Crystal Coffin

by Anita Bell

  The patrol commander was dead and the other two would be discharged on a pension soon to spend the next few months in physiotherapy learning to walk again. But just like Private Harvey, Privates Rogers and Mulhany were both very lucky to be alive. They had lived against all odds, and Lieutenant Colonel Allen’s biggest frustration as a doctor was that no-one seemed to know who he had to thank for that.

  ‘Dr Allen?’ said a woman’s voice over the intercom as Allen checked the progress of Private Harvey’s healing biro wound. It was the nursing administrator. ‘I’ve got General Broxton’s office on the phone,’ she said. ‘They want to know if there’s any news.’

  Allen clicked his biro from red to blue and wrote another monitor reading on the charts. ‘Tell them no, Sally,’ he said. ‘Mulhany and Rogers still claim they don’t remember anything and I want to keep this one under for another few hours.’

  ‘Well, okay, but they won’t be happy. The Prime Minister is jumping up and down that we lost one. If Private Harvey isn’t conscious soon, he’s requested General Broxton to put Mulhany and Rogers through another round of interrogation to figure out what happened.’

  ‘Sounds like they’re preparing for a court martial,’ Allen said.

  He sighed and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t like his patients being hounded for information when their bodies were already under stress, but even he had to suspect that Mulhany and Rogers should have remembered something about who it was who had saved their Eves. They had to be lying, he realised, but he couldn’t understand why they would do that.

  ‘Okay,’ he said reluctantly. ‘Let them come.’ It might not be a complete disruption, he realised. He did have paperwork sitting on his desk — a recommendation for a service medal for the person who had risked their life to bring the men of Charlie Six back from the dead. All the document was missing was the name of the person or people responsible, and Allen hoped that another round of gentle questioning might be able to establish that.

  He recorded a few more readings from the life support monitors onto Harvey’s chart, then he stabbed his pen at the page, angry that being tired had also made him forgetful. He called the administrator back over the intercom.

  ‘Sally, what about the one we released, the lance corporal with the concussion and the shrapnel in his leg? Didn’t they get any answers out of him?’

  ‘Uhh, no. There’s a bit of a mix-up there, I think. They thought we still had him.’

  ‘What? He had stitches in his thigh. Hasn’t he checked in with the field medics at Maliana yet to get them out?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  The doctor swore. ‘Tell them I want him found. Tell them I want that lance corporal found and brought back here to Dili immediately. If he’s been in the fields without medical supervision for a fortnight, Lord knows how many infections he could be carrying!’

  ‘Yes, doctor,’ Sally said. ‘I’ll ring 6Battalion right away and get them onto it.’

  The Bedford didn’t stop at the front of the long two-storey Queenslander. Locklin drove around the side and the wheels crunched in red gravel as Nikki looked past him to the house. Broad timber verandahs surrounded the sandstone walls on the lower level, a balcony came off four rooms on the second level with a rusting corrugated roof on the top.

  The truck emerged around the back into a small clearing that was surrounded by scrubby forest. Nikki saw scattered she-oaks, eucalypts and bougainvillea that made a poor attempt at hiding the view over the lake. There was also a large hayshed clad with corrugated iron, to which someone had added a row of stables down one side and what looked like small living quarters with duck egg-blue coloured curtains on the windows. Stockyards wrapped around the hayshed on the lower side and there was a hotchpotch of chicken hutches below that, scattered between smaller storage sheds and rusting farm machinery.

  Organised or painted, and if Lake Wivenhoe had been full enough to see more water through the trees, she would have labelled the place as elegant. But as it was, it was perfect for her dereliction — a reclusive place to hide and lick her wounds.

  Locklin backed the truck up to a loading ramp and climbed out to get her bags, while Nikki stayed in the truck, waiting for the dust to settle. She bent down to slip her sandals on but the rolled-up towel was in her way. She pushed it and heard something inside it clink. Then she heard a scream.

