by Joy Dettman
He watched Ann as she turned to David. She hadn’t told him where she’d driven to that night. Like Ellie, David had grown accustomed to his partner’s disappearances. She’d told him she’d argued with her father then driven away to clear her head, bogged the car out at the ten-mile. She’d told the same story to the police when they’d found the gun in April.
Destined to live a lie. But these days she was handling it better than he. On the surface she was handling it.
Johnny filled his wineglass and he toasted the dog that had dug up the leg bone.
Let it be over. Thy will be done.
Wine was flowing freely and for once he was having his share. He’d sleep tonight. One way or the other he would sleep tonight.
He raised his glass to Ann. She glanced at him, then away. Her face was all angles, still the eight-year-old face he had left behind, still the wild black hair, pinned high tonight. Half of it was pinned high but, as always, corkscrew curls escaped at ear and neck and brow.
He used to tie up her hair with rubber bands, try to keep it out of her eyes when she was a kid. She’d let him comb it. Refused to let Ellie near her with a comb after her return from Narrawee. Refused to go near Ellie, but she’d stayed close to her father – until he taught her not to. Six years old when Liza died, nearly eight when they’d found Sam’s bones. Almost thirty years ago. She’d be thirty-seven come Christmas, hair still as black as coal. He leaned closer, trying to see grey amidst the black. If there was any, she covered it well. His own hair had shown a little grey at thirty-nine; at forty-four grey was winning the war.
He laughed, raised his glass again. ‘To grey hair,’ he said. No other glass was raised, so he drank alone. What else was there to drink to? The speeches droned on. Johnny filled his glass and drank to speeches, to the new bottle a Smith placed before him while his mind again wandered the past, then back again to the sister seated beside him.
She was wearing a black pantsuit, the top loose and long, her only colour red lipstick, large gold earrings and the long red and gold scarf. Maybe she looked her age. He didn’t know. He couldn’t see the adult. He could see Bron’s age, Ben’s, his own, but never Annie’s – just the little kid with the wild hair he had left screaming on the road. Guilt had embedded that image in his brain and he couldn’t get it out. Maybe he could wash it out with wine, but the more he drank tonight the more she looked like that little kid. Her little hands signing, ‘I come, my Johnny. I come with you. I love Johnny.’
He was going to become a howling maudlin drunk in a minute, and he knew it. Quickly he glanced away, found Ben up at the bridal table. Never much interested in suits but, like Ellie, Ben scrubbed up well. Little Benjie, scared stiff of his father, yet he’d never left Mallawindy. Always said he was going to be a farmer like Grandpa when he grew up. He and his partner Bob Dooley had inherited the shop when Bert Norris died, but at heart Ben was a farmer, and the image of Grandpa. John’s eyes turned to Bronwyn, matching her big brother drink for drink.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’ Bron had found him in the top paddock a month or so back and she’d wanted to talk. ‘I’m pregnant, Father, and I’m going to sue the bloody doctor who gave me the antibiotics, and I’m going to sue the bloody dentist who bummed up my tooth in the first place. If I have an abortion, it’s murder, Father, and if I don’t have an abortion, life is going to be murder, Father, with a thousand Smiths fighting me through the courts for one more Smith. As you know, Father, the world is short on Smiths.’
‘Lay off the Father bit, Bron, and of course you can’t have an abortion.’
‘You can take the priest out of his church, put him in a cow paddock with hay seeds up to his bum, but you can’t take the church out of the priest, Father. So what do I do?’
‘You’ve been living with Nick for six years that I know of. You’re probably overdue to get married, aren’t you?’
‘Stuff marriage and happy families, Father – if you’ll excuse my French. I’ve seen enough of them to last me a lifetime.’
Sisters. Three of them he’d known.
Liza. Miss Tiny Tot.
I’m telling Daddy on you. You wait till Daddy gets home, and you’ll get it.
Daddy. He’d ruined the lot of them. Liza too. What might she have been without him? Just a normal wilful kid like Bron. He liked Bron. There had been no past to come between them. Only two years old when he’d left, they’d met as strangers. Bron had nothing against strangers.
