by Joy Dettman
I am the creator.
He had to be told.
She picked out a brief text. Mavis died in her sleep. It looked wrong, looked cold, so she added peacefully, and peacefully when applied to Mavis looked ridiculous – and death wasn’t something you texted about. So she wiped those six words away and decided that Martin had probably phoned him.
Poor Martin, always being dragged away from parties, and he’d been looking forward to this one. No one had asked him how he’d felt, just expected him to take control. Lori didn’t know yet how she felt – maybe a bit like a person who’d lived through a major tornado, bruised, a bit battered, but now the wind had dropped and soon the lights would come on again.
They were coming on across the river. Always campers over there and now that the weather was improving, there’d be more of them.
She checked her charge again, decided the battery might have enough left in it to make a fast call. She needed to hear Eddy’s voice to know if he was okay. She stood then, drew a breath, hit call and somewhere in Melbourne’s shadowy streets, his mobile rang. Hoped he wasn’t wandering alone down there.
‘Edward Smyth-Owen,’ he replied.
‘It’s me,’ she said. ‘Did Martin or Nelly call you?’
‘What for?’
‘We just found Mavis,’ she said. ‘She died in her sleep, Eddy.’ Dead silence at the other end and his silence was wasting precious battery power. ‘We thought she’d gone out in the car with her mongrel but he left her in bed.’
‘Did he murder her?’
‘No – or I don’t think so. Mick thinks it must have been her heart.’
‘Her father’s heart killed him young,’ Eddy said.
‘Are you all right . . . I mean . . . you know what I mean?’
‘It’s over,’ he said. Silence again, then, ‘I’m okay with it. You?’
‘Yeah, but my battery’s dead, or it’s going to die in a second or two. Call Martin or Nelly if it does.’
‘Plug it in,’ he said.
‘I’m down at the river.’
‘You’re as bad as . . .’
No more Eddy. She wriggled the phone back into her pocket and thought about going home to charge it. He’d want to talk tonight, or text, but police and ambulance men took their time about death and she wanted Mavis gone from that bed before she went home. Also, she’d need to be ready to respond in PC new speak – not that the cops would expect sugar-coating. They’d come the night Martin was injured. They’d come the night Mavis put Vinnie out of action, and he’d never sugar-coated anything in his life – except his porridge.
Sun falling behind the caravan park and getting ready to rise over Henry’s London, but as ever, clinging to Willama’s trees, lighting red fires in their topmost leaves. She used to love being down here to watch the sun being dragged kicking away from Willama.
As a kid she’d believed it used to melt into the ground behind the caravan park, that every morning the night stars congealed into a new sun. Henry had explained to her how there was only one sun, that when it had painted those leaves red, it had been painting a pink dawn sky over London.
Looked towards home then and didn’t want to go there. The boys would go on and on about Mavis tonight, as they had about Greg, and if she didn’t join in, they’d look at her and think, she’s a girl.
Everyone down the bottom end of Dawson Street would know by now that Mavis Smyth-Owen was no more. By tomorrow half of the town would know, and a few would have her murdered by her terrorist boyfriend.
He hadn’t been a terrorist, just a bludger – and a destroyer. He’d powered into their little band of unarmed supply ships and would have scattered them come December.
No need to move now. Since the day Eddy’s bus had driven away, she’d thought of little else. Every morning she’d woken with a jolt in her stomach, her first thought had been living in that rotten city.
Who did a house belong to if its owner died before making a will? She’d read somewhere or Nelly might have told her that the estate went to the government. Watts would sort it out – and what government official would dare put umpteen kids out of their family home.
Mick’s chooks were safe, and Henry’s pot plants. Those pumpkin plants would keep growing. By Christmas they’d be picking butternut pumpkins – and picking their own tomatoes. Everyone, everything would be safe now.
