Читать книгу The Styx - Patricia Holland - Страница 15

My father always had so much to do, he said. Dozing with a book in a squatter’s chair was research, he’d say. Reading Country Life magazine was keeping abreast of things. Apart from going to sales and conferences, in the early days, he didn’t seem to do much in the cattle side of things—plenty of staff to do that—but he always had some project in the offing, some scheme to roll out, some way to big-note himself—mostly to himself. And to his cronies.

He has—had—three main cronies: Silas, Dominic and Warren. Creepy crony number one, Psycho Silas, is ace wingman and the master manipulator, with money to invest from his very lucrative psychiatric practice in Leichhardt, a town with the highest mental health problems per capita in the country. His greatest joy is in seeing the impact of his manipulations—usually to the detriment of others involved, and not always for his own personal gain. The pain of others is sufficient joy for him. His patients, especially those underage or in government care facilities, are frequent targets, often involving inappropriate sexual behaviours—sometimes on his part, but by no means necessarily.

Crony number two, Dodgy Dom, is a bit of a wingman too, a small-town lawyer, a minor investor with major free legal advice who, at nineteen and still at uni, married the wrong woman for the wrong, but then socially pragmatic, reasons. He is tall, not bad looking in a rugby union way, with a resulting mutual magnetism towards women—pretty well any women—which generally turns to petulance on his part if they don’t continue to show sufficient interest in him; and contempt when they do.

The third crony, generally an afterthought and only included when they need him, is Warren, the fixer. Rabbit Warren is on the bottom of the pecking order and crony social hierarchy, and definitely not an investor in terms of cash. He used to manage his parents’ gift shop, but when that went broke, he has worked on and off at Styx River, calling himself head stockman, manager, overseer—whichever title takes his fancy at the time. The highlight of his life always involves something dodgy, more often than not borderline illegal, and in many cases straight out illegal. When it suits, especially when travelling overseas, thus limiting the chance of being sprung, he’ll claim to be a police officer—always a sergeant; significant that it’s never inspector. These days he’s a communications officer for the police. Still not a real policeman.

The four cronies have always been a tight group. Even when one of them drinks too much and abuses one or the other of them, the rift is only ever temporary. They always have a plan to hatch, and I think they love the togetherness of hatching plans, probably more than the plan itself.

You’d think this sort of stuff would wash over me. Especially when I was five, and even when I was ten. But not much happened to me, ever, and while my syndrome limited me physically, my mental faculties were intensified, so anything, everything was noticed. And noted for future rememories.