by Ilsa Evans
Access? What’s all this with bloody accesses? I’ve never heard of them being called accesses till this week and now everybody’s saying it. What happened to ‘the under-the-house door’? Because ‘access’ could mean anything – perhaps even a portal to another dimension far, far away. With a considerable amount of effort, I lift up my head to have a look at the time – and immediately wish that access did mean a portal to another dimension far, far away, because then I would give my son a quick shove through it and lock the damn thing. I mean to say, just because he can’t sleep, it doesn’t follow that everyone else is suffering from the same affliction.
I flop my head back down on the pillow and mentally assess the chances of (a) me being able to get back to sleep, and (b) Ben letting me stay that way. As a handful of pebbles clatter noisily against the outside of the window, I reluctantly accept that neither (a) nor (b) is likely to come to pass. Accordingly I lever myself out of bed, stagger over to the wardrobe and grab an old black woollen cardigan to pull on over my Winnie-the-Pooh shortie satin pyjamas. I thrust my feet into a pair of runners and stick my head around the corner into CJ’s bedroom to check that she is, like any normal person, still fast asleep. Then I head outside through the front door that, of course, has been left wide open. I close it after me gently, walk out onto the porch and look around for Ben. He is nowhere to be seen. I pull my cardigan tightly around me because it is rather brisk out here, and take a deep breath of the cool morning air in a vain effort to invigorate myself.
I always find early mornings the strangest time of the day. Everything is so still and quiet, except for perhaps a few early birds and a few late possums. Familiar objects take on strange and eerie manifestations when coloured grey, and the commonplace becomes alien. It feels like you are intruding into another dimension where your fit is not as snug as it will be in just an hour or two.
I shuffle my feet to keep myself warm and then, just as I begin cursing Ben under my breath, I remember that he said to meet him by the under-the-house door (I categorically refuse to call it an access). Accordingly I walk down the drive past my car and Terry’s car (which she’s left in my driveway because she wasn’t capable of riding a tricycle by the time she left last night), and around the side of the house. But Ben isn’t there either. In fact, the only company I seem to have is a few possums who, judging from the noise, are leaping from the roof to the trees almost directly over my head. I do hope that none of them misses because I imagine it would be rather painful to be hit by an uncoordinated possum. Or a coordinated one, for that matter. So there I stand, my cardigan wrapped tightly around me and my legs getting rather goosebumpy, becoming steadily crosser by the minute.
‘Hey, Mum! Pssst, over here.’
‘Where?’ Thoroughly irritated now, I peer around for the source of the voice.
‘Over here – at Dad’s.’
Sure enough, when I turn to look at the next-door fence, there is Ben’s head obligingly sticking out over the top. He gestures impatiently.
‘What’re you doing there? I told you to meet me at Dad’s!’
‘I’m not going to your father’s! I’m in my pyjamas, for god’s sake!’
‘No one’ll see you, Mum! Dad isn’t even here. C’mon, quickly.’ His head disappears only to reappear seconds later at the end of the dividing fence. ‘C’mon!’
‘Coming, I’m bloody coming,’ I mutter as I forge my way through the knee-high grass on our side of the fence, across Alex’s concrete driveway and over his neatly mowed front lawn. ‘Could be in bloody bed but, no, here I am, coming, coming, bloody coming.’
‘Follow me, I’ll show you.’ Ben gestures wildly at me and then takes off around the side of his father’s house.
I gesture wildly myself, but only to his back because I don’t encourage those types of gestures in front of the children. When I get to the corner I stop for a moment and bob down to do up my runners. Knowing my luck, I’ll trip over a lace and end up in the Angliss Hospital for the morning and I’ve got too much to get done today for that sort of malingering. After I finish off the laces, I stand stiffly upright and peer around for Ben. I spot him squatting about ten feet away by the under-the-house door, which is only about four feet high.
‘Oh no. You’re not getting me through that. Not a chance in the world.’
‘Oh c’mon, Mum!’
‘No way.’
‘But I have to show you that I was right!’
