Sensible Shoes

Sensible Shoes

by John Ellison Davies

Hearing the telephone ring, he dropped his suitcase on the doorstep. He thought: it is the instinct of the tribe to hold you back.

"You're still there?" He heard Carole's breathing on the line, a soft exhalation of hints and hurt.

"On my way out."

"Are you sure about this?"

"No." On the step outside his suitcase gleamed in sunshine.

"A weekend away together could be good for us."

"A weekend together is not a weekend away. I'll call you when I get back."

Gently he hung up the receiver. The telephone rang again.

"Mr. Hollingdale?" This voice was unknown to him. It hinted at nothing. "Detective Chief Inspector Carter here, sir. Are you acquainted with Mr. Adrian Quinlivan?"

"Yes."

"May I ask how, sir?"

"As a friend."

"Would you say as a close friend?"

"I think so. Why?"

"We found your business card in his wallet. Mr. Quinlivan is dead."

A scarf of russet cloud wrapped around the city's towers as Eric Hollingdale steered his red Rover towards Rushcutters Bay.

The Shearview Motel was an applauded architect's whimsy twenty years ago. It was now a decaying box of pink and blue rectangles with unwashed windows waiting for a merciful property developer to level it. In the foyer Eric introduced himself to a young policewoman.

In room 217 three men, on their knees, examined the carpet.

"Best not to look just yet, sir," said the one man standing.

Carter was not the grey Easter Island block Eric imagined. His head was a sunburnt oval, topped by a mat of grey hair showing traces of blonde. A youth spent at the beach, perhaps. Now a weekend surfer? A fit man for his age.

"We can talk by the window. Have you been here before?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Routine. Not much of a place this, is it? We had quite a hunt to find a clean sheet frankly."

Eric's eyes strayed to the bed. He looked away, out onto the street below, empty of marked or official cars, empty of journalists.

"Has his wife been told?"

"The Commissioner is with her now."

"How can I help you?"

"I don't know. Yet. Would you identify the body? Save trouble later."

"You know who he is."

"From the contents of his wallet, yes. From photographs, yes. I saw him once in the flesh, so to speak, on parade, when he was Minister for Police. But you, being a friend..."

"If I can help."

The young policewoman folded back the sheet.

Adrian Quinlivan appeared merely relaxed, as Eric had often seen him in the evenings when he called by to pass a half hour in Eric's company, nursing a glass of whisky.

"Yes. That's him."

"One more detail, if you don't mind." On Carter's nod the entire sheet was pulled aside.

Adrian Quinlivan was naked but for a black leather corset. Coiled beside him lay a leather riding whip.

"Cover him. Ever seen him like that before, Mr. Hollingdale?"

"No. What a peculiar..."

"Had to ask."

Eric stared at the shape on the bed.

"I'm sorry. It's a shock. This is grotesque."

"Not really. Grotesque is... well, I've seen a lot of it. This is, I would say, unusual. The point is, can you give me any idea what happened here?"

"I can't imagine."

"You're an antique dealer. Yes? How long have you known him?"

"Fifteen years. I was at University with his wife. We knew the same people. When she married Adrian we naturally saw each other here and there."

"You're very concise."

"I'm trying to help."

"Here and there." The phrase seemed to amuse Carter. "Knew the same people?"

"I bought furniture for them."

"Expensive furniture. Your sort."

"Yes."

"Are you married, Mr. Hollingdale?"

"No."

"Had to ask. Go on."

"How do you explain these things? Somehow, as time went by, I saw more of Adrian than Charmian. I think he enjoyed not having to explain himself. I'm not interested in politics."

"You went to their house?"

"Rarely. He came to mine. I wish I could be more help."

"You're doing fine."

"Will there be publicity about this?"

"Not likely," laughed Carter. "Sorry. I assume we can rely on you to be discreet?"

"This is interesting, Chief," Alice interrupted, producing a plastic bag containing a pair of shoes. "Found under the bed. Size 6. Flats. Good for walking. Maybe a nurse's. Christ. How many fetishists does it take to change a light bulb around here?"

Carter explained.

