The Roadhouse

by Kerry McGinnis

  ‘I haven’t, not any longer.’ At Mum’s startled look, I continued. ‘No, I’m serious – and it’s got nothing to do with this. I’ve been thinking – oh, for a while now – about chucking acting. I’m not getting anywhere,’ I admitted painfully, looking down to scratch at the ragged edge of a thumbnail. ‘Oh, I expect I could scrape by for another year or two with waitressing and a bit of ad work, but I’m neither talented nor pretty enough for much else. I’m good for “country image” stuff in the ad world, but that’s about all. Outdoorsy-type set-ups with picnic blankets and dogs, and soon enough I’ll be too old even for that.’ I glanced up at her then, saying it for the first time. ‘The truth is, you need more talent than I’ve got to make a living on stage or screen.’

  Mum regarded me carefully. ‘But you always said it was what you wanted. You love acting.’

  ‘I did. I do. But sooner or later you have to face facts. It’s like, well, loving art doesn’t make you capable of painting a decent picture, does it? If I’m going to do it, and I made up my mind on the flight that I would, it may as well be now. So I’m not quitting because you need help, but seeing that I have, you might as well accept that I’m here to stay for a bit. Until you’re well, or I find a new direction for myself. This business with Annabelle has just …’ – I shrugged – ‘I don’t know, brought it all to a head, given me the push I needed to change tack, I guess. But it was coming anyway. And speaking of Annabelle, Bob said she was back here a week or so ago. Why? What did she want? And who was the man with her?’

  ‘A friend, she said. She called him Paul, and that’s all she told me. Not that I inquired too closely.’ Mum shrugged. ‘Well, you know Annabelle’s way with men. But her morals, thank God, are – were – her own affair. I gave up worrying about that a long time ago. This Paul could’ve been her friend, her lover, her boss – if she had one. Or she might’ve been his mistress, I suppose. If so, he can’t have been very generous because she was after money.’

  ‘What? She actually asked you for it?’ I was outraged.

  ‘I’m afraid it was more a demand. She seemed’ – Mum hesitated – ‘fairly desperate. I wish now that I had, but the truth is I couldn’t help her. The Garnet barely breaks even, and I’m already paying off a loan I took out with the bank.’ She sighed. ‘I never intended to tell you this, Charlie, but since she’s killed herself, I suppose you have a right to the knowledge, and it might help you understand what was behind her attitude to you. Her jealousy, what she did with Bryan … Annabelle wasn’t your cousin, she was your half-sister.’

  Chapter Three

  To say that I was dumbfounded was the understatement not of the year, but the century.

  ‘Sister? How? She couldn’t have been!’ A swift calculation had me blurting, ‘She was only two years older, so you and Dad were well married when … besides, Uncle Frank —’

  ‘Yes,’ Mum agreed. ‘Your father cheated on him as well as me. He slept with Anmah while Frank was in Vietnam. He swore to me that it was only that one time, but for some women once is enough.’

  She spoke flatly and I couldn’t tell if it was a thread of jealousy or anger I discerned in her tone. My parents’ marriage, once I was old enough to see it, had been an armed truce of careful civility and tight-lipped silence on my mother’s part. My father had cajoled and wheedled and lost his temper and been largely ignored in the business, going his own way with madcap schemes that seldom paid off.

  ‘Dear God!’ The enormity of this latest transgression made all his other failings pale in comparison. ‘His own brother! And my aunt – betraying a man who was away fighting for his country. When did you find out?’

  ‘You were eight at the time. Of course, we’d had her since she was three.’ Uncle Frank had been killed on patrol in the jungle after the battle of Long Tan and my parents had taken in the orphaned Annabelle when her mother became the victim of a hit and run one dark night in a Brisbane suburb, only a street away from the flat she was renting. Mum said tiredly, ‘I got suspicious, I suppose. Jim couldn’t disguise his partiality for her. I told him he wasn’t being fair to you and he just blurted it out – that she was his daughter too.’

  ‘That must’ve put a stopper on things,’ I murmured, and she nodded with a wry little twist of a smile.

