by Joy Dettman
He’d had a talk to Irene Murphy – a nice girl, that one; she’d told him they’d moved Ruby into the infectious diseases ward and stuck a smallpox sign on the door. ‘No one will be sticking their noses in there, Mr Thompson,’ she’d said. ‘Willie is with her. He says he got a bit of sleep this afternoon so can sit with her until dawn. It might help. A lot of people seem to die at dawn. Maybe they get lonely,’ she’d said.
Maybe they did. Maybe they got lonely at nine o’clock too – maybe they woke up in the morning feeling lonely. It wasn’t the being with someone, that other presence in the house, that stopped loneliness; it was more about having some connection to that someone. He’d been feeling disconnected ever since he’d lost his boys.
The widow Dolan would be interested in what Miss Lizzie had told him tonight. If his legs hadn’t been so achingly weary, he might have taken a ride down there. She wouldn’t be in bed. She’d probably be walking around her garden, watering it with tank water while he drank mud and a shrimp or two. All of those hotel beds lying empty and I’ll be sleeping on a horsehair couch, he thought.
Then, as if he wasn’t feeling miserable and lonely enough, those Murphys had to go and start playing his song. All it took was a few bars of it to get tears welling up behind his eyes – which didn’t prevent him walking across to the tree so he could hear it better. What a sentimental damn fool of a man he was turning into in his old age, but it wasn’t only that song; it was his boys’ cricket bats and that cricket ball he’d bowled at their stumps a thousand times, and it was Rosie too, and Katie Monahan and bloody Morgan and his interfering bloody nose. It was everything.
The song ended and still there was no sign of Jeanne coming out. And how the hell that girl was going to sleep through Rosie’s snoring, Tom did not know. She was good with her, treated her like a two year old, but always managed her. She’d been handy for him today too, she’d cleaned up the kitchen as well as Rosie, and she liked taking telephone calls – near ate him out of house and home, though.
He was on his way back to the house when they cranked that song up again, and this time, Mary Murphy started singing along with it. Tom walked across to her picket fence, and let his own voice free, needing the relief of singing. He was a light tenor, untrained, but he had a good range. He always gave them a song or two at the Town Hall concerts, and his items went over well.
Now you are gone there’s nothing left for me.
A photograph, a lonely melody.
If he could desensitise himself to those words, he’d sing it at the next concert and sing it with feeling too, from his bruised heart – maybe do a duet with his neighbour. Their voices blended well.
And all the years, my love, those empty years, my love.
You were my life. You were the world to me.
Each day I live with just your memory.
And all those tears, my love, those lonely tears…
Those Murphys started clapping when they were done, then Mary stuck her head out the screen door and asked him if he’d like to come in for a while. He thanked her, but declined the offer. Her invitation had got his shoulders a bit straighter, though, got his chin lifted a bit higher. He ought to be celebrating tonight, not feeling miserable. He’d solved a murder today. He had the culprits locked up in his cells. Forty-nine years old – almost fifty. He might have felt dog tired and a bit emotional, but he didn’t feel as old as he’d felt this morning – and it was all thanks to those lads finding that handbag.
‘Ah.’ Jeanne was coming out the screen door.
‘Was that a hint that you wanted to lock up, Mr Thompson?’
‘No, lass. Just enjoying the music.’
She walked through the gate, closing it behind her. ‘You haven’t heard any news about Ruby, have you?’
‘Nothing new, lass.’ Or nothing he wanted to discuss with her tonight. Tomorrow morning at nine-fifteen, he’d speak to her. Tomorrow morning he’d feed her a good solid breakfast then take her into his office, sit her and Miss Lizzie down, and one way or another, he’d get the full facts of that Ruby business cleared up. Tomorrow’s list of things to do was growing lengthy.
He walked her to the door, opened it and was greeted by that rafter-rattling, bubbling, choking snore. ‘I hope you can get some sleep, lass.’
‘Oh, I’m used to snoring. I don’t even hear it. Good night, then.’
