The Boundary

by Nicole Watson

  ‘Bub, I’m so glad you’re here. You remember Glenda?’

  Miranda nods at Glenda. ‘Auntie, let’s go home.’

  ‘But he’s here, bub. Golden Tongue.’

  Glenda releases a sigh of frustration. ‘No, he’s not, Auntie Ethel,’ she says. ‘Harrison McPherson was here this morning, to meet his staff . . .’

  ‘Well, there you go. True God, tell me, Glenda, how do you feel about working with a paedophile?’

  ‘Okay, that’s enough. We’re out of here.’ Miranda seldom raises her voice at Ethel. But Ethel rarely defames rich and powerful men. To her surprise, Ethel rises from her chair.

  ‘See you, Glenda. Next time we run into each other, we’ll have a real yarn then.’

  As they venture into George Street, they run into Jonathon. Even though he has just been in Court, Jonathon looks fresh, like he’s woken from a deep sleep.

  ‘Jonathon, how are you, bub?’

  ‘Auntie Ethel, what a surprise.’

  ‘You’re lookin’ well, but you’re getting a bit thin, my boy. What do you think, Miranda?’

  Miranda gives Jonathon a cheeky grin. She’s relieved to be away from the Tribunal. There is no one here for Ethel to defame.

  ‘I agree. Auntie, I think you should cook your deadly shepherd’s pie for Jonathon.’

  ‘But I’m a vegetarian,’ he says.

  ‘You’re what?’ Ethel is horrified.

  ‘I have been for the last ten years. What are the two of you doing in the city?’ Jonathon speaks as though the city is a different country from their homeland of West End.

  ‘We’ve just been to the Tribunal.’

  ‘Oh really?’ Jonathon’s eyes widen with curiosity.

  ‘Actually, we’re on our way home.’

  Miranda’s firm voice dampens his interest. ‘Would you like me to hail you a cab?’

  ‘What a gentleman. Miranda, why haven’t you settled down with a nice man like Jonathon?’

  Ethel’s words were not calculated to hurt, but they do.

  Charlie’s sitting on the verandah. Three places are set on the old table of splitting timber. Miranda can smell the tea-leaves in the pot. His jaw is clenched, but that’s nothing unusual. Unlimited compassion for those in the community. Only cynicism and bitterness left for her. Charlie raises his eyebrows, the way he used to when Miranda lied about brushing her teeth.

  ‘Heard you had words with your boss.’

  ‘What did he say to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Miranda hates these cryptic discussions. ‘Then how . . .’

  ‘You have to give up the grog. You look like a fifty-year-old woman.’

  His candour stings. Her self-esteem is already a pile of bones. Ethel puts her arms around Miranda.

  ‘Charlie, leave this girl alone.’

  ‘Ethel!’

  ‘Charlie, I mean it. She’s had a tough week.’

  He sighs in frustration.

  ‘Charlie, where’s my chocolate biscuits?’ Auntie Ethel says.

  ‘You don’t need them. Besides, your doctor said you have to cut back on sugar. I thought you were worried about diabetes.’

  ‘But I’ve been walking, every morning at six o’clock.’

  ‘In the fridge.’ Charlie’s voice hums with resignation.

  Ethel disappears inside, leaving Miranda without her shield.

  ‘I have to go. Bye, Dad.’

  ‘Anytime you want to talk.’

  ‘I’ll keep it in mind.’

  Boundary Street is the theatre of a cold war between the new rich and old poor. She walks past rundown houses that carry million-dollar price tags. Miranda had always wanted to buy her own, but that’s a pipedream now. She notices the doors of Justice Products are closed, as if in mourning. But fragments of the old West End linger. Inside the windows of one of the few hostels left, Aboriginal flags sing in defiance.

  She’s so angry that steam could escape from her ears. A boss could never be an equal friend. In the event of a clash of wills, O’Neill would always prevail. She’ll have to grin and bear it. Miranda has no doubt that O’Neill genuinely cares. Charlie too. In his own twisted way. But she’s a mature woman of thirty-eight.

