by Joy Dettman
‘Where are his keys?’
‘Don’t go, love. Don’t leave me.’
‘I’ve got to go. I’m going mad here. I shouldn’t have come home. This wouldn’t have happened if I’d stayed away. Annie would have worked it out. She didn’t need me.’
‘I need you, love.’
‘I’m just a convenient replacement for him. I’m just the shape, the shadow of that bastard, when what you need is the real thing. If he were to walk in this door now, you’d get up, wouldn’t you? One way or another you’d run to him – or crawl to him, kiss his muddy boots while they kicked you.’
‘He didn’t have anyone but us.’
‘And he didn’t want us. It was Liza. All for Liza. So little love in that bastard, he had none left for the rest of us. He hated me from the day I was born.’
‘He didn’t. He was proud of you. He took you home to show to his father. It was his father that . . . that spoiled everything. Going to Narrawee spoiled everything. I didn’t fit in there, love, and his father was a terrible old man.’
‘So the father blames the son and the son blames the father, hate creating its vicious little circle that none can escape.’
‘He would have been all right if Liza hadn’t died.’
‘He killed her, Mum.’
‘Don’t you start that again, Johnny.’
‘He killed her.’ She shook her head and he turned away. ‘I couldn’t fight him then, and I can’t fight him now. You’ll defend him with your last breath.’
‘I just care about him. I don’t want to think of him as dead, as dying in his underpants and one sock – dying with a gun to his head. He was so proud of himself and his Narrawee and his great-grandfather. If I think of him dying like that, like some sort of a common criminal, then it all gets too hard for me to bear, love. I just want to give up. I just want to lie down somewhere and sleep and shut it all out of my head and never have to wake up again.’
Poor old rag doll, tossed to the floor, to be walked on, kicked around, her stuffing knocked out of her, then tossed aside for a newer doll. Someone had to pick it up, prop it up, shake it back into shape.
He limped towards her on one crutch and she reached out a hand.
‘My legs have gone to sleep. Can you help me up to the chair?’
‘You’ve been asleep all your life.’ He took her hand but one leg and a crutch could not support him. Somehow he was on his knees and her arms were around him.
A little boy, lost too long, and a betrayed old rag doll. They clung together and they wept. But his tears were too hard. In time they dried her own.
‘Hush, love,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll break my poor old heart with your crying. We’ll be okay, you see if we aren’t. We’ll get over this. Don’t cry, my beautiful boy.’ Rocking him, kissing his face, she soothed him as she had soothed him forty years ago. ‘Hush now, my beautiful boy. It’s going to be all right. Remember what you used to say to me when you were little and I used to cry? You used to say to me, “Don’t cry any more, Mummy. All your tears will run down to the river and make the water salty, then all the fish will die”.’
‘They’re all dead. They’re dead, Mum, and I can’t make them live because I’m dead too. There’s nothing left in me to give to you, to Annie, to anyone.’
‘Oh, yes there is so. You’re my beautiful boy. My own precious boy. And those fish aren’t dead. We just let that old river get a bit too muddy there for a while. But it’s going to be all right soon, and you will be too. We will be, my beautiful boy. You hush now. Those eyes were made for smiling, not for tears. Shush now. Hush, my boy.’
a long way to spring
Wednesday 13 August
The sky was grey; the trees across the road were grey. Life was grey today. No neighbour to stand yarning with at the side fence, no children set free to play in the back yard, just the sleety wind-driven rain, beating against the windows, trying to get in.
Not much to be said for motherhood on miserable days. Kids stir-crazy, mother with cabin fever, and the rat-a-tat of knuckles against the back door. Little boys, seeking something of interest, fought to be first out.
Ann caught Tristan beneath an arm and blocked Matthew’s progress with an extended foot as she opened the back door.
Dee Williams and her large umbrella blew in with the wind, and the door was closed fast, the glass shuddering in its frame.
‘Your C A T,’ she spelt out. ‘It’s D E A D, Ann. A car H I T it. Didn’t even stop, the callous swine.’
