‘Are you gifted in music like your mother?’ I recalled her rich, deep contralto at Borys’ funeral.
‘I love music, but it wasn’t the career I wanted. After I left secondary school, I studied Arts at the same university where I now work. This took me into work as a teacher. In my thirties, I joined the Polish Order of nuns that had taught me in primary school. I was with the Order for ten years, but I found the work unsatisfying, and convent life didn’t suit me. I had a burning desire to learn about Polish history and its literature, particularly the literature that arose during the German occupation. I wanted to go to Poland and begin a doctorate, but as a religious sister it was impossible. So I left the Order and taught in state schools for two years to save enough money for my first trip to my homeland. It was the turning point I’d been looking for.’
Ah! Her history was Catholic, just as mine was.
‘Did your parents ever go back?’
‘Yes, I accompanied them two years after that first return of my own. They still had family and friends there, and we toured the length and breadth of the country. It was very joyful, and I learnt a great deal about my family background. But my parents were pleased to come home to Australia.’
‘So since then your life has been in the university?’
‘Yes, I have many friends and relatives in Melbourne, but my life has been given to my work. And every now and then there is a moment I’ll never forget … like finding Borys Stasiewicz and his poetry in Melbourne. But I’m talking too much. What about you, Colin?’
I told her the bare details of my work on the bench, and something of our family, especially of Mary, but I didn’t mention Bernadette’s illness. I didn’t understand it well enough yet.
All too soon, it was time for her to leave. I felt lighter and happier than I had since this dreadful business began, and I wanted to see Nadia again.
She kissed me lightly on the cheek as she left to walk back to her office. ‘I’ve enjoyed this, Colin. You’re a good listener.’
I smiled at that. I was sure my children wouldn’t have agreed. ‘I’ve enjoyed it too. May I bring Alison to talk to you?’
Her face lit up in a smile. ‘Please do. Call me and we’ll make a time.’
Then she was gone, the black cape swirling around her as she strode across the street.
Chapter 41
The Age
Tuesday, 10 May
Yesterday in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Henry Stanley was sentenced to eighteen years jail for the manslaughter of Borys Staskiewicz, a homeless man who at the time was sleeping in Enterprise Park by the Yarra.
The Presiding Judge, the Honourable Justice Holliman, remarked that although he accepted that the killing was unpremeditated, and taking into account that Stanley had confessed, the viciousness of his attack on a frail, elderly man led him to impose a sentence just below the maximum recommended of twenty years.
Stanley will be eligible for parole in fifteen years.
Chapter 42
Harry (Henryk Stanley)
Monday, 16 May
Well, it’s over, the waiting. At least now I know. I’m inside for the best part of twenty years. No point whinging. I’m not scared. I’m a big bloke. I can take care of myself.
It was not too bad in jail. Three meals a day and bit of free time. The worst part was the smell. Blokes stink. And the early lockdown — tea at five and then into the cells for twelve hours. Keep my head down and mind my own business, they told me.
They put me to work in the mornings in the maintenance shed — broken appliances, stripping down and servicing engines. Right up my alley. In the afternoons, there were classes.
Might be a chance to catch up on the schooling I missed when me and the old man lived in the forest camps.
Trent came, that partner of Leo’s. It was his day off. Wrote and asked if he could visit. One of the screws read the letter for me. He turned up with the old man’s book of poems. Said I could have it now that the case was over. I didn’t want it. Couldn’t read it, and there was too much to remember anyway — the old man crying over it when he was drunk in those days in the Carlton factory. ‘Give it to Allie,’ I said.
But why she’d want it I don’t know.
So, it’s alright. Got my own cell with a bed, basin and toilet, bare walls. I don’t have anything else, as it all went up with the house, all of the junk. Too many years of living in junk. Shouldn’t have done that to Allie.
Trent said that she was staying with them until they could work something out. Told me that Bernie was still in hospital. She didn’t know about me yet. Didn’t know what I thought about it all — stuck in jail for years now. Trent asked who I wanted to visit me. You had to put them on a list.
Who would want to visit me? Leo? Why? Bernie never goes anywhere. Allie? No fear. I won’t have her going through that. Won’t have my lovely Allie in this place. She’s got to make her own life now, forget about us. We let her down.
‘You could talk to her on the phone,’ Trent said.
Said he’d arrange it. Said I could ring her once a week, she missed me, he said.
She must hate me though.
‘No,’ he said, ‘she doesn’t, she wants to talk to you. Wants to write you letters too.’ She asked Trent to get the permission.
I choked up a bit when he said that. I didn’t deserve her. She was the one good thing in my life, but I didn’t want her in this rough place.
Okay, I’ll call her every Saturday in the morning. That’s when you can line up for the phone, and she’s got that job on a Sunday. When she’s eighteen, she might come. We’ll see.
Chapter 43
Leo Brennan
Monday, 16 May
No! Not this. Not now. The thing I’ve dreamed of, waited for, prayed for even, if my vague pleas out to the universe can be called ‘prayer’.
