by Joy Dettman
‘How did she get out?’ Rob asked.
‘She was sound asleep, Jeanne beside her, so I left the front door open to let a bit of air through. I never leave that door open. I lie in bed and fry at night, and tonight I decide it’s safe to leave it open, and she decides to go out wandering.’
‘She’s probably curled up on someone’s back veranda,’ Rob said, turning to the gathering group. ‘If you had your doors open, check inside your houses. She’s likely to be curled up asleep somewhere.’
Bill walked off to search his open work shed. Tom waited. There was a lot of junk in there, but no Rosie. He looked towards the station, not knowing where to head for next.
‘I was going to get a ride back with the Russell Street chaps, take her down to that private place for a week or two, but their motor died so they’re coming in on the train – which is getting closer by the minute. I might take a wander down to the station.’
Mary Murphy, followed by her troops, wandered out to the tree, their gramophone left playing. With a bit of luck they’d bugger that record tonight.
‘She’s not in our back yard. She’s done no walking in weeks,’ Mary said. ‘She couldn’t have got far on those pins.’
‘I hope she hasn’t gone towards the river,’ Miss Jessie said.
‘I suppose we ought to get a bit of organisation into this,’ Tom said. ‘If someone could have a look down by the station and the bridge, I’ll check down at the school. She got down there two months back.’ He wasn’t too concerned, other than wanting her back in bed before that train got in.
There was no sign of her in the school grounds. He considered taking a walk around the oval, but couldn’t see how she would have been able to climb the fence, so he wandered back to the road, walking slowly, peering over every fence, checking verandas while continuing on downhill, which was more or less in a direct line from his front door and would be easier on her legs than walking up it.
‘Rosie! Rosie, love. Where are you? Answer me, Rosie.’
dead roses
Her rag of nightgown sweeping the road, that floral teapot held like a baby in her arms, Rosie shuffled on, unaware of where she was, where she was going, or why. Nothing was what it should have been, so she walked on, hoping to find . . . why she was walking. Dream and reality melding the past and the present into confusion, she knew only that her arms had been empty and her house had been empty. Then he’d come to her, and her house hadn’t been empty.
Her old slippers not made for walking, she lost one, though was unaware of it, unaware too of the clods of sharp clay bruising her foot. Perhaps she heard Tom’s distant call behind her. Her feet moved faster. Faster wasn’t good, faster confused her feet. They trod on her gown and her remaining slipper became tangled in her gown, hobbling her, holding her back from finding…
Always holding her back. Him. All of them. She’d told him, told them all that the Germans had him. He’d said so today. He’d come to her empty house and it hadn’t been empty anymore and he’d told her. She pointed, stood immobile, remembering. Used to steal roses from over fences. Used to bring her roses.
‘A rose for Mummy Rose,’ she muttered. ‘A rose for Mummy Rose.’ Years and years of his stolen roses. All here. Down here. He’d left them down here. Left her a sign, so she could find him.
The Germans had him. She stepped closer to his roses. He’d built her a mountain of roses.
‘A rose for Mummy Rose,’ she mumbled, her scrawny arms reaching out to embrace that tepee of roses, her teapot forgotten, falling.
Years and years of his roses. Couldn’t carry all of them, but for too long her arms and her house had been empty, so she grasped all.
‘Rosie! Are you down there?’
Head turning to the hill, jaws moving. He knew. She’d told him. Always told him the Germans had him. Prisoner of war. His fault. He’d sent them away. Hated him for sending them away.
‘His fault. His fault.’
She snatched at one flower but the head came off in her hand. Desperate now, she grabbed with two hands and a huge bouquet came loose.
‘All lies. All of them. Lies, Ronnie,’ she said. ‘Jealous of Mummy Rose, Ronnie.’ The flowers grasped to her breast, she turned in a circle to face her pursuer, stepped on her nightgown and stumbled, nearly fell, and she dropped Ronnie’s bouquet.
