by Jane Jago
Shona glared at her mother.
‘My dad moves around a lot.’
‘Oh, really? So does Shona’s.’
‘OK, Mum, stop it,’ said Shona, firmly. Mrs Wilcox smiled, cut a tomato wedge in half and put it into her mouth.
When her mother joined a handful of parents on the small dance-floor Shona took the opportunity to pour the remaining whisky into Liam’s empty glass. He looked at her dumbly. ‘Well, you don’t want her to drink it, do you?’
He obediently skulled the neat spirit and pulled a face. ‘Won’t she know?’
Shona snorted. ‘She’s already had four doubles . . . Have you changed your mind about coming to the after-party?’
‘No.’ Liam felt the heat of the alcohol settling in his stomach.
‘You’re joking, right?’
‘No, I can’t. I’m moving tomorrow.’
‘Yeah, I know, but . . .’
‘She’s a good dancer,’ said Liam, watching Mrs Wilcox grind and bump with somebody’s father.
‘She should be. She danced at the Moulin Rouge in Paris when she was young.’
Liam had no idea what the Moulin Rouge was.
‘That was where she met my father.’
‘Where is your father?’
‘He left us for one of his students.’
‘Didn’t you want him to come tonight?’
‘He sent me a card . . .’
In the foyer Liam lined up with his classmates to view the photographs, already printed and on display for sale. Shiny faces smiled out from the glossy squares of coloured paper. Liam selected an 8 x 10 enlargement and bought three copies. He held one of the prints carefully and studied it. Without warning, a surge of bodies pressed against him from behind, causing him to bump the photographer’s table. ‘Shit!’
Behind him Ethan wrestled playfully with another youth in a white suit. ‘Sorry, Liam. Cole won’t tell me where the after-party is.’ He let go of his victim.
‘If I tell you, I’d have to kill you . . . Everyone gets on the bus first.’
Ethan slapped Liam’s shoulder. ‘You coming or what?’
As if alerted by some secret signal the young men and women of Meredith-Baxter’s graduating class were emptying from the reception hall, spilling down the ugly orange and purple carpeted steps of the foyer and out into the street. Two white minibuses stood waiting in the drive.
Caught in the tide, Liam found himself walking beside Ethan and Cole. Shona’s head bobbed above the crowd as she pushed her way towards him.
The students began climbing onto the buses. Shona lifted the ruffled hem of her dress away from her red sandals and stepped up. ‘Come on,’ she called, taking Liam’s hand and pulling him on board. A trail of students followed up the rear. ‘I knew you’d come.’ She squeezed herself onto a seat next to him. Liam looked up the aisle, then at Shona’s smiling face. ‘You can’t chicken out now.’
The buses pulled slowly away into the night, leaving behind a small crowd of waving parents.
When they finally reached the designated community hall and picnic grounds, Liam had resigned himself to having a good time. Climbing down from the bus, he saw that a semi-circle of seating ‘logs’ had been set up around the lighted hall, and several forty-gallon drums blazed with fire. Music sounded from the hall. Galvanized tubs, full of ice and soft drinks, stood on the grass alongside the steps to the building. Bottles of liquor and six-packs of beer appeared as students dug into their backpacks to liberate their stash.
A crowd gathered around the flaming drums, drinking their contraband. Shona pulled Liam down onto the log next to her and handed him a peach wine-cooler. He sipped the sweet drink and winced. ‘That’s a chick’s drink,’ called Cody. ‘Here.’
Liam held out one hand and caught the icy wet can that Cody tossed to him. ‘Thanks.’
‘Don’t thank me. I didn’t buy them.’
‘You fucker, Cody!’ called another boy from out of the darkness.
Liam drank the beer. A pleasant buzz crept over him and his private thoughts began to meld with the joyous, crazy, tipsy laughter and talk of those around him. He watched the showers of amber sparks that randomly shot up from a nearby drum into the infinite black night. Somebody offered him a cigarette. He experienced a brief sensation of his head spinning as the nicotine-rich blood percolated to his brain. At some point Shona slipped her hand into his. When the beer ran out one of the boys gave him the remains of a half-bottle of Southern Comfort. He drank it neat. It tasted good.
