Goodwood

by Holly Throsby

  Davo looked at him like he was dim. ‘It’s a toy horse,’ he said.

  ‘I can see that,’ said Mack. ‘But why’d she leave it for you? Where’d she leave it? And how do you know it was her? How do you know it’s for you?’

  Davo ran the little horse along his leg, trotting. ‘Because I gave it to her,’ he said.

  23

  Davo and Rosie had been seeing each other for almost nine months. It had started slowly. Rosie was so beautiful. She was always aloof. Davo found her impossible to figure out. He was older by eighteen months, but he’d seen her around at school for years. There was electricity when he saw her. She’d hardly have to look at him and all he could do was feel it, charging down the wires.

  The other girls at Goodwood High were rough and eager. He’d had sex with them on the oval, or in the back of his car, or in the bushes at Sweetmans Park. He always went home empty. He drank a lot of beer to forget his mother; his mother had long forgotten him. He didn’t want to just fix cars in the yard with his dad, and now his fucking uncle. Rosie was different. He had really wooed her. He stood out the front of Woody’s until she’d smile. Then she finally smiled: and he died. He took her to the clearing to go swimming in summer. She’d be hot and then she’d be cold. One minute, his hands were up her skirt, finding her skin wanting, finding her covered in goosebumps and pressing his hand higher. The next, she’d walk right past him, by the beer garden at the Wicko, ignoring his waving and looking the other way.

  By the start of March, she seemed to be won over. They didn’t see each other all that much. Davo always wanted more, but Rosie would recoil if he pushed her. She’d stay in her room with the stereo up loud. She’d sit in Sweetmans Park under the grand old fig tree, reading magazines, listening to her Walkman. He pressed her to open up to him, slowly, like a flower. He felt around for the pieces of her difficult life. But she would show him only tiny fragments. They lay in his bedroom, smoking. They lay at the clearing, in the dappled shade.

  The clearing has a big willow tree and there’s a hidey-hole in its trunk, up above the high branch that goes out over the water. Over summer, Davo would leave Rosie presents. He left her two cigarettes wrapped in paper. He left her nasturtium flowers. He left her a mix tape. It was always when they were going to meet there. He would leave her a present, usually on the way home from the Wicko the night before, and he loved to watch her climb up and find it. Then they’d have sex—fast and slow—under the willow tree, on his laid-down jacket, while the cows looked on and the birds sang in chorus.

  Rosie wanted to leave Goodwood. She always had. Davo tried to make plans for them both, but she wouldn’t hear it. She was so independent. So brave and alone. He could never tame her or make her his own. She spoke always of her Cousin Tegan in Ballina. She was older and cooler and free. She had a good job at a restaurant and maybe she could get Rosie a job too, right there under the Big Prawn. Rosie wanted to move to Byron—Tegan had told her all about it. Rosie would say to Davo, while they lay in the clearing, ‘We’re getting out of this one-horse town, one horse at a time.’

  Davo wished they could ride out together, but it was always one horse at a time. Maybe he could catch her up, he thought. He decided on her next present.

  The last time they met at the clearing to swim, before the weather got too cold, he had left his present and arrived late. When he got there, Rosie, in cut-off jean shorts and one of Davo’s Big W flannos, was holding the little plastic horse. Davo had bought it at the toyshop at the Clarke Plaza and kept it in his glove box.

  ‘One horse at a time,’ she said, properly smiling. She smiled like that and he died. She undid his jeans in a fever and he pushed himself inside her—on the dry leaves, while the sun dipped low and the dusty sky dimmed the mountain.

  After, Rosie carved their initials in the trunk with her Swiss Army knife: RW 4 DC.

  That was March. The weather cooled. They met a few times a week, but Rosie always put the brakes on and Davo always tried to speed things up.

  Then, in April, Lafe arrived. Rosie didn’t like him at all. She would not say why, no matter how much Davo asked her. She just stopped wanting to go to Davo’s house altogether. She gave a wide berth to the whole delinquent street. Lafe stayed in his caravan, drinking and leering. Davo never understood what he’d done that was so wrong. But Davo couldn’t go to Rosie’s house either and she’d never explained why. She just said, ‘It’s not a good vibe,’ and wouldn’t go any further. She never said one word about her stepdad, Carl White, but Davo knew there was some kind of problem. He knew that something wasn’t right. One time she had little brown bruises—just one time—wrapped around both her wrists. Davo had put his fingers on them tenderly and Rosie had jerked her hand away.

