Sensitive New Age Spy by McGeachin Geoffrey

Author:McGeachin, Geoffrey [McGeachin, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2008-08-04T00:00:00+00:00

I shook off the bozos in the Astra after doubling back through a couple of one-way streets in Tamarama, and by 7.15 I was in a private room at Tetsuya’s, waiting for my date.

Tetsuya Wakuda is a lovely Japanese bloke who got off a plane from Tokyo one day in the early 1980s, took a bus to Darlinghurst, and using the few words of English he knew, got himself a job washing dishes in a fish restaurant. Twenty-five years on, Tetsuya’s is consistently rated one of the top five restaurants in the world, and people fly in from all sorts of places to marvel at a twelve-course degustation menu that changes subtly from visit to visit but which is always sublime.

The private rooms looking out over the immaculately groomed traditional Japanese garden are always great for impressing women. But not tonight. My dinner companion arrived sporting a walking stick, a nice new titanium hip replacement, and a pensioner discount card. He smiled and stuck out his hand.

‘Fell off the fucking massage table, Alby, can you believe it?’

Charlie Somersby was a former World War II bomber pilot who now enjoyed a very pleasant retirement in Byron Bay, thanks to an inheritance. The last time I’d seen him he’d been naked on his living-room floor, getting a rubdown from three beautiful young ladies wearing frangipani leis and nothing else. They traded, according to the sign on their Kombi van, as Lovely Hula Hands and provided holistic massage involving coconut oil, incense and ukulele music. They offered a pensioner discount to boot, which put Byron Bay well up on my list of retirement possibilities.

‘Been meaning to try this place for years,’ Charlie said, looking around the room approvingly. He patted his new hip. ‘I was a bit worried I’d have to sit on the floor, though, and then we’d be buggered.’

Charlie had been piloting RAF Halifax bombers on secret missions over occupied Europe before he turned twenty, and he’d survived more than thirty missions without a scratch. On his eighty-fifth birthday, the hula girls had thoughtfully suggested using the massage table rather than the floor and the poor bastard had fallen less than a metre and fractured his hip.

‘Didn’t have my bloody parachute on, did I Alby? Didn’t have any bloody thing on. When the ambulance arrived they took one look at the girls and sent out a radio call, and ten minutes later I had every emergency vehicle from Ballina to Southport parked in my driveway. Fire engines, police cars, State Emergency Services, the lot.’

He ordered champagne. ‘Seeing I’m on the government’s expense account down here, Alby, I reckon we should go the whole hog.’

‘No argument from me there, mate,’ I said.

We drank a toast to absent friends, which of course meant Harry. I’d first met Charlie through my mate Harry Wardell, a fellow Dedhead who’d stuck his nose in someplace it wasn’t welcome and paid the ultimate price. I missed Harry and I know Charlie did too.

As we worked our way

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