One Sunday

by Joy Dettman

  ‘He might’ve, if he found out his Squire goose was planning to fly the coop.’

  ‘Squire? He’s got no more right to that name than me or you, laddie. It was old Murph, who owned the punt back then, that gave the old trollop her name – as a joke, mind you, when she had all of those builder chaps living over there building her manor house – and a few of them taking their wages where they could too. Old Murph spent half his life ferrying them and Moll’s building supplies across that river. ‘Morning, Squire Molly,’ he’d say. ‘And how is your charming daughter?’ So everyone started doing it. And now the joke’s on us.’

  ‘You’re pulling our legs.’

  ‘No such thing, I’m not. It’s all fact.’

  ‘Then why name the town after her?’

  ‘That was the copper’s doing, the year that Merton died and we were overrun by drunken diggers. They sent three burly coppers up here –’

  ‘Speaking of burly coppers,’ Len Larkin interrupted. The roosters up the pear trees were crowing.

  Len placed the money bag on the keg, picked up the tea-chest he’d been sitting on and up-ended it over keg and money bag. ‘Glasses,’ he yelled. ‘Empty them and get them under fast.’

  Glasses and mugs drained, many hands collected the empties, placing them beneath the tea-chest, then a large, white, hand-embroidered cloth was tossed over the chest and the vase of paper flowers set on top. They had it down to a fine art. Maybe a minute had passed since that first rooster crow. They were still crowing too, each trying to out-crow the other, which meant the law wasn’t too close yet.

  ‘Some of you pour yourselves a cup of tea. And don’t eat those scones.’ The last bit was added for the laughing pickers’ benefit. This was new to them. A few got into the game and fixed themselves up with teacups as Mrs Dolan placed her collection tin, half filled with coins, beside her vase of paper flowers.

  The dairyman had plenty of listeners sitting or standing, nursing cups, a few balancing a scone on their saucers, when Tom Thompson’s helmet-clad head bobbed low through the cider pit door.

  ‘Good afternoon, officer,’ the widow said. ‘Welcome to our little gathering. Any donation to the orphans entitles the donor to a cup of tea and one scone. Money in the tin on that table, and remember, even a penny counts to a little orphan child.’

  Tom stepped down to the floor, picked up the donation tin and rattled it, his eyes scanning the dark room. No big bloke with a gingery mo and yellow hair. Still shaking that tin, he worked his way down to the corner where Vern Lowe was trying to remain invisible.

  ‘Ah, and if it isn’t my old mate, Vernon. Just the feller I was looking for. Outside, Vernon.’

  ‘What for? I didn’t do nothin’.’

  ‘You’ll find out what for.’

  Vern wasn’t leaving his corner. ‘You can’t charge a man yet for doin’ a good deed and gettin’ a free cuppa tea for doin’ it, can ya?’

  ‘It’s too hot to argue, Vernon. Out that door!’

  ‘I can’t walk. I sprained my ankle somethin’ chronic. That’s why I’m drinkin’ tea instead of pickin’ today.’

  ‘I can arrange for you to be carried.’

  ‘Uphill? On your handlebars?’

  That one raised a few sniggers, which Tom didn’t like much. He stood looking at the smiling faces and playing with that tin.

  ‘I haven’t found a lot to laugh about myself, chaps, not today. I’ve been pushing those pedals up and down that bloody hill since before dawn, and I pushed those pedals down here in the hope of getting a bit of help in finding out who murdered a lovely eighteen year old girl last night. I didn’t think I was going to have to twist any of your arms into helping me but, believe it or not, I am still capable of twisting arms – when necessary. I want to see all of you, on my veranda, by the time I get up there.’ He turned to the widow. ‘You too, Mrs Dolan. I’ll give you half an hour to wash your pretty cups and saucers, fold up all of your pretty tablecloths, take your flowers and donations up to your parlour, then you can join the queue on my veranda.’

  ‘You don’t run Squire in when he throws his fundraising garden parties,’ she said.

  ‘No. Well, you might plan on having a garden party next Sunday, Mrs Dolan, because I’ll be putting my own padlock on that door tonight, and it won’t be coming off in a hurry. Now get going, all of you. Righto, Vernon, make your donation, then out that door – if you don’t want to be carried out.’

