‘That kid’s a bloody long time away,’ he said again. ‘I wonder what’s holding her up?’
‘Ah, she’s probably got herself into a game somewhere. She’ll turn up, Mac. She always does.’
He let it go for another ten minutes. He was not so much concerned as curious. He didn’t think of her as being able to get up to much harm, and the suspicion that she might actually have come to any harm was a long way from his thoughts. Then he remembered he had only seen her going in the one direction. He couldn’t recall having seen her to go down the other way.
‘Better go and have a look, I think,’ he said.
He walked right round the block, looking over people’s fences, down their backyards, increasing his pace as he found himself coming back to his beginning. She was not back at the job. He walked down the street again in the direction he remembered her taking. At the corner he stopped, frowning. He was starting to feel worried. He stood there, looking down one way and up the other.
He saw an elderly woman come out on to the verandah of the corner house. She walked down the path, saying as she came, ‘Excuse me, but are you looking for someone?’
‘Yeah,’ he shrugged. ‘A bit of a kid, about so high. You haven’t seen her by any chance?’
‘The little girl, do you mean? Her father works up there on the new house?’
He nodded.
‘Buster?’
‘That’s right, that’s her name.’ He was impatient.
‘Oh, we’re old friends,’ she smiled. ‘She comes and says hullo to me over the fence nearly every day when I’m about.’ She rambled, seeming to have forgotten why he was asking. ‘I saw you looking, and I wondered if it were — ’
‘I’ve lost her. I can’t find her. Did you see where she went?’
‘Oh, yes!’ She looked at him in surprise. ‘I saw her going along there not long ago. She was with a woman.’
‘Woman? Where?’
‘Why, what’s the matter? Is there something — ?’
‘Listen, which woman, and where?’
‘I didn’t know her. I never saw her before. They were walking down the street. That way. Towards town.’
‘You must be mistaken,’ Macauley told her edgily. ‘My kid wouldn’t go anywhere with anyone. Only me.’
‘Well, it was Buster, and there’s no doubt about that. I saw her with my own eyes.’
Macauley licked his lips. ‘What’d she look like, this woman?’
‘Rather small, slender. Nice clothes. Of course I didn’t see her face.’
The description, except for the nice clothes part, fitted Mrs Weiss. Maybe the old duck had been passing and taken Buster home on an impulse. She was one person he could think of that Buster might go along with.
‘Young?’
‘Well, I couldn’t tell, looking at her from behind like that, but she had a young woman’s walk. Yes, I s’pose I’d say she was young. Has there been — ?’
‘How long ago?’
‘Oh,’ the woman looked into the air, calculating. ‘I’d say about half an hour. Didn’t you know her, the — ?’
But Macauley was gone, jogging towards the town. He flung open doors in the boarding house. Mrs Weiss came in from the back. She hadn’t seen Buster. Macauley hastened through the streets, down past the post office, back, along the main thoroughfare. He stopped people, asking them roughly, quickly, brusquely if they had seen a woman and a kid in overalls and a straw hat. He met nobody who had. A staid couple, man and wife, thought by his appearance that he was drunk, and walked away without answering.
He ran back to the job. The men were on the verge of knocking off. Buster hadn’t returned there. They asked him what had happened. He told them. He picked up his gear. Cody, the boss, drove up in his Hudson. He walked on to the job.
A man said, ‘Some half-witted chook’s got off with Mac’s kid.’
‘Some bloody stunt,’ said another.
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Cody said when he took it all in. ‘That sort of thing doesn’t go on round here. We’re not down in the city now.’
Macauley out of his reflection shot him a wild glance. ‘Say what you like, that kid’s gone, and she didn’t go herself. Some slut took her.’
Cody believed the look on Macauley’s face more than he believed the words. ‘Get in the car then, and I’ll drive you down to the police station if you think it’s as serious as all that.’
‘No, no police.’ Macauley waved a hand. ‘Don’t bring those bastards in. Not yet.’
He asked a man named Mick to drop his togs and billycan into the boarding house on his way home. Then he rushed off. He went back to the house on the corner. He tried to get more details from the woman. She said she did not actually see the woman accost Buster and pick her up. She strolled down to the front fence and that was when she saw the woman and the child going along the street. The woman was holding Buster’s right hand. Buster, recalled the elderly woman, was holding and swinging that toy animal thing in her other hand.
Macauley went back into the heart of the town. He downed two beers in the pub. He walked up and down streets, looking, inquiring. The darkness deepened and the lights came on. He went back into the pub and stood before a schooner and thought, drumming his knuckles on the counter.
He couldn’t get past the premise that Buster wouldn’t go away with anybody she didn’t know. He knew his own kid better than anybody, he thought, and she wouldn’t do that. The person must have been known to her. Yet who could it be? She had made no mention of meeting anyone who had tickled her fancy. She talked about this one and that one, names and funny noses or queer eyes or ways of talking that she met over fences on her stroll up and down the street, but he couldn’t think of anybody among them who had received special attention.
Settle for that. The person knew her. They knew one another. Okay. Get to the next point. Was this somebody who knew her just waiting around? Was she there just by chance when Buster walked along? No, that was out. That didn’t sound right. She must have known the kid’s movements. Must have known she was in the habit of strolling up and down the street two or three times a day. She knew that and when she was ready she struck. There was no speculation about it.
And a woman – slender, small, nice clothes, a young walk …
Macauley went on thinking, deducting, and then he thought he had a lead that might prove to be the answer. He went to the post office, got a handful of pennies from the exchange, and rang every pub in town, asking if a Mrs Macauley was staying there. He rang two boarding houses. He drew a blank. But he didn’t go away. He thought. Then he rang them all again and asked if they had a guest by the name of Margaret Andersen. At the last pub in the book he hit the mark.
