The Vale Girl

by Nelika McDonald

  Both the Montepulcianos crossed themselves and bowed their heads for a moment. Gertie was still, looking at her husband with wide eyes. The sergeant looked at his hands in his lap and saw that they were trembling.

  ‘Yes, Salvatore was there. But he was not the one who try to hurt her,’ Mrs Montepulciano said, shaking her head at her husband.

  ‘No?’ Gertie said.

  ‘No. Salvatore’s a good Italiano boy. He just got in with a bad crowd. With the hairdresser’s boy. Cameron, you know, Cameron Something – like the dog? He was the one who try to hurt her. Not dog – you know, they go like this.’ Mrs Montepulciano threw her head back and howled.

  Mr Montepulciano shook his head at her.

  ‘Wolf?’ Henson asked.

  ‘Sì. This is it. Wolf. Cameron Wolfe.’ She nodded, and picked up her tea.

  Gertie jumped up to get her husband’s notebook, and Mr Montepulciano picked up the newspaper that was folded over the arm of the couch, shook it open and yawned. Sergeant Henson looked down at the swell of his stomach over his waistband. Must not have been instinct after all, his dismissal of Cameron Wolfe’s part in Sarah’s disappearance. Maybe just indigestion.

  Later, as they lay in bed listening to the neighbourhood cats yowl and hiss in the street, Gertie rolled over in the darkness and put her hand on her husband’s chest.

  ‘You need to sleep,’ she said.

  Henson grunted and pulled her closer to him. ‘She’s out there somewhere.’ He didn’t have to say who.

  ‘She is, and you will find her.’ Gertie rubbed her hand against Henson’s cheek and sighed into his shoulder. ‘I keep thinking of her poor mother. Probably lying awake right now, like us.’

  ‘Her poor mother? Her poor mother is too sozzled to realise that she seems to have misplaced her daughter.’

  ‘You don’t really believe that. Did you ever wonder why she drinks?’

  Henson sniffed. Gert was such a bleeding heart. ‘Mmmphhhh.’ He stroked the hair back off her face.

  ‘Her father – imagine. And then, what she did when she came back, it’s as if she wanted to make everyone hate her, make them stay away. She was so young, still a child herself.’

  Henson turned to face his wife. ‘Gert, what are you talking about?’

  Gertie turned on the lamp on her bedside table and looked at him, quizzical. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘Don’t know what?’

  Gertie sat up in bed and then swung her feet down to the floor, sliding them into her waiting slippers. ‘Oh, my. I’ll have to make us a cup of tea. Have I got a story for you!’

  chapter twenty-seven

  Today in my long daisy chain of time, I’ve been thinking a lot about independence. My mother has always said that if she could teach me one thing, that would be it. She wanted me not to need anyone or anything, including a father. She said fathers weren’t all they were cracked up to be, anyway. They were just another person who could fail you. The closer people were, the more they could let you down. Knots near the needle are harder to untie.

  When she returned to Banville, Susannah decided that nobody was going to cross her threshold unless it was on her terms. Because she worked for herself, she answered to no-one, and no-one controlled her. By making people pay for something that she could have given them for free, she had the upper hand. But when she was passed out on the bathroom floor with an eye slowly dappling purple and yellow and a string of vomit hanging in a gossamer thread from the corner of her lips, when the phone was going to be cut off in the next twenty-four hours if payment was not received, when I had eaten Milo from the tin for breakfast and the ceiling in the bathroom was leaking so badly that the plaster dropped in sodden chunks into the bath and mould crept in a green rash down the lounge room walls, it was hard to see how she had the upper hand over anyone. If this was the independence she was always talking about, I couldn’t see much good in it.

