Mallawindy (27 page)

‘Was it that bad?'

‘I thought ... I thought you'd be experienced.'

‘You sound like a character from a Jane Austen novel.'

‘I feel like one. Some rakish cad. Why did you call me, Ann?'

‘Your number came up on the computer.' He didn't reply. ‘I think the man I'm marrying is gay, and I know I'm going to run at the altar – or if I don't, I'll damage him for life when he tries it,' she said.

‘You think he's gay and you're still going to marry him!'

‘His mother had a heart attack two years ago. He wants to give her a grandchild. Two actually.'

‘Do you love him?'

‘I don't know. He's a good friend.' She breathed deeply, and turned to face this beautiful man. ‘Everything I ever do is wrong, David. Every plan I ever make is wrong. I came home today to see Mum. That was a very bad move. I don't know why I drove up to Warran. Probably because I wanted to be close to where you were. I don't know. Was it so wrong?'

‘What do I say? What can I say?'

She slid from the bed. ‘It didn't feel wrong. It felt like the least wrong thing I have ever done in my life,' she said, and she walked to the shower.

He heard the shower's hiss, and waited, unsure of her next
move. Would she steal away while he was sleeping? His limbs spread in the tumbled bed while he waited for the water to be turned off. His eyes closed.

It was just before dawn when he woke and knew the bed he was in was not his own. Memory filtered back. He felt for her beside him, but he was alone. He sprang up, found the light switch, stared into white light. Her case was on the bench. He looked through the window, saw her car was there.

He found her in the bathroom, sitting on the floor, scribbling on the back of a motel breakfast menu, the bottle of cherry brandy at her side.

‘So you're still here,' he said.

‘You too.'

‘What are you doing?'

‘Making a shopping list.'

She was wearing a towel, and he reached out a hand, exploring the painfully thin shoulder, the child-like curve of neck. He wanted to gather her back into his arms, but he stood, turned to the mirror. She was making the rules. ‘It's almost dawn,' he said. ‘Warran still has a small town mentality. Our reputations will be in shreds.'

‘I didn't like mine much anyhow.' She stood then, holding her towel close and brushing the damp strands of hair from her face. He watched her fold the menu and place it in a briefcase, lock the briefcase. ‘You go if you want to, David. What do you want to do?'

‘What a silly, silly question.' And he reached for her, gathered her to him, and he kissed a mouth, fresh with toothpaste. ‘What a silly, silly question, you idiot girl.'

It was with some cynicism that Malcolm Fletcher watched the building of a new brick school. For twenty years he'd pleaded for improvements, but his plea had been ignored. Still, he goaded his students, he drove them with sarcasm, and he whipped them with his tongue, his voice overriding the hammer and the drill. He taught the unteachable, and he sipped his brandy from a teacup until the final bell.

On that last day, the bell rang non-stop for six hours, and when townspeople complained, and the rope was removed, Robby West's youngest son shimmied up the pole and the bell continued to peal.

Malcolm now at retirement age, was given six weeks to get out of the schoolhouse. No-one cared that he had no place to go. They bought him a cheap gold watch, allowed him to declare the new school open, then the solid citizens hurried away, eager to indulge the new man who was promising to inject some enthusiasm into the dust.

Malcolm bought a new Falcon stationwagon, suitable to his stature. He bought a caravan and a five-hectare paddock from Bluey Fraser. He chose it because it faced the Burton property, gave him a perfect view of Jack Burton's bedroom window.

It took two days to load his caravan, and one more and a bottle
to raise nerve enough to tow it away. His new car aimed in the direction of the river road, Malcolm hoped his caravan would follow. It jibbed at the bridge, so he stopped, halting a truckload of beef one side and the town clerk's new Toyota on the o
ther. While they cursed him, he walked around his van and edged sideways through its door, exiting with the gold watch. He studied it a moment, nodded to the town clerk, and the farmer, then he flung the watch high, watching the sunlight catch it and glide with it into deep water. It shimmered as it sank. He stood at the railing until the watch disappeared from view. Chubby cheeks trembling with suppressed amusement, Malcolm drove on to commence the next phase of his life.

The year came in wild, intent on leaving its mark on Mallawindy. Bert Norris died two hours into New Year's Day. He left his house, business, and bank accounts to Ben Burton and Deadeye Dooley. Then on the 4th of January, Ethel Dooley, long-term cook at the Central, dropped dead at the stove, throwing the counter meals into chaos, and leaving a husband, fifteen children and umpteen grandchildren to welfare.

‘Two down, one to go,' the old ones whispered, eyeing each other for signs of imminent demise. Death always came in threes.

