River of Salt

by Warner, Dave;

  Life, for women, was all about erasing stains.

  She watched her little egg-shaped screen until it went back to the test pattern. She imagined others driving by outside and seeing the little blue-grey glow from beneath her curtain. She would miss that.

  14. The Trouble with Secrets

  He’d decided to head further south because it was throwing a nice right-hander. About a half-hour into his surf he saw a figure on the beach in white. He knew the shape and took the next wave in.

  ‘You’re back.’ Self-evident as that was, he couldn’t help but yell it as he ran out of the surf, the plank under his arm.

  ‘You seem surprised.’

  Crane looked different, better, not so much younger as less resigned to defeat.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Prison gives you time to think. Actually, not so much prison as no alcohol. I have a daughter and son. I felt the need to visit.’

  It was cool on Blake’s back but the wind was slowly drying him.

  ‘How did that go?’

  ‘One forgives me, one doesn’t. You must think I’m an ungrateful bastard.’

  Blake cast quickly through his brain, couldn’t remember ever expecting anything from Crane. He just said, ‘It was wrong. They wanted a patsy. If you weren’t there, it could as easily have been me.’

  ‘Well, thank you, anyway. I’ll never be able to pay you back.’

  ‘I don’t need the money. You can do a month of free shows if you feel like it.’

  ‘My inspiration has dried since I’ve been abstemious.’

  ‘You’re on the wagon?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it because the disappointment will only be greater when I lapse.’

  ‘You might not.’

  ‘Our sins define us, Horatio, not our good qualities. But I think you already know that.’

  That was the thing with Crane, putting it out there, one sinner to another.

  He said, ‘Word is that Sergeant Les Nalder is my saviour but I don’t believe that for a minute.’

  ‘Andy is your saviour. He saw Stokes with the kid in the Hawaiian shirt, which I recognised as his old man’s. That set the ball rolling.’

  They were ambling back towards where Crane’s shelter had stood before. What the hell, he may as well try. He asked Crane, ‘You didn’t see whoever it was in the car with Stokes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘The Clarke kid denies it was him. Says he went off to scrounge together money to pay Stokes. And they found some prints in the car that don’t belong to him or Stokes.’

  They had reached the place where the shelter had been. Nothing was built but Crane had made a start, collecting forty-four gallon drums and some sheets of tin.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay at the Surf Shack.’

  ‘Thank you, but I like the open air. You think the kid did it?’

  ‘I don’t know. His story is believable but he could be lying. He says he got the money together and drove to the motel. He claims a van swung out from the motel just before he arrived. He says the door to unit ten was already open. He pushed in, saw Stokes butchered. He threw up and drove off. The motel people didn’t see any van.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean he made that up.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’ve gone back over that night a thousand times in my head. The dance contest, lots of pretty girls. There was one blonde, she was seething.’

  ‘She lost the dance contest.’

  ‘I was drunk. Duck was smoking weed. There was a young girl on a bicycle who had danced.’

  Kitty, Doreen’s favourite.

  Crane reached out and laid his hand on Blake’s arm. ‘Thanks for believing in me. It was a long time since anybody did. Including myself.’

  ‘I didn’t do all that much.’

  We need a champion, all of us. Jimmy had been his. And Doreen. He’d promised himself he’d call in on her again, watch television. There were worse things.

  The second thing he did when he walked in after she’d opened the door was look around for the TV. The first thing was hand her a bunch of flowers he’d bought at the florist. Jimmy always said that the best gift you can give a woman is flowers.

  ‘They’re beautiful, thank you.’

  She beamed, began fussing for a vase.

  ‘I wanted to cheer you up. You’ve looked blue lately.’

  ‘Just tired.’ She found a vase under the sink, poured in water.

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The long-awaited television.’

  ‘I sold it.’

  He didn’t understand women at all.

  ‘I thought I’d like it but it just wasn’t for me. I think I prefer the radio.’

