Page 76 of People Skills

‘Sure,’ I say, pasting on my assistant’s smile. ‘I’ll do my best. Is he, um, expecting me at his house?’

‘I said I’d come and see him, so just let him know you’re there in my stead,’ Hillary says.

Oh great, I’m sure he’ll love that, instead of the famous Hillary Hobbs, he gets her assistant. That won’t offend his ego in the slightest.

‘Then meet us at Simone’s at twelve. I’m taking you girls out for a working lunch!’ Hillary claps her hands to punctuate the end of this sentence. This is new. She has never called us girls before and she hasn’t taken us out for lunch before.

Kat and I exchange a what-the-hell look. Jamila grabs my arm and whispers to me, when Hillary is out of earshot, ‘Are we all about to be fired?’

‘No,’ I say reassuringly. Hillary wouldn’t fire three people at once in public when she still has ten thousand festival tickets to sell and an endless stream of problems hitting her inbox—surely.

But I’d better do a good job at shutting down Murray O’Healy, just in case.

21

MURRAY O’HEALY IS a very short man with a very big moustache, the kind of moustache I think of as ‘notable’ and not in a complimentary way. As well as being the president of the Barwon Bay Civic Association, he’s the unofficial town historian. And, as I am discovering, his house is full of ships. Or boats. I’m not sure of the difference and I’m not about to ask. Murray has ship paintings on every wall, ship figurines, little ships in bottles, cushions with pictures of ships on them on the couch, and in the middle of his lounge room, covering the entire dining-room table, a giant model ship which is, he tells us, a replica of the real-life shipwreck that is on display in the Barwon Bay Maritime Museum.

‘Wow,’ Xavier says, circling it, peering in the little windows.

‘Don’t touch,’ Murray says firmly, like Xavier is a child.

I can see Xavier is itching to touch it. I kind of am too.

I dragged Xavier with me to Murray’s house, against his will, because I decided if I couldn’t produce Hillary, her award-winning son might be the next best thing. I don’t like to turn up to important meetings empty-handed. I guilted Xavier into coming by saying I didn’t want to go into the house of a strange man on my own. That I felt it was extremely dangerous (never mind that the town has the lowest crime rate in the state and Murray O’Healy is a good head shorter and thirty years older than me). The extreme ship décor confirms I was probably right to do this. I’m not against a strong theme, per se, but too much of one thing becomes concerning in my eyes. I also lied to Xavier and said Murray is a big fan of his. In truth, looking at his bookshelf, I don’t think Murray has read a book that wasn’t about history or ships in a long time. Next to the bookcase, he has a whole wall dedicated to newspaper clippings that he’s framed, stories of ships going down and sailors being rescued. It’s serial-killer-meets-nautical-enthusiast style.

Murray self-published a history of Barwon Bay last year that sold quite well with locals, so Hillary has asked him to do a historical walking tour of the town for the festival, which has also proved popular.

‘So, Murray, can we talk about the tour and the new stops you want to add?’ I ask. My approach is to go in positive. To pretend I’m here for information, rather than to shut anything down. Murray is a man who will dig his heels in at the first sign of anyone trying to stop him doing anything. He owns an antique shop on the main street, and when the council installed a new public rubbish bin on the footpath outside his shop, he used his own angle-grinder to remove it. He then spent a lot of time and energy fighting the council about putting it back.

Murray ignores my question because he’s watching Xavier.

‘This is incredible, there’s little figurines of people in there,’ Xavier says, bending down and squinting into the window of the giant model ship. I bend over and look in as well. In one window I see a little plastic figurine of a sailor, his face painted so that his mouth is open in fear. A silent scream. I guess he knows the ship is going down. I’m adding this figurine’s face to my mental dossier: Reasons Murray O’Healy Makes Me Uneasy.

‘How long did it take you to make this?’ Xavier asks.

Murray frowns. ‘Oh, thousands of hours over many years. A decade, maybe, until I decided she was finished.’

‘A decade,’ Xavier murmurs, looking impressed.

Murray turns to me. ‘What did you say he does, again?’ he asks, indicating Xavier, as if he can’t hear us or answer the question himself.

‘He’s an author,’ I say. ‘You might have heard of his novel The Bird House,’ I add. I can feel Xavier’s eyes on me as my ‘he’s a big fan!’ lie is exposed.

‘Is it about birds?’ Murray asks.

‘Not really,’ I say. ‘It’s a kind of family story—’

‘I don’t have time to read stories,’ Murray says, smoothly cutting me off.

‘So, the extra stops in the walking tour—’

‘Are necessary. I was up all night thinking about it, and I cannot give an accurate history of this town without including those sites.’

‘Well, what if we kept half of them, and reduced—’

‘No. No. It’s all or nothing.’

‘It’s just that, it means the tour will be almost four hours, instead of ninety minutes, and that’s quite a lot of time for some of the, uh, older patrons to be on their feet.’