The Silence

by Susan Allott

  “And I don’t think I can be his mother.”

  “Couldn’t you give it a try for a while? If it doesn’t work out I’ll get in touch with Ray.”

  The sky was almost blue now behind the tea trees. She breathed in and out, slow and steady. She could feel the hope in him. He had too much love to give, this was the trouble. He needed more in return than she could offer.

  “I’ll give it a short while,” she said. “Two weeks at the most. I mean it.”

  He threw his head back in relief.

  “We’ll need to keep him inside, out of sight. Keep him quiet. We don’t want people talking.”

  He kissed the baby’s head. “We can manage that, can’t we, William?”

  She froze. “What did you call him?”

  “William,” he said, as if this were reasonable. “I named him William, after my old man.”

  “You named him—?”

  “Why not? He needs a name.”

  “Doesn’t he have a name already?”

  “I wanted to name him myself. I always wanted a son called William.”

  “He’s not your son!”

  “I know that.” He kissed him again. “Might be the closest I get, but.”

  She shook her head at him, but he was looking at the baby, smiling in that absorbed way. “You need to slow down.”

  The cicadas reached them through the window. She had the sense again, just briefly, of a rope unraveling. The rapid slip into a place beyond reason. She looked away.

  “Why don’t you go back to bed, Mand? I can manage now.”

  She left him there, rocking the baby, looking out at the yard as the sun lit the sky.

  31

  New South Wales, 1997

  “This was all prime real estate, twenty-odd years ago.” Scott changes gear and overtakes a truck, gliding past it noiselessly and pulling back in again. “Back in the seventies, it cost more to live out this way than it would have to live in Darlinghurst.”

  Isla looks out the window of Scott’s low-slung Honda. A disused railway line runs alongside the road. The tracks are overgrown with grass and strewn with empty bottles. An Aboriginal man sits on the platform of what must once have been a train station, holding a bottle in a brown paper bag.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she says.

  Scott taps his fingers against the steering wheel to the beat of the song on the radio. “Couldn’t have you driving all the way out here on your own.”

  “You mean you don’t want me driving your car.”

  “There is that.” He reaches for the dial on the radio and turns it off. “And I wanted to see you again, before you go back to the dark side.”

  “Sorry I’ve been bad at keeping in touch. It’s hard, with the time difference, and—”

  “Are you still drinking?”

  She turns to him, surprised. “I’ve been on the wagon a couple of months.”

  He nods. “How’s that going?”

  “Great.” She squirms in the soft leather of his car seat. “Why d’you ask?”

  “You were pretty wild before you left.”

  “I was twenty-five.”

  “You were off the scale, Isla. I was there, some of the time. Nobody could keep up with you.”

  “I know.”

  “I thought you might crash and burn in London.”

  She puts her hands through the coarse mess of her hair. “I did, in the end.”

  He overtakes again, checking the mirror and holding his speed within the limit. Her sensible, careful brother, who studied hard and married young, who can remember his twenties. Who can remember her twenties, more to the point.

  “You’re right,” she says. “It became a problem. The drink.”

  “It’s good to hear you say that.”

  “I’ve got it under control. As much as you can, you know.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I’m an alcoholic.”

  He looks across at her and she looks away. She has never said those words out loud before. The day is too bright, the sky too clear. The car is too smooth and silent. She sinks down into the seat and wipes her palms on her jeans.

  “Are you going to meetings?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “It’s meant to help. People say—”

  “Would you give it up? I know what people say.”

  “All right. I was trying to help.”

  Her heart will not slow down. “I was about to start going to meetings in London,” she says, just to test if her voice is working. “It wasn’t the best time for me to come out here.”

  “You’re doing pretty good, considering,” he says. “Still got your temper.”

  She laughs, because she knows he expects her to laugh.

  “Personally, I hardly touch the stuff,” Scott says.

  “Well, aren’t you fucking perfect?” She looks pointedly out the window, at the long grass and the stripped-down cars at the side of the road.

  “Not really,” he says. “And I’ll leave you out there with the roadkill if you’re going to be like that.”

  “Sorry.” She looks back at him. “I haven’t told anyone else, that’s all.”

  “I care about you, Isla. You know?”

  “Yeah, I know that. I do.” She shuts her eyes against the sun. “I think I started drinking so I could be closer to Dad. I didn’t want to disapprove of him. It made it easier to be on his side.”

  “That makes sense,” Scott says.

  “Does it?”

  “Sure.” He glares at a white pickup that flies past them in the fast lane. “You were the only one who could calm him down. Can’t have been easy on you.” He glances at her. “D’you remember?”

  “Some of it. The hardest thing about sobriety is remembering things I’d rather forget.”

  “Do you remember when he broke all the fingers in Mum’s hand?”

  “No.” She thinks about it. “No, that was an accident. He slammed her hand in the door of the car.”

  He makes a growl of disagreement in his throat. “He might have told you that.”

  “It was an accident. I remember he drove her to the hospital.” She hears how this sounds. Her voice has a childish whine.

