by Joy Dettman
They usually responded to water. She didn’t move. Nor did she slide deeper. Too much length in her and insufficient depth of water. He stood watching her long hair, floating like pale seaweed in an ocean current as the water crept up to her chin, up to her mouth, when he spoke the words he’d spoken to each of them.
‘Time to pull the plug, angel. Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.’
Turned on his heel then and left her. He never watched their final puny fights for life. An amazing thing, the human body, and its will to live. The third of them had fought for minutes.
In the kitchen her outfit lay ready on the table. Angie would have loved that pink sweater with its beading. She’d loved sparkly things. The denim skirt, left too long folded, had deep creases. He gave it a shake, a slap, then placed it down. White briefs, white socks, pink and white sneakers joined by an elastic thread. He snipped it, studied one of them. Made in China and sold at Kmart for twelve dollars.
Listened for her fight. He could hear water running but no sound of splashing.
His preparations were familiar: the plastic raincoat, the latex gloves, the rubber bands. Not the plastic shower cap. He pulled that on as an added precaution. He had more hair now to shed, longer hair, and the hunters had got his DNA from the gully’s refuse. He knew he’d bled there, had sucked blood from his wound and spat it. The shock of what he’d uncovered had made him fling natural caution to the wind.
One mistake after another, after another. There’d be no more.
‘You.’
He couldn’t shake the expression in her eyes, the disgust and disbelief.
He’d get rid of the Kingswood tonight, get a train back to the city, hop on a tram and be home in plenty of time.
He’d walked here tonight, or walked the last kilometres across country and over the hill. His neighbour hadn’t seen him. He’d burn this place tonight, spread that hay around and be long gone before anyone saw the flames – and he had to get on with it.
He picked up a roll of paper towels, the shampoo and was walking towards the passage when he noticed that no light was escaping from the bathroom. He’d left a candle burning in there, and he turned and picked up his lantern.
Looked for her. The tub was near full and she wasn’t in it. He turned the tap off and lifted the lantern higher. She had to be in it. She had twenty milligrams of Valium in her system. Five milligrams was enough to knock him out. He dropped the shampoo and paper towels to reach into the water, feeling for her, creating waves that slopped to the floor, to his shoes, his trousers.
Feeling around in a tub of water wasn’t going to alter the fact that she wasn’t in that tub. The window was small, high, and sealed. He looked behind the free-standing bath, behind the door, then ran back to the kitchen to check his back door. He’d sealed the front door with screws, sealed every window. She hadn’t got out.
Saw her trail of water then, and followed it to the eastern end of the house and into the room where he stored his bales of hay. Found her standing on one, attempting to open the top window.
She heard him, turned, then sprang down from that bale and ran at him. Had to drop the lantern to grab her, but he got her, held her until she hooked a foot behind his knee and threw him off balance. He went down hard. Hit the wall, hit the floor, hit the lantern, but took her down with him.
Lantern on its side, flame flaring high, eager to taste spilled hay, playing shadows on the ceiling as she ripped the shower cap from his head. He swiped at her with a wet glove, but the fighting bitch slammed her closed fist into his new glasses, driving their plastic bridge into the side of his nose and momentarily blinding him with pain.
He never marked those girls. He’d had cause to, but he’d kept his hands off them. He was fighting for his life in a house that would go up like matchwood, and that bloody lantern had a bowl full of kerosene and looked ready to blow. He hit her with a closed fist to her jaw.
It killed her fight long enough for him to get a grip on her hair, long enough for him to right that flaring lantern. Its glass shade had cracked, but there was no time to worry about it. Her scream was bloodcurdling, shrill and unending.
She screamed down the dark passage, screamed when he dragged her by the hair into the pantry, where he attempted to manhandle her into the cage. She got a grip on the bars and fought him with her feet, and one of them got him in the throat. Already breathless, he fought then for the air in that stinking hole, and that fighting bitch slammed the door, and screamed her victory.
