Mercy Street

by Tess Evans

  Stella’s eyes gleam. ‘We’ve got a couple of things to sort out first. They’ll be able to trace your car. And your credit card and phone.’

  Bree, who’s been looking annoyed at being gazumped in the planning stakes, smirks. ‘Ahead of you there,’ she says. ‘We drove up in separate cars while it was still dark. Redgum’s is parked out on the road near town, and the other one’s hidden in bush a few k’s back. I got it from a friend of a friend. Untraceable, that’s what he said.’

  ‘How much . . . ?’ George begins but Redgum interrupts him.

  ‘You don’t know how much you’ll need,’ he says quietly. ‘I’m in no hurry. What else have I got to do with me money?’

  George blinks behind his glasses. ‘Ta, mate.’

  ‘So,’ Stella sums up, earning another glare from Bree. ‘George leaves in his own car tomorrow as planned. Then he picks up the other car and drives out to our place until what’s-her-name gets tired of waiting or Bree talks her into staying.’

  ‘He’ll need cash in hand.’ Park is eager to contribute to the plan. ‘I’ll take him round to the bank. He can tell them he needs cash to pay a bloke for a car. That’ll explain the large withdrawal. Private sellers always want cash.’

  Redgum pulls an envelope full of notes from his backpack. ‘Some readies here, too – just in case.’

  ‘They’ll need at least one overnight stop on the way,’ Stella warns. ‘And we don’t want them recognised.’

  ‘Easy-peasy.’ Bree’s back in the game. ‘We’ll shave George’s head and buy him some sunglasses. And . . .’ She’s all fired up. ‘We can cut Rory’s hair and dye it dark brown.’

  Stella hugs herself with excitement. ‘We’ll disguise her as a boy. She’s the same size as Harry – close enough, anyway.’

  While they plan around him, George listens in a kind of daze. He has never contemplated kidnapping Rory. He just wants a few more days with her. Then enough time to persuade Angie to stay in Melbourne. How is it possible that all these apparently responsible adults are planning what has to be a crime? Or even if it isn’t a crime, is it the right thing to do? Not from Angie’s point of view – that much is obvious. But in the overall scheme of things, what’s in Rory’s best interests? He tries to imagine her in five, ten, twenty years’ time. Will she be an addict, or homeless, or reliant on some sleazeball for support? Will she be another Angie, small child in tow, her best not nearly enough to rescue her child from the same fate? George sees them, one generation after another, plodding through life, heads bowed, or racing reckless to the same end. He, George, can offer her so much more. Stability. Education. (He sees her, clear as can be, in a cap and gown, Doctor Aurora-Jane Wilson – in this scenario, even her name sounds dignified.) And love. His love will never waver. She can rely on him every inch of the way. As long as I can keep it together until she grows up. This thought, submerged for some time, bobs up to the surface like a drowned man, a clamorous corpse that, if he’s to go along with this preposterous plan, needs to be buried deep in the earth.

  ‘George, are you listening?’ His reverie broken, George looks around at the four conspirators – all of them his friends. ‘I can’t let you do it,’ he says. ‘You could end up in jail and – wait—’ A thought strikes him. ‘Shirl. Does she know anything about this?’

  Bree shakes her head. ‘Only told Redgum ’cos he had the key to your house.’

  Stella nods her approval. ‘Excellent. A need to know. That’s what they call it.’

  George is relieved. He isn’t sure how Shirl would react, but it’s hard to imagine that she’d condone kidnapping. Best keep her well out of it.

  ‘Accessories,’ Stella confirms. ‘That’s what we are. If you’re caught at our house, we’ll tell them you did it all off your own bat. That you knew the house would be empty and used it without us knowing.’

  ‘No reason to suspect us, either,’ Bree says. ‘We came in from the beach. No one knows we’re here.’

  ‘But all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Isn’t it a bit over the top?’

  ‘You haven’t spoken to her,’ Bree says. ‘She’s very jumpy and aggro at the moment. I thought I knew her, but I don’t know what she’ll do if Rory’s not back by Monday. We need to play it safe.’ George looks so alarmed that she hastens to reassure him. ‘She wouldn’t call the cops or anything. Lover boy’s got too much to hide. But he does have some nasty mates.’

