The Silent Inheritance

by Joy Dettman

  ‘Airport,’ she said. ‘We flying home today.’

  They were flying at four ten. Marni wanted to know more about Gramp’s will, and what Peter had been going to say about Sarah’s father, but Lynette had her one o’clock appointment and Mandy had to get back to work, so they returned to the office where backpacks were buckled on, where more kisses were exchanged and promises to keep in touch extracted.

  Then it was over.

  ‘What did Gramp leave you?’ Marni asked when they were walking again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sarah said.

  ‘Why did you get up when he mentioned your father?’

  ‘I said we will see them for five minutes. We see them for more than one hour, Marni.’

  ‘When did your grandfather die?’

  ‘I don’t know what day. Mrs Vaughn finding out for me two month after.’

  ‘Did I ever see him?’

  ‘One time. He is in the same nursing home with Gran. He was blind.’ She crossed another street, crossed again then stopped outside a National Australia Bank, removed her backpack, placed it against the bank wall and told Marni to wait with it.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Find out something. Watch my bag.’

  It wasn’t even their bank. Marni picked up the extra backpack and hauled it in, dumped it on a chair, and joined Sarah as she was called to a teller’s window. And she passed that out-of-date bank card to the woman.

  ‘Were you issued with a new card?’ the teller asked.

  ‘I change address,’ Sarah said, and offered her birth certificate. ‘I open my account at this same bank.’

  The teller didn’t want the card, the birth certificate or the problematic customer, and when she went for reinforcements Marni read what she could of an upside-down birth certificate. The name on it wasn’t her mother’s, which wasn’t a surprise. It was like nothing would surprise her again.

  A second woman came to deal with them. She invited them into an office. Marni read the note her mother pushed across the desk.

  I did not close the account. When Centrelink stopped making payments, there was fifteen dollars in the account.

  ‘Fifteen dollars!’ Marni gasped.

  The woman turned to her voice, her expression relieved. ‘Accounts, unused after a period of time, are considered to be dead accounts. It is possible, in some cases, to access them.’

  ‘For fifteen dollars! She’s a millionaire. She’s probably trying to hide some of her money from the tax man,’ Marni said, picked up her mother’s backpack and got out of that place fast.

  ABOVE THE WORLD

  Marni’s mobile beeped while they were waiting to board. Only Bob saying he’d pick them up at the airport.

  Our plane gets in late. Mum said we’ll get a taxi.

  Tell her late is good. Less traffic.

  It beeped again minutes later, and it wasn’t from Bob but a number Marni’s phone didn’t recognise.

  Mandy just sent me your photo. Hope to be home in September. Don’t disappear before I get there. Miriam. xox

  Her mother glanced at the message.

  ‘Reply to her,’ Marni urged.

  ‘Still night-time over there,’ Sarah said.

  ‘She’s awake,’ Marni said, then she replied and sent her words flying over the ocean to London.

  ‘Have you got any idea how weird it feels? I just messaged my aunty in London. I had no one and suddenly I’ve got a grandfather, a step-grandmother, two aunties and baby cousins, and I’m changing my name to Clark when I’m eighteen and coming back here to tell them the truth.’

  ‘You not thirteen yet.’

  ‘How do you leave people like them? Will you pack up and leave me one day?’

  ‘I bring you with me when I leave them.’

  ‘You left them because you were having me.’ Her mother didn’t deny it. ‘If you didn’t want them to know you were sleeping with Oliver, you could have had an abortion?’

  ‘You talk rubbish.’

  ‘It’s not rubbish. Samantha said you walk in pregnant and walk out not pregnant. She said her mother did it while her other kids were at school one day.’

  ‘You learn stupid thing from Samantha.’

  ‘Well, you could have. If you had, you wouldn’t have had to leave the Clarks, and if you had, and then gone to live with Gramp, you could have stayed there and looked after him and he might have left you his farm and money and everything—’

  ‘Very good idea,’ Sarah said. ‘Oliver is dying, so good idea to kill what I got alive of him inside me, eh?’

  ‘You left Gramp because of me.’