  “There were no accidents in our house,” he says.

  Isla sinks farther into her seat. “You always think the worst of him.”

  “Jesus, Isla.” He slows his speed at the Ropes Crossing turnoff. “I was the one who drove her to the hospital when Dad was too far gone. One time he dislocated her shoulder. Another time he broke her ribs.”

  She turns back to the window, stares out at the western suburbs. Street after street of fibro houses with steel fences. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I could go on,” he says. “But I don’t want to knock you off the wagon.”

  The sun is in their eyes as they head west. The road narrows. Isla wonders if her brother is as right as he thinks he is. If she has always been wrong. Her heart pounds.

  “How did you turn out so normal, anyway?”

  He smiles and taps the steering wheel. “Therapy,” he says. “Years of therapy. I recommend it.”

  She waits, sensing there’s more.

  “I work hard. Too hard, Ruby would say. I’m not good with too much time on my hands.”

  “Me neither,” she says.

  “Ruby knows I don’t want kids.” He turns to her with a sad half smile. “I’m not going to risk it. In case I have the bullying arsehole gene.”

  “That’s a shame.” She sits up straight. Don’t cry. “I think you’d be a good dad.”

  The sky has turned a deep blue. The buildings are low and makeshift, corrugated-iron roofs and chicken-wire fences.

  “Have you thought about what you’re going to say to this Steve bloke?” Scott says, after a while. “How are you going to play it if he’s not happy to see you?”

  “I’m not going to lose my rag if that’s what you mean.”

  “T
hat’s a good start.”

  “I know you think this is a bad idea.”

  He keeps his eyes on the road. “If I were him, I’d stick to my story, that’s all. If I’d told the police I’d moved away and left my wife behind, I’d tell you the same exact thing.”

  “I want to look him in the eye,” she says. “I want to see his face when he says he moved away without her.”

  The road turns and Scott drops his speed. They pull up outside a smart new community center with steps leading up to double glass doors. The doors part and an elderly man leaves the building, stepping aside for a younger woman with a baby on her hip.

  “I’ll come in with you,” Scott says.

  “You sure this is where he works?”

  Scott turns off the ignition. “He’s listed as a manager here. And he’s on a few local committees operating out of this address. Neighborhood development projects, that sort of thing.”

  “Pillar of the community,” Isla says. They sit for a moment in the sealed capsule of his car. “Maybe we should have made an appointment.”

  She swings the car door open. Scott checks the car is locked before he follows her into the building. The doors open straight onto a small waiting area, where a ceiling fan rotates slowly and several people wait on plastic chairs.

  An Aboriginal woman stands behind the front desk. She has close-cropped bleach-blond hair and a heavy-set jaw. “Can I help you?” she says, looking doubtful.

  “I’m here to see Steve Mallory,” Isla says.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Yes,” she says before Scott can reply. She smiles. “He’s expecting me.”

  “We don’t speak to journos.”

  “I’m not a journalist. My name’s Isla Green.”

  “I don’t have you in the book.” She taps the diary that lies open on the desk. “I don’t think we can help you, Miss Green.”

  “There must be a mistake, then.” Isla steps away from Scott, who has gripped her by the elbow.

  “I don’t think so. Mr. Mallory runs the Connect service on Fridays. He’s helping people find their families. People whose kids were taken. Or who were taken themselves, brought up by white folk. Stolen kids.”

  Isla nods and smiles, lost for words. She thinks of her dad in the kitchen, listening to the radio: that bastard next door was up to his neck in it. Beside her, Scott fidgets uncomfortably.

  “I can fix you a time in a couple of weeks,” the receptionist says. “If it’s the Connect service you need.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Isla says.

  “No.” The woman glances at the window, where Scott’s gunmetal gray Honda is visible out on the street. “I didn’t think so.”

  “Could you pass my details on? I’m a family friend.” Isla takes a leaflet from a stack on the desk and writes down her name in the top corner. She adds her parents’ address on Bay Street and underlines it. “I’ve come from London to see him,” she says. “I have to go back next week.”

  The woman snatches at the leaflet and leaves through the double doors at the back of the room, letting them slam behind her. A fly circles the room, passing close to Isla’s face. She swats it and it falls silent. In the waiting area behind them a baby screams.

  “I think we’re the only white people in this place,” Scott says in her ear.

  “So what?”

  “It’s a service for Aboriginal people. We just charged in like we own the joint.”

  She leans against the reception desk. “I thought I’d catch him off guard,” she says, weakly.

  “All he has to do is say no.”

  “I think he’ll come out,” she says. “You wait.” She watches the double doors with a childish fear in her chest. The fly sets off again, louder than before, its circuit tightened.

  “He’s with someone,” the receptionist says, cheerfully efficient. She slaps her palms down on the desk. “Sorry. Who’s next?”

  Scott steers Isla back through the glass doors and onto the street. He points his keyring at the Honda, unlocking it with a small, electronic bleep. “That was a waste of time,” he says.

