The Wrong Door

by Bunty Avieson

  Gwennie gave an involuntary yelp. It was a mixture of shock and disbelief. The colour drained from her face.

  Clare immediately understood. She watched carefully, analysing his features as he came up to the verandah. His gait was awkward as he manoeuvred his legs up the stairs, but he didn’t seem self-conscious.

  ‘Jimmy, I have some guests I would like you to meet.’

  The man turned and smiled as Terri introduced Clare and Gwennie.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. His manner was shy and childlike.

  Gwennie was dumbstruck and unable to respond.

  ‘Hello, Jimmy,’ said Clare.

  He smiled at her. ‘I’m picking blackberries. For Briony.’ His face was open and affable, with no hint of curiosity about the two strangers.

  ‘Oh,’ said Clare in the sort of sing-song voice she normally saved for children.

  Gwennie, watched by Terri, continued to stare.

  ‘Jimmy, why don’t you take the berries in to Briony and then wash your hands with the special soap in the laundry,’ said Terri.

  ‘I got lots,’ said Jimmy.

  Terri smiled gently. ‘I can see that. You’ve done well. I’m sure Briony will be very pleased.’

  It was all the encouragement Jimmy needed. He carried the bucket carefully through the double doors. The three women watched him go.

  ‘He’s been here ever since that night, when Peter brought him here,’ said Terri.

  Clare felt great sadness and yearning. She felt the tears well in her throat but she swallowed them. ‘Why is he like that?’

  ‘It was the fight. He had lost so much blood that he very nearly died. We were sure we would lose him. He was out of it for five days. When he regained consciousness he was like this. He has been this way ever since.’

  ‘What fight?’ asked Gwennie. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Terri. ‘I’m not sure what you do and don’t know. Peter didn’t want you to know and yet somehow you have found your way here. I always disagreed with Peter’s keeping it from you but he wanted to protect you. He was right, I suppose, but I don’t believe in secrets between a husband and wife.

  ‘I knew everything about Giles – and not all of it was good. But when you love a man you take it all. That’s just how it is.

  ‘But Peter didn’t want to involve you, make you an accessory to his crime.’

  Gwennie trembled as she listened. The woman’s manner was kind and she had a softness about her that encouraged Gwennie’s trust. But at the same time she felt a growing wretchedness that Pete had kept any secrets from her. She felt betrayed … and scared.

  Terri seemed to understand. ‘He loved you very much. All his actions, whether I agreed with them or not, stemmed from that. Please don’t ever doubt it,’ she urged.

  Gwennie nodded.

  Satisfied, Terri continued. ‘Micky had a violent fight with a man called Charles Dayton.’

  Terri turned to Clare. ‘Marlene’s father. I’m sorry to say this to you, but he was a pig of a man.’ She turned back to Gwennie. ‘Micky was eighteen, full of raging hormones and a hothead by nature. I know it’s hard to believe looking at him now but when he was eighteen it was a different matter.

  ‘He was dating Marlene and Dayton caught the two of them together in his shed. They had been fooling around and Dayton went berserk. His little girl. He beat up Micky pretty bad. Dayton was a nasty piece of work. I never liked him. You never wanted to be alone in a room with him. He worshipped his little girl though. And the idea of Micky and her was just too much for him, I guess.

  ‘Marlene ran home leaving them to sort it out man to man. They fought and Micky was really copping it but he must have got in a lucky blow to the head. Dayton dropped. Micky hadn’t meant to kill him but there he was, dead at his feet. He panicked and tried to cover it up, setting fire to the shed. Then he limped home to Hat Hill Road and woke up Peter.

  ‘He was in a bad way but wouldn’t let Peter take him to hospital because then they would know he had been in a fight and the police might ask questions. He just wanted to lie low for a while to see what the police came up with. He hoped it would look like an accident. Peter insisted he had to get help so, as a compromise, he came here.

