‘Such as?’ Alice is unable to keep the irritation out of her voice. Both Sylvie and Leyla are friendly and polite whenever they meet her grandmother. They put up with her grumpy, intrusive questions about their lives and rude comments about their Annie-Get-Your-Gun clothes and attitudes, and yet they still meet with her grandmother’s disdain. Why? Because their father Charlie is a meatworker and they live in a small unimpressive house out of town. She has suggested a number of times that Alice should find more ‘suitable’ campanions. You snobby old bat! The twins are my best friends.
‘There is a rather good gallery down near the library,’ Phyllis tells Eric pompously, ignoring Alice. ‘I think you’ll find it has an interesting little collection of nineteenth-century water colours and of course there are some fascinating geographical features around this town. The caves for example are only a fifteen-minute drive. Do you drive?’
‘Yes I do, Mrs Hickey.’
‘Well, I have a rather good work vehicle. And it’s at your disposal should you and Alice decide to do a bit of sightseeing.’
‘Oh, how wonderful!’ Eric’s face lights up. Alice’s mouth falls open. Sightseeing!
‘Are you able to drive a four-wheel?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Eric says confidently.
Alice gives him a hard look. Liar. When she’d asked him that same question on the phone recently, he’d told her that he had no idea what gears were for.
‘I keep encouraging Alice to get her licence but . . .’
‘I’ve only just turned eighteen, Gran!’
‘Well . . . you should have been down at the police station the next day, my dear. That would have been my attitude.’ Phyllis smiles at Eric who smiles back in total agreement. Alice can’t be bothered telling her that you don’t go to the police station for your licence anymore.
‘What age were you when you got your licence, Mrs Hickey?’ Eric asks innocently.
‘Well, I suppose I was over thirty, but . . .’ she has grace to blush a little, ‘things were totally different then!’
‘Of course they were.’
‘There was the war and . . . women were not encouraged the way they are now.’ Phyllis stifles another yawn. ‘I’m going to have to leave you now,’ she smiles at Eric. ‘I do hope you have a comfortable night.’
‘I’m sure I shall.’ He stands to help her up.
‘I’m concerned that Alice won’t entertain you properly to morrow,’ she grumbles, ‘so I’ll have a think tonight about some appropriate outings.’
‘Please don’t be concerned on my behalf!’ Eric smiles at Alice behind her back. ‘Those caves sound very interesting.’
After Phyllis has gone upstairs to bed, Alice and Eric don their coats and go for a walk. They say nothing for some time. Alice is enjoying the cool night air and the sense of escape. She strides out alongside her friend.
‘You want to go down to the water?’
‘What if I fall in?’ Eric asks, half seriously.
‘I’ll save you.’
‘Okay!’ Eric squares his shoulders and sniffs the air. ‘I’ll risk it!’
They stride on. She will take Eric down to the beach and let the tang of the sea and the crashing of the waves do their work.
‘So what did you think of Grandma?’
‘Adorable!’ Eric doesn’t hesitate for a moment. ‘Love her! Christ! What a museum piece! How old is she again?’
‘Ninety-two!’ Alice laughs softly. They are heading down Murtle Street now and Pitt Street is only a block away. Will she show him the house? The tiny bubble of panic that begins with the thought bounces around inside her chest, building strength and muscle. No. Not tonight. They will walk further along the beachfront, down to where that fancy restaurant sits perched out on the cliffs. Maybe they will get a glimpse of her cousin through the windows.
‘So, Alice, are you going crazy here, or what?’
‘What do you think?’ Alice puts her arm through his.
‘It’s so very quiet,’ Eric whispers, as if this is an extraordinary and unexpectedly freakish secret, ‘and dark and . . . What do people do at night?’
Alice doesn’t bother to answer. She takes the turn to the right that leads down to the ocean. What do people do anywhere? They go to bed at night and they get up in the morning, if they’re lucky.
On they walk, along the dark quiet street, through the cold night and down to stand on a pile of rocks to look out over the raging sea. Eric slings one arm around her shoulders and she puts her arm around his waist. They say nothing as the wind bites into their faces. Eventually Eric moves away to stand by himself. He throws his head back and howls into the wind.