"That's the other thing Mr. Hollingdale. We believe that Mr. Quinlivan was not alone at the time of his death."

The Quinlivan house stands apart from the city of which the Quinlivans have been so much a part, at the end of a scythe-shaped driveway. The stone mansion, high on our Heritage list, droops a coquettish fringe of untidy vine. Adrian had pruned the vine himself to give just that effect. The effect was a wink at the world which the world rarely saw, encouraged by Charmian's scorn of symmetry. The Quinlivans had often arrived at the same results from different motives, a useful accident in a marriage.

Charmian's attitude to interiors was more conventional. Admitted by the maid, Eric was pleased to note that several items which had passed through his hands were still prominent, offered first to a visitor's eye. An 18th century Milanese rosewood and marquetry commode stood in the hall. Twin spelter lamps braced the dining room entrance. Elegance, usefulness, and investment value happily combined.

Charmian's lips brushed his cheek.

"How did you hear so soon?"

"I've been with the police."

"Admirable Eric-on-the-spot. So like you."

"What will you do now?"

"I shall do what a Quinlivan does and see my solicitor. We don't need to pretend, do we? He was good to me, and now he's gone."

"I think I understand.

"You do. Have coffee with me."

In the morning room Eric remembered that its spare comfort was the work of a single decorator given a free hand. Not one fabric, mirror, frame, or colour had been chosen by Adrian or Charmian. In no detail was the room an expression of their personalities. In that way it revealed much. Morning was a time to bring the mind to focus on the day ahead. So long as the room supported the purpose they would not trouble with details. You took trouble where it mattered, where it would be seen, where you entertained. He wondered how their bedroom was decorated, or if they had shared one at all. This last thought he tried to put quickly from his mind.

"Will someone be with you today?"

"Dear Eric. I should have kept you for my friend, my friend only. Don't worry about me. I have Ursula to take care of me. Haven't I dear?"

"Yes, ma'am," the maid answered curtly. "I'll call your taxi now ma'am."

"Let it wait."

"Your appointment is for ten, ma'am," Ursula insisted.

"You're right. Call them." As Ursula left the room Charmian whispered: "You should have seen our nervous Commissioner trying to tell me, without telling me the details. Adrian appointed the poor man himself, you know. Isn't that typical of him somehow?" Charmian squinted. "The newspapers will report only the passing of a public man, a man with many friends. Such a sham. We may have been his only friends. He kept people, and his secrets, in separate boxes. It was a game with him. And good manners."

"You were not unhappy with that?"

"No. We liked each other. We did not make obstacles for each other. It's a more useful arrangement than what people call love." She held his hand. He stared for a moment into the unsettling green of her eyes and looked away.

He recalled Adrian as he had been during the evening visits, at ease, conscious of his authority and beguiling voice, yet wholeheartedly off duty. A gossiping bull, confiding rumours, inventing some for his own pleasure, knowing they would go no further, if believed. He would light a cigar, let it go out, and light it again, enjoying Eric's twenty- eight year old whisky. One glass and one cigar, never two.

With the address Charmian gave him, Eric found a plain brick house with a neat blank patch of front lawn. He mounted the low step onto a patio enlivened with Chinese paper lanterns. There was no bell. He knocked several times. In the unlit narrow side passage he found another door, its solid iron knocker moulded in the shape of a mermaid.

The door was opened cautiously by a dark-haired woman, with wide eyes in a narrow face, wearing a man's dressing gown.

"It's a bit early, sweets," she said.

"Are you Chantelle? I'm a friend of Adrian's."

In the plain kitchen there was only a laminex-topped table on a linoleum floor recently laid. One chair was incongruous, a dragon-adorned extravagance in teak. Eric remembered selling it to Adrian himself. Chantelle sat in this chair and spread her sleeves regally. A slight turn of her wrist Eric interpreted as an invitation to accept a lesser throne of tubular steel.

Badly framed portraits of Myrna Loy and Rita Hayworth hung on the walls. From the ceiling hung baskets of fruit, onions, and garlic.

"Do you have something for me?" Chantelle's thin nervous shoulders pinched together. He handed her an envelope. She opened it. Her long fingernails scratched several banknotes, counting. Her worried eyes acquired a relieved, liquid brilliance.