A loud chorus from Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping (I get knocked down)’ rang out from the hall.
‘Come on!’ called Ethan from beside the fire.
Liam got to his feet and went with Shona and the other couples to the hall. Inside, the students had already formed a circle by linking arms over shoulders as they shouted the lyric of their unofficial anthem.
The newcomers barged playfully into the ring, breaking and re-forming the circle in unison. The unwieldy chain of drink-loosened bodies repeatedly broke down, as the revellers fell and got up again, adding to the hilarity of this spontaneous eruption of solidarity, a rowdy salute to their impending futures. Liam had never had a reason to laugh so hard. All around him ecstatic faces mirrored his euphoria. At that moment they felt that anything was possible.
When he left the hall and stepped out into the cool night, his head was spinning. Shona fell against him, laughing, and they stumbled back to the fire where they sat huddled together. She leant forward and kissed Liam on the lips. He kissed her back.
A can exploded near the hall, showering a group of girls with beer. ‘You fucking dickhead, Heinzy!’ Everyone moved towards the commotion, leaving Liam and Shona alone on the log.
Liam’s perceptions were slowed by the alcohol. He could see people collecting near the steps of the community hall but he couldn’t focus long enough to make any sense of what was happening.
‘You don’t say much, do you, Liam?’ said Shona, holding onto his shoulders.
‘Not much to say,’ he replied drunkenly.
‘I bet you have lots of secrets.’ She poked him in the chest. Liam laughed and grabbed her finger, imprisoning it in his fist. She pulled it away. ‘What are you hiding?’ she teased.
Liam was feeling more and more light-headed, as if he was in danger of lifting outside himself and floating away. He looked at Shona’s face, her sweet Cupid’s-bow lips and soft brown eyes. It occurred to him that she was someone you could tell things to, someone who would try hard to understand. He was struck by an overwhelming desire to unburden himself to her.
‘Hey, Shona?’ A skinny blonde girl was fishing drinks out of the watery slush at the bottom of one of the galvanized tubs. ‘This yours?’ The blonde girl wiped her face blearily with a wet hand, smearing blue mascara across her cheek. She dropped a bottle of wine-cooler at Shona’s feet.
Liam opened it and began to drink. ‘I do have secrets.’
‘Oh, yeah?’ Shona stood up and brushed herself off. ‘I need something to eat.’
He grabbed hold of her clumsily and tried to kiss her again. As he pressed against her, Shona became aware of his growing erection. ‘I think I know your secret,’ she said, holding him off.
Liam shook his head. There was something he wanted to tell her but his thoughts were tangled. Suddenly he felt nauseous, bile rose in the back of his throat. His head hurt, as though a steel band was being tightened around it. He lunged forward,over the back of the log, vomiting violently.
‘Oh, God!’ Shona stifled a laugh ‘Are you all right?’
Liam couldn’t reply. He kept vomiting, even after his stomach was empty. It was as if he was unable to hold his very innards down. Shona made him drink some water but it came up again. He kept trying and eventually succeeded. She splashed some on his face. His head felt a little better.
‘Sorry.’ Liam wiped his mouth. Aware of the spectacle he was making, his awkwardness and embarrassment returned. He began to sweat heavi
ly, his heart palpitating. He was overcome with the need to get out of there, to lie down somewhere and sleep it off. Thank God he was leaving tomorrow and would never have to see any of these people again.
Waiting outside the transit centre the following morning, clutching his ticket, head thumping, he remembered, with horror, how close he had come to telling Shona the night before. How in his inebriated state the desire to reveal himself to her had become almost irresistible. As the hydraulic doors of the interstate bus hissed open, he vowed silently that he would never drink again.
Mathew, 2008
The Rodeo pickup had been parked outside the Military Road Workers Club for nearly ten minutes. A black-and-white cattle dog waited patiently on the truck-bed in the shade cast by the front cabin, tongue lolling from its mouth. Mathew Allen had tailed the vehicle from a white stucco villa in Ravensbrook Gardens, across the bridge, to a building site on the docks, then to this tradesmen’s waterhole.
