Matthew Talbot Hostel for Men. The sign was on the corner facade of the brick building, a couple of minutes walk from William Street. Despite the drone of traffic up there the only sound in this quiet street was a radio blaring country music through the doors of a house open to provide some relief from the summer heat. Across the road from the hostel a dero, or rather a homeless man, sat propped up against a wall. Perhaps he was just enjoying the sunshine. Or maybe he was trying for the hostel and hadn’t quite made it. He had his arm in a sling and took no notice of me as I entered the hostel.
There were men, young and old, standing round the entrance. I went into a reception area with a curved reception desk of the type you find in old-fashioned hotels. Except the place was a lot more downmarket than a hotel. But not as downmarket as I expected it to be. It was clean, there was a strong smell of bleach, and it had recently been painted—green and pink.
There were three women behind the desk—a motherly woman in her fifties, a woman in her thirties who looked like she might have had a drink or two in her life, and a woman in her twenties who despite the freckles and the ponytail looked as if she could handle any funny business that might arise.
On the wall was a chart entitled Outreach, with photos of houses and flats and the suburbs they were located in. There were contact phone numbers at the bottom of the chart for those interested in medium/long term accommodation in community housing. Houses in Five Dock, flats in Newtown. It could have been a real estate agent’s.
I thought perhaps I’d be walking into Dante’s Inferno, that men would be pissing in the corners and dribbling in their beards. Screaming and clutching their stomachs, each in their own individual hell. But it wasn’t like that. The motherly woman asked if she could help me.
‘Yes,’ I said with false bravado, ‘I’m looking … I’m wondering if my …’ I had to stop. Inexplicably I was on the verge of tears. I don’t know why, but I felt the same as I did in the office of the crematorium when the clerk had said my father’s name. Probably a little fragile from the lack of sleep last night.
The motherly woman said softly, ‘Would you like to go somewhere more private?’ Like a nurse asking me if I’d moved my bowels, a ridiculous expression it seemed to me. I mean, what do you say? ‘Yes, I’ve moved them, I thought I’d put them up round my lungs today’?
Having someone treat me condescendingly was enough to burst the little bubble of emotion that had welled up inside me. ‘I’m looking for Guy Valentine,’ I stated.
‘Is he staff or client?’ asked the woman.
‘Client.’
‘And what’s your interest?’
‘I’m his daughter,’ I announced.
If I thought that was going to open doors I was wrong. ‘You must understand,’ explained the woman, ‘that we respect our clients’ confidentiality here.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘he’s my father. If he’s here, if you know where he is, I want to see him.’
She spoke through an intercom then turned to me. ‘Nadia will be able to help you,’ she said.
I had the feeling she thought I was being difficult. I stepped back and turned my attention to the doorway leading to the inside of the hostel, waiting for Nadia to appear. There was a sign which said ‘To Left—games room, lounge, dining, kiosk, kitchen, laundry, clothing store. To Right—toilets, showers, proclaimed place, clinic, welfare, sick bay’. The sign was momentarily obscured by a bright-skinned woman with dark eyes, wearing clothes with Aboriginal motifs and big earrings. She came up to the desk and the motherly woman pointed in my direction.
‘Hi, I’m Nadia,’ she introduced herself to me. Having now passed me on, the motherly woman busied herself with other tasks. Nadia took me through to the right. We passed the clinic where a man was having his eyes tested against a chart with rows of letters, then we went up a ramp to a small glassed-in space marked Proclaimed Area. It looked over a dormitory of beds, three or four of which were occupied by men sleeping in their clothes. The beds were clean and white though none of the sleepers seemed to feel the need of sheets. Nadia sat down in the only available chair. There was a note stuck to the glass wall saying ‘If Charlie Holmes wakes up and asks for his money, tell him that Martin has banked it for him. On no account give him the money.’
It was kind of peaceful here, watching over these men as they slept during the middle of the day. Nadia explained that the Proclaimed Area was where the police bring the men when they’re drunk and disorderly, or if they look like they might do some damage to themselves. ‘Mrs Grimes tells me you’re looking for your father,’ Nadia said.
