‘Oh, Bridget. Hell. I’ll come over.’
‘Don’t. I’m going on leave. Can you tell Rob I won’t be in? I’ll call him in a day or so.’
His worried voice: ‘What can I do?’
You’re so raw you’ve forgotten how to phrase things. ‘Just stay away. I can’t deal with it, I can’t—’
‘I only want to help.’
‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘I’m your friend,’ he says. As if it hasn’t all been about something else.
‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Don’t cut me off,’ he says.
It would be better to refuse, to make the break clean. It’ll just make it harder, having the door still open. But you’re not quite ready to close it yet. ‘I’ll be in touch. Don’t call me.’
You pocket the phone and walk back towards Jarrah’s ward. You’re in a state of hyper-awareness that started when you saw him lying on the ground in the torchlight and hasn’t stopped. If anything, as the sleepless hours have passed, it’s intensified.
This could tear what remains of you into pieces that can never be put together again – or be what pulls you through. Jarrah’s given you purpose with this. He’s given you a reason to get up and try to assemble yourself into something like a person each day. A real job.
FINN
Was it an offence, being late for a court mention? He had no idea. But he couldn’t go straight to court, not half dressed, smeared with mud and covered in scrapes. He drove slowly home, blinking through half-shut eyes. A council team was parked out the front, chainsaws blazing, reducing the fallen branch to manageable chunks and feeding them into the chipper. He circled around them to the gate. The smell of shredded timber, something he normally loved, cut the air like hospital disinfectant.
He changed, splashed his face, stared at himself in the mirror. The empty house scared him even more now. The place was attacking them. It was after ten-thirty. He grabbed wallet, keys, phone. Got into the car. Checked the address. Started the engine. Knew he was too strung out to drive. Got out, called a taxi.
At the courthouse he went through the security check and upstairs. The foyer of the Local Court was full of people. Children, adults, toddlers, old people – some as out of place as he, some clearly in their natural habitat. He looked around, disoriented.
‘Finn!’ Malcolm came striding over to him. ‘Where were you? Why didn’t you answer the phone? I’ve stalled them, so we’re all right for now, but you could lose your bail like this.’
‘Can we talk?’
‘Sure.’ Malcolm gestured to a nearby meeting room.
It was a relief to shut the door on it all, slump into a seat and say it out loud. ‘I want to plead guilty.’
Malcolm stared at him, shocked, then visibly shook himself. ‘Hold on. Let’s go back a step. Firstly, negligence in this case is a matter of opinion and must be proved to an extremely high level. I really doubt they can do it. Secondly, you and your family have gone through enough. You don’t need a criminal record and a jail term to add to it. There’s a good chance it will all be over at the committal hearing in a few months, if you can just be patient.’
Only someone who hadn’t lost a child accidentally could suggest that it would all be over if he were proved innocent, Finn thought. ‘But if I do plead guilty, won’t it speed things up?
‘Yes,’ Malcolm conceded.
Finn forced himself to concentrate. ‘Talk me through it.’
‘Christ.’ Malcolm rubbed his face. ‘You should consult your barrister. If you plead guilty now, you’ll waive a committal hearing. The magistrate will probably refer you straight to the next sitting of the Supreme Court for sentencing.’
‘How long?’
‘Depends on the sitting schedule.’ Malcolm pulled out his iPad. ‘You could possibly get into the next Lismore circuit or go to Sydney.’ He scrolled down the screen then looked up at Finn. ‘It’d be quick, at least. They’re sitting in Lismore on the seventeenth of November. Less than two weeks. You could get into that hearing, potentially, and Justice Kelly is a good choice for this case.’
‘What else?’
‘It’s true you would get a twenty-five per cent reduction in whatever sentence is imposed. That goes for anyone who pleads guilty straight off. Acknowledging guilt does impact on the type of sentence too: you are more likely to avoid a custodial sentence. But there’ll still be evidence heard so the judge can make up his or her mind. We’d have to build a case for why you shouldn’t get a custodial sentence. Things like the wellbeing of your surviving son would play a part. The judge will still want to hear an account of what happened, and there’ll still be cross-examination of witnesses. All that will still happen, Finn. And you’ll be a convicted criminal.’