  I was born at the hospital in Welonga, healthy, plump and fair. Susannah brought me back to Banville on the bus, wrapped in the hospital-issued muslin. When she was home, Susannah let it be known that she was receiving visitors. Usually when a baby was born in Banville, the mother could have filled a swimming pool with the knitted booties, appliquéd romper suits and satin-edged blankets she received from all the stickybeaks, well-wishers and other mothers dropping by. But, thanks to Susannah’s aloofness since her return from the city, not many of them took her up on her invitation initially. Eventually a few members of the Christian Women’s Society came by, performing their neighbourly duties. They found Susannah to be not at all defiant, as they had expected, but perfectly hospitable, even warm towards them. The house was in good order and the baby a Lamb of God, wrapped up like a Christmas ham with only her sweet little face visible. Once they had reported the lack of hostility, others came, driven by curiosity, three abreast at the door bearing casseroles like admission tickets. Taking tea on the verandah, while Susannah nursed me at her modestly shrouded breast, some of the bolder among these callers even ventured so far as to inquire about the infant’s father. Susannah, ever the actress, summoned an impressive welling of tears into her eyes and set her lower lip trembling. She clutched me tighter to her chest. She looked into the middle distance (her eyes resting on the stream of bird shit currently being ejected into the sandpit in the park). And then she whispered a name.

  With each visitor, the name that Susannah whispered changed. But each was the name of a prominent Banville resident, well-respected family men, married churchgoers and generally well-liked citizens. Many of them were associates of her father’s. Some of those names were customers of Susannah’s, and others were not. She mentioned, among others, Phillip Delaney, George Wilkinson and Alfred Darcy, the last name being whispered to Adelina Perutti, Annie Darcy’s neighbour and best friend. Adelina turned white like flour when she heard her dearest friend’s husband incriminated in such a manner. Then she burst into tears right there on Susannah’s verandah, staring at the child in shock. It was Alfred’s? How could he? How was she ever going to tell Annie? As if the poor woman didn’t have enough on her plate already. She would skin Alfred and hang him from the church spire by his privates, Adelina vowed. So help her, God, she would. The more she looked at the baby’s squashed dumpling face, the more she thought she could see Alfred’s features taking shape. And him with this Vale woman, barely more than a girl herself. As soon as the tears stopped, Adelina would picture Annie’s face when she told her of this and they would begin again. Susannah handed her a clean and pressed handkerchief from a stash beneath her chair, but Adelina flicked her hand away. Samson only succumbed to temptation because Delilah flaunted her wares so provocatively, she thought. She told Susannah to prepare her soul for the Hell that awaited her and left, with one last searching glance at the babe. Susannah finished Adelina’s delectable hummingbird cake and stretched her legs out on the chair her visitor had vacated. The threat didn’t frighten her. She couldn’t believe in a God who would see her back in this house, in this town, before she had even met her thirtieth birthday.

  In fact, Susannah had known who the father of her child was the moment the infant was placed wailing onto her chest, but his name was not one of those she whispered. As she had anticipated, the word spread quickly. In church, in the supermarket, at kitchen tables and over back fences, rumours were propagated throughout Banville like grass seed carried in the wind, taking root and spawning anew with each telling.

  Susannah understood from her time in Sydney that the power of suggestion was mighty. It was enough for someone to think you may be somehow guilty for them to treat you as though you absolutely were. And so they did. Some of the men publicly denied her claims; others tried to buy a retraction with the promise of a monthly stipend. Several of them pointed the finger at another man, only to find someone else pointing at them. Some tried flat-out denial, but Susannah countered with her knowledge of freckles in intimate places and appendectomy scars shaped like scythes. Others among the men jus
t admitted defeat, staring in silence at the lithograph of lines on their palms while their families sat apart from them in church.

  Eventually, the townspeople realised that Susannah had issued paternity to more than half a dozen men, and they couldn’t all be responsible. Clearly, all this drama was what she had intended to effect from the outset. But such was the cunningness of her plan – the damage to the people of Banville had already been done. By the time they realised what she was up to, it was too late. Suspicion had been cast and reputations forever sullied. Nobody knew who to trust, what to believe, who was lying and who was not. Wives circled their husbands warily and sniffed deeply at their collars for scents not their own. Families unravelled at the seams, stitch by stitch. The wives of Banville knew Susannah offered a certain service, as it were, and certainly there were a lot of transient labourers around who might partake of such a service . . . But their own husbands? Their fathers? Their sons, Lord have mercy? The fact remained, the child wasn’t the Immaculate Conception, someone had to be the father, and even if they weren’t, shame on them for visiting that house of ill repute at all. There was no coming back from this. It was as though Susannah had poked her finger into a tiny hole in the social fabric of Banville and wriggled and wriggled it until there was a great big rent. She had planted a seed of doubt and it had grown into a cloak of ivy.

