Life Before

by Carmel Reilly

  ‘Yeah. Okay.’

  She stood at the bench and looked out to the garden. The rain had transformed it, given it intensity, definition, painted the concrete path a dark grey, the weeds a lush green, the yellowed leaves of the pear tree a rich red-gold. She’d never doubted Jason, Jason’s love. She wasn’t sure why. Most people seemed to doubt their partners sometime or other. Even his late nights didn’t prompt her to think he was having an affair or just didn’t want to spend time with her. When he was with her, he was all hers. He could be tired, grumpy, irritable, but she was always his focus.

  ‘He adores you, that man,’ Anselma had commented one day.

  ‘You think?’

  ‘I know. Ross was never like that.’ Ross was Anselma’s former partner, father of Sasha. ‘To think you’ve been together all these years and his eyes still light up when you walk into the room.’

  In those moments on the phone, she thought she’d noted a change, something subtle and new, as though she was no longer that important person; that something else mattered more than her. Then she thought about her own preoccupation these last days and wondered if he was feeling the same thing. She added her plate and cup to the dishwasher and put it on. Grabbed her bag and keys and headed for the car.

  In intensive care she went through the same ritual that she had on previous days, greeting staff, donning the gown, applying the antiseptic handwash. The curtains were only partially drawn and from her position outside the door she could see that there was no nurse in the room, that when she entered it would just be her and Scott. He was lying half propped up on his bed, his eyes closed, and whether he was conscious or not was impossible to tell. She fought down the queasy feeling in her stomach and slid the door back. When she turned to close it again she felt, as she had each time, that she’d passed through an airlock, was entering a foreign, unexplored world where anything might happen.

  The room was quiet, just a small whirr of something electrical in the background. She walked to the bed and looked at her brother. As if on cue he opened his eyes and stared back at her.

  ‘Hello,’ she said.

  A slow smile.

  ‘Can you speak?’

  He opened his mouth and a small croaky sound came forth like a false start, then, ‘Think so.’

  Lori put her fingers to her lips, thinking that she hadn’t heard her brother’s voice in all this time, his slow country accent. She couldn’t tell if he still had that from those two blurred words but the tone was there. He sounded like Mick; even though she hadn’t been able to remember Mick’s voice, she could recognise it now. She looked around for the chair and pulled it up, hoping he wouldn’t fade back to sleep, unconsciousness, whatever it was, wherever he was, before she settled. But he remained awake, eyes wide open.

  She had a moment of doubt. ‘You know who I am, don’t you?’

  His nod was accompanied by a small sound. He was still gazing at her as though she was an apparition, the second coming, but also an object of affection. A friend long unseen.

  ‘I don’t know what to say. This feels very strange. I think you already know a bit about me. If you can remember. I know nothing about you.’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Scott, ‘to know.’

  ‘I doubt that very much.’ She scanned his bedside table. There was a small cup with a straw. She motioned her head towards it and said, ‘Want some water?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  She took the cup and positioned the straw towards his mouth. She noticed that his lips were dry, flaking and slightly cracked. He took a sip then put his hands up to the cup, his fingers brushing hers.

  ‘Enough?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said again.

  ‘Do you remember me coming in before?’

  ‘Today?’

  ‘No. Other days.’

  He shook his head. ‘Feel you’ve been … don’t remember.’ He paused for a moment as if he had to catch his breath. ‘Sorry you had to come.’

  ‘The police found my address at your place.’

  He opened his mouth to speak, then faltered. ‘Shouldn’t have …’

  ‘You don’t have anyone in your life?’

  ‘You won’t … be stuck.’

  A feeling overtook her then that she couldn’t quiet identify. Pride. Wilfulness. ‘You think I’d be standing here now if that was a consideration?’

  Behind them the door slid open and Malcolm came in. ‘Good afternoon. How are we?’

  Lori turned in her seat. ‘It’s incredible. Scott is speaking.’

  ‘And it’s not Mandarin,’ said Malcolm, hovering at the monitor for a moment before coming to inspect Scott more closely. ‘How are you feeling right now, Mr Green? Any blurred vision, headache, nausea? Anything else we need to know about?’

