Pike's Pyramid. Michael Tatlow
ushered her to the fringe of the crowd.
She said, ‘An hour or so later, Mary O’Halloran rang Rocky’s wife Dulcie. Mary swore they shouldn’t have anything to do with Sean’s meeting. And please don’t go, sort of. What a peculiar business, if Rocky’s got it right.’
Pike looked into his soda water. ‘That doesn’t sound like Mary.’
‘I know,’ Janet declared. ‘Marvellous prospects, they are. She’s President of the Irishtown CWA.’ The Country Womens Association was a real power in the municipality of Circular Head, which was named after the circular Nut. Political parties were cream puffs in comparison.
‘Rocky says his Dulcie was pretty cut up. They were going to stay at home on Monday. Dulcie was still sounding off about it when the phone rang again. It was Sean. He told Rocky not to take any notice of Mary. He said he’d feel bad about it if the Shaws missed a chance to make some real money. He reckoned Mary was trying to keep them away from a fortune. He likes his money, does Rocky,’ Janet laughed.
That liking, Pike admitted to himself, was what Argo was all about. ‘Who doesn’t?’ he asked dispassionately. Bending to pat Tasman, now the best-fed dog in town, he caught an interested glance from Alex. ‘Well,’ he asked Janet, ‘are the Shaws going to Irishtown?’
‘Sean said they deserved the opportunity. So Rocky says bloody oath, they’d go. They want to see a brawl between Mary and Sean, maybe involving you.’
‘I’ll check it out tonight,’ Pike replied thoughtfully. That sort of flak, he knew, would get around like a plague.
He gave the assemblage a stirring account of the launch in the republic, peppered with some personal colour and photographs. ‘We’ve recruited Stanley’s first foreign legion!’ he announced.
He felt his lack of detail about the republic would be attributed to his modesty. It was a rendition De Groote would be proud of. He saw that Alex also felt guilty. It was like writing a news story with a slant. There was no point now in unsettling them, he figured.
He was asked when the professor was going to Prague to further the Pikes’ gains. ‘Pretty soon,’ he said. ‘Richard told me last night how thrilled he is.’
That, at least, was not a lie. Argo’s heavies said the sort of propaganda he was sprouting was not lying. It was simply a recitation of successes, presented in advance.
‘A fruitful mission, a holiday with Alex’s family in a glorious old country, and all tax deductible,’ he summarised expansively. ‘The seeds have been planted, ready for cultivation.’ A pathetic little patch, and no damned cultivator.
The Pikes, the achievers, stood hand in hand as their team sang For they are jolly good fellows. Dicky Allcock led the hip hip hoorays. Magda and Josef Dvorak were near bursting with pride.
To her husband’s astonishment, Alex announced that she would soon get tickets for an exciting Argo seminar at Burnie, four Sundays away. Everyone had to go. National leader Jerry Bell himself was coming from Sydney.
De Groote had been on the phone to her, Pike guessed. The event was unavoidable. ‘Take lots of people with you. All your new recruits,’ he contributed. ‘It will be a great team-building experience and you’ll hear more about the Czech Republic.’
‘It’ll cost only thirty dollars a ticket,’ Alex added. She and Blarney knew De Groote and Bell would pocket most of the proceeds. Some would flow to Harbek.
Pike took their six front-line couples aside, one at a time, for reports on their progress while the others enjoyed the unusually windless sunshine.
The operators of the big Stanley Cabin and Tourist Park down the hill at the bottom beach oozed confidence. Pike managed to cover his amusement at a particular cruelty of Stanley’s nick-naming mania. It was bad enough that Maurice White’s young wife, a sultry little Filipino he had met and married in Manila, was named Lily. Maurice was a large Maori with ebony hair that curled to his shoulders. It was probably inevitable that, soon after he’d arrived from New Zealand two years back, the locals had named him Snow. He seemed to like it, however.
‘We got four new ones while yous was away,’ Snow White reported proudly. His big right hand covered a can of beer. ‘They was all customers at the park. They’s gone back to the mainland now. Lily got three of ’em.’
The system provided for people who joined Argo while away on holidays to be contacted back home by an agent in their patch. The agent who collared the new networkers shared the loot, usually half and half.
‘That makes our downline twenty-six people!’ Lily chimed in. ‘But we missed two families, probably because we’re shitty presenters of the pitch. You help us next time, Hells?’
Pike told them it was a terrific result. ‘Let me know when you’ve got another one lined up,’ he said, ‘and we’ll do a double act.’
Less ebullient were Mildred and Tractor Ferguson. In their late fifties, they had been Argo networkers for nine months. Three married daughters with children were their best customers. Mildred declared that they were sorry, they had no new members. Her customary surprised-looking eyes of blue, above a nose like a button mushroom, looked troubled. Three couples had accepted their invitation to the pitch at home two weeks back, she reported anxiously, and not one of them had fronted.
‘What did you do about that?’ Pike asked, businesslike.
‘Got pissed orf,’ said Tractor, whose real first name was Horace. His dairy farm was on the Green Hills across the bay. His weather-worn face creased. ‘Then I attacked the bloody cream cake Mildred made to feed the coots.’
‘Okay, don’t worry about it,’ said Pike. ‘It’s their loss. But you’ve got to remember, Mildred, feed them only Argo tea or coffee and Argo biscuits and chocolate bars. People will think they have to lay on a spread like that, too, if they join you in Argo. This business works on duplication, remember. Keep it simple.’
Mildred flushed. ‘If you’d been home, I’d ’ave brought the cake here.’
‘Crikey, Hells,’ Tractor observed defensively. ‘Her sponges and bread won at the Stanley Agricultural Show, you know!’
Their leader grinned to himself as he remembered the Great Cake Fight at the Stanley Show a year back. Furious woman cooks, the losers, accusing the judges of favouring Mildred and some others, had yelled abuse and hurled cakes and cream puffs and custard at the judges and winners.
Pike had rescued Mildred and another winner from the hilarious melee. He had set the town giggling when, a mess of yellow custard, he’d sat singing, There’s no business like show business…
CHAPTER 8
The party dispersed with the arrival of Blarney’s fellow fly fisher for trout, Sergeant Samuel Bond. He carried a plate of pikelets from his wife Sadie. Tall, broad and looking official in his police sergeant’s uniform, he took off his cap and joined the couple at the backyard table over a glass of beer. Bond’s fair hair was greying at the temples. His blue eyes were alert.
Bond detected in Pike the stale odour of a man who at least last night had consumed booze. Not again, he hoped gravely. One more trip down that boozy road for you, my friend, hero of the Sumato affair, will wreck your marriage, your business, your very soul. He hoped this robbery drama would not afflict Blarney’s feisty but once-brittle bride.
The Pikes’ two moggies, black and white Jack and Siamese multi-cross Jill, now appeared, plundering scraps left by the guests and Tasman. Alex had brought the cats from her parents’ home when she moved in a few months before the wedding, to the initial consternation of Tasman.
Pike