Last Bridge Before Home

by Lily Malone

  Brix put the house phone back in its cradle, making sure he had it in the seat properly and it wouldn’t slip out like a scream.

  ‘That didn’t sound so good?’ Jaydah said, and he turned to find her eyes on him.

  ‘That was Jake on the phone. Mum’s not doing so well.’

  Jaydah closed her book. ‘It doesn’t make it any easier does it, even if you’re expecting it?’

  ‘Nah.’ He rubbed his chin. He needed a shave and a shower. It had been a bloody long day. They all were during vintage. ‘Nah it doesn’t.’

  Rosalie thumbed the volume lower on Home and Away. Jaz reached for the remote and the volume ratcheted higher.

  ‘Where is she?’ Jaydah asked, as a man’s voice advertised saving $30 off a vacuum cleaner if they bought it by Friday.

  ‘She’s in Mount Barker hospital. Dad couldn’t get her pain under control at home. She had massive headaches and a sore back and arm. Dad wants to bring her home tomorrow, but Jake’s not sure. Mum’s been saying she’s a burden—’

  ‘I could buy a new vaccum cleaner!’ Jaz said from the floor.

  ‘Brix is talking, Jaz,’ Jaydah said smoothly. ‘It’s rude to interrupt.’

  He hardly noticed Jaz’s interruptions anymore. ‘Mum’s stressed out that she’s being a burden and she should go to the Hospice and looking after her is too much for Dad. Taylor says it’s time for stronger pain medicines. Pain is the easiest thing to manage apparently, but Dad’s been baulking at how much to give her. He’s worried she’ll get addicted.’

  ‘Getting addicted to pain relief isn’t her number one problem,’ Jaydah said. ‘I’m glad Taylor’s there.’

  ‘She’s the only one Dad’s really listening to.’

  ‘That’s because she’s a doctor, even if she’s a doctor of psychology.’ Jaydah rose and crossed the small lounge to be nearer him, putting her hands around his waist. ‘You need to go spend time with your mum while you can.’

  He hugged her to him. ‘It’s lousy timing. We’re picking Semillon tomorrow—’

  ‘Don’t let work get in the way.’

  ‘I’ll call Jake in the morning. I’ll see how she is. Maybe I’ll plan to head over there at the weekend.’

  * * *

  True to form, his mum rallied on her hospital bed and when Jake rang he said she was sitting up like Lazarus, eating morning tea.

  She was allowed to go home and Brix spoke with her several times through the week. She seemed fine on the phone, although talking tired her quickly. In those gaps where she went away, she took longer to come back.

  Sometimes his dad or Jake would pick up the phone and talk instead. Increasingly, it was Taylor who would be at the house during the day. She’d been in Chalk Hill since New Year—teaching swimming at the new pool to help Ella—and most days she helped Abe in the café during the lunchtime rush. When she wasn’t at the pool or the café, she’d been happy to sit with his mum and help his dad care for her.

  Taylor rang early one morning when Brix hadn’t been in the winery long and his heart was in his mouth the moment he saw her name on the phone. Was this the call? Was this the call when she told him Mum had slipped away?

  He took a minute, standing off to the side with the phone while Whale Rock’s vintage cellar-hand used the forklift to load chilled white grapes into the crusher.

  ‘It’s the official opening of the new water-ski park this Sunday,’ Taylor said, after they’d shared the obligatory small-talk and he’d worked out this call wasn’t that news he didn’t want to hear. ‘Your mum really wants us all to go as a family. Jaydah and Jasmine too.’

  ‘Are you sure she’s up to it?’

  ‘She really wants to do it, so I’d say that’s a yes. I think she knows it will be the last outing she has with the family. Jake says the park is really something to see so it would be great if you can be there.’

  He’d said yes without thinking.

  * * *

  ‘No. No. No. It’s not fair. I don’t want to go. I like it here. You can’t make me!’ Jaz wailed, rocking back and forward in the middle of the lounge and smacking at the pieces of plastic fences and trees and animals all around her. The plastic figures whacked into the television and the wall, pattering and pinging like hail in a storm.

  ‘I like it here. I don’t like it there. It’s not fair.’