  In the grand old house by the park, Susannah heard of each sorry development from Graham. Her favourite was the news that Sandra Gordon, hearing her husband Vince’s name in the mix, had pushed him for the truth about his mysterious absences so insistently that he had broken down and confessed that he had, indeed, been having an affair – with John, the husband of Sandra’s tennis partner, Verity Ingren-Glass. Graham was pleased to see Susannah laughing, but he fretted that she had made a rod for her own back with this scheme.

  ‘You’d better not go into town for a bit, Suze,’ he cautioned her. ‘You won’t be welcomed, love.’

  ‘When have I ever been welcomed?’ Susannah said, but she heeded his advice, and kept to her home. Graham brought her movies and groceries, and the American shearers from a cattle station near Welonga brought her bourbon. She had everything she needed. It was in this way that Susannah settled into the pattern that she would keep to from that time onwards, spending her days at home with me and her nights at home with men. Sometimes, in the afternoon quiet, she would take me outside and let me play under the hose while she lay on a blanket under the mango tree. From that spot, she would look up at the kitchen window and imagine she saw her mother still there, bent over the sink, and she would raise her glass to her in a toast to justice served. Banville had paid the price for letting her mother suffer. Susannah had brought the town to its knees. The actress tried her hand at directing, and pulled off the greatest show of all. And its people would not forgive her for it – not then and, as it happened, not ever.

  chapter twenty-eight

  Tommy decided that he needed to cast his net a little wider. Maybe the people of Banville didn’t realise how serious this was, and how long Sarah had been unaccounted for now. Maybe they just needed to be reminded that a young girl was missing from their town, really missing. And maybe to understand it, really take in what that meant, they needed to hear it from someone who actually knew her, someone who had a hole in his life the shape of her. Someone who loved her. Tommy decided to go to his first town meeting.

  If you wanted to speak at the monthly meeting, you wrote your name down on the clipboard by the door, and your name was called when it was your turn. Or, you could write down your issue and leave it in the box at the mayor’s office and Monica Wilkinson would read it out. When he arrived and registered his wish to speak on the clipboard, Tommy was relieved to see only the names of Monica and the Banville Tourism fellow alongside his own. He had trouble sitting still at this sort of thing. He had never spoken at a meeting before, and had got dressed up for the occasion. The only collared shirt he could find was his school one, so he wore that, a bit crumpled but collared nonetheless, paired with his cleanest shorts. He had washed his face and combed his hair, and helped himself to a cup of tea and handful of milk arrowroot biscuits before taking a seat near the back of the stifling-hot hall.

  Phillip Delaney, chairman of the Better Banville Tourism Board, opened proceedings.

  ‘Good evening, everybody. Thank you all for coming tonight. I would like to start by thanking Monica Wilkinson, the secretary of the Better Banville Tourism Board for her tireless efforts thus far in organising what is going to be the biggest and best Grevillea Festival to date. Everyone, let’s put our hands together for Monica!’

  Mrs Wilkinson stood up from her seat in the front row and turned and gave the Queen’s wave to the rest of the room. Delaney cheered into the microphone. A few others clapped a couple of times and then went back to fanning themselves with the printouts of last month’s minutes.

  ‘She is a credit to our town!’ Delaney continued, beaming at Monica. She smiled and lowered her eyes. There was a long pause while they gazed at each other. Tommy watched Belinda Delaney look from her husband to Monica, and back.

  ‘Get on with it,’ someone called.

