by Susan Allott
He ground out his cigarette in the saucer he was using as an ashtray. Mandy had used him, he could see that now. She’d wanted out of her marriage. Grounds for divorce. She’d probably timed the whole thing so Steve would come home and find them like that. Just as he’d started to get sweet on her. Next thing he knew, he was getting thumped and she was standing there holding a baby, someone else’s black baby, telling him to go home. He’d thought he was going to die. He undid his collar and rubbed at his neck. Shame his right arm was out of action. He could have hit the bastard harder.
They’d been jumpy about the baby. It was one of those kids that Steve had to remove for work. It had to be. Steve must have liked the look of it and decided to keep it for himself. It probably wasn’t official. It was outrageous when you thought about it. He knew he’d get away with it because he was a copper and he knew the right people. And the kid’s family had the whole system stacked against them.
Joe stood, shut the back door behind him, and reached for the whisky. Poured it quickly, a big one, hand shaking a bit, but this wasn’t too early in the day. Almost five-thirty. He’d put a full day’s work in—his first in over a week—and he’d earned a drink a dozen times over. The others would be in the bar by now, downing the schooners before they went home to the wife and kids. The second glass was smaller and he didn’t rush it. Even found some ice. Steady hand. No need to get drunk.
The lounge room was a tip. Dirty plates on the coffee table and a stain on the carpet where he’d knocked a bottle over. The ashtrays were all full. He disgusted himself. The whisky was no solution, but it was all he had to lean on, now that Mandy had let him down. The evenings were long and it was too quiet; even with the TV on he couldn’t forget he was on his own. The house had an echo to it. Every footstep was amplified.
He sat down on the couch, leaned back, and looked at the blank TV screen. Stan had taken some of his workload off him. He’d been good about it and his kindness had made it worse somehow, more humiliating. It was a challenging job, Stan had said. It was looking like the architects had changed their minds again and the proscenium arch in the major hall would have to be dismantled. It would be an Opera House whose major hall was a concert hall, not suitable for opera. The men were complaining, walking off-site saying they’d had enough, and a few months back he might have joined them. He’d been an idiot to think he could rise up the ranks on something like this.
He slopped whisky over his shirt when the phone rang. Six o’clock. It wasn’t Stan this time. He put his glass down and looked at the phone, his mouth sour with fear and hope.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Joe. It’s Louisa.”
The shock of her voice went through him like cold water. Jesus Christ, he might cry.
“Can we talk? I’ve been calling for days but there was no answer.”
He gripped the receiver. “I want to talk to Isla.”
“She’s asleep.”
“Wake her up.”
“She’s been unwell. I don’t want to wake her.”
“Unwell?”
“She’ll be fine. She’s been checked over by the doctor. It’s flu, that’s all. She’s over the worst of it.”
His words were trapped in his throat. “I want her back,” he managed to say. “She should be here. This is her home.”
“Can we talk, Joe? Please.”
The line hissed between them, and Joe stood on the rug, arms outstretched, phone cable pulled taut. “You didn’t even tell me where you’d gone. Can you imagine how scared I was?”
She was quiet. The silence clogged his ears.
“Did you hear me?”
“She saw us, Joe.”
He dropped his arms to his sides. “What?”
“Isla saw us. That night.”
“What did she see?” He had a feeling he knew. His stomach turned over. “Lou? What did she see? What night?”
“The night I went to Mandy’s. We argued and it got physical.” Her voice was small, hesitant. “I don’t know if you remember.”
“No. I blacked out.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“How bad was it?”
“Pretty bad.” She was crying. “What kind of parents are we, Joe?”
“You should have told me.” He reached for his glass. “Is she all right? Did she say anything?”
“She hasn’t mentioned it. She’s been distant with me. I think it scared her.”
“Of course it scared her.” He drained his glass and let the warmth fill his head.
“We’re not right together, are we?”
He sat down on the rug and fought the tears, swallowed them back down. “Don’t say that, Lou.”
“You said it yourself.”
“I was angry with you.” He rocked forward, holding the empty glass between his feet. “I’m sorry I said that. I’m sorry about what happened that night. I hate the idea that Isla saw it.”
She was quiet a long time. He thought of Isla on the beach, treading water in the ocean beside him.
“Will you come back?”
There was a flare on the line and he wondered if she’d heard him.
“I can’t come by boat,” she said when the line cleared. “The baby’s due in April. I don’t want to give birth on a ship, Joe.”
He sucked air through his teeth. “Jesus, Louisa. There’ll be no money left if you fly back.”
“Don’t be angry with me.”
“Did you have to take all the savings?”
“I thought I’d need money to live on,” she said. “While I was looking for work.”
He rolled the glass between his feet. “You had it all planned out, then. Didn’t you?”
She was crying again. “I don’t want to come back. Not if you’re angry with me.”
“I’m not angry.” He hung his head between his knees and tried to say it like he meant it. “I’m not angry, Lou. I know things have been bad between us.”
“Will you stop drinking?”
