Mallawindy

by Joy Dettman

  A yellowing handkerchief, the initials AEB were embroidered on its corner. A tiny white comb, on its handle were two blue birds in flight. A wind-up mouse that one time had danced, she held in her palm a while, turning the key. Its spring was broken. Long broken. A dog collar, still stained with old Mickey’s blood. A bubble pipe, made by Johnny’s hands from a reed and a large gumnut. The staring eyes of a broken doll. Blue eyes. Liza’s eyes. And beneath these things, and amongst these things, were scraps of paper – pages and pages of randomly folded paper, each one covered by script that had altered through the years.

  She read some and refolded them. Others were placed to one side. A yellowing scrap, she smoothed and worried over, its faded, pencilled words, written by a childish hand, were almost gone. The Crow swi – ... tomato ... fishes fl – ... wing – There were many in similar condition. Daddy went ... ar – we ... – Liza and ... Impossible. Tatters carried through time from a previous life. Some were typewritten pages, their ink new.

  Dear Miss Burton,

  Further to your inquiry re John Lawrence Burton. We have no record of a marriage.

  Dear Madam,

  Enclosed, a cheque for the sale of the size teN, beaded wedding gown. We have a customer eager to order the same style in a size sixteen, in the cream silk.

  She was an accomplished seamstress, but these days she named her creations, therapy. It was something to do with her hands when her mind refused to lie down and rest. Sewing was amindless occupation, but lucrative. She received more for one wedding dress than she’d paid for her car. Some good lessons had been learned in Mallawindy. Sell your merchandise too cheap and people think it’s no good, Bert Norris once said. It was true. Put two thousand dollars on the price tag, and a dress caught the eye of exclusive buyers who had no idea the fabric was picked up cheap at the markets.

  The bridalwear shop in Chapel Street took thirty percent, and sent her the cheques when the frock sold. She’d seen one of her creations in a women’s magazine. Some footballer’s bride had bought it. That photograph was also squirrelled away in her briefcase.

  Her hands continued to search the litter, for what, she was unsure. A trigger that might force a memory. Something. Maybe she’d find something.

  Dear Madam, We are unable to supply a copy of death certificate, as requested. John Lawrence Burton – .

  She knew Johnny wasn’t dead, but it had taken her a long time to raise sufficient nerve to write that particular letter. A small square of white butcher’s paper almost fell apart in her hands. She spread it on the table, carefully.

  – Sam was a – a very – ad – call for – wife – and he – 1-2-3

  That one was almost gone too. Maybe it was better to bury the past. Bury Johnny with his secrets. Maybe he ran away because he knew the secret. Had to stay away so she couldn’t find out.

  Push me Johnny, push me high. I’m a bird and I can fly.

  High up to the clear blue sky. I made Liza Burton – .

  Had he seen that one? It was still strong, written on a page ripped from a colouring book, the paper stiff, the words clear. Red crayon did not fade. Had the word she had written last been die? Had he tried to protect her, rubbed at the word until his finger wore that hole, wore the word away, or had she rubbed it out?

  She didn’t know, and it haunted her. She knew Liza was dead. She knew it. Did Johnny know too? She had to find him, and she would find him. Even two grains of sand moving through a giant sandpit must eventually come together in the same sandcastle. It was only a matter of time before the letter came, or the voice on the end of the line replied, ‘Just a moment. I’ll put you through.’ But eight years of time had gone. Disappeared into the big anonymous Melbourne. Big sandpit, growing bigger every year.

  Carefully she returned the papers to the case, placing Mickey’s collar on top. The handkerchief she held to her nose, expecting it to have retained some scent of Narrawee. Nothing. Old. Stale. She placed it with the dog collar, and closed the lid, locked it.

  The sun was coming out, the light breeze had blown the early cloud away. Today the world outside the city would be green with spring. She didn’t need to be holed up here. No use ordering a bed if she wouldn’t be here to take delivery. Next week.

  She had a car now. Her petrol tank was full, and her engine sound. ‘Old Holdens never die, they just rust away,’ she said, and for a moment saw the face of the man who had said it. Sergeant Johnson. The words spoken during that year of laughter. Year of happiness. Ben’s new second-hand utility. Ellie? Almost a mother, that year. A person, not his punching bag.

