by Joy Dettman
For minutes Lori watched him until he moved from view, when Neil walked over to the big window, Lori behind him. Between the gaps of the slatted blind she saw the curved beak of his nose, saw him hawk and spit where kids walked – and she hated him – and feared him.
He’d done nothing to her, except for grabbing her arm that day in the laundry. Maybe he’d done it to save her when she’d tripped on Martin’s toolbox. Knew it was just his excuse. Her fear of him was instinctual.
She lost sight of him when he entered the back door, but not the sound of him. He’d got enough wood to light the stove.
They didn’t hear Mavis enter the kitchen, only her command. ‘Shut that bloody thing. It’s smoking up the house!’ And who was she to complain about smoke? Every time they saw her, she had a cigarette in her hand or mouth. Though maybe not this morning. ‘Did you get my smokes?’
His reply became lost in the rattle of the firebox closing. She was training him.
‘I told you last night I was out of smokes. Get the car out.’
He must have said ‘eggs’.
‘Bugger eggs,’ she said. ‘That bloody thing takes hours to heat. We’ll eat out.’
More stove noise, the central hotplate removed so the pan would heat faster. If Lori was an expert on anything it was on the sounds of this house.
The frying pan hit a wall. She knew that sound. Mavis had thrown it full of fish one night. Henry had cleaned up the mess.
Ali-oomph was no Henry. He released a spurt of foreign language.
‘I told you last night that I’d need smokes this morning.’
Mick stopped doing his homework to listen with her and Neil at the door. Timmy stopped reading The Borrowers, though only momentarily. He’d learnt early how to tune out life with fiction.
Flesh slapped flesh, an unmistakable sound, though unheard for some time.
‘Which one?’ Neil asked.
‘Shush.’ Someone hit the table. A chair flew, accompanied by another spurt of foreign language. He was no undergrown, underfed Henry. He was fighting back.
The war in the kitchen continued for minutes, but she won it. She always won. They heard him go out the back door, then minutes later heard the Hyundai’s motor roar.
*
Eddy texted at twelve-thirty. He’d arrived in Melbourne, to rain. By Monday night cold rain was falling in Willama and on Tuesday the temperature didn’t climb above eleven. September was supposed to be springtime. They’d had two very fine days and now it was winter again.
Nelly never missed her Wednesday bingo, except that Wednesday, and as the kids arrived home cold and wet from school, she rapped on her window and gathered them in to share the warmth of her gas heater. She rapped for Lori, who parked her bike against Nelly’s house, shed her backpack and ran through the rain to add a third fuse to her collection. She’d heard the air conditioner thumping before hearing Nelly’s rap.
‘What time did the electrician come, Nelly?’
‘Before lunch. It’s been going since.’
It wasn’t now.
Lori drank a mug of tea at the window, ate two biscuits hot from the oven while watching Henry’s house. Saw him come out and walk right, towards the silent motor. She expected him to look at the meterbox. He didn’t. He went inside.
Twenty minutes later, when Alan and Jamesy rode home with the usual shopping, a white van turned into Henry’s muddy driveway. Its driver walked directly to the meterbox, before he knocked on the door and Mavis came out firing. Unable to hear what was said, Lori went out to the veranda. A wild wind blown up from the South Pole carried Mavis’s words clearly, but not the electrician’s, who would have diagnosed the problem at a glance. He was pointing, attempting to show her that row of fuses – with one missing.
‘Shades of the blow-heater era,’ Alan said.
‘Shush.’
Mavis was in that poor dude’s face, disinterested in what he was pointing to. She wanted heat.
‘I paid you to fix the bloody thing, so fix it.’
‘I told you this morning. One of your neighbours is playing games. If I put another fuse in, it’s wasting my time and your money. You need a door on that box you can lock.’
‘It’s my bloody money to waste and you’re not getting another cent of it. I paid you to do a job, so bloody do it.’
He might have been Martin’s age but was a head taller and he was standing up to her, and it was good to see. ‘Pay me my call-out fee and I’ll put another fuse in.’