At three in the afternoon, apart from two other vans covered with signage, the car park was virtually empty. Sunlight burnt his arms through the windscreen. He flipped the visor down, sucked some water from a plastic bottle and turned on the radio – some left-wing reformer stridently advocating a better, fairer social-security system that didn’t punish or stigmatize the poor.
He punched the tuner button through the static until he found some classical music. He didn’t need any more voices in his head.
The Ravensbrook address had been sent anonymously, written across a copy of the forensic photo projection of ‘Offender B’. The sender had circled the face with a red marker and drawn an arrow pointing to an additional sentence: ‘Evil resides here.’ Mathew had seen little reason to give this tip-off any more credence than the other cryptic voodoo messages he was regularly sent. Some people had elaborate imaginations and way too much time on their hands. There were hundreds of twisted nuts out there and he figured he had received mail from most of them. It was impossible to be shocked any more by what they said: the stimulus of a brutal crime and private pain made public was irresistible, luring them out from under their rocks to offer bizarre clues and confessions, taking credit for a crime already solved and providing explicit details.
In the years since his son’s death, Mathew Allen had had an ongoing education on just how sick the world really was. He’d had no idea.
The fact that the address was a local one agitated him even more. As part of the conditions of their release, neither Harris nor Simpson was permitted within the greater Henswick area, but over the years people had speculated on whether or not the conditions of their parole had been properly enforced. Internet rumour had it that Danny Simpson had even visited Benjamin’s grave.
It galled Mathew to imagine that he could unwittingly run into one of them and never even know.
When the local paper ran a story quoting an associate of one of Simpson’s brothers, laughing off the strict terms of their release, claiming that ‘Danny’ had visited the area ‘several’ times and ‘did as he pleased’, Mathew decided to check it out for himself.
On the car radio, Beethoven’s Overture to Prometheus was surging towards its manic crescendo. Impatient now, he flicked the switch, cutting short the climax. He pulled the keys from the ignition, left the heat of the car and strolled casually in the direction of the pickup. A panting dog was tethered to a U-bolt on the truck, with no water that he could see. That wasn’t very nice now, was it? He offered his closed knuckles for the animal to sniff; it wagged its entire body and submissively licked his fingers. He rubbed its head and woolly neck while cataloging the contents of the pickup’s tray – the usual fixed toolboxes, several large bags of Skimcoat plaster, a length of poly pipe tied with a red rag. He felt for the dog’s collar as he continued to pat him and lifted the bone-shaped identity tag. ‘Hey, Barney.’
The dog quivered all over at the mention of his name.
‘You want some water, buddy?’
A white Moto Guzzi Eldorado rumbled through the parking lot and out the other side. Barney gave three sharp barks.
‘Shoosh.’ Mathew Allen left the dog and went back to his Nissan, returning with the water bottle. He drizzled some into his hand and held it out. The dog sucked it up gratefully, making big smacking sounds with its tongue. He unhooked the animal’s lead and beckoned him down. ‘Come on, Barney, that’s a good boy.’
The dog followed him to his car. In the back of the little station-wagon he gulped water from a paint tray as Mathew fired the ignition and drove away. A few blocks later he turned into a Hungry Jacks drive-through, bought a burger, threw away the bun and tossed the patty into the back. The offering was devoured in one mouthful. Barney looked only slightly perturbed when his new chaperone opened the hatch door and beckoned him out onto the grass by the river.
Mathew waited until six p.m. to send a text to the number on the dog’s collar: ‘Lost dog, Barney, found wandering’. Within seconds his phone was vibrating. ‘Mathew here.’
‘Hi, I’m Justin, Barney’s owner. Where did you find him?’ asked the caller.
‘He was down near the water, below Ravensbrook Bridge.’
‘Man, how did he get all the way up there? I don’t even know how he could have got off the truck.’
‘I’m just dropping my wife off at her sister’s in Faulkner Road,’ said Mathew.
‘That’s not far from me.’
‘Right. What’s your address, then – Justin, you said?’
