Did My Father Play Guitar?

By Roy Jenner

Brad Mason had never known a father's love. Whenever he raised the question his mother's answer was always the same. 'He was a good man.'  Tilly Mason was a hooker on Kings Cross.  Brad left Sydney on her death to seek seclusion in the outback of Australia. Trees, a paddock, a stream, no electricity, and no people, all this enabled him to fulfil his dream; play guitar and paint. His landscapes were good.  Lester Arnold, an ex-patriot Nashville musician, recognised the potential of Brad's paintings and displayed his work in his steak-house on the Princes Highway. Success created new friends for Brad. He was welcomed into a world of country music, romance and intrigue.  Laurie Anderson was a Sydney police sergeant on late shift when attracted by smoke billowing from a boarding house on Darlinghurst. He entered the burning building and rescued a young woman, left her on the road and returned to the flames to save her companion.  Tilly Mason watched as firemen carried Laurie from the blaze and was by his bed the day the bandages were removed from his sixty five per cent burns. She was not repulsed by the synthetic mask that was now his face. For Laurie the prospect of rehabilitation was long, but Tilly was there and supported him. She stood by Laurie and fell in love, but continued to work at her profession. When she lay with him she saw only the beauty within, but would  not give up her profession and continued to do what she did best. Laurie grew strong enough to re-enter the work force. His reputation as a police officer bore him in good stead for a position with a security company. His daily routine saw him responsible for the collection of large sums of money. Life continued to be cruel for Laurie, but acceptable, but  he lost the one thing in the world he cared about. Tilly died and left a legacy that tested his emotions to the full. She revealed she'd had a son by him many years before; her only child.  The boy had no knowledge of his father. That child was Brad Mason, a young man running from life while grieving over a lost mother and yearning for a father he didn't have. Laurie Anderson, a ruin of a man, became inspired by the search for his son. Two torn individuals, each a vital character in a twisting tale of romance and intrigue.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lawrence Davidson
• Release date: Jun 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9781719923170

Roy Jenner

Roy Jenner is the author of fourteen novels such as this one. Each reflects his experiences as he travelled the world from his homeland of London England to eventually settle in the Antipodes and make Auckland New Zealand his home.  Each page of each book is flavoured with the knowledge and understanding of life’s experiences gleaned along the way. Three years service with Her Majesty’s armed forces prepared him for life away from the docklands of London’s East End, where he was born, to taste the arid and vital atmosphere of Egypt and its controversial Suez Canal Zone where he served two years on active service. Forty years in the meat industry were superseded by twenty years of equal success in the real estate sales.   He was thrilled in later years to become involved with the magic of Nashville and Memphis Tennessee and venture into the challenges of the Australian Outback, being always pleased to return  to the security of his home in New Zealand. A strong family man he has four sons, eight grandsons, three granddaughters and now five great grand children. He continues to write for your pleasure.

Book preview

Did My Father

Play Guitar?

Roy Jenner

Family love and intrigue in Australia’s New South Wales.

Prologue

‘IS HE STIFF? YOU MEAN, is he dead?  No, he’s not stiff, but he is dead. Been that way for half a day, I would think; all night probably.’

An off duty police officer and a council street cleaner made an unlikely mix of observers in Sydney’s Hyde Park, staring at their discovery, the  relaxed form of Moses Stilton; relaxed in death. Rigour mortis had long been and gone and he lay where he usually lay, where he usually slept, in neglect in selected undergrowth within two hundred yards of the bustle of traffic. This was one of the several open air kips chosen by the city’s top vagrant. He’d lived rough for years.  Known to the locals, he was accepted as part of the scenery, to be ignored by most. It was normal for his dishevelled figure to appear publicly, lurking in the timbers, or hovering over a waste basket as he sought sustenance from other people’s scraps.  His one requirement of life was to be left alone to scavenge and live out a feral existence in the wilderness of society, wishing harm to no one.

There was no visible indication of what may have caused death; no injury which could account for the gaping jaw, the staring eyes and the cold, clammy nature of the skin. Nonetheless, the experienced eye of a jogging law enforcer on the first lap of his routine post-dawn two circuit stint of the park was able to diagnose death before breaking his stride. He had no need to touch the man to confirm what he knew. Two years in the crime squad made him an authority on expired beings, on deceased persons in unusual circumstances, on dead people. For most people death was unusual in any circumstance. For him, in many ways, it formed a segment of his everyday life.

‘Don’t touch him,’ he snapped as the cleaner in his white overalls moved close and bent over the man. ‘I said he’s dead. Stay back. This is now a crime scene. Touch nothing.’

