Cedar Valley

by Holly Throsby

  ‘Thank you,’ said Benny. She was pleased to have the eggs, since she had eaten the first lot already; and she was pleased to have the herbs, because she could put some with her pasta. But mostly she was pleased to see Odette, and to have her here in the house. A sense of comfort and safety emanated from Odette Fisher, like warmth from a fire.

  ‘The house feels good with you in it, Benny,’ said Odette, glancing around the kitchen. And then: ‘So. I went home to look for Vivian’s letters. I thought about these two dead men, in their matching outfits, all the way home! It’s just so unusual, isn’t it? Part of me is laughing at myself, and the other part is just desperate to investigate.’

  ‘Did you find the letters?’ asked Benny, who had been thinking about the dead men also. She had been slicing garlic and thinking about them; and she had been opening a can of tomatoes and thinking about her mother. Then she had been stirring the sauce and staring out the window, wondering about the photographs.

  ‘Well, no. That’s why I’m here. I think they might be in the shed.’ Odette walked out the double doors and down into the back garden, shooing Bessel from under the rosemary, where he appeared to be eating something from the dirt.

  The sound of someone hosing came over from next door.

  ‘Hi, Fred!’ Odette said.

  ‘Is that you, Odette?’ said an invisible Fred from over the paling fence.

  ‘I’m just here with Benny,’ said Odette loudly. ‘You well?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Fred, and Odette said she was glad to hear it. Then she turned to Benny. ‘You can come and have a look if you like.’

  Benny went back inside and turned the stove down and then followed Odette down the garden, Benny filled with a sudden anxiety that Odette would immediately realise she’d been snooping in there.

  Odette opened the shed door and stepped inside.

  ‘Possum poo,’ she said, looking at the shelving and then into the washbasin. ‘He must still be around. Is that a new towel in there?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Benny. ‘I thought it might be a bit softer. I’ve left him a few things—some fruit, and then some cashews this morning. He’s eaten all of it.’

  ‘Aren’t you adorable,’ said Odette as she went towards the high shelf at the back, where the cardboard boxes were. She chose the one on the right, heaving it down and setting it on the concrete floor. Dust rose up around her ankles.

  It was the box of old bills and bank statements that Benny had looked in already. Odette sifted through the papers on top, then started lifting them out and piling them on the floor around the box. She pulled out the calendar from 1980.

  ‘God, 1980! That was a while ago. My house up on the mountain wasn’t finished properly till 1980. Before that it was just a shack and, when Lloyd left, I moved back here to town for a couple of years while I had the plumbing and electricity put in. And while I got over Lloyd.’ Odette said this in her serene way. ‘He never wanted any amenities. Sometimes I think he was a true transcendentalist, old Lloyd. “The tonic of wildness,” as he liked to say. But after he left, I didn’t want to live that rough on my own.’

  Benny watched as Odette got deeper and deeper into the cardboard box, and the piles around it grew bigger.

  ‘It looks like I just tipped the contents of the kitchen dresser in here. I think I must have. But I did keep letters in the dresser. Oh, here we go.’ And from the bottom of the box Odette pulled a thick wad of envelopes and postcards, bound together with an elastic band.

  Benny blinked at them and the wintry feeling began to rise inside her, a cold wind in her chest. To think that Vivian’s letters had been sitting there in the shed this whole time. So near.

  Odette crammed the piles of papers back into the box, and put the box back up on the shelf. Then the two women went back across the garden to the house.

  Bessel settled inside the back doorway, surveying the garden, and Benny went to the kitchen and stirred the sauce. She filled a large pot with water, and lit another burner on the stove.

  ‘Would you like some pasta?’ she asked Odette.

  ‘I’d love some pasta,’ said Odette, and she slipped her shoes off and sat down at the kitchen table and put the pile of letters in front of her.

  Benny, hopeless with curiosity, took oregano and parsley from the plastic bag and began to chop them on a wooden board.

  ‘It’s upsetting for you,’ said Odette.

  ‘I’m okay,’ said Benny.

  ‘I don’t mean to be lighthearted about this,’ said Odette. Benny turned to Odette now, leaning against the bench. ‘I’m okay,’ she said more firmly.