  It was a girl’s scream, but all she could see through the windscreen was a boy on the far side of a hedge sitting on the raised end of a slanted plank. The boy disappeared behind the hedge of purple-flowered bougainvillea and then a girl appeared on a slanted plank a few feet away from him. She disappeared and the boy popped up again. This time, he was squealing as what must be a seesaw rocked up and down.

  Locklin appeared in Nikki’s door mirror and she watched him roll the back gate open. Then she felt the truck lurch as the horses backed out one after the other.

  ‘Home Jack,’ he said. ‘Show her the feeder.’ The dark horse trotted off to a metal rack full of hay with the grey horse close on his heels. The dog barked once and got out too. It curled up in a damp spot beside the horse trough and went to sleep.

  Nikki saw Locklin coming with her bags and climbed down before he could help her. But she didn’t get the door shut quickly enough and he spotted his towel sitting up on the seat instead of on the floor.

  His eyes lingered on it, then on her.

  ‘This way,’ he said, walking off with her bags. He carried them as far as the verandah and dropped them at the bottom of three small timber steps.

  ‘You can manage from here,’ he said. ‘The kids can show you in.’ He gave the lowest frequency wolf-whistle that she’d ever heard and the kids looked up from the seesaw towards the noise. He waved to them, and they ran over.

  They were twins, two blonde scrawny waifs who ran around the bougainvillea and skidded through their sandpit with bare feet. They zigzagged around prickles and stopped in front of Locklin.

  ‘Who are you?’ they sang like a poorly trained duet.

  ‘This is Nikki Fletcher,’ he told them. ‘Take her to meet your mum, okay?’

  Their grins broadened and their hands shot up in front of them, cupped in the universal symbol of ‘give me money’. They looked like a pair of bookends and Locklin reached in his pocket and gave them a gold coin each.

  ‘Here, Tina,’ the boy said and the girl gave her coin to her brother and winked.

  Then she wiggled her finger for Nikki to follow her. ‘Come on,’ she said, tiptoeing towards the house like she was sneaking up on a tiger. ‘But you have to be sshh, not like Alex. He’s never sshh.’

  Alex stayed behind, looking at the coins in his hand. ‘We should prob’ly get another one for being quick,’ he said. But Locklin shook his head and scruffed the boy’s hair.

  Then he looked at Tina, who was creeping up the steps now with the Fletcher girl close on her heels. He realised that the twins had little reason to recognise him as the big kid who used to live next door to them since they were born. They’d only seen him about four times in the six years since then. He’d been in the army for the last year and busy at high school and bike racing before that. But they were smart and if they figured out that it was his house they were moving into now, he knew he’d have to pay them for their silence.

  ‘All right,’ he said, giving the boy another coin as a down payment. ‘But share it with your sister.’

  ‘You bet,’ Alex said, skipping back to the sandpit.

  Locklin waited until he was busy digging up a shoe box to deposit their treasure in, then he headed back to the Bedford to take care of his own treasure.

  Nikki carried her bags across the verandah, listening to the clack of her heels on the timber and wondering what was in the boxes that were piled outside the kitchen door.

  She followed the girl inside and saw more boxes sitting beside an oak counter. Some of them were half packed with saucepans. Groceries were spread all over the counter and she realised that the Maitlands we
re either moving out or moving in.

  Inside the house, the air was cool, but the room smelled sour and the curtains were dark, like the colour of dried blood. The cupboard doors were all carved, like a continuous ivy vine that begged her hands to caress them and she ran her fingers along the top as she hurried after the girl.

  Tina disappeared into a darkened doorway and Nikki followed. In a long hall, bearded men scowled down at her from their portraits as she lengthened her stride and stepped from rug to rug along the musty timber passage. It was even cooler here than in the kitchen, but she could feel a warm breath from somewhere against her skin. The floor creaked under her sandals, and above her in the pressed metal architrave, melancholy flowers wept for sunlight long forgotten.

  Four closed timber doors and three great archways were spaced unevenly along the hall. The doors were simple colonial jobs with tall rectangles carved into their faces like sad clown eyes, but the archways gaped with carved timber lattice, which hung like teeth in three hungry giant mouths. Nikki passed them quickly, hurrying to keep up with the little girl ahead of her. She stepped onto the last long red carpet, which lolled like a tongue out of the archway at the end.