Say what they liked about that big-mouthed little bugger, she was reliable, her manners were good, and maybe a town needed its gossips poking their noses into places other folk steered clear of – like Miss Lizzie when she’d finally got him inside that post office and closed the door so he couldn’t get out.
She hadn’t taken him in there to complain about his whistle, though that’s what he’d been fearing.
‘As you are aware, Constable, my sister and I are sometimes forced to overhear a few snippets of private conversations – being called on as we are to interrupt at times, in order to enquire if the caller wishes to extend his call –’
‘Of course, Miss Martin. What’s troubling you?’
‘Troubling me – yes, Constable, I am troubled, and have been, I might add, for some time – since I became aware that Squire and Judge Cochran had taken an inordinate interest in the welfare of Ruby’s infant. They have found a childless city couple who are prepared to raise it.’
‘The girl was educated with Squire’s daughters, she worked for him. It’s natural enough that he’d take an interest, Miss Martin. There’s not much chance of the family raising the babe in town, I’d imagine.’
She shook her head, her narrow lips expressing distaste for the subject. ‘As you say, Constable, as you say. However, I have good reason now to believe that their interest in that infant is not purely philanthropic.’
‘Who –?’
‘My information, not being first hand, and given the attitudes of many in this town regarding my unenviable situation – and a situation thrust on my sister and I, never sought – you may understand if I say no more on the subject, at least for tonight.’
He tried to get a word in, but her hand was raised.
‘If I might continue, Constable Thompson. My niece, Jeanne, has first hand information on this subject. She is a reliable girl, as you, no doubt, have come to know. I intend tomorrow to offer her a home with my sister and I, and a position. On a day such as today, it has become obvious that we require assistance handling the telephone exchange.’
And God help Molliston.
‘I feel certain,’ Lizzie continued, ‘that once my niece is free of that nest of toadying fools, she will be willing to tell you all she knows of her sister’s predicament – and, might I add, of her own near escape from a similar violation.’
‘Wha –?’
‘I was told in confidence earlier tonight, and thus am not at liberty to say, but be assured that this will go further than Molliston. At the time of the violation, Ruby was a fourteen year old child, a pleasant, well-spoken child who could have made something of her life. I intend taking this business all the way to the hangman’s noose – which is why my sister and I feel it desirable that the information come to you first hand. If you could put aside an hour tomorrow morning, shall we say between nine and ten, I’ll come by your office and we can speak to my niece together.’
‘Make it nine-fifteen,’ Tom said.
He had things to do when the shops opened at nine. He needed sugar, another hunk of corned beef, a few china plates and a couple of cups – he couldn’t feed city coppers off enamel, make them drink out of enamel mugs. And he’d get a decent-sized enamel teapot with a lid that didn’t fall off in the cup while Tom poured the tea.
Weary, drunk now with weariness, he manoeuvred a large lump of wood into his firebox, and even that wood looked fit for a pillow. If he could get his head down on a brick, he’d probably sleep tonight. ‘And I’m not doing anyone any good walking in circles. I’ll hear the train whistle when she starts her blowing,’ he told himself.
He opened a few windows, opened both front and back doors, smiling as he peered through his kitchen window at the lock-up. The trio sweating it out in there wouldn’t be doing much sleeping. Oh, to be one of those blowflies on the wall tonight.
He opened the parlour’s side window, glanced at the couch he’d spent a lot of time sleeping on back when his boys were small. They’d slept directly across the passage from him, and by Christ could they talk.
‘Get to sleep in there, you two,’ he’d say.
‘Get to sleep yourself, Dad.’ And the little buggers would giggle.
Maybe he’d been more mate than father to them. Maybe he hadn’t been tough enough on them, but you couldn’t drive a boy in the direction you wanted him to go. Boys did what they wanted, not what you wanted them to do. Girls were different – or maybe they weren’t so different, but you felt you had more hope of keeping them safe from harm. You couldn’t keep a boy safe, only point him in the right direction, then hope he didn’t wander off the straight and narrow. His boys had always walked the straight line, and it was that bloody straight line that had led them off to war.
