by Stephen Orr
‘Not me. Each other perhaps.’
‘But she was a mature girl. She liked to hang around adults.’
Kevin shook his head. ‘She came here for Mariel.’
‘So you never . . .?’
Kevin looked at him. ‘Talked to her? Of course I did.’
‘Like that time, what was the date?’ Bert took out his notebook.
‘It doesn’t matter, Bert,’ Dad interrupted, and Bert looked at him with red eyes that were crying out for sleep. ‘Henry said you and Janice used to be quite chummy,’ Dad continued.
‘Chummy? What does that mean? What are you saying?’
‘Nothing like that, Kevin. Only, if she talked to you, she might have told you something useful.’
‘Bob, we’ve been over this. She never told me nothin’.’
‘You were her basketball coach?’
‘Yes.’
‘So?’
‘I can’t think of anything,’ a voice whispered from behind the flyscreen door.
‘Mariel,’ Kevin scolded, ‘you shouldn’t be listening.’
The short, brown-haired girl opened the door. ‘Even if she’d told me a secret, Mister Page, I’d tell you now, I swear.’
Bert twisted his body to see her. ‘She got on with all her teachers?’
‘There were one or two, but she didn’t let them bother her.’
‘Go on, get in, and close that door,’ Kevin said, and she was gone.
Bert looked back at Kevin. ‘That basketball team, must have been a bit of work?’
‘Ah, they’re fine. It’s a bit of a laugh.’
‘You ever coached cricket, football?’
Kevin glared at him again. ‘I’ve only got a daughter.’
‘Of course. Those little ones, they’re full of life, eh?’
Kevin shook his head. ‘What’s your point?’
‘Makes you feel young, eh?’
Dad looked at his partner. ‘What is your point?’
Bert glared at him. ‘Just talkin’.’
Dad turned to Kevin and said, ‘I suppose you’re glad you didn’t let Mariel go to the beach.’
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘You say your prayers and thank God. But it’s all down to chance, isn’t it? I was just lucky. I nearly said yes.’
‘So why’d you say no?’ Bert asked.
Kevin looked at him, but didn’t answer. Instead, he turned to Dad. ‘We were meant to be going out. I didn’t think she’d be home in time. Anyway,’ he continued, returning to Bert, ‘I wasn’t sure if it was safe, at that age.’
‘And you were too busy to go?’
‘Yes, I was.’ He looked at Dad. ‘What’s this fella on about?’
‘It’s alright, Kev, he’s tired.’
‘There are a million other people you could be talkin’ to.’ He stood up and looked at them both. ‘None of them helped you search the Port River.’
‘Sit down, Kev.’
‘Bob, you oughta give your mate a lesson in manners.’
And with that he was off, stepping inside and slamming the door. Dad looked at Bert. ‘Good work.’
Bert waved a long, brown, crooked finger in my Dad’s face. ‘Are you a bloody copper?’ he asked. ‘“He’s tired.” I’m trying to do my job, like you should be.’
‘Bert . . .’
Bert pulled a face and imitated Dad. ‘“What’s your point?” I’ll tell you. You don’t know it wasn’t him, or anyone. If you’re scared of upsetting your neighbours . . .’
Dad stood up and started walking out of the Johns’ yard. Bert was only a few steps behind him. ‘I won’t have you do that to me, Bob.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Listen!’
Dad stopped in the middle of the footpath.
‘We’re meant to be partners,’ Bert whispered loudly, from a few feet behind. ‘If you’re not gonna back me up . . .’
Dad turned around. ‘What?’
‘Then someone else should be running things.’
‘Well, you’re welcome to go ask, mate. You’re entitled.’
Bert took a step towards him. ‘How’d you have felt?’
Dad stopped to think. ‘I was getting there.’
‘And how would it be, in a year or two, if it turned out that he – ’
‘I was getting there!’ He paused. ‘I didn’t get where I am by missing things, Bert.’ Again, a long pause. ‘I’m sorry I questioned you. I shouldn’t have.’
