The turnout for the Fish Fry was, as happened every year, even bigger than the turnout for the parade. The Bowlo never saw a day like it, and all the face-painted kids ran around together on the green while balloons gathered in corners and under the white plastic tables.
George and Lucas and Ethan and I sat in the fading sun near the fence, so no one could smell us drinking. We didn’t have much left to drink, but we kept a steady pace and remained warm and, in George’s case, slightly slurry. The line at the bar was long all evening. Never had so many kegs been required. I saw Mack and Tracy dancing under coloured lights. Mum and Nan were in a deep literary discussion with Arden Cleary, who wore a checked tweed jacket despite it being spring. Big Jim was belly-laughing with Irene Oakman, both in their best King Gees. The whole thing was triumphant and festive. It was like Goodwood had been granted a reprieve. The whole town was drinking and eating and enjoying the music.
Then the multitude of coloured hanging streamers in the doorway parted to reveal Evie, who was standing there with no expression next to her parents.
My heart wheeled to a stop.
Evie.
I hadn’t even considered that I might see her there, but as soon as I did I thought, of course. Her parents were new in town. It was a great chance to meet people.
I watched her—Evie—as her parents were introduced to people and her dad shook lots of other men’s hands and her mum clinked other ladies’ wineglasses with her own.
Evie looked as if she wasn’t really there. She was floating like a streamer, hovering in the doorway, looking around for no one, in her faraway world. Then she saw me across the green and she held my gaze for a long moment before turning away.
I felt the electrics in every bulb and cord and socket in the Bowlo rush through me.
The food was served. Smithy and Merv were the main men at the barbeque and the charred white fish, flaked and broken, sat steaming on huge plastic platters, surrounded by wedges of lemon.
It was twilight when the paper plates were set aside, full of scrunched napkins and tiny bones, and more people started dancing.
Evie had been with her parents the whole time, not really eating, not joining in the conversation. I was flushed in my face from the whisky and Lucas started pashing George in front of us, so Ethan lay back on the concrete and closed his eyes and I excused myself to go to the bathroom.
I caught Evie just as she was leaving.
‘Are you leaving?’ I asked. I could not hide my disappointment.
‘Yeah. I’m going home,’ she said, looking me right in the eyes.
I had nothing at all to say, so I just looked back until it became uncomfortable, and then I looked at the carpet instead.
‘You should come over if you want,’ she said.
My face felt hot. I looked back at her blankly.
‘You know where my house is,’ she said. ‘When you’re done here, you should come over.’
And just like that she turned and left, and I was standing on the carpet, a little giddy, and Nan and Pop were dancing—him in his good yellow shirt, her in her peach dress. Pop was leading. Nan smiled completely. She gripped his shoulders and closed her eyes. Pop swayed and tilted. He moved his feet back and forward, and back and forward, as they made a slow and gentle circle that went around and around on the floor.
•
I walked towards Evie’s house with a flock of birds in my chest. I went along the dark road much faster than usual. I tripped up a gutter and almost fell over. I was full of whisky and everything in the dark world was whirling.
I hadn’t said goodbye to George or Ethan. George was pashing Lucas in the shadows, and Ethan had gone off somewhere when I got back to our spot near the fence. George didn’t see me, and I turned around and went back across the fairy-lit green.
I told Mum I’d see her at home and she waved, full of wine, and said, ‘Jeannie, honey. Feed Backflip! I’m gonna have a dance.’
She hardly blinked.
‘Celia!’ said a woman from the CWA, before they fell into a deep and immediate discussion. Mum didn’t seem to have a burning heart that night. The mirror ball spun diamonds of light around the room, and my Nan and Pop swept across the foreground—gliding—and soon I was walking very quickly towards town under a blanket of country stars. I felt like yelling and running. I wanted to be new and different. I was a sparkling fish in a bucket, flipping and beating around on its side.
Evie.
