by Joanna Baker
She drove Paul through the jostling lunchtime traffic of Sandy Bay Road and Davey Street, turned into her driveway and stopped outside the garage. Gordon’s car was parked in the circle in front of the house. He must have driven in the bottom gate. He was just getting out of his car. When he heard them arrive he glanced up, then turned to look down across the garden. He had seen something there. He went towards the lawn and Veronica and Paul followed.
Roland was under the cypresses, sitting on the dry, dead ground, up against the stone wall. His clothes were dirty. His feet were still bare. In his hands there were some sheets of A4 paper. Judith was standing beside him.
Veronica couldn’t think anymore. Her mind wasn’t moving. There had simply been too much happening and now all her thoughts seemed to be present at once, overlaying each other, packed tight.
Gordon started to go down the lawn. Judith said something to Roland and he stood up. They walked up, met Gordon and kept coming. When they all got to the driveway Judith said, ‘He’s exhausted.’
Veronica stared at her. This was the first time the woman had spoken so simply.
Judith said, ‘The immortals have ended their sport.’ She met Veronica’s eyes with a knowing smile, looking deeply saddened. ‘He’s been asked to perform a difficult task. It’s really too much, but he’s insisting.’
Veronica was struck again by the clarity of her green eyes, their intelligence. And there was something else. Kindness. Judith put a hand lightly on Roland’s shoulder.
He said, ‘I have to read this aloud to everyone. I promised to do that.’
‘O, you have torn my life all to pieces.’ Judith touched the papers in his hands. She seemed to be speaking about them.
Roland said, ‘Yes. That’s exactly what this is.’
Veronica didn’t know what he meant by that. Why had they been brought here? Roland was going to tell them that Paul killed Treen and Belle. Was he going to explain it, excuse it, justify it in some way? The papers were drooping backwards, over his hands. They were covered in type. No heading, but she could read the first line: ‘Sometimes I feel as if I am all sounds’.
Judith put a small object into her hands. She said, ‘Here’s a spot.’ Had she gone back to quotations again? Veronica couldn’t think about this now.
It was a jar of hand cream. A red jar, the cream Judith had taken from Lesley’s house. Judith took it back from her and opened it, releasing the scent Veronica had smelt in Lesley’s lounge room. Geraniums. And with that came the feeling she kept having, that there was something she was supposed to be seeing, something she needed to know, just out of sight, at the edge of things, something that vanished with the act of turning.
Judith said, ‘All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’
Lady Macbeth. Veronica thought of Lesley, rubbing her hands together. Veronica had itchy hands too. Because of Belle’s cream. Belle had said some of her cream was in coloured jars. She had tried to remember the name of the scent. She had said, Rose, rose something.
Rose geranium.
So Lesley owned a jar of Belle’s cream. Lesley said she had never met Belle. But she had. Lesley knew Treen and Belle.
And Lesley had finished her piece of writing. Roland had kept meeting her, insisting that she write about women who were branded as sinners. He wanted her to learn to understand women who did terrible things. And he had promised to read Lesley’s writing out to them. He was about to tell the story of Treen’s and Belle’s murders.
Judith said, ‘Mesdames et messieurs.’ Was that meant to be a reference to Hercule Poirot? It hadn’t been a joke. Judith looked grim. No-one looked amused. And when she spoke again, Veronica couldn’t tell whether the words were a quotation or not.
‘From the very beginning I felt that to understand this case one must seek the secrets of the heart.’
Gordon looked grey. There were beads of sweat on his chin. Paul tucked a hand behind his father’s arm and put his other hand on the outside of the arm, holding him steady.
Roland said, ‘Can we go inside?’
Veronica led the way through the scaffolding into the junk-filled hall. She wanted to apologise for the state of the place. There was nowhere they could all sit. She thought of the kitchen table, covered in papers. For some reason she was worried about the white stone, wished she’d put it away somewhere.
A stupid thought. She was in shock. She needed to take charge of this. She couldn’t.
