The Port Fairy Murders

by Robert Gott

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘Father Brennan’s always at me to bring Selwyn to Mass. Can you imagine it? He knows perfectly well it’s impossible.’

  ‘Has he ever actually met Selwyn?’

  ‘Oh, only in Sackville Street, and Selwyn just scratched away on his slate and giggled and drooled. You’d think they’d had some sort of conversation, from the way Father Brennan talks about it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Aunt Aggie. I know he’s a priest and all, but the man’s a fool.’

  ‘I think he drinks. He’s often rather florid.’

  ‘Maybe it’s all those sins he hears in Confession. Maybe he gets overheated.’

  Only Matthew could get away with that sort of talk. Aggie would have felt compelled to express strong disapproval at any aspersions cast upon the priest by anybody else. Conversation with Matthew was a delicious conspiracy. She lied to Father Brennan in Confession — she’d never confessed her feelings about Selwyn — but she never lied to Matthew.

  ‘Father Brennan must know a lot of dark secrets, don’t you think?’ she said.

  ‘If people are silly enough to tell him things.’

  ‘Oh yes. People want absolution, Matthew.’

  ‘Would it shock you to know how long it’s been since my last Confession, Aunt Aggie?’

  ‘No, don’t tell me. I’d worry.’

  And Aggie would worry because, despite her low opinion of the priest at St Patrick’s, she believed absolutely in the power of Confession. She was an obfuscatory penitent, but she never took communion without absolution.

  ‘You should go to Confession, Matthew. An eternity in Hell is a very long time.’

  ‘Where will Selwyn go when he dies, do you think? All that self-abuse must be racking up the mortal sins.’

  ‘Father Brennan seems to think he’ll go straight to Heaven, without even a short stay in Purgatory. Imagine that, if you please. He commits a mortal sin every day of his life, sometimes twice a day, and he’ll get a free ride to Heaven.’

  ‘While you suffer in Purgatory. It seems unfair, and somehow typical of the Catholic Church.’

  ‘Matthew! Besides, my dear, I have no intention of spending any time in Purgatory. I’ll have a priest at my bedside to administer Extreme Unction.’

  ‘If it’s the last thing you do?’

  Aggie laughed. She didn’t laugh often, and it was usually Matthew who provoked it. It was Matthew who brought a quantum of joy into her life.

  ‘If you slip into the house for a moment, I’ll get Selwyn out through the back gate.’

  ‘I could just drag him out, if you like.’

  ‘No. I couldn’t bear the noise. I have a bit of a headache.’

  JOHANNA SCOTNEY DIDN’T like snakes. She didn’t have a horror of them; she just didn’t like them, which was why she said no when Timothy Harrison suggested they take a walk through the mutton-bird rookery on Griffiths Island. She said that she’d prefer to walk the other way, go over the bridge across the Moyne River and saunter through the Botanical Gardens, or the remnants of them. The gardens had fallen on hard times, without a full-time gardener available to tend them. They’d been damaged, too, by floods. And yet, somehow, the presence of many trees — the almost ubiquitous Norfolk Pines mainly, and even ragged hedges — managed to create the illusion of a garden. Johanna’s mother had told her that there’d once been a lover’s walk in the Botanicals, and that proposals for several marriages, including her own, had been made there.

  Johanna and Timothy met as arranged at lunchtime outside the courthouse in Gipps Street. The wharf opposite wasn’t as busy as it had been before the war. Many of the boats had been requisitioned by the armed forces, and now, instead of dropping lines for sharks, they moved supplies and ammunition along the New Guinea coast. There weren’t as many fishermen either. Even though sharking was a reserved industry, many men had enlisted. The army was a break from the gruelling, dangerous, and poorly paid life of a fisherman. Her father’s couta boat, old and too small for military use — it was barely a 20 footer — wouldn’t be tied up at the wharf now. He’d left at his usual time of 3.00 am to drop lines ten miles out from shore. Shark numbers had fallen, and Mr Scotney added to his meagre income by smoking a portion of his barracouta catch in a smoker he’d made himself in the backyard of their house in Corbett Street. He had steady orders from locals for his smoked couta.

