The Last Dingo Summer

by Jackie French

  ‘She was Czech. My father died. I took my stepfather’s name.’ Detective Rodrigues took out his notebook. ‘Speaking of stepfathers . . .’

  ‘Merv was my stepmother’s boyfriend. They weren’t married.’

  ‘I know. We’ve spoken to her.’

  Jed looked at him in terror. What had Debbie told them? That she’d broken Merv’s nose when she hit him with the telephone? That she had every reason to hate Merv, to fear him, that she would violently attack a man . . . ?

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ she said shakily.

  ‘Of course you didn’t,’ said Will Ryan quickly.

  Detective Rodrigues silenced him with a look. ‘We know you couldn’t have,’ he said calmly. ‘You were isolated here by the fire and in labour. You couldn’t have got to the Drinkwater church then back here that day.’

  Jed stared at the two policemen. They didn’t know, she realised. The whole world thought she’d run her car off the road when the labour pains struck as she tried to get to town, that she’d staggered straight back to Dribble to wait the fire out. No one else knew that Merv had lit a fire to stop her getting through to Gibber’s Creek, and another to stop her driving back towards Overflow. No one had even guessed that she’d had to flee into the fire itself to escape him. Only the old Driza-Bone she’d found at the billabong, and the river, had saved her.

  But she’d had a chance to kill Merv, even if she doubted she could have managed it either physically or psychologically. Nor could she have carried his body into the church. But there was no way she was going to admit that to the police.

  Jed McAlpine-Kelly always spoke the truth, but she was also an expert in not telling the whole truth. She had never told anyone, even Sam, how she had run from Merv towards the flaming billabong, because the fire seemed a lesser danger than a madman who wanted to kill her and her unborn baby; how she had managed to half float, half swim upriver to Dribble . . .

  When had Merv been killed? It had to have been sometime between when she escaped from him and the fire burning the church down. An hour, at most, probably much less.

  Was that why Merv hadn’t pursued her to the billabong? Had someone seen them and struck him down? The smoke had been so heavy she’d only been able to see a few yards ahead, the screaming wind blotting out most other sounds. Had someone else been there that day? But who? She shook her head and voiced her thought aloud: ‘Who else would have wanted Merv gone?’

  She saw both men blink. ‘I didn’t want him dead,’ she added hurriedly, realising it was true. ‘Just to leave my family alone.’

  Detective Rodrigues glanced at Constable Ryan. ‘We know you reported him to the police a week before his death. Who else knew of his connection to you?’ He spoke as if this were a normal afternoon chat. And she’d forgotten to offer them a cup of tea . . .

  ‘Scarlett. She’s my, well, we sort of adopted each other as sisters. Sam knew. And Michael — he’s my great-uncle.’

  ‘Do you know who they might have told?’

  ‘Lots of people,’ said Jed evenly. ‘The idea was to have people watch out in case Merv came back again.’

  ‘We look out for each other around here,’ said Constable Ryan. ‘Always have. Always will.’

  Detective Rodrigues ignored him. Jed noticed Will flush. She gave him a sympathetic smile. It must be hard for him dealing with a newcomer who had no idea how country towns worked. ‘Your husband was out of the area with the fire brigade all that day and the day before?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jed. ‘He and the boys on the bushfire truck only got back here after the fire had gone through. Merv,’ it was still hard to say his name, ‘must have been dead by then. Then Sam came with me and Mattie and his father and Scarlett to the hospital.’

  ‘I’ve already told you that,’ said Constable Ryan impatiently.

  ‘I was asking Mrs McAlpine,’ said the detective.

  The detective put his notebook down. He spoke with what Jed recognised as an illusion of well-practised frankness. ‘Mrs McAlpine, I know how hard this is for you.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘All I can do is apologise. But it’s our duty to find out who might have felt so strongly about Ignatius Mervyn that they tied him up and left him to burn.’

  ‘I don’t know anyone who would be capable of that.’ Certainly not her darling Sam.

  ‘Was your adopted sister with you the whole time?’

  ‘No. Scarlett left for town just before I tried to drive there. But she couldn’t have killed Merv.’ Again her voice cracked a little at his name.

