by Kim Kelly
Chris. Rourkie. The name came to her now: Christopher O’Rourke. She wouldn’t forget it again. And it rang a deeper bell still: he wasn’t Young Labor or any of Keveney’s usual lot – that’s why she couldn’t place him straightaway; he was Young Liberal, someone important in the scheme, father owned a chain of hotels or caryards or something. Someone who pronounced the ‘g’ in ‘fucking’. He was power: money. Lots of it.
She told floppy bunny girl: ‘Your friend just tried to rape me.’ Her breath was ragged, but her words were clear.
‘You filthy little liar,’ he shot straight back at her as he got to his feet; he told Chubs: ‘I didn’t touch her. She’s fucking nuts. I thought it was the toilet in there, and she just – went fucking nuts. Look what she did to my face.’ He pointed to where she’d scratched his cheeks – barely, as it turned out, for all the force she’d tried to unleash.
She looked at Chubs and floppy bunny girl: they seemed to believe him; the girl frowned at her, querying. And that’s when the shock set in, in those few seconds of silence that sat between them, there in the kitchen. That’s when she began to doubt herself. Had she overreacted? Had she misinterpreted —
‘Hello?’ She heard a knock at the front door, and footsteps following after it; the door was open, and she expected to see another football jersey or several crash in off the street. ‘Hello? Addy? Are you home?’
It was Dan. She saw the scuffed toes of his work boots first, and then his grey canvas overalls. She could not have known what he saw when he looked at her, washing powder showered all over her dad’s old cardigan, her ponytail half pulled out, her face drained of colour, eyes filled with terror and despair. She only knew he looked horrified.
‘Addy?’ He looked at the laundry door on the floor, confused, as anyone would have been: ‘What happened?’
‘Just a misunderstanding.’ Chubs stepped in. ‘Addy thought Rourkie was having a go at her.’
‘Having a go? What do you mean?’ Dan looked to Addy again. She couldn’t respond, though; she’d lost the power of speech. She wanted to run, but he was blocking her way – Chubs was as well.
‘She thought Rourkie was making advances.’ Chubs tried to laugh it off; some laughter drifted in from the backyard, too, Harriet trilling above it all: ‘Noooo! I don’t want pizza – I want tom yum goong, I truly do!’
‘Were you?’ Dan stepped further into the kitchen; he stepped towards Christopher O’Rourke. ‘Making advances?’
‘As if,’ Christopher O’Rourke replied, composed as though he’d done this a hundred times; perhaps he had. ‘I was having a joke with her, but you know what a crazy bitch she is.’
‘Who’s crazy?’ Dan wasn’t buying any of it. ‘You know who her brother is, don’t you? You’d have to be fucken game.’
‘And you know what a prick tease she is, don’t you.’ Christopher O’Rourke shot back, laying plain his legal defence.
‘No, I don’t,’ said Dan, standing over him. ‘Tell me all about it.’ Dan pushed him in the chest, pushed him so hard he fell back against the stove, coffee cups rattling in the cupboard overhead.
‘Dan – Dolly – don’t.’ Chubs tried to hose him off. ‘There’ll be a pile-on if you take this further. Settle down.’
Settle down? Addy couldn’t settle down, and she didn’t want to see how this would end; she found her way unblocked now, and darted out through the lounge, up the hall.
‘Go on, call the cops – you’ll find out what happens if you do,’ Christopher O’Rourke called after her, but they all knew the answer to that: she could never win.
She just wanted to be free of him, all of them, and so she ran.
She ran out into the night like a crazy bitch – and Dan Ackerman was running after her.
THIS IS WHAT A HERO
ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE
‘Addy!’ He kept on after her, all the way up to the alley. ‘Please stop, let me help.’
There’s nothing you can do. Please, go away.
She couldn’t outrun him, though, obviously. She might well have been a little fitter than he was, but his legs were far longer, and she was tiring. And yet, even when she could run no longer, she did not stop moving; she kept up a pace through the alley and around the winos’ pub onto Broadway.
‘Addy, where are you going?’ He was almost by her side.
I don’t know. The pedestrian lights here at the crossing were flashing red, so she kept on going straight ahead, towards the centre of town.
‘Please, let me help.’ He was not going to go away. ‘Did he hurt you?’