  ‘It’s just, I know you want to know, Benny; I can see that, and I wrestle with it. I keep thinking: who am I to hide things from you, when you want to know? So this whole thing with the dead man—or the dead men—I mean, it’s so bizarre. And it’s a distraction. But I wonder if it’s a good way in for you. It was something that Vivian was interested in, and now you’re interested in it too. It’s a nice connection, in a funny sort of way. Except for the fact that it’s so … morbid.’

  Benny smiled, and Odette did too.

  Then Benny started to laugh and Odette, well, she didn’t just laugh. Odette Fisher cracked up like Benny had never heard her before. What a glorious laugh she had! Odette laughed and laughed, her eyes crinkled up like paper, until tears ran down her cheeks. The two of them in the kitchen—Benny Miller and Odette Fisher—they shrieked with laughter like old friends.

  ‘Psalm Twenty-Three, verse one: The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing,’ said the ancient voice of the man on the radio, as the laughter of the women abated.

  ‘What are you listening to?’ asked Odette, wiping away a tear.

  ‘Odette,’ said Benny, suddenly serious, ‘did my mum work at Curios?’

  43

  Elsie Simmons was sitting in her living room, listening to her radio, when Detective Sergeant Anthony Simmons arrived at her house.

  ‘It’s just me, Mum,’ he said, opening the screen door. ‘Don’t get up.’

  ‘Oh, good,’ said Elsie, and got up.

  She shuffled into the kitchen and put the kettle on, and Tony was struck by the sight of her meagreness. There was nothing of her. And she was so bent forward now, it was as if she’d permanently dropped something on the carpet and was about to pick it up. Tony could barely look at her. He went to the fridge and put a bottle of milk in.

  ‘Thanks, love, I needed milk. Do you want tea?’

  Tony nodded and the two of them were soon sitting in the living room next to the fan, and Tony wondered why his mother had the living room so dim these days, when it was so bright outside. She sat in this room with the curtains drawn and one lamp on, and it broke Tony’s heart that a once-sunny woman would choose now to sit in the dark.

  ‘How’re you feeling, Mum?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m good, love. Just fine. How was your day at the station?’

  Tony Simmons had left Franklin and Hall at the station with their fax paper and notepads and property bags.

  They had gone around in several circles about the significance of a certain comb, they’d posited various theories, and Hall had suggested they consult an expert in antique hair care products.

  When they’d run out of ideas, Hall and Franklin returned to their desks and Simmons brooded in his office for a while before rising and going to the door. ‘I’m gonna head over and ask Mum a few questions,’ he said.

  ‘Sure thing, boss,’ said Franklin. ‘We just heard from the sketcher. He’ll be here in the morning.’

  ‘Very good,’ said Simmons, and he’d left the station and driven the short distance to Elsie Simmons’s house in the bright sunshine.

  ‘Why’s it so dark in here?’ he asked his mother now. ‘Should I open a curtain?’

  ‘I like it this way,’ said Elsie. ‘It’s easier on my eyes.’

  ‘Mum, why didn’t you ever mention the Somerton Man to me?’

  Elsie laughed. She sat there with
her hands resting gently in her lap, such a neatly comported woman she was, and she laughed softly at her son.

  ‘The Somerton Man? Everyone wants to talk about the Somerton Man! And I don’t know, Tony. I didn’t not tell you on purpose, it just never came up. I’ve not said much to you about Adelaide. It’s a place I’d rather forget in a lot of ways.’

  ‘Because of grandfather?’ asked Tony, who had the vaguest inkling that Elsie’s father—his grandfather—had not been a good kind of father. And it had always struck Simmons, even if it was something he didn’t care to dwell on for any stretch of time, how strange it was that his mother had endured such a father, and yet went on to choose a husband like Neville Simmons.

  Elsie sipped her tea, and a look passed across her face—a blank and bottomless expression—and Tony knew not to ask any more questions about his grandfather, who he had never so much as met.