The sun was low and heavy in the sky. The two men cast shadows halfway across the road. They stood still, without talking, without moving, without thinking how it would look to neighbours watching from behind closed curtains.
‘I’m a naughty boy,’ Dad said, starting to smile.
‘Bugger me,’ Bert replied, grinning and kicking my dad up the arse, walking ahead and motioning for him to catch up.
Meanwhile, back at 7A Thomas Street, I was sitting on the couch in the hot living room, staring up at photos on the wall. Liz came in, smiled at me, opened the front window and waited for a breeze. Nothing. Then she lifted the curtain, watching, waiting for it to rise. She looked out of the window and there was Mr Hessian, headed home from work. He met her eyes but then looked ahead. Then he thought better of it, looked back and waved. ‘I have a concrete Virgin,’ he said, not quite loud enough for her to hear, pointing to the lump under my window.
Liz sat down at the piano, removing a few Matchbox cars and using her handkerchief to clean off weeks of dust.
‘Like to hear something?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I smiled, having never, I think, heard her play. Mum had told me that she’d been very good. That she’d studied at the conservatorium, given concerts in Elder Hall, Sydney, Melbourne, but that she’d given it all up to please Bill. And not just given it up – but closed the piano lid for good, just to make sure there’d be no lingering memories.
Liz searched through a pile of manuscripts on the lid and found a book of music hall songs. She opened it and flattened it out until the spine cracked. Then she put it on the piano and lifted her fingers above the keys. They hovered for a few moments and then there was a chord, and another, and her voice, ‘My bonnie he’s out on the ocean, While sadly I wait on the shore . . .’ She became louder, pressing the keys harder, before stopping. She tried to remember some Satie but couldn’t get beyond the first few bars.
Now Janice was beside her. She’d been learning for three months but it wasn’t looking good. She’d use a single finger to clunk out ‘Three Blind Mice’ and when Liz said, ‘Gentle, gentle,’ she’d just shrug and reply, ‘They’re the notes I gotta play.’
‘Janice, if you’re not going to take it seriously . . .’
‘You know what she does?’ Janice asked.
‘Who?’
‘Miss Kelly, my teacher. She picks her nose, like this . . . and then she plays something.’
‘So?’
‘There’s bacteria, all over the keys.’
Back in her living room, Liz stopped playing. ‘You never wash your hands,’ she whispered.
‘I do.’
The lessons only lasted a few more weeks, before Janice told Miss Kelly, ‘I could get conjunctivitis.’
‘Pardon?’
‘From the germs, on the keys,’ indicating her nose.
Then Friday nights had become the Third Croydon Brownies, which had only lasted a few months. ‘We line up and sing “God Save the Queen” and then we have to put our hands out and they walk past and make sure our fingernails are cut short.’
Bill came into the room with a beer in his hand. He switched on the television and waited until it warmed up. Mum came in with a cup of tea for Liz. She put it on top of the piano and said, ‘Casserole’s in the oven.’ Then she started singing: ‘Roll out the barrel . . .
’ ‘Ssh!’ Bill said, watching grainy black and white images form on the screen. It was an ad for peanut butter – a mother in an apron spreading it lovingly on thick bread for two anxiously w
aiting children. ‘Who eats peanut butter?’ Bill asked, sitting down.
‘Anna does,’ Liz replied.
‘I’ve never seen her eat it.’
‘She likes it. She used to keep a jar in her room.’ She looked at Mum. ‘She’d scoop it out with her finger and eat it, straight.’ Both women grimaced. ‘Until it was mouldy,’ Liz recalled, closing the piano lid. ‘Then she’d never touch it.’
Bill was in his own world, listening to a man standing beside a highway discussing the merits of new versus secondhand Holdens. He could hear galahs, and early evening crickets, and see stars pricking a still blue sky streaked with vapour clouds.
Liz took her cup of tea and sat on the lounge, and Mum settled beside her. Soon there was a loud, urgent news theme – drums and a trumpet fanfare, staccato notes and dotted crotchets preparing us for more bad news. Someone else’s. So that we could sit and watch and hear and taste not-too-distant tragedies, and feel glad they weren’t ours. Except that this time they were.