  ‘Head. Ache.’

  ‘We can get you something for that. What would you give it out of ten?’

  ‘Five.’

  Malcolm pursed his lips slightly then returned to the computer, keying in a few words. ‘Orrighty. I’ll be back in a moment with something for that pain.’

  Scott closed his eyes, tilted his head back into the pillow.

  Scott?’ she said, lightly touching his hand and feeling, with his lack of response, a bubble of impatience that immediately made her feel guilty. All she wanted was to talk to him. So long without contact, without looking for contact, and now her only desire was to talk and talk and talk. To listen, to know. But being here wasn’t about her, it was about him. He needed time to recover and heal and she had to wait. There was testament in how far he still had to go in the dark circles under his eyes and the yellowed skin that stretched tight from cheekbone to jaw. It was the face of someone who’d been stripped of the few reserves he’d had.

  Even the tan she’d noted when she’d first seen him seemed to have faded, making the small dark lines on his arm—just visible under the sleeve of his hospital gown—more obvious than they might have otherwise been. She looked at them, mentally piecing together an image from the little she could see and what she could remember; willing the entire shape of it into being.

  They had driven to Shepparton that night—she, Scott, Troy, Mike and Josh—to that crumby tattoo parlour with the bleaching fluorescent light and the plastic chairs and the laminated prints of tattoo designs and photos of wild horses and trees and flowers covering the walls. That was the night she had realised there was something happening with Troy; something more than him indulging his friend’s sister, something more than her tolerating her brother’s friend. She, Mike and Troy had squeezed into the back seat of Scott’s car, and all she could think of was the sensation of Troy beside her, his thigh pressed hard against her thigh, his breath on her cheek when he turned to speak.

  It had been Troy who’d wanted the tattoo, a decision both spontaneous and deliberate. He’d been thinking about it for a long time, making drawings, accumulating designs. Loren had seen some of them in passing as he’d tried to convince Scott (and perhaps shore himself up in the process) of the beauty of getting one himself. Scott had been ambivalent, simultaneously attracted to the idea and repelled by the reality. ‘Tattoos are forever,’ he’d said uncertainly.

  Troy had laughed hard and replied that that was the point. ‘I want this on my arm forever. To remind me,’ he had declared as they’d walked to the car. ‘Of now. Of who I am right now. When I’m old and my skin is saggy and wrinkled I’m going to look at it and remember this.’

  Lori leaned forward now and delicately lifted the sleeve of Scott’s gown. There it was, the whole image. A sweet plump swallow, as good as you’d see on any sailor, faded to a washed-out indigo, an empty scroll in its beak. She recalled that the tattooist was a burly guy who looked like he rode a Harley Davidson and smoked piles of weed. What did he want him to write in the space, he’d asked Scott in a jaded voice, and Scott, who’d seemed to have sobered up after being subjected to the needle for twenty minutes, had said he wasn’t sure. He was going to leave it until he was. She had known in that i
nstant he’d regretted doing it. It wasn’t him. But, of course, now it was. Now, whenever he’d look at this, he’d remember that moment. And so many more. She wasn’t surprised to see he’d never filled the scroll in. What would he have to add? Live and learn. Life is suffering. Ink is destiny.

  The door slid open and Malcolm returned holding a small medicine cup in his hand. ‘Here we go,’ he said.

  Scott opened his eyes then. He wore a stunned expression, the kind that people have when they’ve woken from a long and deep sleep. Malcolm spoke to him, asked him a couple of perfunctory questions before giving him the liquid painkillers.

  Lori sat down again. ‘Do you want me to do anything? Call your work? Or anyone who needs to know.’

  Scott squinted up at her. ‘Lambeth Lincoln.’

  ‘Lambeth Lincoln,’ she repeated. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Work.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Chippie.’

  ‘Wow.’ She considered this. ‘I always thought you’d be working with machines or cars.’

  ‘No cars.’ His eyes rolled up to the ceiling in a way that might have been voluntary or involuntary.

  She put her other hand on his hand then, feeling the roughness of it. ‘Is that why you were on a bike?’

