The Boundary

by Nicole Watson

  But was she happy?

  Dan would laugh freely at her wit and listen enthusiastically to her chatter about her cases. Their lovemaking had been exciting, but as soon as it ended, he’d roll over without so much as a hug. He never had the courage to share his thoughts about their future, always placing some kind of barrier between them.

  The white stucco house at the corner of her street looks as though it’s lived through the generational change in West End. Probably bought for a pittance decades ago, it would now be worth a fortune. Branches laden with purple flowers lean beyond the yard and into the street. Miranda crouches to avoid their touch.

  Boundary Street is a suburb contained in a street. Incense wafts from quirky gift shops that sell cheesecloth and crystals. Real estate agents have hung photographs of properties on their windows: she winces at five hundred thousand dollars for something ‘cheap and a great start’. The luscious voice of a saxophone fills the air.

  She continues up the hill, passing the Murri Hostel, quickening her pace as she creeps past Charlie and Ethel’s home. The light in the kitchen is on and she can hear the faint trace of Huey B on the radio. She pauses at the top of the hill and turns to see the links in the chain from Boundary Street to the skyscrapers of Brisbane’s CBD. As the pink and orange sky disappears into night’s blanket, she walks on.

  A dim light inside the church illuminates the image in the stained glass window. The saint’s dress appears to be from the middle ages. He holds a sword above a Latin inscription. Miranda wonders if there is a patron saint for drinkers. A priest walks down the rickety steps and smiles.

  Enclosed by chicken wire and overgrown shrubs, it’s as though the hall is deliberately hiding. Miranda walks down the brief, worn path. A young man and a middle-aged woman stand outside the door. He appears to be in his mid twenties. He’s handsome with chocolate eyes and a muscular physique. The woman is stout but not obese. Her hair is grey and cropped. The woman’s clothes are casual but the fabric is expensive, designer label wear for slumming.

  It’s not too late for Miranda to turn around. But they have stopped talking. Both are now looking at her. ‘Welcome,’ the woman says, warmly. ‘I’m Ann. We’ll be starting in a couple of minutes.’

  An urn bubbles furiously beside a pile of Styrofoam cups and a basket of teabags. Miranda makes a cup of milky tea and then walks to one of the orange chairs of hard plastic.

  Most people stand in clusters, chatting animatedly, some are even laughing. But a few are like Miranda, alone and mirthless. The plain wheat biscuit tastes like cardboard, but at least it makes her look occupied.

  She studies the large poster draped across the wall in front of a podium: The Twelve Steps. Does she even believe in God? Is alcoholism really just a hereditary disease? And what of the cure – a lifetime of meetings in places like this?

  ‘Hey, stranger.’

  Miranda turns to find Tegan sitting in the row behind. She radiates good health, her skin luminous. What on earth is she doing here?

  ‘I know that look.’

  ‘Sorry. I mean, if I look so surprised.’

  ‘It’s been eight years.’

  ‘And you still come here?’ Miranda says, incredulously.

  ‘If I wasn’t getting something out of it, I wouldn’t be.’

  ‘I don’t really need this place . . . it’s my boss.’

  Tegan’s laugh is earthy. ‘This place achieved a miracle for me. It could do the same for you. But you have to want it.’

  Tegan looks up to greet a young man; he’d been standing outside with Ann a little earlier. ‘Ian, how are you, bro?’

  They embrace tightly.

  ‘Good to see you, sis.’

  As Miranda settles into her first AA meeting, she feels a slight shift in her thinking. After all, Tegan seems happy. Is happiness a process that can be learnt? Perhaps it exists independently of good fortune?

  But the more she listens, the more she feels confronted. Their stories bite into Miranda’s conscience like termites on wood.

  Jenny sobs as she recalls being arrested as she drove her twin boys to kindergarten. Her husband has since taken the children to Western Australia. Now Jenny sees her sons only twice a year, under the resentful eyes of her former mother-in-law. Her whole frame shudders as she speaks, like a dilapidated farmhouse abandoned by the family who had once breathed life inside it.

  Ian’s withdrawal was so painful he ended up in Emergency. Miranda has read that going cold turkey can be fatal, but till now she’s never met anyone who’s come close to dying from sobriety. She ponders the fingerprints that a daily cask of wine has left on his brain. Still too afraid to consider how alcohol has affected her own.

  Ian’s descent began with a childhood fractured by his mother’s death and a heartbroken father who took to the bottle. By the time he was twelve, Ian’s father was hardly ever home. Neighbours who had pitied them in the aftermath of the tragedy, began looking down on them. Before long, Ian was living on the streets. And a diet of plonk. When he could sell himself, he’d obliterate reality with vodka.

  Ian hasn’t imbibed for thirteen months. His face swells with pride as he describes his new life as a trainee administration officer in a government department. Only last week, he moved out of the hostel into his own flat. Miranda is charmed by the young man’s sincerity. She wants to know when he hit rock bottom, so that swimming to the surface was his only option.

  As if reading her mind, Ian describes his final drink. He can’t remember how it began, only the epiphany when he woke in Meston Park. A dog licking his bloodied face. The few dollars in his wallet taken. No idea how he got there.

