`Red Nights'
by Louis Nowra
Elizabeth Kelly
Red Nights is a novel set in the Kings Cross of the early 70s, a novel full of seriously inadequate and fairly greedy people arrayed against a backdrop that alternates between glamour and sleaze. And it rains incessantly.
Nelson Taylor's parties in a mansion on the shores of Elizabeth Bay, the Red Nights, were once the toast of the town.
" ... before heading down the three ochre sandstone steps into the garden with its flickering flames of the cane lamps, a brief pause to take in the sight (and definitely there was no sense of gawking) of three hundred people all glowing, glimmering, because this party, this Red Night, was the most important place to be."
But Nelson isn't much of a business man and he loses both his mansion and the Red Nights which are his claim to identity. Socially he is relegated to the Twilight zone.
As well his past life involving a none too ethical rise to riches eventually overtakes him. He loses the girl, two of them in fact, and finally after a long night in the bars of the Cross, he loses his life. There are images of the Cross and hints of scandal aplenty.
"A tall drag queen dressed conservatively in a white twin-set and pearls came in through the door to be greeted by a chorus of excited shrieks. 'Annabel,' said Reggie motioning towards her with his glass. 'You know who's her favourite customer? The Leader of the Opposition. Yep, she reminds him of his wife. His wife hates sex but he has this thing about her appearance, so Annabel has to dress up in twin-set and pearls. Yet the idiot still hasn't worked out he's screwing a boy. The doggy style is fraught with ambiguity, Nelson.'"
But this is not a story about the Cross and it's not the Cross that takes Nelson's life, but his past misfortunes.
"He told her of how they went to school together, a hick school outside Cairns, where the sugar cane families sent their kids before sending them down to Brisbane for their secondary education, if they were wealthy enough. He told her how Nelson's family had owned a motel on the coast called the Sunrise, and how he and Nelson were the odd couple of poor white trash and chink."
"'A beach bum. Just a beach bum,' said Larry between gritted teeth. Then he pulled the trigger."