by Joy Dettman
‘To your wife? I suggest you keep your pants on – or turn the light off when you sleep with her, Matty.’
‘You like to call the shots these days, don’t you?’
‘I just want honesty.’ She’d looked at the fake ring, almost told him that she knew it was fake. Not worth the effort.
No rote ‘Love you, Sall’. Just those eyes, angry, then home to the wife to explain his bruise. And if he had been honest about his living arrangements in Hallam, how the hell was she going to see his inner thigh?
Sally had spent hours imagining his home, his wife. She’d tried to force the mental image of a nagging, overweight blonde, sitting on her bum, eating chocolates. She’d tried to imagine Matt mowing the lawns on Sundays.
Daddy had mowed the lawns. Daddy in his short shorts, Sally not far away. It was weird, but every time she tried to imagine Matt’s garden, she saw her old garden in Geelong, saw her father working there.
She glanced at her father’s photograph, and he smiled at her. She picked it up, looked at the lock of dark hair falling over his brow, and at the shape of his face. Daddy in his suits. Daddy with his briefcase. Daddy with melted chocolate frogs in his pocket.
You’re spoiling her, Bren.
How do you spoil a little girl with chocolate frogs, Glen?
The memory had her searching through the photographs found in her mother’s handbag. It had her standing close to the window, lifting a small black negative to the light. Just a puzzle in black and white. Woman with dark hair and face, light dress, light trees and black sky. Life in reverse. There was one of three women, all with dark hair and faces, and some structure behind them. Light bars against the dark. She took up another. Same bars, different angle and a lone woman’s figure before this one.
It was a house frame! And that was a roof shape at the edge of the negative!
It was the Geelong house, and that was Raelene’s roof. The Masons had moved into Carter Street six months before Mummy and Daddy.
Her search continued, but faster now. Seven negatives had been slipped back into their envelope when she found the one of a man holding a little girl’s hand. Her heart leapt to her throat. She wanted it to be of her father, wanted, wanted, wanted it to be her father holding her hand. But she knew it wasn’t. Even with the dark and light reversed, she knew the clothing was wrong, the shape of the male was wrong.
She scattered the old snapshots onto the table then. The one of the man and child, faces scribbled out with red biro, was not among them. Ross had packed them up that day in Lakeside; he’d deemed photographs with red-biro faces junk. Easy for some to toss away junk.
Again she looked at the negative. Was it Mummy and her father, or had it been taken on the same day as the ones of that house frame? Was it Sally and old Papa? She placed it to the side and picked up another. Two women seated. Then one of a woman with a small boy in her arms. Mummy and Shane? She searched the scattered photographs until she found the negative’s perfect match. Grandma and Shane. Had there been a matching shot of Sally and Papa?
The negatives were probably too old to have printed, the surfaces worn by years of rubbing against mates. But it might be worth a try. With a shrug she slid the single negative into a clean envelope and placed it into her bag, then she dressed in her op-shop gear, picked up her guitar and her crazy hat, and left the flat.
The photography shop on Toorak Road couldn’t print the old negative on the spot. It would have to be sent away, the woman said. She didn’t like its condition either. ‘We can’t guarantee it.’
‘I’m not looking for guarantees. Enlarge it, please. A ten by eight.’
The woman attempted to explain the problems associated with enlargement, but Sally waved her hand and returned to her car.
Keys in her purse, old brooch beside them; she hadn’t wanted to leave it in the flat. As she removed her keys, the brooch pin became entangled in the bunch and the glass ruby glanced at the sunlight, near blinding her. She stood beside her car, tilting her purse, watching the stone catch the rays. It was magic.
There was a jeweller a few shops up. She looked towards it. Why not? Been there, done that before, why not make a fool of herself one more time?
He had a barred door, barred windows too, but she pushed his door wide and walked to the small rear counter, placing the brooch down. He came from behind a wall, distrustful, half-pirate, with his one eye.
‘Is that stone real?’ she said.