She couldn’t say at that moment; she was still fighting for the truth of just what had occurred. Christopher O’Rourke had attacked her. There had been no mistake; no misunderstanding. He had meant to hurt her. He had meant to assault her. He did assault her. Her scalp still ached where he’d pulled her hair; her ankle was throbbing from having kicked at the door; the middle of her back was sore where he’d pressed her against the washing machine: these were facts.
‘Addy, let me call my dad. You don’t have to go to the police if you don’t want to. He can deal with it through the hospital. I know he’ll help – he’d want to help.’
‘No.’ The word flew from her; that would be one more humiliation too far. She could only imagine Dr Ackerman remembering her as the foul-mouthed girl from last night, maybe even judging her; no matter how nice he’d seemed, she would be ashamed of herself. Besides, she couldn’t bear the thought of the fuss, the questions, the doubt upon doubt upon doubt. But ‘no’ was all she could say about it right now.
‘I’m sorry if I’m making a pest of myself,’ Dan continued regardless. ‘I can’t let you walk alone through the streets like this. You’ll just have to put up with me.’
This stretch of Broadway was its usual night-time wasteland of empty warehouses, boarded-up shops and old workers’ pubs no one frequented anymore. The brewery that sat in the middle of the next block was belching out the stench of hops; a truck lumbered past with a rattling cough; and they walked on.
After a while, Dan said: ‘I came over to apologise. To see if you might have wanted to talk. I don’t know what I did last night to upset you, but whatever it was, I’m sorry. I’ve felt bad about it all day – the way I left – like I was shitty. I wasn’t shitty – I was embarrassed. I meant to call you, from work, but I left your number at home. Then I got caught up – my uncle Evan needed me to help him with this big order, and I couldn’t get away. I’m sorry.’
That broke through, a little: he sounded so regretful – as though he might have prevented Christopher O’Rourke from attacking her. As though he might have prevented his fellow men from being arseholes generally.
She said: ‘You haven’t done anything to upset me.’
He said: ‘Do you want to go for a drive or something, and just talk?’
She nodded: ‘Yep.’
Still, she didn’t say a further word as they made a return loop through the backstreets; and he didn’t press her to speak, either. By the time they got to his car, parked on the kerb opposite her house, a delivery driver carrying a stack of pizza boxes was knocking on the front door.
As though nothing has happened, except that they decided against Thai, after all.
The stereo was playing something more sedate, something she couldn’t quite hear.
How civilised.
She didn’t know how she was ever going to walk back into that house again.
Dan drove her through the city, past the movie-theatre crowds, past the black labyrinth of the business district and out beyond the tourist trap of Circular Quay, to a part of Sydney she’d never seen before, though it wouldn’t have been five kilometres from Flower Street. The Harbour Bridge vaulted up above the road, its line of lights shooting out across the water like stars. It was quite a magnificent sight, solid steel floating in the blue-black night; it was deserted here, too, nothing but decommissioned wharves, and the smell of the sea.
He said: ‘It�
�s all right here, isn’t it.’
She almost smiled: You’re such a poet. But she knew there was a lot more than that going through his mind.
He said: ‘I come here when I’m feeling out of sorts.’
And then they sat there together for a long time not saying anything at all, only listening to the steady hum of traffic across the bridge, the clacking of a train heading north. She began to come back into herself; more tired, more deeply sore, everywhere, but somehow normal, whatever normal might be. A yellow splash of graffiti on the warehouse wall outside the window of the car said: ‘Wazza was here.’ She felt just like that: mad, wonky, but here. She looked at Dan; he looked at her. He was tired, too; but he was here, too.
Finally, she said: ‘Thank you. Thank you for being such a good friend.’
He gave her a sad smile; he said: ‘I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’
And that was it for Addy. She didn’t have time to hide her face, the rush of her own sadness; there was nowhere to hide anyway, inside this tiny car. They were so close.
‘Hey …’ The sound he made was warm; safe.
The sound she made was of her wounding, and it was no less tortured for the delay. A small sound, but so essential, so profound, it filled all time and space. She stared ahead into the chrome button of the glove box, tiny silver disc shining out of the black. She told herself, and the silence and the sea: I’m safe. I’m safe.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to see a doctor?’ Dan made the sensible suggestion again. ‘Maybe a woman? Or maybe I can drive you home to Mum – she can sort it out. She’ll understand – she really will. And she will want to see O’Rourke pay for this as much as I do. He should pay.’