Moses Stilton: he’d lived rough, he’d died rough. He’d been labelled Moses for no other reason than the long hair and white beard, suggesting the ragged image of the biblical character and Stilton, because he smelled stronger than the cheese. Few knew his real name. The names given to the derelict of no fixed abode years before, on account of his determination to remain a stranger to soap and water, a feat which he achieved with consummate ease. He’d been christened by the local constabulary who despaired of taking him downtown on regulation trips which always achieved nothing. They’d since found it more convenient to look another way when he crossed their vision rather than endure the nauseating experience of incurring the wrath of Moses when confined to the rear seat of a police vehicle.

At journey’s end the said vehicle would probably need to be taken out of service, as had happened on occasion, to be cleaned while Moses himself was forcibly cleaned and his vexatious temperament was unleashed on every one of the altruistic beings with whom he came in contact. This would include the Sallies whose love for him never waned. They offered him a home on a regular basis, but always failed to hold him.  Fresh clothes, a private room and a dry bed held no appeal for Moses Stilton. Within hours and at the first opportunity he would be gone.  Sydney’s most famous park, with its inviting clumps of trees, was his patch where he was best left alone. He was surely alone now. He’d lived rough and he’d died rough; a voluntary outcast.

Chapter 1

VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA is often described as being a stinking hot hell hole; and not always at the height of the summer. At its hottest, temperatures have been known to rise to a slow baste most times, in excess of forty degrees Celsius. Despite the heat, it was a climate sufficiently cool to attract Brad Mason down from Sydney to make his home in the Buldah Valley. He was twenty two when he fell in love with Cann River. It was there with the surrounding Gippsland and Bombala districts beckoning he felt most comfortable. It was there he set up home and was never inclined to stray. He had an adventurous spirit, but sought not to roam with most of his satisfactions in life and there were many, locked up inside his calm personality behind a façade of tolerance and few words.  Thirty five  kilometres north of  Cann River  and another fifteen in from the Cann Valley Highway  could be found his Elysium, his Shalimar where forty acres of trees on the side of a hill comprised a retreat void of human population; void, but for one adult male, Brad Mason. Below him a fresh water dam nurtured a half dozen head of grazing stock and to the north, a further ten acres of paddock completed the entirety of Brad’s spread. This land formed an exposed security belt to the property which made it impossible for anyone to approach without those on higher ground becoming aware.

Brad had scraped together the twenty thousand dollars needed to purchase the property when the death of his mother had freed him from the strings of her apron in the lowly Sydney suburb where they’d lived. He’d never known his father, but then it had often been said  neither had his mother whose efforts to escape from the seamy night life of Kings Cross when her son was born to redirect her life had met with little success. In a less than sober moment, before her addiction to alcohol had claimed her life, she had laughingly professed she may have seen him standing up some time. This somewhat countered other statements made by her when she remarked her son’s kind heart and short frame came from his father’s side of the family. Brad’s mother was one of the most prolific hookers on the Cross and the only family he knew as a child. Despite that, as a youth growing to a man he never failed to stand by her to the last and give her as much love as any mother could ever wish to receive from a son. He was devastated when she was taken from him on her forty-third birthday. He slumped into a grieving depression from which he thought he would never recover.

Brad was nineteen when his mother died. Time heals, he was told and it did, but the scars remained for none to see, but him to feel.  His home in the trees was his coming of age, his twenty-first birthday present to himself following a year and a half of drifting through the outback, having sold most of his  every material possessions except his Chevy van and his guitar. After a year in the trees he suddenly realised happiness had presented itself to him and  he ruefully accepted it. The purchase of the property cleaned him out financially and he was happy with that. He was able to turn his back on the city and especially his bank in Martin Place, leaving no debts and an account balance of nine dollars sixty six cents. With no expectation of needing his cheque book ever again it burned easily and he withdrew from society leaving no forwarding address. In a new lifestyle which made him as self-sufficient as is ever possible with  money  not being a requirement. This was a dream situation: no dependants and no mortgage, just his ugly face to fill with food as the requirement arose and all day in which to do it.

As a city boy he now learned well the lessons of existence in a rural situation and that’s what his life became for several months; an existence. At the end of that time, a tent by a campfire in a clearing was superseded by a wooden cabin with a stone hearth, built by him. Stones from the bed of the river running close by were fashioned into a fireplace and a chimney was formed as a cornerstone to the crudest of wooden structures. Fashioned from the timber of his own trees this hovel was his pride and it served as both home and art studio. Brad was a creative person who loved to paint. He found great release in his depiction of everyday scenes of the Australian Outback on canvas while never seeking opinion or approval from others. He had no need for those to know his work was impressive.

