“Then why was he late in joining the Buffalo?”
Sergeant Finter drew a long breath. “He went AWOL from the Bilgola Mission. A week later, an architect is murdered on a farm in Victoria. Kish is picked up as a suspect in Melbourne. There’s no evidence. So they let him go. Two days later he’s packed off on the Buffalo under Gangell’s supervision. End of fucking story.”
“Is that how the criminal justice system works?”
It was a jibe too much for Sergeant Finter. “Hell, and what do you know about the criminal justice system?” He laughed angrily. “I don’t need this.”
“Alex, Pete. Please,” feeling giddy all of a sudden.
There was a creak. In the cane chair opposite, Mrs Anselm sipped her tea and her words seemed hotter. “When I try and go on a ship, I can’t pay enough. How come these delinquents get to go–and for free? A nice way to see the country, isn’t it? At taxpayers’ and victims’ expense. Why don’t they pay to catch him?”
Merridy was surprised at the level of detail that Mrs Anselm had wanted to go into. She reminded her: “There was no weapon discovered–and you identified someone else.”
He had been arrested in St Kilda market knotting balloons into inflated swords for children; his earring and short blond hair matching the description given by Mrs Anselm, who promptly failed to pick him out in the identity parade.
“Pah!” And Mrs Anselm looked helpless and angry out of her sunglasses. “As soon as I left the police station I knew which one it was. I was on the steps and I had to hold my daughter’s arm. He was standing right next to the man I had chosen! I went back and told them I had made a mistake, I had accused the wrong person, but they weren’t interested. They didn’t want to listen.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Exactly.” She returned her saucer to the trolley. “Some more?”
“No, thanks.”
Mrs Anselm looked with a troubled expression into the milky tea that Merridy had left untouched. “I don’t understand. My husband wasn’t a bad person. He was only trying to help. You see, I have no experience of such people.” She uncrossed her legs and cupped her hands around her knees. “Tell me, Mrs Dove, this boy Kish, what was he like? I hardly saw him–well, a moment only. That’s why in the line I didn’t recognise him right away. They all looked the same…”
A hubbub of memories and longings blasted about Merridy’s head. “He was strange. He seemed lost in another world.”
“Lost?” sitting back.
“We felt sorry for him.” It was not what Merridy intended to say. Nor what the older woman wished to hear.
Mrs Anselm raised her sunglasses. “What do you want with me, Mrs Dove?”
“I thought…since I knew your husband’s killer, well, it might help…for us to talk…”
“Talk?” Mrs Anselm looked at her. And Merridy, meeting Mrs Anselm’s receded, hurt eyes, was also at a loss. On the train from Melbourne, she had stared at the galahs arranged on the telegraph wires, sheet music for some inaudible melody that was drawing her in, and believed that she understood why she was making this impetuous journey to “Ashfield”.
But now she wondered: Can this help either of us?
Less than five feet away, Mrs Anselm readjusted a pair of round dark lenses on the bridge of her nose. She pretended not to see as far as she did. But she had seen. Merridy’s halo of anguish.
She picked up the pot.
“Let me tell you, Mrs Dove, what it means to lose the man you love.”
“There were two of them. They were standing beside the fence, by that quince tree.
“The only thing he said while lying there: ‘Who was it? Was it those boys?’
“They’d come to ask for work. They said they’d do anything–sweep leaves, even. I told them we had nothing for them to do. But Daniel was kinder. He remembered how it was to have no money.
“He said to me: ‘Darling, they’re still there. Let them sweep leaves.’
“‘You speak to them, then.’
“He opened the door. Then the dog started growling–and suddenly I heard a shout and I saw someone lying on the grass–like that, two hands over his head. Daniel. Daphne raced up to him. She kneeled down and kissed her Grandpa and came up with her face and golden hair full of blood.
“The boy had stabbed him. For no reason at all…My husband didn’t lose his watch, they didn’t take his wallet. Like they were just out to kill him, a man they didn’t know…” Her words were crushed as the grass.
