by Joy Dettman
‘Everywhere,’ Sarah said.
‘Her parents were gypsies with a tent and she doesn’t like talking about them. They got killed in a car crash when she was twelve, which is why she doesn’t like talking about them. They were Joe and Stephanie,’ Marni said.
*
He drove them home, commented on the size of the block, and when Marni asked him if he’d like to see inside, he turned the motor off and allowed her to give him a guided tour, around paint cans, rollers, cartons of tiles. He commented on the size of their rooms, on their ceilings, how the high ceilings and fancy cornice plaster had gone out of vogue in the sixties.
He stepped around a paint-speckled ladder and on empty tubes of gap filler to praise their kitchen, midway through its transformation. Pop, having finished the bathroom tiling, had got rid of his stockpiled tiny midnight-blue tiles on the worn laminated benches. Dave may have been going snow-blind, but Pop was adding colour, and between them they’d injected hope into that house.
‘You’ve bought yourselves a good old house,’ Ross said, and his phone rang.
They locked up and met him in the driveway to thank him for breakfast. He said it was his pleasure and perhaps they’d do it again. Marni told him they were having a combined housewarming and birthday party in July, and when she knew when in July, she’d dial triple zero and ask them to pass on an invitation—
‘Or I could add your number to my contacts.’
He laughed and gave her his mobile number. ‘Only to be used for invitations and emergencies,’ he said, then he left them waving in their driveway.
He’d had a good morning. He liked that kid, and if he’d let himself, he might drown in the liquid chocolate of her mother’s eyes. Watchful, honest eyes, except when he’d asked about her family. Their shields had been raised then. She was hiding something, from him or from her daughter, and he had a fair idea of what it was she was hiding.
Joseph Jacob Jones wasn’t dead, or he hadn’t died in the accident that killed his wife and three teenagers. He’d been sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. He hadn’t served those ten years. They’d let him out in late 2001. If he’d died since, Ross had found no record of his death. He’d found no record of his life either, not since 2005, when he’d reapplied for his driver’s licence.
*
‘He likes you,’ Marni said. ‘And he’s available too.’
‘You too cheeky to him … about everything. And you tell him everything.’
‘You’re not cheeky enough. He couldn’t take his eyes off you.’
‘If I want boyfriend I can have Bob.’
‘You said you don’t want him.’
LOSS AND GAIN
Ainsworth had ordered him to take some time to mourn his boy. He should have been mourning him. Freddy missed his presence – or lack of it. He missed his Ferrari – he wasn’t supposed to miss the courtroom, but he did, or the persona he wore in the courtroom. He was nothing without it.
Cheryl didn’t want him underfoot. She told him to see his GP. She’d seen her own before the funeral. He’d tested her for everything except hyperactivity, and maybe he’d tested her for that too. He’d prescribed pills to slow her down. She’d taken one and pitched the rest into the kitchen tidy. Freddy had retrieved them. They slowed him down, damn near stopped him, made him sleep like one of the dead, and when he woke up feeling guilty, he swallowed another one and went back to sleep.
‘You make me tired,’ he said. ‘Sit down and talk to me.’
‘I’m better off keeping busy, and so would you be. Go to work, Freddy.’
If she mourned Rolland, she did it in private, and made sure she was never in private to do it. She’d got herself a job, voluntary work, three days a week at the local Liberal Party office where she and her cronies willed Labor to self-destruct. They were pulling it off too, and Freddy no longer cared.
He cared when she left him alone for hours. He looked on the internet for a psych he could spill his guts to, tell about his Technicolor dreams of his mother and Rolland and that girl and Ross Hunter.
An eye for an eye, Freddy.
He dreamt of those girls who’d called him an angel. Dreamt he’d locked them into the boot of the Commodore and torched it and when he had second thoughts and ran back and opened the boot, they were skeletons, and Marni’s sat up and said, We call you our angel.
He was a heartless bastard. The only reason he’d gone near those girls was to find out who’d bought his father’s farm, and when he’d got around to asking them, they’d known nothing about that will.