  ‘I was just reading some articles at work. There was one about the Beaumont children. I remember when that happened.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Elsie. ‘And it happened on the same beach, just about; it’s really just one long stretch of beach. That was a long time after I left, though. Mum was so upset, and we talked about it a bit on the phone, but it was just too awful. I don’t think anyone enjoyed talking about the Beaumont children.’

  ‘I read in the article that before she disappeared, Jane Beaumont was last seen buying pasties,’ said Tony. ‘And did you know the Somerton Man had a pasty in his stomach? That’s a pretty weird coincidence. And you know what I think about coincidences.’ Detective Sergeant Anthony Simmons, in issues pertaining to law enforcement—or anything else for that matter—believed there was no such thing as a coincidence.

  ‘Oh, well, you’re not from Adelaide,’ said Elsie. ‘I’d say if you opened the stomach of most South Australians in those days you’d have found a pasty.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Tony.

  ‘Oh, yes. Cornish immigrants! They brought their pasties,’ said Elsie. ‘We had the Cornish, we had the Germans. Did you know they had a German newspaper in Adelaide at one time? There were that many Germans.’

  Tony was reminded sharply then of how savvy his mother was. How knowledgeable. After Neville Simmons died she would host dinner parties with her book club friends and there was no one better at Trivial Pursuit than Elsie. Elsie Simmons, who never forgot a face. And now, to have that memory and knowledge fading. Tony looked across at Elsie, in her housedress and slippers, with respect and regret.

  ‘Do you remember a woman called Vivian Moon?’ asked Tony.

  Elsie looked taken aback. ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Do you?’

  ‘Should I?’ said Tony Simmons, who’d had the name Vivian Moon floating around in his consciousness since hearing Ed and Fred talk about her at the Royal on Saturday. The name Vivian Moon, it meant something to him, but he sure as hell couldn’t work out why.

  ‘She was Cora’s neighbour, a long time ago, when you were maybe twelve or thirteen. Do you remember? You and I came down from Clarke a few times to stay with Cora and Fred of a weekend. We’d have a meeting of book club and sometimes we’d socialise. Viv lived next door with Odette. You know Odette Fisher—she lives up in the bush now. Very fine woman, very smart. But Viv. Well, she was smart, too, but quite inscrutable. She was very … free. Maybe too free.’

  Memories were coming back to Tony. He did stay at Cora Franks’s house—he had forgotten they would sleep over—and Fred Franks was always so good to him. Freddy would let Tony sit in the shed while he worked on things, and did he take him fishing one time? Cora and Fred had a son, Nathan, a real wuss of a kid.

  ‘Why would I remember Vivian?’ he asked.

  ‘She looked after you once,’ said Elsie, ‘while Cora and Fred and I went out to a dinner party. And to be honest with you, Tony, I regret leaving you with her.’

  There was something sparking in Tony’s mind now.

  ‘She was a gorgeous woman to look at, but not very maternal, I suppose. And I don’t think Odette knew what was going on, because she was up at her bush house a lot and Viv was in the little cottage by herself most of the time. But she had men come to see her. Just, you know, a lot of men. Married men maybe, I don’t know. She was a different kind of person to me.’

  And now Tony Simmons did remember.

  That beautiful woman, the illicit essence of her beauty; and that strange, artistic house. Was that the house next door to Cora’s? It was. Was that woman in his memory Vivian Moon? She must have been. It was all there, in his peripheries, and it stirred him up inside.

  Simmons moved around in the armchair, disconcerted by his feelings.

  ‘Oh, well; no law against it,’ he said.

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Elsie. ‘But I must say I’m glad you don’t remember her. Are you okay, Tony? You look a bit funny.’

  ‘I’m good,’ said Tony Simmons, and he arranged himself in his chair, unsuccessfully, before putting his cup down and standing up and walking through to the lean-to, where a sliding door opened out to the garden.

  ‘I might do the lawn while I’m here,’ he said, separating the curtains so the light came in.

  44

  Freddy Franks was out back in the fernery when Cora got home, misting the maidenhairs with a spray bottle.

  ‘You’re doing it,’ said Cora from the back pavers.

  ‘Well you’ve been on at me,’ said Fred, who wasn’t normally a man to employ a spray bottle.

  It was true that she’d been on at him. Cora felt that Freddy didn’t pay enough delicate attention, in general, and it had become something of a disagreement.

