Life Before

by Carmel Reilly

  The little street was deathly quiet. He remembered coming here the night of the accident. In the darkness you had no idea of the landscape of the place; that behind the houses a small band of grass melted slowly upward into the bush, giving the impression that the environment was cradling the estate, holding it close. He could imagine when the world ended that the bush would slowly spread downward again and take over everything man-made below. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, he thought. Peace. It would happen one day, when they were all long gone. The world put to rights again.

  Des stood on the front verandah clutching a manila folder that was more for show than anything else and feeling faintly nauseous. He hadn’t rung the Druitts earlier because he knew it would only have provoked a barrage of questions, which would have led to a query about why he was really coming. And the reason for his coming was something that needed to be dealt with face to face. He knocked on the door and within seconds a wary-looking Maxine opened it. He wondered if she’d glimpsed him through the window first as she didn’t seem surprised.

  ‘I hope you’ve got some good news for us,’ she said as she opened the door.

  He kept his face neutral. ‘Is Ray here?’

  ‘He’s in the garage. I’ll get him.’ She pointed into the living room. ‘Sit down.’

  He’d sat in this room with Ray on the night he’d come from the accident with the news. He’d never felt so wretched, and he’d felt pretty wretched on many occasions before. That night Ray hadn’t woken Maxine, but she’d heard them at some point. Heard Ray sobbing, Des believed, and she’d come out and when she realised what had happened she’d run into the kitchen and retched into the sink. With the focus on Ray and Maxine, the pain of the situation, he hadn’t noticed that night how impeccably tidy the house was. It was only when he’d come back last month that he’d seen it. He wondered if it had always been like this or if it was a reaction to Troy’s death. He noticed it again today, the minimalism, the lack of clutter, the lack of colour or, indeed, any kind of personality. No books, few trinkets. One family photo on the sideboard. It looked like a hotel. Some people liked that, he supposed.

  Ray appeared before him in trackpants and an old shirt. Not too grubby for being in the garage, but Des figured he’d probably been wearing overalls and had scraped them off.

  As if reading his mind, Ray said, ‘Want to come into the kitchen? I’m a bit dirty to sit down here.’

  Des thought about the night of the accident and how Des had been rain sodden. He’d supposed given the terrible events no one was going to care too much about the puddles, tracked in grit from the road. Maxine would have spent the next morning between jagged despair and cleaning the carpet. The only consolation was that it might have given her some distraction in those early hours of grief.

  In the kitchen Maxine put on the kettle. Des was surprised by that, thought she’d want him gone. But then she hadn’t heard what he had to say yet. He might find himself doused in hot Nescafe in a couple of minutes.

  Ray sat across the table from Des and leaned forward. ‘So what do you have to tell us?’

  Des hadn’t been so close up to Ray for a while. He noted his unshaven chin and bloodshot eyes and wondered. He’d never heard that Ray drank, but there was something about him now, a little dishevelled, unfocused. Ray had always been meticulous about his appearance. They both had, he and Maxine. But she seemed as neat as ever, only her colour palette a little more subdued. ‘I’m sorry, I still don’t have news on the charges …’

  Ray let out a low groan. ‘Ah, jeez.’

  ‘I really wanted to talk to you about the Greens.’

  It was as if a static charge had been let off. Ray and Maxine both tensed at once. Ray’s face turned stony.

  ‘What about that restraining order?’ Maxine spat.

  ‘I believe that it was your sister with that problem,’ said Des. ‘If she wants to take one out, she’ll have to come into the station and fill out a form and give us a good reason for her concerns.’

  Maxine’s face contorted a little, as if holding something back. Behind her the kettle stared to whistle. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee, thanks. Bit of milk. No sugar.’

  Maxine turned to the bench and Ray said flatly, ‘What’s this about the Greens?’

  ‘Well, I was hoping you might be able to help me.’

  Ray leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, his expression contemptuous.

  ‘Someone has been harassing them.’

  Des heard Maxine let out a small, almost jubilant guffaw.

  Des continued. ‘We have no idea who’s behind the incidents, but I was wondering if you might know anything. Maybe put in a word to stop what’s going on.’

  ‘You must think I’m a moron, Mr, sorry, Sergeant Robinson,’ said Ray.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You pretty clearly think this is me. Well, I can tell you right now, I couldn’t care less about the Greens. Wouldn’t cross the road to spit on them, fire or no fire. If someone’s harassing them, bloody good job. But don’t look at me.’

  ‘So you don’t want to help us put a stop to this?’

  ‘How could I do that?’

  ‘Put the word out.’

  Ray scoffed. ‘There’ll be a stop when justice is done.’

  Justice, thought Des, and rubbed the side of his face with his palm. ‘So you have some idea who might be responsible then?’

  ‘No. No I don’t.’ Ray’s jaw set hard. ‘What did they do, anyway?’

  Des felt the weight of farce on his shoulders. Telling Ray what he already knew. It was like watching a fire alongside the arsonist who’d lit it. He recounted the phone calls, roadkill and car eggings. Ray sat immobile, unmoved for all intents and purposes. Maxine put a coffee down in front of Des and he looked up into her eyes and she glanced away across to her husband, who fractionally softened. Des saw a complicity that, if he was a paranoid type, might make him wonder if Maxine had spiked his coffee. Especially when he realised she hadn’t made anything for herself, or Ray.

