I hadn’t had a chance to wash the crystallizing brine off when our door bell rang. Jacko was there, very New York pallid in a sport shirt and slacks.
—Come in, mate? he asked.
He went lolloping down the stairs and into the living room and saw that wonderful azure and foam which is the surf off the coast of New South Wales.
—Why would anyone ever leave a place like this? he asked, and then answered it himself, Fame and bloody riches I suppose, that’s why.
I got him a beer and we sat out on the deck. The cries of children, the surf hitting their waists, rose to us. The same primal sounds whenever children were struck by mother brine. I’d always listened to and marvelled at and been soothed by the rising fragments of that sound.
—I still remember, he told me, not finishing the sentence.
He still remembered making the long journey in Stammer Jack’s tank of a car, through the rubberbush and the mauve desolation to Hector, then north to Darwin. And the Arafura there, the stickiest, most humid sea, full of sea wasps, brimming with fascination. That was what he remembered and was too wise to express.
—We’re going to take Francis, he told me.
—He’s agreed? I asked hopefully, wanting to be off Bickham’s hook.
—Chloe and I are going to sedate him. Then we’re just going to bloody take him.
I looked confused. I couldn’t see how this could happen.
—We’ve got his passport, said Jacko. We’ll take him on the plane. We’ll tell customs and immigration that he’s under sedation.
I would later get more used to the casual lawlessness of Jacko’s tone.
—Chloe and I are going to take him Sunday night. If he goes to his normal Monday meeting with Madames Mulcahy and Lauber, they’ll just reinforce his resistance. Mind you, the little bugger will engineer them to do that eh. From their point of view it will seem the right thing to do. He’ll get ’em so bamboozled they’ll beg him not to give in to his yobbo brother eh. Cunning’s the last thing to die in a human being, you know. Frank’s got bags of it left.
I took a breath.
—Bickham called me, I told Jacko. He says Francis should go.
—What? He said that? I’ll never say another bad thing about the old bugger.
Indeed, Jacko’s eyes had softened into a pitiable gratitude. He turned them towards the eastern horizon, where the waves were white-horsing out in the Tasman Sea.
—Chloe and I wondered if you could come out with us, you know, to see us through immigration and everything. You’re a respected figure here. You can say he’s travelling to California for treatment and the buggers at the desk will believe you eh. We’ve already arranged to do his check-in in the first class lounge, but if you’re there with us at immigration it’ll stop them thinking his brother’s trying to abduct him.
—But you are abducting him.
—Noooh! said Jacko.
But neither Bickham’s persuasion nor Jacko’s and Chloe’s desire had yet quite convinced me this wasn’t abduction.
—Come on, mate. You’re a bloody wordsmith, aren’t you? You know the definition of kidnap. We’re not holding him to ransom. He’s been holding us. The little bugger.
—Does this request come from Chloe too?
—Mate, he said, reaching into his breast pocket. She wrote you a letter.
When I saw the pink envelope, and the hopeful large loops of Chloe’s handwriting, I knew I was embroiled.
I avoided any further argument by the dishonest but not abnormal marital means of telling only part of the truth. I implied that Francis himself had consented under the influence of his mother’s good friend, the Nobelist, to go to Tijuana. The flight across the Pacific was hardly one he was unfamiliar with.
I was vaguely grateful just the same that, on principle, Maureen did not want to come to the airport with me to see the Emptors off.
After lunch on Sunday, a limousine ordered by Jacko arrived to collect me from the beach. As I was dragged away in its front seat – Australians like to signify mateship with the driver they don’t even know by sitting in the front rather than in the back of limos – I saw Maureen frowning up at me from the bottom of the drive. I was sure she suspected I’d misled her. I know it sounds thin now, even to me, but at the time, I have to plead, I believed what that sick man, Bickham, had said. And believed, too, under the pressure of Chloe’s misery that there was no harm in hope and in placebos.