  She arranged the flowers. She didn’t seem right though.

  ‘Have I been working you too hard?’

  ‘No, not at all.’

  But she wasn’t looking him in the eye. Maybe it was a personal thing? A boyfriend or some family problem. He’d chosen to know nothing at all about her life outside the Surf Shack.

  ‘Crane’s back.’ He flexed his toes as he delivered the news.

  That made her look at him.

  ‘Sober,’ he emphasised.

  ‘I hope he thanked you.’

  ‘He did.’

  She placed the flowers on a table near the door. He wanted to spend time with her, couldn’t help it. He cleared his throat because if the words caught it would be more awkward.

  ‘We’re rehearsing later but I thought … well I was thinking TV, but do you want to do something?’

  ‘I’m going to Kitty’s school play, South Pacific. She’s got the lead role. You want to come?’

  He wasn’t ready to sit on a hard chair listening to a musical, and truth was what he’d really wanted was just some quiet time, him and Doreen, like it had been in the hospital room when they’d been waiting for Andy to get better.

  ‘I’d have to leave halfway. We’ll do it another time.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I better let you get ready then. See you tomorrow. Have a good night.’

  He let himself out. When he said he couldn’t go to the play, in her eyes had been a look he recognised, disappointment. She actually wanted him to go with her. This was confusing, dangerous. He let people down, he was weak. No matter how much he bathed in the river of salt, no matter how much he sought to numb the pain or erase the past, he was the same person who had left Jimmy to have his brains blown out in a cheap room. If you cared about someone, like he did for Doreen, a care that was growing, then you should leave them be, for their own good.

  She felt like pinching herself. Everything had worked out since that day at the library when she’d found the code-key to the mysteries of her life. The day, she liked to think of now, as the day she grew up. And here she was tonight, Nellie Forbush for real, sitting in the dressing-room with Mrs Wilson the costume person, fussing over every detail. Vocally she was passable, certainly as good as any of the other girls — and they’d all tried out, even Jenny who couldn’t sing the Vegemite jingle, what a joke! It was her dancing, all those hours she’d been spending with Doreen, that had been the clincher. Mr Cobham, who was directing, actually dropped his clipboard. She didn’t want to sound big-headed but from day one she knew she was going to get it because it was like following a map, connecting dots. The one thing that was putting a stopper on her excitement was what had been happening lately between her parents. Once she began reading a lot and taking in what she’d learned — listening to the sighs, understanding the import of words not spoken, the absence of things — she had come to understand them not as cardboard cutouts but living, breathing people with their own ambitions and thwarted dreams. Their lives weren’t perfect, they lived with disappointment the way some people live with backache. No matter, they had seemed to be able to deal with it. But things had changed recently.

  At first, she thought it was simply her new awareness of the intricacies of their hitherto hid
den world. But one day sport had been cancelled and she’d come home early and found her mother down the back garden on an old tree stump, dabbing her eyes with tissues. She began to listen out for scraps of telephone conversation between her mum and her friends, noted more frequent times when voices were dropped to exclude prying ears: hers. But it was clear from the lack of maternal harassment of recent times that she wasn’t the topic of conversation. Her mum’s mind was drifting too. She’d pack no lunch for her, or double. There were more drop-ins from Aunty Muriel, her mum’s closest friend, not a real aunty. More hushed conversations followed. Her first thought, that her mum was sick with some horrible disease, was dismissed when she saw that the same conversations were not repeated with her dad. Oh, there was a hush alright, but the lines on their mouths were drawn tight when she would ‘surprise’ them. And then they would make up some ridiculous gabble about the car or a neighbour, as if that was what they’d been talking about. One day at the tennis club she had set out to deliberately spy on them and had noted, from the safety of the drinks machine, her mother pull her hand away when her father tried to touch it. But even before then, she had concluded there was only one explanation.

  Her father was having or had had an affair.