  It was cold on the oval. It was cold at the clearing. They met in the day and found a small patch of sun. They drank at the Wicko and sat by the fire.

  Then it was August. That week before Rosie vanished. She had worked as usual at Woody’s and Davo hadn’t seen her at all. He’d tried, but she’d gone silent. Then, out of the blue, she called his house on the Sunday morning. Linda, already half drunk answered and slurred Davo’s name. Lafe said something revolting from the doorway.

  Rosie asked Davo to meet her at the Wicko, and so he had. She seemed kind of normal, but not normal at all. There was just something different about her. Maybe she was sad. He couldn’t quite tell. She laughed at his stupid jokes. She endured when he was lost for words. But there was something. She seemed so far away, but was smiling to reassure him, or to reassure herself. It was there in her eyes—this dark intensity—and she looked down at the table more than usual, and avoided his glances.

  She’d said, ‘David. One horse at a time.’

  No one ever took him seriously enough to call him David. He liked it.

  They said goodbye in the beer garden. She was going home for dinner; he was staying on. She kissed him with her tongue, with all of her mouth, with her hands on his face. He got hard in his jeans—just the impossible smell of her.

  And then she was gone.

  •

  Mack leaned back in his chair. He had a pen in his hand, but he hadn’t written anything.

  Davo held the horse. Mack chewed at the inside of his lip. The two men sat in silence. Sergeant Simmons’s voice said, ‘Ah, fuck’s sake,’ muffled from the other office, with the sound of rustling paper. Davo looked at Mack starkly.

  ‘I went down the clearing last weekend,’ said Davo. ‘First time since summer. I dunno why.’

  Mack nodded.

  ‘I just went to sit in our spot I guess. Just be there a bit, even without her. And this was there. In our hidey-hole.’ He held the horse up in case Mack hadn’t seen it enough already. ‘I can’t believe it. She left it for me,’ he said. He was quiet for a time. He looked like he might crumple. ‘She left.’

  Mack said, ‘Okay. Okay.’ Nodding, thinking.

  He wrote some words on his pad. Last weekend—horse. The clearing.

  Then he looked Davo straight in the eye and asked him plainly, ‘Mate, what about the money?’

  Davo looked back, his brow furrowed. ‘What money?’

  •

  After school I stopped at Vinnies and asked Val Sparks if she had any army coats or fingerless gloves.

  ‘But Jean Brown, it’s spring,’ she said.

  I looked at her blankly.

  ‘Oh. Yeah,’ I said. ‘But I get cold.’

  Ray Charles was singing out of Val’s little silver radio.

  ‘That’s because you’re too thin,’ said Val as she showed me to the coats.

  She rifled through the small array of knits and jackets. She held up a mauve cardigan with white lace flowers embroidered on it and glass buttons cut like diamonds.

  ‘How about this?’ she asked.

  I looked at Val and at the glass buttons. That was what Evie was like, I thought. She was like diamonds. The light in her and the way it sparkled and the way she made me feel di
fferent.

  I had spent the whole afternoon remembering Evie’s fingers and how she ran them against my arm in assembly. She pressed them, up and down, on the outside of my jumper, and every time I thought of it I got the shivers.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said, and Val went into the back room to sift for gloves.

  The view of the street was sliced at an angle by the pole that Fitzy had run into with her car. It had still not been straightened. Ray Charles and Val sang together now, Val warbling high from the back room.

  The nativity scene behind the counter bore no dust. Next to it, Val had put together a small shrine. Prayer beads were draped casually next to a cedar crucifix. Two white candles burned, and Val had propped up name cards in front of them, as if they were guests at a dinner party. One name card said Bart in Val’s wobbly cursive. The other said Rosie.

  ‘I’ve only got these ones with the fingers,’ said Val, who had reappeared holding a dreadful pair of black leather ladies gloves.

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said.

  The sun had caught the bent-over pole and reflected silver light at Val’s window. Her new display did look very fresh, just as Nan had reported. Val went back to dusting grief off all the hard surfaces. Her phone rang.