He told them they weren’t going over there to fight. He put his foot down hard about that. He told them it wasn’t their flamin’ war and they weren’t going, and that was that, and he’d heard enough about it. Three days later the little buggers came home and found him sitting on this same couch. They stood shoulder to shoulder in front of him and told him they’d joined up.
‘You’ve got to give us your blessing, Dad.’
What man alive wouldn’t have given them his blessing? What else could he have done?
Put his flamin’ foot down a bit harder, that’s what he should have done. Flattened the little buggers, handcuffed them to their bedheads, that’s what he should have done. And they would have hated him for it. And he would have lost them anyway.
Tom sighed in a slow breath, eased it out more slowly. His boys were close tonight. He could almost smell their sweaty little heads, feel their warm little hands in his own, hear their voices echoing in his mind: Come on, Dad. It’s not dark yet. Come and have a hit with us.
‘You look after each other,’ he said to a crack in the ceiling. ‘Wherever you two are up there, you look after each other for me. Righto?’
He’d given away their cricket bats tonight, and the stumps, and any other cricket paraphernalia he’d found in his vestibule. It had been a good outfit in its day, bought the Christmas of 1913, when his boys had been playing for the junior team at Carlton. Two years later they were dead and he’d carried that outfit around ever since, refusing to let it go.
But they were gone. They were gone, and now their cricket gear was gone, and tomorrow – or maybe not tomorrow, too much to do already tomorrow, but soon, soon, he’d start cleaning out that vestibule and see what else he could give away.
His vest off, he struck a match and checked his watch one last time, then hung his vest over a chair. Not quite nine-twenty – at least an hour to train time and he was going to use it. He’d taken his favourite feather pillow from his bed and swapped it for one stuffed with kapok, hard as rock, mentally earmarking that bed for Clarrie Morgan. Tom folded the pillow in half, propped it against the arm of the couch, placed his head down, and went out like a light.
He dreamed that he was with his boys. They were playing cricket down in front of Dawson’s place.
Catch it, Dad.
And he caught that ball, and held it too. In his sleep, Tom laughed.
hunting by moonlight
Dave Kennedy dreamed of boys, but he wasn’t laughing. He was back in the trenches wading through a river of peaches, trying to stop them from floating away. Waist deep in peaches, arms flailing, trying to hold those peaches back while baby-faced boys shot more at him. He couldn’t move, his foot was stuck. He slashed at his leg with the bayonet, trying to cut it off and break free as the river of peaches swelled, washing in waves over him. Then they were no longer peaches. Legs, arms, heads were coming at him. And he went under, saw the ‘plop’ of his own head going under, and in his sleep he cried out as he tried to kick with one leg and get his head up for air.
His cry, or the fall from his bed, woke him, and he preferred his dream to reality. In his dream he’d been whole. He lay on the floor, heart pounding, his bad leg useless, dead. He couldn’t stand up on it, so he crawled away from the bed and down the passage to his kitchen.
Not his kitchen – Squire’s bloody kitchen. He’d wanted a tall house with windows that looked out at his orchard, where in spring, when his land was an ocean of blooming, he and Yvonne could sit and watch their children running with blossom in their hair.
Yvonne? Just another dream. She’d probably forgotten him the day he left. Just a dream they hadn’t been able to shoot out of him, hadn’t been able to cut out of him. That shit-mouthed little whore had killed it. He had nothing now. He was no one. He was dreamless now.
He sat on the floor with his back to the wall, only becoming aware that he was still wearing boots when he tried to rub his dead foot. He hadn’t gone to bed in his boots. He must have fallen onto that bed. Those powders knocked out the pain and knocked him out too.
It wasn’t the first time he’d slept in his boots; he’d done a lot of that, the gun cradled in his arms, safe in the dark. The chaps couldn’t see your face in the dark, couldn’t see your fear. The only time you didn’t have to be someone you weren’t was in the dark. If your legs wouldn’t hold you, then you could crawl on your belly, slide on your bum, vomit your guts out. No one to see you in the dark.