‘Who brought you?’ Alice laughs.
‘I’m releasing my inner demons.’
They walk around the curve of the cliff and onto the jetty. Alice points out Thistles and ends up telling Eric everything about the run-in with Tom outside the courtroom. Eric listens carefully.
‘So, what do you think?’
Eric sighs thoughtfully and remains silent.
‘Come on!’ Alice laughs impatiently, but in fact she has always liked Eric’s reticence, the way he thinks things through before speaking.
‘He could feel guilty and want to make amends,’ Eric mur murs.
‘Guilty?’ Alice frowns, the thought alarms her.
‘Well,’ Eric says mildly, ‘you don’t really know much about him, do you?’
‘No . . . I guess not.’
The restaurant looks wonderful at night. It is like a glass bubble suspended in the surrounding darkness. From this distance the people moving about inside make Alice think of tiny creatures inside a sack of liquid. Back and forth they swim like mosquito larvae, or fish, sliding around each other. She pulls her scarf tighter around her neck and stares out into the wind, momentarily forgetting Eric beside her, wondering about her cousin working in that glass bubble, trying to remember him from when she was small. Sometimes she’d see him in the street, a skinny blond-headed kid walking along beside his harried dowdy mother. That is my aunt, she would think to herself, my mother’s sister, and that one beside her is my cousin. It’s hard now to even summon up an image of what he looked like then.
‘Can you see your cousin?’ Eric is following her gaze. ‘Shall we move closer?’
‘No. Let’s go now,’ Alice says shortly, and turns away. She remembers her cousin on the night of the concert trying to find help for his hurt friend. He was quietly spoken and polite, deferential even, but in the fluorescent light . . . those eyes were there; the green, bright eyes. She shudders and takes Eric’s arm. How often had she stared into his photograph in the local paper, those weird eyes that seemed to be looking straight at her. Accusing her, mocking her, filling her with rage! So often she’d thrown that photo out only to pick it out of the bin and put it back in her drawer. Her mother’s murderer! What had he thought of her the night of the concert? How strange to think she’d been so close to him.
Sadness flies in from nowhere on a volley of arrows, unexpected, sharp and precise. Each one hits its mark. The first to her stomach, making her want to keel over as she walks along beside Eric. Ping! There goes another, straight to her heart, dropping its poison dart. The venom floods slowly outwards and upwards until her eyes sting with it. The black fog comes next, swirling over and around her, right into every hollow and crevice of her being, filling her with a helplessness she can’t begin to explain. She could jump down from the jetty onto the sand, fill her pockets with stones – like Virginia Woolf – and just walk out slowly. Let the waves beat against her knees, her chest, and then cover her head. She would just . . . sink and it would all be over.
‘Did Tom say why he’s so sure Jonty did it?’ Eric suddenly asks, as though reading her mind.
‘He didn’t say he was sure.’
‘But he thinks he did it,’ Eric says thoughtfully. ‘He thinks he’s capable of it. Why? Does he know something that other people don’t?’
‘I don’
t know.’
‘So ask him, Alice. Ask him!’
Alice sighs. They head back to the house.
‘You think those two are friends now?’ Eric murmurs.
‘How would I know?’
Once back inside the big gates, Eric stops to take a look at the house in front of them.
‘So, all this will be yours one day?’ he asks.
‘Yep.’ Alice hasn’t thought much about her grandmother’s money lately. ‘Every single brick!’ They look at each other for a moment or two before Eric begins to grin.
‘I can see you up there,’ he points to the small balcony on the second floor, ‘overseeing your vast estates.’
‘I know,’ Alice laughs, ‘it’s going to be such fun!’
‘Alice in her wonderland!’ Eric puts an arm around her shoulders and they move off towards the front door. ‘Will you marry me, Alice?’
‘Why would I?’
‘You’re grandmother wants me as her grandson-in-law.’
‘You think so?’
‘I’m positive.’
‘I guess that settles it then.’
