by Judy Nunn
Kit hadn’t known what to expect in confronting his father. Perhaps the rage that he’d already encountered, perhaps the vitriol; neither had surprised him. But this calm, cold reaction was the last thing he’d anticipated. He stood at a loss, not sure what to say. It seemed there was nothing he could say.
‘Thank you for telling me the truth,’ he said when he finally found his voice. It was time to go, he thought. He crossed to the verandah door and opened it.
‘Give me the locket, Kit.’ It was an order.
‘Why?’ he asked, turning back.
‘Because I don’t want photographs of my wife and her lover floating around for everyone to see.’
‘I won’t show anyone.’
‘I said give me the locket, Kit.’ Terence crossed to the door, his hand outstretched.
‘No.’ Kit slipped the locket into his shirt pocket. ‘She wanted me to have it.’
‘You’ll do as you’re told, you little bastard,’ Terence snarled, his anger once more on the rise.
‘Not so little,’ Kit said, ‘but you got the other part right.’ Looking at Terence Galloway’s face, twisted with rage as he’d so often seen it, Kit felt light-headed and strangely relieved. So many unspoken questions seemed to have suddenly been answered. ‘I’m glad Paul Trewinnard was my father,’ he said. ‘It explains a great deal.’
‘It does, doesn’t it.’ Terence’s years of hatred overwhelmed him. ‘Do you think I could ever have sired a spineless little bastard like you! You’re the product of that slut of a mother of yours and her wimp of a Pom. Big fucking war hero, my arse.’ He shoved Kit roughly in the chest and Kit lost his balance, staggering a step or two back through the door. Terence followed him onto the verandah. ‘Let’s see what you’re made of, big fucking war hero.’ Terence wanted more than a fight. He wanted to kill Kit with his bare hands.
Kit looked at the man he’d known as his father throughout his life. He was looking at a madman, he realised. Terence’s face was red and distorted, his massive shoulders were hunched, his fists clenched, and he pawed the verandah deck like an enraged bull. A complete and utter madman, Kit thought. Didn’t he realise that it wasn’t an even match? Didn’t he realise that he didn’t stand a chance? For God’s sake, didn’t the man realise that he was nearly sixty years old?
Terence swung at Kit with all his might. Kit dodged aside, easily avoiding the blow, and Terence lost his balance, overturning a chair. He kicked it aside and lunged again at Kit.
There was a scream in the background as Fran raced from the kitchen through the lounge, yelling at them to stop. But neither of them took any notice. Kit was too busy concentrating on evading the lethal punches, Terence was still a strong man, and Terence himself was hell-bent on murdering the kid.
‘Cut it out!’ Kit yelled above Fran’s screams. ‘I don’t want to fight you!’
‘Come on, you bastard. Fight!’ Kit’s evasion tactics were infuriating him. ‘Fight!’ Terence’s chest was heaving as he lunged about the verandah hurling furniture aside, trying to corner Kit. If he could just land one punch, Jesus he’d teach the prick a lesson!
It was madness, Kit thought, as the housemaid screamed and the decking furniture flew in all directions. Terence Galloway would have a heart attack any second.
Then suddenly Terence landed a punch and Kit found himself sprawled on the verandah, his ear singing, the whole left side of his face throbbing. Christ, he thought, as he grabbed at the stair railings to haul himself up, the old man packed a powerful right.
Terence was elated. ‘Come on,’ he crowed as Kit struggled to his feet, ‘come on, mister big fucking war hero.’ And he charged in for the kill.
Kit reacted instinctively. As Terence threw a punch, he dodged it and drove his left fist hard into the man’s solar plexus, feeling the expulsion of air from his lungs. Then, as Terence crumpled, he followed through with his knee, giving it all the strength he could muster, feeling the crunch of nose cartilage beneath his kneecap.
Terence staggered and, in falling, he grabbed for the railings. Too late. Before he knew it he was catapulting, head first, down the stairs. He came to rest at the bottom and lay in a motionless heap on the garden path.
‘You have killed him!’ Fran screamed as she ran down the stairs. ‘You have killed him!’
Oh Jesus, Kit thought, is she right?
But Terence wasn’t dead. Kit slung the unconscious body over his shoulders in a fireman’s lift and carried him upstairs to the lounge room where he dumped him unceremoniously on the sofa.