‘What did she say, Mummy? Who didn’t stop, Mummy?’
‘The taxi,’ Ann replied, looking at her neighbour then down to the small interrogator. Poor old Tiddy had been Mandy’s cat. No more cat now. ‘I’ll settle the boys and B U R Y it.’
‘What’s B U R Y, Mummy?’
‘Banana under raspberry yoghurt. What do you want, a video or some yoghurt?’
‘I want The Lion King.’
‘I want da bidio Lion Tin.’
‘You can both have the video Lion King.’
Good old video. David’s study was now the boys’ playroom, complete with television and video player. Ann’s sewing room held Tristan’s cot and his chest of drawers. The house, once considered too large, had undergone radical shrinkage over the past six years. Even the family room/kitchen had shrunk a size.
The boys seated on well-separated chairs, silent and still, Ann took a garbage bag from the cupboard and her parka from the back porch, pulling the hood up as she walked with her neighbour to the road, walking slow against the wind, fine needles of rain in her face. Her back was aching today; a speedboat to China looked better than it had yesterday.
‘Silly old cat,’ she said when she saw it, wet, bedraggled, its mouth open, eyes open. She picked it up while Dee held the plastic bag wide, then Ann took the bag and the two women returned to the yard.
‘Silly old cat. It used up the last of its nine lives two years ago. Cost us a fortune at the vet’s when the last car hit it,’ she said.
‘I could take him down to the vet. He’ll dispose of it, Ann.’
‘I’ll bury it,’ she said. She found her favourite spade in the garden shed and chose a site between the bare apricot tree and the plum. Tall now, they’d burst into blossom soon, be covered in fruit come Christmas, if Christmas ever came. The earth was soft here, and the cat not so large.
She’d never liked it – or never forgiven it. Mandy had been chasing it when she’d fallen down the stairs. How many children tumbled down stairs and lived? Not her baby. Not sweet Mandy.
Bloody cat. Ann wouldn’t have bothered with the metal pins and the seven hundred dollars two years ago, but David had bothered. He hadn’t blamed the cat for Mandy’s death.
So now it was dead, and no metal pin to give it another life.
‘Let me do that. You shouldn’t be digging.’ Dee said.
‘I’m fine. Fit as a mallee bull and twice as dangerous today. I’ve been stuck inside too long. It’s nice to feel the wind in my face. With a bit of luck it might blow the rain away tonight. I’ve had enough of it.’
‘It’s been a bad time for you. Bad enough to lose a parent without it happening like this. It must be terrible for your mother.’
‘Yes.’
‘No more news?’
‘No. They’re checking the DNA. It takes a while.’
Dee knew better than to pursue that subject. They were friends, but not close. Ann, like Ellie, was difficult to get close to. Dee took the shovel when Ann stopped to stretch her back, and in silence they completed the soggy hole and placed the bag in, tucking the edges under before shovelling back red mud.
‘Poor little thing. They drive too fast along this road. When we built here, it didn’t go anywhere. We need signs, or speed humps.’
‘It had a long life.’ Longer than Mandy, Ann thought. And it was only a cat, not like when she’d buried old Mickey, her dog. Just a fat, self-satisfied cat that had it all, a safe house, meals all day, a warm
bed in the laundry, but it had craved live food to torment and it couldn’t get live food in her yard, because when it tried, she’d chased it with a broom, sprayed it with the hose. It had hated her broom, and her hose, spat at her each time she swept the floor, watered the garden.
Greedy things, cats. Cruel cynical eyes that never quite made contact with your own, she thought. Not like dogs. Dogs looked you in the eye, communicated. Honest, honourable people were dogs. Maybe she’d get the boys a pup – get herself a pup.
‘Got time for a cup of tea, Dee?’ she said, wearied today of her own and the boys’ company. Wind and rain had never caged her before she’d had the boys. They caged her; not a lot of walking you could do with tiny ones in tow. It was all very well to play mother earth, populate or perish, but motherhood was wearing. Matthew, barely four, Tristan having a premature run-in with the terrible twos, and David always at work. Only minutes before Dee came knocking at her door, he’d called to tell her his computers had misplaced ten thousand; he’d be late home. Again.
