by Tim Winton
She got better. The twins were born and she cried for three days, but she pulled herself together. I worked hard and brought in a lot of money and improved the house still more. Everything was good. Greta was content with the boys.
But something went wrong somewhere. Six months after the twins were born, Greta changed. She seemed distracted. She was a scrupulous mother, she did everything right, she spared the twins nothing, but I’d come into the room and find her suckling them, one on each breast, with a look of awful sadness on her face. She looked as though she was waiting to die.
Not long after, she stopped eating meat. It didn’t bother me. When I saw it made her ill to see me eat it, I quit too.
The kids grew. I climbed into work each morning, and for eight hours I thought of nothing but the smell and the feel and the weight of wood. I made us a lot of money.
For a long time Greta hid the rash from me. It was red and ugly and puckered. Her skin felt as though it had been embossed. Greta said it was a side effect of the pill.
We didn’t linger over sex. It was a gradual thing. Greta never joked about it anymore. I started going without. It was weeks, then months. The boys took my mind off it. I used to laugh at their crazy infant dialect as we played under the big purple lilac in the spring.
I waited for her – she was my wife – I knew she needed time. But there was nothing. Even Greta’s affection for me seemed to dry up. She never touched me, never said anything gentle; there was no intimacy in her. She hardly looked at me. Every now and then she would get drunk and melt a little, enough to laugh and to hug me and even lead me to the bedroom, but it always ended with her in tears and me going mad out in the workshop.
It was like starving to death.
Greta saw doctors about the rash. She saw a psychotherapist about sex but he wanted her dreams and I could have told him that Greta never remembered dreams.
Some nights when I fled to the workshop, her weeping sounded wrong. I thought I heard laughter. It was a sick noise. My whole life was warping like a plank in the sun. That’s when the hatred came into me.
The night I was desperate and pitiful enough to try to make love with my wife while she was asleep, the night that made her look at me as though I was diseased, that was the night I decided to kill Fred Blakey.
When I went back inside that night, the house was quiet. I went to the big grey filing cabinet in the study and took out all our documents relating to the trial: letters from the lawyer, copies of legal documents, some rape pamphlets, a few notes I’d made during the proceedings. I sifted them on the desk. It made me cold to see the letterheads, even the shape of my own handwriting from the time. In the file there was a slip of paper which bore nothing but the words: a minimum of two. Blakey might be out already, I thought. I checked back through the dates. No, he’d still be inside, but nearly due for parole. The twins found me asleep in the reading chair in the morning. They thought it was great fun.
During the day I looked up some old telephone directories and found where Blakey’s house was and at dusk I went driving. On my way through the city I passed the Public Service building where Greta had worked. The sight of it did something to me. I turned into the entrance of the multi-storey carpark just down the Terrace, stopped there for a while, and backed out. I couldn’t make myself go in. From there I went across the bridge and found Blakey’s house in the suburb by the river where all the doctors and the lawyers live and everything stinks of new money. Blakey’s place was an open-front, glassy shoebox arrangement with the lights of the city on the river melting up towards it. Outside, I sat for some time. I don’t know why I got out of the car. I was just doing things; my brain seemed a step behind every action.
I walked up the long, wide, curving driveway, found the double doors in a portico dense with bougainvillea, and rang the bell. A small woman came to the door. She looked drunk.
‘Is Mr Blakey home?’
‘No.’ She leaned carefully on the door.
‘When will he be back?’
‘Are you a friend?’
‘We have someone in common, I suppose.’
‘He won’t be back. We’re divorced.’
She shut the big jarrah doors in my face.
All the way home I thought about Blakey, tried to remember what he looked like. He was taller than me and about as broad. Thick hair the colour of dead grass. He had a strong-featured face that was going to fat and he sat like a man who was used to sitting. At the trial, and at a work party where Greta introduced him to me once, he looked to me as though he’d only be comfortable at a desk or behind the wheel of a car. He talked a lot and loud.
The day after I visited Blakey’s wife I did something I promised Greta and myself I would never do; I rang my old school friend Tony Mitchell. I knew then that I was serious. I really would kill Fred Blakey.
Tony Mitchell was an education officer at Fremantle Gaol. He’d made a lousy teacher in the state school system. I hadn’t seen him since he began at Fremantle. He owed me a favour. In those early bare months after the trial, I sometimes wondered whether my old friend Tony Mitchell ever saw the man who raped my wife. I wanted to know what it was like for Blakey in prison; I needed to know he was scared and unpopular, but Greta didn’t. The rape is over, I told myself; the man is in gaol. The past is the past. I determined never to use Tony Mitchell to satisfy my curiosity.
Tony Mitchell took a while to remember who I was. When he did recognize me on the phone he sounded vexed, as though he deserved an explanation.
‘What do you say to a drink?’ I asked.
‘Well —’
‘Lunchtime tomorrow?’
‘Been a long time, Neil.’ Tony Mitchell was the only person alive who called me by my first name. Even Greta and my mother in Sydney called me Madigan.