Ali-oomph was out but standing well back. When Mavis reached her screeching stage, no one wanted to be near her. That electrician, who had been leaning against a veranda post, lighting a cigarette, moved when Martin drove up, saw the situation at 108 and turned into Nelly’s driveway. In Willama, tradespeople knew each other and half of Willama would have recognised Old Red. The electrician did. He crossed over.
‘What’s with her?’ he asked.
‘Tell us and we’ll all know,’ Jamesy replied as Martin and Matty joined the rest of the kids, seconds before another wave of rain blew in from the south.
Nelly’s veranda wasn’t long or wide enough to keep a crowd dry, unless they flattened against the wall.
‘I told your mother this morning that someone was removing her fuses, that she needed to get herself a door with a lock. I gave her the phone number of a bloke who’d do it for her.’
‘We’re not too concerned, mate,’ Martin said.
‘How much does she owe you?’ Mick asked.
‘I charge double for an after-hours call-out.’
Mick had twenty-two dollars in his wallet. Lori could raise thirty with shrapnel. Alan had ten and a half dollars. Martin never carried money.
The electrician took cards, but with his means for taking card payment in his van, they had to wait until the shower eased off, then Martin crossed over to pay.
No sign of Mavis, or not until the van cleared the driveway. Martin had continued down towards his van to change out of his work clothes when the watchers on the veranda saw Mavis and Ali-oomph follow him.
‘You’re the bastard taking out our fuses,’ she screeched.
‘Pay your own bills and you can burn what you like,’ Martin said over his shoulder.
They’d had a few epic wars in the past, verbal wars. That vulture-beaked mongrel made it physical. The watchers on Nelly’s veranda saw Martin go down.
There is a certain point when the rational brain stops recording, when the world becomes white space and primal reflexes take control. You don’t know what you grab, only that you need a weapon. You hear screaming in that white space, but it’s no noise you’ve ever made before; it was more the war-cry of the screaming hordes as they ran to their death, swords in their hands.
Lori didn’t have a sword. She swung Henry’s metal-headed rake, swung it as a golf club at that brown bald head, and in that moment of white time she expected that head to fly like a golf ball over the fence.
Missed her shot but got him in the upper spine, which staggered him mid-kick. The back of his knees hit the edge of the veranda and as he sat down hard, she swung the rake again at his head. His raised arm saved his head but not his arm. He was holding it when he backed towards his car.
Mavis had lost one battle today, but Nelly was coming, yelling that she’d called the cops. The fight went out of Mavis. Slipping, sliding in the mud, she damn near ran for the car, Lori behind her, swinging. She belted the car’s bonnet and before they cleared the driveway the rake flew at the windscreen. But they got away.
*
Alan and Jamesy got Martin up, got him inside. His nose was pouring blood. He had a bloody gash beneath an eye full of mud, but they supported his uncoordinated feet into the diseased shower cubicle, and who cared if it was diseased or not when muddy, bloody water was flowing down its drain.
The cops arrived and with only Nelly to greet them they heard an honest account of why she’d called them. Raised in the era before tongues had required padlocks
, they copped a few ethnic insults and fat murdering bitch insults as they followed the trail of mud and blood through the house to the bathroom, where Martin stood in his jeans and boots, blood still pouring but no more mud.
The boys and a cop got him clothed. His nose was still leaking blood and swelling. One of the cops said it was broken.
‘Given the volatility between yourself and your mother’s new partner, it may be advisable for you to find alternative accommodation,’ he said.
His mother’s new partner? Lori wanted to scream the truth, wanted to scream that they didn’t have a mother. She’d done too much screaming, had broken something in her throat so she stood, staring at the gun on one of those cops’ belts, and thought that if she’d had that gun tonight her ‘mother’ and her mother’s new partner would have been lying out there in the rain with bullets between their eyes.
The cops took down what details they could. Mick knew Ali’s date of birth and that he had family in Sydney, that his family name might have started with an H. He knew that the Hyundai was around five years old and that Vinnie knew its registration number. He told them that Ali had a holiday visa.