Trapped again. Phantom arms holding her, but tonight she fought those phantom arms, fought them for her boy, fought until a button popped free, and the gown slid from one bony shoulder, releasing her arm. She withdrew it, a skeletal arm, but it reached for her bouquet and she clutched it to her breast as her second arm was drawn free. The nightgown slid down, entangled her feet, followed her feet for a yard or two as she tottered on. Then her feet stepped away from it, and she was free.
Nothing much left of poor Rosie Thompson. Stick-thin legs and shrivelled breasts, ear-length grey hair and a large bouquet of wilting roses, grey roses, black roses, stripped of their colour by the moonlight but dusted with its silver. Moonlight glinting on that china teapot, left in the dust.
Moonlight glinting on the barrel of Lieutenant Kennedy’s rifle, and that glinting could give the game away when you were hunting. You had to creep up on them, taking what cover you could while keeping your gun at the ready.
He’d put their light out tonight. Put their lights out too. One more dead German was one less he had to kill, and when they were all dead, he could go home. That’s what he wanted, just to go home and get some sleep.
He was near the road now, and there’d be no cover once he left the trees. Open land on the other side, but more cover further down.
‘Make your way downhill, chaps. We’ll go at them from the east side.’
Dodging from tree to tree, following no track, he worked east until he had cover on the opposite side of the road, then, at a crouching run, he crossed over.
Great moon eye watching over her, showing her the way. Moon showing her where she had to go. No German fence, no German gate would keep her away from her Ronnie. He was her boy, her fine handsome boy.
‘Rosie!’
His fault. He made them go away. He’d done it. All his fault.
‘Rosie!’
‘Make him pay, Ronnie. Pay,’ she muttered, fighting that gate open, pushing it wide, then shuffling on down the drive towards the light.
‘Rosie! Are you down here?’
Faster. He wouldn’t stop her. Not this time.
‘He’ll pay.’
‘Rosie!’
She swiped at her head. Voices in there, confusing her again.
‘Answer me, girl!’
Too much noise of him in there. All of that him in there making the why and the where and the what twist together – disappear.
His fault. Close your eyes, Mummy Rose, and he won’t see us.
And there she stood in the moonlight, silhouetted against the bright light of Elsa’s parlour window, clutching her wilting black and grey bouquet, her eyes closed, her wasted flesh like a ghostly white statue.
train whistle blowing
Tom turned towards town. He’d have to go back. He’d meant to have a shave before Morgan got in, meant to put on a clean shirt and his other trousers. The ones he was wearing looked as if he’d slept in them – which he had.
Time enough to get around to the station when he heard the train’s first whistle; it started its blowing, waking up the little town, a good two miles before it got there. A lot of stops between Melbourne and Molliston, it wouldn’t be coming in early, not two nights in a row it wouldn’t. Some nights it was an hour late. Plenty of time to shave and change his clothes.
He was five yards from Kennedy’s Road when he trod on her slipper. It felt alive, and for a second he thought he’d put his foot on a snake. It shook him to his liver. Then from three feet back, where a reflex jump had taken him, he recognised it, and wished it had been a ten foot serpent with three heads.
She was down here. He picked up the slipper, stood with h
is jaw hanging loose, head turning. She wouldn’t go bush. She hated the grey bush. She might be curled up on the widow’s veranda, on that cane couch – could have turned down Kennedy’s Road.
‘Rosie?’ For fifteen seconds he waited, his ears tuned in to the night. No answer. Facing the town, cupping both hands to his mouth, he let go with the bushman’s cry: ‘Cooee!’ He repeated his call, and a voice from up the hill called back.
Walking fast now, heading for the hotel, he was at the murder site when his feet stopped beside the teapot – and her second slipper not far away. He picked it up, picked up his teapot, found its lid too, then sighted a patch of light against the dark of the earth not far ahead. For an instant he thought he’d found her. He ran to it. Only her old gown. He picked it up, held it high – empty.