  Unsure whether it’s crazy or courageous, George agrees to go along with their plan. How else can he keep his little girl? His stomach betrays his anxiety, but he has to be firm. Angie, with her wild ways, has lost the right to be a parent.

  How many years is it since he’d stood behind Penny, holding a lock of the rusty grey hair that fell, soft and full, just above her shoulders? In his other hand were scissors. ‘I don’t think I can do this, Pen.’

  ‘I need you to do it. It’s better than losing it in clumps.’ She smiled without conviction. ‘I suppose this is the price we pay for vanity.’

  He began – lifting each strand, brushing it with his lips, then cutting, sculpting, until all that was left were short tufts.

  ‘Now the shaver.’ Her voice was so steady – and there he was, his hand shaking so much that he could barely hold the razor. He turned the dial to zero and began at the back. Her eyes were closed; he could see them in the mirror. Shadows lay across her skin like bruises. He screamed without sound – God Almighty. Then resumed his task, unsure if he’d just uttered a prayer or a curse.

  As the razor did its work, he cupped her head in his free hand. And through his fingers, with awful clarity, he came to understand her mortality. Shrouded in a thin layer of flesh, a skull was biding its time. Shorn of its protective fleece, it laid bare sinuous curves, delicate undulations. Remember, man that thou art dust . . . Life was so fragile. He wanted to stand there forever, holding her mortal skull; shielding her from life and death.

  ‘Hold still.’ Bree is shaving around his ears. ‘I’m giving you a number-one. Don’t want you to look too bald.’

  It’s such an intimate thing, shaving someone. Pen had shaved him a couple of times when he had the flu. He can’t have been too sick because they made love afterwards. Bree rests his head on her stomach as she finishes the front, and George finds, to his embarrassment, that he’s aroused. And he’d just been thinking of Pen. He closes his eyes and shifts in his seat. It’s all too difficult.

  Rory is not at all happy with the thought of having her hair cut. From a straggle of light, yellowy brown, it is now a deep honey colour and falls thick and shiny, long enough, as she demonstrates, for a ponytail. No wonder she’s appalled at the prospect of a boyish crop. ‘Me and Maryam and Kirsty are growing our hair as long as Rapunzel,’ she shouts at the scissor-wielding Bree. ‘We measure it every single day with our rulers. And . . .’ She pauses to emphasise the outrageousness of her situation. ‘I’m already ten centimetres behind the others. I’m not a boy,’ she continues, clutching her head. ‘And I don’t want to look like one.’ Having said her piece, she makes a sudden dash for the door, only to be blocked by the diminutive figure of Park, who catches her by the shoulders and squats down so they can talk face to face.

  ‘Hey there, Rorykins. Slow down.’ His voice is conspiratorial and, though poised for flight, she listens as he continues. ‘It’s like this. We’re playing this huge joke on everyone in the whole world and I reckon you’re just the girl to help us out.’

  Rory is intrigued. George can tell by the way she stops, head to one side. With any luck she’ll go into negotiation mode. They’ll have to up the ante here. The situation is way beyond Choc Wedges. With inspiration born of two Rory-filled years, he picks up the first available container. ‘We’ll pay you, of course. Every time someone mistakes you for a boy, I’ll put a dollar in this lunchbox.’

  Rory’s inbuilt calculator whirrs. ‘How many dollars to buy a dog?’

  Despite the seriousness of their situation, George can’t help but grin.
<
br />   ‘About seventy-nine, I think,’ says Park. ‘You’ll have to pretend very hard.’

  Rory looks at George. ‘Is that true?’

  ‘Park should know,’ he tells her. ‘He’s got a couple of dogs of his own. We can meet them when we go to his place.’

  So Bree and Stella dye Rory’s hair a dark brown and cut it as short as she (and they) can bear. ‘It’ll grow again in no time,’ Stella whispers.

  ‘No wearing pink,’ Bree warns her. ‘That’d be a dead giveaway.’

  Rory is still inclined to sulk, but when the dependable Scary Mary comes in and asks who the new boy is, she gleefully holds out her lunchbox. ‘One dollar, Poppy George.’ She giggles. ‘Only seventy-eight to go.’

  Bree and Redgum plan to slip away after dark. It wouldn’t do for strangers to be seen around George’s caravan. Stella brings them some meat and salad from her barbecue and George eats inside with them, while Rory shouts and tumbles about with the Parker children.