The cops said that they’d follow it up but were more interested in getting Martin up to the hospital. The gash beneath his eye was weeping pink tears. Blood was still leaking from his nose.
‘I’ll go when Vinnie comes home,’ Martin said, and the cops left. Maybe they’d try to do something, as they’d tried when she’d broken Mick’s hip. Maybe they would have done something if Lori had opened her mouth. Back then she’d been too afraid of Child Welfare to say anything.
It was after six before Vinnie came in with his boss who’d never before come inside. More into action than words, he looked at Martin’s nose and agreed with the cops that it was broken. He’d know. His own looked to have been broken a few times.
He also agreed about alternative accommodation, as did Lori. Martin was no fighter. He didn’t have the height or the weight. That mongrel dog could have killed him. She’d thought that he was dead when he’d been face-down in the mud.
She had Sean’s phone number, so phoned him from the front veranda and asked him to come and get the van.
He came five minutes later with his father, and their kitchen was crowded. The crowd thinned when Martin and the caravan left with the Dobsons. Vinnie’s boss didn’t leave. He had illegal information to pass on.
According to Nelly, there were three degrees of separation between Merve and ninety percent of Willama’s population. He had nine brothers and sisters, his wife had seven, his father was one of thirteen and his mother one of ten, and where no blood or marriage was involved, paint was. Two of Merve’s uncles were master painters. Merve told them about Gladys, a young aunt who ran the office of a car yard out near Bunnings.
PC language wasn’t all that went out the window that night. Privacy laws, supposed to protect everyone’s right to privacy, followed it once Merve got started.
‘She did the paperwork on your mother’s car,’ he said.
‘Our mother’s?’ Neil asked.
‘She paid a deposit and signed the rest up with a finance company,’ Merve said.
‘Who’d give her credit?’ Alan asked.
‘She’s never paid a bill in her life,’ Mick said.
She hadn’t, but her bankcard had. Mick and Lori’s bill-paying reliability would have given her a triple-A credit rating.
Merve’s wife phoned him twice. ‘Coming now,’ he said twice. She phoned a third time before he left. Nelly stayed on until the stove was hot enough for Vinnie to fry bulk eggs.
The Hyundai didn’t return. Perhaps the cops had got them.
Sean phoned from the hospital at nine-twenty. There was more wrong with Martin than a broken nose and that gash. Two of his ribs had been cracked by that killer bastard’s boots, and he had a mild concussion. They were releasing him though, to Sean and his father.
‘We’ll keep him with us for a day or two,’ Sean said.
Or for a week or a month or forever – and it was too much like that last time for Lori, when one by one the boys had left home.
*
No Hyundai in the drive come morning, Martin’s ute still blocking Nelly’s driveway but the stove was burning, the kettle boiling, and Vinnie wanted porridge.
Matty protested about being buckled into the worn-out kid’s seat on Lori’s bike. He’d become accustomed to better. Before they reached the highway, his early complaints about the buckles hurting his tummy and the wood hurting his legs had become an ongoing whine. Lori stopped pedalling and told him to get off and walk.
‘It’s too far.’
It was too far to pedal. Martin’s choice of childcare was two kilometres out on the Melbourne highway and the high school a two-kilometre ride back, and she didn’t want to go to school, though staying at home was no option.
‘Walk or shut up. Make your choice.’
‘It hurts my legs.’
‘Life hurts, kid. Get used to it,’ she said and pedalled on.
*
No Hyundai in the driveway that afternoon and no sign that it had been there. There were positives to the caravan being gone. There was daylight in the laundry; the washing machine could be plugged directly into the power point. Lori looked for positives, but they’re hard to find when every car she heard was them returning, when every movement she glimpsed in the backyard made her heart lurch.
Her heart lurched when she heard footsteps on the west-side veranda. Only Nelly, dodging the muddy driveway.
‘Did Martin happen to leave his keys here, Smithy?’
