Mallawindy

by Joy Dettman

  She shrugged. ‘One, but he got married six months after I left. I don’t leave a very lasting impression on people, Roger. I pass by, and for a moment I become visible. I leave, and memory of me disappears.’

  ‘Then stay, my lovely.’

  ‘I’m going to bed.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘This is the eighties, pretty lady. Everybody is doing it with everybody else.’

  ‘Good night.’

  ‘Night. Dream of me,’ he said.

  He’d been in his own bed an hour when he heard her scream. Up, and through the door, he hit the light, flooding her room, but the dreamer saw nothing. She screamed and thrashed at the air with her arms, fighting off old demons, her back against the bed-head.

  He grasped her arms. ‘Ann. Wake up. Ann!’

  ‘Jesus.’ She screamed at him, wrenched her arms from his grasp. ‘Get out of my room. Get out.’

  ‘Tell me what you were dreaming and you’ll never dream it again. I’ve been where you are. I’ve dreamed those dreams.’

  ‘Get out of my room, Roger.’

  ‘What were you dreaming?’ He was on the bed, his arm around her, strong, and he pulled her to him.

  ‘Nothing. Let me go.’

  ‘Trust me, my lovely.’

  She closed her eyes, but it was there still. She shook her head. It was Narrawee. It was the road, the trees. It was the crow’s head with the fish tail. One for sorrow, two for joy, he sang. Just in case, he sang. She stared beyond Roger, her eyes wide, then she let her head fall to rest against his.

  ‘Talk to me. Tell me your dream, and I’ll take it all away.’

  ‘It was nothing. I don’t need this – ’

  ‘Nothing does not evoke that scream.’ Both arms were around her, and she leaned against him while the terror slowly seeped away.

  Let it all seep away. Let it all go. Open your mouth and drive it away.

  ‘I’m driving the car,’ she said. ‘It’s just a road. It’s ... I know the road, the church, the house on the corner. I go around the curve and ... and ... and it goes back to the same as I’ve had forever. It’s always the same. I’m walking then. It’s narrow ... dark. I open a door. Huge room. Beautiful magic room, but while I look at it, it changes. It’s old. It’s falling down. And crows. Crows everywhere. Black crows in the rafters, then they turn blood red, and I see they aren’t crows – .’ Her hands began to reach for the words. ‘All face turn. Got no eyes. Blood come from eyes. Crow face all go. All get same face. Same face. Not crow face.’

  ‘You sign?’ he said. ‘You said face.’

  ‘No.’ She snatched her hands to her sides, pushed him away, and she locked her tell-tale hands beneath the blanket.

  ‘Yes, you did. Yes, you did, my lovely. I’ve got a deaf cousin.’

  ‘Leave me alone,’ she said. ‘You’re screwing up my brain.’

  ‘Look at the face. Who does it belong to?’

  ‘I don’t want this. I don’t want you in here, either.’

  ‘Look at the face, Ann.’ She covered her face with her hands, sat head down, and he took one hand, and he lifted her chin. ’Look at the face. Who do you see?’

  ‘The kaleidoscope man,’ she said to his eyes. ‘The demon face. Flesh disintegrates, reconstructs. It’s coloured. Orange glow, purple dust. No more. Don’t make me think about it, Roger.’

  ‘Recognise him. Spit in the bastard’s eye and tell him you are not afraid.’

  ‘No more,’ she pleaded. ‘I stopped. For years I stopped dreaming. You are bringing them back. You are filling my head with magic again, and there is no bloody magic. There never was.’

  He found her dressing-gown, and she became conscious of her brief nightie, that hid little from his eyes. She slipped quickly into her gown and he buttoned her up, when her own hands couldn’t find the buttonholes. He took her hand again, and led her to a well-equipped kitchenette where he heated milk and mixed two mugs of Milo.

  ‘Where do your parents live?’

  ‘Mallawindy,’ Ann said.

  She sat with him for an hour. It was like it had been with Malcolm Fletcher. He asked questions, and she replied. So good to talk again. So good to open her mouth and let words pour out uncensored. She couldn’t lie to him, and she knew there was no need to lie. She told him she had lost her speech at the age of six when her sister disappeared, and how for seven years she had been mute. She said she remembered a name. Ted Crow. That she remembered blood, then she spoke of her accidental trip to Narrawee and how she almost blacked out while driving.

