The Accusation

by Wendy James

  ‘I think I remember him. And you’ve got children?’

  ‘Four. We’ve got two grandkids already. And another on the way.’ Her smile was fleeting but genuine.

  ‘Grandkids. Wow. You must be busy.’ Honor did her best to look interested rather than appalled.

  ‘Yeah. Our youngest is still at school. Year Nine.’

  ‘Here?’ Honor had no idea why she asked this – it was highly unlikely that any of the Howatt children attended boarding school – but Cheryl hadn’t noticed, had circled back to her original conversational target.

  ‘She was in that woman’s class. That bitch who took Ellie.’ Honor was surprised by the venom in the woman’s voice.

  ‘Oh, yes. I suppose it must have been a bit of a shock to the school community.’ Her response was measured, but the woman was enjoying her anger too much to be deflected.

  ‘They shouldn’t allow them around kids, sickos like that. And I don’t understand why her and her loony mother haven’t been locked up.’

  ‘I guess she’s not really a danger, though, just living quietly at home. I mean there are bail conditions, and I’m sure the police are keeping a close eye on her.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, that’s a load of bullshit, isn’t it? Not what you know, it’s who you know, around here.’ The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘If it’d been one of us, they’d be in jail and the key thrown away.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know that that’s really . . .’

  ‘Oh, come on. She’s screwing Chip Gascoyne. Those cunts have always had this town wrapped around their little fingers.’

  ‘Maybe that was true back when we were kids, but things have changed a little, don’t you think?’

  The woman glared at her. ‘No, actually I don’t think. That woman’s a fucking pervert and she should be locked up and not let within a hundred miles of any kids. It’s not just a principle – some of us still actually live here.’

  Honor ignored the barb, gave a sympathetic sigh. ‘I can understand why it must seem unfair. And frustrating. But there’s not really anything that can be done.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes it would be better if communities could just deal with this stuff themselves. But we can’t, can we? The law’s the law.’

  ‘Yeah. Well, there’s the law, and then there’s justice.’ Cheryl’s full smile, as unexpected as it was ghastly, revealed a row of blackened stumpy teeth. ‘And some of us don’t see why one has to wait for the other.’

  SUZANNAH: OCTOBER 2018

  I WOKE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT. MARY WAS STANDING silently beside the bed, gazing down at me intently, as if willing me to wake up. She looked like a wraith – her long hair wild around her head, eyes wide, a pale blanket draped around her body for warmth.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mary?’ I kept my voice low, calm, steady. I had found her sleepwalking once or twice before, and didn’t want to startle her. If she woke up properly, she would be difficult to get back to sleep.

  ‘There’s someone out there.’

  ‘Out where? Outside?’

  ‘Out there. In the garden.’ She pointed to the window. ‘Listen.’ This wasn’t following the usual pattern – Mary’s sleepwalking conversations were generally with unseen others, and never made sense. She was awake.

  I pushed the blankets off and sat up. She grabbed my wrist in her bony fingers and squeezed hard.

  ‘You need to do something,’ she hissed.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Before they get us.’

  ‘Who’s going to get us, Mary?’

  ‘The villagers. They’re out there. With their pikestaffs. Come and see.’

  She grabbed my shoulder with her other hand and pulled me, surprisingly strong.

  ‘Stop, Mary. I’ll get up.’ She let me go, but hovered, breathing heavily, as I got to my feet.

  She positioned herself behind me and pushed me towards the window.

  ‘Go and look out, but don’t move the curtain too much or they’ll see us.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ But I humoured her, crept over to the window, peered out. ‘If there was anyone here, the dogs would be—’ But then I remembered: Chip had taken both the dogs with him.

  ‘Can you see them?’ Mary stood behind me, too close, literally breathing down my neck.

  I couldn’t see anything unusual, just the shadows of the dense canopy of trees that grew around the perimeter of the yard moving gently in the breeze.