  George looks out the window. ‘She’ll miss them. Growing up with all these other kids around, down here, at the beach . . . It’s the sort of healthy life I’d like her to have.’

  ‘That’s for sure.’ Redgum wraps a sausage in bread and he, too, looks out at the clamour of children. ‘Sometimes a man wishes he’d had a kid or two of his own.’ He adds tomato sauce to the sandwich and savours his first bite. ‘’Course, little tackers come with a missus and who’d have an old bloke like me?’

  ‘Could do worse.’ Bree busies herself with the salad, and won’t meet George’s quizzical gaze. He glances across at Redgum, but his big mate is refusing the proffered salad. ‘Lettuce,’ he declares, ‘is for rabbits.’

  After dinner, Rory and George walk Redgum and Bree to their car via the beach. They stop at the path leading to the road and the two men shake hands, their clasp lingering a fraction longer than usual.

  ‘All the best, mate.’

  ‘Yeah. I owe you one. That’s for sure.’

  Bree hugs a startled George and kisses him on the cheek. ‘Good luck. And don’t forget – ditch the mobile before you leave. I’ll ring the Parkers’ place from a phone box in a couple of days.’

  They hug Rory in turn. ‘See you later, alligator. Be a good girl for Poppy.’

  As they disappear into the dusk, George is chagrined to see Bree take Redgum’s hand. The track is rough. That’s the obvious reason. Although, there was that look she gave him when he spoke of children. The thought of them together bothers George – it isn’t all that long ago that she’d come on to him. This pang, it must be jealousy – is it for Bree or for Redgum? Redgum is a nice bloke, but what would a woman over thirty years his junior see in him? Security, he thinks. She wants security. Well, she’d get that in spades with Redgum. He sends a silent message through the dark. If you’re after my mate, girlie, you just better do the right thing by him.

  ‘Come on, Rory.’ They turn back towards the caravan park, but as their feet whisper across the sand, George feels a deep reluctance for the venture ahead. At that moment he truly understands his situation. After tomorrow, he and Rory are on their own. She snuggles into his side, and with absent-minded affection, he tousles her hair. His fingers understand before he does. From now on, he has a grandson.

  16

  George and Rory leave the Red Dolphin after an early breakfast and Park follows them to where the untraceable car – a roomy station wagon – is hidden. The men quickly transfer the luggage from one vehicle to the other and Rory climbs into the back seat. ‘Bye, Uncle Park.’

  The men shake hands. ‘Can’t thank you and Stell enough, mate.’

  ‘No worries. Safe trip.’

  As Park stands on the verge, waving them out of sight, George has to suppress a creeping panic. It’s all up to him now.

  With so many years of moving from place to place, Rory has learned to face most changes with equanimity and, as they turn north, she chatters on about the farm and the dogs and wonders aloud if there’ll be a river to swim in.

  George drives with a nervous eye on the road behind, and is relieved when a dark-blue sedan that has been following them for miles turns off on the road to Canberra. How on earth had he allowed himself to be talked into this? It was madness, pure and simple. There’s a U-turn bay ahead – it isn’t too late to change his mind. But then Rory, who’s been quiet for a while, sits back and sighs with a long, contented exhalation.

  ‘Can we go to the caravan park again next year?’

  George doesn’t know how to answer her. ‘We’ll see,’ is the best he can do.

  ‘Please. Please. Please. Promise. It was the best holiday anyone has ever had in the whole world.’

  It was. And if everything goes according to plan, they’ll go back year after year and stay beside the Parkers. Year after year, until she grows up. Then his job will be done and he’ll sit back, an old man (a very old man) and enjoy watching her children. He sees them, a boy and a girl, sitting by his side as he tells them stories. ‘I remember when your mum was a little girl . . .’

  The alternative, that the plan fails and Angie has her way, is too awful to imagine. He turns to Rory, who is waiting for his answer.

  ‘Will you remember this holiday, do you think? I mean, when you grow up?’

  ‘Of course,’ she scoffs. ‘I got the best remembering in Grade 1.’

  ‘Can’t say fairer than that.’

  ‘Soooo. We can go back?’

  George makes the best promise he can. ‘I promise to try my best to go back with you next year.’

  ‘Yay!’