Roland led them into the dining room. Judith helped him unstack chairs and place them around the table, while Gordon, Paul and Veronica stood watching them.
They left the drop sheet on the table. Roland sat down and Judith sat beside him. He said, ‘Lesley has finished her writing. She printed it out. She asked me to read it to you.’ He lifted his eyes towards Paul and Gordon but his gaze didn’t reach them. He looked back at the pages.
Gordon said, ‘Is she here?’ His face was ashen.
Roland looked towards the windows, the garden, the white sky.
‘She left. Not very long ago. She didn’t want to wait.’ When Gordon moved towards the door, he added quickly, ‘But she wanted you to hear this.’
Veronica pulled out a chair and sat side-on to them, so that she could see Roland and Judith and also Gordon and Paul, who had stayed near the door. Around Lesley’s pages, the drop sheet was wrinkled and stained, gritty grey, splodged with paint. Veronica wanted to pull it off, to see the polished wood underneath. But there was no time. And it was absurd, to be thinking about tables. They were gathered here to hear what Lesley had written.
Roland began reading:
Sometimes I feel as if I am all sounds.
He looked up. ‘She wrote that at the top and then left some empty lines. Then she put a row of question marks, as if she might delete it. But I wanted to read it. I think she was trying to describe what things feel like, how she … I’ll just read the whole thing and maybe it’ll be clearer.’
Veronica could see the struggle in his face. He felt a responsibility to read this to them. Lesley had asked him to do it. He shoved his hands between his knees, hunched towards the papers and read some more.
Roland insisted I write something. I know he was hoping to help me to feel more sympathy for Treen and Belle and to understand myself and to explain what I have done. But I fear this is going to disappoint him. Because I don’t understand. Any of it.
Roland looked around the room. ‘She starts with the past.’ He read on:
When I had my first baby I was seventeen. It was horrible. I thought I was going to die.
He looked at Gordon and Paul. ‘Do you want to sit down?’ Nobody moved or spoke so he shuffled straighter in his chair and read on.
After my baby was born they let me see her. I think it was a mistake. I don’t think they were supposed to do it, because then I wanted to keep her. I really wanted that so badly that I argued with them, and I was a girl who never argued. I remember shouting at this little nurse person, and it really was nothing to do with her. I remember saying ‘You can’t stop me’, that kind of thing. Very rude.
At first they said I could keep her. At least I thought they said that. They took her away, just for a little while, so I could sleep. I don’t blame any of the people involved. It was a long time ago. Different times. Nowadays you can read about it. Apparently it was happening all over the place.
They must have given me drugs. I signed things. At least I think I did. They didn’t tell me I was losing her. They simply took my baby away for a moment and I had a sleep and then I just sat there waiting. That’s all that happened. I thought she was coming back, so I just sat in the hospital bed and I heard the sounds in the corridors, and I waited for my little girl and she never came.
Eventually I asked someone where she was and they said I couldn’t have her, that she’d gone. At first they told me she had died. Or more precisely, my mother told me my baby was dead. I knew she was lying because she looked me straight in the eye a
nd it was the only time she had ever done that. So that was the sign. That’s how I knew it wasn’t true.
I asked the little nurse there. She wasn’t a nurse. I don’t know what you’d call her. She said no, my baby was alive, but she had been given away.
And that’s all, really. I waited and then I went home. There was never an actual event. I have no moments, nothing to remember.
Over the years my heart shrivelled up. I had Paul …
Roland’s voice faltered. He swallowed.
I had Paul who was so strange and difficult and I had Gordon to put up with. And then Vicky came and I saw that my baby was lost to me forever.
People will think my baby came back but they don’t understand how ruined she is. And by the time she got here my heart was just a little walnut. She was too late, and she’s all wrong.
‘Two ruined babies,’ said Paul. ‘One not middle class enough. And one too gay.’