‘They’ll be in his pocket,’ Lori said.
‘His ute is leaking oil into my azaleas,’ Nelly said.
It had been leaking for months. In recent weeks, every time he’d poured oil into its motor, he’d threatened to stop pouring it in, threatened to blow up its motor before giving it up to the Kelly gang. Money he could earn. He didn’t give a damn about money, but Old Red had been a part of his life since he’d turned seventeen.
‘I’ll ride out and get them,’ Mick said. It was a six-kilometre ride out there and six back and at this time of day there was traffic about and he rode that bike too fast. Lori phoned Vinnie, or she phoned Merve and spoke to Vinnie. He picked up the keys and Matty, who learnt that night that there were worse places to ride than on the back of a bike. Merve’s work van, an old rattletrap Kombi, had no rear seats. Matty rode home on a pile of paint-splattered tarps and paint paraphernalia, with not one window to offer a view.
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The Hyundai came home on Sunday morning. Neil saw Mavis unload three heavy plastic bags, watched the Taliban get out from the driver’s seat. ‘Like Spud used to get out of cars,’ he said – like an eighty-year-old man with a bad back. ‘He’s been to a hospital,’ Neil reported. ‘He’s got his right hand and arm in plaster.’
The rest of the kids didn’t see him that Sunday. They spent the day on the safe side of the road. They saw her go out in a taxi at two. They heard her at eleven when she came home. Half of the neighbours probably heard her attacking their door. No sign or sound of her or him when the kids left the house on Monday morning, Matty on his pile of tarps.
Eddy texted most days. On Tuesday he texted to ask if they’d received his letter. There’d been no mail or junk mail that day. They found out why on Wednesday. Nelly told them that she’d seen Mavis emptying their letterbox, and Martin had been expecting a letter from Melbourne, and not from the Kelly gang. Eddy phoned on Wednesday night. His voice sounded nasal but otherwise okay.
The kids emptied the green bin that night to look for shredded letters. Mavis couldn’t have burnt them. They had no wood so no stove, and her mongrel was in no state to forage for wood.
They saw him on Saturday. Mavis had taken a load of washing out to the laundry where they heard her attempting to kill the washing machine she’d never learnt to use. Her mongrel could use it. He limped out and got it going, but instead of hanging it,
she went out in a taxi.
He hung it at nightfall, with one and a half hands.
‘He’ll go,’ Mick said.
‘She’ll turn him into a Henry,’ Jamesy said.
*
It was Thursday, a week and a day after Martin and the van had been driven away, when the kids rode home to a white twin-cab ute parked in Nelly’s driveway. It looked like Sean’s but was too clean to be his.
Martin was in Nelly’s kitchen drinking tea. His nose was taped. He was bruised around and beneath his left eye; he had a red scar in the centre of that bruise but there wasn’t a thing wrong with his mouth.
‘That’s not Sean’s ute,’ Lori greeted him.
‘I spent most of my money on it,’ he smiled.
‘You’re not giving up Old Red!’
‘I’ll take to it with Bert’s chainsaw first,’ he said. ‘But I think it’s safe.’
He told them then about an Andrew Barron, how he’d been in contact with Eddy and Watts during his convalescence and how Andrew Barron was one of Watts’s partners.
‘I hired him to deal with the Kelly gang’s solicitor. He suggested I transfer ownership of Old Red to Vinnie – or that was the plan before Jan sent me a video.’
He played the video Jan had taken last December when her entire family had seen it and decided not to show it to Martin.
It was dated visual proof that Miss Piggy had been cheating on him months before he’d left her. He played it three times before everyone over the age of six had seen Miss Piggy and some stranger dude doing everything but have public sex. He played it again when Vinnie and Matty joined the group around the table.
Vinnie turned the talk back to Old Red.
‘She needs new rear main seals and bearings, but other than in name, she’s yours, Vin,’ Martin said.
‘Shit, ah,’ Vinnie said and he smiled. He didn’t do it often. He should have.