by Stephen Orr
Dogs disappear, I thought. People tape notices to Stobie poles, without ever expecting to see them again. Dogs get knocked over by cars and people run over them until they’re just a red stain on the road. And then the rain washes them away. And sometimes people’s relatives disappear. When they’re a bit loopy. Found wandering barefoot beside highways. Taken to asylums and forgotten. But every time there’s a reason, I guessed. Someone’s dad running off with a girl twenty years his junior. Bill had a song about that.
But this was different. This was a UFO: a metal disk floating across the sky supported by fishing line. The Marie Celeste. Dan O’ Mara, the Irishman working on the Overland Telegraph who walked into the bush and just disappeared. This was the x in algebra. And yet there was no mathematical means of solving this equation. It was God’s fault. We’d all been to church. Janice had even prayed under the healing tree, kneeling on grass so dead it had become dirt. We were semi-regulars at St Barnabas’. So what? If there was a secret, God wasn’t letting on.
‘It’s only been a day,’ Rosa said.
‘I should’ve gone with them,’ I managed. ‘Janice asked me.
If there were four of us – ’ I lowered my head and, for the first time, I cried. They were gone, and I was part of the reason why. I sobbed. I fitted. Rosa pulled me close and buried my head in the gap between her arm and body. The boy in the long shorts looked and Rosa stared at him. He returned to the swing and continued twisting himself.
‘No,’ Rosa hushed, ‘whatever it was, it wasn’t your fault. It would’ve happened. We might have lost you too.’
‘I’d rather that,’ I gasped.
She stroked my hair. ‘It’s only been a day,’ she repeated.
‘If it was someone, I could’ve – ’ ‘Henry.’
I looked at her. ‘Janice has helped me a hundred times,’ I said. ‘And maybe, this one time, she needed me.’ Then I was off again, bawling like a baby. Rosa put her other arm over my head so no one could see me.
Eventually we walked to the cold stores. They could be there, I suggested. No one would’ve thought of that. And Rosa just walked beside me, thinking but not saying, stopping at the gatehouse to see Con. ‘We’re going to check the cold stores,’ she said to him.
Con looked up from a timetable. ‘Henry,’ he said, ‘I’ve checked it again. If they’d caught the 5.10 from Semaphore, they would’ve changed trains at Woodville.’
Something else to tell your dad, he explained. Although later, when I did tell Dad and Bert, they both dismissed it.
They weren’t at the cold stores, so we checked the Port Road netball courts, the Cedar Street reserve and the Croydon and West Croydon station underpasses. Then we checked the Elizabeth Street shops (all except Doctor Gunn’s). Joe Skurray told me to keep my chin up and Ted Bilston told me to tell Liz that everyone was keeping their eyes open. Mr Eckert pretended not to have heard but gave me a free sherbet anyway and John Cox the bootmaker gave me a holy card of St Bartholomew. As we walked home, Rosa said, ‘This happened in the twenties, in a village near ours.’
‘What happened?’
‘It was a little place, hidden in a valley, with five or six kids. One day the parents went to pick up their children and they were gone. Turns out the teacher wasn’t a teacher. But these things happen. Afterwards everyone says, “We should’ve done this or that”.’ She shrugged. ‘Thomas Street is a village,’ she explained, indicating how small it was with the space between her thumb and forefinger. ‘And the people you meet are good. But not everywhere is Thomas Street, and not everyone is Mister Page.’
‘What happened to the children?’ I asked.
‘Never seen again. There were stories: a teenager in Norway, a few kids moving in next door to someone, a child’s body found under the floorboards of a home . . . stories . . . lies . . . or people just wanting an answer.’
‘What do you think happened to them?’ I asked.
‘All you can hope is . . .’ She stopped, but I could finish her sentence.
Soon we were standing in front of the Rileys’ house, and Rosa turned to head home. ‘Tell Liz I’ll bring some stew over,’ she said, crossing the road. ‘Nobody likes curry.’