A hard working  hand to his  receptive mouth was an easy way to live. Root crops from his own ground made for healthy eating and the few head of sheep he grazed offered a balanced diet. His neighbours were few and all lived in the same reclusive situation as he and once comfortable with the new face in the valley they accepted him and were ready to trade. A box of vegetables, or a half sheep, was often accepted as legal tender by those willing to lend a hand around the place to cut timber or burn out a tree stump.

At the end of the first year his innocence and ignorance received a firm jolt when he was landed with a local body account for property rates. Twelve hundred dollars was a  hard amount of money to find, but it was a fortuitous opportunity which opened a gateway for him to present his canvases for sale at an outlet on the Princes Highway where he achieved immediate results.

From Cann River for eighty kilometres in any direction along the pencil of tar seal bordering the Pacific Coast there was practically nothing to appease a traveller’s appetite, be it tourist, or logging trucker. The Tiny Township’s claim to fame, apart from its art centre and bush walks, was its revamped colonial hotel and restaurant, two motels and petrol station, but Brad found solace in the enterprise and attitude of a newly established eating house proprietor.

Lester Arnold’s business was focussed on a traveller’s needs and he believed that a good steak and a plate of veggies after a few hours behind the wheel would hit the spot more than most things; and he wasn’t wrong. On top of which the diners at his main road business Feed-N-Read had a bottomless supply of the current top ten paperback novels available for sale and that’s where it stopped. An inflexible menu with no frills and first rate service soon became local legend on the Princes Highway and a premeditated pit stop for those bound regularly north and south on the Sapphire Coast through to Lakes Entrance.

Brad and Lester discovered a unique affinity from the outset.  From Brad’s point of view it had never been sought after and he surprised himself with the ease with which he let himself drift into the relationship, but knew it was the music. Lester was a Nashville musician, not yet thirty who had defected from an Austral-Asian tour years before when he’d met the love of his life backstage at the Sydney Opera House. Prior to Alice, music had held that top spot for Lester, but blonde hair, blue eyes and a warm heart had soon relegated that to second standing, although it still challenged strongly at tender moments. What Lester could do with acoustic guitar and country fiddle left purists in awe and it was the fiddle Lester was playing when Brad walked into Feed-N-Read early on a July afternoon.

If it hadn’t been the music it would have been the smell of grilled steak that dragged him in off the street that day. The air was cool outside, but the warmth of the hospitality compensated as it overflowed onto the car park. It was Alice who took care of the cooking while Lester handled the counter and between times he pleasured the customers with random moments of musical release.

With the counter and kitchen to the rear the room was set for a dozen tables, three of which were occupied, but the focal point of the whole place was to the right. The polished floorboards of a large alcove served as a resonator for the strains of a fiddle which was being worked by a tall sapling of a man dressed in clinging black. Seemingly unmindful of the presence of others  he cradled the instrument to his cheek, his eyes closed in love with what he held, coaxing a mixture of melody and passion from its fragile frame. Three bare walls around him bounced the sound back to the dining area to greet Brad as he advanced in Pied Piper mode to where the strains of the music held him spell bound. Standing ten feet from the fiddler he watched in admiration as the man crouched and swayed in time to his music which rose to a climax and suddenly ceased. Momentarily he stood poised, bow raised, then he was done. His arms dropped to his side and he stood erect and stood tall; taller in his black leather cowboy boots and he towered over Brad as he moved toward him from his stage and flashed him the cleanest of smiles. Brad joined the accolades of the few diners who downed their knives and forks to put their hands together.

‘Bloody brilliant,’ he said offering his hand, ‘bloody brilliant. I’m Brad Mason, from up the valley.’

Lester placed his fiddle in its case, as though it were a newborn to its crib and warmly extended his own hand in return.

‘It’s Lester, Lester Arnold and I’m really pleased to meet yu’all.’ The handshake was firm, the fingers long. At the counter a beaming smile surrounded by blonde hair appeared over two steaming plates of steak and mash. ‘There y’see my Alice,’ he drawled. ‘Finest cook in the county. What is it we can do for you?’

They became seated and were drinking coffee which appeared as if from nowhere.

‘I’m looking for work. It’s as simple as that,’ said Brad.

The coffee was good. It hit the spot.

Lester considered the statement momentarily

‘Work! What do you do?’

