The Silent Inheritance

by Joy Dettman

  ‘No.’

  ‘If we can spend six hundred and eighty dollars on a painting, we can spend the same on a caterer.’

  ‘We got very good oven in there. We will make finger food, like Bob’s mother’s party,’ Sarah said.

  ‘I’m inviting our policeman.’

  ‘You embarrass him.’

  ‘He doesn’t have to come. I’m inviting Pop and Dave too, and Dave’s wife, and you’re inviting Bob and his mother and some of the people from your work.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘If you don’t, I’ll ask Bob to invite all of them.’

  LEMON SEGMENTS

  ‘The fish and chip shop must be close,’ she said when he tossed her the paper-wrapped parcel. It was conveniently close. He’d be forced further afield tomorrow. His computer needed charging. It took time, but the power adaptor worked. He’d need more duct tape soon, more firewood.

  He’d forgotten the constant demand of a wood stove. Each day it forced him into action. Cut a barrow load in the morning and by nightfall that stove had turned it to ash. He had to keep it burning. Without its warmth, the house was uninhabitable.

  Two weeks ago, he’d killed two birds with one stone, had hired a trailer, charged up his computer and bought two trailer loads of split firewood – and burnt most of it. Tonight he was considering using the house as firewood. He had twenty litres of petrol in the shed, purchased for the great escape he hadn’t made. He had half a dozen bottles of kerosene and the cans of aerosol paint he hadn’t used on the Kingswood. He’d got rid of the Hyundai.

  Sat watching her pull that slab of battered fish apart with her hands before she bit into it. Watched her stuff chips, two at a time into her mouth. She’d made his eighty-three days and then some, which was all he’d asked of the first of them. He would have released the Chinaman’s daughter had she lived for eighty-three days. He couldn’t release this one.

  The flesh below and above her ankle collar was raw. If he didn’t get that collar off soon, her foot would fall off, and he smiled, visualising her escape on the stump. She’d do it.

  He’d bought a replacement padlock. In Bunnings it had looked big enough. It wouldn’t lock around both bars. He could have crawled beneath the house and located the old padlock. Built on a slope there was a good metre of space beneath the house at the front. Could have. Hadn’t. He’d grown accustomed to seeing her sitting there, accustomed to watching her.

  Watched her search the paper for one last chip, and when she found no more, she started eating the segment of lemon supplied by the fish and chip shop – and ate the lot, flesh, pith and rind, and when it was gone, for his own amusement, he threw his own squeezed portion of lemon at her. It hit the wall behind her and landed on her bedding. She found it, wiped it on the fish and chip paper, then ate it while he marvelled again at the breed of this fragile being with its steel-reinforced spine.

  ‘What’s the date today?’ she asked.

  He no longer knew Monday from Friday, had stopped counting the days after she’d made her eighty-three. Each day was the same, the stove, the axe, the computer, a meal, and his hard bed and soft bottle.

  Watched her fold the fish and chip paper, place it under her mattress.

  ‘Did the police find your other house? Are they watching it?’

  He had no other house.

  ‘You used to go home,’ she said.

  If he ignored her, she shut up.

  ‘How far are we into June?’

  June was winter. Winters on this land were cold. He liked the green of springs, the scent of spring. Had chased a blue butterfly one fine spring day, praying to God to make it get tired and settle low so he could get it, and God had answered his prayer. It had settled and he’d captured it in a homemade butterfly net.

  The elation, the ecstasy of holding perfection cupped between his sweaty palms. He’d caught a rare and beautiful thing, and all the way home he’d felt the flutter of its wings in the cup of his hands.

  Opened them in this kitchen to show off his prize. Found tattered wings, their blue and silver shed to his palms.

  ‘Perfection is only for those free to fly,’ he said. It was a mistake to speak to her, but he’d made a lot of mistakes with this one, so what was one more?

  He’d made a mistake in taking the second of them. He hadn’t meant to. He’d got away with what he’d done to the Chinaman’s daughter. Should have quit while he was ahead, but he’d seen her walking in the sun and she’d been Angie, the hair, the legs, even the walk, and because she wasn’t Angie, he’d wanted to punish her for being alive to walk in the sun while Angie rotted in her grave.