  I was standing in the doorway when I saw Davo Carlstrom walk out of the Goodwood Police Station and cross the street. He looked exhausted. His shoulders were slumped. He’d lost weight. His bootlaces strayed behind him. I saw him avert his eyes as he passed Woody’s, so he didn’t have to see the hole where Rosie should have been. He pushed one hand through his hair to brush it off his face and his eyes were as red as blood. He looked like he’d been crying.

  ‘Oh yes, I’m praying,’ Val was saying into the receiver. ‘It’s everywhere. Everywhere. I know you don’t like it when I say it, but it feels like the end times.’

  It didn’t occur to me to wonder what Davo was doing at the police station. It didn’t occur to me to think what he might have said, or what he might have done. I was just struck by the sight of him, so shrunken, pushing his hair off his tired face. And his other hand: gripping a little plastic horse and holding on to it for dear life.

  •

  All up, Mack and Davo had sat in the police station for two hours that afternoon. This, Mack thought, was the best information he’d had so far. This was a picture of Rosie that no one else could draw: a troubled, solitary figure; someone who pushed love away; a girl who was lost at home and all at sea. The whole thing was like an awakening.

  Davo didn’t know anything about the money. He swore it to Mack and Mack believed him. Davo said, ‘What money?’ and so Mack told him.

  Someone in town, he said—not revealing any names—had found money in the hidey-hole. That someone had left it there, in good faith and honesty. Then that someone had gone back and found the plastic horse. They had left that there too, and eventually come forward with the information.

  ‘You knew about the horse?’ asked Davo.

  ‘I was told of its existence,’ said Mack.

  ‘Who found it?’ Davo asked. He seemed very intent on knowing the answer.

  ‘Just a kid,’ said Mack, much to my disappointment.

  ‘I was protecting you, Jean,’ he told me a long time later. ‘Well you could’ve protected me with more respect,’ I said.

  Davo kept on at Mack to tell him, but Mack refused. Davo gave up and trotted the horse along his leg.

  ‘Would Rosie have that kind of money?’ asked Mack.

  ‘No,’ said Davo. ‘How would she? She was always talking about saving up to go, but she wasn’t talking about right now. She meant in the future, when she’d saved up enough.’

  Mack had talked to Roy Murray. He knew Rosie’s wages. He’d spoken to Judy White. He knew Rosie’s expenses. The year before, as a graduating present, Rosie had bought herself a stereo with her own money. A Sony CFD-770 Boombox. She loved music. She loved playing it loud. She’d saved up for many months. She also kept herself in cigarettes, beer and clothes. But that was about it and she bought at op shops mainly. Judy White didn’t have money. Rosie got the job at Woody’s because there was none. Carl White liked to put it all in the pokies at the Bowlo. There were no nice steak dinners.

  Judy White said, ‘Rosie didn’t have any money. You can check her bank balance I’m sure. But she didn’t use the bank. She got paid and she spent it on whatever she needed, just week to week. The last money she actually saved she used to buy the Boombox.’

  Mack had checked Rosie’s bank balance. She had $7.43. No recent transactions. No credits since February, when she’d deposited a cheque for a hundred dollars that Aunt Alison had sent her on her eighteenth birthday.

  ‘Do you know who might’ve given her that kind of money?’ asked Mack.

  ‘No,’ said Davo. ‘Do you?’

  Mack stared at him, looked away. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’

  Mack changed tack. ‘What about that Corolla that I asked you about a couple of weeks ago? The one that went missing from Bart McDonald’s carport?’

  Davo leaned back in the cheap vinyl chair and looked at Mack. He almost smiled. ‘You think Rosie stole Bart’s car?’ he asked, incredulous.

  Mack looked back at Davo, trying to get a handle on the situation. ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘Are you fucken serious?’ asked Davo.

  Mack was serious, but he quickly felt foolish. ‘I’m just pursuing all avenues,’ he said.

  ‘Trust me. Rosie would not know how to hot-wire a car,’ said Davo. He held on to the horse. ‘Carl taught her to drive and all, and she got her licence. But she was pretty wobbly at it. She didn’t know shit about cars.’