I didn’t want to go into 7A. It looked and felt like an oven that had been left open, the fan still running. I didn’t want to go home either, that was just an empty box echoing with Ernie Sigley, smelling of Brasso and populated with tight-suited American detectives catching their man in forty-eight minutes. So I went to my hutch. I sat on my Michelin tyres and fetched my diary from the hole in the wall. Then I stopped, thinking, imagining, and eventually wrote:
The boy was kept in a box in a cupboard in a caravan. He’d been there since he was three. His skin was white because it never saw light. He was covered in cigaret burns. Every day his stepfather would open his box and put in some food. His legs were crooked from being pushed up in front of him. Even if he did get out he wouldn’t be able to walk. One leg had broken and healed itself wrong. It was painfull. He went to the toilet in a bottle, and the other he did in a newspaper. But he was alive, sort of. He breathed, and knew when it was hot or cold, and heard noises. He smelled food cooking and felt the rumble of cars from the carpark. Sounds. TV. He could laugh at Jerry Lewis, imaganing what he was doing. Music. Elvis Prezley. As he tapped his foot in his box and a voice screamed out to shut up. But most of all he loved the sounds of birds. Because birds were free. No one hit them, or spat on them, and their mothers protected them.
Bert and Dad walked along Semaphore Road. They were hoping the Rileys had come this way. That is, if Mr Patterson was right. But, of course, he must have been right, he was a postie. Posties carried people’s bills and love letters, ransom letters and invitations to christenings, weddings and funerals.
If that’s what Mr Patterson had said . . .
They searched the ground as they walked. Bert picked up a hair clip. ‘Familiar?’ he asked Dad.
‘Search me.’
So Bert put it in his pocket. There was a comb and a handkerchief and a couple of shillings, but how was that going to help them find the kids? Dad asked.
They stopped people walking home with their shopping and showed them a photo. They asked people sitting on benches and waiting at bus stops. ‘About this time yesterday,’ Dad explained. ‘Mighta been waitin’ for a bus.’
No, no and no. Sorry, I’d love to be able to help you. I read about it. They had this copper talkin’ on the radio. I’m here the same time every day, but I didn’t see those kiddies.
They stopped at Soto’s fish shop. Two girls said they’d been working at the time but neither could remember the children. Bert looked out of the window – streams of blue water trickled down the inside, pooling beside fish fillets sitting on green plastic, cut frilly around the edges like bonbons. The faces and bodies of pedestrians were hazy through the water. Even so, a moment later, they were forgotten.
‘Australia Day is just about our busiest,’ one of the girls said, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘Did they have money?’
‘Yes,’ Bert replied, thinking she was taking him for stupid.
They tried a furniture shop, a hairdresser and a bank (although it hadn’t been open). They asked an old man wearing Arthur Calwell glasses, reading a Bible, and a couple of housewives in netball uniforms.
Nothing.
Then they went into a bakery.
‘No, never seen them,’ the manageress told them, loading frozen pasties into a pie warmer.
‘Yesterday?’ Bert asked. ‘They mighta been hungry around this time. We think they walked by here.’
‘No, sorry. She’s a beautiful lookin’ girl though, eh?’
A fat-faced, middle-aged baker came up behind her. ‘They yours?’ he asked Dad.
‘No, we’re looking for them,’ Dad replied. ‘We’re detectives.’
The baker squinted and studied the photo more carefully. ‘The older one,’ he said, pointing. ‘She bought three pasties and a pie.’
<
br /> Dad looked surprised. ‘When did you see her?’
‘Yesterday, about this time.’
‘You sure it was her?’
‘Yep. I’m good with faces. Three pasties and a pie. Said she wanted the pasties in one bag and the pie in another.’
Dad looked at Bert, who lifted his eyebrows and sighed.
Dad returned to the baker. ‘How did they pay?’
He shrugged. ‘Let me think.’ He stroked his chin a few times and then said, ‘I think, perhaps, it was a one pound note.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘I got a good eye, Mister . . . and a good memory. Comes from doin’ crosswords.’
Dad looked at Bert again. ‘Liz said she gave them 7/6,’ he said.
‘Maybe it was Janice’s.’
Dad smiled. ‘Whose money would you use first? Your parents’ or your own?’
