‘ You’ve absolutely nothing to be sorry about. I know you loved your cousin and we are going to find out who killed her.’
‘Do you think Goldie’s murder is related to the girl in the park?’
His expression became inscrutable, reminding me that this man is a cop, who might want to discuss the case, but couldn’t. Perhaps, but we don’t know yet.’
He drew me into a sitting position and with all the expertise of my mum, plumped the pillows up behind me and settled me against them. The throbbing in my head eased; warm contentment drifted through me. A huge hand came out and gently probed the dressing on my forehead. ‘How does it feel now?’
‘You know what? I can hardly feel it!’
The gorgeous mouth in front of me stretched into a broad grin. ‘Have you had your dinner yet?’
‘No, I must admit I’m hungry.’ Whatever you do, don’t sick it up, Pam.
‘Great! Do you like “Indian”?’
‘Love it! There’s a menu in the kitchen under my kindle on the shelf above the bench.’
Anthony pretty much bounded down the few steps to the lower level and was back in a moment waving the menu. ‘Okay pick whatever you like and I’ll ring for takeaway.’
We ordered and then he took both my hands in his. ‘They reckon it’ll be only about twenty minutes.’ He took a deep breath.
He looked relieved. ‘Perhaps we could go out to dinner one night soon?’ He smiled. ‘This visit is a one-off, but when it’s all over I want to be able to get to know you and find out where this is going.’
‘I understand. I have another concert to perform next week. It’s only in Ipswich, so that’s practically Brisbane. I told one of your troops the date I’d be away, where and for how long. I hate driving back late at night, so I might stay with a girlfriend who lives down there, if that’s okay?’A young detective constable had made a note of them and as I hadn’t heard anything, I had to assume that I’d be able to go.
‘Shouldn’t be a problem, but I’ll check it out tomorrow and let you know.’
I took a deep breath. ‘And then I fly to London – after that, Edinburgh in Scotland and then London again for a Royal Command Performance in front of Charles and Camilla no less!’
He looked astonished, as well he might. Most people – particularly men – didn’t understand that I had to go wherever my agent booked me. There was no choice if I were to have a successful career. I hastened to soften the blow. ‘I’ll only be away two weeks and then I come back and work here with the Pacific Symphony for a short season. We’re doing an outback concert tour.’
Now he would pull back. There weren’t enough fingers on my hands to count the number of blokes who had shot through when they understood that my life is one of being on the move – concert halls, church halls, TV studios, recording studios and sometimes, open air concerts in parks. Pam, what are you thinking? The man’s only just met you!
Remaining cool wasn’t easy, but he didn’t look about to bolt. ‘There’s always Skype. I’m thirty-two, mature enough to understand your dreams and that achieving them means you have to be where your career takes you. You’ve worked long and hard to get where you are now. Besides, I work long hours and any lady who has a relationship with me wouldn’t find it easy either.’ He reached one hand down and stroked the back of my hand, smiling. ‘But we can work something out if we put our minds to it.’
Our eyes met, my heart pounded. He leaned forward, sliding his hand around the back of my neck to draw me to him. His lips felt soft but firm, claiming mine in a kiss so deep, so sincere, that I knew I would walk through fire for this man. I slid my arms around his neck and drew him down onto the pillows with me. His hands slid over my breasts, kneading and gently squeezing. I tweaked his shirt out of his waistband and slid my hands up underneath, patting and stroking the sleek, powerful muscles. Breathing heavily, we sank into each other, taking what each had to offer...
Then the doorbell rang.
CHAPTER 27
Shaping a Nocturnal Animal
Dingo
Late 1990s
After the baby died, Frances’ drinking rose to new heights. Sometimes he wondered if she had forgotten that terrible day, but then she would go into bouts of smashing things, and chasing him around the house, trying to whack him over the head with whatever she could get her hands on. After one of these episodes she would drink herself into a stupor and then throw up. From an early age he became more proficient with a mop and bucket than any child should ever be.