  Isla slumps into the passenger seat. “I know. Sorry.” She looks up at the building. The glass doors open and a man in a blue checked shirt stands behind them, his face hidden.

  “He’s doing some good work, this Steve Mallory.” Scott fastens his seat belt and turns the ignition. “Doesn’t sound to me like the bogeyman you had in mind.”

  “Guilty conscience,” she says. “He was the one who removed half those kids in the first place.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Dad told me.”

  “Right.” Scott nods.

  “What’s that meant to mean?”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Just because Dad said it you think it’s not true.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  She turns from him as he swings the car around. The man in the blue shirt walks out onto the footpath and watches them. He is short in the legs, broad in the chest, and Isla knows him as if thirty years had not passed, as if she were four years old and he had just walked through the door of the house on Bay Street.

  “Stop.” She sits forward in her seat. “That’s him. That’s Steve.”

  Scott brakes. Steve crosses the street, holding up the leaflet that Isla wrote her name on. He leans forward to tap on the passenger window and they hear his voice through the glass. “You wanted to see me?”

  Isla lowers the window. He has ruddy skin and watering eyes and he looks genuinely moved at the sight of her.

  “Isla Green,” he says. “I came out as soon as I clocked your name.”

  Isla climbs from the car and meets him on the footpath. She towers over him. He stands with his feet apart, shoulders back, and runs his hand over the bald pate of his head.

  “Thanks for coming outside,” she says. “I know you’re busy.”

  He’s not as familiar now that she’s in front of him. His physical presence—gentler than she remembered—is in the way. She has a pang of doubt.

  “Christ almighty,” he says. “Isla Green. I remember you as a tiny thing. Always running around the yard looking for bugs and spiders.”

  “The police have been to see my dad.” She blurts it, and his expression changes.

  “I imagine they have.”

  “They seem to think he was the last person to see Mandy before she went missing.”

  He curls the leaflet with her name on it and taps it against the palm of his hand. “That sounds about right.”

  “My dad says Mandy left with you. He says she went with you to Victoria.”

  “He’s a liar. Sorry to have to tell you that.”

  He moves the palm of his hand over his face, pulling at the skin beneath his eyes. He’s almost crying, Isla thinks. He’s only just containing a bank of emotion. This is what scared her as a kid; it comes to her as she stands before him. His surface layer is paper thin and behind it he is utterly broken.

  “Mandy was soft on you,” he says. “Do you know that? Do you remember?”

  “Not really.”

  “She would have made a good mother. We could have raised a family.”

  Behind him, a woman leaves the building and turns onto the footpath. The baby on her hip wakes, lifts its head, and cries out, a long wail of protest. Steve spins around in alarm. The woman takes a minute to settle the child, patting its back.

  “My dad’s going to take the blame,” Isla says. “If they can’t find Mandy.”

  Steve turns back to face her. “Your father took her from me,” he says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I left her behind in Sydney with Joe Green.”

  “He denies that.”

  “There were witnesses, love. It was broad daylight when I left. People saw what happened.” Tears stand in his eyes. “It’s the biggest mistake of my life.”

  She hears Scott climbing from the car, slamming th
e door. He stands beside her, his arm on her shoulder.

  “I never remarried,” Steve says. “I miss her every day.”

  “Do you think she’s alive?”

  “No,” he says, fighting the tears. “I know they’re treating her as missing. But she wasn’t the sort of woman to disappear without a trace. She was the sort of person you noticed.”

  Scott taps Isla’s shoulder. “We should get going,” he says.

  “We’d be a family now,” Steve continues. “That’s the hardest thing. It was what Mandy wanted more than anything. She was a natural with kids. We’d have had a brood of our own, if we’d had the chance. I never thought I’d be on my own at this time of life.” He wipes his face. “Do you have a family, Isla?”

  “No,” she says. “Not yet.”

  “There’s still time for you.”

  “I’m sorry.” She doesn’t know why she says it.

  “What good is that?” he shouts at her. “Do you think that’s any bloody use?”

  “No. I just—”

  “It’s your father who should be sorry. Why isn’t he the one standing here? Where the hell is he?”

  “We should go,” Scott says. “We’ve taken up enough of your time.”

  Steve holds his arm up to block the sun. “You are the image of your mother,” he says to Scott.

  “We’ve got a long drive.” Scott steps closer to the car. “Thanks again for—”

  “How is Louisa?”

  “Not so good,” Scott says. “It’s been difficult for her, with our dad being under suspicion. The police asking questions.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” He looks bereft. “She was always a cut above, was Louisa.”

  “You’re right there,” Scott says.

  Steve considers Scott, lowers his arm. “Send her my regards, would you?” he says, stepping backward into the street. “I hope she finds a way through this.”

  He stands at the glass doors and watches them get into the car. Isla feels his eyes on her until they turn the corner. She waits in anxious silence for Scott to speak.

  “I don’t think he was lying, Isla.”

  She looks out at the long grass and the telephone poles.

  “He left Mandy behind in Sydney, with Dad.” Scott changes gear and pulls into the fast lane. “You heard the man.”