He slid on his backside to the sink where he pulled himself upright, filled a mug with water, poured another powder onto his tongue – bitter as gall, but he swallowed it. One wouldn’t kill the pain, and he didn’t want it back, not tonight, he couldn’t take it tonight. He found a spoon, emptied two more papers of powder into it, building the nerve to put them in his mouth. Water washed them down, though water didn’t kill the taste, so he killed it with a swig of gin. Supporting himself against the wall, he made his slow way to the front door, unlocked it and sat on his veranda steps – Squire’s veranda steps – rinsing the taste of those powders away with more gin.
Didn’t know why he bothered locking that door – nothing to lose now. Anything of value he’d ever had had been lost a long, long time ago.
To the east he could see the moon rising like fire over the trees, and for a second or two he thought it was fire. For another second he willed that fire to keep coming, to burn him out, turn his trees and Squire’s house and his bloody Dodge truck to ash, but as he continued lifting that bottle, the moon rose higher.
A hunting moon, that one. He’d done a bit of moonlight hunting in his day. A crack shot, Dave Kennedy, better than young Tige, not as good as Len – when he’d had two hands, Len was better than Arthur.
‘Pow. Pow. Pow,’ his finger-gun aimed south, through the trees towards Reichenberg’s lights. He couldn’t see them, but he knew where they burned. He lifted an imaginary rifle, sighting down the barrel at imaginary lights, pulling the imaginary trigger.
‘Pow. Pow. Pow.’
You couldn’t kill the bastards that easy. You had to see the whites of their eyes, feel that bayonet going in, give it a rip and feel the suck of it, hear the suck of it coming out. Then you knew they were dead.
Peace stole through his limbs now, that divine peace of no pain. Ears hollow, hearing things. Hearing birds chirping when they shouldn’t have been chirping – or was it the birds? He shook his head, trying to still the noise. It grew stronger.
They were coming. He could hear their boots marching, hear a thousand voices singing Tige Johnson’s marching song.
Pack all the generals in the cannons, boys, and fire, fire, fire.
Shove all your bullets up the colonel’s arse. He’ll give you no more strife.
Oh, tell the captain you’re going home and make the bastard cry.
Then pack up your tucker in your old kit bag and run f
or your bloody life.
Couldn’t see them yet. They were behind that dark hump of trees – a battalion of the dead marching down that hill. And that German’s light glowing bright, glowing brighter as he stared. Something wasn’t right. He shouldn’t have been able to see that light from here.
He closed his eyes, but the light wouldn’t go away. Like one of those electric globes they’d used in the Melbourne hospital, close your eyes on them and the light came through your lids.
What the hell were they thinking of, anyway? They were asking for trouble showing that light, and Lieutenant Dave Kennedy, the lucky bastard, was just the one to give them trouble.
Those boys still singing – making too much noise.
‘Take cover in the trees, lads,’ he yelled. ‘We’ll wait until that moon rises higher, then bag us a clutch of them tonight.’
the wood paddock
The moon was playing hide-and-seek in the river, but there were good wide patches of moonlight down here. It was odd how you could smell water; it didn’t seem to have a smell when you drank it, but down here you could smell that muddy, fishy smell.
Helen had cut this walk into sixths because it was too scary even to contemplate if she tried to look at what she was doing as a whole. Getting to the river was only the first sixth, and she’d got there, was standing close to it, but hiding behind a tree, having realised that the Johnson boys could have been swimming down here, or maybe setting traps for water rats in the reed beds – they skinned them and sold the skins to make fur coats.
She stretched her cramped fingers, rubbed and shook them, as she listened for voices. Only the frogs and the trickling bubbly sound of water making its way around the big snag, giggling at her and someone whistling. Probably one of those fruit pickers on the other side of the river, or they could have been on her side – but if they were over here, then they wouldn’t want her to see them any more than she wanted them to see her, so the faster she got past this sixth of her walk, the better. She wasn’t going back to that house. No one cared if she was there or not, so she was not going back.