When I was leaving the Cressy house to go home without my baby, I found a white stone in the garden path. It was a bit bigger than an egg, and it had a sort of fold in the middle with a yellow crack. I kept it. It felt heavy and solid. It wasn’t a substitute for my baby, not a symbol or a talisman. It was just something I could hold onto while I thought about her. I liked having it in my pocket. Nobody else knew it was there. Later, when I was older, I found I could put my stone in full view and nobody knew what it meant.
Then I found out about this new child, Mayson. When I saw his feet I knew he was my grandson. Other women were going to think he was theirs but they were going to lose him. I know what that feels like. I found some white stones and I gave them to the other women. I left Veronica’s on her lawn and later I moved it closer to the house. I put it on a scrap of paper so that she would notice it. I don’t know why. I think I wanted her to feel what it was like, to have a stone instead of a child.
Nobody knew the stones were important. Except maybe the old drunk. She saw the stone in my lounge room and she knew straight away. Not what it meant, but that it had meaning.
Roland paused again, as if he wanted to explain something, then decided just to keep going. He read slowly, pronouncing every word.
I don’t know why I’m writing about this here. It is not to make an excuse. It’s just that it seems related to what happened to the two unfortunate young women. The feelings are the same. When I lost my baby, I had a sense that events were sliding of their own accord and I was simply being carried along. It was the same when Treen and Belle were dying.
I do know that Belle Ahern hurt my grandson, Mayson. She hurt him to the point where his life was endangered. Treen McShane allowed her to do it. She knew what Belle had done to Mayson and she allowed her to live with him. Treen might even have hurt Mayson herself.
The room was cold, with a thick stillness. Veronica realised she had been holding her breath.
Our first thought when we hear about this, our first reaction before thought, is that these young women were evil. Some people will object to that. They will say Belle and Treen weren’t evil, they were drug affected; that they themselves were mistreated, by Dane and by others; that they were misunderstood. People will say that the behaviour was a product of their terrible backgrounds; that they had been taught fear, resentment, bitterness, loathing, rage. People will say that, in harming a child, Belle and Treen were simply responding to what had been done to them. They will say that a person cannot be evil, that only acts are evil.
But where is the line between the person and the act? This is what I cannot fathom.
Now Veronica’s stomach was hurting again. She wrapped her arms across it and leaned forward, trying to change the pressure points. She moved her stiff shoulders. Her head was aching.
Roland read:
Belle put her hands on a small child. She felt the hot sticky skin, the frail bones, the breath, the push of blood through his veins. And at some point she made a choice to hurt him.
But what does that mean? What is a choice? Certainly, at the time of the action, Belle’s muscles, her arms, her fingers, were under her control. And there was one small moment, one fraction of a second, one tiny point in time which acted as a gateway, a departure, a division between the absence of the action and its presence.
Somewhere in the house there was a sound: thin, electronic; a single beep, then a space, then another. Veronica couldn’t work out what it was. A clock or a timer, or an alarm, running out of batteries. Apart from that the place was deadly quiet.
People will talk about whether or not Treen’s and Belle’s deaths were the result of an intentional act by me. I try to find my own point of decision. But if there was one, it was obscured by all the other countless moments. The decision point must have been there, somewhere in the constant forward flow, but it wasn’t present to me. So if you ask if there was ever an intention to kill these girls, I would answer that I don’t understand what an intention is.
Every five seconds, the beep: tiny, distant.
Last Tuesday morning I drove Treen McShane to the Chalet car park on the mountain and we walked along the path to a large rock. She died of hypothermia, because of a storm.
‘No, no, no,’ said Gordon. ‘She shouldn’t be saying this. Give me that.’ But he didn’t move.
Roland pushed his chair back a bit, the sound echoing down through the wooden floor. He looked at Judith, who refused to meet his eyes. He let go of the breath he was holding and read on.