Dingo had never tasted takeaway food and only homemade hamburgers, ice-cream and chocolate. He had never ridden on a bus much less a train. From the window of his room he would watch until the vapour trails of planes passing overhead vanished into the atmosphere. One day he too, would be in one of those...one day when she’d gone.
Counting became a ritual. If he got to five hundred, she would have likely gone to sleep; if he couldn’t get past fifty before she created a racket, it wasn’t good. From his window upstairs he counted the distant passing cars, grouping them into colours and bargaining. Please God, if the next car is blue, I promise I’ll be good for the rest of my life... If there were two blue cars at once it might be a good day, two red screamed danger. He didn’t realise that he subconsciously incited attacks because his tension levels rose after he saw red cars. His mother, with her instinct for survival, sensed his vulnerability. The beatings were bad times.
There were precious occasions when Frances was forced out to see the Trustees or for medical reasons. It was a measure of her control over him, that even when she was gone, Dingo couldn’t mentally bring himself to venture outside. The problem was that the rare occasions when he was taken out to the dentist were spoiled by the crowds of people on the street pushing past. Even the manic grip of Frances’ hand around his wrist, so tight that bruises surfaced, was security. The light, heat and smell of exhaust fumes were overpowering, so much so when he was really small that he couldn’t wait to get back to the sanctuary of their home. The doctor came to the house to visit both of them, because his mother pleaded her “condition.” Agoraphobia wasn’t part of his vocabulary until much later.
By the time he turned ten, Frances was forced to concede that his prowess at music had outgrown her expertise. Reluctantly, she found a music teacher who lived on the other side of town and his weekly lesson became another treasured expedition. His mother would bundle them both into a taxi – she said to make sure the teacher was doing the right thing by her prodigy – but also to ensure that he had no contact with anyone other than Gordon Eastwood. Musically, Dingo flourished. It was not long before the man recommended that his mother take him to a professor at the university in the next city. This was too much for her to accept. She remained adamant that her son remain with Eastwood.
Despite Frances’ edict that her son not enter any competitions, the teacher held private concerts at his house so his students could play for each other and get experience in performing. When Frances’ vigilance relaxed enough to send her son to his lessons alone in a taxi, Dingo joined in. He knew better than to mention the program at home. It was at one of these sessions that a stranger appeared and Frances never knew that her son had performed for, and greatly impressed, one of the foremost professors of music in the country.
Dingo’s musical education continued with Gordon Eastwood, who encouraged his pupil to reach heights that he, Eastwood, could never have attained. The professor remained in contact and it was this connection, along with Eastwood’s excellent teaching, which enabled the boy to attain the standard which would see his career assured.
When he turned thirteen, Dingo, aided by rising levels of testosterone, knew he would have to break out, die or kill his mother. He yearned to experience the outside world and managed that through watching TV for his schooling, as per the Distance Education curriculum and from keeping the sound almost off, while he watched programs of which his mother wouldn’t have approved.
She watched
every move he made...at least he thought she did until he discovered the spy cameras hidden around the house. How she had gotten them there and made them work, he didn’t know. He had found out when he sneaked out onto the back patio one day, chasing the cat while his mother was asleep. The beating he received for that minor excursion remained with him a long, long time.
The sleeping pills his mother hoarded in her bedroom were fair game. He wasn’t a fool. He halved them and watered the grog. Having a dead mother on his hands was not something he actually wanted. She wasn’t an unintelligent woman. There were times when she could talk rationally about the state of the world, the latest drama on TV and political matters from the daily newspaper thrown at the door early in the morning. It was at those times when Frances was relatively sane and approachable that he was persuaded things were looking up. They weren’t.
Then he started going out at night. By dint of discreetly working out where the camera was angled to include the back door, he devised a method of crawling against the skirting board. If he squeezed his shoulders together, he could crawl through the cat door, which had actually been made for a dog before the boy and his mother moved in.