Jesus Christ, she wanted him to roll over and beg. He stretched the fingers of his broken hand, curled them as far as he could, and stretched them again. “I’ll cut down,” he said. “I’ll give it a go.”
“We both miss you,” Louisa said. “England doesn’t feel like home. It’s freezing cold and Isla hates it.”
“I’m pleased to hear that.”
“We need to stop fighting.”
“I know.”
“I’m scared that we can’t.”
He put his head on his knee and tried not to think of the way she’d planned it all, the note she’d left him while he was at work. Coming home to find them gone.
“We can,” he said. “There’s a baby on the way, Lou. We’re a family.”
She was still crying. He held the receiver to his ear, sorry and guilty and, at the same time, empty. Sometimes, he thought, love and guilt felt the same.
34
Sydney, 1997
The wooden chair is wet under Isla’s jeans as she sits down with her coffee. The sky is gray, the deck damp with recent rain. She slept badly. Every night since the trip to Ropes Crossing she’s woken in the early hours, full of fear. She tells herself, as she lies awake, that she’s scared for her dad, not of him. She fights the creep of doubt. When she can’t rest she walks through the house, looking for him, this man who might have killed. When she finds him passed out on the couch, she thinks it’s not possible. Surely not.
She can hear the breakfast news from the radio in the kitchen: Tasmania has decriminalized homosexuality. There is talk of a referendum on whether Australia will become a republic. She blows on her coffee. In the kitchen the radio snaps off. The flick of a lighter. A glass bottle meets a hard surface.
“I thought I heard you out here,” her dad says, stepping out onto the deck.
He pulls up a chair and puts his mug down on the table. It’s not yet seven-thirty but his eyes are foggy, unfocused. Drunk.
“My boss wants me back at w
ork,” she says. She keeps her eyes on the rotary dryer, where her swimsuit is hanging after yesterday’s swim. “He left a message on the machine, asking when I’ll be back.”
Joe reaches for the ashtray and rests his cigarette on the edge. He sits back in his chair. “It’s been good to have you here. Shame your mother didn’t stick around.” There’s a slur in his voice. “Just you and me, in the end.”
She can’t look at him. The gulls are flying inland from the beach. “I need to ask you something, Dad.”
“Fire away,” he says too loudly. “What’s on your mind?”
“Are you sure Mandy left with Steve? They moved away together?”
He finishes his cigarette before he replies. “Where’s this coming from? Haven’t we talked this over already?”
“I don’t think so. Not really.”
“I thought we had. I thought I’d told you they moved away. Wasn’t I clear about that?”
Isla makes herself face him. He stares back at her, drunkenly belligerent.
“You don’t believe me,” he says.
“I think you might be sticking to your story.”
“Lying, you mean? Is that what you think?”
“Maybe.” A cool wind blows in from the south, spinning the rotary dryer, lifting her swimsuit into the air. “Maybe you told me the same thing you told Mum when we got back from England. Mandy and Steve moved away.”
“They did.”
“Please don’t lie to me, Dad.”
He drains the contents of his mug, opening his throat, tipping his head back. It’s not coffee. Isla knows the burn in his chest as he swallows, the warmth in his head.
“I’m not lying,” he says.
“Steve Mallory says you are.”
He becomes very still. “What?”
“He says he left without Mandy. He left her behind with you. He’s told the police you’re lying.”
“And you believe him?”
Her throat aches. “I want to believe you.”
“But you don’t.”
“I think you might be keeping something from me.”
He pats his pockets for his cigarettes, lights one with a shaking hand, smiles at her unconvincingly.
Surely not, she thinks. Surely not.
“I’ll tell you something, Isla. Something I didn’t tell you before.”
“Go on.”
“Steve Mallory took a baby. An Aboriginal kid. A baby boy.”
She looks away. “You already told me about that. I know he removed kids.”
“But he kept this one.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Little black fella. Screamed all night,” he says, leaning dangerously out of his chair to gesture toward the yard next door. “Screamed all night and half the day too.” He rocks back toward her on his chair.
“I don’t see what this has got to do with Mandy.”
“You don’t want to hear it. Nobody ever does.”
“I want you to tell me about Mandy.”
He stabs at the table with his forefinger. “This is about him. Steve Mallory, the bloke whose story you’re swallowing. He kept a baby for himself. He wanted a child of his own so he kept one.”
She takes a mouthful of coffee and lets him talk, half listening.
“He gets to have a family,” Joe says. “Never mind about the family he broke up.” He lifts his mug and finds it empty.
“Steve doesn’t have a family. He’s on his own.”
“Who told you that?”
She wants to tell him: I went to see Steve and he bad-mouthed you. He tried to turn me against you. There’s a time she would have said that. She would have known whose side she was on.
“I’ve been asking around,” she says. “Trying to get to the truth.”
“Have you?” He is quiet for a moment. She can hear the rasp in his chest. “You think I’m making things up?”
“I think it suits you to think Steve was a monster.”