  ‘I ran from a signpost,’ she said.

  ‘Go back there, lay the old ghosts, my lovely.’ She sat before him, shaking her head. ‘We all have to confront our demons sooner or later. Once we face them, we can come to terms with old nightmares.’

  ‘I’ll die if I go back there. I’ll shrivel up and die. I’ll blow away.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, hold your hand, and the wind won’t dare to blow you away.’

  the opalescent gem

  January 1985

  The young copper had a mother fixation and a bloody long nose. Jack had always made an effort to steer clear of confrontations with the law, but the copper and Ben were thick as thieves and out to get him. Since the night of the toothache, the officious little bastard had taken to dropping in at the house at odd times, so Jack had started staying away, trying out a few new beds.

  He would have gone to Narrawee, but May had banned him after his last visit. He’d gone on a bender, spent his days drinking and planning a slow and painful death for teetotaller Sam. May was a wild cat with claws when things didn’t go her way, a bloody-minded manipulating bitch. She’d got too used to thinking she could have things her own way.

  He could live without her. He’d show her, and he’d been doing all right too, until yesterday. Women today were into stuff they wouldn’t have thought of in his youth. Vera Owen didn’t live too far out of town, and though she wasn’t much in the looks department, she was a bloody contortionist in bed. Jack had been feeling twenty years younger – until yesterday.

  He had seven stitches standing to attention on his scalp; his hair, kept short and always lightly oiled, was usually worn brushed back from his brow. Today it stood on end. Vera’s husband, a truckie, home ahead of schedule, crept into his house at dawn, eager to surprise his wife. He caught her napping, Jack at her side.

  Bloody big-mouth Bessy passed the news on to Ellie. He couldn’t go home to rest up, like the Daree doctor told him to do; he was in no mood for Ellie’s cow-eyed accusations, so he was resting up in the pub, head propped on his hand, one eye on the window, watching for the truckie and his tyre lever. Instead, he saw a maroon Ford brake sharply and thunk to a stop against the deep gutter. The driver got out and lit a cigarette, while his woman snapped a fast photograph of King Billy and his bottle.

  The male was familiar. Jack knew he’d met him, but he couldn’t remember where. His brain was functioning on the level of a bowl of mashed pumpkin today. Then the woman stepped out, and Jack knew he knew her too. His past was coming home to roost today. He rubbed his head and watched the door where they would enter. Who was she? One of the Daree farmers’ wives he’d sold a policy to. He started mentally ticking off names, forcing his brain to work. Bleached hair, a fat and frumpish fifty, her husband a lanky, bald, bean pole.

  The couple walked into the main bar, scanned it, then sighted Jack. ‘You’re Sam Burton’s twin brother, or I’ll go eat my hat,’ the male said. ‘Harper, Bill and Edna Harper from Narrawee.’

  Jack shook their hands, he straightened his shoulders and dug out the old bullshit artist from his boots. He could do it well when he was sober, but even drunk he could still charm the pants off a virgin if it was worth the effort. It might be worth it today. His arm around Edna, he guided her through the maze of narrow corridors into the ladies lounge, a ten by ten dark hole, opening onto the rear of the bar. It gave the illusion of pri
vacy.

  ‘The bar is no place for a lady,’ he smiled, and his jaws ached with the effort.

  ‘What will you drink, Jack?’

  Jack considered a free whisky, but settled for a beer. He’d need all of his remaining wits intact.

  ‘Three beers,’ the traveller called to the barman, busy wiping the backside of his bar, priming it with his beer wet cloth. Bill tossed twenty dollars down. ‘You live around here, Jack? I knew you were up the mulga some place.’

  Jack nodded, and it hurt his head. He looked through the gap to the main bar, sighted the bull-necked truckie. Shit, he was big. He hadn’t looked so big sitting in his truck. Have to get out of town, Jack thought. He was in no fit state to drive. His concentration was shit, everything he looked at, lopsided and back-to-front.

  ‘We’ve been checking out motels up through Dubbo. Supposed to be back home yesterday, but Edna decided to run into a post. Had to wait for a new radiator.’ Bill Harper’s laugh raised a small echo from his woman.