  Her story.

  She can’t tell a soul. Never will.

  Miranda coughs and splutters like a broken down car. Her lungs plead with her to stop.

  I drink not because I have no control over my addiction. I drink because I have no control over my dreams.

  Two teenagers shoot hoops on the beaten basketball court, underneath the streetlight.

  She sits on top of the picnic table and cries.

  Ethel wants to hold her, but it’s pointless. It’s a journey Miranda must travel, on her own. When they’d seen Miranda stumbling in Meston Park that night, Ethel had pleaded with Red Feathers to carry her girl home. But he wouldn’t. Ethel understood his reasoning. Besides, he promised that no harm will ever come to Miranda. Red Feathers keeps his promises.

  Ethel sits with Red Feathers behind the huge mud brick oven on the hill. It was an experiment built by a community group, several years ago. She once cooked a damper inside it, Ethel tells him, a flash one too with pumpkin seeds and parmesan cheese. On top of the oven the group built an eagle, each wing folding into seating for at least three people.

  Ethel sits in one wing, Red Feathers the other. The mud brick is sheltered by a tin roof, which shields them from the streetlight.

  ‘She’s so sad, that one.’

  Red Feathers shakes his head. Ethel knows Miranda’s self-destruction has pained him too.

  ‘Too much sorry business in this place.’

  Smells of the community garden waft up the hill. Ethel breathes in thyme and basil.

  ‘Hard to believe we been fighting the whole time you’ve been gone.’ She laughs in frustration. ‘And it’s the same bloody fight.’

  Ethel knows the fight better than any of the living. Red Feathers had found her an empty vessel, but over time he had filled her with their stories.

  It began in the palms of Biamee, he told her. It was Biamee’s fingers that carved the people, his genius the source of the millions of beings who swam, flew and scurried across landscapes every colour of the sunsets he painted. Biamee loved them so dearly that he created the clever men. The clever men had promised to protect them from the newcomers. An impossible pledge.

  A
t first relations between the two were civil. The Corrowa tried to impress upon the townspeople that some places were dangerous and best avoided, especially the ring. But the newcomers cared little for protocol. They extracted labour from the black men and women for which they paid them opium and alcohol. Gradually, the clever men left, in disgust. Only Red Feathers had stayed.

  During the day, blacks could enter the town; indeed, they were expected to. Most white families employed black domestics, gardeners, cooks. But as night descended, West End’s streets emptied of the Corrowa. Only the domestics stayed, quietly eating their dinner by the woodpile. The townspeople looked to the Corrowa’s ‘protector’, Horace Downer, to strictly enforce the curfew.

  Some were taken to faraway missions after the ‘protection’ Act passed in 1897. Those who remained held onto the old world. But the townspeople resented their presence. In time, contempt mutated into hysteria.

  The Blacks are cunning. Like dingoes. You can see it in their eyes.

  Don’t trust the domestic with food. She’ll lace it with arsenic.

  Just as you poisoned her family?

  Don’t allow the boy near white women. He’ll do to them . . .

  What you did to his wife, his sister?

  Remove the vermin.

  Red Feathers was the first to fall.

  After, from his dark prism, he watched the death marches. Survivors were cast around the State, like seeds in the wind. Red Feathers’ family was spirited away to Yarrabah, but his wife never walked its pristine beach. She died during the journey and was laid to rest in an unmarked grave, far removed from Corrowa land. Their daughter would grow up in a dormitory, knowing nothing of her parents. Ethel’s mother.

  Red Feathers lived with the guilt for over a century. But he remained trapped in his prison of night. It was the force of Ethel’s pain that brought him back, he told her, when the white man’s law had denied her identity. Just as her grief over her dead son had brought him to her, all those years ago.

  But time is of the essence.

  Before, Red Feathers had been with her for only a month when his body began to disappear. At first, his left arm faded from her sight. Then his feet, followed by his legs, until finally even his head disappeared.

  Tonight, Ethel can still see all of her grandfather. But she knows it’s only a matter of time before his journey back to the darkness will begin.

  She looks at him and frowns.

  ‘Don’t be wild with me.’

  She shakes her head in frustration.

  ‘Don’t you see? I had to tell the young fella your name. Come on now, he’s your mob.’

  She waits for Red Feathers to reassure her, but he says nothing.

  ‘You know I wouldn’t have said anything otherwise.’

  Ethel suppresses a sob. She gets so upset when she thinks she’s disappointed him.

  ‘I can so keep a secret.’

  Ethel’s voice has turned soft, childlike.

  ‘Okay, okay, there was that one time. But Lesley and me, we were just kids.’

  She wipes a tear from her cheek.

  ‘We didn’t have no one lookin’ after us.’

  They sit silently for a moment, welcoming the cool night air on their skin.

  ‘You must have felt good today, seeing our mob at the march? You know, they’re determined to stay at Meston Park in that tent embassy.’

  Ethel rubs her forehead to relieve the pain. Soon the headaches will go, together with Red Feathers.

  ‘What, you’re not talking to me now?’