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘Do you think he wants you to find him?’ asked Nadia.
The question was ridiculous. Of course he’d want me to find him. I’d rescue him from this place, take him home, give him a nice hot bath, a new set of clothes. ‘I’m his daughter,’ I said, as if that explained everything.
But apparently it didn’t. ‘Sometimes having a family member turn up is a disaster,’ said Nadia. ‘They get upset when they think about them, particularly at holiday times like this, when everything around them blares happy families. It makes them feel all that much worse.’ I realised now what was happening. She wasn’t helping me with my enquiries, she was counselling me. ‘It is a point of strength with the men not to get in touch with their families because they know their weaknesses. They know the hurt of the past—the guilt they already feel will be compounded if they’re reminded of it.’
I heard what she was telling me but it wouldn’t be like that with Guy and me. Once he saw me, the years would dissolve away and we would be happy families once again. ‘I appreciate that,’ I said. ‘I just want him to know that I’m here and that I’d like to see him. No strings attached. Perhaps I could just leave a message. If he doesn’t want to get in touch with me, OK. I’ll accept that.’ I knew even as I was saying it that I was lying.
‘Look, I understand how you feel,’ said Nadia. ‘My father was an alcoholic. Left home when I was thirteen. Not an easy age to have your father piss off, let me tell you. He swore he would never leave his children. You see, he’d been forcibly removed from his Mum and Dad. But,’ she sighed, ‘the pattern repeats itself.’
‘Did you ever see him again?’
‘Yes,’ said Nadia. ‘He got in touch with me. So it was a different ball game. I was twenty-seven. I’d already gone beyond thinking he was a bastard for leaving Mum to bring up four kids on her own. I was curious. So I went to see him. He was living in Mosman with another woman.’
‘Do you stay in touch?’
‘Sporadically.’
I asked her if she could at least tell me whether she knew the name Guy Valentine.
‘The guys in the Proclaimed Area, we write their names down in this book, but the others … they come and go as they please. Some of the regulars we know, those who’ve been coming here for years. They pay their eight bucks a night for accommodation, five for a meal. Often we know them only by a nickname. Some of them leave everything behind when they become homeless, including their names.
‘But if he’s been brought in here to the Proclaimed Area we’d probably have a record of him. Unless there was a volunteer on duty—sometimes, if it gets busy or there’s an emergency, they get a bit slack about the bookwork.’
She opened a ledger in which there were handwritten entries—the date, the name of the person, time in, time out, bed number. ‘Valentine, was it?’
‘Yes.’
She started looking through it, starting with today’s date. There was a stack of similar-looking ledgers on a shelf at the side. ‘Perhaps I could give you a hand,’ I offered.
‘Well,’ she hesitated, ‘we’re not supposed to.’ But she didn’t say anything when I opened the first ledger on the stack.
‘How far do the records go back?’ I asked.
‘Forever. When do you think your father might have been in?’
‘Anytime in the last thirty years.’
‘Oh,’ she said, with a downward inflection. We chatted a bit, her ‘charges’ slept on soundly, a heavy, immobile, alcoholic sleep filled with no dreams. It was tedious, boring work going through the ledgers but I was used to tedious, boring work. I pressed on, running my eye lightly down the list of names, looking for long surnames combined with short first names. I found one or two that were close, experienced the expectancy of the heart, the slight widening of the eyes, but they proved to be red herrings.
‘I’m ready to go now.’ The speech was slurred. One of the sleepers had got up and was now standing in front of Nadia.
She glanced down at the book. ‘Richard?’ He nodded laboriously. ‘Why don’t you go back to sleep for a little while,’ she said.
‘OK.’ Obedient as a child he climbed back onto his bed.
‘They’re supposed to stay here till they’re sober,’ she explained.
