bench, and with his hands on his hips, told me Marty was out.
‘Out of what?’ I asked. Apron clad, I proudly lifted from the oven the large stainless steel baking dish heavy with my latest culinary creation, beef wellington.
‘The business! We’re on our own now.’ He didn’t look at me, but I knew his face looked like thunder. ‘I’ve been on the phone to the lawyers all afternoon. The papers are being drawn up. He wants to open his own agency.’ His voice filled with rage. ‘He’s gotten too big for his boots.’ His fist came down and slammed the kitchen bench. ‘If he wants war, I’ll give him war.’
To say I was shocked was an understatement. I stood rooted to the spot, oven mitts on my hands. ‘Davis? What are you talking about? You must be joking?’ However, I could tell by the anger he wore on his face it was no joke. Baffled, I asked, ‘How long has this been going on for?’
‘For God’s sake Peach, he’s been trying to undermine us for years.’ Loosening his tie, he stalked off towards the bedroom, his long legs like a giraffe. Without turning, he shot over his shoulder, ‘Look I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It’s done.’ From behind, I saw his hands cut the air like a knife.
Throwing the oven mitts on the bench, I hurried after him. He was standing in the robe taking off his trousers. In frustration, he flung them on the bed. They slipped to the floor.
I hovered in the doorway. ‘Davis… I don’t understand… he is your best friend… our best friend.’
‘Not anymore.’ He brushed past me and went back to the kitchen, snatching a Corona from the fridge. He opened it roughly, spilling some on the floor. He left it. His behaviour was so out of character I didn’t know what to make of it. He took a lime from the fruit bowl, slammed it down on the stainless steel bench, pulled the largest knife from the block, and angrily hacked a slice, pushing it into the neck of the bottle, before retreating to the terrace. I watched as he stood with his back to me, one hand on the railing, the other throwing back the beer. He looked as if any moment he might hurl the entire bottle at the wall opposite. I could not think of a time when I’d seen him like this.
Davis was such a perfectionist. Ever since we had moved into the warehouse, he’d been over the top about the housekeeping. Anal, might be a better word. Everything had a place. The newly laid light-coloured timber flooring was incredibly soft, and rather than offend our guests, Davis bought six pairs of white towelling slippers to keep just inside the front door, so our female visitors wouldn’t mark the floor with their heels. He kept bringing home different mops for the cleaners to use. Trialling them first, giving them a ranking out of ten. It drove me crazy. It annoyed me more, when I turned the tap on in the evening to get a drink of water, and he’d comment that he’d already wiped the sink down and now there were water marks.
‘Davis, it’s a sink,’ I’d say, and shake my head in frustration at his analness, if there was such a word.
Marty broke into my thoughts. ‘So tell me again how you know this Mr Carmody?’
I shrugged. ‘I really didn’t know him that well. Sometimes I’d see him when I shopped at New Farm. Poor old guy was in a wheel chair. He’d had one leg removed from the knee down.’ I glanced across at Marty and caught his grimace. ‘He used to sit outside The Deli most afternoons, having a coffee, watching the world go by, and attempting to have a bit of a chat with anyone with a keen ear. Occasionally, I’d see him struggling to roll himself up the ramp, so I’d give him a hand. To be honest, at first I always thought he looked a bit cranky, but surprisingly, when he spoke he had a wonderfully melodious voice. The more I got to know him, I realised he was extremely articulate. Apparently, he’d been a notable landscape architect in his former years.’ And then I smiled to myself. ‘And, after a while, I realised he was a bit of a joker as well.’
Marty glanced at me. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I remember once asking how he was. Instantly, he grabbed at his heart, looking concerned. Startled, I leant closer and asked if something was wrong. “No, the day could not be any more perfect now that I have set eyes upon the beauty of you,” he said.’ I shook my head in mirth. ‘Another time, he said that his doctor had only given him a short time to live. Obviously I was shocked and when he saw my face he said best not to waste any time, we should have coffee immediately, and then he laughed.’
‘Sounds like a flirt to me.’ Marty chuckled. ‘How old do you think he was?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps in his late eighties, early nineties.’
‘Cheeky old codger. Sounds like he did a good job of staying in his own house for as long as he did.’
‘No, he didn’t. The house has been closed up for a couple of years now. Mr Carmody was in one of the aged care facilities in the area, although he never gave up hope that one day he would be able to return. He told me the hardest thing of all was giving away his dog Wilbur, when he went into the facility. I met Wilbur a couple of times, tied to his master’s wheelchair. He was a beautiful blonde labrador with huge dark eyes that appeared to say so much. He looked as if he understood what was going to happen to him and was scared and sad. When Mr Carmody told me, it really bothered me and I cried. I told him I would try to find a way to take Wilbur for him, but when he knew we lived in a warehouse, he said that it would be unfair to Wilbur, that he was used to a large garden. Apparently, Wilbur went up the coast to a friend of his. So although it was good the dog had a home, it meant Mr Carmody couldn’t see him. You could tell he was heartbroken. In fact, it was as if he went downhill after that.’
‘So has it been a few years since you’ve seen the old guy?’
‘No… I continued to see him at the shops, up until about six months ago.’ I laughed lightly. ‘He’d tell me that he’d escaped from the facility. Truth be known, they were probably glad to have a reprieve from him for a short time. I gathered he was a demanding patient.’ I smiled and shook my head. ‘Anyway, he’d wheel himself up to the shops and wheel himself home. One afternoon after work when I had raced over to pick up some of that Italian ham that Davis used to like, Mr Carmody told me that it was Happy Hour back at the facility, but no one was ever bloody happy, so he preferred to chat to his friends at the shops.’ I laughed again.
‘How come you shopped over at New Farm so much when you lived at West End?’
I glanced over at him and indicated with my hand to turn right at the roundabout. ‘In the beginning it was almost quicker for me to come across to do my shopping, than to stop and talk to every man and his dog at West End. As delightful as our clientele was, being so well known in the area meant the smallest tasks took forever. And then in the last year, it was simply because I could not face those very same people.’ My face blushed at the way I had felt.
Marty gave me a fleeting look. ‘I understand. Speaking of dogs, you’ve always loved them, why haven’t you had one of your own?’
I rolled my eyes to the heavens with frustration. ‘Because Davis said no, that’s bloody why.’ Neither of us spoke for a minute and then I continued. ‘Also with the hours we worked, it wouldn’t have been fair.’ I thought for a few seconds. ‘Funny, but I have always wanted a dog. I remember begging Bea and Johnny. All we ended up with was a guinea pig called Harriet. Johnny said it would teach us the responsibility of taking on a pet. Harriet was such a lovely little thing, with funny little teeth that munched noisily on celery. Quite clever really, she reacted to my voice, and to the sound of the fridge door. For a while I even pretended she was a small dog.’ I paused. ‘Funny thing was though, when Bea left us and moved to New Farm, the first