Memories were rushing at him from all sides tonight, but the constant tension he lived with had gone. His neck wanted to give up the effort of holding up his head, so he rested his chin on the palm of his left hand, his right still occupied with his glass.
On Monday he’d drive his mother back to Daree and have a look at what they’d found of the bastard, and he’d spit in his eye socket. Would he recognise anything? What would be left apart from the teeth? Would he recognise the teeth outside that cruel, cynical mouth?
Have a go, you cowardly little bastard.
Maybe he’d tell the police that he’d finally grown up and had a go. Put the barrel to the bastard’s head and pulled the trigger, then loaded him into the car boot and buried him. It might be a relief to go back into hiding, this time in a cosy cell. No cows to milk, no post holes to dig in there. They’d give him a big pile of rocks and a little hammer.
He laughed at the image, and faces turned to him as he stood – tried to stand. His foot stopped the laugh. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t drive to Daree with Ellie on Monday either. No foot to drive with. He looked at his fat plaster cast in its blue hospital-loan cotton shoe and he filled his glass, drank to his broken bone as David stood to retrieve the crutches leaning against the wall.
‘Do you need a hand, John?’
‘What I need is a toilet.’
With David steadying him, John manoeuvred the crutches beneath his arms. He stood head down, waiting for the walls to still or for the impetus that might move his one good foot forward then, David still at his side, he made his slow way to the door and through the mud to the old toilets where he struggled with Jack Burton’s zip.
‘We are an odd race, David. Conceived in drunken lust, born of the virgin Ellie; alcohol and milk runs through our veins, and it’s a bad mixture. Warm it up a bit and it curdles. The Vevers in us begin to feel pain, but the Burtons don’t like feeling anything, so they top up the alcohol content . . . which uncurdles the curdle and kills all pain.’
‘Wine has always been Ann’s happy juice.’
‘Ann. I don’t know your wife.’
‘I’m not sure I know her brother tonight. Are you right there?’ John was struggling with the zip, and required two hands. He released his hold on the crutch and David caught it before it hit the floor, wet with urine and tracked-in mud.
On their return to the hall, David remained standing. ‘Are you up to another dance, Ann?’ he asked, unimpressed by this reincarnation of Jack Burton and eager to get away from that table.
‘The flesh is willing but the back is weak. Ask Mum. She loves to dance,’ Ann replied.
Johnny had watched them dance earlier in the night. They were well matched on the dance floor. Maybe he’d envied them.
What was it that drew two people together? What was it that held them together? He turned to stare at Bronwyn and Nick and he smiled, wondered if they’d make it to their first anniversary.
He’d married a few score, spoken the words and blessed the rings. He’d advised a few score contemplating the union, or contemplating the dissolving of the union, but he’d never been with a woman.
He laughed, and poured more wine, drank to celibacy. He’d been perfect material for the priesthood. By the time he was eight years old he’d seen enough of the male animal rutting in the dirt to kill that urge. Raping, murdering bastard.
Lay down and play dead, you cold bitch.
He’d been three or four when he’d run to their room, afraid of the dark, and seen him on top
, heard Ellie crying. He’d got a backhander for his trouble that night and he’d never gone to their room again, but a year later he’d belted his father with a piece of firewood when he’d found him on top of her in the kitchen. Six or seven at the time, he’d seen Bessy’s bull at the heifers. He’d known. He’d known too much.
Maybe that’s what he’d expected to find that Christmas Eve. Time trapped. Ellie weeping in the dust, the bastard on top, laughing. He could have pulled him off, shoved the kitchen knife between his ribs, split his head open with the wood axe, blown him to hell with his own gun.
He laughed again and this time Ann turned to him, a question in her eyes if not on her lips. His laughter continued until she reached for the bottle of wine, poured a little into her glass then placed the wine out of reach.
His reach was long and he poured more wine while staring at the bride’s table, where David now stood behind Ellie. He watched her smile, watched her wriggle her feet back into her shoes, willing to dance with a divorced man if it allowed her to escape the table of Smith aunties.