Dee looked at her watch. ‘Just a quick one. I’ll pick the kids up today.’
‘It’s my turn.’
‘You look worn out. How long have you got to go?’
‘A little over six weeks. I’m usually pretty close to time.’
‘I shouldn’t have let you dig. Have a rest this afternoon. Put your feet up.’
‘The doctor’s wife giving advice now.’
Dee laughed. ‘Live with them long enough and it starts to wear off on you. I’ve got to do some shopping anyway, so I’ll pick the kids up and take them with me.’
They washed their hands in the laundry, and they spoke of the weather and the school and the town; they sipped tea, ate biscuits, kids’ biscuits – chocolate teddy bears. At three-fifteen Dee left. She had three children; the last one, Jana, was in Benjamin’s class. Frances, the middle man, had been a few months older than Mandy. He was ten. Her oldest was at high school.
Ann walked her neighbour out to the gate, then returned to check on the boys. The one thing these two agreed on was The Lion King.
‘Best invention since the wheel,’ she said as she sat on David’s recliner and took her doctor’s wife’s advice, put her feet up on the footrest. Perhaps she might steal a minute of mind-numbing peace.
From its protective pillowslip Ann took a wedding gown bodice she was beading for some unknown Sydney bride; she unscrewed the lid from a plastic container half-filled with small pearls, then balanced it on the broad arm of the recliner.
It was an intricate design she and her needle worked. She could see what she wanted in her mind’s eye and her mind’s eye drew the lines before her needle. Ann had always looked on these bridal gowns as therapy; while her hands created, her brain slowed down, put its feet up too. The therapy part wasn’t working today, but the panel was almost done when her doorbell rang.
‘Damn it,’ she said, capping the pearl container, safe from tiny hands. Two small faces peered from the study door, but visitors couldn’t compete with undeserved videos.
Two men, two strangers, waited beneath the shelter of the patio. Ann knew who they were without their introductions or ID.
‘Mrs Taylor?’ She nodded. ‘We’d like to ask you a few questions. May we come in?’ the tall one said, his foot already inside.
She considered slamming the door on his toe, blaming the wind, but it probably wasn’t a good idea. ‘It’s not a good time,’ she said.
‘A few minutes only, Mrs Taylor.’
The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things –
She sighed as she held the taller man’s bloodhound, red-rimmed eyes. Then she stepped back, led the way to the family room and pointed to the chairs. But she stood, so they preferred to stand.
‘As you were the last person to see your father alive – ’
‘Highly unlikely,’ she interrupted his opening speech as she packed her sewing into the pillowslip, leaving it on the table with the colouring books and textas and a gumnut bubble pipe.
‘If you could tell us again your movements on the night he disappeared, Mrs Taylor.’
‘I signed a detailed statement six months after my father left and another one in April when his gun was found.’
‘Bear with us. Refresh our memories.’ The smaller man’s voice was patronising. King Rat, lording it over a guilty mouse.
‘I saw him down by the river, not far from Ben’s bridge – the footbridge. There was a flash of lightning, a clap of thunder and . . . and I ran for cover.’
The words, repeated too often, sounded flat today, sounded like a lie, and these two men had built-in lie detectors. They weren’t interested in flashes of lightning – not now, not with that body in its shallow grave, but they made their scratches on paper, scribbling liar, liar.
‘In a previous statement you said that you then drove off in your car – to clear your head.’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘It was still raining at the time?’
‘Yes.’
‘I believe your husband stated that you returned home after four on the following afternoon.’
‘And as previously stated, I didn’t look at the clock. I had a cup of tea and I went to bed.’ Words read from a tattered old script, the actor having lost interest in her role.
‘You said, I believe, that on the night in question you drove out the old river road, that your vehicle became bogged near the ten-mile, and that you waited until daylight before attempting to drive out. You did not attempt to walk out.’
‘Too much mud to walk.’
‘So you sat in your car.’
‘Yes.’