  Hadn’t spoken to that one. She hadn’t lived long enough.

  The last of them had cursed him to the final day. She would have lived longer had he not seen this one, near the carousel. He’d known that day that he’d have her.

  Wind howling out there tonight, rattling the sealed windows, lantern flame flickering, playing shadows on the walls. Little of its light reached the corner. If he looked at her through slitted eyes, if he saw only the pink and white of her, she was his Angie.

  Her Yankee accent killed the image.

  ‘We had a basement in Kentucky we used to go down to during bad storms. We used to live with my grandparents on a horse ranch. They died when their plane crashed into a mountain.’

  ‘Once upon a time,’ he said. ‘Once upon a time in this windswept kingdom there lived a holy hog wed to a lapdog. Imagine the progeny of such a union.’

  ‘Pigs don’t breed with dogs,’ she said.

  ‘They bred mutations. Pigs who yapped like dogs, dogs who squealed like pigs, and one born with the heart of a wolf.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  He stood and opened the door. ‘He caught rabies and they shot him,’ he said, and stepped out to the howling wind to slip and slide on greasy clay to the shed.

  He kept a torch on the bench, and by the light of its beam he found the row of red plastic containers, his great escape petrol, his final solution petrol. Tonight would be a fine night for a fire. It would add its roar to the winds. No need for a grave or the stale words of the resurrection.

  WRONG WAY. GO BACK.

  If they’d only locked that brainless bastard up.

  WRONG WAY. GO BACK.

  They’d suspended his licence and sent him home to the loving arms of his wife and daughter.

  ‘You bastard,’ he howled to the wind.

  He’d driven out here the day he’d buried Angie. Her mother had collapsed and been carted away in an ambulance before the hearse had carried Angie to her grave. He’d followed the hearse, not the ambulance, and after the earth had taken her, he’d driven out here and climbed that hill to howl out his pain where no one would hear him.

  Satan had. He’d sent him down that hill with vengeance in his heart, and he’d found relief in vengeance.

  It had taken time to find the Chinaman and his daughter, but he’d got her, and for a week, he’d read every newspaper. Then she’d sickened and he’d become afraid of what he’d done. He’d dosed her from a bottle with Angie’s name on it, then came out here the next night to dose her again and hadn’t been able to rouse her.

  Tried to clean her up to take her home and she’d slid down in the bathwater and drowned while he’d been searching for soap.

  It had come to him while he’d been dressing her in one of Angie’s outfits, how Angie had never got to ride in the Kingswood. The Chinaman’s daughter had. He’d tossed her out on the freeway where that brainless bastard had caused the pile-up.

  She’d been found at daylight, and all day he’d waited, expecting the police to put two and two together and come knocking on his door. He’d wanted them to come, had wanted his day in court.

  They hadn’t put two and two together. Given time the media had forgotten little Nancy Yang and the wolf had gone to ground, but as with the swallowing of a handful of pills, once the effect wears off, the pain returns, and is stronger.


  HOME BEAUTIFUL

  Their painting was titled Solitude. Sylvia Moon had written it on her receipt, with the six hundred and eighty dollars. They hadn’t seen its title until Sarah found the receipt in her handbag and put it into the cake tin with the others. There was plenty of space in there for receipts. They’d bought an album for the photographs.

  They hung Solitude over Mrs Vaughn’s mantelpiece, and to Marni, it looked better than a few of the paintings she’d seen hanging at the National Gallery. Maybe it would hang there one day when Sylvia Moon was dead. Most artists hadn’t been heard of until they’d been dead for a few hundred years and now their paintings were worth millions.

  Solitude looked even better once the new carpet was down and their black lounge was delivered. Then they found their dining room suite on eBay. It had a gorgeous timber table they could extend for the party and six tapestry-upholstered chairs. When it was delivered, it didn’t fade Solitude but did steal the eye’s attention away from it.

  The curtain man faded it, or the colour they’d chosen for the lounge/dining room drapes did. They were a deep burnt orange, and they’d ordered a fancy pelmet. Mrs Vaughn’s corner window looked like a picture from a Home Beautiful magazine, and the drapes drew a tiny bit of burnt orange from the chairs’ upholstery. They were perfect together. The lounge suite was perfect, but together, they killed Solitude.

