Jacko by Thomas Keneally Page A

discussing this further eh. Because you say you’re coming back. I really need to talk to him. Before he dies.
    â€”Yes, we’re coming back, said Larson. We want to talk to your husband. And maybe go out mustering.
    â€”Yairs, she growled. Let’s hope he’s over his sulks by then.
    Larson said, This is a great place. For atmosphere. And for light.
    â€”Christ eh, said Chloe. If you write me up as a quaint bloody bushie, I’m going to be ropable.
    Larson said softly, I think you’re great. You exceed the sum of our expectations. You ought to trust us, Chloe.
    It was a reckless proposition of Larson’s. But Chloe stopped arguing with me, and we kissed her goodbye.
    I left promising that I would see what I could do with Bickham. But I knew I could do damn-all.
    Three weeks later, I had the honour of giving Larson’s eulogy in a chapel at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium. A great crowd came, for, in the world of tricky and crooked images, Larson was considered an honest man. With his intimate eye, he had photographed Australia so extensively that advertising people went to his enormous stills library whenever they were stumped for an image. And so now they too came to his funeral, along with all the people who’d worked with him in live footage – in commercials, documentaries, features.
    The crowd spilled out onto the lawn cemetery.
    People who work at such visual tasks have a particular look. This made it easier for me – just as I was praising Larson quite accurately for his openness, his generosity, his powers of observation, his lust for Australian light, his vision, and the range of his gifts – to see Mrs Chloe Emptor, in a black dress and a broad-brimmed straw hat, standing by the main door of the chapel, being killed – I was sure about this – by her pair of unlikely, stiletto-heeled black shoes.
    She looked, nonetheless, a fully paid up member of this union of grief. Beside her was her great moon-faced son, Jacko Emptor, looking something of an outsider in this serious film congregation.
    More so outside afterwards, when everyone was remembering Larson and consoling each other with anecdotes and falling on each other’s necks. Jacko approached wearing the sort of shiny, pristine suit only television people and cabinet ministers wear.
    â€”Sorry for your loss, mate, he told me.
    The corners of his mouth pulled deep into his cherubic cheeks.
    Chloe Emptor said, Boomer – you know Boomer the heli pilot – he had to fly the machine to Mount Isa for maintenance. I came on down to Sydney by commercial jet.
    With breaks for re-fuelling, it would have taken them a day in the mustering helicopter to get to Mount Isa. Then another two thousand or so miles to Sydney. A Burren Waters commute.
    â€”I couldn’t believe it, Chloe murmured. When I heard the radio news eh. I mean, you blokes were due back to interview that mongrel of a husband …
    â€”I’ll still come if you’ll have me.
    â€”Course.
    She turned to her son.
    â€”Our friend here’s going to try to arrange for us to have lunch with Michael Bickham.
    â€”Shit, said Jacko. Yeah?
    The lips hung part open in the kind of speculation I’d seen in Chloe.
    â€”The only one of our family who’s met him is Frank.
    â€”That’d fit, said Jacko, and he turned to me, keen to make things clear.
    â€”Frank’s my poofter brother, he told me with a mixture of gaugeable ill will and affection both. Lives in the Eastern Suburbs. The opera. Makes sense Bickham would’ve met him.
    Jacko put his giant arm around my shoulder.
    â€”Listen, maybe you could tell me. What’s the connection between Banjo Paterson and Michael Bickham? You know? What’s the line of succession? Is Bickham Banjo Paterson gone sour? Or does Banjo not even appear on the same planet as Bickham?
    And as if he had his own answer he began to recite Banjo Paterson’s famous