  ‘We were old friends of their parents, Fiona and Alex. They were good people. I went to school with Fi when we were teenagers. It was tragic when they died. It was in a car accident just down the hill from Leura, a particularly dangerous stretch of road. Of course this was before the new highway with its double lanes. Back then there were some stretches that were black holes for accidents. Fi and Alex were coming back from Sydney and their car went off the road. No-one knows exactly what caused it. The boys were still quite young. Peter was nineteen and Micky just seventeen. They had been such a close family.

  ‘It was about a year later that the fight happened with Dayton. I’ll never forget opening the door that night and seeing Pete standing on our doorstep supporting Micky. Micky’s face …’ Terri shivered. ‘It was covered in blood. He couldn’t see. There was blood in his eyes, dripping off his hair. Peter was just about carrying him and he had blood all over him too. At first I thought they had both been in an accident.

  ‘Giles, God bless him, immediately took them in. No questions. Fi and Alex’s boys were in trouble and had come to us. That was all he needed to know. They would have done the same if it had been our kids.

  ‘We got Micky cleaned up and tended his wounds. He had a smashed jaw, broken ribs and his hip was dislocated. His blood pressure was way down. We put him to bed and overnight he developed a fever. The next morning he was burning up so we set up an antibiotic drip. Peter came every day and sat with him. But then the old lady that lived in Hat Hill Road, opposite Charles Dayton’s shed, told police she saw Micky there that night. They wanted to talk to him. It took them long enough I must say. I suppose they had a lot of other things on.’

  Terri stopped as the back door opened. Briony’s smiling face appeared. ‘We’ve run out of eggs so Jimmy and I are just going up to the shop. Can we get you anything?’

  ‘No dear, I’m fine.’ Terri waited till Briony closed the door. She continued, her voice low and conspiratorial. ‘By the time they started looking for Micky he had regained consciousness and it was obvious he wasn’t quite right. He had no memory of who he was or where he was. We think he suffered a massive stroke. It was like everything in his brain was wiped. He knew how to eat and dress himself but that was about it. There was no way he could face a trial. Peter didn’t want him to and nor did we. Even if he was just found guilty of manslaughter or declared unfit for trial, he would be taken away. Put in an institution. Peter couldn’t bear the thought of that.

  ‘Peter told the police that Micky hadn’t come home that night. They didn’t know about us, that we had been friends with their parents. There was no reason why anyone would know our connection. Giles and I kept pretty much to ourselves. We grew a bit of dope here so we never exactly welcomed outsiders. And, apart from Fi and Alex, we didn’t socialise so much within the community.

  ‘It was the perfect place for Micky to stay. Our own girls were a bit younger. Jilly was sixteen and Amanda about fifteen. They immediately adopted Micky, who we renamed Jimmy, and he just became part of the family. He calls me Terri but he believes I am his mother. And honestly that is how I feel.

  ‘He is a happy, loving boy. He has no anger, no fire in his belly. He is happy as long as he is here on the farm.’

  The tears poured down Clare’s face unchecked. She could no longer hold back the torrent of emotions. Her shoulders heaved as she gave vent to it all. Gwennie and Terri both looked at her. So absorbed were they both in their own feelings about that night they hadn’t noticed the effect it had been having on her.

  ‘Why does it upset you so much?’ asked Gwennie.

  ‘Micky is my father,’ sobbed Clare.

  Gwennie’s eyes widened with surprise.

  ‘I wondered,’ said Terri qui
etly. ‘Oh my dear. This must be very painful for you.’

  Clare continued to sob.

  Gwennie passed her a tissue. ‘I had no idea. And your mother is Marlene?’

  ‘Yes, only she calls herself Marla now.’

  Gwennie remembered the beautiful woman with the sad eyes from the AA meeting and their conversation about secrets. How she had hated her. God how self-absorbed she had been, consumed with her own grief. For the first time since Pete had died, she felt some empathy for someone else. Clare and Marla. They too had suffered, and still were suffering.

  A hairline crack appeared in the wall she had constructed around her grief. She put her hand on Clare’s arm. ‘I’m so sorry, Clare. This must be awful for you.’

  Clare wiped her eyes. ‘It is a bit of a shock. But I’m okay. Go on, Terri.’