  ‘I leave because Gran is … is dementia and have to go in a nursing home, and because John and his wife coming.’

  ‘There you go. You just admitted that what I said was true.’

  ‘Poor thing. Everything your fault. Your fault I am Mrs Sarah Carter, payroll/accounts officer. Your fault Maureen Crow giving me fifty-six thousand dollars so I will stay working for her—’

  ‘It’s my fault you’re a millionaire, poor thing,’ Marni said, and she told Sarah what she’d said to the lady at the bank.

  ‘Your fault when the tax man put me in jail,’ Sarah said, and they laughed.

  *

  As on their outward flight, their aisle seat was vacant when the plane launched itself skyward. Today it wasn’t the only vacant seat. They had books to read but it’s hard to concentrate on printed words when you’re above the clouds, when you look down and see the shadows they make on the land, and even more difficult when you’re sitting on a wing and can see it vibrating.

  Sarah removed her hearing aids. Marni spoke of implants, and Sarah told her about Lynette, who’d also nagged about implants.

  ‘When I am fifteen, she make appointment to talk to implant people. I don’t want them. Don’t want them to shaving off my hair, make a hole in my head and put wires inside me. One month after, the doctor find Oliver’s tumour. They shave all of his hair off, cut his head open, cut off his skull.’

  ‘When he was sixteen?’

  ‘Yes. They taking out like a golf ball tumour, all of it, and everyone said, he is so lucky.’

  ‘How long was he lucky?’

  ‘They find three when he is eighteen. They can’t take all of one because of damage. The tumour damage him anyway.’

  ‘You slept with him.’

  ‘He can do that.’

  ‘Why would you, if he was brain damaged?’

  ‘Because … because he is Oliver. Because he can. Because it make him feel better.’

  ‘You slept with him to make him feel better!’

  ‘No. Because he is my friend from thirteen, and he is going away. Before, everywhere I live for a while, my father making me to get in the car and I go away and leave my friends. I know Oliver don’t want to leave everyone. And I love him very much and I think maybe I can make him stay.’

  Marni turned her eyes to the window. The earth so far beneath them now, she could see only cottonwool clouds. The cemetery had been a bad place to find out about Oliver. Riding above the clouds was the exact right place to find out that she’d been made from a love story as sad as Romeo and Juliet. There’d been no feuding families to ruin her mother and father’s romance. A brain tumour had done that, but it was as sad, and beautiful.

  ‘Oliver and Jillian,’ she said. ‘Did he call you Jillian?’

  ‘I was Sarah at high school. Sarah Clark.’

  ‘Why?’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Because … because I can’t say Jillian Jones … because I hate that name … because everyone knowing Jillian Jones’s name.’

  ‘Because you were orphaned in a car crash.’

  ‘Because … because my father crash his car into one with two boys, eighteen, one girl, sixteen. They are dead. One girl, seventeen, live with a broken spine. And he have got no licence. The judge take it already for being drunk and going fast. He was very drunk. The doctors measure his blood. The newspapers printing every
thing, funerals, everything.’

  ‘Why would your mother get in the car if he’d been drinking!’

  ‘My mother was … she was a very good, very kind stupid lady. He will say, “Get in the car.” We get in.’

  THE LONG NIGHT

  He’d left her tied up for two nights that she could remember. The first night the kitchen had been warm, then it got cold and the floorboards beneath her had felt like ice. The only warmth she could remember was when she’d wet her pants, but once the wet had grown cold, she’d been colder. The second night, she’d been shuddering so hard she couldn’t breathe, and her hands were dead. Then nothing. Until a mug of warm sweet milk held to her mouth, and a man holding it and a little yellow light behind him.

  Thought she’d been in hospital. She’d been lying on something soft and warm, had a pillow beneath her head and a quilt over her. After she’d woken, that day or the next, she’d found that dog chain in her bed, and it wasn’t a bed, only a narrow mattress on the floor in that same kitchen corner.

  You won’t like my gags, he’d said that first day.