‘It’s very old!’ His voice was old. He looked at her through his eyeglass, then applied it to the brooch. ‘It’s a beautiful stone.’ Again she was examined under magnification. ‘A family heirloom?’ Her op-shop gear didn’t go with family heirlooms.
‘My grandmother died recently,’ she said, knowing he thought it was stolen.
‘You’re looking to sell it?’
‘No! I said I wanted to know if it’s real.’ Want to get out of here too.
‘If you should change your mind . . . ’ He wasn’t handing it back.
‘Thank you for . . . for your time.’ She took the brooch from his hand, pinned it on her bodice and got away.
So, it wasn’t Matt who had placed that padded envelope in her letterbox.
But who?
The bikie! Had he stolen it, dropped it in her letterbox for safekeeping? He knew he could scale her drainpipe to get it back. She looked over her shoulder. That jeweller was probably on the phone to the cops, giving them a description of her op-shop gear.
She went home and changed into black slacks and sweater, then she and her guitar caught the tram to the city. All afternoon she stood in the Bourke Street Mall, singing the songs she loved, not the ones Cocky liked. She had a crowd around her at lunchtime and she didn’t have to share her coins either.
No-one recognised her. Street busker. Matt’s prostitute. A waitress. Junk collector? Home wrecker. Nightingale with a broken heart. Bikie’s safety-deposit box.
Reality
April 2000
A black Honda Prelude was parked in Bollinger Street when she left the flats on Sunday morning; it had been there for an hour last night too. Probably a plain-clothes cop, or an insurance investigator with his video camera – it was a nice little car, though.
As she drove out to the street, she tried to see the cop behind the windows. Couldn’t see much at all, but she mounted the kerb trying, and probably buckled her front wheel. The steering had a wobbly feel to it as she headed for Toorak Road.
The Honda moved off too. He was watching her. She’d hoped he might have been after the bikie. It tracked her to St Kilda, and all the way she watched it in the rear-view mirror, and all the way her steering wheel felt queer. But she got a park, and the Honda didn’t.
She hadn’t seen Matt since Monday night, and as she took her guitar from the boot, she began writing a different scenario for her tail. Matt’s wife had hired a private detective to follow her, and that was the reason Matt had stayed away on Wednesday. His wife had seen the bruise on his thigh and put two and two together.
Sally smiled, and wondered why, but it was a funny image, Matt cowering down before this overweight blond wife.
Poor Matt.
Until Christmas she had seen him as faultless. But he wasn’t. He came to her flat empty-handed. Never bought wine, or the Jim Beam he liked to drink with ginger ale. When they ate together he left her with the washing-up. He used her expensive shampoo as if it was water and he wasted her toilet paper, swallowed her Panadols. He’d promised to take her out for her birthday, but he hadn’t. He’d never taken her out.
Little Cocky spent half of his life pleading to take her out.
There had been months when she’d lived on Matt’s Mondays and Wednesdays. These days she managed to slot them between the Sundays she spent with Cocky.
He was waiting on their corner of the Esplanade, revved up and ready to go, his guitar case primed with his own coins.
They played their guitars and they sang, they did requests and had a ball
until the weather changed and an old guy tossed an envelope into the case. Cocky snatched it, as the wind tried to steal it away.
‘I’ve had enough. Let’s go to the pub, babe. Do the split there while we have a drink.’
He was a pint-sized pain in the bum, but brilliant on the guitar and he had a good feel for harmony. They did well on their corner, not many notes but plenty of coins. Today there was a note – when Cocky opened the envelope they saw green.
‘Jesus, babe! Somebody appreciates us,’ he said.
‘It was an old guy in a suit. He probably wanted your body.’
‘Nice to know someone does.’
They cashed the note, split it and the coins, and he was still nagging. ‘Come on, babe. It’s too early to go home.’
‘I’m old enough to be your mother,’ she said.
‘You get into it young in the country, eh?’
‘I’m thirty,’ she said. ‘I was thirty on Thursday.’
‘Well, don’t tell anyone and they won’t know. How about it, then? Dinner and back to my place, and we’ll tape those songs.’