I turned the corner onto the laneway that cuts through to the car park behind Woody’s, and down towards Sooning Street. Derek Murray was sitting on the edge of the metal fence, near his filthy Kingswood, smoking a cigarette. He was all by himself. The light bulb shone stark on the wall near the dumpster bins. Derek Murray’s face was empty. He blew a line of smoke out and stared. There were two black holes where his eyes should be. He heard me coming and looked over sharply and more smoke came out of his nose, giving him the appearance of a dark dragon. I was startled. I had never seen him look quite so unpleasant. His mouth made a repellent smile and I thought of Lafe and his leering. I walked faster. The laneway felt so narrow and I wanted to be at the end of it. I could feel Derek Murray’s eyes on me.
‘Nice night for it,’ he said, and I skipped into a run and ran the rest of the way to Evie’s house.
There it stood: her strange-looking house, red and green. I hovered in front of the gate and tried to collect myself.
The front door was closed. I walked up the steps and stood on the landing. My chest was bursting. I considered turning around again. I took a deep breath and tried to steady myself. And just as I raised my hand up to knock on the door, it came open and, as I breathed all my air out, there was Evie. She had changed out of her jeans. She wore tights and an old green T-shirt with a Dalmatian on it. The cartoon dog, covered in spots, stared out under big white writing that said Dalmatians Are Spot On!
‘I didn’t know if you’d come,’ she said.
She looked down shyly, and I did the same. Then she opened the door wider to let me in. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.
I was drunk. I knew that Evie wasn’t. I told her that I would love a cup of tea, even though I didn’t, and I soon found myself standing in the kitchen, while Evie put the gas on under the kettle and fetched two teacups from the cupboard.
The kitchen was modest. I imagined old Grace and Teddy would’ve resided there happily. Teddy, the eccentric, had done a little painting in the interior too. The door of an unknown room along the hall was purple, but the skirting was an unrelated blue. There was a confusing mixture of browns and oranges on various shelves in the pantry. I leaned against the bench as Evie spooned leaves into an old pink teapot.
She asked me if I wanted milk and I said I didn’t. She seemed to be smiling, but she was yet to look me properly in the eyes. Some of her braveness was gone, and there were constellations of beauty spots on the skin of her long arms. The cartoon Dalmatian stared out from her shirt, full of innocent joy. Leaning against the bench, I had no idea what to do with my hands, so I folded my arms and looked at the floor mostly, and sometimes up at Evie.
She was so beautiful in her home clothes. She was what Nan would call ‘lovely’. The sweet darkness went forever through the gap in her teeth. She took a deep breath, pouring the boiled water into the pot, and finally she fixed her eyes on me and I fell all the way off the deep green mountain. I stood there—stuck in the feeling of falling and not having yet hit the ground.
Then Evie went to get something from the drawer, right next to where I was standing. She fumbled around for the tea strainer with one hand. She was there so suddenly, so close, to one side of me, facing the bench, rummaging around in the utensils.
I wanted to fill the silence. My mind raced around for some piece of conversation. My face felt hot and I was about to speak when Evie turned her head up from the drawer and looked at me, holding the tea strainer. And then she was turning with her whole body, quickly, and then she was kissi
ng me. I turned into her, kissing her, without thinking. I put my hands up to her face, on both sides. I heard the metal strainer fall to the floor as she moved in front of me and pushed me with all her body against the bench.
I felt like a flower, pressed in a book. Her arms, her legs, all parts of her were against me. She moved and moved there, slowly. And in just a small moment I felt her hand go up under my dress, searching, and just like that she found me. It made me breathe in so sharply. She kept her mouth on mine all the while, swallowing my breaths. And soon we tumbled from the kitchen into the hallway, onto the carpeted step, and the birdsong in my chest turned to a heavy fluttering of wings in her fingers, until the walls of the hallway, breathing quickly, brilliantly flickered with lamp and moon and stars, seemed like they went all the way to the sky.
35
The next morning was Sunday and Mack was enjoying a cup of Nescafé when Judy White called the station and asked if he would please withdraw the Apprehended Violence Order he was lodging against Carl—as soon as possible—and that she’d like to drop the assault charges, also.