  Timothy knew nothing of this world. Like most people in Port Fairy who weren’t fishermen, he had a fairly low opinion of them. They kept to themselves mostly, because townspeople thought them crude and rough. No one doubted their courage, or that the work they did was dirty, hard, and perilous, but they weren’t welcome in clean parlours. Most people ate fish only occasionally, even reluctantly — Catholics ate fish on a Friday, of course — and they weren’t particularly interested in the lives of the men who toiled to provide for them. If push came to shove, they could do without fish altogether. This certainly couldn’t be said of lamb or beef. Johanna was, by degrees, changing Timothy’s mind about fishing. She tried to convey to him what life was like on a fishing boat, although she’d never been far beyond the mouth of the Moyne in her father’s couta boat. Tom Scotney wasn’t willing to expose his daughter to the open sea, not even on the calmest of days. Freak waves had overwhelmed couta boats before, and had drowned the most experienced of men. Fishing was not for women; he wouldn’t budge on that.

  ‘Did you know,’ she said as they walked towards the bridge, ‘that the fish you get at the fish-and-chip shop in town is shark?’

  ‘It’s Sweet William, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sweet William’s just a nice name for shark.’

  ‘Ugh. I’m not sure I like the idea of eating shark.’

  ‘It tastes nice, doesn’t it, and it’s got no bones.’

  ‘No bones, that’s true. I’ve never really thought about it.’

  ‘Dad catches shark mostly. He gets a better price for it than couta.’

  ‘How do you get a shark into one of those boats?’

  Johanna hit him playfully on his shoulder.

  ‘They’re not huge man-eaters. They’re gummy sharks. Dad says the worst thing about them is that when you cut them open you breathe in a whole lot of ammonia, and it makes your face go bright red. Imagine breathing that in all day.’

  ‘My dad was gassed.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Johanna was embarrassed, and felt as if she’d done something wrong. ‘I didn’t mean to compare …’

  ‘No,’ Timothy said quickly. He was now embarrassed in return, and neither of them could find a way out of the clumsy moment. They walked in silence.

  ‘I’d like to meet your mum and dad,’ Johanna said.

  ‘Dad doesn’t say much.’

  ‘My dad doesn’t say much either, and when he does talk it’s always about fish.’

  Johanna stole a sidelong glance at Timothy. He was just a few months younger than she was, but she felt so much older, and it wasn’t just that the boy wasn’t quite yet the man. Her life had been protected, but not sheltered. A childhood spent on the wharf, surrounded by the unguarded conversation of men, had ensured that there wasn’t an obscenity or blasphemy she hadn’t heard. No one had ever turned abuse on her or done anything as vile as Matthew Todd, though. Tom Scotney would have killed the man who outraged his daughter. This was partly why she hadn’t told him about Matthew’s actions. Tom Scotney would go to Todd’s house, and God help Matthew then. He’d gut and fillet him. Timothy’s life had been sheltered. Johanna had never heard him utter a curse. He looked unused. Yes, that was the word — unused, as if he was yet to know how ugly the world could be. He’d grown up with an invalid father, but perhaps Mr Harrison was one of those men who never spoke of the horrors he’d seen. Timothy turned his head, caught her eye, and smiled. Johanna felt a rush of affection for him, and as if
he’d sensed it, he did something extraordinary. He kissed her, right there in Gipps Street, just before the bridge. He leaned down and put his mouth on hers, and she didn’t pull away. To the astonishment of each of them, the kiss was warm and smooth, with no hint of clumsiness. They drew apart and began to walk across the bridge towards the Botanical Gardens.

  ‘KISSING IN PUBLIC like that, really, it’s disgusting,’ said Dorothy Shipman. She and Matthew Todd, having left his aunt’s house after a cup of tea, had decided to walk to East Beach, where Matthew thought he might have a swim. When they’d turned into Gipps Street, he’d seen the couple ahead of them and recognised Johanna Scotney at once. He slowed their pace so as to avoid catching up with the couple, and gave no indication to Dorothy that he knew the girl. So that gangly, gormless youth was the beau that Rose mentioned. Matthew chortled.

  ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘You never tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m not thinking anything at all, Dotty. My mind is blank.’

  ‘I wish you’d tell me things.’

  You wouldn’t like the things I could tell you, he thought. When Johanna and Timothy kissed, he experienced a thrill. It wasn’t jealousy. It was more visceral than that — it was the thrill of the chase. Whoever you are, he thought as he watched the young man put his arm around Johanna’s waist, you’re not going to get there first. Dorothy, having expressed her disappointment at the lewd display, looked to Matthew for his reaction. She couldn’t make sense of the expression on his face.

  ‘Really, Matthew, I insist that you tell me what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I was thinking how lucky I am, Dot — how very, very lucky.’

  ‘Lucky to have me, you mean,’ she said and laughed.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That, too.’

  She had no idea what he meant, but she was pleased to be walking beside him. He was a good man — reliable, honest, respectful. Once she’d nominated the boundaries of their physical relationship, he hadn’t gone beyond them. She wished he was more mindful of his faith. That was something she could work on after they were married. It wasn’t something she wanted to argue about now. The sacrament of marriage and the gift of children would bring Matthew back to the Church. Dorothy was praying for this, saying the Rosary every day, and she believed in the power of prayer. After all, even before she’d met Matthew she’d prayed that someone like him would come along. And hadn’t God answered that prayer? Luck, she told herself, had had nothing to do with it.

  IT HAD BECOME a scheduled part of every week on the Abbot farm that Saturday lunch would be followed by sex. They had the house to themselves. They never took their lovemaking out of the bedroom, even though there was no danger of being caught by anyone. Rose had tried to encourage her husband into other rooms, or outside. He said he couldn’t relax and enjoy himself in odd places. Rose lay on the bed in her nightdress, waiting for John to finish cleaning himself in the bathroom. He liked to approach their lovemaking feeling freshly bathed and smelling of Bornns Bay Rum. He also liked to begin matters with his wife modestly covered. Early in their marriage he’d found her lying naked on the bed, and he’d said that the sight of his wife disporting herself was unseemly. He, however, always approached the task naked. He had no personal modesty. Why would a man need to be modest? Modesty was the domain and responsibility of women.

  Rose had become used to her husband’s contradictory notions about sex. He wasn’t a particularly thoughtful lover, but he wasn’t rough or nasty either. She’d come to accept that he was a tad boring. It was always the same. He whispered endearments, fiddled about a bit, manoeuvred her into position, pushed himself inside her, and, trying not to lie too heavily on her, began to move back and forth with the monotonous regularity of an underpowered piston. Rose closed her eyes and tried to extract as much pleasure as she could from the exercise. Sometimes this worked, but she had to be careful not to be too expressive. John believed that his wife should enjoy sex, no question about it. There was a difference, though, between enjoyment and wanton abandonment. His wife moaning with pleasure frightened him.

  In the kitchen, after each of them had sponged the evidence of their lovemaking away, Rose said that she’d like to drive into Port Fairy, visit her Aunt Aggie, and maybe go for a swim at East Beach. John said that he’d be happy to drive her in, but that he’d go to the pub while she was at Aggie’s.

  ‘She doesn’t like me anyway, so it’s not like she’d care.’

  Afterwards they could both go for swim. That was fine by Rose. She was never comfortable when John and Aggie were together. Aggie made no secret of the fact that she thought him coarse — which he was. Visiting Aggie was a chore, not a pleasure. She couldn’t make her laugh the way Matthew could, and she lacked his knack of easy conversation with her. Even though they saw each other irregularly, there never seemed to be anything to say. Aggie would ask if Rose had heard from her parents. The answer was usually no, although occasionally there might have been a recent phone call. Rose knew not to ask after Uncle Selwyn, and she wouldn’t have done so anyway. She didn’t loathe Selwyn the way Matthew did, yet she felt no connection with him. She avoided Sackville Street, and if she had to shop there, she never acknowledged him.