Seconds passed before Mrs Anselm spoke again. “I ran on to the lawn and pulled off his shoes and tried to sit him up, which I should never have done. I screamed at the kids: ‘Get back, everything’s OK.’ Then I held a cloth over him so he’d get a little shade over his head. His arms and legs were drawn up, and his wrist–hanging on a thread. Nine times chopped up. Well, I knew he would never play again. He had trained as a pianist and I prayed, squeezing his shoulder: ‘Please, God, for his sake let him die, but for my sake let him live.’
“Of course, to him I said: ‘It’s OK, darling, everything is OK.’
“Then I ran back to the house and called for an ambulance. The kids were screaming when I came outside. They’d found Ruskin. Your Kish had slashed him, too.”
Merridy felt sick. “How do you know it was Kish–not the other one?”
“Because I saw his knife…”
Mrs Anselm lifted the pot that she had clasped to her lap, and put it back on its stand. “I thought it would be quicker if we drove Daniel ourselves, so we got him into the car. His head was slit over his left eye. But he died that night. I’m glad they didn’t see. He died in agony…” and patted away the labrador which had come up with a rubber bone in its mouth. “But you’re OK now, aren’t you, Ruskin?”
The labrador’s tail was wagging. Catching sight of his mistress’s face, the dog retreated and dropped the bone into Merridy’s lap.
“He wants you to throw it.” Mrs Anselm’s voice sounded as though it was echoing off the plain outside.
Merridy picked up the toy bone that gleamed with slobber, and got to her feet. She studied the quince trees, the striped lawn where out of the blue Kish or whoever had launched his savage attack on a perfectly innocent stranger, and wondered where best to hurl the thing. It was–everything that she had heard–quite overwhelming.
Just at that moment the doorbell rang.
“It’ll be the taxi,” Merridy said, and put down the bone.
Mrs Anselm saw Merridy out. Not until they stood on the steps did she notice how Merridy’s dress fell in uneasy lines across her body.
“Your first?”
“Yes. How can you tell?” quickly doing up her coat.
“You are starting late,” and sighed. “I started too young.”
“We’ve been trying for a long time.”
“Your husband must be overjoyed.”
“He doesn’t know.”
The driver was opening the door of the taxi.
“You’re going to have to tell him soon,” searching Merridy’s face. She smelled of banana cake and fragility.
“When I get home.”
Mrs Anselm relaxed. “There’s nothing so wonderful as making a family.”
CHAPTER TWO
COUNCIL ELECTIONS. There are a select few who reciprocate, contribute, extend respectability and bestow blessings on our town and its people. Then there are the takers, the ones Councillor Grogan refers to as “stakeholders”. Their decisions are arrived at behind closed doors, quietly, secretly, with a select few muckety-mucks, the so-called ey-leet and the wanna-bees. They take objection to interference from we “the ordinary people”, the “country bumpkins”, the so-called “brain-dead” seniors or their supposedly ignorant siblings. I could have sworn we voted Mr Ray Grogan in as our councillor to help us fight for a sports complex. Was that a fantasy? Together let’s dismantle our council in April. Ray-as-in-sunshine, ho, ho, ho. Ray-as-in-scorched-earth-policy more likely. (Mr Talbo
t, could you run this past a lawyer before you print it? Thanks, Abby.)
Abbygail Deverill.
Orange flames blazed in a circle on the lawn. Alex stood the far side of them and kicked a smouldering branch into the pyre of browned foliage. He was burning off the last of the Oyster Bay pine.
Merridy parked beside the ute and even before she had taken off her seat belt Alex was bounding across the grass, followed by Rusty, opening the car door, leaning down. She let him kiss her, but she could feel the whimper in his throat.
“How was Melbourne? I missed you,” and kept kissing her face in search of what she was withholding. His kisses had the flavour of woodsmoke and kerosene.
“Hey, let me get my suitcase,” extricating herself.
“No, I’ll get it.”
She waited by the car while he opened the trunk. The air unnaturally still. The twisted sheets of flame. She stood looking up at the pipe-cleaner of smoke rising vertical from the lawn, and followed him inside.
Across the safe distance of the kitchen table, she told Alex about her visit to her mother and her lunch with Dmitri.
“And I bought you a present,” she smiled.
Later on, he came into her study wearing the blue jersey.
“Oh, but Alex, that’s far too tight!”