  ‘It’s just the trees, Mary. It’s just their shadows in the breeze.’

  ‘No – look over there.’ She pointed in the direction of the garage. Three forms, shadows elongated but distinctly human, were lined up against the back of the shed. It was impossible to make out which way they were facing, but they appeared to be doing some sort of bizarre dance, swaying this way and that, moving up and down, their arms sweeping back and across in long fluid gestures. Each of them held something aloft. It only took me a moment to work out what they were doing.

  They weren’t holding pikestaffs, but their modern equivalent – cans of spray paint.

  ‘Oh, shit.’

  ‘So, can we shoot them?’ Mary’s fear had morphed into excitement.

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re on our property. Isn’t it the law out in the bush? I’m pretty sure we can shoot them.’

  ‘Mary.’ I turned her away from the window, and led her over to my bed, pushing her down gently. ‘We can’t shoot anyone. Not only is it illegal, I don’t actually have a gun.’

  ‘Doesn’t your cowboy boyfriend have one?’

  ‘I don’t think so. And anyway, Chip’s not here.’

  ‘Did you scare him away? No wonder.’ She poked at my belly. ‘You’re getting a bit tubby.’

  ‘I’m going to call the police. And then I’m going to make you a hot cocoa and take you back to bed. Okay?’

  ‘Why would you want to call the pigs? They already want to put you in prison for what you did to that girl.’

  ‘You know I didn’t—’

  ‘There’s only one way to handle this.’

  Mary was back at the bedroom window in an instant. She peered out into the night, shaping her fingers into a pistol, taking aim, firing.

  It was impossible to know who might have been out there. Online attacks had been coming from all quarters. Most were from people who’d never met me, but some were closer to home, and all the more frightening for that. It seemed that even during my brief, and I would have said relatively uncontroversial time at Enfield Wash, I’d managed to make some enemies. Who would have guessed that a tiny disagreement about classroom bookings could be turned into a public assassination of my character, again compliments of 180Degrees:

  An anonymous source tells us that Wells was a constant troublemaker during her time at Enfield Wash High: ‘It’s an under-resourced school, so most teachers work hard to share what we have as fairly as possible – but Suzannah Wells was utterly ruthless about never sharing her drama room with other teachers, even when it wasn’t in use. At the time I just thought she wasn’t a team player, or that she was big-noting herself . . . now I’m wondering whether there was some sort of sinister reason . . .’

  And how could I have known that the supermarket employee who accidentally knocked a can of tinned tomatoes off the checkout and onto my foot had been utterly terrified by my response (it hurt; I swore), and would one day be eager to share her terror with the world:

  ‘I mean, it’s not as if I did it deliberately, but the look she gave me. Honestly, I thought she was going to kill me . . .’

  And then there were the revenge-seeking parents, frightening enough when I was just the annoying teacher stifling junior’s creative genius, but on steroids now that I was the villain du jour.

  The mother of a student at Enfield Wash High has spoken about having always had a sense of unease about Wells’ relationships with some of her charges. ‘I did always wonder if her relationships with some of the girls were healthy. Her favourites always seemed to be vulnerable girls,
not girls who had strong family connections, and not the students who displayed any particular talent. I ended up warning my own daughter to keep her distance from Ms Wells – which is such a pity as she’s such a talented actor – although I couldn’t really put my finger on what was worrying me. Anyway, it turns out my instincts were right.’

  This last ‘informant’ was easy to work out: Linda Simmons, mother of Lexie, and a classic stage mum. She had bailed me up in the school car park one afternoon earlier in the year. It was a gloomy autumn afternoon, and I had been in a hurry, running late after a staff meeting, worried that it would be dark before I arrived home. Linda didn’t bother with any preliminary greetings, but launched right in.

  ‘I hear the Mallory girl has been given the main part in The Crucible.’

