The magpies settled, one on the fence, and the other on the tree, and Fitzy, who had fallen against the rain gauge and knocked it off its post, continued to fall on top of it thoroughly, smashing the outer tube against the inner tube and conjuring a particularly sharp, knife-like shard from within which—as Fitzy’s lower body landed—triumphed upwards into her popliteal artery.
Then came the screaming.
Big Jim, just home and enjoying a Toohey’s New in front of Wheel of Fortune, ran out to find Fitzy in a soggy pool of blood and rain, and Myrtle yapping with terror.
Coral, who loved a drama much more than a calm day, heard the screams from her couch, where she was also watching Wheel of Fortune, and dialled 000.
Fitzy went as white as hail and responded with whimpers to the makeshift tourniquet Big Jim fashioned from his work shirt.
The magpies continued to swoop as he held her damply.
•
That night was dinner at Nan and Pop’s, with us, Mack and Tracy and Jasper, and Nan’s friend Shirl, who had been having a hard time with her loneliness and closed-angle glaucoma.
Nan roasted a chicken because no one wanted red meat since the discovery of Bart, and Nan thought everyone would be sick of fish. Mack, who had spent much of the day with Roy and Derek Murray, didn’t mention any of it at the time. I recall him sitting next to Tracy and appearing lost in thought every so often, but no one was the wiser on any new developments, and everyone was beside themselves with what had happened to Fitzy.
By dinnertime, Fitzy was at Clarke Base Hospital and was—according to the latest update from Big Jim, who had called Mum—receiving a much-needed blood transfusion.
‘Big Jim says she’s O positive, which is the common one,’ said Mum.
‘That’s very fortunate,’ said Nan.
‘Unbelievable,’ said Mack. ‘The woman’s a walking time bomb.’
‘And she has far too much hair for one person,’ said Pop.
There followed a brief and comic history of Fitzy’s numerous misadventures, including the flattening of the guardrail next to the bridge and the toppling of the pole outside the Vinnies as the most recent and dramatic examples.
Poor Fitzy. All she wanted was a bit of rain.
Talk moved along to the Fishing’s The Funnest parade and everyone agreed it was the best one yet, and the best Fish Fry, too. Tracy said Jasper had not stopped parading around the house, and every time she asked him to stop—to rest or eat—he protested that he ‘wasn’t finished yet’, and marched on in circles around the living room, dragging his toy platypus and requesting applause.
‘Everyone needs a little applause on occasion,’ said Nan, and proceeded to tell us of her visit to Mrs Bart, and how she and Jan were thinking of keeping the shop open and becoming butchers.
‘Good on her,’ said Mum, and Shirl whooped like it was the craziest thing anyone had ever heard.
‘She could just put a “Mrs” in front of the sign and they wouldn’t really have to change anything,’ said Mum.
‘I think she should call it “Flora’s”’, said Nan.
There were murmurs of agreement, which gave way to murmurs of resignation, and then Nan looked sad. Mack didn’t say a thing about it. He ate his chicken and potatoes and drank more than he usually did in Reschs Pilsener.
‘It’s her birthday tomorrow,’ said Nan. ‘It’s Mrs Bart’s fiftieth.’
No one spoke, and the air felt uncomfortable and blue.
‘And the awful thing is that she’s terrified something’s going to arrive for her—like a big present—from Bart. Or that she’s going to find something if she looks around properly in the cupboards. She thinks he might’ve organised something for her. You know, before.’
‘How awful,’ said Mum.
‘From beyond the grave,’ said Shirl, quite spookily, like the host of a haunted house.
Mack looked up at Nan, curious.
‘Why does she think he organised something?’ he asked.
‘Well, for her forty-fifth he had that wonderful piano delivered—right on the day. It came all the way from Victoria on a truck. And then there was the rose garden. He was so good at presents. And Mrs Bart’s been going through the books and she says there’s money missing from the takings tin in the office. Bart kept a good log of it and her and Jan are going through everything. There was five hundred dollars taken out a week or so before he drowned, and Bart had written “gift” in the ledger.’