‘Jesus wept,’ he moaned, wanting to go bush and hide his head up a hollow log full of twenty foot serpents with ten heads each. ‘Jesus bloody wept. She’s getting around somewhere out here, stark bloody naked!’ The grit shaken from the gown, he turned in a circle, wishing he hadn’t called those cooees back to town. ‘That’s the end of it, girl. You’ve done your dash this time. You’re going back into that state home, and this time you’re staying there.’
Two slippers, teapot, lid and gown, he had his hands full, but he’d need that gown if he found her before the others got down here. He was squatting in the shadows, making a neat parcel, tying the sleeves tight, when he heard two fast rifle shots from nearby and he sprang to his feet, aware that trees and shadows were not good places to be poking around in with someone taking pot shots at foxes.
Securing the parcel beneath his arm, he swung around to face the town. Maybe someone up the hill was letting him know they’d found her – and found her stark bloody naked? No. Those shots had been fired from close by.
There was a third shot, followed fast by another. The widow practising her aim, just in case Morgan came looking for a room?
Reichenberg’s gate hung open, and that gate was never open. Headlights were coming up Dolan’s drive, spraying the land with light. Maybe the widow’s aim was off, so she’d decided to leave town.
The fifth shot was followed by a woman’s scream, and it didn’t sound like Rosie.
Tom ran down Reichenberg’s drive, holding tight to his bundle as the widow’s headlights swung in through the gate behind him, and with her coming down this drive like a bat out of buggery, the drive wasn’t a safe place to be. He headed for a tree, those headlights blinding him.
There was a final blast, and somehow he knew it was final. It left an eerie stillness behind it, left Tom lost in that stillness – until the long, haunting hoot of the train woke up the town, letting it know it had no time to waste on Molliston – there were two more stops to go before it could rest.
Blinded by the widow’s headlights, he didn’t see Joe Reichenberg step from the shrubbery until the old bugger’s gun barrel was in his back.
‘What the bloody hell are you doing with that thing?’
‘Ah. Is the law. The crazy bastard, he shooting everybody,’ old Joe said, heading off towards the rear of his house, clad in his white knee-length nightshirt.
A small hump of white huddled in the shadows, twenty-odd feet from the house. Rosie, crumpled in a naked hump beside the shrubbery. A different sort of silence then. A hollow, blood thumping in his ears kind of silence, broken by that bloody train whistle, tooting in the distance as if this was an ordinary night.
Then the widow was running from her car, running into her own lightbeams, standing beside Tom, staring down at that awful nakedness, squatting when Tom squatted, helping untangle Rosie, rolling her over, gently and slowly, their shadows covering her awful nakedness, but not covering the blood. Black tar pumped out through a bloody great black hole in her throat, the withered bouquet still clutched in her hands.
Tom tried to cover the hole with his palm, tried to hold the blood in. Nothing to hold on to. No place left on her throat to seek a pulse. He tried her wrist.
‘It’s no use, Thomo.’ The widow stood, her shadow long.
No use at all. He started taking off his shirt with bloody hands, thinking to cover Rosie – and expose his own nakedness. He’d forgotten the bundle, dropped when Joe Reichenberg had shoved the gun in his back.
‘Oh, Christ. She didn’t deserve this. She didn’t deserve this,’ his words not much more than a moan. ‘Who did it?’
‘I was in my car, coming in to see you, when I saw someone creeping along the side of their house. Then the shooting started and I heard breaking glass.’
‘Turn your lights off her,’ he said, standing stiff legged, shaky, and walking back to find the bundle he’d dropped and give Rosie some dignity in death.
The widow turned the car until those beams played on two elm trees, turning them from black to green, then she walked towards those elms while he hunted for Rosie’s nightgown.
‘There’s someone over here,’ she yelled.
He knew it was young Chris. Didn’t want to see him dead, and where were the rest of them? Kurt, big Elsa? Didn’t want to see any more death, but he was a copper and he had to, so he picked his way across the grass to where she waited.
It wasn’t Chris. It was Dave Kennedy – or most of him. He lay sprawled on his back, dressed in his lieutenant’s uniform, his medals glinting. He’d eaten the barrel of his .303 army rifle, blown the top of his head off.