Deadeye, still in a daze over his good fortune, couldn't wipe the dollar signs from his glass eye. It dazzled as his mother's coffin was lowered, it tallied when his father over-balanced and almost followed his wife to her rest. It subtracted as he dragged his father back to the brand new car he'd bought on account of he was going to be able to afford it as soon as probate went through.

Unchanged by the years, untouched by the sun of Mallawindy, protected in the cool dark cavern of his bar room, Mick Bourke, owner/barman of the Central Hotel poured beer into glasses while drinkers poured cash into his pocket. He was stressed out. He needed a new cook. His wife was giving everyone indigestion, and
Jack Burton was giving him indigestion by asking for credit again.

The heat of that last January day was threatening everyone's sanity.

‘You've got a few bob on it from before Christmas, Jack,' Mick said.

‘You'll get your money. You always get your money.' The price of whisky was high. Inflation had reduced Jack'
s annual income to a pittance. There was money to be had at Narrawee, but he had to crawl to get it and May was turning the screws. There had been no cheque for three months, and he was stony motherless broke.

‘It's your liver,' Mick said. He reached for his top shelf and passed a full bottle across the bar. He took his red account book from beneath the bar, licked his pencil, coughed, grabbed his heart, and that was the last move he made.

Jack walked away with a free bottle and the old ones in town breathed deep sighs of relief and gossiped on, safe again now the third pin had fallen.

For years now, Ellie Burton had been hearing rumours about women's liberation, but she'd learned early to close her ears to gossip. She ironed Jack's shirts and cooked his meals. She didn't miss him when he wasn't around, and she dodged his bad moods when he was. She collected her eggs for the egg board, she milked her cows and fed her pigs, while her golden hair paled to white at the temples.

In the evenings, when she sat alone doing the crosswords, the old house seemed to ache with silence, and the iron roof groaned, as if it too mourned her lost children. The blackened rafters in the kitchen trapped no more childish laughter, hid no more children's tears. The beds were still made up in the empty rooms, though cobwebs hung grey in dark comers. Rusty hinges creaked, windows rattled, doors slammed on still evenings. And sometimes . . .
sometimes on the darkest night when the air was still, Ellie swore she heard the plaintive cry of a child trembling on the air, and from the yard, bright eyes watched and seemed to follow her.

Only an owl. Only a feral cat, or some wild thing of the forest.

Ann wasn't in the private ward. David found her sitting alone in the sunroom.

‘Get me out of here,' she said.

‘Doctor Williams wants you to stay in for a few days. Dad and Mum are flying over from New Zealand at the weekend. They said they'd stay as long as necessary.'

‘Just what the doctor ordered.' Ann turned, walked to the door.

‘You're not supposed to be walking around. Sit down, or better still, go back to your room and lie down.'

‘Heel, Mickey,' she said. ‘Come to heel, boy. Sit. Roll over, and play dead.'

‘Do you want to lose the baby, Ann? Williams warned you that it wasn't going to be an easy pregnancy, and yet you go racing up to your bloody old school teacher's death-bed instead of looking after yourself. Is he more important to you than our baby?'

‘They told me he was going to die, and I sat with him for two days and I wouldn't let him die. He lived because I made him live.'

‘And in the process you almost lost the baby.'

‘If it is determined not to survive, then no doubt it will succeed. Far better we lose it before we know it.'

‘You won't lose it if you do as you are told.'

‘But I don't. I never did. Don't try to control me, David.'

Control her? That was surely a witticism. She was still the girl he'd known and loved at sixteen, but so much more. She was a businesswoman, a supervisor of builders, and something else, some indefinable quantity he couldn't fathom.

He'd railroaded her to the altar. When his freedom papers were in his hand, she didn't want marriage. They'd had a wonderful year. The best of his life. The best of her life, she said. ‘Don't try to cage me, David. Leave me free to come and go at will. I'll never leave you again, but sometimes I need to be by myself.'

How many times had she repeated those words? But too afraid of losing her again, he'd forced the issue and tried to tie her to him with a wedding ring. The pregnancy so soon had been a mistake. The house in Mahoneys Lane was barely finished, their plans placed on hold because of the baby, but for a while she'd seemed pleased. Then, for no apparent reason, she'd begun disappearing for the day. ‘Just felt like a trip to Melbourne. Just wanted to be by myself.' She'd creep from his bed in the middle of the night, and he'd find her walking the yard, or seated at the table scribbling stuff she locked in her briefcase.

The briefcase was kept beneath her side of the bed. She caught him as he was about to open it one night, and she snatched it from his hand, snatched the key. ‘Private. It's clearly marked private, David. Can you read, or will I add. Keep Out Snoopers?'