  ‘Hey, stranger.’

  Miranda turns to see the woman from the old converted flats next door. She has a large frame and her hair is cut in a mohawk. Lives in cargo pants and singlets. They say hi occasionally, when Miranda’s sitting on her back patio, wine glass in one hand, cigarette in the other.

  ‘Hey, Tegan. How are you?’

  ‘Great. And I’m glad I ran into ya.’

  Her neighbour often busks in Boundary Street. Has the look of a busker, unkempt hair, feet naked. Something dancing in her eyes, a silhouette that teases without spite.

  ‘Oh really?’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got an exhibition opening next Wednesday. Was hoping you’d come.’

  Tegan has the rough voice of one who’s seen life’s underbelly and emerged without regret. A survivor.

  ‘Sure, I’d love to come.’

  ‘It’s at the Ochre Lounge . . . the flash place that sells bush tucker at city prices.’

  ‘I know the place.’

  Tegan continues on her way and Miranda is calm now. She even looks forward to the exhibition. Mobile phone screeches.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Miranda.’

  She recognises the voice of the corrupt evangelist.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Miranda, that’s no way to speak to someone who has the ability to cause you a great deal of embarrassment.’ Payne’s voice is playful, but cruelty swims through it.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she says.

  ‘You really have no idea?’

  ‘Just cut the bullshit.’

  ‘Miranda, please don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about our little tryst in your office last Thursday night. You know, I have been thinking about going to the police. After all, assault is a very serious matter. How would the Law Society view a solicitor who was not only charged with assault, but is also a pathetic alcoholic?’

  She knows he’s relishing the fear in her silence. Payne is like a vulture feasting on road kill.

  ‘My fucking eye, Miranda!’

  The heightened pitch in his voice is suddenly terrifying. She’s always thought that Payne is unbalanced. As though he really does believe the ridiculous platitudes that politicians and journalists throw at him.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Geez Miranda, your clients must cringe when they smell the grog on your breath. I’m surprised you haven’t been struck off.’

  ‘You have five seconds to tell me what you want.’

  ‘Now that’s no way to speak to your new lover.’

  ‘I’m hanging up.’

  ‘A private meeting. That’s what I want. You and I have some issues to resolve.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘My office. Tonight.’

  ‘I’ll consider it.’

  ‘I look forward to it. By the way . . .’

  ‘What now?’

  ‘Wear something sexy.’

  She imagines him in his office, with his feet on the desk.

  ‘Come at nine. Call me when you’re downstairs.’

  ‘What if I don’t turn up?’

  ‘Then you’d better get a new job. Or maybe you won’t. Perhaps you’ll become another black whore. Turning tricks for grog.’

  She hears Payne’s confident laughter before the phone goes dead.

  The woman pushing a pram walks past her, ventures to the very edge of the footpath. She can sense Miranda’s anger, her fear. The afternoon breeze has only just arrived;
it’s too early to drink. But her mouth pines for the taste.

  The public bar of the Boundary Hotel reeks of spilt beer and spilt lives. Gravelly voices should be omens. But all that Miranda can think of is the three bottles of wine in the plastic bag.

  Her apartment, Miranda realises, is more a tomb of broken dreams than a home. Old furniture that should have been replaced years ago lives alongside photographs from a time when smiles were genuine. Empty bottles are kept hidden underneath the kitchen sink, only disposed of late at night when the neighbours are asleep. Every corner holds memories of drunken tears.

  It’s not as though she hasn’t attempted to address her loneliness. She’s tried to meet men at nightclubs, but that only ever ends in cheap and nasty flings. So she joined a dating agency for the princely sum of two thousand dollars. Once a month, she’d climb into a ridiculously expensive dress and shoes that made her feel a metre taller. She did her best to appear casual and asked her dates thoughtful questions about themselves. Even though each man had said that he enjoyed dinner, not one called. So she gave up.