Fifty minutes later, we stopped in front of Francis’s terrace, and Jacko appeared through the front door at the trot. He and the driver and I quickly packed the Emptors’ extensive luggage into the boot of the car, and I went into the house to help Jacko manage Francis out the door and into the limousine, all under the supervision of Chloe. I was appalled at how limp and glazed Francis looked. His eyebrows flicked, trying to focus. We simply lifted him by either elbow, and I heard his feet scrape along the pavement. Chloe got in ahead of us, and when we eased Francis in beside her, she received his head on her shoulder. At the sight of this Burren Waters Pietà, I found myself swallowing tears. In that second, I was irrationally pleased with myself for doing something to allow Francis to meet the cactus doctor.
That afternoon there was a tight test match between Australia and India in progress at the Cricket Ground, and people were on their way there for the afternoon session. Chloe looked at the cars, the drivers avid for the sight of cover drives and square cuts. She sighed.
—Michael Bickham despises cricket, she told me in her smallest voice, but as if she agreed utterly with Bickham. People cluttering the roads for the sake of a mere game!
I mentioned that Bickham’s biography claimed his father had adored the game. I don’t know what made me challenge her quoting of Bickham. She was after all in an innocent enough state of impatience, this woman whose son was dying. I was pleased anyhow that we so quickly got past the Cricket Ground crowd and were able to turn south for the airport.
Jacko had called ahead from the limo, and a young man in an airline uniform was waiting on the pavement outside the glass doors for our arrival. There were too many of us being too solicitous, but between us we got Francis safely into the chair, where he slumped, his head lolling. The young man in the airline uniform leaned forward to his ear.
—Francis, it’s Arnaldo. I met you at the Friends of the Opera party last year. I really hope this trip works well for you, Francis.
—Okay, okay, Jacko announced. They’re going to check us through in the Captain’s Club.
—I’ve been told, said the young man, beginning to push Francis’s chair.
Chloe raised her eyes at me. Francis, Michael Bickham and Khalil were the only homosexuals she had room for in her world view.
Sydney’s growing Asian, Arab and Turkish population seemed to fill the airport. transits and reunions turned these latest immigrants into airport habitués. A provincial-sized airport that was required somehow to service a big city full of perhaps the most wandering people on earth!
Strolling past queues of passengers, Jacko put his arm around my shoulder.
—Okay, mate, here we go. Me for fucking lustre and you for renown.
The combination seemed to work well enough in the lounge to which we were led. It was the sort of place which was used for ministers of state and film stars, visiting and departing.
Especially for Francis, a sofa had been set up with pillows. Jacko and the young airline official lifted comatose Francis onto it. Chloe pulled up a chair and held Francis’s diaphanous hand.
The young airline official asked, What can I get you from the cocktail bar?
We all ordered Scotch. And even though we knew Francis could not possibly drink it, the accustomed flute of champagne was votively placed for him on the coffee table by the sofa. The young airline official took all the Emptors’ passports and tickets and immigration forms and went away to deal with them. It was an hour before boarding, he told us.
—Do you mind waiting here with us, mate? J
acko bleakly asked me.
I said that of course I didn’t. I wanted to see the Emptors get away safely.
Chloe murmured, You’re really a kind old bugger, aren’t you? Compared to Bickham eh. Do you think you have to be an utter prick to be a genius?
—Let me tell you one thing, Jacko breathed. You don’t have to be a genius to be a prick.
—Bickham let me know he wanted Frank to go, I confessed to Chloe. That was one of the deciding things with me.
—Yeah, said Chloe, her eyes clouding again. I didn’t really mean to imply he wasn’t kind. But tell your missus we appreciate her lending you to the bloody cause.
Waiting through the next hour, we drank a lot. Francis’s Heidsieck went flat on his coffee table, but none of our drinks stood long enough to go off or alter their states. Jacko found time to reiterate his belief that saguaro serum, administered by the healer of Tijuana, could very well work by one means or another, and there was a lot of talk about how complex the chemistry of fatal illness was, and the role of the mind, etc., etc.
Jacko said, It’s funny – Australians think Californians are gullible. True enough in a sense. They’ve got a capacity for belief. But they’re hard-headed too. More hard-headed than we are eh. Stuff that we’d just let go, they’ll sue over. But down in Tijuana the cactus doctor injects Californian architects, lawyers, movie producers. Let me tell you, these are the toughest bastards on earth. They don’t lightly declare themselves fixed up, remitted, cured. They don’t lightly give up the idea of lawsuits. And there are hordes of these tough old American bastards who swear by the cactus doctor. So who gives a bugger whether it’s magic or not? Those bloody opera friends of Frank’s think that even dying has to be in good taste.