  The sun in Vern’s eyes wasn’t doing his aching head a lot of good, and the hot road beneath his feet was doing them the same amount of good. He was limping badly before he reached Dolan’s gate and started pushing the bike he was cuffed to up that bloody hill. He should have known better than to come to this tin-pot town. Should have known better than to go down to the pub today too. He hadn’t been planning to when he’d walked off, but he’d needed smokes and that hill had looked long, so he’d walked down it, knowing where he could get smokes and a beer to fix his headache.

  At the Reichenbergs’ gate he stopped for a breather in the shade of a golden elm and, with difficulty, took a fag from his tin and lit it. ‘I told you already, I never saw nothin’ last night. I never saw no girl, and you’ve got no right to cuff me when I never done nothin’ in your bloody town. I know me rights.’

  ‘You were resisting arrest, Vernon.’

  ‘I wasn’t bloody resistin’ nothin’. What were you arrestin’ me for, I kept arstin’ you. If you’d told me what you wanted me for then I would’a come quiet. I didn’t know you could run a man in for havin’ a bloody cup of tea.’

  The baton prodded and Vern moved on, limping on his heel, keeping the ball of his foot off that burning earth, and watching that the pedal didn’t get him in the shin again.

  Tom was enjoying this walk, enjoying jabbing that same place on Vern’s scrawny little arse too. If nothing else came of this arrest, Vern Lowe would have a nice bruise to remember it by. He’d gone to the pub hoping to find that Pommy bloke, who may or may not have been a figment of young Mike’s imagination. Lowe was the consolation prize. Morgan had shown interest in him, and with a bit of luck he might be waiting up at the station. And with a bit more luck, Rosie would still be sleeping and not entertaining Morgan. He gave Vern another prod, just to cleanse his mind of that particular image, then watched the little runt limp on.

  ‘New shoes pinching, Vernon? You should have tried them on before you nicked them.’

  ‘I told you. I sprained my ankle, and my name is Vern.’

  Tom prodded him again. ‘That’s not a sprained ankle limp. You don’t walk on your heel when you’ve got a sprained ankle. You walk on your toe. I’ve had enough of them to know.’

  ‘I’ll bloody walk any way I want to bloody walk, you big walloping bastard. And stop pokin’ that mongrel of a thing at me. I’m walkin’ as fast as I can. What are you arrestin’ me for, I arst ya?’

  Tom prodded. ‘That’s the arse, Vernon. Right there, and you’ve just been arst. Asked has got a K in it, and I’m arresting you because I hate useless runty little bastards who say arst, Vernon.’

  haystacks and wars

  Dave Kennedy’s hands were still, his feet were still. He was sitting on the same log Tom had sat on that morning. Worn and greyed by the years, set at the right height for a man and offering the smooth bark of a gum tree for a back rest, it was perfectly positioned for those who wanted to watch that hill, perfectly placed too for watching the Reichenbergs’ gate, watching who might go in and out that gate. Dave had spent a few evenings sitting on this log in recent weeks.

  Since noon he’d been controlling his pain by controlling his mind, thinking peaches, thinking cannery, thinking truck. He couldn’t do it anymore, so he’d swallowed two pain powders. His ears were ringing, but he was feeling no more pain.

  His truck would have to go. Not much he could do about the house, except pay it off, and he couldn’t pay it off without his truck. And the loan? Dave laughed. He’d lost, lost everything, lo
st the last of his early peach crop too. It was half an hour since he’d walked away from his trees and sat down here, allowing forbidden thoughts to flow over him. They weren’t hurting. Nothing was hurting now.

  He could see Nicholas’s bouquet, the first set into that tepee of timber. In the hour since Dave had sat here, others had wandered down that hill, bringing their own flowers, many spending time arranging those flowers in and around the tepee. It looked like a floral funeral pyre for a pretty little witch. Tomorrow those flowers would be dead, and he’d put a match to it and watch it burn.

  No woman should have spoken the way she’d spoken to him. ‘I love him,’ she’d said, and in broad daylight, said it to her husband she’d vowed to obey. She looked him in the eye and said, ‘I love him, Dave, and I’m not going to waste my life living here with you and wanting to be with Chris.’ And she thought she could get away with saying that?

