by Joy Dettman
The solicitors wanted to see him. He tossed their letter at the wall and considered his stomach. The bills pushed back to the general mess on his table, he stood and walked to the fridge.
Eggs. That’s what he wanted. He knew how to fry an egg. None in the fridge. A tin of canned peaches in the pantry and not much else he could do anything with. May had been big on canned fruit. She’d stockpiled the stuff, and he didn’t want any more canned fruit. He wanted grease. He wanted butter. And bread.
Frozen peas in the freezer and a lump of meat. A leg of lamb. He balanced it on his palm, considering it – until his hand froze, then he tossed the meat back in with the peas and headed for his bedroom, searching the floor for clothing fit to be seen in. He picked up three shirts, smelt them, chose the cleaner of the three. The others were returned to the floor. He looked down at his jeans and decided to buy a clean pair, a size smaller. He picked up his hat and his sunglasses, his wallet, car keys and the manager’s cheque, which he dropped into the Hargraves Park mailbox before driving into town.
Sugar, milk, coffee, three loaves of bread and two tubs of soft butter, Solvol. He added a tin of apricot jam and a tin of fig, a large bottle of fake cream. He looked at the onions, tossed in three. Picked up a hand of bananas, a bag of potatoes, two packets of cornflakes and three tins of condensed milk. Then he had to queue to get out of the bloody place.
Queue too close to the liquor department. Queue right beside a two-metre high stack of VB cans. Queue with six bottles of Jack Daniel’s within arm’s reach, and his hand reached. But he snatched it back, fixed both hands onto the trolley. He didn’t have Sam’s hair to hide behind now, but bastard Saint Sam had been a teetotaller. He could hide behind that.
‘Nice to see you out and about, Mr Burton. And how are you managing?’
Jack unloaded his shopping onto the counter, tossing the cans and containers down while Saint Sam simpered his Ss and kept his eyes away from the grog.
‘Just scraping by, Mrs Simpson. Just scraping by.’
‘Time heals, Mr Burton. We don’t think it will at the time, but it does. When I lost Martin I thought my world had ended.’
Until you found Clarrie, Jack thought, but he paid with Sam’s plastic, poked in Sam’s pin number, then pushed the trolley before him as he walked to his car. He unloaded his bags into the boot then walked into the menswear shop. Two pairs of jeans, three shirts and half a dozen pair of Bonds size 16 briefs and he was out on the street, walking by the butcher’s shop. Steak. Steak and eggs for dinner.
Another bloody queue inside. More eyes to stare at his missing hair and eyebrows.
‘Good morning,’ someone said.
Jack glanced at the woman’s grey head and he didn’t know it. He looked at her hand and he flinched. ‘Morning,’ he said, his eyes staring at the plastic splints on the woman’s wrists, then quickly away to the butcher.
‘What will it be, Mr Burton?’
‘Give me a couple of slabs of steak,’ he said, and Sam added, ‘And some sausages, please.’ He didn’t like sausages, but sausage started with an S and everyone in the shop was staring at his hat. Sam used to have long hair and he’d never worn a hat. Today he needed those sibilant Ss. And he could probably fry a sausage anyway.
The butcher was shaking his head. Something wrong with that order. Jack scratched beneath his beard as he met the butcher’s eye. He was some blow-in from Melbourne.
‘I’ve got a nice bit of silverside this morning, Mr Burton. It’s easy enough to cook.’ Sympathy in the pale eyes staring out from beneath the bushy brows.
They all looked at him with sympathy. The bastard in the menswear shop had shaken his hand, his pop-eyes watering. ‘A lovely lady,’ he’d said. ‘The town will miss her smile, Sam.’
Jack had never had much sympathy, and sympathy hurt. He wished they’d all stop looking at him with their hangdog bloody eyes.
‘How do I cook it?’ he asked.
The women with the wrist splints smiled, but her eyes, her voice held that same sympathy. He knew her too. Didn’t want to know her, remember the last time he was this close to her, but he did.
It was Barbara Dean.