  ‘We buying her bushfire,’ Sarah said.

  ‘We have to,’ Marni agreed, and they opened their cake tin and found the receipt and Marni phoned the number on it.

  The artist didn’t know who Marni Carter was, or not until she mentioned Solitude. ‘Mum is wondering if you’ve sold your big bushfire painting yet?’

  She hadn’t, and would be pleased to hold it for them, however she would be away for most of the weekend.

  ‘I’ll be home by two on Sunday,’ she said.

  They bought sheets, quilts and quilt covers, two big blue/green self-watering pots for their jade trees, and potting mix, and when those trees were in their new pots and on Mrs Vaughn’s front porch, they made it look proud enough to be called their patio. Pop called it their patio. He’d spent two days on his knees tiling it after Dave painted their wrought-iron railing.

  Those men had done such a brilliant job and were so nice and their bills so cheap that when they were finished, Sarah put an extra five hundred dollars into two envelopes to give them, as a bonus, and when they wouldn’t take the money, Marni told them that her mother had won Powerball and that she liked giving money away.

  ‘But don’t tell anyone that we won because it’s our secret.’

  The neighbours probably heard Pop. ‘Powerball? Fair dinkum, darlin’?’ he’d said. Dave pocketed his envelope then zipped his lips with finger and thumb, while Pop told a long loud story about a cousin who’d won a million a year or two back and went spending mad because she didn’t want to lose her pension.

  Sunday was cold and windy but not wet, which was lucky, because Sarah had to test the car’s brakes at the first big roundabout near Eltham, when a van in front tested its own. They missed it by about two centimetres, but they missed it. They didn’t stop for a coffee, and were at the artist’s property before two. Her gate was open and her car was there, so they drove in and parked beside it.

  She talked while she bubble-wrapped their bushfire, and before Sarah wrote her cheque, Sylvia bubble-wrapped the pink and violet dawn, which would match Marni’s bedroom drapes perfectly.

  Herod remembered them. Marni couldn’t go for a walk with him, but gave him a pat and a scratch, and because they looked so lonely when Sarah started the car, Marni wound her window down and invited them to her party.

  ‘It’s a combined housewarming and birthday party on the thirteenth of July at seven o’clock. Herod’s invited too. We’ve got a safe backyard and a lock and a Beware of the dog sign on our gate.’

  They backed out then, left them standing in the drive, the artist in her psychedelic poncho which must have been warm because she lived in it, and Herod, standing with his head hanging low.

  ‘We buy paintings from her, the same as buying from shops. You don’t invite people from shops to your party.’

  ‘I bet that man from Harvey Norman wished I had. He was giving you the eye the whole time we were buying the fridge and stuff there.’

  ‘People stare at deaf people – and he is thinking I am retard who can’t pay for anything.’

  ‘You talk rubbish. Anyway, it’s different. Shop people don’t make what they sell. If I went to the trouble of painting something, I’d want to see where it ended up.’

  Sarah didn’t turn the car towards home. She drove again past Gramp’s land, convinced since their last visit that Sylvia’s neighbour was one of Gramp’s sons. Whoever he was, he was expecting visitors. He’d left his gate open.

  ‘His name is Jack James, Mum.’

  ‘Writer using different names so they can be … anon … anonymous,’ Sarah said, and she drove onto Gramp’s land and up a steep drive that wasn’t paved or dry.

  *

  For one winter, she’d known it well. ‘Keep your wheels moving,’ Gramp had warned the first day she’d driven it wet. She kept them moving today until the land levelled out in front of the tin shed, where she parked, pulled on her handbrake and wound her window down so she could smell the winter scent of this land.

  ‘Smell is beautiful,’ she said. Always the scent of wet eucalyptus, and wood smoke on Gramp’s land.

  Up here she could see smoke was gusting up from the kitchen chimney. No sign of the writer, but fresh tyre marks led towards – or away from – the old shed. ‘Maybe he is go out.’

  ‘He’ll come back and block you in and get stuck into you. He told me to get off his land, Mum.’

  ‘He tell the dog, not you. I don’t like big dogs,’ Sarah said, her feet now on Gramp’s land. Marni didn’t move, so Sarah walked around and opened her door.