The bar was crowded in the pub where we met in Fremantle. From it you could see the prison buttress above the tin rooftops of houses. Tony Mitchell had a stool saved for me at the corner of the bar. He was thin and looked as though he didn’t know what to expect. We shook hands, made the tentative connections again. I bought him a few beers. He seemed worried.
‘I need a favour,’ I said after twenty minutes. ‘As an old friend.’
He went stony. ‘And it would have to be illegal.’ Tony Mitchell owed me some favours. He had married young. Foolishly, I’d made him and his wife a whole dining suite for nothing because they were short of money; it took me months to recover financially.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Unethical, maybe.’
Tony fooled with his glass. ‘You in trouble?’
I shook my head. ‘You don’t know my wife, do you? She was raped —’
‘Madigan! I can’t —’
‘So you know him?’
‘Shit, Madigan.’ He drank off his beer and looked ready to leave. ‘Yes, now that I’ve blurted it out. I know Fred Blakey.’
The old curiosity got me. ‘What’s he like inside?’
‘He’s all right. Getting old quick. Doing a degree in literature and politics externally.’
‘Popular?’
‘The screws like him. The boys like him well enough. Rapists aren’t pick of the crowd inside.’
‘He gets parole soon, doesn’t he?’
‘Madigan, I can’t talk to you about Blakey. Give me a break.’
‘All I want is some information. For a favour. You remember favours.’
‘What’re you gonna do? You can’t dish out your own justice. Blakey’s been punished. It has to stop somewhere.’
And I was thinking: what about for Greta, when does it finish for her? And me, when does my bloody life go back to normal, when do I get back everything that once belonged to me, for Chrissake?
‘I’m not dishing out any justice.’
‘How is your wife?’
‘Fine.’ I shrugged. ‘I just want some information. I sort of know the guy – he’s not a stranger. I thought I might clear the air.’
I bought him ano
ther drink, kept him on his seat. He looked hard at me. He didn’t believe me for a moment.
‘I just want to know when he gets out and what his address’ll be outside. Just so I can contact him.’
‘I’m sure he’s in the phone book.’
‘Didn’t you hear about the divorce?’
‘I’m in the business of helping guys improve themselves —’
‘And I’m not gonna stand in the way of that.’
‘I’ve got principles, Madigan.’
‘Must be improving yourself, while you’re at it. Things changed since the state schools, have they?’
He put down his beer. ‘I’ve gotta be back.’
‘One phone call.’
‘Don’t hold your breath,’ he said, already walking.
I finished his beer and ordered myself another.
He rang three weeks later. Greta was beside me when I took the call; I felt her looking at me.
‘June 12. Morning.’ He hung up. That was all, but it was enough. I got to wondering why he did it at all. We were school mates and team mates from football. There was a favour outstanding. It was about a rape. We were men. I would have done the same.
Five weeks passed. Greta and I didn’t speak much. We had the boys for a buffer. Greta had never been a weak person. She was independent – wilful even – when I married her. People said she wasn’t afraid of men, of anybody. They liked her forthrightness and her kindness. I loved her for the way she looked and the way she could tell you to go to hell. She took charge of a situation. I just liked wood, happy to work as my own boss, confident that Greta and me had our own domains and the shared privacy of the house and the place our bodies made when we made love. We chatted and gossiped. We did things. People liked the sight of us together.
But those five weeks before Fred Blakey got out, we lay straight as nails in bed and Greta dressed in the dark and scratched herself and whimpered in her sleep. Doors were always locked and windows closed. Greta was no longer strong. I worked distractedly, got so far behind schedule that it seemed hopeless. All day I thought about Fred Blakey and at dinner Greta looked at me as though I might pounce at any moment.
The days were short and never warm. At night Greta sat with the twins in front of the TV until they were asleep, then she went to bed herself and I sat up alone, picking splinters from my palms. My body began to feel as though something had been hacked out of it.
One night I went in to bed and in the dark I heard her talking. I stopped before she heard me and I discovered that she was praying. I got into bed and hugged her hard. She yelped.
‘Fred Blakey will pay, Greta,’ I murmured in her ear. ‘I swear it.’
She writhed free and I let her lie nail-straight beneath the quilt.
On the evening of June 11 I did two things. First I rang Tony Mitchell and he told me to go to hell. Someone, a woman, was shouting in the background. I’d had some scotches; it was a bad idea to ring him. I had nothing to say to him in any case.
The second thing I did was more hopeful, but it went bad all the same. I took Greta out to an Italian place we’d been regulars at soon after we married. I drove her, organized the babysitter, opened doors for her. She needed to know I cared and understood.
We sat by the window with its ferns and baskets and bottles, watching people walk past to the cinemas and cafés. Across the way, a club washed the street the colour of sunset. I bought wine. The food was good: things in butter and rich sauces, pasta without meat on the sort of china we used to slip into handbags when things were tougher. Greta wore a light suit, all crushed and sultry-looking. The collar of bone beneath her throat was sweet to see. Her dark hair was short and showed her ears and that neck and I felt grateful for her. When she moved, in those nervous jerks she’d acquired, her breasts shifted and her hands furled and unfurled and it didn’t seem so bad that there was no talk between us.