‘Yeah, Justin Lucas. Number four forty-eight Pembroke, white Spanish arches out front. I mean, I’m not home now, but I can be there in five minutes?’
‘Sure. I’ll drop him off as soon as I’m done here.’
Mathew was already parked under the cool sprawl of a poinciana opposite the villa when the Ute pulled up. He observed booted feet stepping down from the Ute’s cab, and caught a flash of the copper-tanned face under the rim of the labourer’s cap as its owner turned to retrieve a bag and made for the front door. Barney immediately woke up, got to his feet and peered out of the window, wagging his tail. Freed from the stranger’s car, he pelted into the house, dragging his lead behind him.
At the doorway Mathew held a hand over his eyes to see beyond the glare of the free-standing halogen light that lit the room. Two scaffolds spanned the walls; the room had been gutted.
Barney broke off from licking Justin’s face to bark hoarsely at the incoming visitor.
‘Bit late now!’ admonished Justin. ‘You must be Mathew.’
He nodded, still taking in the empty space, the bedding roll and pillows on the stripped hardwood floor. ‘You live here?’
‘No, mate, it’s a job. I crash here. Work late, early start. Saves driving in and out from my parents’ place.’
‘Looks like it’ll be a nice reno when you’re done.’
‘It’s all right, yeah. Thanks for bringing the dog. I was driving around in circles looking for him. Someone must have unclipped his lead.’
‘Who owns this place?’ said Mathew, looking around the room.
‘Some real-estate group – bought up the whole complex, want to turn them around quick.’
‘What about before that?’
Justin patted his dog. ‘Haven’t a clue, mate. From the smell of the back room, I wouldn’t be surprised if had been used as a squat. Why?’
‘I think I may have known a guy who lived here a little while back.’
‘Been empty for months, as far as I know.’ He took off his sweat-stained cap and combed his fingers through a frizz of surf-bleached hair.
‘How old are you, Justin?’
The young man cocked his head. ‘Twenty-three.’
With no reason to disbelieve him, Mathew Allen was immediately relieved. Tall, blond and amiable, Justin Lucas was five years too young to remember a day in 1993 when the whole of Henswick had stopped to take stock of where their children were. The freckled tradesman seemed to be a genuinely nice kid. ‘Look after that dog, then.’
‘I will.’
Code Blue
‘Let your yes be yes and your no be no’
Geoffrey, 2008
The phone rang three times. Geoffrey looked at it from his position near the window. He stared the device down, almost willing it to ring again so he could tear it from the wall and smash it into a thousand pieces. He hadn’t been to work for three days now, not since he’d read the article in the Sunday paper. He’d called in sick on the first day and had spoken to no one since.
From under a pile of discarded clothing, the hollow trill of his mobile phone sounded again. Ignoring it, he looked at the street below, observing a young mother half in and half out of her car as she clipped her child into a safety seat. A little leg and sandalled foot kicked impatiently. A hunched old woman in an adjacent yard tugged uselessly at a clump of weeds that grew along the fence line of her barren garden.
The aluminium kettle on the stove gave a lisping hiss. He dumped a spoonful of instant coffee into a mug and poured boiling water over it. He took a carton of milk from the fridge; the milk separated into tiny curds as he poured it into the coffee. ‘Fuck.’ He lit a cigarette and drank the sour coffee. Sitting down on an armchair in the small alcove that served as his living area, he picked up a folded newspaper from the floor and opened it to page fifteen.
Under the headline ‘HIGH COURT RULING FLOUTED’ there was a picture of Mathew Allen standing on the steps of the court building. He reread the short article beneath.
Mathew Allen was acquitted today on contempt of court charges after circulating computer-generated images of Graham Harris and Daniel Simpson on the internet. The forensically modelled images show a probable likeness of the perpetrators, as they would appear today, almost two decades after they were convicted of the brutal murder of Mathew Allen’s only son, Benjamin. Lawyers for Mr Allen successfully argued that the modelled projections did not constitute a breach of the special High Court ruling in regard to the publication of ‘recent photographs’ of the released offenders and that the internet, as a ‘territory’, was otherwise outside the jurisdiction of the Australian courts . . .