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Very sure.’ She had seen Scarlett’s car vanish into the smoke. And anyway . . .

  ‘Scarlett is in a wheelchair,’ said Constable Ryan, anger in his voice now too. ‘And . . .’ he was obviously looking for tactful words ‘. . . and small.’

  Which didn’t do justice to Scarlett’s life-long struggle for mobility and independence. But it served its purpose.

  ‘Scarlett can’t walk,’ said Jed. ‘She can lift light things these days, but her arms still can’t manage heavy stuff.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have done it, even if she could,’ said Constable Ryan. ‘She’s a good person, sir.’

  ‘So you keep telling me,’ said Detective Rodrigues dryly. ‘Everyone in Gibber’s Creek is a good person. But Ignatius Mervyn is still dead.’

  Jed moved Mattie to the other breast. Feeding her daughter was reassuring, despite the questions and the memories the detective’s questions evoked. ‘You don’t understand. Everyone was fighting the fires that day, or helping with the evacuees at the Town Hall. Overflow, that’s down the road, where my great-uncle Michael and great-aunt Nancy and their sons live, was probably cut off by the fire even before Scarlett left here. People just weren’t driving about. It was too dangerous.’

  ‘But you and your sister drove into town separately?’

  ‘We knew we might need the two vehicles, especially if this house . . . burned. I meant to follow Scarlett into town straight away. And then suddenly I couldn’t.’ Let them assume it was because labour had struck hard and fast.

  ‘Was your husband upset at Ignatius Mervyn’s harassment of you?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I see. So your husband and the rest of the fire crew arrived just after the baby was born? Young Mattie, isn’t it?’ This smile could have been a grandfather’s.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied to both questions. ‘The fire front had passed by the time Sam arrived with the rest of the fire crew. They’d been up at Rocky Valley fighting the fire for about thirty hours. They took the back road to get back here.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Sam stayed with me at the hospital. I’m not sure for how long; till midnight, maybe. Then he came back here to sleep.’

  ‘Did you see a burned-out car on your way to the hospital?’

  ‘No. But I wasn’t looking.’ Strange, she thought. She really had forgotten Merv in the joy of Mattie’s birth and Sam’s return. ‘The smoke was so thick that day. Like a grey soup. It was hard even to see the flames till they were on you.’

  ‘And you didn’t see him when you tried to follow your sister?’

  Jed stilled. She never lied. Lies were like a fungus that slowly spreads its rot. But she had grown very good at evading questions. ‘All I thought of was saving my baby.’

  And that was true.

  ‘Mrs McAlpine, do you think it just possible that your husband and his friends might have decided to . . . deal with your persecutor on the way back here?’

  Constable Ryan made a noise of protest, muffled as the detective shook his head at him. ‘Well, Mrs McAlpine?’

  She had never known that fury could leave you sweating. ‘Perhaps you should ask Sam that.’

  Will flushed and looked down at his notebook.

  ‘It’s . . . inconvenient . . . that you can’t ask Sam, isn’t it?’ Jed could hear the venom in her voice. ‘But you can ask the rest of
the crew.’

  ‘We have asked them,’ said Detective Rodrigues briefly.

  Of course, Jed thought. He’d have asked at the hospital, at Bushfire Control, all the places that would give him facts, before he had come to her or the McAlpines. ‘Then you already know Sam didn’t have any idea that Merv was still anywhere near here. And the church was burned before he got home.’

  ‘They are all mates, aren’t they?’ the detective asked quietly. ‘All the fire crew?’

  ‘Yes. Sam was at school with Bluey and Bill, and he’s been on the tanker with Tubby since he was about fourteen. But if you think that means they’re all lying for him . . . ?’ She shook her head. ‘Impossible.’

  ‘But if your husband had needed to . . . protect you . . . the fire crew might help?’

  ‘What? No! Look, if Sam or any of them had seen Merv trying to hurt me, they might have hit him. But then they’d have called the police. Just like we called the police when Merv threatened me last year.’ She looked at Will for confirmation. He nodded to her, sympathetic, helpless.