  ‘He never could keep a secret, your father. I don’t think he even wanted to because he always acted like owning up to the things he’d done was enough to somehow exonerate him. And the strange thing is that, no matter what it was – whether he was drinking our profits, or dabbling in some shonky get-rich-quick scheme only a fool would even look at – after a while I’d just let it go. I suppose it was just too exhausting to stay angry all the time. He wasn’t forgiven but he acted like he had been, and that was good enough for Jim Carver. I think he was born without a conscience, or the ability to feel remorse.’

  I felt a sudden spurt of jealousy for the man I should have despised. ‘So did Annabelle know he was her father?’

  Mum nodded. ‘She must have. I don’t know when he told her. When she turned eighteen, perhaps? He didn’t make a will, as you know, so when he had the heart attack the roadhouse came to me. Annabelle told me that was wrong, that as his child she was entitled to a share, and if I wouldn’t give her cash she wanted a deed to say she owned a third of the business. So she could borrow against it.’

  ‘Unbelievable!’ I muttered. ‘Why was she so desperate for money, anyway?’

  Mum said slowly, ‘Ever since I heard she’d killed herself I’ve wondered if she was in some sort of trouble. She shouted at me when I told her I couldn’t help her. Well, screamed really. Said I didn’t understand, she had to have money. I said if she was that broke she could move back home, help out here, but that wouldn’t do … Now I wonder if she was ill because, really, she looked quite haggard. Maybe it was worry,’ Mum fretted, and sighed. ‘I don’t know – perhaps it was just tiredness making her so nervy. She had been travelling.’ A stricken look passed across her face and she pressed the fingers of a work-roughened hand to her mouth. ‘Lord, I was so angry! I wish now I’d made her tell me what was wrong.’

  Less charitably and with the memory of city streets and parks fresh in my memory, I said, ‘Could she have been on drugs, do you think?’

  ‘Annabelle? No, she’s too smart – was too smart – for that.’

  ‘It’s surprising who is,’ I contradicted. ‘It’s not just the down-and-outs and deadbeats who get hooked, you know. Models, housewives, flash executive types … Maybe they never intended it to take over their lives, but it happens. She might’ve needed money to feed a habit.’

  ‘Well, we’ll never know, now.’ Mum rose slowly, holding onto the chair for a moment, like a much older woman, before taking a step. ‘I’m for bed. I’m glad you’re sensible, Charlie. You were always the reliable one I never had to worry about. Sleep well.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mum.’ However unintentionally, her words stung. Good old dependable Charlie – always second, in looks and charm and her place in the family, and not even capable of protesting the way things were. The one good thing about it all, I brooded, was that growing up I’d at least been spared Annabelle’s hand-me-downs. None of them would have fitted, even if I’d wanted frills and sashes, which I hadn’t.

  I went to bed in my old room, changed only by the addition of Mum’s sewing machine and a wonky-legged occasional table that belonged in the lounge but had somehow found its way into the bedroom. Sleep, however, eluded me. Snatches of words uttered since my arrival kept repeating themselves in my head. Bob’s blunt words: Molly needs help. Mum’s angry voice: She wanted money. And the finality of my own decision: I’m chucking acting … And more pressing than all, the astonishing news that the orphaned girl whom my parents had raised beside me was actually my sister.

  I wondered if my father had felt guilt for the deed that produced her, but doubted it. I had never known Uncle Frank or his wife. One dead before I was born, the other while I was too young to k
now she existed. How had Mum, once she knew the truth of Annabelle’s parentage, managed to go on treating her in the same brisk, impartial manner she had always used towards us both? She must have loved her in her own undemonstrative way, I supposed, figuring the dates, for Annabelle would have been with us for seven years by the time I was eight. Still it was a lot to ask of any woman, and only a man as brass-necked as my father would have dared do so. Or as conscienceless …

  I must have slept eventually, for at some point the treadmill of my thoughts had ceased and I woke to the grey light of dawn and the prolonged screeching of galahs flying about the mill and tank on the banks of the little creek from which Garnet Soak took its name. I could hear water running in the bathroom as I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, then let myself out onto the dew-damp lawn which, I noted, badly needed cutting, to gaze around at the old shade trees and the tired lean of the morticed post and rail fence.