‘Okay, that’s it. I’m not going one step further until you tell me what’s going on. What were you right about, why do you smell so bad, and what the hell are we doing over here at six o’clock in the bloody morning?’
‘My question exactly.’
I whirl around at the sound of this rather familiar masculine voice – only to be confronted by Alex, standing at the corner of his house, dangling his car keys in one hand and looking extremely amused. Stupefied as I am, I still manage to take in the fact that he is dressed in the same clothes that he was dressed in when I last saw him on Thursday night. With Linnet.
‘Dad!’
‘What’re you doing here?’
‘I might ask you the same question. In fact, I believe I just did – and I’m still waiting for an answer. Because just imagine my surprise when, at –’ he pauses here to consult his watch ostentatiously – ‘at six-fifteen on a Saturday morning, I see a rather wild-looking female, dressed in, well, let me see – a rather attractive little nightie –’
‘They’re pyjamas, you idiot.’
‘Well, pyjamas then – but still rather attractive. Although, if you want my advice, they would look a lot better without the old-lady cardigan but –’ he holds up his hand to stop me from interrupting as he continues – ‘to each his or her own. Now, as I was saying, imagine my surprise at seeing this rather wild-looking female with the rather attractive pyjamas hotfooting it across my front lawn and muttering a litany about coming. And making rude gestures.’
‘Did she?’ asks Ben with interest. ‘What sort?’
‘Good morning, Benjamin. It’s rather gratifying to see that you’re an early riser like your old man. And that you get dressed before you venture outside.’
‘Of course I do,’ Ben replies supportively.
‘Why didn’t I hear you pull in?’ I demand, looking at his empty driveway. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘Over there.’ Alex points across the road to where his Commodore is neatly parked against the kerb. ‘I take it that’s not against the law around here?’
‘So why are you over there?’
‘Well, if I have to explain myself, it was mainly because when I was driving slowly up the road with every intention of pulling into my driveway, I spotted the wild-looking female trespasser I was talking about. So I simply pulled over to the kerb so that I would not alert her to my presence, and wound down my window so that I could ascertain what was going on. You can’t be too careful nowadays.’
‘Oh.’
‘So what is going on? No, let me guess. You –’ Alex pauses to point accusingly at me with his keys – ‘you had a master plan to burrow your way under my house, drill through into my bedroom, and secrete yourself furtively within. There to await my return, whereupon you planned to seduce me, knowing full well that I am unable to resist Winnie-the-Pooh clad females first thing in the morning.’
‘Yeah, sure. With Ben.’
‘Ah-hah! So what you’re saying is that, if it wasn’t for the presence of Ben, I would have hit the nail on the head?’
‘I know someone’s going to be hit on the head in a minute,’ I reply with growing exasperation, not because I don’t find Alex amusing (I do), but because I feel at a decided disadvantage. This is not precisely how I had envisaged our first encounter after his little bombshell on Thursday. I had sort of planned to be cool, calm and nonchalant – certainly not wearing a cardigan over a pair of shortie satin pyjamas, with slept-in hair, and trespassing for no reason that I can possibly think of.
‘S
o what’s the story then?’
‘Perhaps I just wanted to get a head start with the cleaning,’ I say sarcastically. ‘After all, we housekeepers have to keep on top of things, you know.’
‘Really? That sounds promising.’
‘Will you two grow up! This is important!’
Alex stops grinning, I stop glaring and we both turn to face Ben, who is looking, if anything, more exasperated than I am. He is also attempting to open the under-the-house door with a crowbar.
‘Okay, mate, perhaps you’d better tell me what’s going on.’ Alex walks past me and over to his son, where he squats down and does an immediate double-take. ‘Christ, you stink!’
‘I know! It’s because I found the dead body!’
‘Dead body! What dead body?’ I join them by the door and look down at Ben in consternation. ‘Where? Under here?’
‘Yes, under here!’ Ben pauses to look up at me. ‘Like I told you the other day, remember?’
‘You mean – you don’t mean Mrs Waverley?’
‘I think so.’
‘Oh my god!’
‘But I don’t know for sure.’ Ben looks a bit sheepish. ‘That’s why I got you. I didn’t really want to unwrap it by myself.’