  She shook her head, tried to shake all of their names from her head, shake the face of the dead baby from her head. Little blue boy. Thick black hair. Little hands, crumpled.

  ‘Get out in the sun,’ she said, and she picked up her red case, and her briefcase, she locked her door, ran downstairs to the carpark and drove away, her street directory on the passenger seat.

  Michael needed her to have a licence when he started the company. She’d done a little city driving, but his car was an automatic. It was taking her time to get used to the gears, and the car was too big. Pity she hadn’t crawled into a smaller car that day. A modern automatic Toyota. That’s what she’d been planning to buy. ‘Something a little more racy,’ she said. ‘Idiot.’

  With a few deviations, she found her way onto the Tullamarine freeway, busy today, and she followed the signs towards the airport. They had a long term carpark, where she’d leave her car. No self-respecting thief would bother to steal it. It was a rattle trap, rust bucket. Too early to book in yet, she drove past the airport and continued on, looking at green paddocks, seeking a forest floor where she might sit and smell the earth, and the scent of rotting leaves. For an hour she drove and dreamed, turning down roads at will. Her mind was far away when the pictures began flashing, like family slide nights in fast motion. Flash of sewing machine. Flash of purple fabric. Flash of pale blonde bowed head, and with the pictures came the scattering of disjointed words.

  Hollow words. She shook her head, trying to ignore them. ‘Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam.’ High. Discordant, like the needle jammed in a cracked record. ‘Royal dress for a princess.’

  ‘Shut up, Annie.’

  ‘Ann Elizabeth. Ann Elizabeth.’

  ‘Shut up, Annie.’ Her foot tapping the brake, she steered the car around a long curve and down into a valley where the trees ahead grew close to the road, meeting overhead like a tunnel of green.

  WELCOME TO NARRAWEE. The signpost sprang from behind a curve and the world darkened and the car filled with the primal scream of her childhood. Reflexes hit the brake too hard and her tyres screamed as her brakes attempted to obey her foot’s command. The car slewed in a half circle. She was flung against the side window, then sideways across the bench seat, but her belt held her.

  Hissing of huge wheels, the long high moan of brakes, and a transport halted two metres behind her. ‘Bloody stupid moron. What do you bloody think you’re doing?’ The driver was out, at her window. Big, heavy.

  Her key turned. Petrol pumped. Her starting motor growled. The truckie’s mouth was working overtime, but she didn’t hear his words. She kept pumping petrol, turning the key.

  ‘She’s flooded. Stop pumping in more bloody juice. Keep your foot flat to the boards.’ And she tried to follow his advice. Shaking, shaking cold, the signpost over her shoulder. Other cars beeping their horns now, other people emerging. ‘You’re just flattening your battery. Shove over. I know these old buggers.’

  Ann scrambled from the car, her back to the sign, and he took her seat, held the accelerator down and kept the key turning until the motor coughed, caught, flooding the world with the sweet stench of petrol.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You could’ve caused a bloody ten-car pile up.’

  ‘A dog,’ she lied. ‘A little dog.’

  ‘You don’t brake for a dog. If I’d been a bit closer, you wouldn’t be talking
to me now.’ He looked at her then, stared at her face. ‘Don’t I know you from some place?’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll stake my life on it. Ever lived in Ballarat?’

  She shook her head. ‘Thanks. I’ll move it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘No harm done. And no more braking for bloody dogs, love,’ and he returned to his truck.

  She pulled over to the side of the road and sat for a few minutes, sat until her hands steadied and strength returned to her legs.

  ‘Go home.’

  ‘Sydney,’ she said. ‘I’m going to Sydney,’ and she turned the car around, away from Narrawee, following road signs pointing back to Melbourne. Dear old grey Melbourne; it may invent its own nightmares, but they were preferable nightmares.

  It was after three when she came on a beach on the western side. She parked, and walked barefoot to the water. It wasn’t the river at Mallawindy, safe and known, but it was free. She loved the ocean. Wonderful wild thing, untamed by this grey metropolis, no red and green lights told it when to stop and go.