  She hadn’t liked his gag, but it was off now and her hands were free and she could hear things. She could hear him rattling and banging things. Couldn’t see him. Didn’t want to see him. Right now she didn’t want to know anything other than that she was alive and warm, that she could breathe, and the air she was breathing was warm, and that warmth was beautiful.

  It was night-time, but not dark. A light globe swung on a long cord from a high ceiling, but it wasn’t making the light. He had one of those old camping lights that sucked kerosene up a wick. It was on a sink.

  Closed her eyes when she heard his footsteps approaching and he came close enough for her to hear his breathing, and he must have heard hers, because he stepped back and reached for something on the table.

  He had bananas, joined in a bunch. Through slitted eyes she watched him break one off then reach for a knife to cut off its top. She thought he was going to eat it, but he tossed it onto her quilt.

  She wanted it, but not enough to reach an arm out from her cocoon of warmth, and it was probably poisoned.

  Didn’t understand any of it. Didn’t care either, or not right now. Knew he was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, that half of him wanted to murder people and the other half gave them warm sweet milk.

  She looked at him when he put a small bottle of water near her pillow. Water had meant life in his cage. She’d almost prayed to water bottles. Wanted to get it and put it in the corner, but everything hurt, her face, shoulders, back. She clenched her hands, which had come back to life but still felt like they belonged to someone else.

  The bottle had a sucking top. She had to drink water and couldn’t remember drinking any since she’d been in the cage – and maybe a bit in the bath.

  He stood watching her struggle to lift herself on her elbow, to wriggle herself up high enough to get that bottle, and her hand dropped it and it spurted water on the quilt, but she got both hands on it and, got it to her mouth.

  Her mouth was the worst hurting part, and one of her side front teeth felt loose, but she drank as much as she wanted and was placing the bottle down when she noticed her lolly-pink clad arm. He’d put a sweater on her.

  Looked at that sleeve, then at the banana. She hadn’t tasted banana forever and wanted it, but why give it to her now? He hadn’t put her in that bath to clean her. He’d drugged her baked beans and tried to drown her and he’d probably poisoned that banana, and the water she’d just drunk too – except why hadn’t he drowned her while she’d been unconscious and frozen half to death? If he’d put her into a warm bath then, she would have curled up in its warmth and gone to sleep forever.

  Sleep tight. Don’t let the bed bugs bite, he’d said.

  She got the banana, got its skin off, and whether her mouth was too sore to eat it or not, she took a bite, then mushed it with her tongue while checking the skin for needle holes. Couldn’t see anything, so she bit again, with the less sore side of her mouth, and no banana in this world had ever tasted that good, and how could something that was so good for her dare to taste so good.

  He went outside then and cold wind and black night came in before he closed the door. It made the little light flicker, and when he closed the door the room felt safe and cosy and she curled up again beneath the quilt, full of banana and water and closed her eyes.

  Woke to an avalanche of light. It wasn’t coming from his camping lantern. That was on the sink where it had been before, but wasn’t burning now. The light was coming from behind it, through a worn-out blind at a window. Sunlight. She hadn’t seen sunlight, not for weeks, and it was too bright.

  Saw him then, sitting in an old wicker chair he’d pulled close to the stove, saw his shoes propped on a carton full of wood.

  ‘Are you there?’ he asked.

  She was here. Couldn’t see anyone else. She got herself up, got her back against the wall and he was asleep, his chin on his chest. He was talking in his sleep.

  She’d imagined a monster, scarred and ugly. He looked … ordinary, was dressed in an ordinary sweater and jeans and sneakers.

  And he did it again. ‘I can’t see you.’

  She moved the pillow so it was between her back and the wall and she looked her fill at a man no one could ever imagine would murder four girls.

  ‘Over here,’ he said.

  Carefully she eased the quilt back until she could look at the chain. Her legs were bare and she was wearing a denim skirt. He’d changed her clothes again, and he’d taken her pants and stretchy shorts this time. She was wearing white cotton briefs, and knowing he’d looked at her naked made her gag.

  Wasn’t going to. Wasn’t going to waste that banana. Closed her eyes, swallowed, closed her mouth and breathed, in and out through her nose, in and out, in and out, refusing to let herself think of what else he’d done.

