Goodwood

by Holly Throsby

  ‘Because Rosie went missing just after that. I forgot all about it. Isn’t that funny? It must’ve been just a few days before she went. And after that I was just no use to anyone.’

  ‘Bart came here? Why?’

  ‘Well, because of Carl—and money,’ said Judy, who suddenly appeared to be doubting what she was saying. Mack could see her mind turning before him, her thoughts going off in different directions.

  ‘I just thought it was about money. Bart said—what did he say?—he said: “Is he here?” And I said no, because Carl was up at the Bowlo. And Bart said something like he was glad he wasn’t here. I figured he might want to beat the shit out of him like last time. Then he said . . . that’s right, he said: “Jude, I’m going to do what I can to help. Okay? But none of you can live like this.” And I said, “Oh, Bart, we’ll be right,” because it’s fine! It’ll be fine. He was a terrific guy, wasn’t he? Bart. I wish I had checked in on him. I wish I’d asked about his blood pressure and whatnot.’

  Mack stared at Judy. ‘What if Bart wasn’t talking about money?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, but he must’ve been,’ said Jude, who had done what she could to stop her mind wandering. ‘I mean, I knew he wouldn’t have owed money to Bart, because Bart would never have lent him any! But I just assumed Bart was speaking up for someone else. Didn’t you notice how he always stuck up for people? He had time for everyone. I just thought: Carl owes money to someone down the Bowlo because of his problem. That’s all. And Bart was always sticking up for people.’

  Mack swayed on his feet.

  ‘Carl is really trying to stop it, Mack. He is. He’s going to change. He feels so awful about what he’s done, especially in front of Terry. And with . . . everything.’

  Judy did not once uncross her arms.

  When Mack left Ken Jones was washing his car in the drive.

  ‘Maaate,’ said Ken, with a big smile.

  ‘Hey, Kenny,’ said Mack, without one, and he didn’t even stop for niceties. He just walked out and under the jacaranda and clumps of damp purple flowers stuck themselves to the soles of his boots and Mack almost slipped all the way over on the way to his car.

  36

  That same morning, Roy Murray drove his Pathfinder out to the lake and set his boat towards the deep water to fish for bream. Derek Murray remained behind his bedroom door with the plastic STOP sign on it, and played Street Fighter in his miserable underwear. Since Rosie’s disappearance, Woody’s was closed on Sundays. It sat behind its roller door in the dark.

  But there was another member of the Murray family: one who Goodwood rarely saw. A woman who had long ago lost her mooring and sunk like a ship into her peculiar home. A person who had become more like a rumour than a human being.

  Doe Murray.

  For more than a decade, Doe Murray had kept herself hidden away. But that morning would be different. That rainless morning, Doe Murray stepped out under the blue sky. Perhaps she looked up and checked it for cracks. Perhaps she walked with her head down to the uneven pavement. But Doe Murray left the low weatherboard house and walked—on her underused feet—up Woodland Street, with its handsome paperbarks; right at Cedar Street, near the Wicko; and along the wide footpath to where the shops were.

  Doe crossed the street before the newsagent and walked in the shade of the awnings opposite, turning her head to the windows to find her own hollow reflection. Helen saw her and wondered if she were an apparition. Surely that couldn’t be the real Doe Murray. The eyes must be playing tricks. But they were not; and it was. And the real Doe went right past Mountain Real Estate and directly into the Goodwood Police Station, where Mack sat surrounded by pinewood and a pile of useless paperwork concerning the violent deeds of Carl White.

  Mack looked up and there was this woman, standing there like an apparition.

  ‘Doe Murray?’ he said to her, as if she might not know the answer.

  ‘Mr Mackenzie,’ said Doe, because she always got it a bit wrong.

  Mack was halfway through the word ‘Constable’, in an attempt to correct her, but she cut him off midway, only to create an obscenity that he had not intended.

  ‘About the day Bart drowned,’ said Doe Murray, or the apparition, without further ado.

  Mack was still so surprised. He stood up and went straight to the counter, saying nothing.

  Doe looked up at the ceiling, and through it to the sky.

  ‘What about it?’ asked Mack, mystified.