Priorities alter when a door closes, when there is no light. His penlight torch was in his pocket, his pocket was beneath the raincoat. He was digging for it when she floored him with something harder, heavier than her puny fist or foot. It mashed into his ear, and he heard his own roar of pain, and while he roared, she hit him again and he was down, on his backside, ripping plastic to get at his torch.
Saw her in that first sweep of light. Saw what she’d hit him with. Saw it disappearing down the hole in that floorboard.
He’d known that hole was there. He’d broken the bloody board when he’d been ripping out the shelving, when one of the supports had come away with a section of rotting floorboard attached. On his knees, gripping that torch, he sucked stinking air in through his open mouth while staring in disbelief.
And she kicked the torch from his hand, and the light died and she was out that door.
He moved then. He got out before she could lock him in, disbelieving the strength of her. They’d all weakened in that cage. She’d been in it for weeks and there was nothing of her. He’d weakened, and if she got hold of his scissors or a knife, she’d kill him.
He was bleeding. He could feel it trickling wet to his collar. He’d bruised his hip when he’d landed, hurt his head. And he couldn’t see a bloody thing without light.
He could see the stove. He burned his hand when he opened the firebox, but it gave him light. Gave her light too. The cans she’d loathed became her missiles. He took his gloves off, bailed her up between the table and the corner, where he felled her with a closed-fisted blow to her mouth.
Straddling her to keep her down, he ripped the plastic coat from his back and wrapped it around her face and head, held it bunched at her throat, prepared now to do this any way he could. She’d fooled him. He didn’t fool easily, and didn’t like being fooled.
She stopped fighting him to fight the plastic, and his position was killing his hip and his ear was killing him, and his blood was dripping, and she must have been sucking air from somewhere. He had to get her back into the pantry and lock her in until he could retrieve that padlock.
She’d scream down that hole in the floor and bring the dog and its owner running – or rip up the bloody floorboards with her fingernails. They were all rotten where they backed up against the washhouse. Should have done something about that floor, a bit of masonite, foam rubber, something.
He had duct tape. That would silence her. He looked at the dog chain he’d fixed to the skirting board two years ago. Its padlock was on the mantelpiece. He had to do something before his hip seized and he never moved again.
He got to his feet, dragged her with him to the mantelpiece, dragged her back to the corner, then, requiring two hands to get the collar around her ankle, he released his grip on the plastic.
She ripped it from her face. ‘Murderer,’ she panted.
He backhanded her, knelt on her, working blind, his hands shaking while searching for the holes he’d punched into the collar. He got the padlock’s clasp through them, heard the click of its closing, and that fighting bitch going nowhere, he fetched his lantern.
‘I made … you bleed,’ she panted.
‘That is your misfortune,’ he replied.
‘How can you … hate someone … as much … as I hate you?’
He hated her more. At that moment he could have used his scissors to cut out her heart. He used them to cut duct tape.
‘I know what you look like,’ she said.
&nb
sp; ‘That too is your misfortune,’ he said. She had no fight left in her. He closed her mouth with duct tape, rolled her onto her face, immobilised her hands, and she was silent and still.
A bunch of tissues gathered from the box on his table, he pressed them to his throbbing ear, killed his light, then walked out into the night, locking the door behind him.
Stood a while listening. Noise carried at night. There would have been noise, and much of it. The dog wasn’t barking. He walked across to the shed, then made his way down the rock-strewn slope, through long grass and scrubland to the fence he shared with the arty one.
More trees on her side. No light showing through them, no blather of television or music. Gone to bed with her dog? Gone out? Perhaps he’d had some luck tonight.
In no fit state to do more, in no fit state to walk, but with no other option, he’d have to.
He’d had it worked out down to the last detail. He’d ridden a taxi to the fish and chip shop Angie had loved, then cut across open land. They’d done that a few times together. It wasn’t much of a walk. He looked up at his hill and his hip said no. It said no to following the fenceline down, but it accepted downhill.