She sucked in a breath and looked at the river, her river, now and forever more her river. It had changed its skin as it always did once the sun disappeared, changed it from a muddy green-brown to a mysterious grey. That’s how she used to know it was time to go home, when her river changed its skin.
Home. Home tonight, tomorrow night and for always.
This morning when she’d woken up and accepted the day, there had been no tomorrow. Tonight they were out there, a long line of them leading off into the dusk. She’d turn sixteen next February, and attempt to get through year eleven. She could almost see that restaurant photograph of Mavis enlarged and set into the frame – not this year or next year but maybe on some very distant tomorrow when the worst of the bad had been forgotten or pushed away. She could almost see Eddy pointing to it and telling some future girlfriend, ‘That was my mother.’
Everyone forgets eventually, and the media faster than the rest. By Monday, the Willama Gazette might have turned Mrs Mavis Smyth-Owen into a devoted mother of twelve.
‘You might make the front page, Mavis,’ she said.
‘Henry did,’ Jamesy said.
She swung around to search for his voice and found him leaning against a tree not two metres away. ‘Creep up on me why don’t you?’ she said.
‘I did – and you looked like the head of the headless horseman. Are we eating tonight?’
‘Have they gone?’
‘They want to talk to you,’ he said. He offered his hand while she extricated herself from a space she’d outgrown years ago.
They stood watching, listening to a group of campers laughing and drinking around a barbeque, until Jamesy attempted a poor imitation of Martin’s yowie yodel.
‘That sounds like a cockerel’s crow. You need to cup your mouth with your hands to give it resonance,’ Lori instructed, as Martin had instructed her five or six years ago.
She’d outgrown that yowie yodel, though maybe it was what she needed tonight. Maybe it would clear whatever had been jamming up her lungs since she’d found Mavis. She brushed her hands clean of clay on her jeans, cupped them to her mouth and gave him a practical demonstration. It wasn’t one of her best. She was out of practice.
‘When Martin was fourteen, an old dude camping over there told a Gazette reporter that he’d seen a huge hairy beast running between the trees,’ Lori said.
‘Give those campers a duet,’ Jamesy said. ‘On the count of three.’
They opened their throats on three and gave the listeners an ongoing duet that grew in volume until that hurting, twisted lump jamming her airways released its grip and landed with a plop in the river.
‘Again,’ she said. And again they directed their challenge across the water.
In response, the powerful beam of a spotlight sent them scuttling into the trees. Jamesy chuckled as they walked the diagonal path through bushland to the track that would lead them home, Lori silent but now ready to deal with whatever was waiting at the house, be it the cops, green slime silverbeet or a dried-out gravy beef stew – not that Vinnie was likely to allow it to dry out. He’d tasted it.
About Joy Dettman
Joy Dettman was born in Echuca, Victoria. She spent her early years in small towns on either side of the Murray River. In the late sixties, she and her husband moved to the outer suburbs of Melbourne, where they have chosen to remain. Joy is an award-winning writer of short stories set in country Australia, which were published in Australia and New Zealand between 1993 and 1997. The complete collection, Diamonds in the Mud, was published in 2007. Joy went on to write the highly acclaimed novels Mallawindy, Jacaranda Bl
ue, Goose Girl, Yesterday’s Dust, The Seventh Day, Henry’s Daughter, One Sunday, The Silent Inheritance and the Woody Creek novels.
Also by Joy Dettman
Mallawindy
Jacaranda Blue
Goose Girl
Yesterday’s Dust
The Seventh Day
Henry’s Daughter
One Sunday
The Silent Inheritance
Diamonds in the Mud
Woody Creek series
Pearl in a Cage
Thorn on the Rose
Moth to the Flame
Wind in the Wires
Ripple on a Pond
The Tying of Threads
Trails in the Dust
First published 2021 in Macmillan by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 2000
Copyright © Joy Dettman 2021
The moral right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
EPUB format: 9781760985349
This is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously without any intent to describe actual conduct.
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