Yes, he should, but not tonight and not with Addy’s dignity, or the little she felt she had left. Revenge wasn’t what she wanted in any case; she wanted the truth, and she wanted to tell it – now.
She told Dan: ‘He didn’t rape me. He wanted to. He pushed me down and pulled my hair. He rubbed himself against me. But that’s not what it’s really about. It’s not the doing. It’s the fear. The fear has got into me, inside every part of me, so that I’m frightened all the time. I’m frightened of men. I’m frightened of love. I’m frightened of myself. I am a crazy bitch. Every day, I am frightened and mad and ashamed.’
Dan frowned, not quite following: ‘Ashamed? But —’
‘Yes.’ Now Addy let it flood from her: ‘Ashamed. Damaged. Dirty. Fucked up. Fair game. Smile, missy. Have a sense of humour. Can’t you take a compliment? Can’t you not be a freak? It’s all on me, and I don’t know how to fix it – how to fix me. I don’t think I can. And the one who really did do it, the one who really did hurt me – I’m pretty certain he’s not given me a second thought since. It’s too late now to try to make him pay, and the law wouldn’t make him pay, anyway. The charge would get laughed out of court. In fact, it wouldn’t get past Wollongong police station.’
‘What wouldn’t?’ Dan asked her, with the same urgency; she still wasn’t making sense to him. She was only making him upset, on her account; she could see his frown darkening; she could see him holding it back as fiercely: ‘It’s not my right to know, Addy, I’m sorry if I’m pressuring you, but —’
‘No, it’s all right,’ she told him. ‘I want to say it. I want to tell you.’ I trust you. How she did. She’d come this far; even her tears were certain, thick and plain on her cheeks for this witness of a friend, not ashamed in this at least, inside this now, this here. ‘His name is Alan Hadley,’ she said, a name released like something rotten, something diseased. ‘Not that he’s anyone in particular.’
Dan nodded, speaking only with his eyes: Go on.
‘He’s the son of a real estate agent, in Wollongong,’ she told him. ‘Family business, upstanding members of the community, his dad’s a part-time minister, holy rollers and all that. His older brother is a policeman.’ She would tell Dan Ackerman everything; she would banish her silence to the sea: ‘He was in Nick’s year at school. They weren’t mates mates, but they’d played football together. I’d been studying for my exams, had my head down so much that I’d forgotten about the Year Twelve formal. I didn’t have a date – had a dress, of course.’ She remembered that dress as though she held it in her hands right now: baby-blue Chantilly lace over white satin, simple but unusual, and handmade, ageless; she would wear it with strappy white sandals and a white mesh purse, all got for under ten dollars from three different charity shops; her only adornment would be the single-pearl pendant her father had given her for her eighteenth birthday, under advice from a lady at the local jewellers. ‘But I hadn’t got around to asking anyone,’ she explained to Dan. ‘I wasn’t interested in anyone. I was working too hard, to make sure I got the marks to get into law – I didn’t want to disappoint Dad by stuffing it up, missing out. If I wasn’t studying, I was cooking fish and chips, doing Saturday shifts at a takeaway. I didn’t have time to look at any boys other than those in my Maths class, just friends who were helping me get through calculus, my weakest link – that was all I was freaking out about then.
‘Anyway, Alan wasn’t exactly academic. After he’d finished school, he’d got into renovating old properties – his father would buy a crumbling bomb of a place and Alan would do it up, then sell it on at a profit. He’d been doing really well, had plenty to be happy about – he drove a brand-new car. For weeks I’d seen him almost every day, as he’d been working on a house right across the road from the school. I knew him enough to say hello, how’re you going, how’s Nick, blah blah for five minutes while I waited for the late bus home. He was all right to look at, hair bleached from the surf and fit from hard work, always in paint-spattered shorts, dusty boots. He seemed normal. Just a guy. He liked a chat. He’d ask me what I was studying, seemed impressed I wanted to enrol in arts and law. “Oh yeah?” he’d say. “You’ve got some brains, haven’t you.” He was funny in that sort of smart-arsy way, making cracks about the teachers and what have you. It was all small talk. Nothing in it, so I thought. I’ll ask him to the formal, I decided – why not? And when I did, he gave me that same smart-arsy smile, saying, “Far be it from me to pass up the opportunity for free alcohol and perving at all your girlfriends.” I didn’t think he thought anything of me except that I was Nick’s nerdy little sister. It didn’t occur to me that anything would happen.