  ‘Did you do the ones in the pebble tray?’ she asked.

  ‘Just about to,’ said Fred, and he walked towards her across the grass, and they smiled at each other on the back pavers, before both going into the house.

  Cora got some chops out of the freezer and set them in a bowl of water in the sink. She took her shoes off in the bedroom and put them on the shoe rack. Then it took a while to remove her jewellery: she put her brooch and her earrings in a small wooden box of brooches and earrings; she hung her necklaces on the wall-mounted necklace hanger; and she took off her extra rings and her watch, putting the rings in a silver tin and placing her watch alongside her other watches, which sat in a row on a small velvet cushion.

  Cora looked at herself in the mirror on the vanity then and brushed her hair with her soft-bristled brush.

  ‘Therese says she wants to murder Ed,’ she said to Fred from the bedroom.

  She could hear Fred softly squirting the spray bottle at the houseplants.

  ‘I would think there’s plenty of women who want to murder Ed,’ said Fred from the living room. ‘Probably their husbands want to murder him too.’

  Cora brushed her hair more than was necessary—she liked the feeling—and she stared at herself, and the deep wrinkles around her eyes. They were like ravines now, and she stood up abruptly, taking the shop copy of From Russia with Love from her work bag and plopping it on her bedside table.

  ‘Did you find Vivian Moon attractive?’ she said loudly.

  Fred laughed and kept on with his spraying, and Cora went out to the living room and stood in the archway, leaning against the edge.

  ‘Did you?’ she said.

  ‘I guess,’ said Fred. ‘She was a good-looking woman. That wasn’t lost on me.’

  ‘Did Ed sleep with her?’ asked Cora.

  ‘Oh, Cor, I wouldn’t know. I’m sure he’d like some of us to think he did.’

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’ asked Cora.

  Fred stood up straight, holding the bottle. He was so tall when he stood up straight like that. The spider plant, the one on the stand, looked tiny beside him.

  ‘Are you serious?’ he said. ‘No. Of course I didn’t. I could see she was good-looking because I have eyes, Cor, but she wasn’t my cup of tea. And I have never done anything like that and you know it.’

  Cora went over and sat on the co
uch. Then she shifted her legs up and lay down, flat on her back, and she looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘I do know that,’ she said quietly.

  Fred came over and stood beside her, and Cora drew her legs up towards her chin, so he could sit down. And so he sat down, and then she extended her legs across his lap.

  ‘Are you having a hard time with Therese?’ asked Fred.

  ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I’m friends with her,’ said Cora.

  ‘Proximity?’ said Fred.

  ‘Yes, I guess that’s it.’

  Fred put a hand around one of her bare feet.

  ‘What do you think people think of me?’

  Fred made a little snorting sound. ‘I don’t really know,’ he said.

  Cora put her hands up on the mound of her belly and fiddled with her wedding ring—the one ring she never took off.

  ‘I don’t want us to die, Freddy,’ said Cora. ‘Especially not you. Especially not Nathan.’

  Fred breathed in and out of his nose calmly and looked at her, his wife.

  ‘Why doesn’t Nathan visit more? Why doesn’t he tell me anything, Fred? He never tells me anything.’

  Fred was quiet on this for a moment, as if unsure of how to address it. ‘Maybe it’s just his nature,’ he said.

  ‘Sometimes I think people think I’m ridiculous. Do you think that’s what they think? I catch myself sometimes, in the middle of talking to someone, and I think: what am I even going on about? Do you ever feel like that?’ asked Cora.

  ‘No,’ said Fred.

  ‘Well. I just think that people look at me sometimes and they think: uh-oh, here comes Cora. They think: here’s that loudmouth. And they don’t feel happy to see me. They probably wish it was someone else. Apart from Therese—she comes to see me. But Therese doesn’t ever ask me a question! Did you know that, Fred? She comes in and she talks about herself the whole time and she never even asks me one thing about me. And then there’s everyone else. I think they see me and, well, I do act ridiculously. Do you think I act ridiculously, Freddy? And that they think I’m just this loud and picky person? They think I’m ridiculous.’