  Terri looked uncertain. ‘Well, that’s it really. Jimmy has no idea about what happened, no memory of life before he came here. Peter used to come once a month to check that he was okay. Jimmy didn’t know who he was but still he grew to look forward to his visits. Peter was so good with him. He never gave up on him. He paid for all his upkeep.’

  ‘Why couldn’t he tell me that? I would have understood.’

  ‘Of course you would have, my dear. I don’t think he ever doubted your understanding. But it would have made you an accessory after the fact to a murder, and he wouldn’t do that.’

  Terri walked with them to the car. The late afternoon sun was low on the horizon casting a deep golden glow across the long dry yellow grass that covered the property. The cicadas started their evening chorus.

  Gwennie raged inwardly. It didn’t matter what Pete’s motivation had been, she felt cheated. The man she loved, who shared her bed, had had secrets. Big ones that he had to work to keep from her. He had kept a piece of himself tucked away. It went against everything she believed about their relationship. As they walked Gwennie paid little attention to where she was stepping, consumed with thoughts of Pete. She stumbled and grabbed Clare’s shoulder to stop herself falling. They looked down at a pile of feathers.

  ‘Bloody birds,’ Gwennie muttered. ‘What is it with them lately? Everywhere I go there’s dead birds.’ She poked at the carcass with the toe of her leather shoe. It let out a puff of dust. Gwennie kicked it and the dust billowed around her foot.

  Clare pushed Gwennie away roughly. ‘Don’t breathe in that dust,’ she told her. ‘Move away.’

  Gwennie jumped with surprise, not sure what was going on but reacting to the urgency in Clare’s voice.

  Terri shared her surprise. ‘It’s just a dead parrot. We have a lot of those at the moment. More fallout from the bushfires I’m afraid. The fire destroyed their natural habitat and most of their food. A lot of them are weak and diseased. We have been finding carcasses all over the property.’

  ‘There’s nothing harmless about a dead parrot,’ said Clare. ‘They may carry the psittacosis virus and if they do it just takes a whiff of that dust or of their droppings to infect a human. And psittacosis is one disease you don’t want to get. It can kill you. You think you have the flu but you just don’t get better. I did a paper on it at university. Very nasty.’

  Gwennie stared at Terri then Clare. She felt a tremor along the nerve endings under her skin and shivered. ‘What are the symptoms?’ she asked.

  Clare rattled them off. ‘Fever, sore throat, weakness. It starts like the flu but quickly develops into full-blown psittacosis. I think more vets know about it than doctors, which is a pity. It’s usually mistaken for pneumonia.’

  Clare paused, noticing how pale Gwennie had become.

  ‘Pneumonia?’ echoed Gwennie.

  Clare nodded.

  Gwennie started to quietly sob.

  CHAPTER 21

  Marla closed her eyes tightly against the shock. Her bottom lip quivered like a little girl. ‘He’s still up there … at Blackheath?’ she whispered. ‘He’s been there all this time?’

  Her whole body shuddered. She opened the back door and ran down the steps. Clare listened to her retching in the garden. She waited a few minutes, poured a glass of water then followed. Marla was sitting on the bottom step, her shoulders slumped and her brow beaded with sweat.

  ‘I had no idea,’ she said. ‘No idea. All this time …’ Her voice was tremulous. ‘And you saw him? Oh my God.’ She chewed her thumbnail as she looked off into the distance. ‘So how is he?’ Her eyes were full of hope and expectation as she looked up at Clare.

  Clare hesitated. She was trying to explain gently but instead felt she might be making things worse. ‘Well … he’s different … he’s like a … I could take you up there to see him …’

  Marla shook her head vigorously, cutting Clare off in mid-sentence. ‘Oh no. He must hate me. You don’t understand. I let him take the blame for something that I did. I ruined his life. He has had to spend his life in hiding because of what I did, because I was too gutless to admit what I had done.’

  Clare sat down on the ground at Marla’s feet, placing herself directly in front of her. ‘No, Marla. Look at me. That’s not what happened. You mustn’t blame yourself any more. Now listen to me. You didn’t kill Charles Dayton.’

  Clare spoke quietly but urgently, all the while staring hard at Marla.