As we finished our coffee, Greta picked at breadcrumbs on the tablecloth and spoke quietly without looking up.
‘What did you mean about Fred Blakey?’
Now that I looked at the top of her shirt I could see where she’d tried to disguise the ugly rash with powder.
‘What I said. Only that he’d pay.’ I smiled. ‘I didn’t know you had any religion.’
She continued to gather crumbs, eyes down. ‘You wouldn’t do anything stupid, would you?’
‘I’ve done stupid things before.’
‘If you ever —’
‘You were praying. I heard you. What do you pray about?’
‘I want to go home, Madigan.’
When we were out on the street, a dog ran from an alley and Greta shrieked, flattened herself against me, then after a moment, as the dog, running circles around the traffic lights, began to stop traffic, she unpicked herself from me and we walked back to the car like acquaintances.
June 12 was a Monday. By 7.15 that morning, I was parked outside the football ground that backs on to Fremantle Gaol. Rain fell in short turns. There was no wind though I could smell the harbour plain enough. All the limestone buildings downtown looked pretty in the dull light with the sky behind. The long, high walls of the prison were of limestone also, but they were grim and no light, no weather could ever pretty them up.
No one seemed to take special notice of me. There was a hospital and some houses and the football ground close by, and the prison entrance was sixty metres down the hill, so my being there didn’t need to seem suspicious.
I’d thought about what Blakey might do. If he was anything like me, he’d head straight down the hill for the nearest pub, walk those narrow streets to smell the fruit and coffee and see the women and the docks. Beside me on the seat of the rented car were a big wide roll of masking tape for the number plates, a stocking for my head and a claw hammer in case of something unforeseen. When Fred Blakey came out onto the street and headed downtown, I would have plenty of time to tape up and disguise myself before running him down.
Cars came and went just after eight; the shift changing.
I wasn’t nervous; I was like a lump of wood.
At 9.20 Fred Blakey drove past in a white VW with a woman at the wheel. The car came out of the entrance-way, turned up towards me and went past, going up the hill. They didn’t appear to have seen me. I didn’t know it was him until he was past and up round the bend. For a few moments I sat still, hands on the wheel. Then I started the little sedan and threw it into a U-turn up the hill.
A woman! I’d expected a broken man, spurned by all, shuffling out on the road, walking into Fremantle to survey his chances, here he was, the bastard, with a woman collecting him at the gate. I drove hard. I had no plan.
Around the bend the VW wasn’t to be seen. The lumpy road intersected with the north-south highway and on instinct I turned left to go north towards Perth. Buses and trucks stagnated the traffic. I found gaps, worked my way through, made good ground, and after a few minutes, I saw Blakey’s car on a hill ahead. Eventually, I got within five cars of him and I kept my distance.
We wove round the river past shipyards and boatpens and yachtclubs until the better suburbs ran to the foreshore. I saw the two heads in the VW tilting towards one another in conversation, and all the time I tried to organize the business in my mind, to make some plan.
In time we reached the suburb where Blakey and his wife lived, but instead of passing through, as I expected, Blakey’s girlfriend turned into a sidestreet away from the river and up through the trees and rich verges into a quiet avenue. I hung back without the cover of other cars. The VW slipped into a gravel drive between pines and I coasted past, got the number and drove home.
All day I sat alone in the workshop. Greta hung out the washing with the boys at her knee. When she reached up and exposed the back of her legs I saw her with Fred Blakey and I could barely breathe. She saw the hire car later in the day, just looked hard at me and I kept away.
At dinner I joked with the twins and drank some beer. Greta brought out a lifeless v
egetable casserole. She was remote. When she passed I had the feeling you get as a schoolboy when the prettiest girl in the class slides past: helplessness and gloom.
‘Where did you go this morning?’
I said nothing. I wanted so much to talk. Later I said, ‘Things’ll get better. They will.’
For a moment her eyes lifted. The lines beneath them made her older than she was. She looked tired and sick. I wanted her. She turned to the twins, gave them toneless baby talk and supervised their meal.
Late the same evening I parked in the street where I’d left Fred Blakey earlier in the day. In the dark, I walked past a few times until I had an idea of the place. It was a closed-in kind of house, thick with trees and shrubs, every kind of creeper, rockeries, retaining walls, small pools of lawn. Not a vast place, but very comfortable; it made mine look quaint.
I took the stocking and the hammer with me when I finally went down between those pines towards the house. The grass was wet and quiet. Neighbouring houses were obscured by walls and vegetation, so I had no reasonable fear of being observed.
The first window I came to had a faint light in it. It seemed to be a livingroom: couches, a roaring stereo, standard lamp, and a sleeping dog. The stereo saved me; the dog seemed overwhelmed by Elton John. I couldn’t match up Fred Blakey with Elton John. Mantovani, perhaps.
I picked through the garden to other windows, but they were dark and had the curtains drawn. From out there the manic piano of the record sounded weird and set my nerves awry. The final window, a big paned bay window, was carelessly draped with a faint pink light sifting out. I eased up from a crouch in the flowerbed and saw through gaps in the curtains that the room was a bedroom and occupied.