He’d done a lot of walking in his time and a lot of it in circles. It wasn’t raining, there was a partial moon up there, lighting his way, and at this time of night there’d be little traffic about.
Walked on down the centre of the road.
TOMBSTONES
Marni had fifty-three photographs on her mobile, of quokkas and pinnacles, boab trees and sunsets. Sarah’s mobile was in Melbourne, but Bob had Marni’s number. He messaged her and she replied. In this morning’s text, he’d said that Barbara Lane had gone back to Sydney with her father and that her house was to be auctioned.
‘What if the police find Danni? She’ll have no home to go home to,’ Marni said.
‘Two month not long enough for places to be home,’ Sarah said. ‘Two month will be like when we staying at motels. Carry in, carry out, nothing left.’
Except a toothbrush at one motel and sunscreen at another.
They’d showered in palatial bathrooms, bathed in a spa bath, and laughed about going home to their own tiny bathroom. They’d worried about Mrs Vaughn, who had been told three times that they’d be away for ten days, then told again the night before they’d left, when they’d delivered two cartons of cigarettes and half a dozen packets of long-life milk. She had bread enough in her freezer, pills enough, and her son knew how long they’d be away. They’d sent him two emails. He hadn’t replied to either, but they’d be home tomorrow, or tomorrow night.
‘Perth reminds me a bit of Melbourne,’ Marni said.
‘Not so big,’ Sarah said. She remembered it well, the names of streets, the buildings, the shops and buses. She’d lived in Perth long enough for that city to imbed itself in her pores. Twice she’d lived with Gran and Gramp. Their house had been home, and the old green tent. The places where it had been pegged down had altered, but inside it never altered.
They’d pegged it down in the caravan park the day the truck driver dropped them off at the park gate. They’d lived in it for weeks before her mother could afford to rent a cabin. Had lived in the cabin for almost eighteen months. It had become home.
Then the Clarks’ house. The first time Sarah had seen it she’d thought it was a palace. Everything in it had been palatial, the furniture, drapes, the paintings on their walls, the tiling inside, the paving around the swimming pool. She’d walked on tiptoe, afraid to touch.
She could have her own palace now, and as soon as she and Marni moved out, Raymond Vaughn would put his mother into a nursing home even if he had to have her committed to do it – and a few of the neighbours would help him have her committed too. She’d been at war with most of them for years.
Marni was ready to give up on her. She’d phoned her on the second day of their tour, and Mrs Vaughn had told her that the phone was for her convenience, not for ratbag kids to play around with. Marni had refused to disturb her a second time.
They’d lived different lives over here, eaten at night with different people, and been sought out by one elderly woman who had a fifty-five-year-old deaf daughter. She’d signed, and Sarah, who rarely got the chance to sign, had enjoyed talking to her.
If not for that old bank card, Sarah wouldn’t have been on that tour. It was out of date, the account long dead, but the last time she’d withdrawn money from that account there’d been fifteen dollars left in it. Banks might be able to raise old accounts from the dead, and if they could, Sarah had found a way to get rid of some of their winnings anonymously, electronically. She wanted to give some to Jackie and Rena, and Shane, and if it was transferred from that old account, there’d be no way they could trace it back to her.
Almost twelve the day she and her mother had opened that account so Peter Clark could transfer her mother’s wages into it. It had been a joint account then. After the funeral, it had become Sarah’s own, though had been forgotten by her. Not until she’d withdrawn money to buy her bus ticket to Melbourne had she known that the Clarks received money for fostering her, which they’d paid into that account.
Centrelink had paid into it when she’d lived with Gran and Gramp, after Gran’s doctor filled in papers for a carer’s allowance. She hadn’t spent any of it, not at the farm. After Marni had been born, she’d lived on Centrelink until she’d got the job and cancelled her pension. She remembered putting that card away somewhere safe, in case she’d ever needed those fifteen dollars, then forgotten where she’d put it.