‘Oh, the dear sweet man,’ said Shirl.
I looked at my plate.
‘Five hundred dollars?’ asked Mack.
I couldn’t tell if he was looking at me or not. I didn’t meet his eyes.
‘He was such a generous man,’ said Nan.
‘Oh wow,’ said Mum, ‘that’s very hard.’
‘He had time for everyone,’ said Shirl.
41
Mum and I went home that night and I wrote down in my blue notebook everything Nan had said at dinner. If Mack had said something pertinent I would’ve written that down, too. But he hadn’t. And some things I didn’t know until much later. He didn’t mention Doe Murray and her trembling visit. He didn’t mention Judy White, and the fight about money. None of us knew until much later that Terry White, on his way to Ballina, where he eventually moved, buried the metal tin with roses on it near the banks of the Bellinger River and left in it a photo of Rosie and a fistful of petals.
Mack didn’t mention Roy or Derek Murray either. He didn’t say how Derek had wept like a dreadful child. He didn’t say how Roy had gone as red as blood and unburdened himself of everything he had been holding in since winter. And he didn’t say how, without even having to think much about it, as Roy talked and talked in the back booth of Woody’s, all of it made terrible and unnecessary sense to Mack as soon as he heard it.
Roy was as wet as the lake. He admitted it. He said, ‘Bart knew,’ and Mack asked, ‘Knew what? About what Derek did to Rosie?’ And Roy nodded. ‘He knew.’
•
It had been the Friday before Rosie went missing; two days after Roy had found Derek forcing himself against her like a hungry animal. Roy had been up at the Bowlo, playing the pokies with Carl White and Mal West. He went up to the bar to get a round.
Bart was at the bar drinking and talking to Carmel Carmichael, who stood under the Biggest Catch plaque that celebrated Paulie Roberts.
Bart said, ‘G’day, Roy.’
And Roy said, ‘G’day, mate.’
And then, when Carmel Carmichael was filling the schooners and out of earshot, Bart turned to Roy and his amiable smile fell away.
‘I saw Rosie White last night out the back of the shop,’ he said. Roy went red. Bart lowered his head and crossed his arms. ‘I can see you know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what to do here, Roy. She’s your employee, I understand you’d be concerned.’
Roy coughed and said, ‘Of course.’
Then Bart looked away and said, ‘I’m going to do what I can to help. I’ve just been to see Jude and I told her that. Now I’m thinking maybe you better talk to him before I do. And before I talk to Mack. I don’t trust myself not to beat the living shit out of him, so I feel pretty stuck here, Roy. Rosie’s a sweet kid and she hardly said anything at all. But I’ve seen some things before and I can read between the lines.’
Roy had never seen Bart look so serious. Then Carmel Carmichael set the beers down on the bar mat and continued talking, oblivious, ‘It’s mainly people trying to get their twenty-cent hook back that kills them. I tell them: if they’re undersize and they’re not hooked around the mouth, just snip the line and let them swim away.’
‘Yeah, that’s a tough call, isn’t it?’ Bart had said, taking a sip of his fresh beer.
Roy gathered his round, shaken, and went back to pushing his coins into the slot next to Carl White, thinking only of his awful only son.
•
‘He knew,’ Roy had said when they were in the booth. ‘She didn’
t even have to tell him; he just knew.’
And Mack had looked across at Roy and said, ‘And then you saw Bart at the lake?’
Roy didn’t even protest. He didn’t ask, ‘How the hell did you know?’ He didn’t have anything left to hold back with.
It was true. Roy went fishing that Sunday, the same day as Bart did. He left early and went first to Clarke Bait & Tackle to buy a new rod. He pulled up on the browned grass near the boat wharves and was surprised that there was just one car there, and he was horrified when he realised that the car was Bart’s. There he was, Bart McDonald, on his half-cabin cruiser only a hundred metres from the shore.