‘I’m a painter,’ replied Brad without too much thought.

‘Painter! No, my place don’t need no painting. It’s the wrong time of the year anyway. The paint won’t stay on. You’d know that.’

‘No, I’m a painter, an artist.’ Brad shook his head over his coffee mug. ‘An artist,’ and he nodded to the alcove where the man had been playing. ‘Like you, you’re an artist. You’d understand.’

Lester laughed and waved a hand in the direction of a guitar on its stand at the rear of his stage.

‘You play?’ he asked.

‘Not so you’d notice. Not to your standard.’

The musician shrugged. ‘People come here and play; good and bad. It’s of no mind. It’s all music. If it’s bad it’s good.’ He refilled their coffee mugs from a bottomless coffee pot. ‘Travellers, folk passing through, we share. It’s a good feeling.’ Brad said nothing, but considered the guitar. ‘You play, I’ll give you a steak,’ said Lester.

‘I said I needed work, not charity,’ rebuked Brad.

‘You saying you don’t wanna share?’

‘I didn’t say that,’ said Brad.

‘So you don’t fancy a steak?’

‘I didn’t say that either. I didn’t fancy one before I came in,’ and he wrinkled his nose in the direction of the kitchen with the beginnings of a smile. ‘Maybe something has changed my mind.’

Lester smiled. ‘Tell you what, cowboy. You play and then we’ll decide if you pay.’

Brad was hesitant, but wanting. He’d never played in public, ever. He played only for himself. His eyes took in the six string gleaming on its stand; an acoustic, a Martin. He could tell that from where he sat. He wanted to move forward, but couldn’t and then it was someone else’s legs that carried him to the stage where he looped the embossed guitar strap around his shoulders and propped himself on the stool. He was still hesitant and still wanting, but that changed as he fingered the frets and stroked the steel strings. His keen ear recognised a magnificent sound. Suddenly he was alone with himself and it mattered not who saw, who listened, what they thought. What to play? He couldn’t think. His mind was blocked, but as he relaxed it was a composition of his own that made its presence known.

‘Country music, how my heart sings.’

The words and melody came easily, as easily as they did in the quiet of his trees on the slopes of Buldah.

‘I wallow in the joy it brings,

I find that life’s not hard to bear,’

Brad became lost in his music, but suddenly became aware of the tall man in black standing over him, fiddle in hand, bow raised; then sweetly it was a duet. Brad played and sang and Lester just played. With the smooth scrape of horse hair on nylon he imposed his harmonic descant over the melody line of Brad’s song and it were as though the two had played together a hundred times before. They finished together with Lester’s soft Tennessee drawl picking up on the vocal of the last line of the hook; then it was done. The half dozen diners were all alive to what they’d seen and heard, together with Alice who came forward in chef’s garb with a joyful expression. Lester pecked her cheek.

‘That’ll be steak dinner for two, Honey Belle,’ he crooned. ‘I could eat half a hawg.’

The two men sat again, opposite each other, at a table with a view of the road.

‘That was some song, boy,’ he began, but was sharply corrected by Brad.

‘Brad,’ he said, maybe too sharply for the occasion. ‘The name’s Brad.’ He was still afire from his performance.

‘Some song, Brad. Never heard it, ever. Where’d you git it?’

Brad shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s mine. Something I done,  did sometime.’

‘So why are you here? In town?’

From the window could be seen the town art centre across the road.

‘I was thinking that place would be open and hoping they’d show an interest in my paintings,’ he said, indicating the centre. ‘It looks to me like I chose the wrong day.’

Both men had been doing justice to steaks that covered their plates. Lester talked with a mouth filled with mashed potato.

‘They only open three days a week, and today’s not one of them.’ His steak was disappearing in double time. ‘Where’s your paintings? I like to see them.’

Brad wasn’t too far behind in the steak-eating stakes.

‘I’ve got one in the truck. I thought I might pick up some quick dollars; pay some unexpected bills.’

With the meal done and the belts tightened Lester returned to his duties and Brad went to his van and carried in the canvas he’d been hoping to sell. He hung around drinking coffee until the place was empty and his newly found friend was free. Freed from its hessian cover Lester propped his work on the stool in the alcove and together he and Alice stood back to examine it. Lester said nothing, but grunted and nodded, moving around to change his angle of perspective as he studied the outdoor scene.

Alice cooed, ‘beautiful,’ but Lester over-rode her.

‘Pay no mind to Alice. She don’t know a thing. She even thinks I’m beautiful,’ he smiled.