Every day he told himself to contact them. Every night he told himself he’d drive out to the farm and see for himself who’d dug up that girl, that he’d be Freddy the hero who saved Danni Lane – if she wasn’t already dead.
Didn’t do it. Didn’t do anything. He had no car to do anything in. Didn’t want one either, so took a pill, turned on the television and went to sleep until Cheryl came home, when he told her that she was running out of her pills – and she refused to ring up her doctor and get another script.
Left her cooking dinner and walked up at the Catholic church, Cheryl’s church – or her parents’. Not Freddy’s. Maybe they had the right idea though; sin all week, confess on Sundays and go away sin free. Rolland had been baptised Catholic, only to stop his maternal grandmother’s nagging. He’d been buried Catholic to stop her nagging.
And Freddy’s mother, a rabid Baptist, would have rolled over in her grave, which was why she was haunting his nights.
Nothing left of Rolland to bury anyway. He should have been cremated and his ashes scattered to the four winds. He should have been a daughter.
We call you our angel.
Freddy might have been sixteen when Jillian Sarah had been born, and his mother besotted by that female infant. She’d been a praying, wailing maniac for a week after they’d found out the baby was deaf. Joe had stayed drunk for a week.
She’d overcome her disability. She’d sent flowers, a beautiful bouquet, to his office, and when a courier delivered them to the house, Freddy had taken them at the door, seen those names on the card and snatched it, pocketed it before Cheryl started questioning him about a Sarah and a Marni Carter.
They hadn’t received one of her professionally printed thank you cards, and Freddy felt guilty about that too, guilty about not inviting his mother to his high school presentation nights, guilty about not visiting her when she’d been a mindless dying shell in a nursing home bed.
He’d seen her after she was dead. He’d bought her a new outfit and when the undertaker had made up her face and done her hair, she hadn’t looked like herself. She’d looked better.
Spending money on her had been enough to ease his guilt back then. Spending money on Rolland’s funeral hadn’t.
He had loved that boy. When he’d come out bloody and bleating, he’d held him in his arms and promised him the world – then got so busy working his guts out to give him the world he’d forgotten to watch him grow.
Lost him a long time ago. He’d lose Cheryl too.
‘I’d be better off dead,’ he said when she served him his meal.
‘Keep going the way you’re going and I’ll assist you, Freddy. Eat.’
‘I’ve killed,’ he’d said.
‘You bought that fool of a car. You left the keys where he could get them, but you weren’t behind the wheel. He was, and he knew he shouldn’t have been. He took his own life, Freddy. He didn’t want what we gave him, so he threw it in our faces, now for God’s sake, let me get over it.’
He couldn’t. He couldn’t even eat. That was the killer. She’d cooked him a steak, done it the way only Cheryl could, seasoned and fried fast in butter. He tried to eat it. Watched her eat her own. Saw himself digging that grave in the dark, swatting mozzies. Saw himself torching that car and running in his boxer shorts, his toad belly jiggling.
She was in bed at ten, and he was going to do it, send an email to Crime Stoppers, feed them a line abou
t client privilege, blame that phantom client for the information.
It seemed like the answer until Cheryl’s iPad woke to his touch, until he googled and typed in Crime Stoppers. Then cancelled it fast and got into Cheryl’s photographs of Greece.
‘Take a holiday,’ Ainsworth had advised. ‘Take your wife on a cruise, Frederick.’
She’d already been on a cruise and if he’d had an ocean of water around him right now, he’d probably go walking in the night and take the long dive. He killed the photographs, googled again and typed in tours.
Found a thirteen-day tour of Western Australia which cost more than a fifteen-day tour of Canada. Found three nights in Sydney that cost more than five nights in Bali, airfares included – and knew why everyone and their dog went to Bali.
He’d never been there. He’d never been to Greece. He’d never been anywhere out of Australia, other than Hawaii. Checked out a tour of China, then one of Ireland. Which offered free flights in and out of Dublin.