Still, it wasn’t the lead item – the cricket came first. And then the newsreader’s sombre face, and a picture of my friends with their arum lilies. And then Dad, explaining their lack of substantive witnesses, showing his photos and sketches, repeating, ‘Anything, no matter how small,’ as he stared into the camera as if his own life depended on it.
Instead of watching the television, Bill was staring at his wife. She looked at him and said, ‘What?’
‘It’s a big mess to clean up,’ he whispered, and she just looked back at the screen.
Mum turned to Bill, trying to work him out. ‘You look okay on telly,’ she said.
He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Considering,’ and swigged.
‘. . . we’d like to ask people to search their properties . . .’ Dad was saying.
Bill could see Gavin being held over the top of a well, screaming and kicking, as a man smiled and laughed in a sort of forced stage-giggle. He could see the man’s fingers opening, and Gavin dropping – no screaming, no words – just a thud as he hit the bottom. He could hear Janice, still locked in a nearby car boot, screaming, Our neighbour’s a detective, he’ll have the whole police force out after you.
More laughing, this time real, louder and heartier, as the man doubled over, tripped on a tree root and stumbled a few steps.
Bill looked at his wife again. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said, squinting, screwing up every muscle in his face, breathing and panting in a blur of alcohol and pain, a sort of paralysis at seeing his kids at the wrong end of the news hour as photographs, as static black and white memories – which suggested, which meant, which told everybody watching they were gone, past-tense, sitting half-dead down a well on a deserted goat farm somewhere east of Ceduna.
‘Henry,’ Mum said, glaring, ‘go home and see where your father is.’
I stood up and walked from the room, trying not to look at Bill.
‘Lucky you didn’t go with them,’ Bill said, as I went.
‘Bill,’ Liz growled.
But I didn’t have to go home to find Dad. He was coming down the drive. Bert was a few steps behind him, consulting his notebook. ‘What’s up?’ Dad asked.
‘Bill’s drinking,’ I replied.
Bert pocketed his notebook and the two of them went inside. I didn’t want to go home so I sat on the brick edging beneath the Rileys’ lounge-room window. I listened for a while and then dared to stand on the bricks and stretch up until my belly was distended. I could just see in. All five of them were silently sitting on the lounge, staring at their own faces appearing magically on the curry-coloured screen in a room filled with dust and the half-light of early dusk.
Now it was Jim’s voice: . . . . great, great harm . . .
Bill saw the top of my head. I met his eyes and he stared at me. His mouth was open, but not to speak. He turned back to the television.
. . . . return the kids unharmed. That would be the decent thing to do. The human thing. Everyone in this city asks the same thing . . .
Liz was off again, crying, shielding her face in her hands.
‘Christ,’ Bill shouted, ‘can’t we at least get to the end of this?’ He looked and saw himself on the television – calm, rational, pleading. ‘It’s not like you had to go on telly,’ he said to his wife. ‘You make the mess, I clean it up.’ He stood up.
Dear Mum and Dad, I am just about to go to bed and the time is nine . . .
‘Fuckin’ Sonja,’ Bill repeated.
‘Where were you?’ Liz shot back.
‘Shut up . . . bitch.’
I have put Gavin’s plastic sheet on in case he wets the bed. Gavin wanted to sleep in his own bed so one of you will have to sleep with Anna.
‘I was always left with them,’ Liz pleaded, as Mum pulled her closer.
Bill was in her face. ‘It’s yer fuckin’ job, woman. One thing you had to get right.’
Dad stood up and moved between them. ‘Come on, Bill.’
Although you will not find the rooms in very good condition I hope you will find them as comfortable as we do. Good night to you both.
‘Good fuckin’ night,’ Bill echoed, managing to get his hand past Dad, grabbing his wife’s hair and pulling it with a jab.
‘Get off, I want to hear this,’ she screamed.
‘Oh you do, eh? And then what? You got some sort of plan? You know where they might be?’
I hope you don’t mind me taking your radio into my room, Daddy.