  Phillip Delaney cleared his throat. ‘We have a lot to discuss this evening with regards to the Grevillea Festival on Sunday. Before we begin, I would like to mention that there have been some questions regarding the distribution of the funds raised by the Tourism Board raffle in previous years. I feel compelled to make it clear that, prior to the raffle, I had already made a down payment on my new Acremaster. In no way did the funds raised last year contribute to that.’

  Wilbur Cleatus raised a hand. Delaney nodded at him.

  ‘What did the money contribute to, then?’ asked Cleatus.

  There was a pause.

  ‘What did the money contribute to?’ Delaney repeated.

  Tommy shook his head silently. Never repeat the question, his dad had always told him. It makes you look unsure. Weak. Shifty. People only repeat the question to buy themselves time when they’re lying. He shifted in his seat and drummed his fingers on his leg.

  ‘Yes. If not towards your Acremaster, where did the money actually go?’ Cleatus stood up and clasped his hands behind his back. The townspeople looked from him to the chairman and back again in unison, like they were following the volley of a ball at a tennis match.

  ‘Are you asking me to release the Tourism Board treasury reports to the public, Cleatus? Shall I just invite open slather on all monetary decisions made in my organisation? Would you like to see the stationery reports, see how much money was spent on paperclips as well?’ Delaney loosened his tie.

  Cleatus remained measured. ‘As a matter of fact, I would.’

  Delaney huffed and blustered for a bit, growing red in the face. Tommy thought of a steam train, coal in the furnace, smoke pouring out in a streaming mushroom plume. What a load of horseshit. His dad had always said that Phillip Delaney was a clown. Delaney was doing his best to prove him right this evening. The man carried on for a bit longer and Tommy considered going up for more biscuits, but took a stick of gum from his pocket and gnashed it instead.

  Monica Wilkinson was next up, blithering on about the Grevillea Festival, and Tommy tuned her out and looked around the room. There wasn’t a face in this hall that he didn’t know. He wondered if he would recognise them all out of context, dressed up in their Sunday best and strolling by the harbour in Sydney. In a crowd, in the pastiche of other faces with noses, eyes and mouths all moulded slightly differently, would he be able to pick the ones he had been looking at his whole life, without the backdrop of Banville behind them? He thought of the landscape paintings hanging in the Heritage Museum. All the artists must have started with the same base hue, he thought: a flat, dull brown. That particular shade should be named after this place, like a Crayola colour. Banville Brown. Tommy loved that colour. That colour was home. He felt a swell of affection for the townspeople, thinking of them all in this way, familiar, consta
nt, as much a part of the land as the Mallee gums and just as deeply rooted. They were his kin. They would come through for him. He just needed to draw their attention to Sarah’s disappearance, to how many days had passed now, and they would help him. They had to. The gum in Tommy’s mouth had become a tasteless lump of putty, threatening to lodge in his throat and choke him.

  Monica finished talking and someone clapped – probably out of relief that she was finished, thought Tommy. He cleared his throat and tried to smooth down his hair with the flat of his palm. It must be almost his turn. Delaney took the microphone again. Tommy took the piece of gum out of his mouth and wrapped it in its paper.

  ‘The next item on our agenda is a motion moved by Mrs Vera Floss, for our submission to the council,’ said Delaney. Tommy took the gum back out of the paper and replaced it in his mouth. At least if he was chewing he was doing something.

  ‘I ask the secretary to take down the terms of this motion as I dictate it.’ The chairman unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket and began to read aloud.

  ‘I, the undersigned, Vera Floss, hereby move that the wattle tree on the corner of Crossley Street and Gillies Street in Banville North be cut down, the reason for this proposal being that the tree creates a fire hazard when the leaf litter accumulates in the guttering of the Senior Citizen’s Hall at this location. Furthermore, the tree provides a haven for possums of the ring-tailed variety of an evening, whose presence proves distressing for others in the neighbourhood, particularly my pussy.’

  A spurt of laughter came from the third row. Monica Wilkinson turned around again and glared at everyone.

  ‘All in favour say aye,’ said Delaney.

  Nobody said anything.

  ‘Opposed?’

  People stirred in their places, restless. ‘Cheaper to get rid of the cat,’ someone said.