I try to find the point where I made a choice. A few days before, I had offered to help Treen with the child. I offered to give her some money and a place to live. That made her happy. On the Tuesday I visited again and I said we could go for a drive to talk about it. Before we went to the mountain I put a jar of pills in front of her and left the room. I didn’t ask her to steal some. I drove her to the mountain. There was no-one else around because it was getting cold, but Treen didn’t mind. She thought it was an adventure. I told her about happier times when the children were young. At the picnic spot, she drank some of my wine and the morphine dissolved in the wine was added to the morphine she had already stolen, and that put her to sleep.
After that happened, there was no choice for me. I simply couldn’t carry her. I went home. The weather turned nasty. I didn’t know what to do so I waited. There was no act. It was an absence of action. If it felt like anything, it was like waiting.
Gordon said, ‘She’s mixed this up. What morphine in the wine?’
Veronica watched him taking it in. It was a crucial point. Lesley could blame Treen for stealing some morphine pills, but if she admitted to dissolving more morphine in a bottle of wine, it was going to be hard to claim that it was all a terrible accident.
As Gordon absorbed this he continued to protest. ‘She’s confused.’ He came towards the table and stood behind a chair. Veronica moved aside, about to ask him to sit down, but he went on. ‘She’s mixed up her stories.’ His colour was high.
Roland said, ‘I think I should read to the end. She really wanted you to hear it all.’
Gordon pulled his head back as if flinching at a sudden movement. But he didn’t protest again. Roland nodded and read.
I went to visit Belle at the old St Mary’s Hospital building. She had asked me to come. I had met with Treen and Belle several times over the previous weeks. I hadn’t told them Mayson was Paul’s but I had been offering to help them. So when Roland arranged an escape for Belle, she wanted to talk to me about the house and the money I’d offered. She rang me on the Saturday night and said she was going to run away from Dane the next day. She wanted to talk to me about the Shanty Shack. We arranged to meet in the old building at two, before Roland and Paul got there. I told her I would bring some champagne to celebrate her freedom. That made her happy.
I wanted to see what kind of place it was that Roland was moving them into, to check that it was suitable. So on the Sunday morning, I found Gordon’s great set of keys and I went to the building around ten, long before Belle arrived. I was s
hocked that the high door was left there with no fire escape behind it. I pulled away the barriers and found a key that unlocked it. I wanted to show Belle that high door, to demonstrate how precarious life can be.
Veronica straightened. This was a crucial point that Lesley had skipped past. She had brought a key, unlocked the door and pinned it back with a pile of broken barriers.
At two o’clock, as we’d arranged, I went to the old building to meet Belle. I had copies of Roland’s drawings and I put one on the Davey Street door.
Veronica’s eyes met Roland’s and she saw that he understood. Lesley had tried to incriminate him. Her behaviour that day was much more calculated than she was admitting. But neither of them said anything.
When I arrived at two, Belle was already there and she was pleased to see me. I showed her the drawing on the door and said I had a simple white dress for her, and an old shawl. I suggested she dress up for our champagne party, like the girl in the drawing. I said it would be a gesture that would please Roland. I can’t tell you what I had in mind, only that she was delighted by the idea.
She said she had made a quiet room for Mayson to rest in, somewhere else in the building. She wouldn’t let me see him. She took me to an upstairs room with two old chairs and some candles. I suspect she had also accessed some kind of party drug, and that interacted badly with the champagne. She was in a wild and careless mood.
Paul made an angry sound. Gordon went back to stand beside him near the door.
Soon after that we heard Dane arrive. Belle laughed and said she had left him a note saying where she was. Her behaviour didn’t make any rational sense. She simply liked there to be as much drama as possible. That is the sort of girl she was.
Dane started calling up through the building and he sounded angry and dangerous. Belle thought it was funny. She said that when Roland arrived there would be big trouble and she liked
that idea. Soon she was shouting with Dane and running around the staircases. I retreated to a room deeper in the building.
Then Veronica arrived. Belle screamed about two grannies. I thought Veronica would know immediately that I was there, but she didn’t pick up on it.