  Nikki dropped her bags and followed Tina into a library, thick with the smell of leather and stale tobacco. A chill crackled up her spine. Her stepfather smoked tobacco too.

  A shaft of afternoon sunlight pierced between the drapes at the nearest end, dissecting the shadows like a laser slicing through the dancing dust. The furniture, blood red and black, dripped dismal ambience inside the stuffy room.

  At the far end, near a cold fireplace, a tall woman sat at a mahogany desk, where she stooped over a hobby sheet of leather with a paintbrush. Tina tiptoed behind her to poke faces at the baby in the bouncer beside her. Her mother was sitting with one leg out from the desk, slowly tapping the bouncer with her foot and the toddler grizzled at the tongue poking at him. His mother rocked harder, trying to read the label of a small ink bottle before opening it to dunk her brush. She dabbed it meticulously over the leather and she started to hum, while her foot bounced the baby in time with the tune.

  ‘Oh that’s it!’ she growled, throwing her paintbrush onto a blotting pad. ‘They sent me the wrong colour again, Bobby!’ She screwed the lid down and lobbed the bottle into a metal bin under the desk, making it clank. Bobby squealed and his mother swivelled in her chair to stroke his face.

  ‘Oh, sorry honey,’ she said, picking him up. ‘I know it’s hot, baby,’ she added. ‘Please try to go to sleep. Mummy’s got to get back to the rotten unpacking.’ She waltzed slowly away from Nikki with two wriggling legs sticking out from her hip.

  Tina goggled her eyes at the baby and he screamed louder.

  ‘Tina!’ her mother shouted, seeing her duck. ‘I told you to play outside!’

  ‘But Mum,’ Tina said, pointing. ‘I brought her.’

  ‘Hi,’ Nikki said from the doorway.

  Locklin shifted the Bedford into the shade of a gum tree and went around to the passenger side. He pulled the passenger seat forward and pushed the beach towel down behind the seats and scolded himself that he hadn’t put it there earlier.

  The Fletcher girl didn’t have enough time to see inside it, he decided. It was still wrapped as he’d left it, and if she had unwrapped and rewrapped it neatly in the short time that he’d left her alone with it, he figured he should have seen some kind of evidence of it in her face. But there was nothing more than a snobby indignance and as he pushed the seat back, he wondered if that was a permanent state of mind for her.

  The seat clicked into place without crushing the towel and he folded down the glove compartment and switched his phone back on. It blipped once, warning him again that he’d missed a call, and he selected the option menu that revealed that he’d actually missed four.

  Locklin used the arrow key to check each one and saw that they all came from the same number. He stared at the digits until he remembered who it belonged to. Then he deleted three of the records, leaving one as a reminder, and switched his phone back off to save the battery.

  He could call St Joseph’s later, he decided.

  ‘Don’t sneak up on me when I’ve got Bobby!’ Thorna Maitland snapped. ‘I could have dropped him!’ She balanced the toddler on her hip with one hand and brushed a thick strand of short sandy hair out of her eyes with the other.

  ‘Sorry. I’m Nick,’ Nikki said, offering to shake her hand. ‘Nikki Fletcher, your new housemaid?’

  ‘I know. I’m Thorna Maitland, Mrs to you,’ the woman said. She turned away from the handshake and sat on a leather divan with her baby cuddled against her chest. ‘Would have been nice if I’d had more warning you were coming.’

  ‘Didn’t the agency call?’ Nikki asked, confused.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Thorna said. ‘I was talking about my husband. Never tells me anything.’ She studied Nikki for a long time, pursing her lips. ‘Your name’s familiar,’ she said. ‘Do I know you?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Nikki said. ‘I’ve never been to Queensland before.’

  ‘Is that why you’re nervous? Or are you starting to chicken out of modelling naked for Eric?’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Well that’s why you’re here, isn’t it? I’ve never needed help with the housework before. Oh, I know it’s messy here now,’ she said, ‘but we’re just moving in. Come on. You can tell me. He’s paid you to get your gear off for him, hasn’t he?’