I was up early this morning to drop Alison at the pool and get a run on my emails before bookings took over.
I was constantly sending photos to magazines, in the hope of attracting a commission, and now, here it was. I’d almost forgotten that I had entered a competition in Outback Roads some months ago. It was a new magazine, aimed at caravaners, campers and four-wheel drivers, and it specialised in ‘off the grid’ features about tiny outback towns and rural industry. It used wonderful images, and I didn’t think that I could win, but I put my photo in anyway. I’d taken it the year before when Trent and I did a short road trip into outback New South Wales. We stayed at a sheep station that was managed by an ex-cop mate of Trent’s, and we were there for the shearing.
The photo showed a mob of sheep being mustered into the holding yards in front of the shed. It was wall-to-wall thick wool, and looking at the image you could almost smell the dust, feel the flies on your face and hear the frightened braying of the sheep. But the photo wasn’t really about the sheep. The focus was the dog, a red kelpie. A moment before, he’d been mustering the sheep, jumping on their backs, and from one sheep to the next, he was bothering them, moving them forward, doing his job.
From the side of the yard, I called to him, ‘Red dog!’
He stopped for a split second, looked at me and into the camera from his platform on the back of a huge sheep, and his face split in a grin of pure dog happiness. I had the shot in an instant, and he was back to his work, everywhere at once working the sheep. It was an image in time, so Australian, so of the bush and the outback, so joyful.
I’d won the competition!
You know that feeling when something happens that you didn’t dare hope for, something so good, so unreal, that you’ll remember the moment forever. Something you have to keep reminding yourself is actually real.
The prize was $2000 and a commission for a photo essay on remote outback pubs, twenty images in all accompanied by notes for the editor to work into text. Basic expenses would be covered, and I’d be paid a retainer and for each image when it was published. I was to submit the work in early May the following year.
Alison.
She was starting Year Twelve next year, and she had nowhere else to live. Trent’s hours were too unpredictable to rely on him being there for her. I’d have to turn it down.
All day I kept coming back to the commission, worrying at it like a broken tooth. By the evening, the euphoria of winning had worn away. I was tired and depressed, but resolute that I would have to turn down the opportunity.
Then I told Trent.
We couldn’t keep anything from each other. There was nowhere to hide in our relationship, and by the time he’d been home for an hour, he knew everything, including my conviction that I had to refuse the prize.
Trent was a more lateral thinker than me; perhaps that was why he was such a good detective. He saw things from many angles, while I, often emotional and tragic, settled early for the most obvious result.
‘It’s brilliant, Leo, wonderful,’ he said, holding me tight in our tiny kitchen as I chapped vegetables for dinner.
‘I can’t accept it.’ I was stubborn now in my resolution that Alison’s care and safety had to be my priority.
Trent took the sharp knife from my hands. ‘Leave the damn vegetables. Come and sit down and let’s look at this together.’
So we did, me bleating about it being the wrong time, and the fact that there would be later, more convenient commissions. Trent arguing that there were other options for Alison, and then me countering.
‘What options? Her father’s in jail and her mother is incapable of being a parent to her, even if she does leave hospital in the near future.’
Trent then brought up the thought that was floating between us. ‘The Judge?’
‘He’s too old?’
‘He’s fit and healthy. What does he do all day at that house in Golden Beach anyway? Fishing? Pottering around? He’s not ready to give up yet.’
Then Trent delivered the line he knew would nail it. ‘I’ll take Long Service Leave. I’ll come with you. We’ll hire a campervan and be grey nomads for three months.’
I looked at him, the thick beard, the kind eyes, the scruffy jumper and runners, the love in his face. ‘Would you?’
‘Of course.’ His face was gleeful.
‘But Alison?’ I was still not convinced.
‘Look, talk to the Judge. Tell him about this opportunity. See how he feels about making a home for Alison while she does Year Twelve.’
‘It will be longer than that. We can’t have her going off alone to some university college when she finishes school.’ I was adamant about that.
‘As I said, talk to the Judge.’
His common sense and balance finally got through to me as it always did. ‘Okay, it can’t hurt to try.’
‘Exactly.’ He went back to the kitchen, took up the knife and returned to the vegetables.
Chapter 44
Alison Brennan
Tuesday, 24 May
My grandfather’s poems. I have the book here on Grandma’s desk in my room at Uncle Leo’s house.
Trent told me that he’d asked Dad if he wanted the book, but Dad said no, to give it to me.
‘The book is very rare and precious,’ Trent said.
There were only about thirty copies printed. I couldn’t read the poems because they were all in Polish, but it was surreal to hold them in my hands, knowing that the book had survived the war, the concentration camps, and my grandfather’s life when he came to Australia. It must have been so precious to him. The book was very old and dilapidated. If Dad was here, I’d ask him to help me mend it, but he’s not here. I’d have to mend it myself.