It was cheap and half a world away from Melbourne. For minutes he sat staring the iPad in the face. They made whisky in Ireland. He needed a whisky, and the distance, so checked out how to book it – and found out it would cost more to go solo than twin share, so he booked and paid for twin share, online. He hadn’t been away with Cheryl in five years.
His passport had probably passed its use-by date. Hadn’t used it since Hawaii.
They’d gone there as a family. How long ago? Rolland must have been eight or ten, and the little bugger had whinged for the week they were away, either sick, sunburnt or bored, and Freddy had vowed he wouldn’t waste his money again, and hadn’t.
Did they let you know when your passport was running out of time? He hadn’t fronted up for new photographs. Cheryl used to keep it in the small dressing table drawer – in Vermont.
He’d killed in Vermont. Rolland and his rat pack had grown weed in Vermont, and the iPad and tour forgotten, Freddy ran from Vermont and ended up in Rolland’s room.
They had five empty bedrooms. He didn’t find the old Vermont dressing table or his passport, and dared not open the master bedroom door.
She’d sleep until seven thirty, rise, walk around the block, come home, shower, make her breakfast then head out the door to give her time to the Liberal Party office.
A cold house when she wasn’t in it, colder with the central heating turned off at night. He could have turned it on, but she’d roast in bed and wake, so he walked the house, his dressing-gown trying to trip him. Bought wide enough to go around his gut, it had always been too long, and was longer tonight. A man’s guts shrank when he lived on guilt, his pyjama pants slid.
He hitched them high, hitched up the gown, tied its cord tight enough to hold up his pants, then unlocked the back door and walked out to the garage to look at the space where his Ferrari had once lived.
Space to park three cars in the garage, one of his reasons for wanting this place, so they’d have space for a third car when Rolland was old enough to drive. Only one car in residence tonight, her green Honda – and every time Freddy sat in it, he felt like Freddo Frog in green jelly.
He stood in the space where his Ferrari had lived and looked up at an overhead beam, a good place to hang himself. No rope, no chain in his neat garage. The cord of his dressing-gown could have been strong enough, long enough. His pyjama pants would slide down.
DEAD BARRISTER FOUND WITH A BARE ARSE
A cold, lonely, unlucky house, this one. The day it was auctioned, it hadn’t looked cold or lonely. He’d paid his deposit then gone home and told Cheryl what he’d done. She’d had plenty to say, but she’d moved.
*
She didn’t move from her bed until after a quarter to ten, and when she did, she came out yelling at him for closing her door and not waking her up.
‘You told me you’d murder me if I did,’ he said.
‘I’m supposed to be at the office at ten.’
‘They can’t dock your pay if they don’t pay you,’ he said, then he told her he’d put the house on the market.
‘Have you gone stark raving mad, Freddy?’
‘It’s a seller’s market.’
‘You decide we’re moving again without asking me!’
‘You’re never here to ask.’
‘Who are you to talk about never being here? You haven’t been around for ten years,’ she said, and she stalked off to the bathroom, and when he tried to follow her in, she slammed the door in his face.
Made of tough stuff, that woman. Had the young Freddy recognised her tough stuff when he’d started pursuing her, or had he been blinded by her face? He didn’t know and never had. Like with the red Ferrari, he’d seen her and said, she’s mine.
She was out in ten minutes, her hair towel-wrapped. She didn’t speak to him, but picked up the phone and dialled. ‘It’s Cheryl,’ she said. ‘Fred isn’t well. I won’t be in this morning.’
‘You finally noticed,’ he said when the phone was down.
‘Noticed what, you halfwit?’
‘That I’m not well.’
‘The only place you’re sick is in your head. What made you go and do a thing like that again without discussing it?’
‘We don’t need the garage space, or five spare bedrooms.’
‘Where are you planning to move me to this time? A bloody penthouse at Docklands, you social climbing little shit?’ She turned on a fancy hotplate, slammed a pan onto its shiny white and black surface, took an egg from the refrigerator and slammed the fridge door.