The young man who had met Francis at the Friends of the Opera affair returned with a youngish but motherly colleague, who helped us pass the time by fussing over us. Jacko put his arm on my elbow and asked her, Can my friend get a clearance to come with us into the immigration hall?
The young woman said yes and uttered my name as if it were all the argument that was needed for such a concession. In my liquid condition, I felt wonderful about this, as if I had stolen some glory from gods, perhaps even from Michael Bickham.
In these genial circumstances, boarding time came quickly. At last Francis was lifted into his wheelchair, and we caught a lift and emerged amidst the Turks and Arabs to roll Francis down towards the large yellow immigration hall door. The young yet motherly airline official tapped my shoulder to convey to the security guard that I needn’t be delayed by enquiries as to whether or not I had a boarding pass. She then asked a number of passengers whether they minded if Francis went straight to the head of the line. None of them did. Asian, Hamitic, Caucasian, they stared at the ravaged fragment of golden boy who occupied the wheelchair Jacko now fraternally pushed.
A bald and sun-tanned immigration official looked at me and half-nodded.
—Not on Sunday television today? he asked.
For one season I had been a regular on an arts program on television, and everyone still thought I was. Such is the power of television, even in Australia, to fix you in people’s constellations.
And to prove that it was so he also breathed the name of Jacko’s old program, Morning Oz. Then, This is your brother?
—My son, said Chloe. We’re taking him to America for treatment.
It seemed to me that two men in business suits were growing impatient with our queue-jumping and were pressing round either flank of our party. One of them opened his wallet and showed a card to the immigration official. He said, We have a court order to seize Mr Emptor’s passport.
Jacko, taller even than this policeman, reared back and looked down his vast cheeks at the man.
—Which Mr Emptor’s passport?
—You’re free to go, Jacko. Mrs Emptor, too, if she wants. We have an ambulance waiting for your brother.
Jacko, Chloe and I found, by comparing notes afterwards, that at that stage we had all believed someone had brought an injunction against Francis’s leaving Australia for quack treatment in Tijuana. Yet who knew and disapproved? Only Maureen.
Jacko bellowed at me, Who is this man?
I was not able to answer that.
The policeman who had made the speech about the passport turned with studied patience and showed Jacko the same card he had already shown the immigration official. Jacko read it and seemed flummoxed all the more. He and Chloe exchanged looks. I had been expecting her to speak but she was hard of breath, her chest heaving. Suddenly, like Bickham, a sufferer in matters of respiration.
—What … What in the hell? she kept muttering, and turned her eyes to me.
Jacko told the suited cops, I’ll have Tom Hughes QC down your bloody throats within half an hour.
He was invoking the name of a lawyer he admired.
The senior cop could see that Chloe was beside herself and leaned down towards her, looking her straight in the face.
—Mrs Emptor, we have intravenous set up in the ambulance. We’ll bring him round for you. You’re not to blame in any way, Mrs Emptor. He’ll be back to full health in no time.
Chloe swung both hands against his upper ribs, trying to do him damage, but Woollahra and her long grieving had debilitated her.
—No, no, the policeman advised her softly, more like a counsellor than a cop.
I saw the crooked plaint in Chloe’s mouth. Jacko’s pallor also drove me to do something for the Emptors.
—I’m calling the press straight away, I assured Jacko.
The senior policeman quietly informed me that the press were already outside in large numbers in any case.
Meanwhile the immigration hall seemed to have emptied of travellers and to be full now of uniformed police and ambulance men. Chloe wailed as Francis was lifted from the chair and put onto an elegant, wheeled stretcher and pushed away. Chloe and Jacko kept pace with it, and two uniformed policemen had to restrain Jacko, who made a dash from the flank as if to rescue Frank.
—Come on, come on! Jacko yelled. I hope you know what you’re doing! My brother’s dying.