Together we went through the whole of the eighties, which was as far back as this particular set of ledgers went. Not once was there a mention of Guy Valentine. I even went through a couple of the ones Nadia had checked to make doubly sure.
‘You can always talk to the men,’ she suggested. ‘Although they may not talk back to you.’ She looked at her watch. ‘It’s just about lunchtime, you’ll get a couple of hundred of them in one go.’
This opportunity was too good to pass up. ‘Dining room’s straight down the corridor, is it?’ I said, remembering the sign near reception. I made moves to go.
‘Hang on,’ said Nadia. ‘I’m breaking for lunch now. As soon as Annette gets here I’ll come down with you.’
When Annette turned up Nadia escorted me to a huge room at the end of the corridor. Despite the cheery colours, it still looked institutional, like a hospital, or worse, a prison. On one side of the room were long rows of tables full of men eating salads. On the other side men sat in chairs in rows, just sitting quietly or watching the television on the wall. There were old men, young men, relatively well-dressed men, others in an odd assortment of clothes, like pink shorts with a suit jacket. Some were mentally disturbed.
They were men of all shapes and sizes, from all different backgrounds, but they had one thing in common—here in this room they were all well-behaved. The orderliness of them was eerie. Despite the large numbers, there was very little talking. A few of the younger ones who were waiting talked, mucked around a bit, but at the tables there was no animated dinner conversation. There didn’t appear to be any imposed order, no wardens or nurses walking around with big sticks.
‘It’s the different ways men and women are perceived in our society,’ explained Nadia. ‘Women’s refuges are houses, homes. Places of refuge for men are institutions. That way they don’t have to relate to each other. Or look after themselves—it’s all done for them.’ We walked down the aisle between the diners and those waiting. ‘G’day, nurse,’ someone yelled out. They weren’t all that orderly. ‘Specially the older blokes,’ Nadia continued, ‘they’re mainly loners. They have mates in here, but out on the street they’re solitary. The younger ones hang around together outside though, things are changing.’
There was a queue of men at the far end of the room lining up to get their salads. The kitchen was bustling with activity, the clinking of metal, of pots and pans. Probably for the inevitable cups of tea because nothing they were eating today needed cooking. There were crates of bread, vegetables and other food at the entrance to the kitchen area. ‘Donations,’ Nadia told me, ‘from bread companies, from local shops. How do you want to go about this?’
I said I’d try the older men first, the ones who would be about Guy’s age.
‘Rupert is pretty affable,’ said Nadia, pointing out a dapper little man in a frayed suit and tie despite the heat.
He was at a table with other men, none of whom were saying much. At the next table was the man with his arm in a sling that I’d seen outside. He hadn’t been sunning himself at all, just waiting outside till lunchtime. He was doing a good job of singlehandedly manoeuvring the salad onto a piece of bread to make a sandwich. I walked up past his table. No more comments now, everyone was intent on eating. Quietly, chewing their food well.
‘Rupert,’ said Nadia, ‘there’s a young lady wants to meet you. Must be your lucky day.’ He looked up from his meal.
‘G’day, Rupert,’ I greeted him. ‘How’re things?’
‘Not too bad thanks, nurse.’ The second time I’d been called nurse in the last two minutes. Did I look like one, or did they think they were in hospital? I declined his offer of half a slice of white bread.
‘Rupert, I’m wondering if you know my father-Guy. Guy Valentine.’
‘Guy?’ he said, ‘like Guy Fawkes?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Short stocky bloke. Curly hair. Probably grey. He used to work for the newspapers.’
‘Journalist?’
‘Yes,’ I said with a glimmer of hope.
‘Sorry, nurse, never heard of him. Will you let me buy you a cuppa?’
He was the perfect gentleman, I didn’t like to refuse, but if I had cups of tea with all of them I’d drown. ‘Thanks, Rupert, another time maybe.’
‘Can I take you to dinner?’
‘How can you be thinking about dinner when you haven’t finished lunch?’ I joked.