  He’d seen Thompson ride down, seen him stop by the pyre, shake his head at the flowers, then open the Reichenbergs’ gate, close it behind him. Five or ten minutes later he’d come back out that gate and ridden on to Dolan’s. He hadn’t stayed long there either, but he’d come out with Vern Lowe wheeling that bike, Thompson behind, driving him uphill.

  The pain powders were drawing Dave’s eyelids down; he wanted to lay his head back and sleep. If he wasn’t careful, he’d nod off here and make a laughing stock of himself. ‘Already done that,’ he said, his eyes leaving the walkers to return to the Reichenbergs’ gate, to their windmill, their haystacks, brassy, brittle and dry, as they had been when he’d sat here with his father, sat on this same log, staring at a haystack.

  ‘There they were, sitting in their comfortable house, living off the fat of our land for all those years while you was over there getting shot up by their bloody relatives,’ his father had said. ‘And I’ve got to look at that German’s hay every time I come by this way. I’ve got to live out my last years watching that German’s sons grow tall. And look at you, boy. I’ve got to look at what they left of you, and know that you’re to be the last of the Kennedy line. Who are you going to leave your grandfather’s land to, boy?’

  His arms grasping his stomach, Dave leaned forward, moaned. His stomach was cramping – he hadn’t eaten a meal since last night and the powders, swallowed on an empty stomach, felt as if they were chewing through the lining of his gut. He’d put that piece of beef on but hadn’t been back to the house to stoke up his stove. It would have gone out. What did it matter? He’d done his best and it hadn’t been good enough.

  Through October, through November, he’d tried to make the marriage work. Half of December gone before she decided to ruin his plans.

  ‘I know you’re trying to live up to your bargain, Dave, and I respect you for that,’ she’d said.

  ‘Marriages have been built on less, Rae.’ He’d chosen his words carefully, as he had with Nicholas.

  ‘This one isn’t going to get built. I’m so sorry that I’ve made a mess of things, but when I agreed to marry you, I had no intention of going through with it. It was just a way out of that room. I would have agreed to anything if it had meant I could get out and go to Chris.’

  ‘You went through with the wedding. We’ve got the photographs to prove it.’

  ‘I barely remember that photographer. I don’t remember the priest. All I remember about that day is telling Father that afternoon that I’d changed my mind. He smiled at me, said he’d expected it. Then he walked out and locked the door. I thought I’d stopped it in time, but he came back with Arthur’s calming medicine, held me down on that bed and forced it into my mouth, held my nose while I gagged on it. I don’t know what happened after that, but Heli said Arthur’s keeper must have heard what went on, because he’d spoken to Nicholas about it and been told to go about his business. She said you were there too, that you were limping up and down the passage. You must have known what he did, yet you still went through with it.’

  ‘I noticed you were quiet for a change, Rae, now practise being quiet. I’ve heard enough about it.’

  ‘You wanted your house and truck signed, sealed and delivered. Did you hold me upright while the priest said the words. Did you nod my head for me?’

  ‘For whatever reason we did it, let us not forget why you needed to get a ring on your finger. It’s on there now, and we will both make the best of it.’

  ‘There is no best to make of it, and I won’t live like this.’

  ‘In a few months’ time, you’ll be going down to Melbourne with your family. Once the infant is born, you’ll be more content.’

  ‘Listen to me, Dave. Try to see what has happened here. Nicholas God Almighty Squire might think he owns me, but he doesn’t own you yet, and you can’t let him own you. He’s a harsh master, Dave. Don’t let him be your master.’

  ‘I’d say he’s pretty much bought and paid for me, Rae. Now that’s enough.’

  Then she said it, came straight out with it: ‘There are doctors in Melbourne who will do abortions for money. Drive me down there tonight. Help me to find one. He’s desperate for a grandchild. If he thought I’d lost the baby, he’d agree to an annulment so he could marry me off again. Please listen to reason, Dave. We have to get ourselves out of this mess.’

  He walked away from her, but she started in again the next morning. Always calm, speaking quietly, but determined: ‘I’ve got six hundred pounds left to me by my grandmother. I don’t get it until I’m twenty-one, but you could ask for it, and I’ve got an old-fashioned ruby necklet and earrings. The rubies are probably valuable. I promise they’re yours – if you help me now.’