‘I could still be a convicted criminal if it goes to trial. I could still go to jail if it goes to trial. And it might cost all the money we have. I don’t want to put my family through it. I don’t want my son on the stand. What will it cost if I plead guilty?’
‘Nothing like a trial. Say thirty thousand.’
Finn shrugged and sat back in his chair. ‘So then my wife can buy a house back in Hobart. My family has somewhere to live if I’m in jail.’
‘You realise if you get a custodial sentence, you go straight from the hearing to jail? You’d have to be prepared. Have all your affairs in order. And I really think you should refer this to your barrister.’
‘I’m ready,’ Finn said. He looked past Malcolm, out the window. In the weird, normal world that he seemed to have lost, it was another almost-summer brilliant sky-blue Tuesday.
‘I’ve made up my mind. When do we go in?’
*
Afterwards he had to tell someone. Found a quiet spot outside the courthouse and rang. Edmund’s phone went straight to voicemail, but Conor picked up. Finn tried to explain, realising how incoherent he sounded as he stumbled through the agreed explanation of Jarrah’s accident and his guilty plea in court.
‘I don’t understand.’ Conor sounded dazed. ‘I thought these things took years.’
‘They can. That’s why I’ve done it. There’s a sitting in two weeks when I’ll be sentenced and that’s it. Done.’
‘But – but – are you saying you might go to jail? In two weeks?’
‘It’s possible. But at least we’ll know the outcome.’
‘And you don’t want to fight?’
‘I can’t.’
‘But this sounds like terrible timing for Jarrah. Is he going to be all right? If it’s the money, the family can help, we can—’
‘Jesus, Conor,’ Finn snapped. ‘It’s hard enough, all right? I’ve done it.’
‘I wish you’d spoken to me first.’
‘Why?’
‘Dad’s not in a good way. We thought it was the shock over Toby, but he isn’t recovering. He’s not himself any more.’
‘Christ. How am I going to tell him this?’
‘I don’t think you can. He won’t handle it. He’s so confused, I don’t think he’d understand.’
Finn felt disembodied with exhaustion. ‘But I’m coming down. I’ve got to see him before court.’
Conor was silent for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘You’d better.’
JARRAH
Dad was asleep in the chair by the bed when I woke up properly. I’d slept on and off all through the day and it was dark outside. The clock on the wall said nearly eleven.
His head was hanging to one side, looking really uncomfortable. When did he get so old?
‘Dad,’ I whispered. It took three goes before he started and woke.
‘What is it?’
‘Why don’t you go home?’
‘I’m fine here,’ he said, moving his neck from side to side.
‘Nothing’s gonna happen, Dad. I’m OK.’
He gave me a weird, lopsided kind of smile. ‘I can’t risk it, Jarr.’
It hit me then, what it had meant to them. I was sorry. And glad the
branch broke.
‘How you feeling?’ he asked.
‘Better. You?’
‘OK. Try to sleep, eh?’
I lay still, listening to his breathing. It didn’t change and I figured he was wide awake.
‘Dad?’
‘Mm?’
Maybe because it was dark and I didn’t have to look at him, or maybe because we were in the hospital, but I really wanted to know about the day Toby drowned. I was alive, and I wanted to know everything.
‘When are we moving?’ I asked instead.
I heard his breath catch. ‘Don’t worry about that. You’ll finish the term first. I’m going down to see Pop for a few days. He’s not well. We won’t make any other decisions for a while.’
‘Are you going to take Toby’s ashes?’
A long pause. ‘No. We’ll scatter his ashes together when it feels right.’
‘Dad?’
‘Mm?’
‘What happened?’
He knew what I meant. He was silent for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. At last he wriggled a bit and started.