Walking in circles then, walking through dry grass, getting grass-seeds in his socks, looking for young Chris’s body, and all he could think of was talking to Rob this morning, drinking his beer and discussing a similar scenario. Forewarned was supposed to be forearmed. He could have stopped this. He should have locked that mad bastard up this morning and stopped this.
Old Joe was nowhere to be seen, but there was a noise inside the house now, Elsa’s voice. She was alive. The widow ran to the house, poked her head inside. ‘Mrs Reichenberg? Are you all right in there?’ Walked inside uninvited.
Tom didn’t hear the reply but seconds later they came out, Elsa with a blanket that she placed over Rosie. Always trying to cover up Rosie, always trying to keep her decent.
‘Where are your boys?’ Tom yelled.
‘Christian has been shot. His father and brother have brought him into the house. We need to get the doctor.’
‘Where’s he wounded, Mrs Reichenberg?’
She gestured to her thigh, shook her head and returned to the house. The widow was in her car when Tom followed Elsa indoors.
Kitchen window shattered, glass all over the floor. Young Chris was on the kitchen table, the leg of his trousers cut away, Kurt leaning on the wound as old Joe, looking as if he knew what he was doing, strapped a belt around the injured thigh. Tom left them to it.
He knelt again beside Rosie and, working fast, spread the blanket flat on the earth, lifted her onto it. He untied the sleeves of his bundle and got her into that gown fast. He’d had a lot of experience at dressing her, of straddling her kicking feet while her nails maimed him and her eyes accused. Even by moonlight those eyes accused him. She’d had a long list of accusations, ranging from getting her pregnant with Johnny to sending both boys off to war. She’d accused him because he’d never made chief inspector, accused him of buying stale butter, of soiling the necks of his shirts – any flamin’ thing she could think up on the spur of the moment. He’d never worked out how to avoid her accusations.
Shouldn’t be thinking of that sort of thing now. What a bastard of a man he was. He closed her eyes, couldn’t close the buttons on her rag of a gown; two had gone missing and he’d only just stitched them on a couple of days ago. He wrapped her in that blanket then, wrapped her feet, her arms, her shattered throat. Moonlight was kind to her face, relaxed finally by death, softened by her fluffed-up hair.
Half of the townsfolk were wandering down Reichenberg’s drive now. The widow’s car scattered them, then disgorged Rob Hunter, who was no doubt pleased to be climbing out of it intact. He
touched Tom’s shoulder as he walked by to the house. The others didn’t come close, but formed a silent half-circle behind him as Tom kissed that withered cheek.
He’d lusted after pretty Rosie Davis. Morgan had lusted after her too, as had every lad in the street. Tom had won her. He’d thought he loved her. And can any eighteen year old lad know with certainty where lust ends and love begins? He’d thought he was Jesus Christ himself, too, when she’d told him she was pregnant, that he’d have to wed her. He’d been the happiest man alive that day.
Happiest man? He’d been a hot-blooded fool of a boy, most of his brain in the crutch of his trousers.
He’d suffered days of guilt when Ronnie came along three weeks late and big enough to almost kill his mother with his coming. She’d loved that one, though. For a time they’d been happy, until he’d got her pregnant again.
Tears started rolling from his eyes as he covered her face, sealing her in the blanket, salty tears of sorrow for the waste of her life and his. He sniffed, wiped at his dripping nose with a wrist, wiped at his eyes with a thumb first, then with his shirt sleeve. What a stupid, weak bugger of a man he was, squatting there, bawling like a baby and the folk from town all staring at him.
Someone was still cooeeing from the hill, wanting to know where the action was. Someone cooeed back. Madness. This whole day had been madness. And what had gone on down here tonight was utter bloody madness. Rosie had nothing to do with that crazy bastard’s war. And what the hell had brought her down here to get caught up in this? In the past twelve months she hadn’t walked further than the school. It was as if this heat had raised the devil himself up from hell and he’d been hovering over this town since midnight, seeing how much havoc he could cause in twenty-four hours.