  ‘No way!’ Nikki said, crossing her arms over her chest. ‘There’s not enough money on the planet to pay me to do that.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Thorna said, wrinkling her nose as she looked at the ribbons dangling from Nikki’s wrists. ‘It sure looked like you were dressed for a party.’

  ‘Can we have a party?’ Tina interrupted. The girl flopped at her mother’s feet and played with her brother’s toes. ‘Can we?’

  ‘Yes, honey,’ Thorna said. ‘When it’s your birthday.’ She looked at Nikki for a long time, patting the baby’s nappy, but he struggled restlessly against her chest and kept screaming.

  ‘Is it too hot in here?’ Nikki offered kindly. ‘I can open a window for you, get some breeze in here maybe?’

  ‘Touch nothing,’ Thorna said. ‘The drapes keep the afternoon sun out, for your information.’

  ‘Well, the kitchen’s cooler, maybe …’

  ‘I know it’s warm in here,’ Thorna said, cutting her off. ‘But the bedrooms upstairs are worse, okay? If I don’t get him off to sleep down here where it’s a bit warm, then he’ll wake up screaming as soon as I try to put him down up there.’

  ‘Would you like me to give you a break then?’

  ‘Are you a nanny? No!’ Thorna snapped, making the child scream even louder. He cried almost constantly and she struggled with his wriggling weight. ‘Tina, cut that out,’ she scolded, chasing her daughter away from his toes. Then she glared at Nikki.

  ‘If you want to stay here doing housework,’ she said, keeping her voice down, ‘then do housework, but stay out of my hair, okay? Your room’s back down the hall near the kitchen, second door on the left. Get yourself organised and I’ll get you started in the morning.’

  Nikki nodded, shocked and a little frightened, but she didn’t cry as she turned back for the door. The toddler was doing enough of that for both of them.

  ‘Try rolling him on his belly,’ she said, stopping at the door. ‘Lock your arms in a circle and cradle him tummy downwards while you rock him. It worked for my baby brother anyway.’

  Then she was gone, too quickly to see that Thorna Maitland was crying too.

  Nikki’s legs turned to jelly. The second door down the hall seemed twice the distance that it had before and her bags felt too heavy now for her to carry in one trip.

  She dumped one case on her bed and turned to go back for the second when she saw a face staring at her through the door. It was a dusty portrait by Rembrandt, one that she’d never seen or heard of before, and from working in he
r mother’s gallery she’d thought she knew them all.

  This one was the head and shoulders of a grumpy Civic Guard, but she didn’t bother going over for a closer look. She was tired, and copycat prints had never turned her on. But it did feel appropriate in a weird way, she thought, to have a guard outside her door, even if he was a little oily.

  Returning from the hall, Nikki pushed her door closed with her foot and dumped her second bag beside her first on the ivory bedspread. Then she explored all the empty drawers and cupboards in her room. She packed her things away and freshened her hands and face in a tiny shower, room she found hidden inside a closet. She left her ribbons on, unsure if she’d be out again that night and circled the floor a few times, like a caged but tired tiger.

  At least her room was cool, she realised. It was on the morning sun side of the house, but the colours helped too: ice-coloured drapes with sky tiebacks and ivory painted bed and sideboard. The cool polished floor boards looked more inviting than the warm padded bedspread and she kicked off her sandals and lay belly-down on it to soak the heat away from her body.

  She rolled over and saw a ceiling fan hanging lifeless above her head, and she staggered up again on stiff legs to twist a knob beside the lights to click it to life. Then she got down on her belly again and stared at the timber boards, but she didn’t see the cracks between them, only Thorna Maitland’s face.

  The baby would have dropped right off in a cool room like this, she thought.

  Her baby brother would have too. Little Dommie hated the heat, but rock him on his belly, give him his little rubber teething cross to suck on and put him in a cool room and he’d be dreaming little baby dreams in minutes.