‘I was working. I should have helped your mother get ready, but she insisted I get cracking, and you know that was the whole point of Toby going to child care. I was over there, welding. Couldn’t hear much with that going on. And I had my back to the pool and the safety mask on.’
‘And?’
‘Heard your mother. I realised it was something bad. I ran out. She was on the step in the pool, holding Toby. Carrying him out.’
We were both silent. I could hear in his choked voice how hard it was to say it, and it wasn’t any easier for me to hear it. I was ready to tell him not to go on, but he started again.
‘She’d gone to the bathroom. Left him alone reading on the kitchen floor. Just a few minutes. If the gate had been working properly, it wouldn’t have mattered.’
‘What was wrong with the gate?’
He shifted around again, rubbed his neck. ‘Owl malfunctioned. Didn’t shut the gate properly behind me when I went through to the studio. I didn’t notice it. If I’d been paying attention … That’s why they charged me, Jarrah. It was my fault. I should never have changed the gate system.’
His voice was trembling. No wonder. He blamed himself for the whole thing.
‘Thanks for telling me,’ I said.
‘It’s OK. You know, Jarr, you can ask me anything. I’ll do my best to answer.’
I lay there for a long time trying to get up the courage and I think he was starting to doze off by the time I did.
‘Are you and Mum divorcing?’
‘Absolutely not,’ he said in the dark. ‘Don’t even think it, Jarrah.’
I closed my eyes. Still kind of drugged, spiralling down towards sleep, being dragged there in spite of everything.
Just before I dropped off, I realised what was nagging at me. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t believe him, about him and Mum. And if he’d lied about that, what else was he lying about?
PART THREE
FINN
Finn turned up his collar against the cold and leaned over the railing. Below, oily rainbows pooled on the water’s surface and the seagulls shrieked and swooped around him as a nearby child threw chips for them to snatch. He’d nearly forgotten how Hobart could make a joke of summer, obliterating its heat with a glacial roar of wind and rain.
His leather jacket smelled mouldy, and he felt alone, alone, alone like he’d never been in his life, sick with his losses and the way they joined together, streams in a watershed rushing to the lowest point, creating a torrent after a storm, washing out and ruining everything in its path.
The big orange Antarctic ship was in port, her stack steaming as she prepared to sail south. Hobart knew what ships were coming in and out. People watched the Aurora Australis leave for the long journey to the ice three or four times in the summer season, and they kept an eye out for her return, that long hoot of the horn as she manoeuvred into the dock. He’d grown up with the sound, known those ships since he was a kid. Hobart was in his bones; Hobart held his roots. He’d thought. But he’d got back to confront everything his brother had kept from him.
Conor had picked him up at the airport a week ago and tried to convince him to go for dinner or a drink, but Finn demanded to be taken straight to his father’s house. It was so familiar. The crooked path planted with lavender and rosemary and the cold-climate scent they gave off. The odd height of the two steps up to the door. The bricks, when he’d become accustomed to the weatherboards up north. The old pale-blue lino inside. The dear familiarity of it tightened his throat. Until he saw his father.
When the Brennans left Hobart, Toby’s poppa had been an active eighty-five. White-haired, big-boned like all the males of the family, leathery-skinned. He’d had a daily routine of walking, bowls, lunch at the club, mass on Sundays, flowers on his wife’s grave, the children and the grandchildren. Signs of slowing down, but still living. Someone who showed little resemblance to the empty-eyed man now slouched in the armchair in the late-afternoon dark of the lounge room.
‘Dad?’
The head turned slowly to find him. ‘Finn, boy.’
Finn stepped forwards onto the rug, crouched down so his face was near his father’s. Reached for his father’s hand and took it. Couldn’t speak. At once the little boy reaching for his father and the man who knew there was no safety there.
Tears began rolling from his father’s eyes in a steady stream. ‘I can’t …’ He stopped, fumbled, produced a handkerchief. ‘I didn’t believe them. But it’s true, isn’t it?’
