good sport,” Andy chuckled.
“Have you seen it?” I asked.
“Oh, Dad’s got his whole back catalogue on video tape.”
“It’s pretty funny,” Tom said.
“What are they talking about?” I asked, looking at the Tom-clone who was actually Hal and the slightly ‘Chucky’ ventriloquist’s dummy apparently named Corky.
“Girl troubles,” said Tom. “That was the segment, he’d talk about his girl troubles with the puppet.”
Andy and Tom were swaying between being proud and being dismissive of Hal. They couldn’t quite decide.
“And . . . then he joined the police force?” I said, confused. Next along the hall was a photo of Hal Straw as a young man, in a perfectly pressed police uniform.
“Ah, Constable Kershaw,” Andy said. “Magpie Creek.”
“The TV show,” Anita said, then when I looked at her puzzled, she shrugged in solidarity, I’ve never seen it either.
“Poor old Constable Kershaw, he met with a very unfortunate end.”
“Decapitated in a car accident,” Andy said, like it didn’t delight him at all. “So violent.”
“People bombarded the ABC with complaints,” Tom said proudly.
“Did you ever see the show?” I asked Andy.
“Not when it went to air, but Hal’s got every episode he was ever in stored on video tapes somewhere. He used to make us watch them before bedtime.”
“It’s quite stiff . . . the acting,” Tom giggled. “You know, it’s very, ‘I say, Constable!’ But when we were kids, we loved it.”
Andy regarded the old photos again. “He was a handsome prick,” he said, with begrudging admiration.
As it happened, Hal lived around the corner from Tom and Anita, in a three-storey terrace that had once been the boys’ family home. But they no longer went there to visit. According to the boys, Hal’s second wife, Helen, was ‘a reeker’; their own invented noun from the descriptive word ‘reeking’.
“Sometimes he walks by at night, down the lane,” Tom said, “and we’re lying in bed when we hear this voice coming out of the darkness, ‘No humping!’.”
Tom and Andy snickered at this, then Andy patted his pockets for the car keys.
“Shit!” He jumped up. “I parked my car right outside.”
He rushed out to move the car, not prepared to alert Hal to his presence.
After he’d gone, Tom looked at me and said, “You’re not quite ready for that, Nelly-girl.”
“For what?”
“For Hal,” Anita said warningly. Anita was an old hand with the family Straw.
“Who dealt this tripe?” Tom said, back to the hand of cards.
I eyed Anita across the table. We were playing together, as usual. Andy and I had resolved, for the good of our relationship, to never play 500 again after a particular incident early on in our courtship, about which we no longer speak. But suffice to say, when you play cards with the Straw boys, you need to keep your wits about you.
They learned by playing with Hal that mistakes, even at age eight, could result in you being called a little cunt.
They were very particular about the formalities, it was almost a bit OCD. The table had to be immaculately clean, the cards cut always to the person on your right and table talk of any kind was not tolerated.
“Six hearts?” I said hopefully. Anita’s eyes went immediately to the hand of cards in front of her. A small smile twitched at the corners of her mouth and I knew then she had the left bower, possibly the joker.
Andy came back inside and lobbed his car keys into my bag. “Whose call?” Then as he sat down beside me, “Breast! Breast! Breast your cards, Nell.”
I pressed my cards against my chest instinctively.
“Breast!” Tom shouted, just for the hell of it and we all snickered like teenagers.
“These two reekers are table talking again,” Tom said matter-of-factly to Andy as he fanned out his cards in his hand. “Your bid.”
“I never,” I said.
“Six hearts?” Tom did an exaggerated impression of me, the upwards inflection much more obvious. “Then she . . . ” he pointed at Anita, “. . . smiled.”
“I NEVER!” Anita said with exaggerated offence. See what I mean? They didn’t miss a trick. Their instincts were tuned way up; survival at all costs.
“Come on, then,” Andy said, “We’ll whoop your arses anyway.” Then, ever so casually like he hadn’t done it a million times before, he said: “Misère.”
We all groaned, even Tom.
5.
Three months later I was deemed ready. I was introduced to Hal over lunch at a trendy café in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. It was BYO and Andy brought four bottles of wine, which he clutched in a plastic shopping bag like giant worry dolls.
“Four bottles? Are you sure?” I asked.
“Trust me,” Andy said, ripping the cigarette in and out of his mouth with a one-last-request desperation as we walked along the beachfront towards the restaurant, “we’ll need them.”
Hal was waiting at an outside table. I recognised him immediately from the Shrine to Hal wall in Tom and Anita’s hallway. Still the same foppish hair, but white now instead of blonde, his face was a melted version of the young guy in the headshots.
When we were introduced Hal uttered, “Yes, lovely, lovely. Nell Wylie.” He said my name as though to confirm the identity of the object in front of him. Then he lunged forward with wet lips. I was nimble. I faked left then right, so he caught me awkwardly on the ear. But he grabbed me in a tight embrace all the same, pressing his spongy old body against me. Then he held me at arms length for an intense visual examination with his pale, watery eyes.
It does seem especially odd now, that Andy would not simply shield me from Hal for as long as possible, but, looking back, I think relationships, sexual conquests, held currency with Hal. Despite his better judgment, Andy still wanted to impress his father and to do so, he had to deal in Hal’s currency.
I needn’t have worried about what sort of impression I was going to make on Hal. In fact, I needn’t have stayed beyond the first meet-and-greet impressions. About ten minutes into the lunch, bored with the polite get-to-know-me chit-chat, he stopped communicating with me directly and proceeded to conduct entire tracts of conversation about me while I was still sitting there.
“You like them thin, don’t you son? Yes, very thin.”
“Isn’t she gorgeous?” Andy redirected him, grinned at me, kissed my cheek firmly and put a protective arm around my shoulders.
“She can talk too,” I smiled.
Andy laughed. Hal didn’t notice.
“Bit of an improvement on the drug addict,” Hal said, casually rearranging his cutlery.
“Dad, she wasn’t a drug addict.”
“Well, a heavy drinker.”
Hal turned to me, just to make sure I was clear that we were now discussing Andy’s ex-girlfriend. “His last girlfriend, very heavy drinker. It really takes a physical toll on women, the drinking. You can see it in their face, the skin.”
I’d actually seen