The key went missing from her key ring that day. Now she wore it like a charm on her watch band. For days after, she'd barely spoken to him. He couldn't touch her. She slept in a spare room.

‘Hormones,' Williams diagnosed, when David went to him seeking advice. ‘Hormones and the fear of miscarriage.'

It was more than hormones, and David knew it. He wanted this baby, and he hated the fat old slug of a teacher Ann treated like some god.

‘Right from the first weeks, you made no concessions to the baby, Ann. Climbing up and down ladders like a monkey, sewing
curtains at all hours of the night. You didn't want to become pregnant, did you?'

‘No, I didn't. Not so soon – but I don't want it to die, either, so don't go trying to heap any more guilt at my door. There's mullock-heap enough there already.' She turned to face him, her eyes searching his face. ‘You were the one who wanted marriage. Not me. I told you it wouldn't work. We're together, day in, day out. I need space, and I don't need someone trying to tell me how to live my life.'

She walked from the room and he followed her to her private ward where he sat with her case on her bed. Her briefcase was beside it. She never moved without the thing – and he didn't know what she kept in it. Two weeks of marriage to Melissa and there had been no more surprises left, but each week with Ann only made the puzzle more intricate. There was no working her out. The pieces didn't fit into any recognisable pattern.

He watched her slam wardrobe doors and open locker drawers, her jaw tense but determined. Aware that he'd said more than he should, he waited until the case was packed, closed.

‘Why won't you stay here? Just for a few days. Pop back into bed, please. You're worrying me. You're as white as a ghost.'

She picked up the case. He took it from her.

‘Leave me here for another night and I'll be a ghost, or in a nut house. Hospitals are for the dead and dying. I'm going to live, David, and with a bit of luck this baby will too – if you get me out of here. I hate hospitals and poking, prying doctors. I hate them. They make my head crawl.'

‘Have you spoken to Doctor Williams today?'

‘Get me out of here! Now! I'm falling into a black pit, and there's a tonne of dirt pressing on my lungs. I can't think about it or I can't breathe. I'm suffocating in here.'

‘Sit down while I telephone him.'

‘You pick up that phone and I start walking, and when I get home, I start driving.'

‘Oh, Jesus,' he moaned. ‘What am I going to do with you?'

‘I can't change what I am. I wish I could. I don't want to lose the baby, and I didn't do anything wrong.
I sat with a lonely old man who has no-one else to sit at his side, and he held my hand as if it were a precious thing. If you find something in me to love, then know that he alone planted it there. He is part of my life, David, and apart from you, the major part. He can become a part of our life, or you can continue to see his bloated old exterior and hate him each time I run to his side – but know, know now, if he needs me, run I will.'

David's mother thought her new daughter-in-law was intolerable. She said it often. Said it loudly. She and her husband arrived in Warran on the Saturday, having packed for the duration. She had decided to tolerate the intolerable because of the pregnancy. Beggars with an only son couldn't afford to be too choosy.

Three days after the senior Taylors moved into the second bedroom, Ann moved Bronwyn and her cigarettes into the third. Marge Taylor couldn't tolerate smoke. Within days of Bronwyn's arrival, Ann began stealing the occasional cigarette, as she had when she was with Roger.

It was too much for Marge. The bomb had been fizzing since she arrived. Now it went off with a bang. Ann took off in her car and David drove his parents to Sydney and put them on a plane back to New Zealand.

Bronwyn remained. She was twenty, temporally unattached and unemployed, and Ann loved having her around.

‘Get off your feet, Annie,' she'd demand. ‘You think I want to see another baby born on a kitchen floor?'

It was working. For free board and lodging, Bronwyn became David's built-in watchdog. Ann was resting, but her hands were busy beading the gown she'd once intended sewing for her own wedding. Some bride in Melbourne would wear it now, but they
wouldn't wear the old lace. Ann had posted it back to May.

If it wasn't quite the life David had imagined for himself, he made few complaints, and he got on well with Bronwyn. The sisters had some physical similarities, but Bronwyn was an open book, where there was a wall of glass beneath the facade Ann showed to the world. He couldn't break through it.

'That girl is hiding something,' his mother said, when he left her at the airport. 'You mark my words, son.'

Maybe she was right.

In late June, Mallawindy was hit by another spate of deaths. It was an old town, where aged pensioners ruled. Bessy's husband was the first pin to fall, and Mr Mack the third. Ellie Burton's childhood home went to auction, and Ben bought it for a song. The house was a wreck, the property run down.

