The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey Page B

shit,’ he said.
    Cathy looked at Mort and wondered now if he even saw the similarity.
    Benny raised his eyebrows at his father and shrugged apologetically. He put out his hand as if to take his sleeve or his hand, but the sleeves on Mort’s overall were cut off and there was nothing to hold on to except a hand he would not take. Cathy would have taken his hand, but it was not offered her.
    Benny had been in trouble with almost everything, lying, cheating, truancy, shop-lifting, selling bottled petrol for inhalation, trying to buy Camira parts from the little crooks who hung about in Franklin Mall; but now he just looked very young and frightened of being laughed at. He walked lightly on his feet, holding his back straight. You could hear his new shoes squeaking as he crossed the room to the yellow vinyl armchair which had once belonged to Cacka. When he sat and crossed his long legs, he revealed socks as long as a clergyman’s – no skin showed. Benny folded his clean hands in his lap and looked directly at his father, blushing.
    Mort’s colour was also high and his lips had a loose embarrassed look. He shook his head and shut his eyes.
    ‘Ignore your father,’ Cathy said. ‘You look wonderful, better than your uncle Jack.’
    ‘Thanks Cath,’ Mort said. He leaned against the window-sill opposite her and stared critically at the stupid ping-pong table. It was not properly joined in the middle. It was marked with stains from their ‘Social Ambitions’ – ring marks from glasses and bottles, sticky circles of Benedictine stuck with dust.
    ‘You singing tonight?’ he asked. ‘You got a jig-jig?’
    ‘Very funny,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’
    Mort shook his head as if in disappointment at this hostility. He looked down at his boots a moment as if he was considering a riposte, but then he looked up, spoke in what was, for him, in the circumstances, a calm voice: ‘Why does this Tax Inspector have her office in Mum’s apartment?’
    ‘You come up here to ask about that?’ Cathy crossed her arms below her breasts and shook her head.
    ‘Mort …’ Howie said.
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ Cathy said.
    ‘Tough,’ said Mort.
    ‘The auditor needs a desk,’ Howie said, ‘that’s all. She could have taken any vacant desk. She could have had your office.’
    ‘You wouldn’t want me near a Tax Inspector,’ Mort said. ‘You couldn’t trust me not to give the game away.’
    Cathy looked into his eyes and he held hers. He was her brother in a way that Jack had never been. She and Mort were the ones who had sung opera together, killed chooks, sold cars, but now she had no idea what he thought about anything.
    ‘There is no game,’ Cathy said.
    ‘I wouldn’t know.’
    ‘No,’ Cathy said. ‘You wouldn’t, but you’d better find out. If I was you I’d be finding out what makes this business tick pretty damn fast.’
    ‘You going to try and run away again, Cathy?’ Mort grinned. ‘Did you get another letter from The Gold Chain Troubadour?’
    There was silence which was broken by the sound of Benedictine being poured into Cathy’s tumbler. Benny crossed his legs and laid his left palm softly on the back of the right hand.
    ‘Look,’ Mort said. ‘What I came up here to say was that I’ve had a talk to Mum.’
    Cathy poured herself some extra Benedictine, but then she didn’t drink it.
    ‘I talked with Mum and we both decided that if you want to sell the back paddock to cover us with any back taxes, we’ll vote in favour. That’s why I’m here, to tell you that.’
    ‘Do you remember,’ Howie said, smiling sideways at Cathy, ‘that we wrote your mother in as head salesman?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘And we claimed tax deductions for what we said we paid her?’
    ‘Sure, I remember that. We had Jack’s smart-arse accountant. You all got excited about how you were going to keep the trade-ins off the books. But do you remember what I said then?’
    ‘Tell me.’
    ‘I said that I didn’t