This Taste for Silence

by O'Callaghan, Amanda;

  ‘Do you remember a guy called Easton. From Welgrove?’ Jackie said one night, warming up a curry after her shift.

  I felt my heart race. ‘Easton? No.’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ she said. ‘The barley farmer. Frank Easton. Malloy Ward. The one who used to sing sometimes. Hung on for ages, poor sod.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. What about him?’

  ‘Remember he had a son?’ Jackie said. ‘Wiry little guy, about fifty. Not very nice. Came in all the time.’

  ‘Vaguely,’ I lied.

  ‘Saw him this evening.’ Jackie was banging sticky rice off the spoon, making an incredible racket. I’d already eaten. I was sipping a beer, watching her from across the table. ‘He was called Frank as well,’ she said. ‘Remember? Frank Junior.’

  ‘Junior?’ I said, keeping my voice flat.

  ‘Yeah. He was on the bus,’ she said, crashing her cutlery onto the table. Was there ever a moment, I wondered, when Jackie was doing something quietly?

  I took another sip. ‘It wouldn’t have been him. Didn’t he inherit the old man’s farm? That’s a day’s drive away. What would he be doing in the middle of Adelaide?’

  ‘Would have made a pretty puny farmer if you ask me,’ she said, forking in the curry. ‘Bet he sold it, or went bust. Anyway, it was definitely him. Don’t you remember he had a tattoo on his hand? Um …’ She held up her hands to work out where she’d seen it on him. ‘His left hand. A little thistle. A red and green thistle down near his thumb. You must have noticed it. It was definitely him.’

  ‘Where did he get off?’ I said, remembering the tattooed hand lying flat on his father’s bed. I turned my beer bottle in its pool of condensation. Jackie had pulled the newspaper towards her and wasn’t listening. ‘Jackie!’

  She jumped. ‘Jesus, what’s wrong with you? I don’t know. Oh, yes I do – the same stop as me. After me. He didn’t see me, though. He was reading something on the bus. I only saw the tattoo when I was getting off.’

  The beer suddenly seemed too cold, sending a shiver to my brain. ‘Did he walk the same way as you?’

  She looked up from the paper. ‘Hmm? No. He didn’t walk anywhere. He sat down at the bus stop and was looking for something in a bag. I saw him when I crossed the road.’ Turning to me, serving spoon in hand, she said, ‘Want some more curry?’

  Jackie’s been listed as missing for six years now. A cold case, they call it. Clint retired to a walnut farm. He’s squinting at aphids these days, I guess. There was one journalist who used to arrive on my doorstep every year around the date of Jackie’s disappearance. The last time I saw him I surprised myself by asking him in, making him coffee. He got chatty, told me he wrote about the economy, mostly, but he was keen to get into investigative work, write a book. He told me he was examining Jackie’s case as a kind of hobby. A hobby. I knew I had to pack up when I heard that, leave Adelaide for good. I was starting to feel rage rather than pity, and rage didn’t look like a logical reason to kill someone.

  Melbourne’s the kind of city to get lost in, only I know pretty well every street these days. I drive a taxi. Seriously. No more hospitals for me. Taxi driving’s harder than it looks: long hours and some pretty despicable people, drunk and sober. Nice ones, too, of course, and some days, if I’m in the mood and they mention some affliction, I give them a free consultation. There’s always a good tip at the end of those rides.

  There’s a coffee shop near the train station where I used to go regularly, mostly because none of the other drivers stop there. It was winter, I remember; everyone had coats on. I’d bent my head to take a careful sip of coffee – it’s always served scalding hot there – and I heard a voice I knew behind me. ‘Ham and cheese, not ham and tomato.’ A man, pissed off, complaining about his toasted sandwich. The girl behind the counter apologised and gave him his money back when he wouldn’t wait for a replacement. I didn’t turn my head, just hunkered down inside my collar, kept the coffee mug close to my face. Had he seen me? All I saw was the back of a man in a longish navy coat and a red beanie. A woman with a twin pram carved up any further view of him as he left, but, standing up, I could see him at the corner. He didn’t look back. I watched as he pulled one of his gloves off with his teeth to sort out his money. Even from that distance, I could see the dark blob of tattoo near his wrist as he walked towards the train and disappeared.