  Rory hasn’t noticed the equivocation, the fence he placed around his promise.

  The drive to Parker’s Run takes two days, thankfully uneventful. But what is happening back home? George, who had once resented the sound of a phone shattering his solitude, begins to wish he hadn’t thrown away his mobile and needs to make an effort to console himself. His coconspirators are drama queens. Even the police have to go to court to track phone calls. Or was that in England? Or even the US? He’s sure he’s heard it somewhere. So Rory whines (Are we there yet?) and George chews over these unsettling thoughts as they drive through scrubby bushland punctuated by sparsely populated towns and hamlets. A night in an indifferent motel, more driving and they’re within fifty kilometres of their destination.

  ‘Here we are,’ says George. ‘Half an hour to Patterson’s Creek then only twenty minutes to Park’s place.’ They stop in the small town to buy a newspaper, cold drinks and a few perishables.

  ‘Passin’ through?’

  This simple (or is it a deceptively simple) question elicits a stammered reply. ‘Yeah. No. Stayin’ at Park’s place. Me brother. Park’s me brother.’

  ‘You’re the one from Adelaide!’ The woman behind the counter has bleached hair and black, spiky eyelashes, which she bats at George over the cash register.

  ‘Yeah. Something in your eye?’ he asks with what he hopes is that country concern for neighbours you read so much about. ‘Hold the lid like so.’ He demonstrates on his own eye. ‘Then blink.’

  ‘Gawd help us.’ The woman gives him his change without further discussion. George notices that her eye seems to have improved without his help.

  ‘That must be Warren’s place.’ George slows down and turns to Rory in the back seat. ‘Mr Warren’s looking after the dogs.’

  The shack looks as though it’s held together with sellotape and string. Greying timber walls, a sagging verandah and a series of sheds and lean-tos hunker down on a graceless, barren block of land. A few chooks peck their way through the dust and George is surprised to see that their coop is sturdy and well maintained.

  Feeling nervous, he knocks on the door. ‘Anyone home?’

  ‘Who’s askin’?’

  George jumps. The voice, coming from the side of the house, is accompanied by the barking of dogs.

  ‘You must be Pat Warren,’ George says. ‘I’m Park’s brother, Jeff.’

  The man approach
es with a stiff, bow-legged gait. ‘Yeah. He rang.’ He holds out his hand, eyes unsmiling. ‘Rabbit. They call me Rabbit.’

  It’s difficult to estimate Rabbit’s age. His skin is hard and brown like dried mud in a claypan, and the hand George takes is like an old rooster’s claw. ‘Takin’ the dogs off me hands, are you?’

  Restrained by Rabbit, the dogs continue to growl and George steps back. ‘Not too friendly, are they?’

  ‘We don’t like strangers.’ George doesn’t know what to say and the other man decides to relent. Observing his struggle, George almost expects that the effort will cause the hostile old face to crack into a thousand pieces. ‘But I’ll introduce you, like.’ He spots Rory peering from the window of the car. ‘They love kids, but. They’d have to, wouldn’t they? Livin’ with Stella and Park.’

  ‘My grandson, Roy,’ George says, then raises his voice. ‘Stay in the car, Roy, while I see about the dogs.’

  Rusty is a labrador, ancient, fat and arthritic. He responds to George’s overtures with benevolent disdain, while the border collies, Minnie and Dog, dance over to sniff at his hand.

  ‘Dog’ll keep you busy. He’s only three months old.’ Rabbit delivers the news as though it was yet another of life’s many tribulations. ‘Park’s been lookin’ for a good home.’

  Park had mentioned Dog, but not that he’s a pup. One more thing to worry about – first a child, then a pup. And a pretty lively one at that. George looks at the capering Dog with some misgiving. ‘Not sure we can manage a pup.’

  Rabbit snorts. ‘From Adelaide, aren’t you?’ That says it all, he implies.

  Suitably squashed, George calls to Rory. ‘Come on, love – mate. Mr Warren says the dogs like kids.’

  ‘Go slow,’ Rabbit tells her. ‘Let ’em smell your hand. That’s right.’ Rory is soon hugging and kissing the dogs, who respond with delight. It’s obvious that they miss the Parker children.

  Rabbit turns to George. ‘Your boy’s playing with them dogs like a flippin’ girl.’ His scorn is as vast as the landscape.