  ‘We won’t be going to our old house, Jazzy,’ Jaydah soothed, sinking to her knees beside Jaz on the floorboards. ‘We won’t have to see Dad or Hammer and nobody is going to make you sort rocks because you have a new job now, don’t you? You have your job at the winery with the boxes. We’ll be staying at Jake’s house, where we were on Christmas Day. Do you remember the farmhouse where the girl called Charlotte wet Mum with the water pistol? Do you remember Starburst the pony?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jaz hiccuped, wiping at a stream of snot and tears. ‘Starburst let me pat him.’

  ‘He’s in the paddock there. You’ll see him.’

  Brix was still trying to get his head around how quickly the scene had changed. He’d walked in and told them about Taylor’s invitation and all hell had broken loose.

  ‘I want to play Snap with Daddy but not see Hammer and I will not do any work,’ Jaz declared.

  Jaydah smoothed Jaz’s hair where it curtained her face. ‘I don’t think we’ll see Dad.’

  Jaz sobbed fresh tears. ‘Will he be too busy checking the fences?’

  ‘We’re going to see Brix’s mum. Do you remember talking to her at Christmas? Brix’s mum is sick, Jazzy.’

  ‘Was she sick in the toilet?’

  ‘Not that kind of sick. Not tummy sick.’

  ‘Is she going to die?’ Jaz asked. ‘Did she have a heart attack?’

  Jaydah rubbed Jaz’s lower arm with her hand. ‘She has a big sore spot in her brain.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘In here, behind this big bone. It hurts her and gives her headaches.’

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Will we be there for lunch?’

  ‘Yes. We might have to sleep at Starburst’s farm for one night.’ Jaydah lifted her index finger as she spoke the word one.

  ‘One night is okay,’ Jaz said solemnly as she stretched across the floor to pick up a handful of pink plastic pigs. ‘One night would be okay to be away from my house and Val would like to see me. I can collect the eggs for her. The rooster won’t hurt me. Animals like me. Except for dogs. I don’t like dogs.’

  ‘We don’t have to see any dogs.’

  ‘Okay. What’s for dinner?’

  CHAPTER

  26

  The opening of Dylan Fields’s (Pickles) water-ski park was the biggest thing in Chalk Hill since the opening of the Chalk Hill & Districts Swimming Pool. In fact, locals struggled to remember any other time in Chalk Hill history where two events so huge occurred within the space of a calendar year.

  The only thing that came close was the year the hot air balloon crashed in Sally Huxtable’s father’s paddock, and Chalk Hill won the pennant darts competition.

  Jaydah remembered both events for different reasons. The balloon crashed on the same day she started work at the Bowling Club. She barely knew how to pour a proper head on a beer, and nothing about how to change out a keg, when television and newspaper people from all over the State descended on the town to get the story of the hot air balloon crash. Every man and his dog came into the club in the hopes they might be interviewed and get on the telly. The bar had been three-deep.

  Then, when Chalk Hill won the pennant darts competition that summer, Bill Kennedy had shouted the bar, and she’d let Vince Scarponi kiss her during the after-party. All the kiss had done was remind her of why she loved Brix.

  But this? This was the type of day Pickles would have handpicked for his opening: hot, no wind, sunny, with the enormous new dam sparkling diamonds under a blue sky.

  The Honeychurch clan gathered on the grassy slope above the dam, where they had space to set up Jake’s
portable barbecue and spread out on the rough-hewn timber benches custom built for Pickles by the blokes at the Chalk Hill Men’s Shed.

  Abe carried a chair in for Val and made sure she was comfortable beneath her rug. She didn’t say much and for a while there, Taylor had to keep wiping the tears from Val’s face. She blamed the sparkle of the water for making her eyes weep. She said it was too bright.

  The boys stayed close to their mum, and Jaydah couldn’t have found a moment where one of them wasn’t holding tight to her hand.

  Pitched above the ever-present hum of the milling crowd was the whine as the speedboats towed skiers through the course, the wash and spray as skis cut through the water and the thump when one of the demonstration skiers leapt over a jump.

  When that happened there’d be an announcement over the loudspeaker and the crowd would go quiet, then a drawn-out oooh and a cheer as the skier landed clean.

  From the moment they climbed out of Brix’s car, Jaz fussed and whined about where she could sit and that the bench seats gave her splinters, and when was it time for lunch?

  Then there was a tug at her sleeve and her mum hunched in close. ‘I see him, my Jaydah. Your father is here. I saw him.’

