll get back to you shortly.'

He wouldn't, at least not until the radio station had checked with their legal eagles, they didn't want to risk a law suit.

‘In the meantime,' he said, ‘we have a number of calls waiting, in fact the switchboard isgoing mad.' Voice of command once more. ‘What do you think, all you out there listening? Do you believe in “outing”? I'm Mike Lowe and I'm waiting to hear from you. Yes, Gwenneth?'

 

‘Cheers,' Jason said. ‘To talkback radio, and to the idiots who rule the airwaves, long may they live.' He and Wallace clinked glasses.

They were sitting by Wallace's pool, in their Speedos, celebrating, just the two of them, taking advantage of the lull in proceedings before chaos took over and the bulldozers arrived to demolish the property next door. Wallace would move into his city penthouse when they did. They hadn't asked Bruce Hamilton to join them, because he hadn't approved of their tactics.

‘Do you know what your pal Bruce said to me?' Jason remarked as he swigged back his Bollinger. ‘He said,' and he adopted a heavy ocker accent, “‘You've ruined that poor bloody man's life.”'

Jason laughed as he topped up their glasses from the bottle in the ice bucket. ‘Dear God, Wallace, I don't know how you maintain a friendship with that man, he's so square. I mean, really, pet, there's such a thing as being altogether
too
straight.'

‘Yeah, well he's got a point,' Wallace growled, ‘we did ruin the man's life.'

Bernard Williams had been forced to retire from council office after twenty-five years of loyal service. But Wallace didn't really give a shit whether they'd ruined Bernard's life or not—Jesus, they'd ruined enough lives, bankrupted enough people, why the hell start feeling guilty now? What annoyed him was that Jason was camping it up in his presence and such effeminacy, directed at him, seemed to intimate that the two of them shared something in common. Well they bloody didn't. Just because, on a few drunken occasions, rat-arsed with booze and high on cocaine, he'd let Jason muck around a bit meant nothing. It wasn't as if they'd had sex or anything. A little mutual masturbation, that was all, schoolboys did it behind dunny doors. He'd let Jason go down on him a few times too, but that didn't mean a thing either. Christ, Wallace thought, when he was high on coke and randy as hell, he couldn't give a fuck who sucked him off.

‘Oh, she's getting titchy, is she?' Jason said in reply to Wallace's taciturn growl. He was deliberately goading him, aware that the more he queened it up, the more defensive Wallace would become, and the more butch and aggressive his manner. All of which was very amusing to Jason. Even a bit of a turn-on too. They'd had two bottles of Bollinger and, what with the late afternoon sun beating down on their seminaked bodies, Jason was feeling quite horny. ‘Oh dear, she's turning a bit, I do declare.'

‘Shut the fuck up, Jason.'

‘Want another bottle?'

‘No, it'll put me to sleep. I'm going to the opera with Melanie tonight, it'll be hard enough to stay awake as it is.'

‘What about a line of coke then?' Jason dropped the queen act altogether. ‘That'll wake you up,' he gave a lewd wink and played masculine camaraderie, ‘put you in the mood for Melanie later on.'

‘Yeah.' Wallace grinned. He'd had the best sex with Melanie when he was coked up, he didn't actually find her all that attractive when he wasn't. Still, he wasn't marrying her for her sex appeal. He needed a wife and she had all the right qualifications: she had class and her father was a judge.

‘You cut it up while I have a dip,' he said, diving into the pool and powering his way to the other end.

As he sat watching, Jason wondered whether Wallace would ever admit that he was gay. Probably not. He would most likely
play it straight for a few years, batting occasionally for the other side; he'd sire a family, then years down the track discover that his ‘adventures' with men were far more appealing than his wife, but even then he wouldn't admit to homosexuality. Jason had seen it all before.

Hell, he thought, Melanie was one of the best looking women in Sydney. A splendid creature. Raven-haired, tall, slim, and elegant. Jason was a great admirer of beauty. If Wallace preferred a torrid, coked-up night with him, as Jason knew he did, rather than a fuck with his magnificent fiancée, then what was the prognosis for their future marital passion? Oh well, Melanie would find out in time. And by then she'd be more than compensated by the generous trust accounts set up for herself and whatever children she'd borne. Which was why Wallace was marrying her after all.

Funny, Jason thought, as he rose from his chair, that it had been good old, straight, square Bruce Hamilton who had inadvertently led Wallace to the altar.

‘You need to set up some family trust accounts, Wallace,' Bruce had said. ‘What about your sisters?'

‘Bugger them,' Wallace had replied.

‘Well, their children then.'

‘Bugger them too.' Wallace had decided to take a wife instead.

Funny, Jason thought, that good old, straight, square Bruce Hamilton had no idea his mate Wallace was a poofter. Jason went inside to cut up the coke.

 

Melanie Kendall respected her husband. She respected what he'd done with his life, amassing a fortune, heading a corporation, befriending the world's rich and famous. She wasn't sure if she loved him, but she loved the life he offered her.

Their wedding had received the fanfare of publicity such an extravaganza demanded. The guest list had been straight out of
Who's Who
, and Melanie's bridal gown had been designed by Gucci. They had honeymooned in Rome, a suite at the Hassler, then Milan and Paris for some shopping. Then, en route home, a week in the penthouse at Hong Kong's Peninsula Hotel.

Melanie had loved it all, and on their return to Sydney the whirlwind of her life hadn't lessened. If anything it had intensified. True,
she didn't see much of her husband, but that was to be expected, he was a very busy man. In the meantime there were the gala opening nights, the charity premieres, the formal dinners and balls. She was invited by the doyens of Sydney society to be on several high-profile committees; she presented the Humanitarian of the Year Award at the Variety Club's Christmas dinner and was guest speaker at the Black and White Committee's annual businesswomen's luncheon. As Wallace Kendall's wife, and an elegant and beautiful woman, Melanie was feted by all.