  John parked the truck outside the Caledonian Hotel, and Rose walked from there to Aggie’s house. It wasn’t far. Nothing was far in Port Fairy. She had a nodding acquaintance with almost every person she passed. Strange faces were a rare sight in town. There was the odd itinerant who came looking for work on the wharf, but generally people were familiar to one another through church, ladies’ auxiliaries, or the pubs. Rose met Mrs Hardiman, with two of her seven children in tow. Mr Hardiman was stationed somewhere in the Northern Territory, and Mrs Hardiman had no help with the children. Nevertheless, they were turned out beautifully each Sunday at Mass, and Mrs Hardiman never looked harried. While they were chatting, Mr Butler walked by. He touched his hat politely, but didn’t stop.

  ‘He’s a Mason,’ Mrs Hardiman said.

  ‘Really?’ Rose watched his retreating back. ‘You just don’t know about people, do you? I had no idea.’

  ‘He’s nice enough, and his wife’s been good to us. They live next door.’

  ‘Still, a Mason.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a real shame.’

  Aggie was pleased to see, when she opened the door to Rose’s knock, that John Abbot wasn’t with her. It was bad enough that Rose seemed to have caught some of his uncouthness. Her hair, for example, was either pulled back unflatteringly or was a rat’s nest of untidiness.

  ‘I didn’t bring any eggs, but I think Matthew probably brought some yesterday.’ Rose had noticed that her pantry had been raided.

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Aggie said, and managed to convey her disappointment that her niece wasn’t as thoughtful or generous as her nephew. Rose thought that reminding her aunt that the eggs and vegetables were in fact hers, and not Matthew’s, would be viewed as petty, so she said nothing.

  Aggie made a pot of tea, and produced shortbread biscuits that she’d made with butter from the Abbot’s farm. She made no mention of this gift, and Rose didn’t fail to notice that the teaspoon next to her cup wasn’t one of the silver apostle spoons. Matthew, no doubt, would always be favoured with an apostle spoon.

  ‘You look well, Aunty,’ she said.

  ‘I just try to look neat, Rose. It doesn’t take that much of an effort.’

  Rose ignored the implied criticism. She had no desire to squabble with her aunt, who was well practised in withering rejoinders. She used them sparingly in company, not wishing to get a reputation in the parish for shrewishness. A well-timed, well-aimed remark, however, helped create an impression of intelligence, and it was generally agreed that Aggie Todd, while dour, had a sharp wit, and she was never short of invitations to elevenses and tiffin.

  After s
ome dull remarks about the fires and the weather, Rose asked her aunt what she thought of Dorothy Shipman.

  ‘She was here this morning. She seems a sensible-enough girl. She’s a draper’s daughter, which I suppose is what passes for society in Port Fairy. Matthew is fond of her, so that’s all well and good.’

  ‘I’ve only met her once.’

  ‘Well, you’re out on that farm, aren’t you? I can’t see Dorothy traipsing about in cow pats.’

  Rose didn’t bite.

  ‘No, I suppose not. I’d like to get to know her better. What does she see in Matthew, do you think?’

  Aggie looked incredulous.

  ‘What an extraordinary question, Rose. Your brother is the most successful forwarding agent in this town. He’s done more for the fishermen here than the Co-operative has ever managed to do.’

  ‘I don’t think the Co-op would agree with you, Aunty.’

  All of Rose’s knowledge of the lives of Port Fairy’s fishermen had been gleaned from Johanna’s conversation about her father, and her father was a member of the Co-operative.

  ‘You don’t live in the town, Rose. If you did, you’d know how well respected your brother is.’

  ‘Is she a Catholic girl, or is Matthew following in Dad’s footsteps?’

  ‘The Shipmans are very much a Catholic family. If you came to Mass more regularly, you’d see Dorothy there.’

  ‘Father Brennan understands that it’s not always easy for John to leave the farm.’

  ‘It’s a mortal sin. Imagine if you fell under the tractor on a Monday, having missed Mass on Sunday. John should make more of an effort. It wouldn’t hurt him to be little more self-sacrificing.’