‘The formal was pretty boring, all drinking and Top-40 dancing. I was still tired from the exams, stressing that I could have done better, not sleeping properly. My stomach was still upset, so I didn’t even drink that much, probably half a glass of wine the whole night. I just couldn’t relax. But I went down to the beach with everyone afterwards. I didn’t want to be the dag that went home early, like all the other migrant kids. Alan was having a good time, or that’s how it looked. I don’t know how drunk he was. Drunk enough that the law would give it to him as an excuse, I have no doubt. There was a bonfire and bottles of el cheapo champagne being passed around with spliffs, and Alan said, “I’m a bit wasted. Come for a walk up to the lighthouse?” I said, “Sure,” thinking I owed him a favour. I said, “A walk would be good, then I might get a cab home,” thinking I’d save him the trouble of taking me – not that he was in any state to drive. We started walking up the dune at the back of the beach, where it’s steep and scrubby, and once we’d got a little way beyond the crowd, not far, he grabbed my arm and said, “I’m not good enough for you, am I?” I didn’t know what he was talking about. He shifted so suddenly, I didn’t know what was going on. I said, “I don’t know what you mean.” He didn’t answer. He just kept pulling me by the arm, through the scrub. All I could think was that he was going to kill me. I thought he was going to strangle me, bash me, smash me into the lighthouse rocks. I was so terrified, I’d have done anything he said. I don’t remember much from then on, though. He pushed me onto the sandy grass, and he held me facedown there. I don’t think it took very long. I only remember how much it hurt. How shocked I was that he wa
s tearing me apart.’
Dan muttered something she didn’t hear; she wasn’t quite finished telling: ‘I don’t think I made a sound the whole time, I was too frightened. All I could hear was the pounding of my heart. When he stopped, he shoved me around and pushed twenty dollars into the top of my dress, into my bra. He said, “That’s for your university fund. Don’t tell anyone I didn’t do the right thing by you.” And he walked off, back down to the bonfire. I got up, tidied my dress, then I went and found a phone box and called a cab. I went home, had a wash, went to bed. I was in such shock, I didn’t know what had happened. I’d never had sex before. I was pretty naïve about it all. I knew what he’d done, physically, but I didn’t really know. I don’t have a mother to talk to about those kinds of things, she died when I was small, and Dad – well, I don’t say anything to upset Dad, he’s had a hard enough time, and his idea of sex education has always been, “Stay away from boys,” full stop. The next day, and every day afterwards, I just got on with things. I went straight into working full time for a couple of months, saving up for uni, for moving to Sydney. I had to get myself organised, find a place to live, with Roz, find a city job. I started to doubt myself straightaway. I wasn’t sure if I’d made a mistake. I couldn’t make sense of it – why he was so rough. Why he did it in the first place. Why he would terrorise me like that. What for? Only a week later, I heard he started going out with another girl from school, and I thought that was the end of it – I thought at least he wouldn’t come after me and do it again. I thought I could forget about it. I put that dress in the garbage. I thought I could just leave it there, in the bin. Get over it.’
The realisation struck her then: the panic that had stalked her ever since, the sweeping dread, the loose ballooning, the drinking, poor lovely Luke Neilson, mucking him about the way she had, a clumsy attempt to fix the unfixable. The certainty she was having a heart attack; the certainty she was going mad. It was Alan Hadley all along who had caused this. Alan Hadley and a conspiracy of silence. Alan Hadley and possibly a genetic predisposition for bad shit happening. She would never know why so many men were arseholes, but she could know this: Alan Nobody Hadley had robbed her of joy for the past year and a half. He’d robbed her of the choice of sex – he’d robbed her of any love she might have had. He had hurt her. He had smashed her on the rocks. And his moral doppelganger had had another go tonight – in her own house.