“No, it’s not,” and stubbornly flexed the short arms.
“Really–I can send it back.” She stood to help him take off the jersey, before he got it caught on a wire or covered in muck.
“What are you doing?” to deflect her.
Half out of her chair, she looked down at her desk. “I have just put in an order to Shellfish Culture in Bicheno for a hundred thousand seedlings.”
“Do you want me to post it?”
It pained her heart, his eagerness to please.
“Only if you’re going into town.”
“I have to go to Swansea. I need to get a pipe fitting from the hardware.”
“Then let me find an envelope.”
“Anything else?”
She considered the jersey that hemmed him in. As if she had bought it for someone a good deal younger. “We’ve nothing for dinner. Maybe you could buy a chicken at Talbot’s on the way? And Alex—”
He turned. On either side of him, the walls of the corridor were bare–ever since he had taken the frames to Hobart to be replaced.
She had to sit down. “I know this sounds odd, but I’d love you to get some more Coco Pops.”
WELLINGTON POINT GOLF CLUB.
Talbot’s Memorial Qualifying Round:
Competition results for Saturday.
Winner: N. Fujita (visitor) 56
Runner-up: R. Grogan 58
Junior: Z. Grogan 65
Due to lack of bookings the Golf Club Annual Dinner has been cancelled.
It was a stunning blue calm afternoon–smell of early autumn, dry pines–and whales splashing in the bay. Their spouting had drawn a small crowd to the railings above the beach.
Alex watched the pod of Southern Rights for a while. Then walked along the esplanade to Talbot’s. Taped to the windows, black-and-yellow posters advertised Ray Grogan’s forthcoming auction of the general store’s contents: The opportunity to acquire something unique, a part of history.
At the checkout, Rose-Maree said: “You must be hot in that, Mr Dove.”
“My wife gave it to me.”
She squinted through knowing eyes at the cereal packet. “Hear you might be starting a family.” And her incredulous expression that liked to displease added: After all these years!
“I’d be the last to know,” Alex joked with a smile that believed it knew what she was talking about.
He left Talbot’s and walked in stiff steps along the main street, past the newsagent, past the Op-Shop, not breathing in so as to avoid the fragrance of old clothes and to suppress the irritation that coiled through his head. You only had to nurse a thought and already Rose-Maree had heard it articulated from Chyna, who worked at the chemist’s.
Alex had little doubt that if Merridy had bought a pregnancy test it was for Madasun, their frizzy-haired cleaner–she had probably missed her period yet again. And remembered his wife’s exasperation the last time this had happened, after Madasun implored Merridy to visit the chemist’s on her behalf.
“My boobies are hurting, Mrs Dove. The nipples are hard and I feel so good. I only had one glass of wine. I thought it was a safe time.”
Madasun was in such a state of nerves that while she was peeing she dropped the stick in the loo and Merridy had to go back and buy another test.
“Oh, she annoys me so, that girl. And what’s the betting it will turn out negative!”
“Why is she asking you to buy it?”
“Her parents are full-on Catholics. She lives in permanent fear that they’ll find out she’s not a virgin–at thirty-one, heaven help us.”
So by the time he climbed the steps into the post office had Alex explained away Rose-Maree’s remark.
Immediately she saw him come in, Mrs Grogan leaped out from the queue, tugging the small dark poodle at her feet, her trouser suit giving her the look of a tea cosy. She was dressed in her customary pink and clutched at Alex, one hand imitating the other, but she had not worked out what to say.
Perhaps she was ill; she was not, though. Her mouth ungummed itself. And smiled kindly though she was not by nature a kind person.
“I hear Merridy’s having a baby.”
In the queue some woman coughed and another copied her.
Meanwhile, Mrs Grogan was smiling so broadly that she might have owned the beach. “My father used to say: ‘Barren ground can sometimes be what a seed needs.’”
Hostile eyes recognised Alex for what he was, a cuckolded Pom in a close-fitting jersey. White as a rinsed plate, he said: “It’s early days,” and added with as much dignity as he was able: “Anything might happen.”
Mrs Grogan’s face, which speech had animated, was turned wrinkly again. Her hands touched her mulberry frill, like that around her dog’s mouth, and then fanned themselves out on Alex’s constricted chest.