  ‘The church burned before Sam and the crew got here. They couldn’t have killed Merv, and they wouldn’t have. And I couldn’t have and wouldn’t have either.’

  Mattie burped. Jed wiped away the dribble of milk with the tail of Sam’s shirt. Her hands were shaking too. And she had forgotten to comb her hair.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs McAlpine,’ said Detective Rodrigues, getting to his feet.

  ‘It’s Ms,’ said Jed, her body tingling with adrenalin, her mind screaming, I cannot cope with this. I can’t! Sam . . .

  Will Ryan let Detective Rodrigues go first. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this. About everything.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

  ‘It does matter. I used to play football with Sam. Sam was one of the best blokes who ever lived.’

  She looked at him, fury taking over once again, all the anger at today’s futile conversation tumbling out. ‘What do you mean, was? Sam is alive! And one day . . . one day . . .’ Her voice vanished. She bit her lips, forcing her eyes wide, refusing to cry.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Will quickly. ‘I know he’s alive. I just meant . . .’ He looked at her helplessly, then followed his superior.

  Jed walked them to the door, stood there till the police car vanished down the road. Then she gave Mattie a hunk of banana to gum, combed her hair, grabbed her handbag and the nappy bag, and headed out to the car.

  She had to see Sam.

  Chapter 4

  Veg Van Ban

  Broccoli Bill’s ‘Monday veg van’ will now be parked at the side of Green’s Garage after complaints to counsel from unnamed members of the Gibber’s Creak Chamber of Commerce, who claim the van caused traffic congestion in the mane street.

  According to Broccoli Bill: ‘There’s only two cars and a dog in the main street on Mondays anyway. Some people would rather sell canned tomatoes than eat fresh ones.’ The chair of the Chamber of Commerce refused to comment.

  JED

  Visiting hours at the Gibber’s Creek Hospital were strictly regulated, except for Jed McAlpine-Kelly. Each day the woman and baby trudging to the small room at the end of the corridor were carefully ignored. Jed left visiting hours free for Blue and Joseph, and for Sam’s friends, who each visited at least once a week. Even if Sam couldn’t know they were there, you did not abandon a mate.

  The Gibber’s Creek Hospital had never cared for a coma patient before, nor one in what was now being tentatively known as a ‘possible vegetative state’. If there had seemed to be a chance that Sam McAlpine might regain consciousness — or even had been likely to survive the night after surgery — he would have been transferred to Sydney.

  But after the relatively simple emergency surgery to repair artery damage and remove a ruptured spleen, after each of the four periods where breath and pulse had ceased for minutes at a time, Sam had begun to breathe by himself again. He had kept breathing for five months now.

  And that was all. Jed paused in the doorway, as she always did on her daily visits. Sam lay in the centre of the small bed; the tubes that kept him alive had been placed carefully to one side so that visitors could sit at the other. There were no monitors for brain or heart function now, as there had been for those first months when they had hoped desperately, watched obsessively, for any change in his condition, any sign that he heard their voices, or even reflexively responded to the scrape of a spoon on his hand or foot.

  The machines had simply kept beeping, the lines on the screen refusing to deviate from the same pattern hour after hour, day after day. Finally Jed, with help from Joseph and Scarlett, had accepted that blood loss and those long minutes without oxygen meant that Sam was unlikely to wake, to even feel the pressure of a hand on his, or hear the voices of those he loved.

  If — when — Sam McAlpine stopped breathing next time, he would not be revived.

  But he was alive today. He was her Sam and Mattie’s father. Jed put her handbag and the nappy bag on the floor.

  ‘Hello, darling.’ She kissed his unmoving lips.

  ‘Ga!’ said Mattie, glancing at the unmoving figure, then with more interest at the nappy bag, which would contain much more interesting things than nappies.

  Did Mattie remember Sam holding her, bathing her, reading to her?

  Jed took the picnic blanket out of the nappy bag and spread it on the floor. She sat Mattie with the coloured wooden blocks kept here for her, then moved to the armchair by the bed. If it hadn’t been for Mattie, she would be here all day, every day. But Mattie deserved normality, or at least as much of it as Jed could find for her.