He cringed internally. Bloody memory like an elephant. Why couldn’t he go senile and forget? But he’d never forget Barbara Dean. He’d caught Sam molesting her when he was sixteen, and he’d belted the shit out of him. And here she was, bloody near sixty years old, riddled with arthritis and standing at the side of the man everyone thought was Sam Burton, telling him how to cook silverside when she should have been spitting in his eye, screaming ‘pervert’.
‘Pop it in your biggest saucepan with a good inch of water and a dash of vinegar, Mr Burton. But don’t boil it too hard or it will go raggy.’
‘Boil meat? In a saucepan?’
‘Yes. But with the lid on. Add a touch of mustard and a dash of vinegar,’ she said.
His face felt hot, and his spiked hair crawled beneath his hat. ‘Thanks. I’ll have a bit then.’
She smiled at him, then glanced at the offered lump of bloody red flesh on the butcher’s hand, measuring it with her eye. ‘He’s giving you a nice bit there, Mr Burton. It shouldn’t take more than two and a half hours to cook,’ she said, and she smiled again and patted his arm. Patted the arm of the bastard she thought was Sam.
Nobody touched him.
Nobody.
Touch of forgiveness in that crippled hand.
He thought of the touch of that other hand in that grey dawn, on the morning May had died, and he wanted to howl.
The plastic bag of meat passed over the counter, he grabbed it, and too eager to get away, forgot that he had to pay. Halfway out the door he turned, like a lost bloody fool. And they were all staring at him with their hangdog eyes and if he didn’t get a-bloody-way he was going to bawl.
His hand went to his wallet pocket, and the butcher said: ‘Next time you come into town will be fine, Mr Burton.’
Jack put his head down and walked half-blind to his car, drove half-blind back to the house, where he howled. Walked and howled.
He’d taken on Sam’s guilt and worn it as his own. And she’d forgiven him. Or maybe he was the only one who remembered that day. Little blue-eyed Barbara Dean and the bastard with his hand in her pants. Maybe his father had planted that image indelibly in his brain with the belting he’d handed out because bad Jacky had bloodied little Saint Sammy’s nose.
Forgiven for what he’d never done.
He blew his nose and lifted his shoulders.
‘You crazy bastard,’ he said and he turned on the hotplate, found a dirty frying pan, added a lump of butter to it, and started looking through the plastic bags for his eggs.
He didn’t have any eggs. He’d gone in there for eggs and forgotten to buy bloody eggs, hadn’t he?
Fat and butter spitting at him and nothing to fry, he howled again for his eggs and for Barbara Dean. She’d never spoken to him before. But he’d never spoken to her either. Whenever he’d seen her, he, Sam, had put his head down and crossed to the other side of the street.
‘Jesus Christ, a man’s going mad.’
He tossed one slab of steak into the spitting pan and fried it charred and medium raw, but he hid the char and the blood between two slices of buttered bread, and it tasted all right too, with a dollop of tomato sauce.
‘Jesus Christ.’
The solicitor phoned him at three. He had a $100,000 investment come due. They wanted to see him, but he didn’t want to see them. He walked the house, walked until he tripped over one of May’s old studbooks he’d tossed onto the floor. He sat and he read it, then searched out her farm journals, trying to fill his mind with words. He picked up a local newspaper, turning pages, and he thought of Chef-Marlet’s Number 10, and he thought of Mack Curtin and he turned another page.
Pullets for sale. Ready to lay.
The ad ripped out, he took it with him to the kitchen, where he propped it between the salt and pepper shakers with Ellie�
�s letter, his mind with Ellie and her fresh eggs.
That night he rang the number and ordered six chooks. It wasn’t until he put the phone down that he remembered chooks had to be fed. He’d have an excuse to stay home now. He had to feed the bloody chooks. That had always been Ellie’s excuse. Couldn’t do anything. Couldn’t go anywhere with him.
‘I can’t, love. I have to milk the cows, feed the chooks, get the eggs. I can’t. It’s a lovely dress, Jack, but I’ve got nowhere to wear it,’ he said in nasal tones, his vowels flat. ‘You know I can’t wear earrings. They pinch my ears, love.’
‘Couldn’t, or bloody wouldn’t. Couldn’t or wouldn’t.’
‘Just let them loose,’ Jack said to the chook farmer who delivered the pullets in a metal crate. Mallawindy chooks had roamed free. They’d always come home for their dinner.