Mack held the receiver in his hand and wanted to punch a hole in his stupid pinewood desk, but instead he took a pencil in his hand and broke it in two. The lead poked out of one end like a bone, and for a small moment he felt quite good.
‘Jude—’ he started.
‘I’ve made up my mind, Mack. I know it’s hard to understand!’ A nervous laugh came down the receiver. ‘Ha ha ha! I know, I know. But he feels so awful, Mack. He really does. He’s been so good since he got home—very caring, and helping me and stuff. Just so much better.’
Mack said, ‘I’m coming over,’ and hung up before Judy could protest.
When he got to the White house, Carl was gone.
‘He’s out,’ said Judy White, meekly. ‘He was already out when I called you. He really had to go out.’
Terry White hovered in the kitchen and gave Mack a look to indicate that this, and everything else, was complete bullshit. Mack gave Terry what he could of a nod without Judy noticing. Terry went on to his room.
‘Jude, no part of me wants to do this,’ said Mack.
‘Yes, well,’ said Judy.
They went back and forth for a few minutes, Mack persisting and Judy holding her ground. She really seemed to be digging her heels in, even in her slippers.
Mack said, ‘I can still go forward without your cooperation but it’ll make it very difficult—if you would just . . .’
Judy cut him off. ‘I’m sorry, Mack, but I want him here,’ she said. ‘He’s not forcing me. Terry needs to have his dad around. He should have his dad. After everything. Terry needs him. I need him.’ She verged on quivering now, her voice wobbled.
Mack stood, because he hadn’t been offered a chair. Judy looked like she’d said all she wanted to say.
‘At least tell me what the fight was about,’ Mack said.
Judy studied the ground like it was suddenly very interesting. She kept her arms crossed, defiant.
Mack raised his police voice. Hands on his hips, his tone almost hostile, he pushed: ‘Judy, you tell me what it was all about. It was about Rosie wasn’t it? This is serious, Jude. She was . . . She is . . .’ He shook his head. ‘If you know something, you can’t protect him.’
‘It wasn’t about Rosie!’ said Judy, and tears sprang into her eyes. She made a heaving noise. She breathed in hard, sucking back a sob, and the sound of it was animal.
Mack didn’t know what to do. He stood perfectly still.
Another animal sound was emitted, and then another—guttural, primal—and he could not believe she’d produced them.
‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘Steady on.’
‘It wasn’t about Rosie,’ heaved Judy. ‘It was about money.’
An uncomfortable moment followed in which they stood opposite each other and stared.
‘Money,’ said Mack, deadpan. He did not believe her and Judy could see it. She could see it and what could she say? All she could do was steady herself and explain. It was against her very nature: to explain. She was used to shaking off the intrusions of Opal Jones. She was used to closing her bedroom door and keeping what happened there behind it. But now here was Mack, and how it all looked, and what with everything. Judy knew she had no choice but to open herself up and explain that the night Carl had taken to her—the night he had made a sorry sack of her body with his belt, and she had crumbled and broken before him—they had fought, of all the silly mundane things, about money.
Carl had a problem: a big one. The pokies. They were his mistress, and sometimes, when Judy lay awake at night, she wished he had a real mistress instead; instead of those machines that sat and jingled and took everything—took every cent of savings they had; every bit of Carl’s self-worth; every bit of everything.
It’d been a problem for a long time and, while no one spoke of it in front of Carl, everyone in the White house knew it. The night in question, Judy had gone to the tin she was keeping up in the top back corner of their built-in wardrobe, behind the suitcases. It was a lovely metal tin with roses on it, and she had bought it at the Sweetmans Park markets when Rosie was just newly born. Judy found a new hiding spot for it every few months. She worried terribly about money, or their lack of it, and she often stashed some away, just in case. And Carl didn’t like her doing it. He really, deeply didn’t. But she got so anxious and worked up, just quietly to herself, about Terry and Rosie and how she was ever going to help them get along in life. How ever was she? So she popped a few dollars here and there into her tin. She even treated herself now and again, too. Maybe twice a year, she and the other nurses from the hospital would go to the Clarke Plaza and get mani-pedis and, once, a deluxe facial.