‘Fry me one,’ he said.
‘Fry your own. I’m making an omelette.’
‘An omelette will do,’ he said. ‘Do you know where my passport is?’
‘With mine,’ she said. ‘Why?’
‘I booked a trip to Dublin.’
‘For work?’
‘A tour,’ he said. ‘For two.’
‘You’re losing your marbles, Freddy? You’re seeing a doctor.’
‘Ainsworth said I need a holiday. We’ve got free flights,’ he said. ‘Eight days on a bus. Two nights in Dublin.’
‘I’m not going to Dublin. Cancel it.’
‘I tried to. I phoned them an hour ago when I found out we leave on Friday night. We won’t get our money back.’
‘When!’
‘Friday night. I didn’t see the departure date when I booked. We got in on cancellations.’
‘The only place you’re going is to a funny farm,’ she said, but she swapped the small pan for one a size larger, then started cracking eggs into a bowl. He watched until she added two dollops of yoghurt.
‘I don’t eat that stuff.’
‘You don’t know what you eat,’ she said. ‘And why in the name of hell, when you’ve got the whole world to choose from, did you choose Ireland?’
‘What’s wrong with Ireland?’
‘I’m not going there, that’s what’s wrong with it. I’ll go to Italy with you, but not this Friday, you maniac.’
‘We’ll lose our money.’
‘We’ll make money on this mausoleum,’ she said, feeling the heat of the pan then giving it a spray with canned oil. ‘And you can’t up and leave. You’re defending that wife-murdering mongrel.’
‘Ainsworth will do it. He knows more than I do about it.’
Cheryl added salt and pepper to the mess in the bowl, added a dash of milk, a handful of grated cheese, gave the lot a stir then poured it into the pan to sizzle.
‘Dublin!’ she said.
‘It’s a bargain. Free cattle class flights.’
‘I’ll be damned if I’ll fly cattle class. If you can upgrade the seats to business class and add a tour of Italy to it, I’ll think about it.’
‘We flew to Hawaii cattle class.’
‘And Rolland vomited all the way.’ She placed two slices of bread into the toaster. ‘My grandmother Fleming came from Dublin. She had a sister over there who had thirteen kids. We might be able to dig a few of them up. How many days do
we get in Dublin?’
THE FARM
A professionally printed card was delivered to their new letterbox on Friday, thanking the receiver for their condolences on the occasion of our recent bereavement. Uncle Fred had enclosed a typewritten page with the card.
My dear Sarah and Marni,
Cheryl and I are leaving for the UK tomorrow evening and may be away for six weeks. I have been in touch with my father’s solicitor, Simon Tower, in Eltham, now semi-retired, but able to supply me with a copy of my father’s will. The land was willed to you. Tower assured me that all reasonable effort was made to locate you at the time.
The estate has not been settled. Four claims were made on it, by John, Clarry, Gordon and your sister.
‘What?’ Marni asked. They were standing in the doorway beneath the light, reading Uncle Fred’s letter together.
‘I got no sister.’
‘It says your sister, and down further, As your next of kin, your sister … ’
‘I have got no sister. One deaf one is too many for him.’
‘Are they dead? Is that why you didn’t want to visit their graves when we were in Perth, because they haven’t got graves?’
‘I watch my mother die, Marni. All of one day, I am at hospital watching her die. I watch them put her in a hole in the ground.’
I hope I have done the right thing in giving Tower your married name and details. He assured me that he will be in contact with you shortly.
Thank you again for your kind thoughts on the death of our son. Cheryl and I will be in touch when we return.
My fondest regards, Uncle Fred
‘We could have owned a farm if you hadn’t changed our names,’ Marni said.
‘They can find me. Government keeping records when people changing names.’
‘Then how come they didn’t find you?’
‘All reasonable effort mean solicitor charges money to lick stamps and pick up telephones and if they got no one to pay …’ She read the page again, folded it and slid it back with the card into the envelope. ‘They will look in Perth for me, not here.’