  ‘You used to be on the land, Edna?’ Jack’s eyes flitted over her. She had bloomed once, for a season.

  ‘My father worked on the property next door to yours, Jack.’

  ‘Oh, not likely I’d forget you, Edna,’ he said, and she had the decency to blush. Her old man used to work for May’s father. Jack had given her a few tumbles in the hay shed when he was sixteen. He nodded, and sipped his beer. She was another Ellie. Bloomed early, faded fast. Christ only knew where she’d picked up the coot she was with. The ugly bastard’s B. O. was turning Jack’s stomach.

  ‘Motels. That’s where the money is, Jack. We’ve just built a nice little place in Narrawee. Though your sister-in-law might not agree with my adjective.’

  ‘Her great-grandfather and old Samuel Burton cut the town up between them. May still thinks she owns the deeds,’ Jack said with feeling, and Edna, eager for some character assassination, opened her mouth. She closed it abruptly when a shoe beneath the table caught her ankle. Her beer spilled.

  Mick Bourke lifted the side of his back bar and wandered out, rag in hand. ‘Same again, folks?’ The cash was still on his bar; he could be relied on to keep filling the glasses while it remained there.

  ‘It’s a small world, Bill,’ Jack said, viewing his back-to-front, too-small bloody world through the side of a beer glass. He could see the truckie through it. He looked lopsided, but magnified behind glass. ‘What time are you leaving for home?’

  ‘We’ll go through in the cool of the evening. This bloody heat is only fit for the Abos.’

  ‘You’ll think I’ve got the hide of a rhino, but I was supposed to be in Narrawee today. I hit a roo on the way home yesterday.’ Jack pointed to his stitches. ‘If I were to offer to put in the petrol, Bill, could I beg a lift?’

  ‘Christ, it will be my pleasure, Jack.’

  ‘You’re most welcome, I’m sure,’ Edna drivelled. ‘If we can’t do a neighbourly service for an old friend, then what’s the world coming to, I always say.’

  ‘Ready when you are. I keep a few things at Narrawee. Backwards and forwards so often, it saves a man the burden of packing and unpacking.’

  Fate or the devil still looked after Jack Burton.

  The tourists off-loaded their passenger at the gates of the old Burton property seven hours later. ‘Thanks,’ Jack’s voice was weary, his cast-iron stomach ready to give up its contents. He grasped his bottle, his only luggage, and walked away sucking in fresh air to replace the B.O.

  ‘A pleasure,’ Bill Harper said. ‘Give our regards to your family.’ They drove off as Jack flung the big gate open and started on his long walk up the drive to the house.

  It never failed to please him. By moonlight, the white stone glowed like a pale opalescent gem against the velvet backdrop of night. He’d known the house since birth, but his first visual memory of it was by moonlight, his hand held firmly in his father’s. The trees had been smaller then, the lawns, uncut grass; it had seduced his four-year-old heart that night, and held him captive still. His uncle was dead. Now the house was his. His father had said so.

  ‘That’ sours, boys. That’s our land now. One day it will belong to both of you, and to your children, and to your children’s children.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’

  ‘Yes, Father. Mean old bastard.’ The four-year-old boy, still locked inside Jack Burton, cried for his land.

  The house was sleeping, or deserted, but he knew where the spare key was kept. He found it with the help of his cigarette lighter and a singed finger, then silent as any robber, he crept inside.

  Tonight the kitchen door wasn’t where it ought to be, but he was becoming accustomed to his twisted state. He found his way to the downstairs bathroom, felt for the cupboard over the basin, found painkillers. A generous dose popped to his palm, he washed them down with the whisky, warm after its long drive from Mallawindy. Bugger May, and her house rules. He needed its hard teat tonight. No woman was going to lay the law down to him. She could take him as he was or go to buggery. Anyhow, she probably wasn’t here. He hoped.

  With inordinate concentration, the bottle held to his breast, he felt his way through the long passage to Sam’s den and the big recliner chair. No gain in taking his bottle upstairs, in finding a bed. If she was up there, she’d smell his whisky a mile off.

  He sipped and he nodded until the nodding head became too heavy. The bottle still three-quarters full, Jack placed it tenderly on the floor, and his head sank down into the sweet oblivion of sleep.