‘You’ll lose them, mate. You need some sort of a run. Look, I’ll leave the crate with you for a few days while you knock up a bit of a pen.’
The chooks were not laying, and were looking sick in their cramped quarters before Jack bought a roll of chicken wire and took up a hammer to build them a lean-to against the garden fence. He mashed his still fragile thumb and pitched the hammer to buggery; he was dancing, howling, when old Harry, May’s gardener, came riding into the yard with his pup.
Harry took the wrist of the dancer, looked at the thumb. ‘I vonce vorking in clinic. Ve vash him, tie him up. Ya.’
Past fighting, past arguing, Jack allowed him to wash the wound, bandage it and later, when Harry started ripping down the lean-to, Jack made no complaint.
‘Ve no put him in missus garden. Ve making him good birdhouse, behind tree. Ya. Make him for shade. Tomorrow. Ya. I vonce making birdhouse for my president.’
Seventy-odd, a bearded eccentric, his land of origin and native tongue obscure, he worked slowly, but he worked and got the chook palace built, and while four of the pullets were still alive.
Jack wrote him a cheque. SJBurton, the J hard, large, and black.
Old Harry took it but stood on in the doorway, the pup at his feet. They watched Jack search for the least dirty mugs, rinse them, and make coffee. They watched him glance at the pup, add a dash of milk to one of May’s best bowls then place it before the dog, watched him pat its head.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Is Blooty-dok.’
‘I can see it’s a bloody dog. What do you call him?’
‘Blooty-dok, come.’ The dog left his milk and came.
Harry drank his coffee, washed his mug and looked around the kitchen. ‘I see him plenty time in clinic. In my country after vaw. Man’s head he go vhoooosh vith grief.’
‘You go vhoooosh too. You’ve got your cheque. Go to buggery.’
Harry was moving newspapers from a chair. He sat on it. ‘Ve talk. Ya?’
‘I don’t want to talk.’
‘You grass is up-you-bum-to.’
Jack drank coffee, shook his head. ‘I like it up to my bum. Piss off.’
‘Is late for to piss off. Bike is notting light. Ve eat some dinner. Ya. Ve talk more. Ya.’
‘I haven’t got any dinner. Take your bloody dog and go, I said.’
The dog lifted its ears and walked to Jack, sniffed his shoe, then sat on it. Harry laughed and Jack patted Blooty-dok’s head.
‘I vonce cooking for six hunret man. Ve have beer. Ya. Then Harry cook.’
Harry had the beer, and in Jack’s pantry he found an onion and a tin of ham. He found rice and frozen peas and a tin of tomatoes, and all three ate well in the kitchen. That night Harry and Blooty-dok bunked down in the cellar, and at dawn the ride-on mower was mowing, the pup barking, and when they still wouldn’t go to buggery, Jack did.
to hell and back
The Toorak flat hadn’t been robbed; these days, that was a plus. May had always been relieved to open the door and find the place as they’d left it. It was clean too. He walked a while there, looking at the old furniture that belonged in Narrawee.
Maybe he’d move the best of it back. Maybe he’d have old Samuel’s bones exhumed, have them cremated and scatter the ashes over his beloved Narrawee.
‘Narrawee,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ He was standing before the portrait of Samuel. A proud old bugger, posed in his best suit, seated on his throne. Grey beard, grey hair. Jack lifted it down and carried it out to his car, placing it carefully in the large boot. It had hung in the entrance hall at Narrawee when he was a boy, and it would hang there again. He’d take that portrait home today and he’d look into taking the old man’s bones home too.
The garage locked, he walked up Toorak Road, bought a clean shirt, then caught a tram to the city.
For more than sixty years Narrawee had dealt with the same company of solicitors and accountants. John the Bastard had worked for this group prior to inheriting the property, so he’d given them his business. The faces and names had altered through the years, but May had seen no good reason to take the Narrawee business elsewhere.
No May at his side when he rode the lift up. No May to prove he was his twin brother. No hair. But he had Sam’s scars. He’d carry them to his grave.