  Nicholas Squire’s goodwill was worth more than six hundred pounds and old Molly’s necklet. He hadn’t wanted to lose that goodwill, or Squire’s grandchild.

  That was the day he first noticed her swelling waist – just the way she was standing, the frock she wore. Maybe that was the day he realised his entire future depended on a parasitic German growth. It was going to buy back the deeds to his grandfather’s land and nothing to pay. That was the agreement he’d made with Squire. And he’d get her six hundred eventually, and old Molly’s ill-gotten gains. With money coming in and nothing going out, he’d be able to add a few rooms, pull down that old shed so he could look out over his orchard. He’d be able to hire a couple with a bunch of half-grown kids, set them up in the hut . . . have his own Johnsons.

  Or maybe he wouldn’t bother building on. Sooner or later he, Rae and the grandchild would end up running that estate. It might be willed to Arthur, but he couldn’t run it, and even if Nicholas tracked down Arthur’s son, how likely was it that he’d give him and Jennifer control of the property? Not likely, not once Rachael had that infant. All Dave had to do was keep the spoilt little bitch happy until after the birth, get his name on the birth certificate, then she’d never be able to leave him, or she’d lose the kid.

  ‘If you could see your eyes now, Dave,’ she’d said, interrupting his dream. ‘They are looking directly at me, but what they are seeing is your own personal branch of the Squire money tree. I could almost see the pound notes you were picking off me. Tell me the truth and shame the devil. Tell me how you really feel about raising Chris’s baby.’

  ‘I’ll be raising your father’s grandchild, and it will be my child, and the only child of my own blood I’m ever likely to have, Rae. I want it,’ he lied.

  He thought she believed him. She started knitting white. Nicholas said it was an excellent sign. ‘The girl is settling, preparing for motherhood,’ he said.

  Not such a good sign for Dave. Every time he stepped inside the house she’d be sitting there, showing him booties and tiny jackets, Olivia sat knitting with her some days, speaking to her daughter of cribs and cots and prams, and including Dave in the conversation. Raymond’s crib and pram were still in the store room, and in perfect condition. Names too. Would Dave want to name the baby for his grandfather if it was a boy? Or what about Frederick? Frederick David, or Frederick Arthur?<
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  Why not Christian Joseph, or Joseph Christian?

  His trees were loaded, and so were every other bugger’s in the district. He’d had to keep pumping up that water, had no time to think, or to choose the right words. Working from daylight to dark, carting for the cannery, driving half the day and coming home to water his trees. And there she’d be, sitting, knitting, watching him.

  Long exhausting days those, days when Dave had considered begging the doctors to cut him off at the hips. Like a piece of regurgitated dog’s meat dragged around by blowflies – that’s how he’d been these last weeks, falling asleep every time he’d sat down, taking the click-click-click of her knitting needles into his dreams. Bad dreams. And when he’d awakened, he’d got his leg steady beneath him and dragged himself out again.

  No time to drive her to the big house. Let her walk there, swim there, do what she wanted. Too tired to take her to the movies. Let her go with her sister and Percy. Any other wife would have been working at her husband’s side.

  Christmas lost. Days all one. Nicholas had driven her home at around six one evening between Christmas and New Year, and she’d brought a meal and a baby’s gown.

  ‘I made it today. Isn’t it cute? Can’t you just see little David wearing it when we baptise him?’ she said, smiling that fixed smile. ‘Mummy bought the material in Willama last week and she still had the pattern from Raymond.’ She kept it up, playing with the white gown, laying it out on the table, showing him the lace, the tiny buttons, until it got so he could see the kid inside it, see his blond hair, his blue eyes, hear the priest baptise him Joseph Christian Reichenberg-Kennedy. And he’d seen old Joe Reichenberg walking Kennedy land too, owning Kennedy land.

  ‘Get it out of my sight,’ he said.

  She looked at him, smiled. That’s when he understood what those last weeks had been about. She wasn’t dumb. Never had been. She’d been trying to drive home a fact that needed no driving. Then she tossed the gown at him. He allowed it to fall to the floor, its small sleeves outstretched, taunting him.