Finn nodded. In the face of his father’s tears, he remained dry-eyed. He felt Conor’s hand on his shoulder.
John gulped. ‘I wanted to come. I’m so sorry.’
‘I know.’
Finn tried to re-form his world, again. He’d lost a son. And now, in some indefinable way, he’d lost a father too.
John lifted his head and looked out the window. A vagueness had come over him. ‘Sometimes it’s very hard to understand God’s will,’ he murmured.
Finn hadn’t been to mass since he was a kid, but without a particular reason to doubt it, he’d assumed some kind of benign God existed. He knew now – though he’d never tell his father – there was no God. He felt himself sag.
Helen arrived shortly afterwards. Finn hadn’t seen her since it happened either, and they hugged hard. She drew back, tearful.
‘You and Conor go out,’ she said. ‘Your dad can’t take too much at once. I’ll do his dinner.’
The second shock came at the pub, over steak and chips and a cold ale.
‘I’ve moved out,’ Conor said. ‘Stayed in the pub a couple of days, thinking it would blow over, and been at Dad’s since then. Didn’t seem worth getting somewhere to live until I knew how he would pull up. Helen’s been a huge help, I’ll give her that.’
‘But – what happened?’
‘She says she’s been unhappy for years, but she waited until the kids were through school and out of the house.’
‘You had no idea?’
‘Well, you know. I thought it was just being middle aged. Our sex life was pretty non-existent and in the evenings we didn’t have much to say to each other. But I thought after the kids were gone we’d do something else. Travel around Australia or something. I guess I didn’t take enough notice. And then, when Toby died, she said that made her re-evaluate everything. She said life was short. Like we don’t all know it.’
‘I don’t know if Bridget and I will make it,’ Finn said.
Conor shook his head. ‘You’ve got to. It’s too awful otherwise.’
‘She doesn’t want to come back here. She wants to stay where he died, like she’s closer to him.’
‘Maybe this time apart will do you good.’
‘Or maybe I’ll end up in jail and it’ll be a relief for her.’
‘So fucking unfair. It makes me want to …’ Conor trailed off. ‘You think life is OK but eve
rything can go to shit in a second.’
They both drank too much. There seemed no reason not to. Their father’s place was in darkness when they got home. Finn curled into an old quilt on an air mattress on the floor and floated into disembodied sleep.
The next morning, searching for coffee, he bumped into friends in Salamanca Place and the pity on their faces was too much. They didn’t know what to say. Stumbled through awkward commiserations and invited him around for a meal, without conviction. He broke off the conversation as fast as he could.
What had all those old friendships been? Would any of them survive if he and Bridget split? Or were they based on the ease of a family unit?
He could barely cope with his own family either. He drove up to Deloraine to visit Mary and her girlfriend Edie, spent two nights with Carmel and her husband Graeme. He’d left Hobart less than a year back, but in that time his family had grown shockingly old. Finn himself was the much younger youngest son, like Toby had been. There were eight years between him and Conor, his next brother up. But all his siblings had aged and his father was ancient. Was it losing Toby that now hung the years so heavily on them? And if that was it, why didn’t he feel closer to his brothers and sisters in his grief? He’d dreamed of coming home to find family again, of having them hold his pain, but sorrow had done strange things with the bonds between them, stretched and twisted them into unrecognisable shapes.
Whatever comfort he’d dreamed of finding, it wasn’t there. But coming back to Hobart meant he was at last separate from Bridget’s pain. Whatever he felt, it was his own. It might take him over and take him down, it might be merciless, but it was his. Toby soaked his days and nights. Toby throbbed in the empty air, filled the silence, expanded to take in every inch of the room. Toby demanding to be heard, Toby demanding to be remembered. Toby demanding more.
How could life make sense again? All those dead children, the ones who died every day, every minute, from bad water and war and disease and beatings and starvation and malaria, the ones who died in orphanages, the ones caught in violence – domestic, racial, national, international. Now he knew what each death meant, how could he live?
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