‘She was born to laugh, born to dance,’ John said. ‘I remember that night at the shire hall, old Mrs Norris on the piano and her son, Bert, on the drums. Mum knew everyone in town. They all danced with her. She was laughing, happy. She used to have a beautiful laugh. Then that bastard walked in, stood at the door and stared at her. She closed her mouth and cowered, left her partner stranded and walked to the door. A flighty little bird mesmerised by a venomous snake.’
‘Don’t start on him tonight, Johnny.’
‘I’m not starting. I’m finishing. I’m having a wake for the bastard. Join me.’ She reached for the bottle, pushed it down the table. ‘It’s my party and I’ll drink if I want to,’ he sang, his face close to hers.
‘You’re making a fool of yourself.’
‘No. You made me the fool, sister mine.’
Bessy was outside having a smoke. A silenced Father Fogarty had driven Granny Bourke home. Whether he got her out of his back seat or not was another matter. Father Fogarty and Gran out on the tiles all night? That would set the old town talking.
The thought tickled John’s funny bone; his head tossed back, he roared with laughter, spilling his wine as he pointed his glass at cousin Mickey, dancing in his sleep, propped up by his wife.
At the far end of the table, Malcolm Fletcher, in deep conversation with Kerrie Fogarty, lifted his many chins to glare at Johnny; Kerrie lifted her eyebrows, smiled. His laughter dying as swiftly as it had been born, John turned to Ann.
She didn’t want to be beside him. Her back was turned.
There was a time when she’d tailed him like a small shadow. He stared at her back, waiting for her to turn. She looked at her watch, at the dancers bouncing to the jarring, broken rhythm of some Smith band.
‘She can still dance,’ he said. ‘He tried hard enough, the bastard, but he couldn’t kill her, could he, and he couldn’t steal her dance. She beat him.’
‘He was no saint, nor was she. If she’d ever thought of anything other than her chooks and her cows, he might have been different. You’re celebrating his death and everyone here knows it.’
‘I am. I am. Won’t you drink to a dead dog with me?’
Ann stood, knocking her chair over, her dark eyes wide. ‘Did you . . .’
‘Ask me. Go on,’ he taunted her. ‘Ask me, Annie. Say it. Did you kill him, my Johnny? Ask me, Annie. Did you blow his brains out, my Johnny? Did you bury him out the Daree Road? Come on. Where’s your guts? Ask me.’
‘Where’s yours? You won’t find it in the bottom of a bottle,’ she said and she walked away, skirting the dancers and making her way to the bridal table, where she sat on Ellie’s vacated chair.
By ten the numerous Smith offspring had escaped parental restrictions and taken over the function. Balloons burst as the older boys jumped, prodding them with drinking straws and safety pins. The crowd began to segment, and as the various Smiths gathered their own together to begin the sorting out of pot plants and dishes, the hall rocked to the thunder of children’s feet and echoed with their screams. Malcolm Fletcher said his goodnights.
‘They sound like a herd of bloody horses in hobnail boots. I think we’ll take off. How are you getting home, Kerrie?’
‘I’ll grab a lift with your sister, thanks, Mrs Bishop.’
‘We should get going too,’ David said.
John lifted his bottle to the group as they left the table. After ten minutes, Kerrie Fogarty gave up attempting to talk to a weaving brick wall; she excused herself and found a vacant chair opposite the bride.
He was alone then, alone, the way he liked it. All alone at a long table with a half-full bottle and plenty more where that came from. He propped his foot on a chair, and his head on his hand and he watched Ellie. He saw her smile and walk to the dance floor with one of Bron’s new in-laws, and he wanted to howl.
Then his eyes turned to the door, watching, waiting for the ghost of his father to return and again still her dancing feet.
the couple
Ann and David were barely out of town when the skies opened. Rain thrashed the car and the headlights hit the slanting stream and bounced back.
‘We should stop. Let it ease off.’
‘Too dangerous to stop here, and if we get off the road we’ll end up bogged.’