  An old dog chasing waves, came to sniff at her bare feet. She reached out a hand, patted his unkempt fur. ‘Good dog,’ she whispered. ‘Good dog. What are you doing here by yourself? Where’s your person?’ He licked her hand, and she stroked his head. ‘Did you know I needed someone to talk to? Do you read minds, doggy? I had a dog once who could read my mind. He knew everything.’

  The dog murmured, sniffed her knee. Smelt her fear.

  ‘I hate that place, doggy. Hate it. Hate it. Why do I hate it?’

  Stranger dog, he didn’t know that answer. She scratched behind his right ear, finding the exact place he hadn’t been able to reach since arthritis had crept into his bones, and he pushed against her, asking for more. ‘Ever met a split personality in your travels, doggy? Ever had a conversation with a reflection?’

  He twitched an ear, definitely interested.

  ‘Good boy,’ she said. ‘Good old dog. You’re a bit like my old Mickey. Who owns you? Tell your person he should brush you. If you were mine, I’d brush you.’

  In ecstasy, the dog watched her sit in the sand at his level. He lay his head in gentlemanly fashion against her knee, and she took her comb from her bag, and combed his coat gently, tossing fur to the wind, and when he’d had enough and he told her so with a prodding nose, she wrapped her arms around him, and told him many things.

  They sat together while the wind tangled her hair and her watch nagged her to leave, but the slap, slap, slap, of waves on the sand, the warmth of holding a living thing, soothed the ache in her. She didn’t want to leave. Didn’t want to fly.

  ‘I have to though,’ she said.

  The dog kissed her hand, and rose to his feet, again peering out to sea. The waves were moving in again. ‘Back. Back,’ he yelped.

  ‘You sound like Annie. She wants me to go back home.’

  ‘Go back and start at the beginning. Find the place of the mistake, trace it to its source. Erase it, sad lady.’

  ‘I think I already erased it, doggy, rubbed it out until there was only a hole.’ She stood and brushed the sand from her jeans, watching him warn the waves back. ‘You can’t go back to a hole, can you, so you keep on walking around it, around, and around, and around it, until you get giddy and you fall down the hole and someone tosses the dirt in.’

  She made the flight. No comb to tame her hair, no time to pin it high. It was a cloud of shoulder-length curls that she tried to flatten with her hand as she was hurried through. Maybe she’d hoped fate would make her miss the plane, but Roger Wilkenson the Third had fate in his pocket, and he probably owned Ansett.

  She’d flown before. She’d been up to Darwin two years ago, because Johnny had once spoken about going to Darwin. She’d phoned all the Burtons in the Darwin telephone book, but he wasn’t there either. She didn’t like flying, tried to think of it as a bus, but the drag of the craft sucked air from her lungs as effectively as any lift. Black holes in hell. Melbourne was full of lifts. She never used them, not after the first time. They took her back to some place. Choked her. Took her back to ... to – . She closed her eyes. Saw the signpost.

  WELCOME TO NARRAWEE.

  Shouldn’t have gone there. Should have looked at a map, she thought. Should have known Narrawee was out that way. For minutes she kept her eyes closed, breathing in, breathing out. Then the plane was up. And she opened her eyes and thought she’d died and gone to hell – or the Russians had dropped their bomb on Mallawindy and set the world on fire.

  Red, below her. Ocean of red. ‘My God,’ she breathed, and the woman in the seat beside her turned to the window.

  ‘I love these sunset flights,’ she said.

  ‘I’m riding a sunset,’ Ann replied, and her hands began signing. “We run across big cloud, my Benjie. Run fast over sky. Chase moon over there ... over sunset to where Johnny live and no more demon live there.” I’m riding the clouds home to where he is,’ she said.

  ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ the woman said, and she talked all the way to Sydney.

  Roger was waiting at the airport. ‘I’ve been riding a sunset. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable, Roger. Did you order Jesus to turn it on for me?’

  ‘Just for you. I’ve ordered a full moon for tonight too, and a cloudless sky.’ He reached up, kissed her quickly on the lips.