‘For eight or nine hours. And come daylight, you somehow managed to extricate your vehicle, but you did not return to your home until around four that afternoon. Perhaps you could tell us where you drove – after leaving the river road. Did you continue on to Daree or return to Mallawindy?’
‘I continued on to the bitumen then drove blindly. I don’t know where I drove. Almost seven years and three children have not improved my memory of that night. I’m sorry.’
‘You drove blindly for many hours. From daylight until four p.m.’
‘Apparently.’
‘So you have no knowledge of where you were between daylight and four p.m?’ She shook her head and drew her hair back, pinned it back, and all the while they watched her. ‘Your mother stated that you and your father had a heated argument that night, Mrs Taylor.’
‘It was one of our bad habits.’
‘And your father disappeared shortly afterwards.’
‘If you say so.’
‘And you spoke to no one for a period of nineteen hours, from around nine-thirty on Christmas Eve to four p.m. the following day. Did you buy petrol, Mrs Taylor?’
‘I filled the tank before driving to Mallawindy that night.’
‘Where you took possession of your father’s briefcase.’ She waited, her head to the side. ‘Your mother stated that she saw you place it in the boot of your car.’
Her heart rate had increased, disturbing the one in her womb. A future football champion, it kicked back. Ann turned to the sink, stared at a baking dish she’d meant to wash, ran water into it, then she sighed and turned back to the men. ‘My mother may have seen me place my briefcase in the boot of my car.’
‘She stated that the case she saw belonged to your father.’
‘It’s difficult to tell one from another.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t recall having my briefcase with me that night, or putting it in the boot. I may have.’
Both men were watching her as she placed a hand on her stomach to still the movement. Burying the cat may not have been such a good idea. She’d been uncomfortable since she’d made the tea. Pressure beneath her left rib and rolling pummelling on the right. She poured a glass of water and drank it, slowly.
‘Did you return to your parents’ house that night, Mrs Taylor?’
‘Is there a point to that que
stion?’ The one in her womb lurched.
The larger man scratched at his armpit. ‘Your brother, John Burton – ’
‘John slept in Mallawindy that night, but his hire car was parked here, on our front lawn, where it remained for three days after my father went missing. Ben drove him up to collect it.’
‘So, let me get this clear, if I may, Mrs Taylor. You left the house in Mallawindy around nine-thirty. You did not return to your parents’ home that night?’
‘I did not. And for the record, I did not conspire with my brother John to kill my father either, if that’s where these questions are leading – and I can think of no other good reason for them.’
It was the wrong attitude, and she knew it. Smartarse answers were not the way to go. She should be playing the humble Ellie, the good housewife/mother. Maybe she should offer them tea, turn off the video, get the boys fighting again. That might get rid of her unwanted visitors.
She walked to the study door, glancing at her boys, away in cartoon land. Small demanding demons had become sweet angels, their wide eyes avid as they stared at the screen. Videos were a treat, and only allowed if they had been good, and they hadn’t been good, but they were now. Through the window she saw Dee’s car drive in, and children tumble out. Little Ben was growing so tall.
Quietly she closed the door and returned to the detectives. ‘If you’ll excuse me now, I have to go next door to get my other son.’
The smaller man barred her way. ‘One moment more if you please, Mrs Taylor.’
His type always angered her. He reminded her of an old school inspector with his knowing sneer and his sniff, and his sly little eyes.
‘Do you still have the briefcase in your possession?’
‘I have my own briefcase in my possession. Naturally.’
‘We’d like to see it, if we may?’
‘Why not?’ She walked towards the main bedroom.
‘Do you mind if I accompany you, Mrs Taylor?’
‘Please yourself. Don’t fall over the boys’ toys and sue me.’
On her knees in the bedroom she dragged the old black case from beneath the bed she hadn’t slept in since Bronwyn’s wedding. It wasn’t her father’s case, but the one she had bought many years ago, because it had looked like her father’s. As a child she’d coveted his briefcase with its lock, and its little key. Such a good safe place in which to hide her secrets – as he had hidden his.