  ‘So they complained, did they?’ said Ray. ‘Reckoned it was me?’

  ‘No, actually, they didn’t. This came to my notice in another way.’

  ‘Really.’

  Maxine sat down next to Ray. He could see the exhaustion in her face, grief settling into fine etched lines around her eyes and mouth. ‘Sergeant. It’s impossible to tell you how much this has affected us. Those people took so much away from us. You can’t expect us to have any sympathy for them.’

  ‘So what you are saying is that if you did know who was doing this, you wouldn’t do anything about it.’

  Ray stared at Des. Maxine looked across the kitchen. ‘If anyone is doing anything, they’re doing it for us,’ she said, a proud note to her voice.

  ‘It’s just that these things don’t tend to play out too well in court,’ said Des. ‘They can make judges more sympathetic to the accused, end up in a lighter sentence.’

  Ray’s face remained impassive, but Des could see the muscles in his jaw work just a little. ‘I wouldn’t think you’d want Green to get a heavy sentence.’

  ‘Sentencing is not what I do,’ said Des.

  ‘Ah, but you are part of something here though, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m a part of the Northam community, I hope, Ray. A broad church.’

  Ray shook his head. ‘You reckon there’s such a thing as the Northam community? Well, not one that I’m a part of. No one from this community has come to me to say they’re sorry. To lend a hand. Just a coupla old mates from years back. Family. They’re the only ones who’ve been around. But they don’t live here. No one who does live here could care less.’

  Des wanted to say that Pam Green had come, had offered her condolences (he’d heard a simple version of that story from her when she first told him about the harassment), but he held his tongue. ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I suppose you haven’t been here too long.’

  ‘Not by the standa
rds of this town, no.’

  Des took a sip of his coffee and thought about Mary, how hard she’d worked to find a place here, make a new life. He had a role to play, didn’t need to find a niche, but she didn’t have any conventional way to make inroads and had to find ways to connect. He didn’t imagine Ray had got out and networked too hard, volunteered, made himself available. He wasn’t sure about Maxine, didn’t know if she’d had a job before all of this, had town connections. She did have her sister, who he’d heard, funnily enough, was more like Ray than Maxine. Black and white, and full of righteous wrath. A kind of comfort, he supposed, that outraged certitude.

  ‘Still no word from Wangaratta?’ said Ray.

  ‘Not as yet. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear.’

  ‘What happens after they arrest him?’ said Maxine. ‘Will he be gone then?’

  ‘Gone? You mean to gaol? He might go to remand, but I’m fairly sure a judge will give him bail. Which means he’ll be around until the trial, or sentencing. You haven’t spoken to a lawyer?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘We don’t need a lawyer,’ said Ray. ‘We just need that little shit locked up. Justice done. Judges never seem to do the right thing these days, do they?’

  ‘Look, you may not need a lawyer for yourselves. But one could help you understand what’s going on.’

  Ray sparked up, his voice agitated. ‘I think we can work that out for ourselves. As long as you keep us informed. We don’t need to be paying some money-grubbing bastard for nothing.’

  ‘You might want to make an impact statement. When it’s time for sentencing. Let the court know how this has affected you. It’s a reasonably new thing, allows the judges to take your suffering into consideration. A lawyer will certainly help with that.’

  Maxine shook her head as if to say the very idea of it seemed too much, but Des knew ultimately she would want to do it. Most people did.

  Ray, his face slipping from fatigue to irritation, slapped his hand firmly down on the table and looked Des in the eye. ‘You know, don’t you, Sergeant, that the only justice we will ever get is from God. No judge will do the right thing by us. Even the system. It’s so bloody slow. The longer I wait the longer I wonder if anything will ever happen.’

  Des wondered if he was meaning the kind of god who sent down a lightning strike, or the kind of god who got a helping hand from his disciples on Earth. ‘I know it’s hard—’

  ‘Do you? Lost any kids of your own lately?’

  Des tilted his head back. There was never any point in answering these provocations, especially with a man like Ray Druitt, who wasn’t interested in an answer, only making a point. ‘I will do my best to keep you informed. I can only ask for your patience.’

  Ray looked at him and contorted his face into something that was somewhere between a laugh and a sneer. Des realised it was the first time he’d ever seen Ray’s teeth. He wasn’t someone who was big on expression. What had happened to make Ray the man he was? Des wondered. He’d not known him before the accident and had only seen the grieving tortured soul he saw now, but he’d heard he’d been a tough, proud man. Proud of the quality of his work, proud of his family. But a little fixed, rigid. That’s how someone had described him. Not a bad person, but just not accommodating to difference.

  As he was leaving the house, Des saw Kyle walking up the road back from school. Kyle gave him a furtive look and Des wondered for a moment if he’d been wrong about Ray. Had he been covering all along?