‘Are you sure we’re on the right road?’ Marni asked.
‘I know,’ Sarah said. She’d driven this way with the Clarks to put flowers on the twins’ nana’s grave. She’d followed a hearse out this road—
Shook that thought, that day, away, and looked at Marni, who wanted to take a photo of her father’s tombstone before they went home. Hadn’t told her yet. Almost had at the airport while waiting to board their plane, but told herself that the tour would be enough, that she’d forget about graves.
She looked like him in profile. He’d had a strong face and a stronger will. She’d inherited his will.
And they were here, and Marni determined to be first off the bus, as she’d always been first off on the tour.
‘It’s a nice place,’ she said. ‘Nice trees.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said and wondered if fate might present her with a John Carter’s tombstone.
‘Are we going to visit your parents?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I tell you before.’
‘It reminds me of the pinnacles. They looked like a field of ancient tombstones.’
She found the twins’ nana’s stone. There were two beside it now, identical granite stones, Sylvia May Clark 1923 –1999, between two Oliver Johns, one born in 1917, the other in 1980.
‘He fought the long battle bravely,’ Marni read aloud from the young Oliver’s stone. ‘Do they belong to your foster family?’
Sarah nodded.
‘Was he in the army or something?’ A shake of her head Sarah’s only reply, Marni tried again. ‘What battle did he fight bravely?’
‘Brain tumour,’ Sarah said.
*
Cemeteries aren’t silent places. Birds tweet, cars whoosh by on the street, but for a moment there was no noise other than Marni’s own heartbeat, rush-rushing every litre of her blood to her eardrums while her lungs sucked in too much air. She opened her mouth to protest, but the words wouldn’t come. She swallowed, swallowed nothing. Her mouth was bone dry, and when the words came, they sounded like a five year old’s. ‘You said John Carter. You said he was a plumber who drove a white kombi van.’
‘I say Mrs Carter to Mrs Vaughn. I think I will be there maybe for one week, but I stay and I stay and I can’t change it, Marni – so I change us.’
‘You can’t do this. You can’t stand there thinking that it’s okay to do this. I don’t ca
re if you’re deaf or not, you can’t do something like this, Mum.’
‘I tell you one hundred time, not Perth. You fight me for your father.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’
‘Because … because I can’t. Take your photo.’
‘I don’t want a photo of a Clark’s tombstone, and if you picked an easy name for Mrs Vaughn, you probably picked a tombstone for me. You probably didn’t even know my father’s name, or he was married or something.’
‘He die very slowly of a brain tumour. You know this forever. You know forever I am meeting him the first time when I am thirteen, that he teach me computer. Everything you know is Oliver. I change his name, not him.’
‘Then why not tell Mrs Vaughn you were Mrs Clark? Why pinch some nobody’s name to stick on me?’
‘Because Peter Clark was his father—’
‘You’re pure unadulterated stark raving crazy! You said you loved the Clarks. You said you loved your life when you lived with the Clarks.’
‘Yes. And I love him too. Always. Forever. Take your photo. I want to go!’
‘Stuff your Clarks, and him, and you too. Why would anyone pick this place to tell a person that she wasn’t who she thought she was? Why not tell me at home? Why not tell me before we got on the bus?’
Sarah turned her back. Marni turned to the stones, to Oliver John Clark’s stone, to stare at his date of birth, his date of death.
He’d been a nineteen-year-old boy when he’d died, not a father, not her father. She’d been looking at white kombi vans since she’d known what a kombi van was. She’d been looking at plumbers’ advertisements in the local paper, had stood in the street one day watching two plumbers fix someone’s leaking pipe, thinking they might look like her father.
Couldn’t believe it. Just couldn’t. It was like being punched in the stomach by her own mother, like being punched so hard that everything inside her had fallen out, and if it hadn’t already fallen out, she would have vomited it out all over Oliver John Clark’s rotten tombstone.