  I knew there was a chance Frank Junior could be in Melbourne. I’d met old Frank’s niece – the one who got the house – when I went back to the area for my mother’s funeral. She came to the service. ‘Thank you for being so good to Uncle Frank,’ she said, pressing my hand in the overheated chapel.

  ‘He was a far better man than I’ll ever be,’ I said. That was true. Later, she told me the barley farm was gone. ‘Junior sold it for half nothing. Said he hated the country. Said farming was for idiots.’

  I didn’t see Frank Junior again for a long time. I drove. I had good days and bad days. I waited. I dreamed – literally dreamed – of him getting into my cab without realising it was me at the wheel. I had special locks fitted, just in case.

  It took me almost a full day before I finally twigged about the man I’d seen in the lane. I was at home, drinking coffee, staring out the window. Scenes from the previous few days were looping through my mind – that nice big tip from old Ingrid, the Scottish guy with one arm, the truck rollover on Hodda Terrace – all the jumble and flare of ordinary life. And then, half watching someone in the street lugging a shopping bag, I realised what I’d seen the night before: the man with the rubbish bag, the way he walked, the way he turned. The thought stunned me. At last. That man was Frank Junior.

  It was a Thursday night. Late-night shopping; busy for me, most times. I was thinking about Jackie, if you can believe that. I’d gone a fair while without giving her too much thought, then for a week or so she’d kept coming into my mind. Robbie Quinn. Robbie Quinn. Pecking away at me, just like before.

  I found Frank Junior’s flat above a noodle shop. I almost laughed out loud when I pulled the corner of an envelope out of his mailbox and I saw his new name: just one letter stuck on the front of his old name. Frank Neaston. Pathetic. At least I’d had the decency to change mine completely.

  Frank Junior always took his rubbish out last thing at night. It’s never a good idea to be predictable.

  His death didn’t get any more coverage than it deserved. A body discovered … a laneway off Drummond Street … the schoolboys are receiving counselling … not believed to be suspicious. So said the woman on the news. The next night she announced that the body had been identified as Frank Neaston, retired labourer. I chortled. Frank Junior never laboured for anything in his life, except maybe that last breath. I used ketamine, mostly. Not ideal, but my options are limited these days. Not much of the stash I took from Welgrove left now. I used a hypodermic, of course. It was late; I knew he’d be dead by the time he was found.

  The TV showed a long shot of the laneway. The woman from the noodle shop was leaving a bunch of flowers. I was amazed to see she got the spot exactly right: just left of the big wheelie bin.

  ‘He came in on Tuesday nights,’ she said to the camera, standing awkwardly close. ‘Beef noodles.’

  The camera panned across a small crowd of bystanders staring down the now-empty lane. A couple of kids chewing gum, a tall man, a few women. The reporter, a young guy with a square thatch of red hair, signed off, ‘Back to you, Elena.’

  And then it was over. I’d been watching all this, mulling over the mixed feelings I was having: relief, pleasure, that odd flatness. I was half thinking that I might move back to Adelaide now that everything was settled. Now that there was no more danger of being exposed.

  The faces of the crowd in the laneway faded into the next piece of news. Suddenly, I was on my feet. One of the women in that crowd. The one with the white jumper. It couldn’t be. The way she turned her head, her chi
n in profile, her hands balled in her pockets. It was Jackie.

  Every day I tell myself it was not her. A look-alike, that’s all. Jackie’s dead and you know it. I say that over and over. I work hard at keeping everything tamped down. I force her out of my mind. The look on her face. Her voice. I think of nothing, just sit at the window and watch the world go by.

  After Frank Junior – after Jackie – I thought I’d feel … free. I thought the past could be filed away and forgotten. A bit of peace. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. But when I empty my head, that’s when I hear it. Robbie Quinn. Robbie Quinn. In a crowd, especially, I hear that voice. And when I spin around, my eyes raking through all the bodies, I’d swear I catch a glimpse of her face, turning away.

