Moonlight Downs by Adrian Hyland

Author:Adrian Hyland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2009-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

A cup of tea at the Godsfather

THE DAY after my return from this ignominious shambles I got a call from the Lands Council in Alice. A lawyer by the name of Charles Harmes. He wanted to talk to me about Earl Marsh and his dodgy lease, and asked if we could meet the next afternoon.

‘No worries. How about the Godsfather?

‘The Godsfather?’

‘The café at the northern end of the main street. Sign on the front says “The Godfather’s”, but we’re more into Jesus than Brando round here.’

‘Sounds like an offer I can’t refuse. Will you be free all afternoon? I’ll explain when we get there.’

The Godfather’s was Bluebush’s attempt at inner-city café society chic. For years it had been a greasy takeaway, notorious for its camelburgers and dead white chips. The current owner, Helmut Apfelbaum, had slapped on a coat of paint and arranged a few striped umbrellas artfully out the front, but he hadn’t got around to the back yet. The itinerants he employed to peel the spuds would sit out on the back steps, smoking and yarning and chucking the skins into the long grass that had sprung up around the overflowing septic tank.

Despite the flagrant abuse of health regulations, the coffee wasn’t bad—Helmut ground his own—and the conversation was a cut above what you got at the White Dog. The town’s intelligentsia, teachers and nurses, tended to hang out there on a Friday afternoon and soak up the ambience. Much of which, if the wind was blowing the wrong way, came from the aforementioned tank.

Today the café was full of tourists and Charles stood out like a poodle in a pack of camp dogs. Lawyers with a social conscience inevitably have a haggard, hangdog look about them, and Charles was as hangdog as I’d seen. He was in his mid-thirties, wearing crisp jeans and a blue checked shirt. He had a receding hairline, a receding chin and, by the look of the creases in his jeans, a receding personality. The only thing that wasn’t receding was his nose, an immense proboscis of a hue that suggested it had sat through too many outdoor land-claim hearings.

‘I haven’t eaten,’ he said when the introductions were out of the way. ‘What do you recommend?’

I studied the blackboard menu. Marinated buffalo steaks. Crocodile skewers. Wild boar sausages. Helmut was going all gourmet.

‘A cup of tea. Weak black is probably your safest option.’

‘I prefer it white.’

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

To his credit he didn’t, when, minutes later, he poured his milk from its cute little silver jug and watched in dismay as it came tumbling out in yellow chunks.

‘Helmut!’ I yelled.

The owner came shuffling wearily over, a tea-towel on his shoulder, hair sprouting from every possible orifice. He’d had a long day. A long life, if it came to that, as had the milk.

‘Helmut, look at our bloody milk!’

He peered, sniffed, winced, then shuffled to the kitchen and back without a word of apology, without a word of any description except for a complaint about the waitress.

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