‘Whoa! Time out!’ Alex takes the crowbar firmly from Ben before he can start using it again. ‘How about someone fills me in on what’s going on? Who is Mrs Waverley, how do you know she’s dead, and what the hell is she doing under my house?’
‘Well, it’s like this –’ Ben pauses to look at me accusingly – ‘Mum thought I was being stupid when I said that the smell at your place was Mrs Waverley and that Mr Waverley must have murdered her when she disappeared and shoved the body under your house, so when I woke up this morning I thought I’d investigate – and I found her!’
‘Exactly what did you find, Ben?’ I ask as patiently as I can.
‘Well, I followed the smell right up the end of under the house and that’s where I found her, all wrapped up in a blanket. And she stinks something chronic. That’s when I went to get Mum.’
‘So you didn’t unwrap the blanket?’ Alex asks.
‘No, I wasn’t game,’ admits Ben. ‘But now that you’re here, we can unwrap her together and then we can call the police. Yes?’
‘No,’ I say emphatically.
‘Hey, hang on a minute, Ben.’ Alex turns to me questioningly. ‘What is it with these Waverleys, Cam? Did they live here?’
‘Yes, they’re the ones you bought the house from, Mr Observant. But they separated about twelve months ago and she went to Tasmania. So it can’t be her, Ben – the smell wouldn’t be so bad after all this time.’
‘But maybe she came back, like for a visit.’ Ben isn’t giving up his theory so easily. ‘And that’s when the old man did away with her. He was really mean, Dad, he used to call me names.’
‘He called you an idiot once, Ben, and that was only after you threw a cricket bat over the fence and killed one of his chooks.’
‘I didn’t mean to.’
‘No one said you did. All I’m saying is that the one time he called you a name, it was pretty well justified. But I do have to admit that he was a surly old guy, and no one was really surprised when she up and left him. And I’m pretty sure she didn’t come back.’
‘Then what’s the smell? Because Ben’s right – I noticed it the other night but I sort of put it down to the place having been locked up for a while or whatever stuff Maggie was using to clean with.’ Alex puts his keys down and picks up the crowbar pensively. ‘But now that we’re here, I can smell it really strongly.’
‘That’s Ben,’ I reply, moving a little further away from my son.
‘Be that as it may,’ says Alex rather patronisingly, ‘he’s obviously picked up the smell from under the house and if, as he says, there’s something wrapped in a blanket under there, well, I think it behoves us to investigate.’
‘Behoves us?’ I repeat.
‘Yes, Mum. Dad’s right. If you don’t want to help you can go back next door or something.’With that Ben dismisses me and turns to his father. ‘I can’t get the door open now though. I had to use the crow-bar before but it swung shut after and jammed.’
‘Okay, let’s see what we can do.’
Now totally ignored, I watch in amazement as the two superheroes swing into action. Alex jemmies the crowbar into the space between the frame and the door, gives it a quick shove, the door pops open and Ben catches it and holds it firmly so that it can’t swing shut again. The smell is suddenly one hundred times worse. Undeterred, they both peer into the murky darkness under the house.
‘Did you bring a torch, mate?’
‘Of course, Dad.’ Ben reaches behind him, picks up my torch that I keep in the laundry cupboard, and switches it on. ‘Can I hold it?’
‘Sure thing. Then you go first and lead the way, okay?’
‘You aren’t seriously going under there?’ I ask in amazement as Ben proceeds to do exactly that. ‘This is ridiculous!’
‘Where’s your sense of adventure, woman?’ Alex grins at me and ducks down to follow his son under the house. ‘If we don’t come out in ten minutes, call the cops.’
‘Alex?’ I bend down and peer through the doorway.
‘Yep?’ He turns on his haunches to look back at me.
‘You’re an idiot.’
‘True, but –’ he leans a bit closer and whispers – ‘I’m an idiot who needs to do something to impress my son. Capiche?’
‘Capiche,’ I reply with an odd lump in my throat.
‘Oh, and if we don’t come back, I’ve left you the beanbag in my will.’ He winks at me and gets down on all fours to crawl after Ben and the light, which are both rapidly disappearing further into the dark, smelly recesses.