But Carl took all the money he could get his hands on. He’d already hocked his fishing gear last summer when he was down on his luck; and he’d hocked the bass guitar that he used to play, when Judy first met him in Cedar Valley, and she’d drink Kahlua and dance while his band played at the Commercial Hotel. Then he’d hocked Terry’s old bike, without even asking Terry’s permission.
The night in question, Judy had gone to find her tin. She’d opened it up to count the money, because she needed to do something. Rosie had been gone for so long she could hardly breathe. She wanted to scream: my baby. She felt covered in oil, like a seabird caught in a slick. No matter how much she showered she came out coated with grief. She needed to get out of her dressing-gown and have something done about her hair. Opal had told her: ‘You need to let me take you to Clarke and we’ll have a nice morning. Just try and forget it all for an hour at the salon. Wouldn’t that make you feel—oh, I don’t know. But we have to do something with you. Get you out of that terry-towelling.’
The tin was empty. Carl had found it and taken every last cent. Judy put it back in its spot and she turned around and there was Carl, taking off his belt. He’d just got home from the Bowlo and was stinking drunk. It was really only when he’s stinking drunk. He doesn’t even know himself then, and he feels so terrible about it after.
‘It was stupid of me to do it again,’ said Judy, looking genuinely contrite.
‘Again?’ asked Mack. ‘Were there other times?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Judy. ‘I just mean I know he doesn’t like it. I know that. And it’s not good to have any cash in the house either. Like when Rosie was saving for her boom box, she . . .’ Judy trailed off and a tear ran down her pale face and splashed on her folded arm. ‘She was saving for that stereo and she said, “Mum, can you hold on to this?” and gave me a hundred dollars that she’d made at Woody’s. I said to her, “You just don’t wanna spend it all on ciggies!”’ Judy cry-laughed and softened. ‘I don’t know. She asked me to hold it for safekeeping.’ The softness went away. ‘And he took it.’
Judy was vacant now, gazing deeply into the carpet.
‘And Rosie knew?’
‘Oh, God, yes! She knew. He’d done it before. Gone into her room and taken money from
her drawer when she was at work. It wasn’t that much, twenty dollars or whatever. But her money. That’s why she gave it to me to hold on to. I said I had a good spot. She could hardly get into Clarke to deposit it in the bank, could she? Where else was she gonna hide it?’
‘And this most recent time when you brought it up with Carl?’
‘Oh, I didn’t bring it up. I don’t bring it up,’ said Judy with a nervous laugh. ‘I’m just not supposed to have my money like that. He doesn’t like it. He’d rather we keep it in the joint account. That’s just the way he is—he can’t help it.’
Mack wanted to punch Carl out with his bare fists and keep on punching him until he was smeared into the carpet. Mack thought of the kangaroos that always lay flattened on the road before the high bridge over the lake. He wanted Carl to be just like that—his guts spilt and level with the road—and passing cars bumping over him on their way in and out of town.
‘I just worry, but I don’t need to, really. He’s promised he’s going to get some help about his problem. And I think it just makes him feel bad that he can’t, you know, provide. He was feeling so bad. He feels just awful about himself sometimes.’
In Mack’s mind, Bart was there too, and the two of them—Mack and Bart—were laying into Carl, and Carl felt just awful about himself as they kicked the living shit out of him, and squelched him into the very ground.
‘Because Bart, well, I don’t know—I think Carl had some money trouble with Bart. I mean—not Bart, but one of Bart’s mates probably. I don’t know. Bart was always sticking up for people.’ Judy had kept on talking.
‘Why do you say that?’ asked Mack.
‘Because Bart came around here—you know—this was a couple of months ago. I haven’t thought about it at all. Isn’t that funny?’
Judy looked confused. Lines formed along her brow.
Goodwood Page 21