  He looked at her as though the question made no sense.

  ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘A bike.’

  ‘I mean what happened. The accident.’

  ‘No.’ He pressed his head back against the pillow and closed his eyes.

  She waited for a minute for him to connect again, but he seemed to have fallen back to sleep. She looked over to Malcolm at the monitor, where he stood clicking away at the keyboard. ‘Shall I go?’ she asked quietly.

  He inclined his head, smiled sympathetically. ‘That was a lot of chat. It’s exhausting for them when they come round, have to start processing. Good to take a break.’

  She waited a little longer before getting up and going downstairs where she called Daniel Levandi from the café, sitting at the same table she’d been sitting with him the day before. ‘He’s pretty with it,’ she said after telling him where she was and what she’d been doing. ‘Surprisingly so. I really didn’t know what to expect.’

  ‘Good enough for me to talk to?’

  ‘He’s had it for today. I burned him out. Sorry. But he did tell me that he didn’t remember the accident.’

  Daniel didn’t reply immediately. ‘Okay. I’ll talk to him tomorrow then. Probably be better anyway, stuff can come back over time.’

  ‘You need to call the hospital first. They might be doing some more tests sometime tomorrow.’

  ‘Right.’ He sounded a little distracted, as though he was reading something or writing something down while they were talking. She’d noticed he often did that. Multitasking. It made him sound vague, unfocused, when experience had shown her he was far from it.

  ‘Oh, almost forgot. He also gave me his employer’s name. Some building firm, by the sound of it, called Lambeth Lincoln.’

  ‘Okay. That’s excellent. I was waiting on a call back from someone at the super fund. Don’t need to worry about that now.’ There was a momentary pause. ‘Must have been something to talk to him. You all right?’

  She smiled on her end of the phone. ‘I am. It’s strange, but I was really glad to talk to him. I amazed myself.’ She could feel a sting behind her eyes, emotion threatening to overtake her.

  ‘I’m happy to hear that.’

  ‘Are you really?’

  ‘It might surprise you to know that cops like good outcomes from their cases. It’s not all about solve rates.’ It was hard to tell if he was being serious or teasing.

  She laughed, cleared her throat. ‘Sorry, it’s been a long day, I’m feeling a bit emotional. Got to go and pick up my children. Pull myself together.’

  ‘Well, you do that, get some rest. I will continue with this trail, see what I can find. Thank you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, putting the emphasis on the last word.

  ‘Just part of the job,’ he said. ‘Just what I do.’

  October 1993

  Northam

  Des hadn’t been to the Druitt house for five weeks. And, five weeks before that, which had taken him back to the night in question. The night of the accident. Normally he would have felt somewhat ashamed about this state of affairs, but he’d had enough contact from the Druitts not to feel he needed to visit more regularly to keep them updated. Ray or Maxine rang him to see when charges were being laid, when an arrest would be made. They rang him to complain that they weren’t being taken seriously. They rang him to say they’d seen Scott Green driving around town and that he shouldn’t still have his licence. Des tried to explain the way it went. The complaints about Scott driving were pointless (he hadn’t used that exact word, that would have been a red rag) as he had to be charged first with an offence and charges weren’t, strictly speaking, coming from him. The police in Wangaratta would be dealing with this because one of their units, Major Traffic, had dealt with the accident. When this was about to be set in motion, Des might be given a slight advance warning and, if so, he in turn would tell Ray and Maxine, but he couldn’t say definitively when that would be.

  A few weeks ago Ray Druitt had come in, stood over his desk and declared it was an open and shut case and there was no reason for delay. All Des could do was shrug mildly, invite him to sit down. He understood Ray’s pain, didn’t want to seem dismissive or cause him any more hurt than he’d already endured, but there was no getting around the sad reality of it. ‘These things can take a while to process, Ray,’ was all he could say, and Ray had looked at him in that contemptuous way he had, curled his lip and turned and walked out. Ray was a man who believed that he had to fight for everything in life—in fact that nothing was worth anything without a damn good tussle, a show of force. Des also had a feeling that Ray was a man who believed in conspiracies. In his mind, responsibility for his son’s death would never be shouldered. If he was to have any satisfaction he would have to fight for it because people in this town didn’t want to let one of their precious boys take the blame. As far as he was concerned, Scott Green would never truly pay the price unless he was made to. Ray was out to make a point.