  She laughed, laughed because his kiss was the dry-lipped kiss of a boy, and it meant nothing, and she laughed because she had been in a sunset, and she had to tell someone all about it, and he was there and he hung on every word she ever uttered, because her utterings were rare. And when he took her hand and led her away, she clung to his small dry hand and she laughed again, because she knew she was going to find Johnny this weekend. She knew it. Her mother used to tell people that Johnny was in Sydney. And she laughed because people everywhere were stopping to stare at her, and it wasn’t because she was six inches taller than the man at her side. She laughed because Roger didn’t know she had once been Dummy Burton. Nobody knew, and nobody need ever know. She was anyone she wanted to be. David of the magic kiss, on those magic Saturdays, was married to Melissa. No more dreams of David and what might have been. And she laughed because Roger always made her laugh, and because Mallawindy was a horror story she had once read. Banned now, taken from the bookshelves, and all copies burnt. And Ben, dear gentle Ben? He was a boy from that cruel story, a memorable character she would never read about again. Her past was dead. Dead and gone, and she had a life to lead. Business woman, off to a grand party, and a long date tomorrow with a telephone. And answers, all of the answers. Then she could put the last of her past away.

  ‘Marry me.’

  ‘Just because you ordered me a sunset?’ she said.

  ‘I’m all there is to breed the new generation of Wilkensons, and you’re the only one I want to breed with, my lovely.’

  ‘Why breed little fish for all the big fish to gobble up?’

  ‘I’m one of the big fish. I will guard our spawn well.’

  That night while his elderly parents snored, Roger plied her with potent drinks in a suite on top of the world. Five bedrooms, a wall of windows overlooking the moonlit harbour, and too many stairs to climb. She’d wanted to book in downstairs, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘These lifts don’t jam,’ he said. ‘I won’t let them jam. Just close your eyes, and hold my hand, and when you open them, we’ll be in fairyland.’ And she did, she gripped his hand, and somehow knew his will could override any threatening power failure.

  Too much drinking tonight, too much laughter; alcohol always made her happy, turned her worry knob to the off position. It made her believe in the impossible too.

  As the hour grew later, he returned to the subject of marriage. ‘The oldies like the look of you. “A bit thin in the hips, but she’s healthy enough,” Pops said. “We’ll fatten her up”.’

  ‘Give it up, Roger.’

  ‘Long genes,’ Mom said. ‘We could do with some
long genes, Roger.’

  ‘I’m going to bed. There are things I want to do in the morning.’

  ‘You’re getting old. Women should breed before they’re thirty.’

  ‘My race is doomed,’ she said, and she drained her glass.

  He brought her another drink and stood behind her chair, his arms lightly around her, his chin resting on top of her head. ‘Couldn’t you love me?’

  ‘I love dogs.’

  ‘Pretend I’m a poodle.’

  ‘I’m not into pedigrees,’ she said, and she tried to change the subject, spoke about the dog at the beach, but he cut her short. ‘I’m flying home on Thursday and I want to take you with me.’ ‘

  A true Made-in-Australia souvenir. Not great workmanship. Rough around the edges, but an unusual piece.’

  ‘I’m obsessed by your indifference, pretty lady. There are a thousand women out there, ready to fall in love with my millions.’

  ‘Make one of them happy.’

  ‘I want to make you happy. I want to take that sad little girl out of your eyes and make them laugh every day.’

  ‘I can’t understand how people can get married, live day, after day, after day with a stranger. “But I love him,” I hear women say, and that excuses everything. What is that sort of love, Roger?’

  ‘It’s wanting to kill anyone who chats up your love at a party. It’s wanting to brand your name on a forehead, and wake up each day in one bed – ’

  ‘But I haven’t got a bed. I’m supposed to be in Melbourne buying one, but I’m up here in the clouds, and I can’t get down to the earth without you.’ She walked to the window and looked out across the harbour, and at the lights across the harbour. It was the fairyland he’d promised it would be.

  This weekend wasn’t real. The party, the people, everyone knew him, everyone respected him, and he had been at her side all night.

  It was nice to be so cared for.

  ‘Is there another man in your life?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Has there ever been a man in your life?’