  ‘Well, yes. But Rebecca Nurse is a solid role too. I think Lexie will find it—’

  ‘Lexie’s been waiting for this for years. It was always expected that she would be given the main part in her senior year. Miss Amber promised her.’

  I refrained from telling her what I really thought, which was that her daughter’s determination to always be the centre of attention didn’t equate to her having talent and instead said very mildly that I’d made the decision based on who was right for this particular role.

  ‘But I don’t understand why you would give it to Jess Mallory. Why would she be any good? Lexie’s been going to drama classes for years. I doubt Jess has even been inside a theatre. I’m worried – well, quite a few of us are worried – that she’ll . . . spoil things. Are you sure she really is reliable? I don’t want to seem mean, but I’ve always thought Jess was a little bit slow. Are you sure she’ll be able to learn all those lines?’

  It was true that Jess Mallory’s talent was something of a surprise. She certainly wasn’t one of the usual suspects: she wasn’t part of the ‘popular’ gang, she was something of an introvert, and she certainly hadn’t had years of out-of-school coaching in drama and singing. But she could act. What I’d wanted to tell this mother was that art didn’t necessarily come from smart, or pretty or respectable or outgoing. And not even from good or kind or hardworking. Her daughter, for instance, was all of those things. But all the elements that had made Lexie a happy, well-rounded girl with abundant self-esteem, didn’t necessarily make her a great actor. I wanted to explain that art could come from places no one really wanted their daughters to go. I would have liked to tell her that Jess Mallory was tapping into experiences that her daughter didn’t have access to, that there was something dark in her, something hard, something powerful. I didn’t know what her life out of school was like – and to be honest, I didn’t want to know. Most likely there was something that stopped her from feeling whole, feeling real, feeling herself in the way that her Lexie so clearly did. And it was this lack that meant Jess was able to become others so easily, so authentically. Mostly I resisted the notion of the artists’ wound, the idea that there’s always something melancholic in their nature, stemming from some existential trauma, some sadness that can’t be assuaged. But I had to acknowledge that there was an element of truth in it too. Where there was darkness, there was damage – and with damage, sometimes depth.

  But I’d said none of this. Instead I’d smiled, kept my voice breezy. ‘She’ll do brilliantly. They all will.’

  ‘You don’t think perhaps you’ve been out of it for a long time?’

  At our only other meeting the woman had seemed intelligent, interested, but now she was a lioness-mother, her teeth bared, baying for blood. She looked me up and down blatantly, her lip curling. I suspected that I didn’t even meet her expectations of what a school teacher should look like, let alone an actor.

  ‘Perhaps things have changed a little since you were, er, active in the scene.’

  At this, I’d lost my cool. ‘Oh, I don’t think so. It’s like any art form – there are essential elements that haven’t changed since, oh, ancient Greece probably. I’d be happy to fill you in on the details if you’d like, but it’s quite complex. It might take a while.’

  Her face had darkened with anger. ‘I’ll be talking to someone about this,’ she muttered, before stalking away.

  I stood there for a moment, feeling vaguely unsettled, wondering who it was she planned to talk to, and what they would have to say.

  I’d told the story to Bret Baker, a science teacher who’d worked at the school for almost ten years. He’d warned me that Mrs Simmons could be dangerous to get offside.

  ‘She’s ambitious for her four girls. And vicious when she’s thwarted in any way. A music teacher resigned after a complaint she made a few years back.’

  But according to Bret, Mrs Simmons was the least of my worries as far as proactive parents went.

  ‘It’s the violent ones you have to look out for.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘There are a few big families here with pretty solid criminal backgrounds – Cruikshanks, Howatts, Sharpes. They’re all related, and even the ones who seem completely respectable can be pretty shady. They’re fine if you stay on the right side of them, but if one of them gets pissed at you, the lot of them are likely to come after you.’

  ‘Do you mean physically?’