I moved on. The story was the same all round—no-one knew him, not by that name anyway. A couple of them asked their mates who shook their heads, but mostly they simply answered the questions as if they were filling out a form. The first lot of lunchers had finished now and were getting up to make way for those waiting on the other side of the room.
It was futile, like counting grains of sand. I had the feeling that Nadia was getting edgy. I was taking up time, being a disturbance to the routine. ‘Thanks for your help,’ I said finally.
‘Sorry there wasn’t a better result,’ she commiserated.
I found my own way back to the reception area, nodded briefly to the women on the desk and headed out the door. There were fewer men standing round now. They were probably off somewhere having a siesta. Except the man with his arm in the sling. He was back out here, propped up in the same place he’d occupied before. He appeared to be sleeping. But I soon found out he wasn’t. At the very moment I walked past he stuck out his leg. I very nearly tripped over it.
‘He always reckoned he had a daughter,’ he said lazily.
I stopped in my tracks. ‘Pardon?’
‘We never believed him but.’
‘Never believed who?’ I asked, hoping I sounded casual.
‘Shakespeare. That’s who you’re looking for, isn’t it?’
My nose started quivering like a bloodhound on the scent of something. ‘Are you a mate of his?’
‘Maybe. What’s it worth to you to find out?’
‘What do you want?’
He looked me up and down as if deciding what I could afford to pay. ‘You can start with a six pack.’
‘No problems.’
Using his good hand to help himself up, he moved from a sitting to a standing position. ‘Let’s go, baby.’ His gait wasn’t as smooth as his patter but I was prepared to go to the end of the earth with him. Well, at least to the end of the street.
We went further than that, however. Round the corner, across the road and up to a pub on William Street. He’d led me there but once we’d arrived he didn’t want to go in. ‘My money’s no good in there,’ he said.
‘But it’s my money,’ I reminded him. Nevertheless he still didn’t want to go in. ‘Anything in particular?’
‘Yeah, I’ll go for those Colds.’
Very trendy, I thought. I went into the minute bottle shop, pressed the bell to get the barperson’s attention, all the while keeping my eye on my new friend. I needn’t have bothered, he wasn’t going anywhere. He was hanging out for those Colds. Three minutes later I was back on the street with the six pack.
‘What are you going to drink?’ he asked.
‘You’re not going to drink all of these yourself, are you?’
‘Too right I am,’ he assured me.
‘OK,’ I sighed, ‘I’ll get some more.’ I started back for the bottle shop.
‘Why don’t you make it a slab. It’s cheaper by the two dozen. I’ll hold onto those for you,’ he offered.
I moved them out of his reach. ‘I’ll look after them,’ I said authoritatively. Once he had the six pack he’d be off like a shot.
I went back in and rang the bell again. The same barperson appeared. His eyes were close together and he had a long drooping nose. The combined effect was that of an owl. But he didn’t seem to register any surprise that I was back so soon.
‘I wondered if I could return these and buy two dozen instead.’
‘No worries,’ he said. His accent revealed him to be a New Zealander, and fairly recently arrived. I was dying for him to say six pack but he managed to avoid it. He worked out the difference in price then did something complicated with the till.
Out I came again, carrying the slab. I hoped we weren’t going to be walking a long way. He didn’t offer to carry it for me but I guess a man with his arm out of action can be excused. ‘Let’s go and sit somewhere and drink in a civilised fashion,’ I suggested.
‘I know just the place,’ said my friend.
We crossed back over William Street and went down backstreets of Woolloomooloo similar to the ones that led to the hostel. But we didn’t go back to the corner that I assumed to be his ‘spot’.
‘This’ll do,’ he announced. It was a piece of footpath under the Eastern Suburbs railway line, in roughly the area where I’d seen the two boys joyriding between carriages. It was shady under there and presently unoccupied but judging by the general smell, it was a regular watering hole.
He sat down, leant against the graffitied wall and patted the concrete beside him. ‘Well, are you going to sit down or not?’