Dangerous to drive too. This was kangaroo country, the forest tall, native scrub and wattle trees growing too close to the road offered shelter to countless kangaroos. A large roo exploding out onto the highway could do a lot of damage to a car and its occupants. Did they have enough sense to stay out of the rain or were they out on the roads tonight, celebrating the start of a delayed breeding season?
‘There’s another one,’ Ann said. Thirty kilometres out, and they’d already counted fifteen dead roos. She sat forward, watching the road, four eyes safer than two.
‘John was flying tonight,’ David said.
‘He’d taken two tablets and he wasn’t supposed to be drinking. Thank God he’s not driving home.’
‘I doubt he’s still walking. What got into him? Finding your father?’
‘I told him he was celebrating Dad’s death. That’s what it looked like.’ Five minutes passed before she spoke again. ‘I’ve been thinking about Aunty May all night. She should be contacted before it hits the papers.’
‘Ben said he’d called her – or tried to. She wasn’t at Narrawee. He left a message on her answering machine,’ David said.
‘Told her Dad’s body had been found?’
‘He didn’t say. Just that he’d left her a message.’
‘When were you talking to him?’
‘You were with Bron.’ A road train roared by, spraying water and cutting their vision to nil. The windscreen wipers battled a while to clear it. ‘He was worried about your mother, but I was amazed how well she got through the day.’
Ann’s hands signed ‘strange’ but he couldn’t see her hands, and he wouldn’t have understood anyway.
‘She looked well tonight,’ he said. Still she made no reply, and he tapped her knee. ‘What are you thinking about?’
‘May’s answering machine. Ben’s message. Not a nice way for her to learn that . . . that someone she cared about has died.’
‘Better than hearing it on the evening news.’
‘I suppose so.’ Too much traffic on the road tonight, and a too narrow road. David hugged the edge of the bitumen while some fool in a four-wheel drive tried to prove his vehicle was a mud-runner. ‘Bloody idiot,’ she said.
‘Ben was saying he’s been checking the newspapers. It got five lines in the Sydney Herald, but didn’t get a mention in Melbourne.’
‘It will once he’s identified. They’ll bring up the Liza business again. Poor May.’
‘Why don’t you try her at Toorak in the morning?’
‘It’s been too long. I’ve left it too long, David.’
‘I’ll give her a call for you.’
She hadn’t seen May since the inquest. She’d walked away from her that day, and from her father – walked away and refused to look back, determined to wipe them from her life and from her mind. The last time she’d spoken to May was on the phone, over four years ago.
A sad call that one, May had been weeping and Ann didn’t want to think about it tonight. Her hands playing, she opened her evening bag, closed it, she fiddled with the radio, pressing buttons, selecting, rejecting until she found some mellow music.
Johnny the stranger, seeking a new identity as Jack Burton’s son, tossing the wine down as if it had come from the last grape crop on earth. Each time they met, she had to pack a part of herself away, place old love and vulnerability in some inner space, protect herself from him.
What if she’d asked her question?
Did you kill him, Johnny?
Didn’t want to know the answer. Better to play the ostrich, bury her head in the sand. Just wait it out.
The music ended, and again she pressed buttons. They were approaching Mallawindy when David turned the radio off and flicked the headlights onto high beam. The rain had been left behind.
‘I can understand to a degree what you must be feeling. Our parents are not perfect, but it doesn’t stop us caring about them. It’s natural that you’d feel upset by his death. Talk to me about it. Get it out of your head.’
‘Kangaroo!’ she yelled and David swerved, bracing himself for the impact, but the kangaroo lived to play chicken another day.
‘I thought we were going to hit it,’ he said.
‘God,’ she said, her hand on her womb. ‘God. Why don’t they learn, David?’
‘Pinheads. Small brains.’
‘You’d think they’d learn from old mistakes and near misses, wouldn’t you? You’d think that when they get a second chance at life, that they’d breed knowledge of danger into the next generation, wouldn’t you? They’ve been dodging cars for eighty years or more. Why don’t they learn?’