  Red Feathers scratches his beard, the way he does whenever he’s deep in thought.

  ‘I know you don’t want to. But you gotta do it.’

  He frowns at Ethel.

  ‘No one’s gonna take any notice of us until you take him. Come on now. We talked about this.’

  In the moonlight he can just make out the contours of her face. It’s a solemn face that reminds him of his solemn duty.

  ‘The Premier,’ she murmurs softly.

  Red Feathers nods reluctantly.

  ‘He’s next.’

  PART THREE

  SEVENTEEN

  Mrs Stanley has been without Mr Stanley for some time, years perhaps, but she still nurses the pain. Jason doesn’t have to ask her. He just knows. From the cream shirt that’s too big, flowing black slacks that cover her bell shape. Every single grey hair has been swept from a face empty of make-up. Her peripheral vision sees only life’s hard edges, too weary to capture lightness.

  The house is neatly kept. No dirty dishes in the sink or yellowed newspapers lying about. But it’s showing signs of disrepair. Walls carry the footprints of water damage and the screen door in the dining room is broken. Behind her steely façade, Mrs Stanley is falling off her hinges too. Throwing out her words at Higgins, like they’re highly flammable. But Jason knows that if Higgins has to light a match, he will.

  ‘How long had you worked for Mr McPherson?’ Higgins says.

  ‘Twelve years.’

  ‘What kind of a boss was he?’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Ever have any arguments?’

  ‘Never.’

  Higgins taps his fingers on the table. It’s the only noise in this room. ‘What was your routine?’

  ‘I went to his house one morning a week. The days varied, according to Mr McPherson’s instructions. I dusted, mopped the floors, vacuumed the carpets. That kind of thing.’

  ‘How long would it usually take?’

  She shrugs. ‘It’s a large house, so a few hours. Sometimes less.’

  ‘Did you perform any other services for Mr McPherson?’

  ‘I cleaned his chambers every Saturday.’

  ‘Do you work for anyone else?’

  ‘I do ad hoc jobs during the week.’

  ‘So Mr McPherson was your only long-term client?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She hands Higgins a tray of biscuits. The rich base is filled with raspberry jam. Higgins declines. Jason assumes that he’s too hung-over, too sick, to eat anything sugary. Jason doesn’t care for sweets, but he accepts nonetheless. He notices her fingernails – chewed down to the pink.

  ‘What will you do now?’

  She pulls a face that’s mostly confident. But anxiety lurks, like eels camouflaged by pond slime.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Higgins offers a cynical grin.

  ‘I’ve got savings.’

  Higgins looks at the broken door and laughs. ‘Really?’

  She grimaces as though Higgins just crossed the invisible boundaries of decorum. ‘Mr McPherson made it clear on a number of occasions that if anything happened to him, I would be looked after.’

  ‘He was a very generous employer.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  Her voice has become stern, perhaps threatening. But Jason knows that it’s wasted on Higgins, his hide is impervious.

  ‘These days very few employers offer to look after an employee for life.’

  ‘Mr McPherson was old school. Like me.’

  Higgins waits. Jason’s seen it before; he’s giving her time to stew.

  ‘Twelve years is a long time to work for the one person. The two of you must have become close.’

  ‘Not really. Mr McPherson was seldom there.’

  ‘Surely you must have spoken with him from time to time.’

  ‘Mr McPherson usually wrote his instructions down on a note and left it on the kitchen table.’

  ‘What kind of instructions?’

  ‘Well, he’d specify what day he wanted me to come the following week. And if Mr McPherson didn’t want me to go inside a room, he’d say so in a note.’

  ‘Why would he do t
hat?’

  ‘Mr McPherson didn’t pay me to ask questions.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think he paid you precisely because you didn’t ask questions.’

  She purses her lips and her small eyes tell Jason they’ll get nothing.

  ‘Was there a particular room that concerned him?’

  ‘A few times he told me not to go into his bedroom.’ She pauses, appearing to mull over her thoughts. ‘And he had specific instructions about the living room on the ground floor. I had to stay away from there.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Mrs Stanley, do you expect me to believe that in twelve years you never once allowed your curiosity to get the better of you?’

  She looks sheepishly into her coffee. ‘Once.’

  ‘Once what?’

  ‘I had a look beneath the curtain. I thought it odd to hang a curtain over a wall that didn’t have a window.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘A door. It was locked.’

  Jason can feel it, the sixth sense that comes with the job. Broken bodies, remorseless killers and the sheer unfairness of life have all left a carbon print on his psyche that responds to lies like antennae to sound waves. He knows that Higgins has felt it too.

  ‘I think you know more than you’re telling me.’

  She says nothing.

  ‘Mrs Stanley, three men have been killed. Two of them had families.’

  Her silence is a pencil, drawing disgust on their faces, in Higgins’ voice.

  ‘If I find out you covered for that paedophile, I’ll do everything within my power to go after you!’

  Higgins slams his hand so hard the glass tabletop almost shatters. It has the desired effect – her smugness is melting.

  ‘There was one time, six months ago. I noticed the key had been left in the door.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I needed that job. My husband took all of our money when he left. I would have lost this house.’