The canvas was one of Brad’s earliest. Something that had captured his attention when he’d first arrived in the valley which he’d considered as a learning curve for his talents. Carved in oils the broken, tangled trunk of a giant eucalyptus tree, its greyness competing with the icy blue of the raging stream in which it lay partly submerged, was forming a dam and diverting the unstoppable fury of a torrent away from its intended path. In its lee flat river stones gleamed in the sun standing guard over a series of pools yet to be victimised, and dried by a scorching heat. Above, an arid bank of brown earth and tired, tufted grasses contrasted with one dash of blue sky which strained through the leaves of the broken branches. The picture was distinct. The artist was no slouch.

Lester was grunting again.

‘How much money are you wanting for this thing,’ he asked.

Brad had no idea. When he thought of the cost of the canvas and the oils he was thinking money back would be a step on the way.

‘I was thinking a couple of hundred,’ he replied hopefully, remembering the hours involved with palette and brush.

‘And how many have you got?’

Brad seemed surprised at the interest.

‘Maybe ten, a dozen.’

Lester Arnold seemed to make a decision.

‘I tell you what I’d like to do for you, Brad,’ he said. ‘You be bringing as many of these things down here as you’ve got. Me and Alice, we’ll make a showing of them on those three walls back of the stage. I reckon I can fix up a few lights and things and let’s just see if we can’t just sell one or two to these tourist type people that come in here and eat our steaks.’ He held the painting high against a bare wall. ‘What d’you reckon, Alice honey? They’ll sure brighten the place up a hell of a lot.’

‘I think it’s beautiful,’ she said.

‘Yeah, you said that. You’re not wrong.’ He stared closely at the signature in the bottom corner. ‘Well, well, what do you know?’ he smirked, ‘if it ain’t a B. L. Mason original. Ain’t that just dandy?’

Chapter 2

LAWRENCE ANDERSON STOOD in the sunshine of Martin Place and filled his lungs with the polluted air of the city traffic which he much preferred to the clearer ozone of Long Bay Jail. Time passes quickly when you’re having fun, he thought? With a four and a half year sentence hanging over his head he was out now in less than three with everything going according to plan. Even he had been surprised to be hauled before the parole board to be given his marching orders as quickly as he had been. It had been totally unexpected by him; at least another six months he had reckoned.

‘Free to go,’ said the governor, ‘model prisoner, good behaviour, well done, on your way.’

He was supposed to be impressed and spewing gratitude, which he wasn’t, which he did for he realised that this was part of the game.

‘But I like it here, guv’nor, why do you need to change? I’ve got plans and I’ll be no good outside.’

The game had started the moment he’d become comfortable inside. His over-friendly cellmates greasing to win his confidence had been wasting their time. No one chose to believe him when he’d pleaded his innocence; and why should they? On the face of things he had been as guilty as hell, and maybe he was; maybe he wasn’t and there had never been a time when he’d been inclined to admit the truth. His lips had become sealed the day they picked him up and they’d stayed that way, no matter what, no matter whom. It had been left to them to prove it, and they had, at least to the satisfaction of a jury.

Model prisoner! That was a joke. Who did they think they were kidding? He was meant to believe that? Their only interest in him and his early release was the hope he would leave a Hansel and Gretel trail to the money they said he had misappropriated three years before. They’d used every trick in the book while he was inside, but not one trick turned up trumps for them. A last resort for them was to end his internment and let him go to lead the way to that elusive pot of gold? Four and a half million the judge had said, and that was ironic, a year for each million. Is that what he had been worth? He hadn’t planned on that much. Two mill at the most had been his reckoning, but it looked as though he’d hit the jackpot that day, but only because no punter had struck lucky on that holiday race weekend at Randwick. It was all his now and he had never been in a position to count it

Today was Laurie Anderson’s third day of freedom. He sat in the sun on the stone steps of Martin Place enjoying the open air lunch time entertainment, contemptuously surveying the gathering of office workers and shoppers as he’d done the day before. A daily release for most of these people was the free entertainment. The performances of brass bands, tumbling troupes and ethnic musicians provided by local bodies that added colour to the marketplace. Today it was Chinese jugglers and it was good value for Laurie just to sit and watch and appreciate the feeling of freedom. For most days these past three years he had just sat and watched; watched nothing but concrete wallpaper and iron curtains. Today again, for him there was more to see. The same two people were there, sitting opposite across the arena and merging with the crowd, seemingly interested only in the shallow faced Asian woman spinning plates on the end of canes. They’d been with him since he’d left Long Bay, they and others, sometimes together, more often alone, interchanging clothes and vehicles, but always remaining close watching his every move; but only because he allowed it. He could have lost them any time he chose, but that time wasn’t yet.