  She doesn’t believe in God. Has she ever? And Karma’s a load of rubbish too. Some of the nastiest women she’s met are happily married, with healthy children. She, on the other hand, has devoted all of her adult life to a community legal practice, defending the city’s discarded and forgotten. She’d never imagined she too would become expended of promise.

  EIGHT

  Isabella decided that if the room had a name, it would be Grim. The cheap contact on the desk is torn. The single bed groans whenever she moves. Even though the cleaner drops by once a week, the room never smells fresh.

  Outside the grimy window, green fruit is stapled to the banana trees. Isabella can’t remember if the trees were here the last time. She had been in a different room back then, one that had a view of the traffic. At least from here, she can stare into the garden. The alcoholics sit around a wooden table next to the fishpond. Solemn faces occasionally break into smiles.

  Between them, the patients have ingested just about every kind of poison, in just about every kind of way. Ice, heroin, cocaine, the kaleidoscope of prescription drugs. But they drift towards their own. Alcoholics in the backyard, heroin addicts in the dim living room, ice addicts privately writhing.

  Isabella’s emotions are a carousel wheel. She’s nauseous from the wooden horse that drags her from the depths of despair to euphoria. Some call the latter a miracle. Isabella had her miracle at three in the morning on the fourth day. She was going to go back to university to study dentistry. Losing her teeth had been one of the worst aspects of her old life. Without her parents’ money, she’d still be in excruciating pain. Surely her clients at the shelter deserve the same care? Isabella would return a hero. She could visualise it so clearly; she was convinced it was an epiphany. But by the afternoon, depression had hit like an elevator whose cables had snapped. She was a junkie who had made it to the other side, only to become an alcoholic, a shipwreck undeserving of its sandbank.

  Without the chemical crutch, Isabella has to deal with being Isabella. Shy. Painfully shy. When she was a little girl, she would scamper to her room at the sound of the doorbell. Mum and Grandma would appear minutes later, in the doorway, to see tiny feet stuck out from under the bed.

  ‘Emily, that child is paranoid,’ Grandma would say.

  Some couldn’t pinpoint the moment that life crashed, when chemicals became fused with feeling. Isabella can. She had just topped Year Eleven English. She so desperately wanted to share her news with Dad she didn’t bother to ring him first. Isabella practically ran from the lift and stormed into his office – only to see Dad and his secretary, Lucy. Lucy was sitting on his lap, Dad’s face buried in her naked breasts.

  Some memories had been destroyed by chemicals, others by the sheer need to survive. Like the putrid breath of the old man who bounced on top of her. Lying in the gutter, face bloody, teeth mere stubs. The night that began with an argument over twenty dollars and ended with scores of cops and a body bag. Those memories are locked in a huge wooden chest. Occasionally they pulse, but the latch will always remain soldered.

  She had fought so hard to recover from the drugs, only to end up back here.

  It had begun innocently.

  Each day she listened to men who had lost their families, children unable to distinguish between affection and exploitation, faces lined with adult hardness. She had chosen that world. For Isabella, it offered absolution. A solvent to wipe the slate clean, not only for that night, but for the hurt she had caused Mum. But Isabella herself was a sponge, soaking up the pain. So she bought a bottle of wine from the drive-through in her street. Sitting in front of the television, she sipped the first glass. She enjoyed that couch. Like everything else in that apartment, she had paid for it herself, without any assistance from Mum and Dad. Swept up in the idiocy of reality television, Isabella had soon finished the bottle. Within weeks, Isabella was drinking two bottles per night. She’d just rekindled her friendship with Darlene, the only childhood friend who had stuck by her, when she was homeless herself. But Darlene liked to party. Every Friday night they’d hit the clubs. At first, it was only a few harmless giggles, dancing to her favourite eighties tunes. But after a few months, Isabella was in free fall. It became normal for her to wake on a Saturday morning with an exploding head, next to a man whose name had been lost in neon lights. Now she needed a drink just to function. To feel normal. Darlene hasn’t visited since she arrived here.