  ‘It’s just that, mate, if she did a runner, how did she run?’ asked Mack.

  Davo looked at the floor, thinking. There was only a freight train. No passengers, no stop. Mack had checked with the bus lines. He’d spoken to the drivers. No one had seen Rosie.

  ‘I guess she would’ve hitched,’ said Davo after a time. ‘Tegan said people hitch up north all the time. Rosie told me. She said Tegan hitched to Byron heaps.’ Davo stared off into space. He looked like a man deserted. As if he’d suddenly remembered again that he’d been left.

  ‘And what were you and Lafe fighting about the other day?’ asked Mack.

  Davo shook his head. He wouldn’t look Mack in the eye. He just said quietly, ‘I didn’t like the way he was talking about her.’

  Mack went in fast. What way was that? What did he say? How well did he know Rosie? Why didn’t she like him?

  Davo put his hand in his hair. He scrunched up his face. He pulled his hand back and hit himself in the forehead, as if to stop his eyes, which had filled with tears. He shook his head, hot, embarrassed, in pain. A sound came from his throat like a yelp, his cheeks flushed with blood. The noise he made was that of an injured animal.

  ‘Fuuuuuck,’ he said. He looked at Mack. He was blurry-eyed and ashamed.

  ‘Calm down, mate,’ said Mack.

  Davo couldn’t say any more. He couldn’t think any more. He took his horse and pushed the chair back, slamming the little waist-high gate on his way past the counter.

  Mack sat back in his chair. He tapped his pen on his pinewood desk. He stared through the wall opposite. He burnt a hole with his eyes, searching for some kind of vision. Sergeant Simmons came out from the office and said, uncaring: ‘Did you get anything? Is that kid a fucker or what?’

  All Mack could see was Rosie. He saw her plain as day on a Sunday night in August: black tights, red jumper, standing on the side of the road. Maybe she’d walked just out of town, past the Bowlo. Maybe she’d made it all the way to the highway. She was escaping her difficult life. It was the only way she knew how. Her thumb was out in the cold air. She was hoping for a passing car. She was hoping for anything or anyone who could take her to a faraway and much more interesting world.

  24

  Nance drove Judy White home from the hospital first thing in t
he morning. The Goodwood Grocer was supposed to open at eight am, but Nance put a sign on the door that said: Opening late today—Sorry for inconvenience. I should be back by 10.

  They drove out of Clarke carefully in Nance’s silver Laser. Nance wasn’t great at manual and she shifted the gears with lots of revs so they left the traffic lights near the Plaza with a little jump. Judy was jumpy enough already. She quivered. The seatbelt hurt her ribs. The seat, even covered in soft sheepskin, hurt her thighs. Nance had insisted. She’d beat Opal Jones to the punch. Judy was relieved it wasn’t Opal, but she’d hoped for Mrs Bart.

  They drove south out of Clarke through the thick trees and along the straight road. Nance sat at eighty kilometres an hour, even though the speed limit was a hundred. The closer they inched to Goodwood the more Judy’s chest collapsed in on itself at the thought of Rosie.

  They left the trees, and the lake opened out on their right, massive and brown. Judy thought of the water. Litres, megalitres, gigalitres of water. Nance put her foot down as they went past the browned grass near the boat wharves.

  ‘Gives me the shivers,’ Nance said.

  They went over the high bridge, where the water was at its deepest. Judy White hadn’t known Bart that well. She only knew how he felt about Carl. Why Bart had beat up Carl that day two years ago, Judy didn’t know. Carl snarled at her when she’d made the mistake of asking one night after he’d been drinking. Why was she so stupid as to ask him anything when he’d been drinking?

  But Bart—he was a good man. He was gentle when he had that heart attack and she tended to him at the hospital. His wife was such a good woman, too. Coming to visit her like that. If she hadn’t married Carl White she might’ve had friends like the McDonalds. But what would she do without Carl? He could still change. And there was no Bart now, in any case. There was only brown water under the high bridge and a gaping gorge of a hole in her heart where Rosie used to be. My baby, my baby, my baby, thought Judy White, with her swollen eyes shut tight.

  They drove into town past the Bowlo. Nance went around the long way to avoid Woody’s. Judy thought only of Rosie as they pulled up outside the empty White house.