The Tax Inspector by Peter Carey Page A

milk was off.’
    ‘Be a dear,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘Go and see Cathy. They’ve got milk in Spare Parts for the staff teas.’
    ‘I can’t ask Cathy. Cathy won’t give me milk.’
    ‘You don’t understand Cathy,’ said Mrs Catchprice. She pulled free a dining chair, turned it on one leg so it faced away from the bride dolls, and then sat down on it hard. ‘Ask her for milk,’ she said. ‘She won’t kill you.’
    Maria thought: she ‘plonks’ herself down. She is pretty, but not graceful. She is full of sharp, abrupt movements which you can admire for their energy, their decisiveness.
    She looked to see what the Hare Krishna was going to do about his orders. He had already gone.
    ‘Bad milk!’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘I’ve got old.’
    ‘We all get old,’ Maria said, but really she was being polite. She had an audit to begin. She wanted to make it fast and clean – a one-day job if possible.
    ‘One minute you’re a young girl falling in love and the next you look at your hand and it’s like this.’ She held it up. It was old and blotched, almost transparent in places.
    Maria looked at the hand. It was papery dry. She thought of bits of broken china underneath a house.
    ‘I can see it like you see it,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘I can see an old woman’s hand. It has nothing to do with me. I think I’ll have brandy in my milk. Did he take an umbrella?’
    ‘I guess so.’
    ‘I know he looks peculiar but he’s very kind. He looks like such a dreadful bully, don’t you think?’ She leaned forward, frowning.
    Maria had worked in the Tax Office twelve years and had never begun an audit in such a homey atmosphere. She opened her briefcase, removed a pad and laid it on her lap. ‘He’s got a nice smile,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, he has.’ Mrs Catchprice fitted a Salem into her mouth and lit it without taking her eyes off Maria Takis’s face. ‘The Catchprices all have kissing lips. Actually,’ she said, as if the thought was new to her, ‘he’s the spitting image of my late husband. Did you meet his younger brother, Benny? Vish’s been looking after Benny since he could stand. They told you about their mother?’
    ‘I haven’t talked to anyone,’ Maria said. ‘I thought my colleague had talked to you to set up this interview. I …’
    ‘Did you talk to Jack? Jack Catchprice, my youngest son.’ She nodded to a colour photograph hanging on the wall beside the doorway to the kitchen. It was of a good-looking man in an expensive suit shaking hands with the Premier of the State of New South Wales. ‘Jack’s the property developer. He tells everyone about his funny family. He tells people at lunch – Benny’s mother tried to shoot her little boy.’
    Maria closed the pad.
    ‘It’s no secret,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘Benny’s mother tried to shoot him. What sort of mother is that? Nice, pretty-looking girl and then, bang, bang, shoots her little boy in the arm. Benny was three years old. I’m not making it up. Shot him, with a rifle.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Why? God knows. Who would ever know a thing like that?’
    ‘What was she charged with?’
    ‘Oh no,’ Mrs Catchprice said. ‘We wouldn’t report it. What would be the point? She went away, that’s what matters. We wouldn’t want the family put through a court case as well. Everyone in Franklin gossips about it anyway. They all know the story – on the Sunday Sophie Catchprice was confirmed an Anglican, on the Monday she did this … thing. Confirmed,’ said Mrs Catchprice, responding to the confusion on Maria’s face. ‘You’re a Christian aren’t you? Your mother still goes to church I bet? Is she a Catholic?’
    The Tax Inspector’s mother was dead, but she said, ‘Greek Orthodox.’
    ‘How fascinating,’ said Mrs Catchprice. ‘How lovely.’
    It was not the last time Maria would wonder if Mrs Catchprice was sincere and yet she could not dismiss this enthusiastic brightness as false. Mrs Catchprice might really find