I sat down and placed the slab in protective custody between my feet. I wrestled one bottle away from its mates and held it out to him.
‘Rip the top off for me, will you, baby?’ I didn’t know how much of this ‘baby’ business I was going to be able to take but I stuck with it for the moment. I twisted the top off and handed him the beer. He took a long cool swig of it, oblivious to the bit dribbling down his front. He gave a belch of satisfaction. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
I twisted the top off a second bottle and took a long cool swig myself. Without the dribble. It was refreshing, I could feel the bubbles going all the way down. I figured on beer one for hospitality, beer two preparing the way and beer three to get him going. I was hoping to get away with less myself.
‘I guess we’d better introduce ourselves if we’re going to drink together,’ I suggested.
‘Why?’ he questioned. ‘None of that’s important.’
I had a sinking feeling—the bloke was probably just a chancer. Listening to me asking questions in the hostel and working out how he might get a few beers out of it.
‘How am I going to put you in my little black book if I don’t know which letter to file it under?’
‘I’m ready for my second, thanks, baby.’ I passed him his second beer. Three beers, that was the limit. If I didn’t have something after three beers I was leaving. And taking the rest of the beer with me.
‘S. You can put me under S. For Sebastian. But everyone round here calls me The Doctor. Sorry to say, I’m presently without a phone. But you know where to find me. Cheers.’ He took a swashbuckling swig of his second bottle. ‘You don’t look much like him,’ he said suspiciously. ‘How do I know you’re not an imposter?’
I liked that touch—him thinking I was the imposter. A crafty old bugger if ever there was one. I pulled out the photo of Guy. Young and looking very spruce. Wavy hair in a fifties quiff, the short snub nose that David inherited, dressed in a dinner jacket and stiff white shirt. Cadet Journalist of the Year, 1959. I held onto it while Sebastian looked on, silently nodding.
‘Well I’ll be buggered,’ he said softly. He looked away from the photo, down at the ground, as if remembering his own past, his other life. ‘No,’ he repeated, ‘you’d hardly recognise him.’ He jerked suddenly. ‘Fuckin’ bastards. The lot of youse.’ Another swig of comforter. Ah yes, that felt better now, the bastards had retreated into the distance. Lost in the alcoholic haze.
I took another swig myself. No matter how many times I reminded myself that this photo was taken all that time ago, it was still the way I saw my father. I looked at the man beside me. Skinny legs with sores on them, broken arm, eyes sunk back so as to be almost indistinguishable in a face of dirt-engrained wrinkles, brushed with beard stubble. A tooth missing, his body odour heavy with the smell of alcohol. Take a good look, Claudia, your father is no longer the man in the photo—he’s this one sitting beside you.
Sebastian’s head started a slow motion journey to his chest, as if he was nodding off to sleep. Just before it got there he jolted it up. ‘Instead of gawping at me, why don’t you make yourself useful and pass me another beer?’ he said.
I hadn’t realised I was staring, it was more that I was lost in thought. I felt suitably chastened. The man had his dignity and I’d just affronted it. I passed him another beer.
‘Have one yourself,’ he insisted, ‘go on.’ He nudged me with his broken arm, the sling moving up and down like a wing.
In spite of everything I couldn’t help smiling. Another one wouldn’t do any harm. Besides, I reminded myself, it wasn’t as if I hadn’t been practising.
He lifted the beer to his mouth. Beneath his beard I saw the Adam’s apple move as he swallowed. I looked away, at the house across the street, in case he thought I was staring.
‘We were mates at one time, good mates. Before the fight. Must be going on for ten years now. We used to kip in that park at Rushcutters Bay. You know the one I mean?’
I took a swig of beer then turned slightly in his direction. Trying to appear casual. ‘Yeah, I know the one.’
‘Well, one morning he comes at me with a broken bottle, accuses me of rolling him in his sleep. But I hadn’t been there at all that night. I’m sorry to say I hadn’t been able to make it home. The police had picked me up. The usual—drunk and disorderly. I’d spent the night in the hostel. It’s raining like buggery so they let us stay there a bit longer but eventually it was time to go. So I’m coming back the next day feeling pretty good. The rain had eased up, I had breakfast in my belly, a flagon of sherry under my arm.