  ‘Where?’

  There was a sweep of her mum’s arm towards the queue of people waiting for a turn behind the speedboats. ‘Over there.’

  ‘I can’t see him, Mum. Dad wouldn’t come to the opening of a ski park. He hates crowds.’

  ‘So do I,’ her mum said, biting at her lower lip.

  In all honesty, Jaydah would never claim to be a fan of crowds either, but she was here for Brix and his family. This was important to them.

  She plastered on a smile, and the smile warmed as she saw Irene Loveday waltzing their way. ‘Dad’s not here, Mum. You’re imagining because you’re scared. He can’t hurt us. We’re with people who love us and who’ll look after us. Don’t worry!’

  Yet as she moved to greet Irene, her mum didn’t look convinced.

  * * *

  ‘Jaydah love, there is something that’s been bothering me,’ Irene said after she’d greeted Val and Stan, and said hello to Ella and Taylor and the three Honeychurch boys and been introduced to Rosalie and Jasmine.

  ‘What’s that, Irene?’

  Irene stepped closer and her red fringe flopped forward. ‘They’re saying around town … they’re saying your dad hit you and your mum. I’m sorry I didn’t know about it. I’m sorry I didn’t do anything. I should have said something.’

  ‘There’s not much you could have done if you didn’t know about it, Irene,’ Jaydah said without bitterness. ‘We kept to ourselves.’

  Irene waved her hand. ‘I didn’t know about it, but some of us suspected things weren’t right. We never saw Rosalie away from the farm, except I think there was once when Loraine had a doctor’s appointment in Albany when she said she saw Rosalie and Keith at the Coles.’

  Irene glanced at where Jaydah’s mum sat with Jasmine, watching all the people, no doubt keeping a constant vigil for any sign of Keith. Beside her, Jaz turned the pages of her scrapbook, rocking—gently this time—forward and back in the sun.

  I need to put sunscreen on Jaz. Her legs are getting burnt.

  Irene continued. ‘Over the years lots of people said there was something off about Keith. It wasn’t just that he was different or a loner. Lots of people like to keep to themselves. I can understand that, heck, my Doug never joins me for a big do like this. But I remember Sally Huxtable telling me about how she called out at the Tully farm years and years ago to see if Rosalie might like to come to the Melbourne Cup Luncheon at the District Club. Sally said she was too scared to even get out of the car. There was a dog that barked the entire time, and Keith came outside but she never even saw Rosalie. Keith said he’d encourage her to go, but Rosalie never rang Sally and she didn’t come.’

  ‘It was nice of Sally to invite her,’ Jaydah said. ‘I don’t think many people ever invited Mum anywhere.’

  Jaz got to her feet. Holding tight to the scrapbook she ran towards one of the decks at the shoreline. There were other people on the deck, some sitting and paddling their feet in the water; two small girls each with helium balloons; three older boys waiting for a turn on the paddle boards.

  ‘There’s something else I’m not proud of. This news about you being a twin ...’ Irene’s gaze followed Jasmine and her chin quivered. ‘That came as such a shock to us, love. That someone in our own town could hide a girl away all those years.’ She clucked her tongue and shook her head. ‘It wasn’t right. I should have known.’

  ‘I don’t see how you could have known, Irene. We didn’t advertise it anywhere. Dad kept her hidden.’

  Jaz sat on the deck timbers near the two young girls with balloons and opened her scrapbook across her thighs.

  ‘It’s not right,’ Irene said, putting out both her plump hands and catching Jaydah’s hands in her own. ‘It must have been hard for you and your mum and your sister, love, out there on your own. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I should have done more.’

  ‘Listen to us.’ Jaydah made a big effort to smile because Irene’s sincerity was making her eyes prickle with tears. ‘It’s okay. I survived, Irene. We all did. And we’re out of there now. I’m loving living with Brix. Mum’s started driving lessons and Jaz has even been doing some independent work.’

  ‘Can’t Rosalie drive?’ Irene interrupted.

  ‘She can now. Can’t you see all Brix’s grey hairs since he started teaching her?!’

  The two women laughed. When Irene laughed, she attracted a crowd.

  ‘Have you seen my dad around town?’ Jaydah asked when they’d sobered.

  Irene’s eyes slid away. ‘Doug said he saw him at the club a week or two back.’