  ‘Roy,’ said Doe. She was being terribly matter-of-fact.

  ‘What about him?’ asked Mack, transfixed by the apparition.

  Then the apparition spoke to Mack—in words that made sentences and sentences that began to make sense. Doe Murray told Mack, very slowly, as if Mack were dim, that Roy, too, had set out to the lake on the morning Bart had. Roy, too, had driven his car over the high bridge above the water; along the fast flat road after; and parked on the browned grass near the boat wharves. Roy, too, had planned to spend the day fishing.

  ‘And?’ asked Mack.

  ‘And then he came home,’ said Doe Murray.

  ‘And?’ asked Mack.

  Doe Murray’s eyes narrowed. ‘He was as wet as the lake,’ she said, stirring with nerves.

  ‘He was . . .’ Mack trailed off.

  Here was this woman: this Doe Murray. First time she’d set foot in his station. First time he’d heard her talk since Derek Murray was just a boy; after which she’d receded like water after a flood, and let herself seep into the boards of that weatherboard house, never to be seen or heard from again. Until Bart’s funeral the other day—that’s right, she had been there, hadn’t she? She had; and Mack hadn’t thought to appreciate the significance. So up until then—and until now. Here was the apparition that spoke and looked like Doe Murray. Her voice was really quite ordinary. She didn’t have much of an accent that he could hear. She was still a good-looking woman, but older in the face. Crows’ feet had stepped on the sides of her eyes and left their footprints there. Mack looked at the creases and thought for a moment of crows and then, involuntarily, of their close cousins: ravens. He shuddered at the sick feeling. He closed his eyes and gave a quick shake of his head and opened his eyes to find Doe Murray again, looking at him expectantly.

  ‘He was as wet as the lake, Mr Mackenzie,’ she repeated.

  Still, Mack said nothing. What was she telling him? That Roy Murray had something to do with Bart and his drowning? That Roy Murray went fishing that day, even though he told Mack he hadn’t?

  Mack looked at Doe Murray. ‘What are you telling me?’ he asked. ‘What do you think you’re telling me, Doe?’

  ‘I’m telling you just that—that Roy was sopping,’ she said, annoyed.

  ‘Why don’t you come around here and let’s have a chat about it,’ Mack said, trying to soften his tone and regain his command.

  Doe Murray looked up at the roof again, as if she could see the sky right through it. She scanned the ceiling for cracks, appearing apprehensive. The door behind her had swung closed: shutting out the day, shutting in Doe. She was safe and trapped, trapped and safe. She had made it this far. She drew a deep breath and allowed Mack to open the little pinewood gate by the counter and usher her to the black vinyl chair, and she didn’t mind the little whoosh it made when she sat down, even though it sounded like wind, and winds are made of sky.

  Mack sat down at his desk opposite. He got out his statement pad and a pen.

  Doe took a little white pill out of her purse and swallowed it without water.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Mack.

  ‘That’s my business,’ said Doe.

  Mack sat, wordless. So did Doe. She fidgeted with her sleeve and trembled slightly. She flinched at nothing. Then she gathered herself. She dropped her anchor and stabilised. And with the look of a swimmer mounting the starting blocks, she braced for her unburdening, and Mack merely stared as she spoke—an unfettered and unwavering monologue, under an uncracked and invisible sky.
>
  •

  Doe Murray had woken on that Sunday in August like she always did: alone. Roy was always up before her, no matter what time her eyes would open. It was as if he knew she was stirring and made sure not to be there when she roused. The same happened at night, when Roy would potter and watch television, or fill out his order books and reconcile the takings or stay out late at the Wicko or the Bowlo, drinking and playing the pokies. Doe went to sleep alone and woke up alone, and it had been that lonely way for years.

  Roy had proposed a day at the lake for himself, like he did most Sundays. But that day, and the week preceding, there was something fishy. That was the word Doe used—fishy—and Mack stifled a smile when he wrote it down: Roy—fishing at lake—seemed fishy.

  Roy went off in his Pathfinder, Doe stayed indoors, and Derek spent the day playing his awful video games in his underwear. The boy didn’t seem to feel the cold. In fact, Derek didn’t seem to feel much of anything, except a rising anger. It came off his unpleasant face like sweat. And if the anger wasn’t there, there was just blankness. He was wooden, or stone, with two vacant holes for eyes.