"Thank God he kept his word."

"We found the envelope, his wife and I, in his desk, with a letter addressed to me. His instructions were clear. His wife is not curious."

"Would you like some tea?" Chantelle put the kettle on, her hips a model of feminine motion. "Are you curious?"

"Perhaps."

The gas flame bit at the kettle's base. The water wheezed to boiling point.

"Do you mind if we talk while I dress?"

At the edge of revelation Eric wanted to leave. Adrian had left behind the mystery of a friendship, a marriage, a pair of size 6 shoes. In death he was entitled to his secrets, but, alive, he had left clues.

Eric followed Chantelle into her bedroom. It was freshly painted in shades of green and blue, the colours of tranquil inlets and lagoons. He sat on the bed. Chantelle held her hair up at the back, inserting pins.

"Are you his whisky friend? I could smell it on his breath sometimes."

"What is that perfume you're wearing?"

"It's called Nitchevo. One of Adrian's jokes. Nitchevo is Russian for 'nothing'."

Naked, Chantelle was not shy. Her legs were a definition of line and tone. She stretched them generously for inspection before pulling on her stockings. Applying make-up she maintained her breasts in ironic profile, a fluted ideal. Half-dressed she stepped nimbly into a pair of purple high-heeled shoes.

"What do you see, Eric?"

"A convincing illusion."

"I'm real enough, since the operation," Chantelle pouted. "Being a woman is hard work, sweets. Do you know that? Every day I see girls who haven't got the hang of it. They trip over themselves. I want to cry out to them "Let me teach you how to walk!""

"Did you sleep with Adrian?"

Chantelle stared, measuring him.

"I suppose you had to ask. No."

"Thank you."

"I cater for more sophisticated tastes. He liked to talk."

"Watching you dress?"

Chantelle moved closer.

"I bet he enjoyed a gossip with you."

Eric shrugged.

"Did he tell you that each life contains a private joke? And that the only real tragedy in life is not getting your own joke?"

"No."

"He got his, poor dear."

"I wonder why he didn't tell me that? I wonder what he thought my joke is?"

"Or mine?" Chantelle said, brushing her hair. She handed him a card with her phone number.

"Will you visit me again?"

He felt himself moving in a mist, on an unfamiliar highway, searching for a sign. It might not promise shelter. It might be notice of a long way to go.

In the mist he had one consolation. Her feet were too big.

"Those were his happiest days, with the parades and horses."

Charmian put aside the photograph.

She was a real widow now. A single curled and sprayed strand of soft dark hair descended each pale cheek like lifelines to a doomed expedition.

"You had no trouble with that other matter?"

"None."

"Dear Eric. Always the least worldly of us. Not the least capable."

"Excuse me, ma'am." Ursula had approached silently, unnoticed. "It's nearly time."

"Thank you dear."

"You did say at nine."

"Yes dear. I want a moment more with Mr. Hollingdale."

Ursula quivered.

"We should get to know each other again, Eric."

The time came to part. Ursula draped Charmian's coat about her shoulders. Charmian kissed her on the mouth and slipped quickly into the back seat of the waiting taxi.

Eric walked to his own car. He saw, as Ursula closed the front door, a tint of triumph in her humourless eyes.

"There's something different about you," Carole teased him.

He spread her golden hair across the pillow. He traced his fingers along her jaw-line. His hands cupped her skull. With a fervour that surprised him, he wished that he could feel her thoughts through the bone.

"I bought you a present." His packed and unopened suitcase stood in shadow beyond the bedside lamp's field of clarity. Clarity, he speculated, begins at home.

Carole sat up, to watch him at length as he rummaged the package from his dressing table.

"This isn't like you," she said, opening his gift. "Nitchevo? Isn't that Russian for something?"

"The name doesn't matter."

He applied the perfume to her wrists and behind her ears.

"Go on doing what you're doing," she said.

He did, over her welcoming stomach and wherever her pulse was strong. He felt a crash of laughter in his limbs.

He was thinking of Ursula's feet.

--The End--