‘I can’t believe you just got up and left him sitting there!’ Sylvie whispers urgently as she drops the ammunition into the barrel, closes the gun, presses the cock shuttle and raises it to her shoulder.
Sylvie, Alice and Eric have been up on the back of the Land Rover for over an hour now, driving slowly through an open paddock, rugged up in scarves and coats against the chilly night. Charlie is driving and Leyla is hanging out the passenger window looking into the vast dark night. Alice has just given a whispered account of her meeting with Tom Mullaney the week before, but she wishes she hadn’t brought it up because she wants to stay quiet and just take in the night. The chill is making all their faces numb and each breath out blows like fine white dust into the surrounding dark air.
‘What do you mean?’ It’s Alice’s turn with the spotlight. She stands between the twins trying to keep it steady.
Sylvie leans forward – the barrel of the shotgun along the roof of the Land Rover, the butt held close to her shoulder – squinting through the sights, waiting for her moment.
‘You should have asked him things! Or at least listened to what he had to say.’
Alice shrugs, hoping that no more rabbits will turn up and they can drive around like this for hours. How perfect this would be if they didn’t have to shoot anything.
‘But I hate him.’ She tries to hold the light steady as she sweeps slowly over the land directly in front of the slowly moving vehicle. It is quite heavy and her arms ache, but she is proud of the way she is able to do it.
‘Why?’
‘He used to come around with my cousin and—’
‘That was years ago!’ Sylvie snorts. ‘What do you think, Eric? Do you think she should have hung out to hear what he had to say?’
‘I do,’ Eric nods. ‘He might have been going to tell you something important.’
‘Exactly,’ Sylvie sniffs.
‘Maybe,’ Alice murmurs, ‘and maybe he’s just full of shit!’
It all looks so different at night. Eerie. Every tree stands like a waiting ghost, the silver branches like skeleton fingers pointing into the abyss, calling her forward into some place she’d rather not go. It is a crisp clear night with the occasional heavy cloud drifting across the brilliant star-filled sky. She shivers, trying to imagine how she would feel out here on her own.
‘What was your cousin like,’ Sylvie suddenly asks, ‘that night after the concert?’
‘I don’t know.’ Alice shrugs. ‘Normal enough, I guess.’
‘Normal?’ Sylvie says in a small voice. ‘He can’t be . . .’
‘What if . . . he’s innocent?’ Eric says mildly.
The headlights are off and Charlie is crawling the vehicle over the small ruts and bumps, thistles and tussocks. Occasionally they hit a deep pothole which makes the girls on the back lose their footing or bump into each other. They shriek and laugh and yell for Charlie to be more careful.
‘Quiet, you lot,’ he calls back sternly, ‘you’ll frighten them off!’ Alice hears the tenderness in his voice and it grounds her. She can imagine his face as he sits behind the wheel listening to his girls, because she has watched it so many times before. More than anything, Charlie loves to hear his girls laughing. It is what he lives for. It is why he gets up every morning, why he goes to work with all the blood and dead animals. It is why he doesn’t mind coming home at night stinking of death. The twins keep him alive.
‘Okay. Number one, coming up!’ Sylvie says under her breath. Alice holds the spotlight steady on the startled animal staring blind into the harsh light. She hears Sylvie’s deep intake of breath as she squints over the rifle, taking aim. One second, two and then three before the whistling sharp crack of the bullet. A tiny squeal as the rabbit flips over in a crazy somersault and then lies still.
‘Yes!’ Sylvie declares triumphantly, handing the gun over to Eric who takes it awkwardly, too stunned to say no. He and Alice watch her jump down from the back of the vehicle and make for the slain rabbit.
‘How’s this?’ she calls, holding it up. ‘Straight through the head!’ The blood dripping from its mouth and nose makes Eric gasp and turn away.
‘Good one!’ Charlie yells back. Any mark on the body makes the animal virtually worthless for either meat or skin. Only a shot through the head means it will sell.