  The News

  When the news came to the house, it slipped in quietly, past the smiling and the bottles and the happy chink of glasses, deaf to the music pushing at the walls. For a moment, it watched a tall man holding a bottle by the neck, calling, ‘No, not that! Play this one next,’ but it moved on. It could smell perfume, wine, a warm trace of spice, bodies. There was laughter, which always made it uneasy. A woman said, ‘It’s totally true,’ and a group guffawed and shook their heads. ‘God!’ one of them said. The news stepped by on tiptoe.

  At first, no one noticed the small circle of hush at the end of the room; the way it stood, mesmerised and breathless. A woman with dark hair turned towards the news, buckling without warning, hands catching her as she fell, folding her into a chair, a thin arc of red wine on the carpet, vivid as a wound. And how disquiet can lap across a room, freezing everything in its path: the head tipping back to laugh, the fingers reaching for food, the reluctant child being taken outside.

  All the faces turned to the woman, watching her being helped to her feet, led to the door, the news winding around her shoulders, tight and sinuous. And when they looked away, there was something obscene about those paper lanterns, the gaudy shine of the bows, the winking summer lights on the porch. Only the music played on, ringing out like a strange and terrible profanity until someone shouted, ‘Turn it off, for Chrissake, shut it down.’

  And then she was gone. The last of a pale dress in the doorway. Stillness. Only the sound of a child, wailing in the garden. ‘I want to go home.’

  Things

  There are no neighbours. That’s important. Old Mr Novak, who lived on the other side of our walls for decades, is long gone. I still miss hearing snatches of his beautiful baritone and, just once, a heartbreaking violin. When I mentioned this he shook his head and said, ‘No, no, my dear, there was no violin. It must have been the radio,’ and asked about my sister. I told him Lottie was fine, and changed the subject. But after all the years separated by a narrow seam of brick and ageing plaster, I knew his bedroom was the mirror image of my own. The sound of the violin was unmistakable. No matter. We all have our secrets.

  I have only three houses to consider. Our house, the one on the end, once belonged to a typically English terrace of red-brick homes, all curving slightly to the left like a wheeling regiment of soldiers. Our parents had just moved in when German bombers reduced two of the houses and their occupants to smoking rubble. The gap remains, filled by a half-hearted children’s play area. Mr Novak’s place is still empty. While his nephews wrangle over their inheritance, the house waits quietly, unperturbed, its window blinds firmly down.

  The third house in our truncated row is also empty, but not for long. It’s just been sold. There’s an article in the local newspaper, here in front of me. A neat young man in a buttoned-up shirt, smiling into the camera. Chess prodigy makes a move on renovation. There’s new blood coming into the neighbourhood, a sense of all that is old and dull being swept away. Cleansed. This is entirely right.

  Our house was big, once. Especially the front room, with its bay window and a great square rug, wide enough to lie across. One year, when Lottie and I were small, we had a Christmas tree in the far corner. The last of its trunk is in the back garden somewhere.

  By the time Lottie was seventeen, there was still a little bit of space left in the front room. I remember her sitting in there, perched on the armrest of the old navy sofa, looking out the window. That year, the local school band was playing across the street, collecting money in a woven basket. A sign on the grass verge explained that they were saving for a coach trip to London. Carols. It didn’t feel cold enough for Christmas carols. The snow came much later that winter. The snow that changed everything.

  I can still picture Lottie watching passers-by gravitate towards the band. ‘They’re putting money in the basket, Jenny,’ she told me. She was pleased, but she was getting overexcited. She said she could see the mean woman. That was the old hag from the sweet shop. Lottie had gone in there once, but she got her words into a muddle and the woman wouldn’t serve her. ‘I can’t make out what you’re saying, girly,’ she said to Lottie. ‘You’re talking gibberish.’ She told her to come back with a responsible adult.