‘See you next Sunday, babe.’
Like he said, it was too early to go home.
Home?
What made a home? Possessions? People? When Daddy and the boys had been alive, she’d known the meaning of home. Her mind far away, she drove down Dandenong Road, thought of Joyce and turned left into Blackburn Road, thought of Sue and turned right onto the South Eastern Freeway.
So many cars, all going to someplace, but no PI in his black Honda tailing her.
Once I knew the way to get back home again,
Once there was a place where I could be . . .
She sang as she drove, enjoying the sound of her voice against the rhythm of a motor that now suggested its own new rhythms. Her mother used to write songs, and it wasn’t hard. You just let the words flow, let the pain pour out in words, so she sang on, altering a line from time to time, finding the rhymes, then returning to the beginning to sing the line again.
Once I knew the way to get back home again,
Once there was a place where I could be,
Now there is a world of strangers in the street
and loneliness my new reality.
Gather up days, the scattered memories,
Toss them all away, and set me free,
Let me search the world until I find the place,
For somewhere there is a place for me.
Her foot growing heavy on the accelerator, she sang, past Springvale Road and on, faster now, faster. She was going to go to Sue’s to borrow a book, but she passed Sue’s exit and drove on by Dandenong. Freedom driving, no traffic lights dictating.
Then the sign. Hallam. She had found her direction. She was going to Hallam, to Charlton Grove, just to see what she might see.
The Melway map-book, her knowledgeable friend, was on her passenger seat. She opened it at the traffic lights and let it guide her down a road she should have taken months ago. She found Charlton Grove. She found MT Marsden’s street. And later she found the house. Was it the place Matt flew to when he drove away from Bollinger Street? It was no black swan’s nest on a dark river bank, but a mansion with a wide garage beneath.
Her car parked across the road, two houses down, she put on her flower-power hat and her owl sunglasses, and she looked at a leadlight front door, at trees that had found time to grow tall, at the manicured lawns. She scanned the windows. No movement behind the expensive curtains.
There were pot plants on the porch. Why didn’t the wife come out, water her plants? Why didn’t Mr Marsden come out, turn on the sprinkling system?
Not a movement. Not a sound.
Then the perennial junk-mail deliverer walked by, dropping off her bundles from a child’s stroller, and a neighbour and her dog appeared from behind a security door. They checked their letterbox, walked next door and stole the bundle from MT Marsden’s box.
Junk-mail thieves in Hallam? And bad-mannered dogs. It leaked on the letterbox while the neighbour leafed through her collection. The dog treed a cat, then, satisfied with himself, he raked MT Marsden’s manicured lawn with all four paws, sending the turf flying behind him. Together they sprayed the pot plants. Sally liked that bad-mannered dog, but he scuttled off for home, the neighbour following on his heels.
At 7.15, a four-wheel drive turned into the street. It slowed before the Marsdens’ drive, and the big, brown garage door opened. The vehicle drove in. Matt. It must be Matt. Even an inanimate door could not deny him entrance.
Sliding low in her seat, she hid as the vehicle’s lights flooded the garage and the dark blue station wagon waiting there. She knew that wagon.
Then he stepped down from the four-wheel drive, and he turned on the lights. Her heart thumping in her breast, she held her breath, afraid now, afraid he’d turn, see her.
He didn’t turn.
But she saw three small boys tumble out of the four-wheel drive – tumble out running.
Boys?
Three boys?
Her mind quivered. Stilled. Slipped a track. She went skidding off into a time warp.
Nicky and Robby and Shane with their little boy laughter, their little boy feet on concrete, their high little voices. Her eyes staring at the well-lit scene were not taking it in. They were watching an old scene, in negative.
Daddy. Tall and slim and beautiful. The dark hair, the long legs. She was watching Daddy unload the cases when they’d come home from their holiday to Echuca. They’d been on the paddleboats and they were all sunburned.
They hadn’t died. They’d grown up in another place.