  Roosters were crowing amid the dry grass between the mainly empty sheds, and a pair of ground doves were courting on the uneven stone pavers of the path. A flash of scarlet showed that the poinsettias, though badly in need of pruning, still flourished. The trees of course were self-sustaining, but in the Garnet’s garden marigolds and petunias struggled through the weeds that had taken over the flower bed by the old summerhouse. The hose, unusually, had been left lying where it was last unrolled. Mum had never been an ardent gardener but she had always tackled the job with the same energy as she had kitchen chores. Judged by that, the garden was quite out of control. Was it really just a case of being shorthanded or was the heart problem, the ‘bit of an irregularity’ she had admitted to, more serious than she had let on?

  I returned, frowning, to the kitchen having first coiled the hose back onto its stand. Mum was cooking eggs at the stove, the table already set for five.

  ‘Good morning, Charlie. Still an early riser, I see. I thought the theatre might have changed that.’ She flipped the toaster on. ‘Could you make the tea? The kettle’s just boiled.’

  ‘You can blame waitressing for maintaining the habit,’ I said, reaching for the mugs. ‘Seven o’clock brekkies for shift workers. Something I thought of in the night, Mum – where did Annabelle live? She must’ve had a flat. Won’t somebody have to go there, wherever there is, to collect her stuff, sort the rent, whatever?’

  ‘If we had an address, yes. It was the first thing young Tom asked but I couldn’t tell him.’

  It took a moment to remember that Tom was the constable from Harts Range. ‘Oh. No help to be had there, then. I just thought if she was ill there might be something – a prescription, perhaps, or an appointment card from a doctor … I suppose the police will track it down eventually, from her licence, if it’s still current. She might have moved. I wonder why she took the wallet with her and not a handbag? You’d almost think she didn’t want to be identified.’

  ‘Then why leave her licence in the wallet or put my name and address on the letter?’ Mum asked, sliding eggs onto toast just as Bob entered the kitchen. ‘Morning, Bob. He took a photo of her away with him.’

  ‘Who did?’ I asked. ‘Hello Bob.’

  ‘Young Tom. He said the police will circulate it, see if they can find anyone who saw or spoke to Annabelle before she died.’

  ‘Morning, Molly, Charlie, Bob.’ Don had come in, followed by his wife who greeted us all, saying she’d had a lovely sleep.

  Bob acknowledged my greeting and nodded at them both, ‘Get a date for the service sorted, did yer, Padre?’

  ‘Yes, we did. Sunday after next. Is this your seat?’

  ‘Nah, this’ll do me,’ Bob dropped his hat on the floor beside the chair he’d chosen and reached immediately for the teapot. ‘Pump’s going,’ he added economically and I became aware of the distant throb of an engine. ‘I’ll get the hoses started when I’ve ate.’

  ‘I can do that. And clean in here, and sweep out the roadhouse,’ I volunteered, crunching toast. ‘What’s the mower like to start, Bob? Toast, Rae?’ I passed it. ‘I notice the lawn needs a trim.’

  ‘Easy. Just prime it,’ he grunted. ‘You ain’t forgotten how to do that?’

  I ignored this. ‘When’s the mail due these days, Mum? Still early?’

  ‘Half an hour.’ She glanced at the clock as she swallowed her tea. ‘He’ll want breakfast; his passengers too, if he has any.’

  ‘If there is one let’s hope it’s our cook,’ I murmured. ‘I’ll take it on if he doesn’t turn up.’

  ‘Thank you, Charlie. If you don’t mind, that would be very helpful. Just till we can find someone.’ She filled Don’s cup from the pot.

  ‘Or you get this pacemaker fitted,’ I said, passing it down to him. ‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten about that, Mum. We’re going to sit down and organise it today. If it needs to be done there’s no point in waiting.’

  ‘The doctor didn’t say it was urgent,’ she protested.

  ‘Dad didn’t think his indigestion was either,’ I reminded her. ‘I’m going to badger you into hospital, Mum, so get used to it.’

  She frowned, as if seeing me for the first time. ‘You’ve changed, Charlie.’

  ‘Five years suiting myself, that’s all.’ Only nobody ever really did; there was always somebody or something to hamper one’s choices. I grinned at her, suddenly surer of myself than I had been for a long time. ‘Doormats are so last year – as my agent always says. Which reminds me, I need to give her a ring. Right, if you’ll all excuse me’ – I rose from the table – ‘Where are the keys? I’d best open up and get started if the postie needs feeding. Is it still Sid Bennett?’