‘He’ll be all right, Fran. You can call a doctor if you like, I leave that up to you.’ Kit didn’t care one way or another.
‘I will look after him.’ Fran was not a woman normally given to hysterics and now that the situation had been resolved and the men had not killed each other, she knew what she must do. It would be far more than her job, or indeed her personal safety, was worth should she call in any witness to Mr Galloway’s humiliating defeat. ‘We will keep very quiet about this,’ she said to Kit.
‘Yes,’ Kit agreed. They were his father’s words, he thought, Christ he had her well trained. ‘We won’t tell anyone.’
As Kit drove home, he dismissed the ugly image of Terence Galloway from his mind. He thought of his mother instead. His mother and Paul Trewinnard. Memories flooded back to him from his childhood years, and it seemed astonishing to him now that he’d never guessed at the truth. He was not only thankful that Paul Trewinnard was his father, he was thankful that his mother had found such a love whilst she’d suffered life with her monster of a husband.
Hell, he thought, the locket! Had he dropped it when Terence had sent him flying with that punch? He clutched his shirt pocket and felt the reassuring shape beneath the cotton. Thank God. The locket was very precious to him now.
At home, Kit checked the damage in the mirror. His left eyelid was already swollen, he’d have a black eye in the morning. But it didn’t hurt as much as his knee. He sat for a while, swapping an icepack intermittently from his eye to his bruised kneecap, wondering what to do. Only one thing for it, he decided, go to Maxie’s party and get drunk.
The fog in Terence’s brain was slowly lifting. Someone was bathing his face with a flannel. What the hell had happened? His nose was busted, he knew that much for sure, and he could taste blood. He ran his tongue around his mouth, two of his front teeth had been loosened, the gums bleeding. What the hell had happened? Had he been in an accident? Then the fog cleared. Kit!
He pushed Fran aside and got to his feet, then quickly sat down again as the room started to spin. She fetched him a glass of water and he drank it as he gradually regained his senses.
Kit had arrived with the locket. Terence recalled his terror upon seeing it. Then he’d lost his temper when Kit wouldn’t give it to him. He’d had one of his fits. Not very smart, but then he’d never been able to control them. And they’d had a fight.
Terence didn’t dwell on the humiliating fact that his son had beaten him. The kid got lucky, that was all, and then he’d fallen down the stairs. The most important consideration was the locket. He had to get hold of the locket! By whatever means and at whatever cost.
He stood. The room was no longer spinning. He told Fran to piss off, grabbed the bottle of Scotch and lurched, still a little unsteady on his feet, to his study at the rear of the house.
He took his war service revolver from the drawer and placed it on his desk. It was his pride and joy and he always kept it in mint condition. He sat looking at the revolver as he swigged from the Scotch bottle. He’d have to kill Kit to get the locket, and he relished the prospect. He might even tell him the truth before he did it. He might even say ‘I killed your whore of a mother, and now I’ll kill her bastard son’. And then he’d put a bullet right between Kit’s eyes. He savoured the image as he swigged back the Scotch. Then he put down the bottle and started loading the revolver.
Terence didn’t contemplate what the outcome of his actions would
be. He was a man obsessed. As he methodically revolved the cylindrical magazine and fed each .38 calibre bullet into its chamber, he didn’t question his madness. He didn’t realise that every vestige of sanity had deserted him from the moment he’d seen the locket in the palm of Kit’s hand.
‘Yoo hoo.’
It was nine o’clock at night as Kit left to go to Maxie’s party. He closed the front door to his flat and, as he walked down the side path, hefting the slab of beer he was carrying onto his shoulder, he heard a call from the verandah above. He looked up to see Tess O’Malley in the light of the open front door of the house.
‘Would you like to come up for a Christmas Eve drink, Kit?’ she called down to him.
He wouldn’t particularly like to, he thought, but he’d been knocking back Tess O’Malley’s invitations for so long now it seemed rude to refuse; it was Christmas, after all.
‘Love to,’ he called back, and he put the slab of beer into the boot of the Kingswood and went upstairs to join the O’Malleys.
‘How about a sherry?’ she said as she welcomed him into the lounge room where Bob, in T-shirt and shorts, was lolling back in his favourite armchair watching television.