Shane. A big boy. And laughing, not screaming. And Robby, the quiet one, not so quiet tonight. And Nicky. No more thistledown hair.
She didn’t see the woman.
Until she heard her.
Heard the voice that jarred her back into the now.
‘Run in and get the mail from Mrs Bryant, Troy.’
Sally closed her eyes, covered her ears, and her stomach tried to lose the sandwich and the Diet Coke she’d had for lunch. Dry-retching, her mind was blank, until slowly she lifted her eyes to the woman and to an altered scene.
And she saw Matt’s bitch.
Not a bitch, though. Just a wife. Just a young mother. Dark as Matt. Long, straight hair, slim as Matt, wearing jeans like Matt; they were two black swans, perfectly matched and mated for life.
And they had three little boys.
Matt had three little boys.
She wanted to run. Had to run from what she’d done. Had to get away. Couldn’t get away. He’d see her car. He’d know her car. Know her numberplate. Not many old yellow Datsuns left on the roads these days. She had to sit and control her mind and her stomach until he went inside. Just sit and wait it out.
And cry. Cry for what she’d done, and for Matt’s lies. Cry for his beautiful boys. Cry for the fool she’d been. Just cry.
The neighbour and her dog were out again and the dog treed the cat again while the neighbour walked to the fence, not trusting a small boy with her pile of stolen junk mail. The street was breathing now, moving because Matt and his wife had returned. Lights came on behind Sally’s car. She cowered there and wept as she heard Matt’s voice.
Loved that voice once.
Hated that lying bastard.
‘Everyone inside. It’s late. Quick. We’re going to ring up for a pizza. Come on. Inside, I said.’
The smallest one came from up a tree, the cat looped over his shoulder, and Sally remembered a cat who had purred, who had kissed, as this cat kissed. Soft, sweet-scented ginger cat. For a time it had replaced Teddy. Then they’d packed up and left it to starve.
Matt took the mail. One hand on her shoulder, he guided his wife away from the neighbour. Control freak. Do it his way. Always had to do it his way, whether you liked it or not. He picked up the smallest boy and the cat. His boy. His cat.
‘You said I was your family, Matt. You said you’d find me if
I was lost. I’m lost. Find me,’ she wept.
He didn’t find her, didn’t even look her way. He had his family at his side and he walked them to his front door, shepherding in the boys. And when they were all inside, together, he closed the door on Sally, turned off the lights on Sally, locked her out. Left Sally in the dark to cry alone.
She had to get away. Drive away. How to drive when she couldn’t see to drive, that was the problem. She had to do it, though, had to think her way out of this. Had to pretend until she got home. Had to get home, lock her door. Hide.
Bloody fool. Bloody pitiful clown. She’d seen him in the lift that day and she’d known him. She’d loved him in another lifetime. Loved him, or someone who had looked very much like him.
But she made it home – or back to the flats. Her car space was bare. She ran up the stairs, ran for her bathroom and emptied her stomach into the toilet bowl, then sat in the dark, holding the photograph of Daddy to her breast, crying and cursing herself for a fool.
It was close to ten when she walked down for her guitar. Cold out, but there was warmth in the varnished wood, and comfort in the sad strumming, and later, comfort in the sound of her voice as she let the pain come out in words.
Across the small landing two doors were open.
‘Who is she?’ the guy from Number 15 asked, his stereo turned off a while.
‘Something you won’t often hear around this place,’ the bikie said.
‘What’s her name? Have I heard of her?’
‘De Rooze. Sally.’ He didn’t want to talk. He wanted to listen.
The melody rising and falling they stood on, the long, slim blond guy wearing bottle-top glasses and the dark-skinned bikie in black jeans.
And the song drew a third tenant to the hall, a tiny Asian woman. The bikie nodded to her, and she nodded, listening for a moment before closing her door.
‘She’s brilliant,’ the blond guy said as he returned to his unit.
Only the bikie stood on.
Strings plucked. She was feeling for a rhythm, then that voice again; the nightingale, singing her little broken heart out tonight.