What was Roy thinking, coming to the lake on a Sunday? He’d been trying to avoid Bart, and Bart always fished on Sundays. Roy had been dodging him all week, ever since he’d had the word in his ear at the Bowlo. Roy had tried talking to Derek, just as Bart had asked him to, but Derek just drove off in his Kingswood. Roy was a failure as a father, as a man. Where had he misplaced his morals?
All he knew to do was to keep his head down and hope that the whole thing would disappear—just like Rosie had. Thank God she’d left. Good for her. But then it was just a hole where she used to be, and Derek’s holes for eyes staring there, into nothingness. He had seen with his own eyes that his only son was going to rape Rosie White, right there in the dark shop. Roy could hardly utter the words, even to himself. He couldn’t get the picture of it out of his mind. He was disgusted with his son and disgusted with himself.
Unfortunately, Bart was facing Roy’s direction. If he’d had his back to him, Roy could’ve reversed out without him knowing. But Bart had just cut his engine and was standing on his boat, grimacing, and looking directly at Roy Murray.
Christ, thought Roy. What can I possibly say to this man? My friend. What can I possibly say? Roy went red and started sweating as he got out of his car and raised one hand in the air at Bart.
Bart was raising one hand too, but something about his face wasn’t right, and with the other hand he was taking off his life jacket, like it was strangling him. He tore at it, and wrenched it off, as if the thing was made of fire and burning his chest. Roy kept his hand in the air and kept looking. He just looked, not really knowing what he was seeing.
Bart grappled with his life jacket and wrestled it off and it dropped down out of view. Then his knees went out from under him and landed on the edge of his boat. At the same time, his hand went to his chest in a fist and he beat himself there; and then the other hand went to the fist and held it. Roy, on the shore, was far away. But not so far that he couldn’t see it. He saw Bart’s face turn violently in on itself, and he saw Bart kneeling for a moment on the edge of his boat, as if in prayer, and then he saw Bart’s hands, which didn’t move from his heart as he went forward and over into the water.
For a moment, Roy froze. His hand stayed in the air. He was appalled at himself, and paralysed. Sweat covered his brow. Then he collected himself.
‘Bart!’ he yelled, and got no reply from the impression in the brown water that Bart had made when he went under.
Bubbles came up, and then more bubbles. Bart’s boat rocked roughly in the water.
Roy went in.
He waded quickly, in his boots and his jeans and his jacket. The feel of the water was enough to cut his breathing and his lower half was arrested with cold. Ice seemed to drag his old legs down as he dived into the brown water. But Roy swam, thrashing. He propelled himself forward, out towards Bart’s boat, which was already ghostly in its bobbing. It rose back and forth and made silver waves. By the time Roy reached it, all the bubbles were gone.
Roy duck-dived, down and under the water. He opened his eyes to see murky nothing. He closed them again, and almost swallowed water. His hands reached around, clawing for anything.
But Roy found nothing. He felt nothing. There was no arm or leg or log of Bart. There were no feelings left in his own body. Roy just went around in thrashing circles, gulping air and diving, rummaging about in the water, coming up for air, and eventually he was crying, and then he was sobbing, and then he was holding the edge of Bart’s boat, shivering and wailing, the closest a live man had ever felt to drowning.
•
Mack sighed a big sigh as he sat there in the booth and the sun came in and lit up a big square of the lino.
‘Why, Roy? Why didn’t you say something? The whole town has been through hell wondering where he was, and you knew he was in the lake the whole time.’ He was exasperated, drained.
Roy, who was weeping now, said, ‘Derek,’ and then, between sobs, ‘How would it’ve looked? I went back to the shore and I admit it: I sat down and I cried and cried. He was gone. There was no way he was coming up alive, by the time I’d’ve got to a phone to call anyone. But how would it’ve looked? He’d spoken to Jude. I didn’t know if he’d told Mrs Bart, too, or you. I didn’t know how many people he’d told about what Derek did.’ Roy sobbed. ‘And I was the only one out there. When he just fell off his boat and drowned. What would you have thought? That I was trying to protect my son. You would’ve thought that, wouldn’t you? You would’ve thought that I’d gone there and done it to him. To protect my son.’