  ‘It’s possible. There was a young English teacher here a few years back whose car was stolen, set alight and pushed into The Lock after she complained about one of the Cruikshank boys verbally assaulting her. There were abusive letters, death threats. No one could ever prove it, but everyone knew who it was. She didn’t stay long after that.’

  I taught at least eight kids with the offending surnames. ‘Shit.’

  ‘And you don’t have to upset them personally either,’ David added. ‘They’ve been known to go after people who have beef with their friends, or people who they don’t “approve” of, for whatever reason. There was this scientist who visited one year to give a talk about sustainable farming, and apparently he said something that must’ve challenged their world view – Christ knows what – and two family heavies cornered him after the event and beat the crap out of him.’

  ‘But how do they manage to get away with it?’

  ‘The usual. They’ve been here forever. People are scared of them. And they have connections.’

  Bret had laughed at my obvious dismay. ‘I wouldn’t worry too much. I doubt any of that lot are likely to get too upset about anything that goes on in your drama class. And anyway, you’re some old TV star, aren’t you? They’re not going to bother you.’

  It was almost two hours before the police arrived, and by that time the intruders had long gone. I’d persuaded Mary to go back to bed, and she was finally asleep. I offered to accompany them out to the shed, but the two officers – both male, one young, the other middle-aged – asked me to stay put. I watched from the verandah as they sauntered across the paddock and shone their flashlights over the shed, walked right around it a few times, then wandered back, flashing their torches this way and that.

  I quizzed them about the damage.

  ‘They’ve certainly done a job on your shed.’

  ‘Could you read what they’d written?’

  ‘Oh, you know. It’s just the usual rubbish. I wouldn’t bother even looking at it if I were you. We can send someone out to clean it up in the morning.’

  ‘Really? That would be fantastic.’

  ‘They’ll scrub it off with some sort of solvent – shouldn’t cost too much. The car might be more difficult.’

  ‘The car?’

  ‘It looks—’

  ‘—and smells!’ the younger officer chipped in helpfully.

  ‘—as if someone’s dumped a bucketload of, er, human excrement all over it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe you can get out there with a hose, first thing. But the frost might be a problem, yeah? Might be best to get to it before it, um, sets. Hopefully none of it leaked inside.’

  ‘There’s not someone who can come and clean that up?’

&nb
sp; The older officer scratched his chin, looked over at his partner. ‘You know anyone?’

  ‘Yeah, no. Maybe just contact a cleaner? They have like those trauma cleaners in bigger places, but I dunno about here. You could try and get someone up from Sydney, I guess?’

  ‘And what about finding out who did it?’

  They seemed oddly uncomfortable. ‘I’m not sure it’s going to be possible to identify them. You didn’t try and get a look? See what sort of vehicles they were in? What they were wearing?’

  ‘No. It was dark. I could see figures. They seemed quite tall. Male, I think. Adults, or older teenagers, I guess.’

  ‘Maybe if you’d turned on your outside lights they’d have taken off right away.’

  ‘But . . . I didn’t want them to see me, to know I’d seen them.’

  ‘Why not?’ The young officer looked genuinely perplexed.

  ‘We’re two women out here, alone – and they probably already know that, with the reports in the newspapers and everything. It seemed a bit of a risk, anyway.’

  ‘Yeah, no. These types really don’t tend to be violent. It’s just simple property damage. They usually just say what they want to say and then they go.’

  ‘But we couldn’t possibly have known that.’

  ‘I guess not.’ He shrugged. ‘So, do you want to file a report?’

  I was taken aback. ‘I’d have thought that was mandatory. Don’t you have to?’

  ‘Not necessarily.’ The older man shook his head.

  ‘What would you advise?’

  ‘Well, there’s Buckley’s that we’re ever going to find out who they are. And even if we do there’ll be no evidence. It would’ve been too cold for them to have been working without gloves, even if they happened to be that stupid, which I doubt, so there’s no point trying to get fingerprints.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘It’d really just mean a shitload of paperwork for everyone. You included.’