  ‘I’m staying here, Mum, and when he comes out yelling, don’t expect me to save you.’

  ‘Invite him to your party. Tell him, bring Sylvia and her dog. Come on. He won’t understand me.’

  ‘Write him a note—’ Marni started, then she pushed the door wider and undid her seatbelt.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Shush,’ she said. ‘I can hear someone screaming.’

  And she was out and running, down the path that led to the back door, the way Sarah had wanted her to go. She locked the car and took the same path, unconcerned as to why Marni had changed her mind, or unconcerned until she saw the screen door open and Marni hammering on Gramp’s old back door.

  ‘Stop that!’ Sarah pulled her back by her hoodie.

  ‘Someone is being murdered in there. She’s screaming!’

  Sarah could hear something. A siren, maybe, or alarm. Something.

  The kitchen window was narrow, and well off the ground. There’d always been a gap between the drawn kitchen blind and the window frame – a rarely drawn blind when Sarah had lived here, and never drawn during daylight hours. Gramp’s kitchen had needed all the light it could get. Sarah was cupping her hands to that gap, attempting to see in, when Marni swung her out of harm’s way, before tossing a lump of firewood at the glass. Two panes cracked.

  ‘You gone mad!’

  ‘We’re coming,’ Marni yelled. ‘Help me, Mum. She knows we’re out here. She’s yelling to us now.’ She bashed out cracked glass with the lump of wood, then reached a hand through to tug at the blind.

  It didn’t roll up. It fell to the sink.

  And Sarah saw what Marni could hear, saw two fighters in the corner where Gramp’s radio had lived. A tangled nest of blonde hair and grey, a hand tangled within that tangle of hair; a mouth screaming, ‘Help me!’

  ‘Danni?’ Marni said. ‘Oh my God, Mum! It’s Danni!’

  Firewood from the barrow their battering rams, they smashed glass, splintering the narrow strips of timber securing those six small panes. Like wreckers, like
vandals, they bashed out shards of glass, then, using Sarah’s knee as a step, Marni scrambled through, kicked the roller blind out of her way and slid from the sink to the floor. Sarah followed her, Gramp’s old wheelbarrow lending her height enough to climb through.

  Glass everywhere. A jeans-clad man face down on the floor, a pink-clad rider on his shoulders, one foot at his ear, her two hands gripping a single rein. Not a rein, a dog chain, and her mouth behind that tangle of hair screaming, ‘Kill him!’

  Marni, armed with Gramp’s poker swung it with bloody hands, like a woodsman swinging an axe at a block of wood, but the grey man’s head was that block, and it kept moving as he bucked like a crazy horse at a rodeo, attempting to rid himself of his rider.

  Some are born pacifists. They lose. Others are born to wage war. They win. Marni waged war with Gramp’s poker, and she got his head.

  He turned his face then to Sarah and she saw the teeth behind a well-remembered grimace, saw his eyes. And when Marni’s weapon connected again, Sarah felt his pain as a spasm in her bowel. It washed the colour from the old brown kitchen, washed it white, like the colours of a spinning top washed white.

  Head spinning, making the room spin, she grasped the glass-littered sink to stop her sliding into the spin.

  He’d stopped bucking. Marni was on her knees, yelling words as she untangled his hand from Danni’s hair. Danni’s mouth was making words.

  ‘Keys. Chain.’

  ‘Look for keys, Mum. She’s chained up and it’s around his throat. Find his keys. There’s a padlock on it?’

  He kept his keys in his pocket. Always, but Sarah couldn’t find the words to say so. Couldn’t make herself move. Stood like a rabbit caught in the headlights, unable to look away from him.

  ‘They’re hanging up, Mum. Look. Near the window.’

  Gramp’s keys had always hung on a hook between the window and the door, where she’d hung them the last day she’d driven Gramp to the market. Saw them. Not Gramp’s, too many to be Gramp’s.

  He was dead. Two years after she’d walked away from this place he’d been dead. No one had told her. Hadn’t known where she was to tell her. Got rid of her name, her pension, her bank account, hadn’t gone to a doctor for five years because she’d been scared to show Jillian Jones’s Medicare card number, scared that one day he’d find her.