  ‘So he hasn’t gone away. I kind of hoped he might go away. Disappear down a crack, you know?’

  ‘I know, love. I know,’ Irene said, eyes suspiciously shiny and bright. ‘I want you to know I’m always here if you need me, Jaydah love. Always.’

  And perhaps, Jaydah thought, as she returned Irene’s grip with a fresh grasp of her own, this was either pregnancy hormones softening her up or it was a sign of her months with Brix, wrapped in his love. Whatever it was, she was getting mushy in her old age because her eyes were shiny too, and the emotion was making her words catch in her throat.

  ‘I know you would be, Irene. I know. If I had my time back I would have asked for that help too.’

  ‘Oh, love.’ Irene blinked back tears, and she let go of Jaydah’s hands and threw her arms around her shoulders, pulling her in for a hug. ‘Don’t be a stranger. Come see us, okay? There’s a lot of love for you in Chalk Hill.’ She glanced about and then whispered conspiratorially, ‘Bill Kennedy’s nowhere near as good as you behind the bar!’

  ‘Oh, stop it, you. I’m a wreck,’ Jaydah said, laughing as she leaned into Irene’s embrace. Irene’s soft, rose-scented perfume descended around her, warm as the rug over Val Honeychurch’s knees.

  Then a scream from the water ripped Jaydah straight out of Irene’s arms.

  CHAPTER

  27

  Jaydah raced towards the deck near the lake where Jaz was on her feet, arms flailing, body rocking, and a sound coming out of her mouth that was a mix of a roar and a wail and a scream.

  The two little girls with balloons watched Jaz, open mouthed, until an adult arrived and pulled them away.

  The boys on the deck didn’t run away though, they stood on the boards mimicking Jaz’s frantic movements, throwing their arms in the air, rocking and laughing.

  How they laughed.

  ‘What is it?’ Brix said, appearing beside her. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She reached the decking boards, feet creating a hollow thump.

  ‘Jazzy? What’s wrong?’

  ‘I want my book back!’ Jaz thrust her arm out, pointing to the lake, and Jaydah saw her scrapbook on top of a paddleboard n
ow being paddled out into the dam. The boy doing the paddling wasn’t the best at manoeuvring the heavy board. He strove for balance as one of the ski-boats passed, sending a ring of waves against the board’s nose.

  ‘Bring it back!’ Brix shouted. ‘Bring it back before you lose it, mate. If it falls in the water, kid, you’re toast.’

  The other two boys stopped laughing. ‘It’s just a bit of fun.’

  ‘It’s okay, Jazzy, we’ll get it back,’ Jaydah said, closing her arms about Jaz’s heaving shoulders. She was so agitated and so strong, she rocked Jaydah off her feet.

  ‘The boy said could he look at it. He shouldn’t look at it, Jaydah. I didn’t say he could look at it. I said no you can’t look at it, it’s special, my daddy gave it to me.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ a male voice asked, moving between Brix and the two boys on the deck. He was a big guy, solid across the shoulders, zinc cream on his nose.

  ‘That kid has my friend’s scrapbook. It’s important to her,’ Brix said. He didn’t recognise the man, nor the boys.

  The guy glanced at Jaz and his eyes narrowed. ‘So tell her he’ll bring it back. It’s no big deal. It’s just kids blowing off a bit of steam.’

  ‘It’s not his scrapbook. He got told he couldn’t take it and he took it anyway.’ Brix stepped nearer the adult.

  ‘Jesus, keep your shirt on,’ the guy said, rolling his shoulders before he stepped to the side of the deck. ‘Harry? Hazza? You heard this bloke. Bring the thing back. Bring it back right now.’

  ‘See, Jaz? He’s bringing it back. It’s okay, alright? You’ll have it back soon,’ Jaydah whispered, rubbing Jaz’s shoulders and speaking close to her ear.

  Out in the water, the kid laboriously turned, knees bobbing as his weight shifted. A round of waves rocked the board as a speedboat bore past. The two boys on the shore elbowed each other as their mate wobbled.

  Jaz’s sobs died to small hiccups, but each hiccup shook her shoulders.

  The kid got the craft in to the deck—the nose of it bumped the boards—and sidled alongside. Brix knelt to reach for the scrapbook and Jaydah breathed her first shaky sigh of relief.