  ‘Jack! Jack? What are you doing here like this? And what is this doing here?’

  He woke with a start that jarred his brain into orbit. He blinked, slowly focused on May and the bottle she held high.

  ‘What on earth were you thinking of? How dare you come here like this after that last time.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, keep your voice down and have a bit of compassion. Give me back my bottle.’

  May was still slim as a girl. Her blonde hair, kept that way by her hairdresser, was worn short. She walked purposely to the kitchen, and Jack tried to rise, to follow. Too hard. He sank back to his chair and listened to his money glug-glugging down the sink. ‘Mean bitch,’ he moaned.

  ‘You know better than to bring drink here. If you don’t like the rules I set, then you stay away, Jack. It’s your decision. But I will not have you here in this state.’ She was back in the den, her eyes roving over him.

  His hand went to the stitches on his scalp, then flinched away. ‘I needed it, May. I broke out of hospital last night,’ he said. ‘Took a taxi home. I’ve got a brain tumour. It’s inoperable.’ It was the tale he’d intended for Ellie, until bloody Bessie got in first. Tilting his head forward, he displayed his many stitches to May. She gasped, stepped forward, looking closely at his stitches, and at the shaved scalp.

  ‘Not a very clean cut, dear. I’d change my surgeon if I were you.’

  ‘Emergency operation, May.’

  ‘Obviously, dear. You’re going to have another terrible scar. How did that happen?’

  ‘It won’t worry me too long. I’ve got three months at the most.’

  ‘Yes, dear. Now tell me the truth. Did you smash that car up? You’re getting beyond a joke, Jack.’

  ‘I told you. I’m dying.’

  ‘I don’t have time this morning for your games. What happened to your head?’

  ‘Irrational behaviour? The old man said it all my life, May. Headaches. I’ve had them since I was a kid. They’ve been getting worse. You’d remember those headaches.’

  ‘I remember your youth well. Now what happened to your head, and I want no more nonsense?’

  ‘Everyone remembers my youth, and bloody Sam’s too – .’

  ‘If you are staying, Jack, then we cut that conversation here. What happened to your head?’

  ‘I’ve crawled home to die, May. The quack in Daree sent me down to Melbourne for tests and that’s the truth, and may Jesus strike me dead if I tell you a lie.’r />
  ‘I believe you, dear, but thousands wouldn’t. Now go to the shower, and fix yourself up. Where did you put your case?’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just me today.’

  ‘Oh, Jack. What am I going to do with you? This cannot go on.’

  ‘But it will, May. It will go on and on until my name is on that bloody Narrawee title. It’s my land, May. Mine.’

  May sighed and looked towards the ceiling. ‘I’ve got the cleaning ladies coming in at nine. Come upstairs and I’ll see what I can find for you.’

  narrawee

  ‘Narrawee. Green place. White house, green lawns.’ Like an incantation, Ann chanted the words, willing more information to come. ‘Narrawee. A town like any other town. Houses, ordinary people living out their ordinary lives.’ Old Samuel Burton had named his property Narrawee before there was a town. Jack had been proud of Samuel, but he hated the straight-laced little town that didn’t even have a hotel. Her hand reached for the windscreen wiper switch as the clouds split open to drop their load on her car.

  ‘Narrawee, green place. Narrawee, green place.’ Again she picked up the chant, creating a rhythm that kept time with the wiper-blades. Visibility was cut to nil. She slowed, navigating by the white posts alone. It was eerie. Locked in.

  ‘There is nothing to fear except fear itself. I was six when it happened, now I’m twenty-four. What am I afraid of? Of you, little Annie? Fear of one’s self is irrational. Look at me. I’m an adult. I hold down a responsible job. But I’m the mermaid too, and they are an endangered species. They scream in the night.’

  Since the night in Sydney, she had planned this day. Roger called her often from America, and each time he asked if she’d been back there. He was flying over next week, and he said they were going there together, but she didn’t want him there, didn’t know what she’d find there, so she had to do it alone.

  Roger Wilkenson. She liked him. She’d been out with other men. Younger men, boys. None had ever got close to her. A few kisses, a few who expected more, and got annoyed when they didn’t get it, but none of their kisses had been like that other mouth, that asking, laughing, David mouth.