‘Might have already spent it.’
‘Those kids lost?’ the baker asked.
‘Yes,’ Dad explained. ‘Yesterday morning.’ He grabbed a paper from a pile for sale, opened it to page seven and pointed. ‘Listen, if you’re sure, this will help.’
‘I don’t forget a face,’ the baker insisted. ‘The little ones stood near the door, and the girl came forward.’
‘And there was no one with them?’
‘Not so’s I could tell.’
‘A man, tall, blond, mighta had blue bathers?’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘Okay, you got ten minutes, so Bert can take a statement?’
The three of them went outside and sat on a bus stop bench. After they were finished the baker went back inside and Bert said, ‘Separate bags? Does that mean he wasn’t staying with them?’
‘Who knows?’
A woman walked out of the shop with a bag full of six or seven pasties.
Dad and Bert finished their trawl of both sides of Semaphore Road. There were no more sightings. They returned to their car, still parked on the esplanade, and sat in full sun in their suits. ‘What now?’ Dad asked, scratching the tip of his nose.
Bert watched Bill in the near-distance as he made his way along a path behind the dunes, stopping to talk to people and show them his photos.
‘What else do you know about Bill Riley?’ Bert asked.
Dad shrugged. ‘I’ve known him for years. You don’t need to worry about Bill.’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘You sure?’
Dad stared at him. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘He’s a sales rep, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Must come into contact with a lot of people.’
‘He sells them linen.’
Bert took out his notebook and started to leaf through it. ‘I know he sells linen, but . . .’
Dad turned his body to face Bert. ‘Eh, this is my best mate . . .’
‘Someone’s gotta say it.’
‘If there’s cause.’ Dad stopped and there was a long pause. They watched more officers coming and going from the caravan. ‘Jim’s got ’em workin’,’ Bert said.
‘I can vouch for him,’ Dad replied, refusing to be distracted. ‘You get to know a person, Bert.’
‘Okay.’
‘Anyway, I hate how you skirt around things. Just come out and say it.’
Bert took a moment and then asked, ‘What did he do before he sold linen?’
‘He was on the stage. J.C. Williamson. The Tivoli circuit.’
Bert smiled. ‘Doin’ what?’
‘He can sing, dance, juggle . . . tell a few jokes.’
‘Well bugger me.’
Dad had heard all about it: Bill in an over-tight velvet jacket, wearing a boater and brandishing a cane like his old Latin master. ‘Bill Riley has been treading the boards since he was five. He has sung for the King, and every fruit seller in Hindley Street. Bill can carry a tune from here to Alice Springs and play the ukulele like Heifitz plays the fiddle.’
‘My folks used to take me,’ Bert said. ‘I mighta even seen him.’
Bill sat on a bench and lit a cigarette. Then he got an idea. He stood up and walked into the dunes, looking behind saltbush and samphire. Bert shook his head. ‘From the Tivoli to tablecloths – and then this.’
‘See, you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree,’ Dad said.
‘Played the halls, and you think you know everything about him?’
‘That was a long time ago.’
Bert read from his notebook. ‘Missus Catherine Sayer,’ and looked at Dad. ‘Ramsay Avenue, Hillcrest Gardens. And she’s the only one, eh?’
Dad pulled on his seatbelt. ‘That’s miles away.’
Bert looked for his keys in his pocket. ‘Let me do the talking.’ He started the car. ‘You gotta be a little bit discreet with these sort of things.’
Now we get to the bit that Dad only hinted at. There were no names, addresses, or details. I suppose it went like this.
The paint on the house was barely dry. Everything was new and Dad felt uncomfortable. The tar on the road smelt like the chemical works. The nature strips didn’t look that old, but had died through lack of water. The soil was clay so the houses had been stumped. There were dozens of big blue and lime-green asbestos boxes with wooden feature panels around the doors. Diosmas and neatly edged lawns. A silver birch for shade in fifteen or twenty years’ time. Concrete drives and paths littered with trikes and beach pails that had never seen the beach.