  Knew she’d peed her pants. Maybe she’d done worse than pee, and if he’d done worse than change her pants, she had to be grateful that he hadn’t drowned her when he’d had the chance. Didn’t know why he hadn’t, only that he had to be seriously mad.

  The chain was rusty. It had a ring fixed to its end and he’d cut a piece of what looked like ancient dog collar he’d put through the ring, then put a padlock through holes he’d made in both ends of the dog collar, only a small padlock, half as long as her thumb. She’d been like a hamster in the cage. She was tied up like a dog out here.

  He had a ton of stuff on the table. The chain wasn’t long enough to reach it. He had a long curly metal rod thing leaning against the brick chimney, near where his feet were propped. If she’d seen that the night she’d fought him, she would have got away.

  Everything was out of reach of that chain he’d fixed to the bottom of the corner wall with two screws. They were hidden by her mattress now, but before the mattress she’d seen two screws he’d put through two separate links of the chain.

  If there was a better and a worse, being chained up and warm and eating a banana was better than being in his cage eating beans, or it was now that the tape was off her mouth and her hands were free. She could see things, hear everything, mainly birds.

  She wasn’t in the city. Knew that now. There were bird sounds at home, but their calls had always been muffled by the background noise of traffic.

  She was so close to him she could see everything, like he needed a shave and a haircut. He had grey hair, mostly grey. He was older than her father, but not old. He wasn’t big, wasn’t fat, wasn’t skinny. He looked normal.

  She shouldn’t have been able to look at him. Should have been too scared to. She didn’t feel scared. She’d thought she was dead when she’d been frozen solid in this corner, but she was alive and warm. Maybe the cold had killed off the part of her brain that produced fear hormones – or it had swapped jobs and started making survival hormones – or she had that syndrome people who were kidnapped developed, a sort of dependence on their kidnappers, an acceptance – Stockhol
m Syndrome, that’s what it was called. He’d given her milk, water, a banana, a warm sweater, a bed…

  She’d kill him if she got half a chance.

  She’d had one chance and blown it. Hadn’t expected his house to be empty. Hadn’t expected windows that wouldn’t open or to find nothing in the house to break them with. In here, there were plenty of weapons. She hadn’t seen in here, not when he’d carried her through to the bathroom.

  And her head was hurting now. She worked out why. She was sitting on her hair. In the cage she used to be able to comb it with her fingers and plait it, tuck the plait down the neck of her tracksuit. Maybe later. She gathered it into a bunch, twisted it and pushed the twist down the neck of the sweater, then sat, looking at his twitching wrist hanging down at the side of the wicker chair.

  Didn’t know why she’d grabbed his wrist that night. If she hadn’t, she wouldn’t have seen where that grey comet of light came from, and if she hadn’t seen that it was a hole, she wouldn’t have dropped the padlock into it and she’d still be in the cage. Didn’t know how she’d found that lump of something that shouldn’t have been in baked beans. Maybe Nan Lane was up there, keeping an eye on things and sending her subliminal messages.

  She’d started eating those beans. She must have scooped up two or three mouthfuls before she’d felt a powdery lump in her mouth, and known what he’d been planning. She’d scraped the rest of the beans into her toilet bucket, which he might have found if he’d ever emptied it.

  Should have attacked him with that padlock when he’d been lifting her out of the cage. Hadn’t found out where he’d put it until he’d tried to push her back in. He’d never get her back in to it. He’d have to take the chain off first, and if he did, she’d get his scissors, or his boiling kettle, or that curly rod thing, or his lantern, anything, everything. Had to get herself strong enough first. Had to crawl to him until she was strong enough.

  He had keys on a hook between the window and the door, a whole bunch of them. One would be for the dog chain padlock. If he came close enough when he had those keys in his hand, or in his pocket, if he put his head down low enough, once her bones weren’t so stiff and aching, she could use her chained foot to loop the chain around and around his throat. It wasn’t long enough to do it with her hands, but if she caught him off guard, her foot might do it.