  ‘And the same old truck,’ Bob said. ‘The Pope must’ve blessed the bloody thing, it couldn’t still be running else.’

  ‘You might want to have a word with him about that clapped-out Rover of yours, then, before it quits,’ I quipped, accepting the keys from Mum. Don laughed and I felt Bob’s glare follow me from the room.

  Chapter Four

  The old green International I remembered pulled in before the Garnet just as I finished sweeping the verandah. Sid Bennet, stained teeth gripping his pipe stem, bristly grey moustache still covering his top lip, lifted out the canvas mailbag and headed towards me. ‘Mornin’, Miss. Molly about?’

  ‘Hello, Sid.’ I set the broom aside to take the bag, my gaze going past him to eye the woman climbing out of the cab. So the cook hadn’t come after all. ‘I didn’t think I’d changed that much.’

  He squinted for a second, then a smile split his face. ‘Jesus! Didn’t recognise you, Charlie. When did you get back?’

  ‘Yesterday. How have you been?’

  ‘Oh, fair to middling, you know. So, home for a visit, eh? You’ll find it a bit on the quiet side I’m thinking, after the city.’

  ‘Peaceful, is how I look at it. Just the two of you for breakfast today? I’m working the kitchen,’ I explained. ‘I was hoping you’d brought our new cook out today.’

  He jerked his head at the woman who, I now saw, was laden with the weight of a large backpack, and was fitting another smaller one over her chest. ‘I did – there she is.’

  ‘Oh, good.’ Why had I automatically expected a man? I lowered my voice. ‘What’s her name?’

  He shrugged. ‘Beauty, near as I can figure. Wog sheila, talks funny. Got your mailbag handy? I’ll grab it before I eat, that way I don’t forget.’

  I had left the outgoing bag on the slatted seat further down the verandah. ‘There you go, come in when you’re ready.’ Then I turned to the woman now waiting behind Sid. ‘Good morning. I understand you’ve come to work here? I’ll take you to see the boss, okay?’

  I had spoken slowly and clearly, wondering, after Sid’s comment, if language would prove a problem and was disconcerted to hear the careful preciseness of her reply.

  ‘Thank you. I would like to speak, please, with the manager, before the driver he goes again, yes.’

  So she could go with him if the job wasn’t up to her expectations, I ass
umed.

  ‘Of course. My name’s Charlie – Charlie Carver. My mother, Molly, runs the roadhouse. And you are?’

  ‘Ute.’ She pronounced it U-tee. ‘Ute Byzinoski. Is not so difficult, no? But the driver does not understand. He calls me Beauty – this is the name for a cow. Mine is Polish.’

  ‘I see. He’s probably a bit deaf. It’s a noisy old truck.’ She was, I judged, somewhere in her thirties, strongly built and athletic looking with pleasant if rather heavy features that added to her appearance of strength. Her lips were full, her nose broad, her teeth very white and even. Her blonde hair had been pulled back into a knot beneath a nylon hat, and she strode rather than walked, shoulders braced against the weight on her back.

  ‘You live here, too, Charlie? This is a man’s name,’ she observed with a slight frown.

  ‘It’s short for Charlotte. And yes, for the present I do. My mother’s not very well. How long have you been here – in Australia, I mean?’

  ‘Three months. Is the working break for me of six months. Then I return to Europe. I work in the Hague – you have heard of this place?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I haven’t been to Europe though.’

  ‘Is very different.’ She paused on the top step, her eyes lingering on the purple bulwark of the flat-topped range visible beyond the ridges and low scrub. ‘Here is very dry, very … strange. But strong, you know. One sees the bones.’

  It was an odd way to put it but I understood what she meant. ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘a hard land, but beautiful. Come this way, please. I’ll have to leave you with my mother because right now I should be in the kitchen.’

  I hurried back to prepare a plate of bacon, eggs, tomato and toast for Sid, served him, and went out to position and start the sprays on the lawn. The tubs of geraniums that were staggered along the verandah were also dry so I watered them too, weeding as I went. Paint was flaking from the timber verandah posts and rails, and there was a patch of rust on the homemade barbecue under the big breezeway. The whole place, I thought critically, needed a face-lift, but financially it was probably an unlikely ask. A piece of guttering had come askew. I stood on the log fronting a bed of emu bush and pushed at it but it resisted my efforts.