  Most recently Maxine had rung Des to say that her sister Regina had been verbally attacked by Pam Green at the town hall on the weekend. ‘I want a restraining order against that woman,’ Maxine had brayed down the phone at Des, who for a moment had wished he had a restraining order against her. He held the receiver out from his head and his young constable, John Ryan, had turned in his chair and stared at him wide-eyed before uttering a small snigger and returning to his paperwork.

  Des had already heard about the supposed verbal assault incident. Lorna Crew’s daughter had been at the yoga class (quite popular these days apparently) and reported back to Lorna who had reported to Mary. Mary had also told him about running into Pam in the supermarket and Pam’s reluctance to let him know about her family’s continuing harassment. He had gone to visit Pam after that, but she was adamant that the drama would abate. Things were improving. She said she didn’t want to make any kind of formal complaint. From his vantage point, he could see the way it played out: Pam trying to dampen down the situation by ignoring it if she could, while the Druitts, feeling disregarded, fobbed off, were keen to beat a drum of discontent—in plain sight, or by stealth. There was no winning this one. And, while he didn’t have the resources to stake out the town’s phone boxes, he certainly could have a little chat.

  Des got into the station’s one unmarked car and drove across to the estate. When he’d first come to Northam, the estate didn’t exist. It was farmland then. A dairy property that belonged to the Ungers. He had an abiding memory of Mr Unger, although he couldn’t quite recall his first name after all this time (was it Cyril?) standing on the grass strip next to the road complaining that young hoons had broken one of his gates, allowing his cattle to g
et out. Des had examined the gate in question and sympathised with Unger but had told the old man that they had little hope of catching whoever did it. Unger had looked at him in a way that was reminiscent of Ray now—half contempt, half anger—and declared that it was virtually useless to have police presence in the town if they were never going to catch any wrongdoers. Des had felt, not for the first time, nor the last time, a sense of quiet frustration with the way that people didn’t understand how the world worked, the way they wanted someone to come along and fix the unfixable. Like children. And he the parent. Which he had to admit to himself is what he’d signed on for all those years ago. What else was a cop but one of the parents? For better or for worse (there certainly were egregious examples) for all concerned.

  Unger’s farm sat right across the river from town. Prime real estate that no one except wily old Jim Temple, ever aware of possibilities for development and growth, had ever thought could be anything other than a home for cows. Unger had died in the late seventies, but his wife lived on another ten years, running the farm for a time and then gradually reducing the herd, selling off the equipment. Jim Temple had the land rezoned by the time Mrs Unger died and the farm, inherited by a son who’d long moved away, was sold off, subdivided. Here it was now, a tract of sinuous wide streets, long, low houses, some small trees still not grown to maturity. Although, happily, a few old oaks still dotted about. Des couldn’t quite marry this manicured suburbia—especially here in Northam—with the wide sloping green hills he’d first seen all those years ago. Whenever he came up here, he always tried to locate the house, the sheds, fences. Only the big exotic trees gave him any sense of place, markers in what seemed now to be a foreign landscape, which he was, half a decade later, only just growing used to.

  Des parked the car one street back from the cul-de-sac and got out. He leaned on the bonnet and lit up a cigarette. Standing in the tepid sunshine with the eucalypt-scented breeze wafting down on him, he thought, not for the first time, that he really needed to give up the fags. He didn’t know how Mary put up with him. She’d smoked for a while herself, years ago, as a kind of bonding exercise he’d figured at the time. But smoking didn’t suit her and she’d stopped after a year or two. Lucky her. It would be no easy thing for him, having been hard at it for thirty-five years. His parents had smoked too. He should have taken note, both of them addictive personalities dying from the gaspers in one way or another. He stubbed the smoke out and got back into the car. Took a peppermint from the roll in his pocket and put it into his mouth, then drove around the corner.