  ‘Look, Jenny, look!’ Lottie called out that day. When I went to the window, I could see the sweet-shop woman hanging back, one misshapen arm holding on to a wrought-iron fence. She kept so many tissues balled in her cardigan sleeves that they looked like tumours under the wool.

  ‘She’s getting music for free!’ Lottie was shouting and pointing. ‘She’s stealing it!’

  I told Lottie there was no rule about having to give money, that it was voluntary, but she started jumping on the sofa, yelling ‘Stealing, stealing’ until I came and calmed her. She was wearing our grandmother’s necklace. A heavy gold chain with a crescent-moon pendant, its inner curve edged with tiny red stones. As Lottie jumped and shouted, the chain flew up, its bright paring of moon suspended, for a moment, before she fell to earth again.

  ‘Indian rubies,’ our grandmother had told us in a whispery voice when we’d first seen that necklace. ‘My wedding present from your dear grandfather.’ Lottie and I had watched, transfixed, as the gaudy moon bobbed under her fingers.

  After Grandma died, our mother said, ‘Garnets, if they’re real stones at all,’ and dropped the necklace into an old box under the hall table. She had a way of pulling the air out of a room, of filling it to the brim with negative things.

  After the band played on the corner, Lottie never went into the front room again. A young couple with bulky shopping bags had stopped at the gate to rearrange their parcels. They noticed Lottie waving and calling out. But the couple seemed to sense something wasn’t right and the man put his arm around the woman and turned her away. Poor Lottie got very upset. It was too much for her. I made her stay in the back kitchen after that. She could be peaceful there.

  The old sofa is still in the front room, though I haven’t seen it for years. There’s no view from the window anymore. Not long ago I squeezed in there, and I could hear children outside, bouncing a ball. There was something about those sounds: the slap, slap of the rubber on the pavement, a screechy girl, the way another one laughed – a big, throaty laugh – that reminded me of Lottie. I felt too sad to be standing there, so I worked my way back to the hall, pulling the door behind me as much as I could. I won’t go in there again. It will be like Mr Novak’s house, like our parents’ room, like Lottie’s room: places that have closed their eyes forever.

  Lottie is dead. She was always so vibrant and dramatic that it’s hard, even now, to accept how plain her death was. There was no rare and terrible disease, no violence, no deadly sting from a creature that had sailed halfway around the world in the nib of a banana. If I had known how awful a plain death could be, I would have wished for some glossy black spider to find its poisonous way in here. Make it quick.

  When the snow finally came that year, it filled the back garden, softening the boxy edges of things into something less jagged and imposing. Snow piled up on the front path, clouded the windows, muffled the grind of the town. We were cocooned inside the house, and quite calm. There was always food. The pipes
froze, but we had boxes of bottled water that had been stacked in the pantry when our parents were alive. Towards the end of that week, someone made their way to our front door and knocked for a long time. I think they may have pushed something through the letterbox. Later, from the corner of an upstairs window, we could see how the snow on the front path had been trampled and pushed aside. We both stared at the old wooden gate left open to the street.

  Lottie loved winter. Even when she was a small child she never seemed to feel the cold. I can barely recall her wearing a coat or gloves. She hated the heat. When she was about eleven, there was a very hot summer. One long, stifling night she called out repeatedly from her bed, ‘Too hot. No air,’ and banged on the wall with the flat of her hand.

  She was so happy when the big snow came. Gusts of wind drove it onto the windows, where it splattered against the glass like the limbs of a flying insect. Sometimes the snow fell straight down, silent and endless. Lottie was spellbound. There was a high, narrow window in the back kitchen with one of the big dining-room chairs underneath it. Lottie would teeter on the pile of newspapers stacked on the seat, watching the snow fall in the back garden.

  ‘Charlotte! Get down and pull that window closed,’ I’d tell her. ‘There’s a terrible draught.’

  But Lottie would push her face through the small opening and gulp in the freezing air, trying to catch flakes of snow on her tongue. She’d stand on that chair for hours at a time. It was becoming harder to keep her calm. It sometimes suited me to leave her there, her face glowing and ruddy with cold.