  Later on that Sunday afternoon, Roy arrived home and drove his big car all the way into the garage. That, said Doe, wasn’t normal. Usually he pulled up in the drive and left it there. She couldn’t remember when he’d last used the garage, except for during the big hailstorm we’d had last summer. Hailstorm. Doe Murray seemed to find it hard to say the word. What worse phenomenon was there than a hailstorm? Stones of ice flung from cracks in the sky. Only lightning was near as dreadful.

  Doe looked as queasy as Paulie Roberts and Mack had to prod her gently. ‘Roy put his car in the garage,’ he said.

  Doe caught up with herself and found her place. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘very fishy,’ and went on.

  Roy had closed the garage door behind him and come through the joining door into the landing outside the laundry, where Doe was waiting in the doorway, which is known to be, structurally speaking, the safest part of the house.

  She asked him why he was sopping wet.

  ‘Did you fall in the lake?’ she asked. ‘Was there rain? It’s been so dry.’

  Roy’s eyes were wired like poles. His hair was clumped wet weeds. He had actual droplets on his cheeks: water, or sweat, or tears, or all three.

  ‘I . . .’ he said. ‘I . . . Doe, angel’ he said.

  And that was the extent of his explanation.

  The two of them stood there on the tiles, and Roy dripped and had no language, and Doe felt safe in the doorway, but also confused by the wet husband before her. But there was nothing really to worry about, was there? So he’d had a little swim. Maybe he was embarrassed because he’d had an accident. Silly old Roy, he could be so clumsy. Even though his face did look awfully strange and his eyes spoke a silent something that she had never seen them say.

  Roy went to the bathroom and took off his wet clothes and showered. Afterwards, he washed his clothes himself, which was also quite fishy. Much later Doe heard him vacuuming his car. But Doe Murray went to sleep alone that night without thinking more of it. Not until she read the news two days later in the paper. And only then because she had retrieved the paper from the bottom of the bin, where Roy had buried it among the eggshells. There was egg all over the headline on the front page of the Gather Region Advocate: POLICE SEARCH FOR LOCAL COUNCILLOR IN GRANTS LAKE. She scraped some yolk off and read. She was horrified. Bart had gone missing on the very same Sunday that her husband had been as wet as the lake.

  Mack chewed the inside of his mouth and tapped his pen on his desk.

  ‘And you never asked him more about it?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes I did,’ said Doe.

  ‘And when was that?’

  ‘A few days after,’ she said.

  Doe had read the eggy paper and knew that Bart was missing. Of course, she also knew about Rosie, that Rosie was missing—and Roy had been very odd about that as well. He hadn’t wanted to discuss it. And that was extremely fishy, since Rosie was the only employee that her wet husband had.

  ‘I may have my problems,’ said Doe Murray, ‘but I can put two and two together. Four. I know how to get to four.’

  ‘And what would you say four was here?’ asked Mack.

  ‘Well, four is fishy,’ said Doe, and continued.

  After Rosie had disappeared, Roy was distressed. Of course he should be; Rosie had been working for him for almost two years. But it was a fishy distressed, not the regular kind. And then there was Derek. Maybe the fishiness lay with him. He skulked around more than usual and he and Roy weren’t getting on. Doe asked what was wrong, but Roy wouldn’t say. Roy was angrier than she’d ever seen him, and she had not known Roy to be an angry man. Detached, yes. Solitary, unreachable—sure. But not a man of anger. All Roy had said was that Derek was to take over Rosie’s shifts whether he liked it or not, and after a long history of defiantly refusing, Derek miraculously agreed.

  Doe sat most of her days on their brown couch and observed the comings and goings. Derek hadn’t been nice to her for years. Not even civil. As soon as he’d become a boy, rather than a baby, he started asking after his real mother. Roy had always told him the truth: that his real mother was dead. But he also told him a lie: that it had been an accident.