On the first occasion, he turned off the outside sensor light, wriggled his way out and, accompanied by the cat, made it past the inner fence surrounding the garden and across the paddock to the boundary line before panicking and running all the way back to the house. He’d squatted against the wall of the laundry for what seemed like hours, counting his thudding heart beats, waiting for his mother to come pounding out of the lounge room to dispense punishment for him even thinking about disobeying. Too frightened to push his luck, he stayed inside for the next two nights.
Then he ventured out again. This time, again encouraged by presence of the cat, he stood in the garden, deep breathing and savouring the rhythm of the night. Far away, a dog barked. The houses on the perimeter of the outer fence were mostly in darkness, though here and there a light shone. When nothing untoward happened, he went down to the shed by the garden fence. The door was unlocked. Heart pounding, he stepped inside, smelling the oil and fumes from the petrol tank where the casual gardener hired by Frances kept the lawnmower.
Something stirred in the bushes. Terrified, he got ready to run, only to sag against the fence with relief when a strange cat came mewing around his ankles. It was several nights before he got the courage to venture out of the back gate, cross the three acres of heavily treed land separating the house from suburbia and stand in the laneway behind the fence. He left the gate open and walked a short way toward the main road, where he stood for what seemed like a long time watching and counting the cars going past.
Soon his rising confidence allowed him to venture down the laneway and into the shopping centre. It wasn’t long before he met other night creatures, bent on prowling, waiting for something exciting to happen.
“Hey boag, whatcha doin’?’
‘Dunno. Lookin’ around.’
“Wanna knock off the servo?’
‘Nah. That’s boring.’
Naive as Dingo was, he realised that robbing the local service station would be a bad idea. The local cops weren’t the problem; facing his mother might be fatal. After that, he was more circumspect about who he associated with, not realising at first that his size, black clothes and seeming aloofness made him cool. It was this misleading persona and the fact that his companions only saw him occasionally and at night, which earned him his nickname – Dingo. He liked that. It made him feel accepted.
Regular thieving from Frances’ handbag ensured he had ready cash to hold his own in the troop. His sexual life began when, one summer night, a fifteen year-old girl pushed him up against a wall and thrust her hand down his pants. A fast learner with an inventive mind, he soon graduated to being the most sought after of the teenage stallions and his habit of disappearing, seemingly into “thin air,” and absence for nights at a time only made him more desirable. Never telling anyone his name or where he lived was, for Dingo, a survival device, but to his companions it was cool.
For the next few years, Dingo roamed far and wide under cover of darkness, mostly alone but sometimes with mates who thought he was dead “fresh.” His encounters with girls were frequent, but he never told anyone the location of his home or, more importantly, confided how he lived. He would never admit to the dubious friends he made on the streets, that when he was alone he peered through windows into lounge rooms to vicariously partake of family life.
There was one house in particular which fascinated him. An ordinary suburban Federation- style brick house with a verandah all the way around attracted his attention. What Dingo regarded as the quintessential Australian family lived there – mother, father, a boy of about his own age, a small girl, a cat and a fat Labrador who smiled a lot as did the family.
He met the dog first, out for its regular evening constitutional in the nearby park. A soppy animal who loved everybody, it was overjoyed to spend time with Dingo who made sure he brought a ball along to throw for it whenever he could escape after dark. His next step was to accompany the dog home. He would stand behind a tree on the footpath on the other side of the road, watching the son whose job it was to let the dog out and bring it in again. At first the dog, whose name was Benji, waited for Dingo to cross the road with him, but soon accepted that they would part company behind the same tree.
Then one night, the family went out, leaving Benji in the yard. Greatly daring, Dingo went up to the fence and leaned over to pat the excited dog. The light from a nearby street lamp revealed a half-open window. He longed to get closer, to share just for a few moments the family warmth which emanated from that house. He looked around, and seeing no one, quietly opened the front gate, slipped inside and closed it. Benji trotted helpfully beside him as he stepped slowly onto the verandah and, keeping close to the shadowed wall, worked his way around to the window.