‘But there’s no sign of him. I thought he must have gone out looking for breakfast himself. It’s harder to find in bad weather, people don’t go to the parks, there’s no food in the bins. So I’m ready to settle down with the flagon and then I see him sitting under a tree. Sitting there shivering. And I says, “You mad bastard, what have you done with your coat?” Because he’s not wearing it. First time I ever saw him without his coat on. Give us another, baby. All this talking, it fair makes a man parched.’
I looked at the slab. We’d made more dents in it than I thought. I must have been drinking my fair share, because I was even warming to the idea of being called ‘baby’.
‘Claudia? Is that you?’
Oh shit. I’d recognise that voice anywhere. It was Janet. One of the ex-chorus girls who’d twittered around at Mina’s wedding. Shit. Of all the people who could catch me sitting under a railway line drinking a slab of beer with a dero, it had to be Janet. Of all Mina’s friends she was the biggest gossip. I may as well have made an announcement on the evening news. I kept looking down at the ground.
‘Claudia?’ The voice was closer now, almost upon us.
‘Hello, Janet,’ I said tiredly.
‘I was just taking a short cut home, I thought it was you.’
‘Yes, it’s me all right.’
She was waiting for an explanation. But I was under no obligation to give her one. She stared at Sebastian, doing something peculiar with her nose, as if trying to pull it back into her face. Sebastian slowly raised his head to gaze at this apparition. From the toes of the Nikes, the length of the gaily patterned tights, right up to the sunhat. ‘Hello, baby,’ he greeted her, ‘want a beer?’
‘No thank you, not during the day,’ she said stiffly.
She hung around, still waiting for me to give her an explanation of what I was doing here, drinking in public with a derelict person. But the only sound coming from me was a satisfied ‘ah’ as I took another mouthful of beer. ‘Well, I’ll be going then,’ said Janet. ‘I can see you’re busy. Give my love to your mother.’
No need for that, I thought, she’d be on the phone to Mina as soon as she got home. Maybe she wouldn’t even wait that long. There had to be a public phone around here somewhere.
Off she trudged, her ample bottom wiggling in the tights. Before she turned the corner she looked back. I held my drink up. Cheers. Sebastian, I noticed, had taken advantage of the situation to help himself to a new one. It was a pity the momentum had been broken, because it took another two beers before I was able to get Sebastian back to where he’d left Shakespeare sitting without his coat on.
‘I knew something must have happened, he never went anywhere without that coat. He wore it twenty-four hours a day, slept in the thing. I took the flagon over to him. He had a drink then he said: “Some bastard’s stole my letters, Doc. All my letters.” He had scraps of paper he’d keep in that coat. And pens. He had a beaut collection of pens. Most of them didn’t work but they looked nice. They weren’t really letters, he never posted any of them. He’d write things down on a scrap of paper, fold it up and put it in his pocket. What a mad bastard carrying all that paper around. Strike a match near him and he’d go up in smoke.’ Sebastian shook his head, thinking of the memory.
‘Who took his coat?’
‘Well, he thought I did at first, that’s why he was dirty on me. Then he said it was the devil. He’d slept in the tunnel that night, the tunnel under the road, because of the rain. There’s a ledge you can sleep on as long as you’re careful you don’t roll over and end up in the drink,’ Sebastian guffawed. ‘Shakespeare always used to reckon there were devils in there anyway, he’d only sleep in the tunnel when it was really raining cats and dogs. So he’s sleeping in there and he hears these noises. He thinks at first it’s me so he calls out, “Doc?” Then someone hits him, knocks him out stone cold. Then the next thing he knows he’s propped up under the tree and he doesn’t know how he got there.’
‘What happened after that?’
‘Well, we kind of went our separate ways. I know he got Mrs Mason to fix up his Social Security form—that would have been in his coat as well.’