‘Don’t be silly, Tess,’ Bob said good naturedly, ‘he’ll have a beer. G’day Kit.’
‘G’day, Bob.’
‘Pull up a pew. I’ll have another one too thanks, love.’ He handed his empty tinny to his wife.
‘I think we can have the telly off, dear.’ Tess smiled but there was a slight edge to her voice and, to keep the peace, Bob turned the set off.
The room was dominated by a gigantic plastic pine Christmas tree, complete with fairy lights, which reached to the ceiling. As Tess went off to get the beers, Kit commented upon it.
‘Yeah, she’s a stickler for convention,’ Bob said, jerking his head in the direction of the kitchen. ‘We put it up for the kids actually,’ he explained, ‘Tim was coming up for Christmas.’ Bob’s son lived in Adelaide with his young family. ‘But the baby’s got an ear infection and they didn’t want to fly, so now we’re stuck with the bloody thing.’
‘And I’m glad that we are.’ Tess arrived with the beers in time to hear the last remark. ‘It wouldn’t be Christmas without a tree.’
She toasted them with her sherry glass as she sat. ‘To Christmas,’ she said.
‘To Christmas,’ they dutifully replied.
‘What happened to your eye?’ Tess asked.
‘Walked into a door eh?’ Bob had chosen to ignore Kit’s eye, the kid’d obviously been in a fight.
‘Yeah, sort of,’ Kit replied gratefully. ‘You’re looking very smart, Tess.’
She was glad that he’d noticed. She’d been to the hair-dresser’s that afternoon for a new blue rinse and set, and she was wearing her good pearls.
‘We have people popping over in an hour or so for a quick drink before midnight mass,’ she said, darting a look in Bob’s direction. She wished he’d got changed before she’d invited Kit up.
The look on Bob’s face warned her that she was lucky he’d agreed to go to midnight mass in the first place so Tess didn’t push her luck.
‘And what are you doing for Christmas, Kit?’ she asked, offering him a bowl of mixed nuts and raisins which he declined. ‘I suppose you’ll be spending Christmas Day with your father.’ She found it strange that Terence Galloway never visited his son, she had rather hoped that he would when Kit had moved into the flat.
‘Nope.’ Kit offered no explanation, although Tess O’Malley’s raised eyebrows invited one. ‘A mob of us have booked in to Foong Lee’s for lunch.’
How very un-Christmassy, Tess thought, a Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day, but she smiled. ‘Oh you young things,’ she said.
They chatted for half an hour or so and then Kit made his farewells. ‘I’ll leave you to get ready for your guests,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ Tess agreed, glancing at Bob who heaved a sigh. Midnight bloody mass. He’d got out of it last year, staying home to babysit the youngest of the grandkids.
As Kit got into the Kingswood, he could sense the impending storm. The night was restless, the air thick and sticky. It’s going to be a beauty, he thought, and during the drive to Maxie’s he wondered whether perhaps Cyclone Tracy might hit Darwin after all.
The old stilted wooden house which Maxie shared with several others was at the top of the Esplanade near Daly Street, and the party was in full swing when he arrived. Music was blaring from the open windows, the place was lit up like the O’Malleys’ Christmas tree, and as Kit got out of his car, Nick Coustas, who was on the front verandah with a number of others, yelled down to him.
‘What took you so long?’
Kit waved back and lifted the beer out of the boot of the Kingswood.
Aggie Marshall was at Mavis Campbell’s house in Casuarina along with three other women from the CWA. They’d been finalising the last minute arrangements for the Christmas festivities at the hospital the following day. The entertainment had been lined up weeks ago, a guitarist who sang just like Bing Crosby and a Father Christmas for the children, so now it was really a case of deciding who was going to get there early to blow up balloons, and who had cars and could pick up supplies.
‘Albert’s delivering the presents for the kiddies,’ Aggie said. Although Christmas held no significance for Albert Foong, he had willingly inherited his father’s annual tradition, donating gifts for whatever Christmas cause Aggie had taken up. ‘I’m sure he won’t mind collecting the soft drinks.’ Aggie happily delegated another chore to Albert in the knowledge that he never refused her.