  It was devastating. Her father was her hero. He came to every dance recital, every speech night, every sporting event. They washed the car together, played quoits on the back verandah. Often they shopped while Mum was in the salon having her hair done, selected chocolate to share during the Sunday Theatre on TV. Of course he had flaws. He had sought an alliance with Todd’s father because it would have given him a status he wasn’t confident of achieving by his own efforts. But if he’d been having an affair, that was just horrible. She was acutely aware of the embarrassment Shelley Unsworth had suffered when it was revealed her father was carrying on with that slut Wendy Avery. Somebody had spied them leaving a motel up near the Heads. Sordid, that was the word that always came to mind. It conjured discarded bras and dark rooms with blinds drawn, stiletto heels and men ripping ties from their work shirts. She shuddered. The Unsworths had divorced. That was even worse. She had speculated without success on who the ‘other woman’ might be. Her mum might be too stricken to do anything about it but not Kitty. Anyway, tonight her parents had travelled in together and she expected they still had good enough manners not to conduct a skirmish in public. Not on her big night. That would be death.

  Kitty looked at herself in the mirror, felt a flush of satisfaction. She was perfect for Nellie Forbush and Nellie was perfect for her. She should have been nervous but she wasn’t. She was ready. The boy playing opposite her as Emile was nowhere near as sophisticated as was required by the role but she didn’t let that put her off. Nothing, not even her adulterous father, could divert her now.

  ‘Three minutes.’

  Henry Weston was the prompt and director’s assistant. She took a deep breath, others fretted. Last-minute touches of make-up: boys in sailor suits flicking and punching each other, girls checking the mirror again and again, the babble of the audience rising, Mr Cobham’s anxious last cigarette drifting in from the side door, the lights dim, a hush, one loud nervous laugh.

  ‘But what’s this one?’ Her first lines would be spoken offstage. You nailed the first one, everything else would follow. She knew every line. Not just hers, everybody’s. More than once in rehearsal somebody had slipped up and she’d been able to save the day.

  Why couldn’t husbands and wives love one another forever and ever?

  ‘But what’s this one?’ She knew how she was going to deliver it with just the right degree of curious inflection. Henry Weston cued her. She got up from her chair and walked to where ‘Emile’ was jiggling nervously, shaking his fingers out like he was on the diving block for the fifty-five yards. He was the school’s best swimmer but she blanked that out. He was Emile. The band finished the overture.

  Blackout. She filled her lungs with air.

  ‘But what’s this one?’

  It’s funny how your brain has shadows and something can lurk there, something that should have been flushed out in the open by a patrolman’s torch but it never happens, or not until you least expect it. He was out the back of the Surf Shack. He and Panza were already set up but as usual Duck had been late so Blake thought he’d help out by grabbing the kit from the van. Duck carried out the bass drum so Blake just reached in to haul out a floor-tom and a cymbal stand. That’s when he smelled the marihuana, still fresh. Duck was late because he had been smoking that weed again. Which Blake’d asked him not to, at least not around the club, and maybe Duck had figured in order to comply he’d smoke his weed before he arrived. It wasn’t that though that pricked Blake. It was recalling when he’d asked Duck to stop. That was as a result of the cop, Vernon, who had come to the Surf Shack because a marihuana cigarette had been found in Valerie Stokes’ motel room — along with a matchbook from the Surf Shack. Valerie Stokes had never been in the Surf Shack but she could have picked up the matchbook at, say, the Heads. Could have. But she hadn’t likely picked it up at Clarke’s house. Winston Clarke had never been in to the Surf Shack, nor his son. Not even on that night in question. So, whoever left that matchbook might be her killer. And whoever gave her the dope might be her killer …

  ‘Sorry I was late, man. Had a blocked drain, last minute.’

  He looked at Duck, thinking thoughts he didn’t want to think.

  They rehearsed one new song he’d written and a bunch of others just to stay across them but his mind was elsewhere the whole time. He told Duck he may as well pack up, he just wanted to run through the new chords again with Panza. Duck didn’t need an invitation. Panza and he ran through the chords — a good thing anyway because Panza had one of the changes wrong.