‘Mrs Mason?’
‘She used to work at the hostel. Not any more though. They’ve got all these new birds down there.’ He reached for another bottle and managed to get the top off it with no assistance from me, the crafty old bugger. Holding it in the hand with the sling and opening with the other. ‘Cheers,’ he said.
‘Cheers.’
‘He’d never go back to that place, you know. Never went back. I stayed away a few nights but then I went back. Kipped there for years after.’
‘And now?’
‘Na, I give it away. I’ve got another little place, all to myself. It wasn’t really the same without Shakespeare.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Last I heard he was up Surry Hills way,’ he said, as if Surry Hills was miles away in the country, instead of about two kilometres. Still, I guess when you’re on foot and you stick to your own territory it may as well be on the moon.
‘Last you heard.’
‘Yep, last I heard.’
‘When was that? Recently?’
‘Depends what you call recent, doesn’t it? Couple of years ago.’
I didn’t remember my conversation with Sebastian verbatim, there were huge gaps which I filled in later to give it some semblance of coherency. What I remembered was the place, the coat, Mrs Mason, that something had happened to my father the night he ‘died’. Drunk as I was by this stage I kept saying these things over and over in my mind because I’d need them for later, when I was sober.
I stayed on to finish the slab with Sebastian—at least I think we finished it. I remember doing some dancing. I remember that in particular because I’m positive his arm came out of the sling. Then it got dark and for some reason we had this bright idea of going back for another slab. I remember the bright red traffic lights at William Street, then the bright blue light of the police car. And I remember telling the young officer that I was a PI and that I was doing undercover work. Fishing around for my ID and not being able to find it. ‘Sure,’ he said, ‘and I’m Matlock.’ I don’t know what possessed him to say that, he was much younger than Matlock.
I remember the bright city lights, Sebastian and I sitting in the back of the police car being driven around like royalty. And then standing in a place with lots of noise. I think I was making most of it. The cops handing over forms and someone—a nurse?—asking me my name. I started to tell her about the undercover work but she wasn’t interested. Sebastian was there and then he went somewhere else and I was looking at a room. Proclaimed Area. I’d seen that this afternoon, in the Matthew Talbot Hostel. It was just the same only the colours were different and instead of men on the beds there were women. No way I was going to lie down there, I’d never slept in a room with more than one bed in it in my life and I wasn’t going to start now.
‘Where … am … I?’ I demanded, in a slow, controlled voice, the sort of voice school principals use when they come across a nest of children playing with matches.
‘It’s all right, calm down,’ I was told.
‘Ring a cab for me,’ I said imperiously. ‘One passenger. Going to Balmain.’ At least I knew not to try and drive my car. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember where my car was. My vision homed in on a phone. I lunged towards it and tapped out the cab company number that I thought I knew off by heart. Why wasn’t anyone answering? A woman approached. Ah, help at hand.
‘Do you have a home to go to?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’ I reeled off the name of Jack’s pub.
‘You live at a pub, eh?’ They didn’t seem to believe me.
‘Yes, look it up in the phone book, ring Jack up, he’ll vouch for me.’
Someone did use the phone. Because the next thing I knew I was being escorted to the door where a cab waited.
‘I’ll be back,’ I announced ominously.
Another ride through the bright lights of Sydney. Then suddenly we were outside the pub. I gave the driver some spare change. He said it wasn’t enough. I handed him my wallet. ‘Help yourself.’ I remember seeing him take a ten dollar blue plastic note out and handing the wallet back.
‘Evening, Jack,’ I said, foolishly passing through the public bar where all the regulars could see me.
It was Marty who helped me up the stairs, damn it. He was always such a smartarse, I’d never hear the end of this. ‘Thank you, that’ll be all,’ I dismissed him when we got to my door. I fumbled around for half an hour trying to get the key in the lock. I must have succeeded because when I woke up it was daylight and I was in my own bed. Thankfully alone.