Grandpa said we’d go together to see Professor Godlewski. She was that Polish woman who sang the prayer at my grandfather’s funeral. He said that she’d translate the poems for me.
Trent said that Dad was okay. I could write to him, and Dad was going to ring me every week.
Chapter 45
Leo Brennan
Saturday, 28 May
Alison and I had visited Bernie three times now, and each time there was the same passive resistance. She was either playing cards, or pretending to read a magazine. There was no conversation, but you could tell that she was keenly aware of us by the slight tremor in her hand, and the way she snatched a glance at us when she thought we weren’t watching.
It was hard on Alison. She believed she was still being punished for going to the Judge’s house at Easter. It was a lot for her to carry — she was just a kid, but she sat there and tried to talk to her mother, telling her about school and her friend Rosa. Anything to fill the silence.
Today the Judge came with me. The doctor had given reserved permission. ‘He must leave immediately if she becomes distressed,’ we were warned.
The passivity Bernie had shown to me and Alison was so unlike distress that I thought there’d be no problem, although I was aware of the need for caution. The relationship between the Judge and Bernie had never been close, disappointment on his side, fear and subservience on hers.
I was nervous when I entered her room. The Judge was just a little behind me. Bernie sat in the same seat by the window, dressed neatly in some of the clothes Alison and I had bought for her. She was knitting today, something I hadn’t seen her do for years. She’d given up all her hobbies when Mum died, but Bernie’s knitting, embroidery and crocheting were once exquisite. For a few years she exhibited some of her work at the Melbourne Show. Today it was a thin strip of plain knitting, like a scarf for a doll, in a pale-blue wool.
She looked up when I entered, and then back down at her needles again, and then up again when the Judge greeted her.
‘Hello Bernadette.’
Although I’d never seen a volcano erupting, it was the only thing to which I could liken what happened next.
The blood drained from her face, her chair jerked back as she thrust herself up, the knitting fell to the floor. She lunged at the Judge, yelling, spitting saliva in his face, bombarding him with slaps to his chest, pushing him away. ‘No, no, get out, don’t come here,’ she screamed.
The Judge tried to fend her off. ‘Settle down, Bernadette. Sit down, please dear.’
‘I won’t sit down … I won’t … I won’t do anything you say.’ Her ineffectual slaps to his chest continued.
The Judge fended her off gently. ‘What’s wrong, Bernadette? Tell me.’
‘Alright, I will tell you, I’ll tell you now … should have years ago … your fault … horrible man, came to my room, pulled my nightgown off, raped me.’ She screamed the last two words at the top of her lungs, her face blue with the effort. Her eyes were wild, crazy. ‘That rapist,’ she screamed, ‘in our house, in Mummy’s house.’
‘Rapist?’ the Judge repeated, still shielding himself from her blows. ‘What rapist? You’re imagining things, Bernadette.’
For one appalling moment I thought she was accusing the Judge of raping her.
Suddenly her voice was very clam and clear. She stopped beating at his chest and stood in front of him. Despite her weight, she seemed very small before the Judge’s height.
‘It’s time I told you.’ She was breathing heavily and sweating. ‘That pig that was always in our house. The four of you eating and drinking downstairs. He came to my room.’
‘Who on earth are you talking about?’
‘The red-faced man, always drunk, he came upstairs, came into my room.’ Then she began to shake with loud sobs. ‘No … no … no.’ She threw herself to the floor on her knees then curled into a ball and rocked herself, saying over and over, ‘He raped me. He came to my room, his hand was at my throat, and he pushed my head up to the bedhead and forced me. I tried to scream but he covered my mouth. I bit him, and he swore at me, but he wouldn’t
stop. He said never to tell, that no one would believe me.’
The Judge stood immobile. ‘Who on earth?’
I watched as something crossed over his face, some memory.
‘Good God, you can’t mean Jack Constable.’
She rose again to her feet and confronted the Judge, calm now. ‘Yes, your friend, Jack Constable, the red-faced pig.’
She and the Judge stood staring at each other for what seemed like long minutes but must only have been a few seconds.
I went to her, took her hands and guided her back to her chair by the window, leaving the Judge standing, stunned. ‘Bernie, why didn’t you say something?’
‘He said not to. He threatened me.’ She was quieter now. ‘I was so scared. I didn’t really understand what had happened.’
She let me hold her then. ‘I’m so sorry, Bernie, so very sorry. Did Mum know?’
She wouldn’t look at the Judge but said firmly to me, ‘Not then … later…Tell him to go. I never want to see him again. He’s a monster. He’s never cared about me.’
The Judge was pale and shaken, but Bernie was the important one for now. I asked him, gently, to wait for me in the visitor’s room.
At last she was calm. She picked up her knitting and began working on it again. ‘Go now, Leo, I’m okay.’
It was the first time she’d used my name since that horrible night when Alison found her huddled in her bed.
The Blooming Of Alison Brennan Page 15