  ‘How’s it going, Kyle?’ Des was a man who couldn’t use the word mate like many men he knew. Especially with a kid like Kyle, who clearly was not his mate, almost young enough to be his grandchild—if he’d had children exceptionally early on. Des knew he was always going to sound like a cop, a bit stilted and awkward, so he wasn’t sure that Kyle would stop for him and was surprised when he did.

  ‘I’m okay,’ said Kyle, coming to a halt about two metres away. He regarded Des squarely but without any hint of menace. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Oh, you know,’ said Des, slightly taken aback at this enquiry coming from—what was he?—a fifteen-year-old. ‘Getting along. Just been talking to your mum and dad about the Greens. Don’t know if you’ve heard, someone’s been leaving them nasty gifts of late.’

  An expression that Des couldn’t read crossed Kyle’s face. Fear, guilt, frustration. ‘No.’ He shook his head unconvincingly.

  ‘Just asking them if they had any idea who was behind it. But no luck.’

  Kyle stared at the carryall he was holding in front of him and kicked the asphalt with his shoe. Strange, Des thought, how the Druitts all looked so different from each other. The kids. The parents. Kyle had straight nut-brown hair that flopped forward over his face, a fringe half covering his eyes, olive skin marginally less nut-brown than his hair, touched at the cheeks with reddish blotches of acne. He was teenage awkward now, and not as fine-featured as his brother had been, but he would grow into a good-enough looking man in a few years. Des felt a sudden twinge of sadness on his part. The loss of his brother, their past and future together. Des understood that, what it was to lose a brother. Especially when there were only two of you and one of you was the apple of your parents’ eye.

  Kyle swayed a little as he hauled his bag over his shoulder then looked directly at Des again, his face set in anger, but a different kind of anger than that of his parents, something simmering, subterranean. ‘It wasn’t me, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting—’

  ‘It’s despicable,’ Kyle cut in acidly. His word choice surprised Des. ‘It’s bad enough, everything that’s happened. I really don’t get it at all, and I would never do it. I just want to forget.’

  ‘No idea who might?’

  Kyle, looking down again, shook his head, his fringe flicking across his face, and grunted in a way that seemed to translate as a ‘no’.

  ‘All right then, well, thanks for your time,’ said Des.

  Kyle looked up briefly and for a moment Des thought he was going to say something, but instead he nodded curtly and said goodbye. Des watched him as he walked away, up to the house and along the side path to the back, and he wondered if Maxine was behind the curtain watching him and if she would interrogate Kyle when he went inside. What would she ask him? Would she even care? Was there anything that Kyle could possibly say that would make a difference? After a few moments, Des made his way back to his car and returned to the station, only stopping off for a few minutes along the way at the park by the river to have a cigarette and clear his head.

  November 1993

  Northam

  November was a month that could go either way in Northam. Intense dry heat, a harbinger of summer, or freezing tempestuous storms that descended, slashing and spitting like invading hordes rolling over the top of the mountains. Changes so quick that you couldn’t remember which season you were supposed to be in from one day to the next. Pam surveyed the sky now, late in the morning, and hoped the unblemished blue would hold. The weather forecast hadn’t been hopeful, but the weather forecast in these parts could never fully be relied upon, each valley up here its own micro-climate, its own conditions. In the end the weather wasn’t so important. It was probably too ambitious to think about eating outdoors tonight anyway, given it wasn’t summer yet and the cold came in quickly once the sun was behind the hills.

  Despite this minor uncertainty, Pam felt a twinge of something that she recognised as excitement, the anticipation of a get-together, albeit one that once upon a time would barely have rated a mention. There had been a change for her in the past few weeks, a leavening. The coming of summer, a sense of future and possibilities, the passing of time extracting a little of the sting from their grief. Scott’s long-term prospects caused her anxiety, but in the short term the move to her father’s had been for the best. A positive. To everyone’s surprise he seemed to enjoy farm life, using his time to fix all manner of equipment and to help Peter on occasio
n with his sheep and cattle (what a strange duo they made). Pam missed him, but he came for dinner once a week, neatly avoiding Loren who managed to be busy or staying with a friend on those nights. This space, odd and sometimes difficult as it was in many ways, had been good for her too. With Scott gone from home she emerged from her room more often, conversed with her parents, had even been seen to laugh from time to time. Pam wasn’t happy that her children still didn’t speak. She wondered if there was something neither of them was telling her or the police about the accident, but Loren said there was nothing else to tell. Why then had she frozen Scott out, Pam had demanded, to which Loren had responded with an icy stare that declared her disbelief that her mother could not possibly know, followed by a dramatic exit with a slammed door. But to Pam, this break gave her hope for healing. She felt optimistic that the situation would improve with time off. Tonight would test that theory.

  Simon had arrived from Melbourne for the long weekend. He was a graduate now, almost. And he had a job. Pam could hardly believe it. It wasn’t simply that he had completed his degree but that her firstborn had actually left the nest. When he was a student his weekend visits allowed her to pretend to herself that he was still living with them. But now he truly lived somewhere else, had employment with an accounting firm, the kind of start in adult life that would hold him in good stead. Somehow, though, this transition seemed bizarrely instantaneous to her, even though it patently hadn’t been. She still needed time to adjust, move her mind into the new (emptier, but freer) space.