  ‘The police came today,’ she told Sam. She waited, as she always did, in case he answered, even though she knew, as she always did, that he would not. ‘The body in the church was Merv. He’s gone now. He really has gone.’

  The body on the bed breathed in, breathed out.

  ‘The detective in charge hinted you might have killed him. But you could never have done anything like that. Or could you?’

  The body on the bed kept breathing. Jed gazed at him. How long, she wondered, before she created her own perfect Sam, instead of the very human man he’d really been?

  ‘You’d have told me, wouldn’t you, if you’d seen Merv again? Or would you have tried to protect me, not worried me? But you couldn’t have been there when Merv died. So I know you couldn’t have killed him, even by accident.’

  Sam breathed in, breathed out.

  Jed watched him. His face did not look peaceful, just emotionless. Even sleep showed more animation than this. ‘I shouldn’t have to deal with this by myself!’ she whispered. ‘All you do is lie there. I have to get up every night for Mattie, keep on going every morning. And it’s all your fault . . .’ Her voice died away as Mattie stared up at her.

  ‘Ga? Glub ga book,’ said Mattie, propelling herself with her elbows, like a slug with arms, over to Jed across the blanket.

  ‘I love you, Sam,’ said Jed quietly. She reached into the nappy bag and drew out Where the Wild Things Are and a rusk for Mattie, then picked her up and began to read.

  Chapter 5

  Grease: A Raunchy Return to the 50s Showing This Saturday at the Town Hall

  Think jaloopies, leather jackets, soda pop and school dances! The international hit Geese stars Australia’s own Olivia Isaac Newton-John as Sandy.

  The film is a nostalgic tribute to America in the 50s and the music will have you jiving in your seat. The Gazette gives it five thumbs up!

  FISH

  The living room was silent after Blue’s outburst. Mah and Gran began to gather up the afternoon tea dishes. ‘I’d better go and unpack,’ said Fish uncomfortably. That was tactful, wasn’t it? She couldn’t help in this house of grief and puzzlement. She’d probably only make things worse if she said anything else. She heard Gran’s voice as she walked back to her bedroom. ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  Fish
hesitated, then kept the bedroom door open so she could hear everything. That was the advantage of eavesdropping on old people. They were mostly deaf and said everything half as loud again and twice as clearly.

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry too. Blurting all that out. I don’t know why I did it,’ said Great-Aunt Blue.

  ‘Because Fish asked,’ said Gran wearily. ‘She has a habit of asking the wrong questions. Or the right ones. It’s hard to know with Fish. I hope it’s not too much having her here.’

  Fish stilled, waiting for the answer. If the Greats really didn’t want her, then she shouldn’t, couldn’t stay.

  ‘It’s good to have someone young in the house,’ said Blue, to Fish’s relief, though still slightly shakily.

  ‘You don’t know Fish,’ muttered Gran.

  Fish flinched. But Gran was right.

  ‘Is there any news about her father?’ asked Blue tentatively.

  ‘No. He’ll be right,’ said Gran, too obviously trying to convince herself too. ‘How is Jed managing?’ she added. Changing the subject, thought Fish. And of course there was no news of Dad. Because after what she’d done, he’d . . .

  Fish shut her eyes, trying to block the thought. The voices from the living room were a distraction.

  ‘Jed’s coping so splendidly with everything. We . . . we don’t see her much though. She visits Sam when we’re not there to fit in with Mattie’s naps. She’s written a book, you know? It’s being published and everything, but she still has to do a lot of work on it. She doesn’t have time to come to dinner or things like that. I’ve offered to babysit Mattie so she has more free time to write,’ said Blue, and Fish could hear how much her great-aunt wanted to get her hands on that baby, ‘but she says she doesn’t need any help.’

  ‘Jed always seems to be able to do anything,’ said Mah. ‘I don’t know how I’d have coped all by myself after Andy’s death.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have wanted you to,’ said Joseph. Fish could almost see his smile. He meant it too. Would there ever be anyone again who really did want her around? Fish doubted it.

  ‘Sam and Jed were so happy,’ said Blue softly. ‘That’s important, isn’t it? Sam was incredibly happy.’