A big firm, it took up most of the second floor, and he saw a girl shaking the hand of one of the solicitors, saw her hair. Slim as Ellie had been back then, hair like Ellie’s too, gold by the bloody yard. He sat staring at the hair, willing her to turn around. She didn’t.
He watched that hair to the lift, then it was gone.
No one commented on his hair, or lack of it. Handshakes for him in the office. Offered condolences. And papers to sign.
SJBurton. SJBurton. SJBurton.
And if the S grew smaller and the J and B larger, darker, no one in this office questioned it. He had been Sam in this place for thirty years. If he had a head for anything, it was for the business world. Had John the Bastard not been a solicitor, Jack may have taken law at university. Instead he’d taken medicine, and dropped out after that first dead body. He hated dead bodies. Hated death. And been dogged by it. He’d found his mother dead that winter morning. And the little one, Linda.
He shook the other dead from his mind, and listened again to the solicitor.
Since 1960 both Sam and May’s names had been on the Narrawee title, but Hargraves Park had belonged to May. It would be Jack’s for his lifetime, then it would go to Bronwyn. Narrawee would go to Ann.
‘Jack’s trust funds. They go to the widow?’
‘The fund set up by your father was for your brother’s lifetime. It ceases on his death; however, the second fund, from the estate of George Hamstead, goes to the deceased’s wife, then to the children of the deceased. The money already paid into the accounts from the first fund, plus interest, will go to your brother’s wife.’
Ellie and her bloody friend would be rolling in his money.
But he had Narrawee. He had thousands in shares. He had a brand-new Ford, insurance supplied. What else did he need?
A cook.
Old Harry could cook. Cooked for six hundred men, and he’d proved last night that he’d spoken no lie. That meal tossed together in minutes had been fit for a bloody king. Maybe he should let the old bugger hang around, mow his lawns, feed his chooks – and him.
They’d shared two bottles of beer, and they’d talked. The old bastard wasn’t dumb; they’d talked for two hours.
This morning the cellar had smelt different. Smelt of old bloke sweat and tobacco. And dog stink. The stink of life. Just a room. For the first time in thirty years it had been just another room. The ghosts had cleared out.
‘What?’ Jack’s mind was jarred back to the moment and to the solicitor.
‘So what do you think? Are you interested in renting the flat, Sam?’
‘No.’
‘It’s in a prime position. Good area.’
‘I don’t know. I’ll probably sell it.’ Then with a handshake they parted.
He was walking the city streets, not wanting to go back to the flat, whe
n he saw that hair again – Ellie’s hair – disappearing into a bar down the bottom end of Collins Street. He walked by it, one hand brushing his scalp. Then he turned, and walked through the door.
She was seated, her back turned to him, her hair bright beneath the spotlights over the bar – like a shower of sunshine, the hair cascaded free to her waist. He watched her hand lift, tilt the glass, empty it, push it back towards the barman.
‘Vodka and tonic.’
Jack studied a shoulder, bare except for a slim lemon-coloured strap. His eyes followed the strap down. Slim legs crossed, a slim ankle in its light sandal, swinging. Liza might have looked like this. She might have been sitting at a bar too. Greedy little bugger. And he’d fed her greed.
He watched the second drink follow the first. This was a woman with a mission. He wanted a whisky but ordered a beer, and he looked around for a table, an ashtray. No ashtrays on the tables, but big ones on the bar. A cigarette lit, he sipped his cold beer, felt it wander its way down; and he felt at home, at peace. The stools taken, he leaned, sipping, smoking, watching the coot who sat beside that golden hair. Then the coot moved away and Jack took his beer and sat on the vacated bar stool.
She didn’t turn her head. He waited until she pushed her glass back for a refill before he ordered a second beer.
‘Carlton Draft, and a vodka and tonic for the lady.’
A long time since he’d bought a drink for a lady. Maybe he could find someone to talk to. Fill an hour. She turned to face him when the barman placed the drink before her, and she wasn’t as young as her hair.
‘I’m not for sale,’ she said.
‘I was buying the drink.’
She flipped her hair from her face. Lines around the eyes, her jaw not so firm. With the dim bar light and heavy make-up she looked forty-odd, which probably meant she was fifty.
‘You look familiar,’ she said.
‘That line was old when I was a boy.’