“If she’s pregnant, you must come to tea.”
Alex posted Merridy’s envelope and walked back along the esplanade, avoiding the crowd, to the ute. The cabin had heated up and he tucked the plastic bag with the cereal and chicken under the seat.
The afternoon sun through the windscreen showed a middle-aged man in spectacles–forty-three years old, broader in the chest than when he met the two cousins by Ray Grogan’s fence, and darker, with less hair–who switched on the engine and then switched it off and sat looking out.
Is it mine? It could be mine. Couldn’t it? And remembered a doctor saying: “Those who are infertile do sometimes remedy themselves.”
The whales had swum close to shore. In an elegant and unhurried gesture, the largest of them raised its tail in the air. Alex expected the tail to slap down, but it remained vertical, a gigantic black hand that set the mood and tempo of the bay, and of all who watched, until it seemed to Alex that he was himself caught up in the whale’s own slow, mysterious rhythm that was in defiance of gravity or time.
And felt an ache of uncertainty.
A crawl of fear moved in his chest. Where had his head been? He was not a stupid man. It wasn’t as if he had not seen it coming: he knew. He had the evidence and had not confronted her, and now he had to deal with it.
The whale’s tail was still poised in the air when he retrieved his sun hat from behind the steering wheel and put it on. He turned the key in the ignition and was about to drive away when–“Alex! Alex!”
Tildy, crossing the road.
He wound down the window. “Hey, congratulations. I hear you’re on the town council.”
“Did you vote for me?” lowering her head. That had never looked so bubbly.
He smiled. “As far as I remember, it was a secret ballot.”
“Anyway, it’s you who must be congratulated. Is Merridy with you?” peeri
ng into the ute.
“She’s at the farm. She got back this morning.”
“I haven’t hugged you for the pure joy you must be feeling.”
Before he could say anything, she thrust her arms through the window and held him in an awkward embrace.
“Tell me more,” ever so slowly.
“Oh, come on, stop being British. We’re so happy for you, Ray and I. We’re thrilled. It’s a cousin for me. I’ll be Aunty Tildy. Uncle Ray. No, really, it’s the best news.”
Anyone who has copies of my short stories could they please contact me on: 62568583. Thank you, Agnes Lettsom.
From his porthole, Mr Talbot watched Alex’s ute meander out of town towards Swansea. He followed Mrs Grogan following her inescapable poodle from the post office to the bowls club, in time for the five p.m. Twilight Bowls competition. He adjusted his binoculars north to the golf course where Abbygail chatted with Jack Fysshe on the apron of the seventh hole, having done everything she decently could to put a spoke in Tildy’s wheel at the recent council election, assuming that Tildy was only standing to further her vile husband’s interests. To the lane behind the school where Rose-Maree’s son played catch-and-kiss with Cherokee. And back to the main street to survey the faces absorbed in the whales, although not before he spotted Tildy going into Ray Grogan’s office.
Mr Talbot put down his binoculars. He felt all tuckered out. At all that he had seen. All that he had reported back and typed out in his steady hand, or simply kept intact in his head. The children whom he had witnessed growing up, courting and marrying. The husbands slinking like possums at dawn from the doors of other men’s wives–and sometimes of other husbands! The sausage sizzles, the ANZAC parades, the golf tournaments and cricket matches, the Safe’n’Sound car seats in good condition, the visiting speakers and the funeral services…
He closed his eyes. For the first time since he had long, long ago taken up position at this window, Mr Talbot looked forward to quitting his eyrie. Ray Grogan was agitating to show him around a retirement villa on a cliff south of Swansea that sounded congenial to his habits and purposes: it had a view only of the sea. He was tempted to take a look, despite not altogether trusting Ray. He said to himself: Funny how nervous he was that night. He thought I was going to nail him for his horrid little son. And while Ray readily agreed to his sole stipulation, Mr Talbot had kept an eye on the real-estate agent for too many years not to discuss the contract with his lawyer. “This is fine up until–and not a millimetre further than–this devious, untrustworthy person mentions any Nippon corporation. So if he comes to see you…” And instructed him to put in a clause to the effect that whoever bought or developed the store could not possibly be Japanese.
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