The finer details having been sorted out over several pots of tea, the women took their leave. All except Aggie, who stayed on for a bit of a chat with Mavis. The two women had become firm friends since the death of Mavis’s husband three years previously. Over the remains of Mavis’s fine Christmas cake and yet another pot of tea, the gossip ran rife. In Darwin very little escaped Mavis Campbell and Aggie Marshall.
At Foong Lee’s house, not a word was being spoken. There was no exchange between the five of them but the clack of mah-jong tiles. They sat around the kitchen table, deep in concentration, Foong Lee, his wife Lin Mei, who was winning as she invariably did, Albert and his wife, Wai Li, and their eldest son, seventeen-year-old Edward. Twelve-year-old Sally had been sent off to bed, complaining bitterly at the fact, half an hour previously.
It was eleven o’clock and outside the wind was picking up. The shutters were starting to rattle alarmingly and it was Foong Lee who broke the silence.
‘I think we’ll continue the game in the cellar,’ he said.
Albert had thought his father was being a little alarmist in demanding they all come to the house as a safeguard against the imminent cyclone. It was no hardship, however, to spend an evening together, they were a very close family. So Albert had humoured the old man, he and Edward setting up the cellar as a refuge with emergency supplies and even a couple of camp stretchers.
Now, as the howl of the wind drowned the clack of the mah-jong tiles, and the rattle of the shutters became more frenzied, Albert wondered whether perhaps his father might have been right. He went to wake Sally.
The church was crowded for midnight mass. Tess O’Malley sat in one of the front pews, with Bob squirming uncomfortably beside her. Bob always hated wearing a suit and tie. But he was looking very nice, she thought thankfully. She smoothed her hair back into position, there was such a frightful gale blowing as they’d arrived at the church, and she wished she could check her hair in her compact mirror, but that would look vain. She was glad that she’d had a fresh rinse put in that morning, midnight mass was a very social event.
Barely half an hour into the mass, the wind outside seemed to double in strength, becoming a dull roar, eventually drowning out the priest’s voice altogether. The gathered congregation became restless. They looked at one another in growing consternation.
By midnight most of the revellers at Maxie’
s house were drunk. The more frenzied the wind grew, the more exciting they found it. And when the rain pelted down, a number of them stood on the balcony, drenched, admiring the fury. Trees were bent double and, out in the black harbour, white-topped waves whipped the water as though the harbour itself was a giant cauldron. It was most impressive.
Kit Galloway was trying to join in the party mood, wondering why he couldn’t seem to get drunk like the others. Perhaps it was because they’d all started drinking a lot earlier than he had, or perhaps it was the events of that afternoon, but he felt decidedly sober as he opened yet another can of VB.
Nick Coustas sat on the balcony rail, legs dangling over the side, clutching hold of the downpipe in one hand and a tinny in the other. He yah-hooed and rode the wind as if it was a bucking bronco, before one immense gust forced him backwards and he landed in an untidy mess on the balcony, covered in beer. Undeterred, he sprang to his feet, rescued his tinny and leaned over the balcony toasting the storm’s magnificence.
Maxie Brummer was also enjoying the weather’s violence, but in a different way. Trish Paterson, the new front counter receptionist at NTN, had been frightened and he’d taken her into his bedroom to comfort her. She’d soon forgotten her fear. The howl of the wind excited her now. It excited them both. The storm was a real turn-on and Maxie and Trish were lost in its ferocity and their own mounting passion.
In the lounge room, someone turned the stereo over to the ABC for the latest cyclone report. The ABC was playing ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’. Everyone burst out laughing.
They weren’t laughing a little while later. Within minutes, the storm changed. It was no longer a game, nor an impressive show of nature’s strength to be admired. And in seconds, Darwin was hit by the full lethal force of Cyclone Tracy. With an angry roar, she swooped, tearing relentlessly at everything in her path. Full-grown trees were uprooted as if they were saplings. In the streets, cars were overturned and smashed against buildings. People clung to the floors of their homes as roofs and walls were ripped away and tossed about in the air like playthings. Power poles crashed to the ground and, in the blackness of the night, electrical fires ignited in flashes of brilliance, only to be quelled by the deluge. Sheets of corrugated iron danced crazily along the pavement, driven as effortlessly as autumn leaves by the gale-force winds, and everywhere the air was thick with flying debris.