  ‘I was thinking about that night the Stokes girl was killed — in case the police interview me again with the trial and all, or I get called as some sort of witness. When you left, was Crane out the back?’

  ‘Yeah, remember I spoke to the lawyer and he asked me all this stuff. Crane was sitting there when I left.’

  ‘What about Duck? When did he go?’

  ‘He left pretty quickly. There were a few of those contestant girls milling around. I thought Duck must have scored with one of them ’cause he left in a hurry like he was on a promise. He had to jam his brakes on near the exit — nearly hit one of the girls — the sexy blonde. Wasn’t his fault actually, she wasn’t looking, pulled out in front, she’d just had a barney with the boyfriend.’

  Blake remembered the blonde. He searched for a name … Brenda.

  Panza was worried. ‘Crane’s in the clear, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think so, but you know, cops … I like to get a picture of how it was.’

  ‘The girl that got killed. She was never in here, right?’

  ‘No. Thank God.’

  But she had been outside earlier. And so had Duck.

  It was almost ten, probably too late to call Nalder, but he called anyway.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me, Sergeant. Glad you’re still up.’

  ‘Untouchables, just finished. I told you not to bother me at home.’

  ‘I’m sorry. One thing: what make was the van Thomas Clarke claimed he saw leaving the Ocean View Motel?’

  ‘Why the fuck do you want to know?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Bedford. He said it was a Bedford.’

  Duck’s van was a Bedford.

  Even before Doreen took her seat in the school hall, she was feeling the happiest she had in months. Blake had called around with flowers, and though she was sure he didn’t mean that in a romantic way, dammit that made it even better, because Blake wasn’t trying to woo her, just to do something to make her happy. That was romantic. The school hall doubled as a gymnasium. It was boomy and the rows of school chairs were a bit skew-whiff, having obviously been set up by the junior kids who looked awkward standing around in school uniforms. The parents had dressed up, wome
n in long gloves, men in jackets and ties. She waited till most of them were seated before looking for a single seat. The band consisted of a woman who was likely the music teacher at an upright piano, a boy about fifteen on drums whose hair had been Brylcreemed and parted, and some high-school horn players. She made out two saxophones, a flute and a clarinet. She was guessing they were all music students. It wasn’t Duke Ellington but they were in tune and in time enough that you could recognise the songs in the overture. The lights dimmed, the audience hushed and she felt her heart beating fast. She was more nervous for Kitty than she would have been for herself. Lately Kitty had not only got herself back on track but grown stronger. She prayed that it went well, did not want to see Kitty back in that horrible place of a couple of months ago. She was a great kid, funny, talented and she’d worked so hard on her dancing. Kitty spoke offstage.

  ‘But what’s this one?’

  A moment later Kitty strode on. She was like a fireball sucking oxygen toward her. The other kids weren’t in the same league. Even though Kitty didn’t have the greatest voice you’d ever heard, she went off here and there, she had so much bounce and confidence and vitality that you didn’t care. She made ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’ her song, and when you knew what had happened to her in the holidays, the triumph was all the sweeter. Kitty had been telling her she wanted to be an actress and now, looking at her on stage you could see it. Doreen wished she’d had that confidence but you have it or you don’t. She wasn’t a leading lady, she was chorus, good legs, could dance most styles. She remembered all the sensible things your teachers told you: if you’re in the chorus you may not get the star on your door but you’ll always be in work. The leading ladies were either hot as a bushfire or cold as a Canberra frost. Maybe that was true, she’d not been long enough in stage musicals to know. The money in cabaret and clubs was better. Personally in the play, it wasn’t Nellie that she identified with but the Asian girl who fell in love with the American. She felt teary when he was killed but that was quickly smashed away by her applauding palms. Kitty made a point of looking for her. Because she was hidden behind a tall man, she had to move her head so Kitty could see she was there.