I stand up and stretch, smiling despite myself. I also take a deep breath of the air up here. Well anyway, he’s right – he does have a lot of ground to make up with Ben, and what better way to do it than to support him in a harebrained adventure like this. Batman and Robin intrepidly penetrate the sinister underworld with only the power of good on their side. But by the same token, I feel a little bit left out. After all, it was me that Ben had turned to originally to help him find out what’s going on – and he ditches me at the first sign of support from his father. I do hope that this living next door stuff doesn’t turn into some sort of competition, because I’m not sure that I can compete, not with disgusting stuff like this, at any rate. Leaving me his beanbag in his will, indeed! That man will be the death of me.
Suddenly, the smile is wiped off my face as I remember that that man also happens to be engaged and, despite all his witty behaviour, he is, as Fergus put it so succinctly, an absolute bounder. I narrow my eyes and kick out at the under-the-house door to relieve my feelings. It immediately swings closed with an audible thud. Damn, damn, damn. I squat down and attempt to prise it open again but to no avail. So I grab the crowbar and try to copy what Alex did with it earlier, but despite my best efforts, and a lot of grunting and groaning, it still won’t budge. Damn, damn, double damn.
‘Hey, what happened?’ comes a muffled voice from the other side of the door.
‘It swung closed again!’ I call out. ‘You give it a shove from that side and I’ll pull from this side.’
‘No, you stand back! I’ll give it a thump!’ calls the muffled voice and immediately proceeds to follow word with deed, before I even have time to move. Subsequently, several things happen at once. I try to scramble backwards to get out of the way, the door flies open with considerable force, bashes me full on the nose, and bounces back hard onto Alex, who has just stuck his head out to see what he hit.
‘Shit!’
‘Bloody hell!’ I clasp my nose with both hands but the pain is excruciating. I look cross-eyed down at the offending organ and realise that blood is flowing freely down my face and dripping onto my pyjama top. It is quickly starting to look like a macabre version of a wet t-shirt competition.
‘God! Did I do that?’ Alex is squatting next to me now and looking with concern at my face. ‘Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were there.’
‘Mum! Hey, you’re bleeding!’ Ben joins his father and states the obvious. ‘What happened?’
‘Id hid me,’ I reply as I try to get up. Alex puts his arm around me and helps me to my feet. Ironically, although it is my nose that’s damaged, I can still smell them and, believe me, I would vastly prefer not to.
‘Let’s get you home.’ Alex keeps his arm over my shoulders and steers me around the corner of the house and across his front lawn. I am feeling decidedly fuzzy-headed so I am rather glad of his help. Ben dances alongside, looking extremely concerned, until we reach our front door, which he proceeds to pound upon noisily, calling out to Samantha at the top of his voice.
‘Sam! Sam! C’mon, quickly open up! Hurry! Mum’s had an accident and she’s bleeding everywhere!’
‘Bemb?’
‘Sam! Sam! Hurry up!’
‘Bemb?’
‘Why won’t she answer the bloody door? Sam! Sam!’
‘Bemb, dond swear,’ I say automatically, ‘add Sab’s nod here. She’s oud.’
‘Oh. Well, do you have a key?’
‘Dough.’
‘Christ, don’t either of you have a key?’ Alex asks with evident disgust.
‘Well, I left the door open so this wouldn’t happen,’ says Ben defensively. ‘But no worries, I’ll climb in through my window.’
He disappears around the corner and, shortly after, a series of clattering and smashing sounds can be heard from the direction of his bedroom. I use this time to close first one eye and then the other, staring down the length of my nose to see if it has started to swell. I give up when my eyes start to hurt. Shortly afterwards, the front door opens.
‘There you go,’ Ben says with evident pride.
‘Perhaps you should step aside, mate, and let us get her through to the kitchen,’ says mate’s father, who is obviously beginning to feel the full force of my weight.
‘Oh, of course.’ Ben moves to one side and we progress slowly down to the kitchen where Alex plonks me onto a chair with a rather ungallant sigh of relief.