Bill looked at himself on the telly. Then he drank half a longneck without stopping. We all watched his Adam’s apple bob up and down. He wiped his mouth with his forearm, looked at Dad and asked, ‘They’ll show it in the other states?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe it will do some good.’
Then he placed his empty bottle at Liz’s feet. ‘What do I do now?’ he asked her.
Liz shrugged.
‘Wait,’ Mum said.
But Bill just shook his head. He walked from the room, mumbling, ‘For what?’
The newsreader had already moved on to Menzies. Time wasn’t passing anymore. It had passed. This was something we could all sense now. Dad had already told me that the first twenty-four hours were the most important. After that, he (whoever he was) had already done what he was going to do. So now, I guessed, there was just a mess to clean up. Leads to investigate, hoaxes, and worst of all, hope that wouldn’t fade or grow.
Chapter Five
‘This is from Doctor Gunn,’ Dad explained, handing me the book.
I took it, and there, in those few hundred stale pages, was everything I’d ever catalogued, shelved, re-shelved, read, smelt, repaired (a special tape the doctor had, something like surgical plaster), coveted, browsed, wondered about or taken home for myself. The words Treasure Island were embossed in gold on a hard blue cover that was fraying around the edges.
‘You’ve seen him?’ I asked, sitting up in bed, squinting as my eyes adjusted to the morning light.
‘We’ve seen everyone. Door-knocked every house and shop in Croydon.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Who?’
‘Doctor Gunn.’
‘About what?’
‘Janice, the kids.’
‘Nothing. Why?’
I looked at the cursive inside the front cover, and below this, in blotted purple ink: To Doug, Merry Christmas and happy reading, From Granny Rowett, 1942.
‘He said he was missing you,’ Dad continued.
‘Missing me?’
‘His books. Says he’s got a lot of work for you.’
I shrugged.
‘Wasn’t he paying you enough?’
I stopped to think. ‘No.’
‘Anyway, he thought this might take your mind off of things.’
‘I’ve read it.’
‘Take it back to him then, he’d like to see you’
I held it out to him. ‘Could you?’
He half-smiled, half-wondered. ‘Why?’
‘I
’ll keep it then.’
He stared at me for a moment and then said, ‘He’s replaced you. He’s got another kid doing the job now.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know.’
I stopped to think again. After I’d come home the previous night I’d retrieved my copy of The Egyptian Book of the Dead and flicked through it. The last few pages were covered with mould. The photos from the papyrus of Ani were flecked with black dots of various diameters, their margins broken and fuzzy, each coloured grey and black and white where thousands of spores had grown. But there, towards the middle, untouched, was Anubis.
‘What was the boy doing?’ I asked.
‘Sorting books.’
I could feel Dad’s eyes on my skin. There was nothing you could hide from him. He was more than a detective, he was a thinker, a clairvoyant, a second-guesser who could smell with his fingers and feel with his eyes, and he had a mind that glowed like the tip of a Garrick double-filter. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked.
I turned my head and our eyes met. ‘Nothing.’
Then he sat on my bed, stretched back against the wall and rubbed his eyes. ‘You never heard this doctor . . . say anything strange?’
‘Like what?’
‘Anything to do with . . . kids?’
I swallowed. Could I lie? I wanted to tell him, but not like this, not under interrogation. I wanted us to be sitting in a park, or walking down the street, and I’d turn to him and say, That Doctor Gunn, he’s strange.
How?
The way he just watches me, when I’m working.
Dad picked up a Superman comic and flicked through it. ‘Or anything unusual?’ he asked.
‘Unusual?’
‘Like, touching you?’
I gave him my very best astonished look.
‘Has he ever messed your hair, or hugged you?’
‘Like you?’
‘I’m your dad.’ He paused. ‘So?’
Images were going through my head. Doctor Gunn, sitting on a chair in the corner of his library, refusing to stand up; Doctor Gunn, starting a library that no one ever visited; Doctor Gunn, preferring the company of boys, or standing in front of his shop, watching with a not-quite-right grin as the world passed by.
‘He’d met Janice?’ Dad asked.