Bert pulled up and looked at the house. He could see into the lounge room through four half-wall sized glass windows, and could make out a woman, standing at an ironing board, working intently, occasionally looking up at a television and laughing. ‘Christ, what was Bill doing out here?’ he asked.
‘He gets around,’ Dad replied.
They walked down a driveway, bordered with box hedge that had died but not been removed. They knocked on the door and watched through a glass panel as the woman left her ironing and opened the door.
‘Yes?’ she smiled.
‘Missus Catherine Sayer?’ Bert asked.
‘Yes.’
He showed her his warrant card. ‘Have you got a few minutes?’
‘What’s this about?’ she asked.
‘You know Bill Riley?’ Dad replied.
She stopped to think. ‘No.’
Dad shook his head, and stepped into the living room anyway. ‘How about a drink?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You know what I feel like? A nice cold milk.’ He sat down on the lounge on a pile of freshly ironed clothes.
‘Not there.’
‘And Mister Melack just drinks water.’
‘I’d like you to leave.’
‘Bill Riley?’ Dad repeated.
‘Now.’
‘Or maybe your husband knows him?’
She folded her arms and stared at Dad. The iron sighed as Dad pulled knickers and lemon-scented singlets from under his bum. ‘Bill Riley?’ he smiled.
She stormed into the kitchen. Bert followed her and started explaining what had happened.
‘Shit, when did this happen?’ she asked.
‘Yesterday.’
‘Well, I tell you, I could’ve gouged out his eyes, but this . . .’
And Bert continued. Did you know he had kiddies? How many times did you see him? What did you do about the bubba? Where did you have it done?
Meanwhile, Dad sat back on the lounge. This, he figured, was the sort of thing Bert did best. He had a way with people. He was open and honest and said what he thought. If your fly was undone in a crowded lift, he’d tell you then and there. If you had BO he’d turn up his nose and hand you the deodorant he kept in the glovebox of the Melack Motel. And yet because of the way Bert said things, people didn’t seem to mind. He wasn’t a smart arse and he didn’t pretend he was better than anyone else. He just dealt with facts. The world was made up of a billion facts and most people were trying to ignore them or change them or blame someo
ne else. Bert could see the what and the why. He was the kid in everyone’s class who said, Miss, someone’s shit themself. And although he got a clip around the ear for saying it, he was generally always right.
The woman returned to the lounge room with Dad’s milk. She put it down on a coffee table in front of him, and said, ‘Of course I was angry, bloody angry. After that day, at the hospital . . . I never heard a word from him. Not even a phone call.’
Dad sat up and took his milk. ‘Wouldn’t have thought you’d want to hear from him.’
She looked at him sourly. ‘It’s not the point.’
‘It’s exactly the point.’
She chose to ignore him, and looked at Bert. ‘So, I admit, I sent him a letter. I typed it so he didn’t know it was me. I pretended to be Joe, my husband. I said I’d found out and that I knew people who owed me favours.’
Dad shook his head. ‘Stupid thing to do.’
‘He’s the one left me to deal with it.’
‘He didn’t. He helped you resolve it. Then he did the best thing he could: let you be.’
Bert finished his water and left the glass on the ironing table. ‘Listen, it’s not relevant. Missus Sayer, all I want you to tell me is that there was nothing else to that letter. You were just angry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your husband doesn’t know?’
‘No. It’s terrible, I feel so bad now.’
Dad shook his head. ‘So you should.’
‘I didn’t take his kiddies,’ she shot back.
‘From now on, you wanna watch who you fuck,’ Dad growled, wiping sweat from his forehead.
‘Piss off.’ She grabbed the glass from his hand. ‘You can get out.’
Dad smiled. ‘Just remember, lady, all of this gets written down, and typed up, and filed. And do you know who they give the key to?’
‘Get out.’
Dad stood up. A pile of singlets fell to the floor and he picked one up and held it against his chest. ‘You do a good job of ironing,’ he said, turning and straightening a Hans Heysen print on the wall. ‘And a beautiful place too. You’re gonna be here years I reckon.’
Bert stood up. ‘Come on, Bob.’
‘Be such a waste if things didn’t turn out. Nice schools for the kiddies. Nice schools are they?’