Ellie came with Bessy to look at the house; they wept as they walked neglected rooms, then Bessy went home to the no-frills farmhouse she'd shared with Bill for almost forty years. Ellie stayed on. Jack was in Narrawee again, so she came each day with her scrubbing brush and bucket. She ordered wallpaper and paint, and she scrubbed and pruned. Ben worked at her side, a half smile on his lips. He had played the last ace in his hand and he'd finally won the game.

Ellie shed ten years in as many weeks. She climbed ladders, hanging wallpaper as she had with her father so many years ago. She hadn't forgotten how it was done, how to cut and trim like a professional. She polished windows and watered dying creepers, and she drove with Ben to Daree where they ordered linoleum for the floors and a new rug for the lounge room.

When it was fit again to inhabit, and Ben bought his small case of possessions to stay, he asked which room had been Ellie's.

'I always had the little attic room, love,' she said, then she saw his expression. 'Oh no. I won't be moving. I could never have your Dad here. He hates this house and all it ever stood for.'

'I bought the house for you. Mum.'

‘I know why you bought it, and you're the best son any mother could ever wish to have, but I can't leave your Dad. He needs me, love. I'm the only one in the world who accepts him as he is.'

‘What about when you need him? He leaves you, Mum. Every time a letter comes from that rotten place, he goes off and leaves you for months.'

‘I know, love. I know. But he's not happy here. His roots are in that land, like mine and yours are here. Now I've got my old home cleaned up for you, it will be like having my Dad living here again. You're so much like him. Just think, love, when you get your bridge built, I'll be able to run across and cook your dinner, just like I used to do for my Dad. I'll sit in your front parlour, have the church ladies down for afternoon tea. You're such a good boy, Benjie. You've made me so happy, knowing I can walk straight in that front door again. I don't know what I would have done without you all these years.'

Ben moved into the house alone, and he stocked his thirty acres with heifer calves bought cheap, and he measured the height of the gums trees he'd planted half a lifetime ago.

‘We wait hundred year for tree will grow tall.'
Annie had signed.

‘When I'm thirty they'll be tall enough. I'll chop them down and they'll land on Aunty Bessy's side and I'll hammer a few planks on them, that's all.'
A small boy's dream. It had seemed so simple back then.

Each year he trimmed his trees, only allowing the top canopy to grow. His care and cow manure had paid dividends. The trees were tall enough to reach his side of the river. He'd chosen his site well back then. The banks were high, the river narrow. They'd reach. But – . ‘Give them year,' he said. ‘Another year and I'll give it a go.'

Jack sat in May's parlour, drinking coffee. May wouldn't give an inch on her house rules and she could sniff out smuggled bottles
with the perspicacity of a bloodhound on the scent of a decomposing bone. Through the years too much money had been emptied down her sink; he even stopped hiding them in the sheds. His mother still lingered here in odd places. Maybe she helped to keep him sober here; maybe he didn't want her ghost to see him drunk.

He was looking at her photograph now. Tall, and too fine, she was already sick when the photograph was taken. He placed the picture to one side and sorted through an old box of photographs.
May leaned over his shoulder as he reached for a professional study of Ann and Liza. He turned to her. ‘Is there any more of that shit in the pot?'

‘Try calling it coffee, dear, and you'll never sleep tonight.' She refilled his coffee cup, handed it to him.

‘Thanks.' He took up a sepia photograph of his grandmother. ‘That's who she takes after,' he said. ‘She's breeding, they tell me.'

‘Is she happy? What is David like?'

‘Who's happy?' Jack's hand reached for a professional shot of twin toddlers. Even at that early age, he could recognise himself. Identical in feature and dress, Sam was sitting straight, his smile fixed. Little Jacky had been trapped with one hand reaching for a bribe off camera. ‘A wild little bugger, even back then,' he said. ‘Look at good little Sammie sitting up there as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Why did you marry that mongrel?'

‘That's enough of that subject. We do not discuss Sam.'

‘Bugger your rules. May. When is the perverted bastard's appointment?'

‘Stop this. Jack! And it's at two.'

A disintegrating rubber band held a collection of yellowing newspaper cuttings in an envelope. Jack opened the envelope and slipped the papers out, reading again an old tale he knew well. He lit a cigarette and spread the papers before him on the table. ‘The world screwed me good. This is my bloody land.'

‘It belongs to Sam and to me.' He laughed, and she added, 'We
all have to make the best of what life hands out to us, or we rot. I learned that early. You have to decide what your priorities are, or you go down whingeing, blaming the world for your own mistakes. Put those photos away now. They always upset you, always get you started on Sam. You were fine until you started looking at them.'