Mack stared off into space. He didn’t know what he was supposed to say. He didn’t know what he would’ve thought if Roy had turned up on that day back in August, with his awful story, as wet as the lake. He didn’t tell Roy either way. And he didn’t tell Roy that, as far as Mack could figure, Bart hadn’t known anything about Derek at all.
As far as Mack could see, Bart had gone to Judy White and said, ‘You better talk to your husband.’ That was Carl White. Then Bart had stopped Roy Murray, when he was with Carl at the Bowlo, and said, ‘You better talk to him first.’
Him.
Carl White.
All of it made complete and unnecessary sense to Mack as soon as he heard it. Bart hated Carl. He had seen things before, just like he told Roy at the Bowlo. He had seen the bruises on Judy White’s thighs, years back in the hospital. He knew of the drunken carnality that Carl had subjected his darling Flora to, when he groped her near the bathrooms like some kind of animal. Bart knew that Carl White was unchecked and hideous. Who knew how far his foul hands had wandered?
And then Bart finds Carl’s stepdaughter, Rosie White, distressed. She had always seemed dark and troubled, and why was that? He comes across her, upset, and she hardly says anything at all. Maybe she merely hints at something untoward. He reads between the lines. He puts two and two together and arrives at five.
Rosie just wants to go, so he says he’ll help her with some money. He honours her by not telling anyone. She didn’t want it spoken of. Rosie was not a talker. She was inscrutable and proud and brave. And Bart was so generous. He had time for everyone.
Mack didn’t have the heart to tell Roy that, if Mack were a betting man, he would bet that Bart hadn’t known anything at all about Derek Murray. Mack would’ve put five hundred dollars on the fact that Bart assumed that whatever was done to Rosie White was done to her by Carl. And those weeks—all the long weeks that Bart lay in the lake, dusting the silty floor, loosened of his own skin, devoured slowly by the fishes, while Goodwood, desperate for answers, sunk into itself like wet sand—all of it could’ve been avoided. All the while, Roy Murray could have given Goodwood the gift of a swift and merciful conclusion.
In the booth, Roy had looked back at Mack through smeared tears and said, ‘Do you believe me?’
42
Fitzy got home from the hospital the following Thursday and spent her time convalescing in their back sunroom, with a view of where the rain gauge once stood.
‘Val said she’d pray for me,’ she said to Nan, chuckling, when Nan dropped off a batch of chicken soup. ‘I said, “Val, don’t pray for me, pray for rain!”’ And then Fitzy gave Nan an update on the Commonwealth Government’s drought assistance programs and read aloud from her printed material on the Farm Household Support Act 1992, expounding on how it would help
her family of desiccated apple farmers in south east Queensland.
‘The lake’s never been so low,’ said Fitzy. ‘I was shocked to see it like that on the way back into town. Shocked!’
Fitzy was right. With the lack of rain, Grants Lake was at its lowest level on record: thirty-two per cent and dropping. Big Jim complained that he and Merv were having trouble reaching some of their favourite inlets, due to the bottom of the lake being too close to the bottom of their boat.
‘The lower the water, the less the fishes,’ said Big Jim.
‘You’d think the less water there was, the easier it’d be to catch them,’ I said. ‘You know, because they have less room to hide.’
‘You’d think, Jeannie. But you’d be wrong about that.’
Fish or not, on Friday I decided it was time for my first swim of the season at the river. I put on my striped swimmers and shorts and got my towel and phoned George, who was not home but out with Lucas Karras. So Backflip and I went alone, along Cedar Street where burly Joe was still doing his duty at Bart’s Meats, and Roy Murray was behind the counter at Woody’s. I was pleased not to see Derek there, but I didn’t know the truly horrible things about Derek then, I just had my wary instincts about him. Roy Murray was standing in a puff of meat smoke as I walked past.
•
Backflip and I got to the corner near the oval in the high sun around the same time that Kevin Fairley left his north paddock and headed off with his dog, Remington, for a walk to the lake.
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