Alice keeps the spotlight on Sylvie as she runs back over to the truck, grabs the pocketknife that her father is holding out the window. With the dead rabbit hanging between her knees, she makes a quick incision from the bottom of the rib cage straight down to the groin. Then she pushes her small hand straight into the body and pulls out the entrails, all bloody and glistening in the strange white light, and chucks them to the ground.
Alice swallows. She has seen this before but it never fails to amaze her. All of that done in one precise movement. And how quickly it happens! There was the rabbit – staring, frightened and alive – and now here it is, its tiny red liver and heart, and curling, wormlike intestines all warm and steaming on the cold grass. Finished. Alice nudges Eric who is staring open-mouthed.
‘I warned you,’ she says softly. In the shadows cast by the spotlight she can’t really see his face. Still, she fancies that he’s gone a lighter shade of pale.
‘Are you okay?’ she whispers.
‘Of course I’m okay.’ He grimaces. ‘Loving it.’
They are back in the shed, sorting through the haul of dead rabbits. Skinning is done quickly and without fuss. Charlie cuts around the neck and four legs, grabs the neck with one hand and rips the skin off with the other. Alice, standing next to Eric, holds her breath in awe as each one comes off.
‘Just like peeling off a coat,’ Eric mutters to himself. And it’s true. The skin rolls off and the body comes free, dark pink and nude. They watch as Charlie chops off the feet and what is left of the head with an axe. All in all they have netted two dozen rabbits for sale. The twins carry the bodies over to the freezer on the back verandah, and Alice follows them with the gun, which is always stored in the house for safety, leaving Charlie in the shed sorting the skins for drying the next day.
‘I think you should ring Tom Mullaney,’ Sylvie says suddenly.
‘And say what?’ Alice is appalled by the idea.
‘Just ask him if he’s changed his mind.’
‘About what?’
‘I think he wants to help you.’
Alice thinks of the night when she came across Jonty and Tom in the street. She wonders what her mother would say about the sheer coincidence of it happening that way it did. Lillian loved the whole idea of fate. Alice can hear her voice.
Hey listen, babe, maybe it was all meant to happen.
Jonty
Jonty is walking home from work with Buzz one night when he decides he’s got to cut the dramatics and deal with some of the shit that’s been building up inside. It’s time to
go check out the house.
He’s been holding his breath every time he passes Pitt Street, as though it’s got some power over him, and he doesn’t like that. Not one little bit.
He tells Buzz about his planned detour and the old guy’s eyebrows shoot up into one disapproving line.
‘Not a good idea,’ he mumbles gruffly.
They stop under a streetlight, Jonty frowning as he wraps and rewraps his scarf around his neck.
‘Why is that?’
‘I’ll come with you.’
Jonty shakes his head. He doesn’t need company. He has never spoken to Buzz about what happened three years ago, but it seems the old bastard knows all about it anyway, which is kind of annoying and yet . . . so what?
He smiles at Buzz. Under the harsh streetlight the old guy’s face is hollowed out with exhaustion. Dark shadows for eyes and carved-out cheeks under the bones. Earlier he was complaining about having to work so hard at his age and the rest of the staff – Jonty included – started ribbing him about funeral plans and who was going to get his money and his house. By the end, everyone was laughing, including Buzz.
‘Go in the daytime, mate.’ Buzz reaches out and puts a hand on Jonty’s shoulder. ‘It won’t feel so good at night.’
‘It’s just a house, Buzz,’ Jonty shrugs him off. ‘No one lives in it now.’
‘Yes, but . . .’
‘What?’
‘It will be full of . . . memories for you.’
‘I’ll be right.’
Half irritated, half amused, Jonty walks off into the night. What the hell does Buzz know about my memories?
Head down, hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jacket, trying to dampen down the chilly sense of expectation building in his chest, Jonty heads up dark, quiet Pitt Street.
When he reaches the house he sees that the front room is blazing with yellow light. Could he have made a mistake and come to the wrong house? But the number is written clearly on the letter box just as he remembers. Twenty-one. This is definitely his aunt’s old house. So who is in there at midnight? He walks back and forth along the front fence a few times trying to catch a clue.
Somebody's Crying Page 16