He’d enjoyed a bit of light relief earlier in the day when he’d purposely led them a chase on the monorail around Darling Harbour, baiting them and at one time losing them. It had taken dedicated backtracking on his part and blatant standing in empty spaces before they were able to sight him again; and for him to become comfortable once more. If he lost them before he was good and ready they would only intensify surveillance which might complicate things later in the play. The money was there waiting for him. He alone knew of its whereabouts, but it was much too early to move. Until then he was happy to sit in the sun and wait, and eat. The food from the subterranean eating halls of Centre Point was an indulgence for a man who had served such a long term of prison food. In that time he had grown hard and lean, needing to add a few kilos, but he was a man who had plenty of time to contemplate his future and reflect on a shattered past.

Laurie never regarded himself as a criminal, nor as being a hard man, but when the scales of life had started to weigh heavily against him he’d made a firm decision to fight back. He’d learned many years before that it was useless to say that life wasn’t fair. You just had to get on with it. Pick up the pieces and get on with it and there were pieces a plenty for his entire existence had been shattered the day of the fire. His marriage to Beryl for him had been a happy one. He was so in love, as was she, he had thought. Following three and a half years of such happiness, which was marred only by the mild frustration of fruitless attempts at trying for a child, the eventual birth of a son signalled pure bliss. Why should life be this good? He was a family man now and celebrating five years as a uniformed policeman in the best way possible. He was a good copper, sporting new sergeant’s stripes, having long earned the respect of his peers.

Friday the thirteenth came and he’d laughed it off. In no way was he superstitious, but came the end of the day in his hospital bed through a wall of pain he was having his doubts. His was the late afternoon shift that day, but he was out of bed early to turn some soil and stake a few beans in the garden when the phone rang. Beryl had been with her sick sister in Melbourne for ten days and he missed her like hell; missed them both, her and the boy. It was good to hear her voice. Meet her for lunch? But how, she was a thousand kilometres away, but she wasn’t? She was in Sydney and was about to blow their world to pieces; his world.

‘Meet in town, not at the house,’ she had said. Anxious, he arrived at their Centre Point venue early and she was there waiting, but alone. The kid! Where was the boy? He was okay. She’d left him with a friend. She, they, needed to talk. As bottom lines go, it was a classic and an hour later he sat there alone in a public eating house, numbed with tears streaming down his cheeks with a hovering waiter seemingly an understanding guy.

‘Are you okay sir? You’re in pain? Do you need help?’

He wasn’t in pain. He should have been, but his senses were frozen. Beryl was leaving him, never to return. Her sick sister was her personal trainer for the last two years at the local gymnasium who had been giving her extensive tuition in an extracurricular activity. That was the good news! The bad news? There was no easy way to say it. The child wasn’t an Anderson. Sorry it had to end this way, but the boy is with his daddy this morning. He’s taken the day off from the gym. Beryl suggested their lawyers could get together; the house would need to be sold. Laurie could buy her share if he wanted.

The remainder of the day was spent in shock. How thick was he? He’d never had an inkling. Why did he go to work? There was no need, but he went anyway where the cruel hand of fate had yet to finish with him. There was no reason for him to be where he was when the fire broke out on Darlinghurst. Smoke belching from a boarding house on a side street caused him to raise the alarm then enter to a second floor where two young women were trapped. The brigade was not slow in responding, but Laurie was struggling with the second girl when they arrived to drag the two of them from the flames. His clothes were burning, his flesh scorched and his hair gone.

The morphine of intensive care proffered little relief and it served not to ease any pain in the heart when he awoke to realise his whole future had been destroyed and his past life had been a lie. A six month nightmare of misery had him asking his saviour why he hadn’t been allowed to die, as did the first of the girls he had pulled from the building. By that time his stream of hospital visitors had reduced to a minimum with a small band of the faithful deciding to attend when conscience made them aware.

The bandages over his eyes were removed after six weeks and mercifully his sight had been saved, but his face, arms and torso were horribly scarred and remained hidden beneath dressings. One visitor only remained loyal throughout the reparation period of intensive care and plastic surgery and she continued her visits as an insensate mask of synthesised skin was established to simulate facial features. When the time came for the bandages to be removed she was there and he was able to put a face to the soft voice that had infiltrated his dark world. The agony of losing his wife and child