He leans forward across the table. “And what do you think?”
The wind picks up, blowing rain against the house.
“I think he left Mandy behind in Sydney with you.”
He rises, knocking the table, sending his mug rolling onto the deck. “Why don’t you go back to London, Isla? Why are you hanging around here? Why don’t you go and pack your bag?”
“Am I wrong?” She stands next to an upturned plant pot, earth scattered at her feet.
“These bastards can all go to hell. I’m done with the lot of them.” He turns and points wildly at the neighboring houses, the long backyards, the hedges and flowerbeds. “Your mother can go to hell and your brother can go with her. I don’t need any of them.”
“Am I wrong, Dad?”
“I didn’t think you’d turn on me, Isla. You of all people!”
He reaches for the bunting that droops beside the kitchen window. It comes away as he pulls on it, trailing across the deck, shabby and soiled. He kicks it, and it wraps itself around his foot.
“Watch out.” She steps forward to break his fall and he crashes into her arms, almost knocking her sideways. She feels his weakness, his frailty as she holds him upright, hears the whistle in his chest.
He stands, holding her arms for balance. “Don’t ask me that again,” he says.
35
Sydney, 1967
Mandy regretted her visit as soon as she walked into Joe’s kitchen. She shut his back door behind her and kept a grip on the handle.
“I won’t stop long,” she said. “Steve’s nodded off. I wanted to check you were all right.”
He was leaning uncomfortably over the sink, working at the tea stains on the inside of a mug with his good hand. Half a dozen dishes stood brightly upright in the drying rack, and several whisky tumblers, washed and rinsed, were drip-drying upside down in orderly rows. This is a man, she thought, whose wife is on her way home.
“Looks like you’re busy,” she said to his frowning profile.
“Thought it was about time I got the place cleaned up. It’s not as hard as it looks, once you get started.”
She noticed the faded purple bruising at his neck. “Look. My husband nearly killed you. I’m sorry that happened.”
“I’m fine, Mandy.” He looked at her distractedly. “It seems to have knocked some sense into me.” Beneath the soapy water, the gold band on his ring finger caught the light.
“I’m pleased to hear that.” She looked around her at the clean floor, the freshly wiped surfaces. “You turned over a new leaf, is that it?”
“I’m expecting Louisa back soon. And Isla. Don’t want them getting home to a filthy house.”
“That’s great news.” She kept her voice bright. “When do they arrive?”
“Louisa’s booking the flights today.”
“They’re flying back?”
“The boat’s too slow, what with Lou being pregnant.”
“Of course.” She reached behind her for the door handle. “I’ve missed Isla. Be good to see her.”
He wiped the suds from his hand onto his shirt. “All worked out nicely, didn’t it?”
“Did it?”
“I think so. My wife’s coming home with my daughter. Your divorce should come through soon. I’d say that’s a big success all ’round.”
She stared back at him. “What?”
“Don’t think I haven’t worked it out.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Last week. You let me think Steve was at work.”
“Did I?” She brought her hands to her face. “Oh God, I didn’t mean to do that. I lost track of how long he’d been out of the house.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mandy. You must have known he’d be back anytime.”
“I forgot myself.” She flushed hot at the memory. “The last thing I wanted was for him to come home.”
“Is he giving you a divorce?”
“What? No.” She tried to make sense of his face. “No, we’re
going to try and make a go of it.”
His eyebrows lifted. “He’s sticking around?”
“We’re giving it a go. I don’t want to divorce him. I swear to God, Joe. You got the wrong end of the stick.”
His eyes moved over her face. “Could have sworn you’d set me up. Grounds for divorce.”
“Don’t be daft.” She tipped her head, tried to soften him. “No need for anything like that. We were a comfort to each other, you and me, weren’t we? A port in a storm. Nothing serious.”
He swung on his heel, back to the sink. “Was there anything else? Don’t want Steve coming over here looking for you.”
“There was something—”
“Best you don’t come back over. Let things settle down.”
“Right.” She couldn’t catch his eye. “Joe, I—”
“I’ll be ready for him if he sets foot on my property.” He looked out the window to Mandy’s yard, pointing. “He’d better keep his distance.”
“He’s asleep, don’t worry. He was up in the night with William.”
He tipped the dirty water out of the bowl. “Who’s William?”
“The baby.” She cleared her throat. “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
He became still. “The baby I saw you with? Little black kid?”
“That’s him.”
“What’s that all about?”
She stared down at his linoleum and tried to get her thoughts in order. He was making her nervous. “I was hoping you’d keep it to yourself,” she said. “About the baby. Just for now.”
“Why’s that?” He turned and leaned back against the draining board, staring straight ahead.
“It’s easier that way,” she said. “We’re hoping to adopt him, but until then—”
“You want me to keep quiet about it?”
She nodded. “Please.”
He raked his fingers through the stubble at his jaw. “You want to implicate me in what you’ve done?”
She swallowed. “No. I mean.”
He turned to face her. “You realize it’s hell to have a child taken from you?”