A light had been left on somewhere in the house. The dim glow revealed a single bed against the far wall on which posters of well known cricketers were displayed. A jumble of clothes sprawled across the bed and on the floor he could make out a gym bag with a tennis racket lying half out. A desk with a computer and a backpack stood against the left wall.
Suddenly, Dingo was inside the room. He didn’t remember sliding over the windowsill but now he was in he was compelled to explore, his senses alert for any sound of the family returning. He knew he would get into terrible trouble, probably be arrested and Frances would beat him senseless, but the warmth and essence of the family drew him like a hummingbird to nectar. Benji stood on his hind legs with forepaws on the sill and looked on in approval.
He couldn’t help touching things – a basket of knitting by an armchair – a blue sweater for someone, a book on the coffee table, bookmark saving the place, a tea cup left on the draining board in the kitchen and stroking the plump tabby cat curled up in an armchair. Moving faster, conscious of time passing, he slipped down the hallway, past what was obviously the little girl’s bedroom, pausing at the family bathroom, breathing in the scent of talcum powder, moist towels. A little way along was the parent’s room where shaded lamps glowed either side of the double bed.
A man’s blue sweater lay on the bed. He picked it up and buried his nose in the folds, drinking in the folds of – a father. He could barely remember Marcus. The terrible storm and collapse of the shed which took his father’s life was the most vivid recollection, though he could just remember the smell of horse sweat, leather and sheep and the security of his father’s arms holding him on the pommel of the saddle as they followed the sheep the last few kilometres to the yards.
A sound outside sent him back along the hallway, running lightly into the son’s bedroom and over to the window. Was that a car turning into the driveway? He could hear Benji barking out the front. Terrified, Dingo dropped the sweater on the floor, slid out of the window, crouched and ran for the backyard where he hid behind shrubs near the boundary fence.
Head
lights cut a swath across the lawn and what he knew was the family’s 4WD pulled up at the front gate. Benji went berserk with joy. Moving faster than he had ever in his life, Dingo raced for the high, wooden back fence, leapt up, caught the top and hauled himself up and over, just before the dog remembered him and rushed down the garden looking for a game.
‘Benji! What’s the matter, you stupid dog? Come back here!’
‘He’s probably chasing a possum, Wally. Come and help mum with the groceries!’
Breathing heavily, Dingo ran down the road, praying no one had seen or heard him. At the bottom of the street, he slowed to a walk, thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket and slouched home, forcing himself not to panic.
He was never so happy to be home than that night, but it didn’t stop there. Breaking into homes – not houses – to touch, to be part of family life became a secret addiction. When he grew up, he realised that it was only by proxy that he knew how families “worked.” That his home life was tragic hadn’t occurred to him until he started mixing with the teens after dark. The nights that he managed to sneak out tired him for the next day, but he forced himself to keep up the facade and practice the hours his mother demanded. When Frances had her afternoon nap, her son caught up on his sleep.
He rarely thought about the death of the baby after he’d finally managed to tell the police what happened that day when he was eight. They’d written it all down and his mother had signed in his name. Frances told him that she had to go to the Coroner’s Inquest and give evidence. ‘You’re lucky you didn’t get thrown in gaol, you little shit,’ she’d roared, shoving him roughly.
A couple of fat women from Children’s Services wearing thick stockings and sensible shoes, had come to see them, talked in low tones to his mother while they drank vast amounts of tea and scoffed all the scones she had made. They left after exhorting him to practice his music. He didn’t mind, because music was his only relief from the grinding emotional poverty allotted him. By the time he turned thirteen, he’d worked out that the women going into the garden and leaving the baby alone was their own fault. That he was socially inept was the fault of his mother – in fact, everything that was negative in his life was someone else’s fault. And as long as he kept counting, he could maintain control.
After Ariel: It started as a game Page 21