  ‘You have lived with that idea for too long and it is wrong. You didn’t kill your father. Micky did.’

  Clare repeated what Terri had told her. ‘It happened after you left the shed. They fought violently and Micky hit Dayton over the head. He didn’t mean to kill him but he did and then he set fire to the shed to cover up what he had done.’

  Marla looked past Clare’s shoulder, her eyes unfocussed and her expression glazed.

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ shouted Clare. ‘You are not to blame. You did not kill your father.’

  Marla’s eyes snapped back to her. ‘What are you saying? How would you know?’

  ‘Charles Dayton was alive when you left the shed and healthy enough for him to be able to beat the crap out of Micky. Micky’s injuries were extensive. Dayton beat him black and blue.’

  Marla looked at Clare with a mixture of disbelief and recognition. She scanned her memory of the night. Was this possible?

  Clare watched various expressions flit across her face. Her hands flew from her face to her lap to mid-air, where they gestured, as if she were conducting a conversation inside her head. Finally they came to rest. ‘Is that true?’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes. It’s true.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ she mumbled. She repeated it to herself a few times, as if to try it out, test it for meaning. ‘I didn’t kill him,’ she said, this time with a hint of conviction.

  *

  Clare felt nauseous with excitement and anticipation. For the first time in a month she wished Marla was with her. Her sister – she still couldn’t think of her any other way – would know exactly what was appropriate for a first date. And no doubt she would have just the very thing – fabulous and elegant – hanging in her wardrobe for Clare to borrow.

  Clare put her out of her mind. Marla was in Summer Hill in the inner west of Sydney. Clare was here in her new home, sharing this large apartment on the north shore. She had moved as far away as she could without making it impossible to get to classes at the university. There was little chance she would bump into either Marla or Peg. And that’s just how Clare wanted it. She wasn’t about to go home just for help with her wardrobe. She had no desire to see either of them. Not yet.

  A few days after Marla’s revelations and the visit to Cherry Dell, Clare had moved out of Dadue Street. The two-storey house with the rickety wooden stairs was suddenly unbearable. No longer could she sit across the dinner table from those two women. To think of them as her mother and grandmother made her want to throw glasses or smash plates, so she avoided thinking about them at all. Whatever relation they were, it had no relevance to the person Clare Dalton was now, she tried to tell herself. At the moment Clare felt she had nothin
g to say to either woman, nor did she want to hear from them.

  When she had walked out of the front door, handing Peg her set of house keys, she didn’t say where she was going or when she might be in touch.

  Marla had seemed to understand and Clare had found that patronising and irritating, while the look of pain on Peg’s face gave her a moment of perverse pleasure. On a few occasions since, the memory of Peg’s distress had slipped unbidden into her mind but, before it could blossom into guilt, she put it aside, forcing herself to focus on something else. On Peg’s sixtieth birthday she had felt miserable all day, but didn’t ring. While she sorted through her feelings of anger and betrayal, she tried to cut them both out of her life.

  Clare stared at the sight before her – the meagre contents of her own wardrobe. She wished she could ring Susan for advice, or just a chat to share her excitement, but she and Bill were holidaying in Thailand. Clare’s flatmate was out so that meant she was all on her own to make this momentous decision. She rifled through the clothes on hangers. Nothing looked as good as the dress she had already tried on, then discarded. It lay on her bed in a puddle of red fabric.

  The dress was vivid, dramatic, close-fitting and, as Peg would have said in a voice heavy with disapproval, the colour of a whore’s lipstick. Mr Sanjay would have loved it. He would have said it was red like a fresh, young rosebud, or a hollyhock or something else from nature. Certainly the dress was not for the faint-hearted. It reminded her of the one she had borrowed from Marla for Mr Sanjay’s funeral. The thought made her smile. Well then, perhaps it was appropriate. And what the hell? She wasn’t feeling faint-hearted. She was feeling cheeky and mischievous and lusty and, for all her nerves, probably the most confident she had ever felt in her life. She barely knew this man but she felt the strength of the frisson between them. Tonight was a beginning. And there was something almost intolerable and yet exciting about knowing that.