  Life here is hard. No independence, living with others’ rules, being told that she has a disease the only cure for which is lifelong abstinence. But she has made friends, like Peter, the doctor. He’d always enjoyed a Scotch after work, countless drinks at Saturday afternoon barbecues. Reality bit when he crashed his BMW into the neighbour’s letterbox. Peter’s face has the appearance of permanent sunburn. There have been times when she’s seen him in the yard, crying to himself. His family never visits; he rarely mentions his career, or what is left of it. But when he listens to her, it’s as though there are only the two of them. If it is ever possible to achieve normalcy in this place, Isabella was on her way. Now, she’s not sure what normalcy is.

  ‘Your dad had many flaws. But he really did love you, Issie. He’d want you to stay here until you’re well.’

  Mum’s voice was restrained but not cold. Whenever there is a family crisis, Mum just deals with it, because there is no one else to carry the burden. At least, not since Grandma passed away.

  Isabella hardly slept last night. It’s not the creaky bed, or the hushed voices in the hallway. It’s guilt. Guilt that’s dragging her down like wet concrete.

  ‘Issie.’

  Mum stands in the doorway, wearing a long black dress and an elegant matching jacket. Her embrace is firm. Face full of concern.

  Much later, Isabella would try to remember the drive to the church. She could only picture the sudden rain, torrential rain caressing everything in its path. It was as though Dad was making his presence known. But it was the old Dad of her childhood, the one who still loved Mum. Although he was rarely there, when he was, he could be wonderful. Sometimes, when he came home early, Dad would fall into character while reading Dr Seuss books.

  There’s little shelter, most stand underneath black umbrellas. Mum is summoning her strength, like a swimmer just before plunging into the pool on a winter morning. Father Michael opens Isabella’s car door. She’s taken aback. The ginger hair of his youth has turned completely grey.

  ‘Emily, Isabella, I’m so sorry.’

  Isabella manages to smile slightly. Everyone will be using those words today.

  They’re greeted with hugs and glances of acknowledgment. But she doesn’t know these people. Isabella is staring into a sea, watching waves, each indistinguishable from the last. In the corner of her eye, she sees the television cameras. Cringes. The scent of incense in the ch
urch is overpowering.

  ‘Isabella.’ The man’s voice is gentle. Strong hands on her waist. ‘I’ll help you to your seat.’

  She peers wistfully at the holster beneath his suit coat, before sitting down. Jason recognises it. The look. The one that begs to cut the strings of the invisible hundred pound weight of knowing. Knowing that one phone call could have made all the difference. The witness sees the murder, but is gripped by fear. The killer might even contact her, show up outside her kids’ school. So the witness carries it around for thirty years, until it rots her insides. When she’s just about to croak, that’s when she finally makes the call. But Isabella Brosnan won’t be waiting that long. Jason knows she’ll spill today.

  The memorial service for Bruce Brosnan is just as he expected – all pomp and canonisation. The legal profession has turned out in force, along with the Premier and half of his cabinet. Bruce Brosnan is painted as a saviour of the downtrodden. Much is made of his contributions to the board of Legal Aid Queensland and his role as the former president of the Bar Association. But the real measure of the man, Jason thinks, is in the faces of the two women he has left behind.

  Isabella Brosnan is so thin she could be blown away by the storm outside. Her short blond hair is brittle and her face carries an awkward expression. Perhaps she doesn’t believe what’s being said about her father. Emily’s arms are tightly wrapped around Isabella’s shoulders. Lioness with her cub. Emily flinches when she sees him.

  Jason and Higgins walk to the street, maintaining a decent view of Emily and Isabella. The women are surrounded by well-wishers. Isabella stares at them and speaks to her mother. While Emily is distracted by the Premier, Isabella heads in their direction.

  ‘Detectives?’ Isabella has a strong face, a prominent jaw. ‘I’d like to speak to you, if I may.’

  She has a quiet strength that neither detective was expecting.

  Higgins smiles warmly. ‘Certainly. Is there somewhere we can go?’