In the stretcher’s wake, I saw the chief, suited policeman collect the Emptors’ passports and tickets, which they had left behind at the desk. I said that I would swear in court that I saw him take receipt of them.
Calmly he said, That’s okay, sir.
I had no choice but to move in Jacko and Chloe’s wake. The trolley carrying Francis was loaded into a lift, and the rest of us were told to use the stairwell. We raced down, Jacko and I supporting Chloe on either side.
Outside the glass arrival doors downstairs, police were restraining journalists and radio and television crews. One of the television people called out a question to me about whether I’d been helping Francis Emptor escape? I said I was helping him go to America for treatment for lymphatic cancer. Or lymphoma. Cancer anyhow. Whereabouts in America? they asked, but I would not answer. Vanity and discretion stopped me now from saying the name of quackery’s capital: Tijuana.
Amidst the surf of people around the ambulance, I saw Chloe turn her pink gash of a mouth to me.
—Call Bickham! she yelled. They reckon it’s all a put-up job.
Waiters at Emilia’s in Double Bay, who thought the Fraud Squad’s claims outrageous, left the table normally occupied by Francis and Hefty Mulcahy and Irma Lauber free that Monday. On its plain white cloth, they sat a thin vase charged with one white rose. If you had seen the ghastly Francis of past weeks, it was possible to read everything that had happened as police barbarity.
In fact Francis was revived under guard in hospital, charged with fraud, fed intravenously, and then given a meal. Relieved of the burden of creating his own fiction, he was reported to have eaten parts of the food, and to have got more voracious still over the next few days as he ate. He would in fact put on fourteen pounds in the first week.
But Chloe and Jacko and I were not to know this that first Sunday afternoon at the hospital,
as we all sat in a lounge drinking coffee. Chloe looked appalling, and Jacko swore at officials. Then they got a hospital psychiatrist to come and speak to us.
—This miming of the symptoms of cancer might be a result of Munchausen’s Syndrome, a desire to attract attention, or else an attempt to deceive the authorities which became a pathological game. Apart from starving himself, he rubbed depilatory cream into his hair to simulate the effects of radiotherapy. In any case, you have to come to terms with your anger at him …
This might have been a struggle for all but Chloe. For Chloe, I could see very plainly, was ecstatic. She turned to me a face ravaged with tears of relief.
Frank had made everyone look very silly, except perhaps Jacko and Chloe who had blood ties to explain their behaviour. Jacko would never forgive him for his deception. Chloe herself would tell me years later, The little bugger’s an actor. He got into his bloody act and he couldn’t pull out. Jacko should know all about acts. He’s got a bloody beauty of his own.
Ten weeks after the drugged Francis was stopped from leaving Australia, he stood trial. Chloe asked us all to write references which could be put before the court’s attention, but I don’t think anybody did.
When Chloe asked me, I said, But how can I write a reference for someone who duped you? And as cruelly as that?
—I’m the mother, said Chloe. And I’m bloody asking.
Bickham must have refused too, because as far as I could ever tell, she forgave me. No doubt the Chambers, the Mulcahys, the Evans and perhaps even Dame Roberta Murdoch, the great diva, were also asked. Full both of loathing and pity, Maureen and I and all of us followed the trial. I even saw footage of Chloe and Stammer Jack, hand in hand, entering court together. Chloe did not look as drawn as the day on which we had attempted to kidnap Francis for saguaro juice therapy. Her son had been restored to her. She did not need any more answers from Michael Bickham.
It was alleged in the trial that Francis had plundered an amount of two million dollars from the international freight company he worked for. Somehow he had been able to over-enter into a computer the cost of air cargo shipments, so that the computer itself instructed him to issue credits. He directed these credits to certain bank account numbers, which in fact were accounts run by Francis himself. He had once told his mother that money had been left him by an older, grateful lover. He had told Jacko the same, and also that he had profited from some antiques deals. He had always known that some central airline freight computer in Europe would catch him out in the end. So that when it did, and the first enquiries began to be made by company officials, and the Fraud Squad was brought in, Francis had acquired some letterhead from a cancer surgeon recently deceased. He did some research and then wrote himself the letter breaking the news of lymphatic cancer.