  The whole town knew it was no accident. The whole town knew how she’d suffered—the long life of sadness, the postnatal depression—and that she’d taken her life with a whole bottle of sleeping pills while baby Derek slept in his cot in the next room. Poor Derek had to find out at school, from the mouth of an older girl, who said it to him like he should be ashamed of himself; and Derek Murray went home with a stinging face, and was never nice to Doe Murray again.

  In the years that followed, Doe Murray sunk like a ship.

  She had tried to be a good stepmother. She had wanted so much to have a child of her own, but Roy Murray said he wouldn’t have it, not under any circumstances. He said, one night, after a lot to drink, ‘I don’t want another kid killing my wife,’ and Doe had always wondered if Derek had overheard.

  •

  Mack had been sitting back in his chair while Doe Murray delivered her oration. They had danced around in circles, covering various angles of her story while she sat before him, weighted down by the very air above her. But now Mack leant forward slowly, so as not to alarm the apparition.

  ‘And what did Roy say when you asked him about it? After you read about Bart in the paper?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say,’ said Doe. ‘I said, “What’s going on here, Roy? Why were you wet the day Bart went missing? Don’t make me start guessing.” But he wouldn’t say. He just said he ended up in the water. And when I asked him he got very upset. He started to say something. And then he just said, “Derek.”’

  ‘He said “Derek”?’ asked Mack. He looked squarely at Doe Murray and her strange expression. There was her face, yes—her eyes, mouth, nose—but the combination was almost not a face at all. It was more like an abstract shadow, from so many years without sun, and so many years without having looked upon the faces of others.

  ‘Derek what?’ asked Mack.

  ‘Just Derek,’ said Doe. ‘But I assume he meant Derek Murray? Roy’s son?’ She looked at Mack like he was dumb as a box of hair.

  ‘Yeah, I know which bloody Derek he meant,’ said Mack, who was running short of patience. ‘What about Derek do you think he meant, Mrs Murray?’

  Doe caught his tone and collected herself.

  ‘He said, “Derek,” and I said, “Yes?” And he said, “Derek got himself in some trouble.” But he couldn’t get it out. He said, “I can’t say. I can’t say!” and then he said, “It’ll be okay, it’ll be fine.” And I thought: I don’t think it sounds very fine. But that was all he said about it, and I have known better than to mention it since, because he’s still acting fishy. I have never known him to be an angry man.’

  Sitting forward, Mack hunched his back. His nausea rose and he was glad for his
metal rubbish bin, just in case.

  Doe Murray waited for a response.

  ‘Doe, do you think Derek did something to Bart?’ asked Mack.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Do you think Roy did something to Bart?’

  ‘I don’t know. No. I don’t think Roy’s that kind of man. I know he’s not.’

  ‘Was Derek home the day Bart went missing?’

  ‘He was when Roy left, but then he went out for a few hours in his Kingswood.’

  Mack rubbed his temples. He wanted Doe to know full well that he had a very bad headache coming on.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked her, exasperated.

  Doe sat back.

  When she next spoke, her vague sarcasm was gone. Her narrowed eyes were wide again. She looked, suddenly, genuinely sad. She said, ‘Derek’s not been good to me. I’ve tried, but he hasn’t. I’m not his mother, and I have my own problems. But Roy is a good man. I don’t know what’s happened. He’s been devastated about Bart. Devastated. But Derek . . . I know it sounds awful, but I don’t know about Derek. He is not a smart boy. Something’s happened. I don’t know what, but Roy is angry. Or he is disgusted. He’s disgusted at Derek—his only son! He can hardly look at him! And Derek just plays those horrible games in his room.’ Doe Murray shook her body, like she was shaking off a disgusted feeling of her own.

  Mack heard everything she’d said. He turned it over in his aching head—for his headache had set in like a bad storm by then, and his temples pounded while his sick feeling went up and down like waves, so all he could manage to ask was a question that struck him suddenly from above and didn’t matter at all.

  ‘Doe, how did you get here?’

  ‘I walked.’

  ‘How’d you manage that?’

  ‘I’ve been trying it for twenty-six days,’ she said. ‘To come here. I didn’t want to talk about this on the phone. Twenty-six days of trying and today is the twenty-seventh day and I just did it.’ She smiled. It was the first smile Mack had seen on her face for a decade. Just like that, her face looked like a face again.