They had a Margaret Andersen there. The voice wanted to know if it would call her to the phone. Macauley told him no, he would come around. ‘You’ll have to make it soon, sir, if you want to catch her. Mrs Andersen is booking out. She’s leaving on tonight’s train.’
‘When does that go?’
‘About forty minutes, sir.’
Macauley slammed the receiver on its hook. He thought hard. He might miss her at the hotel. He wouldn’t take the risk. He’d catch her at the railway. He pelted along the street, crossed a paddock, ran along the sleepers and darted round the end of the platform. He burst through the gate and came round to the station entrance, watching.
Travellers and farewelling relatives passed him carrying luggage and blankets. He watched them walking up out of the darkness. He knew their shapes before the light touched them. He saw cars slide in and he saw them get out.
The time dragged on. He thought he must have missed them. Panic started in him. He was thinking of rushing onto the platform and canvassing the train. Then he watched a taxi glide in and turn and he saw Buster’s face at the window. He was at the door before the driver was out. He jerked the door open and the woman gaped at him with a look of guilty consternation.
‘We’re going in the train, dadd
y,’ Buster said, excited, scrambling forward and throwing her arms round his neck. ‘I thought you mightn’t be here, but mummy said you would.’
He lifted her out onto the ground, distracted in his rage, not knowing what to say or where to start.
The woman put a foot out of the door and moved her body forward.
‘Get back in there,’ Macauley said.
‘We’re catching the train.’ She tried to make her voice firm.
‘Get back or, so help me Christ, I’ll kill you on the spot.’
The taxi driver put a hand on his arm. ‘What’s the matter?’
Macauley shook his arm free. ‘Keep out of it, you.’
The woman, taking advantage of the diversion, scrambled across to the other door and thrust it open. Macauley flung himself round the back of the car and caught her, standing, but with her back to the open door.
‘Get in!’
She glanced round nervously. Suddenly she waved a hand and called in a loud voice, ‘Oh, officer!’
Macauley flicked a look sideways. The policeman standing at the entrance door started to lumber across to them.
‘If you want a fuss,’ Macauley ground out, clutching her arm, ‘I’ll give it to you. I’ll turn it on proper. Get rid of this flatfoot.’
He stood back from her as the policeman advanced. Macauley clenched his fists. His eyes glittered, but they were on her. She looked down at Buster hugging his legs, and staring up at her unruffled, but bewildered.
‘What’s the trouble?’ said the policeman.
There was a silence. The taxi driver sat in behind the wheel like a dummy, only his neck listening. He knew what was good for him.
‘Well?’
‘I didn’t call you,’ Macauley said to the policeman. He looked stonily at his wife. She glanced from him to Buster to the policeman. A little nervous smile twitched her lips. ‘It’s all right, constable. I — I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
He was a young man with a thick neck and hard eyes. Macauley hadn’t seen him before. He seemed to take a time to consider the situation. He looked at them all in turn. Then he nodded impassively and walked away.
Macauley pushed Buster into the car and got in beside her.
‘Back to the pub,’ he told the driver.
‘What about my train?’ the woman protested with a cover of anger for her fear.
He didn’t answer. He wanted to talk to her and he wanted somewhere he could do it in private. There was no place at the railway. She would have walked away. There would have been a scene. He couldn’t take her to the boarding house. He didn’t want his affairs broadcast and handed down to posterity. The hotel was the only place.
She walked ahead of him docile with fear, obedient to her instincts, and he carried the single suitcase. He told the attendant Mrs Andersen had changed her mind; she wouldn’t be leaving until tomorrow or the day after, and maybe never.
The attendant looked him up and down in his workman’s clothes, but only nodded.
At the top of the stairs the woman turned left, and walked down the corridor. She stopped at Room 14. The door had no lock or key. She turned the knob and went in. She tried to slam it shut before he entered, but he was too quick for her, wedging the suitcase in the opening.
He closed the door behind him and dropped the suitcase on the floor and stood there. Buster grabbed at his coat and started to prattle. He told her to shut up and sit down on the chair in the corner and look at a book. It was a wicker chair on which lay a pile of magazines under a cushion. He waited until she had settled herself with a magazine on her knee. He was in no hurry. But the tension was working in the woman’s face. Macaulay turned his eyes on her again.
‘What are you going to do?’ she said, with fear.
Nice clothes all right, Macauley thought. Snazzier than the sort she had put on out of his payroll. The figure to wear them, too. Still as slim as ever, still as attractive; still built, she was, to catch the eye, and hold it. She hadn’t lost the pretty face, either; the lustrous dark eyes, the full red lips, the striking white skin. Her dark hair was cut short all round, parted on the side and brushed back close to the head like the sleekness of a swan. But there was something different about her; something changed. There was a hardness, a shadowy controlled malice: the look of a woman, he thought, who had been around and was no stranger to any experience.
‘Don’t be frightened,’ Macauley said. ‘I’ve never touched you yet and I’m not going to start now, though God knows I ought to.’
She was satisfied he meant what he said, but suddenly she put her head in her hands and cried. He wasn’t fooled by the weapon.
‘What a sneaky bitch you are,’ he drawled with scorn.
‘What’s so sneaky about taking my own child?’ she shot back at him tentatively, now with her back turned and still weeping.
‘Thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?’ Macauley said. ‘Hanging round here, spying out the land, working the nut. How long have you been here? A week? How’d you get on to me? How’d you know where I was?’
She didn’t answer. Buster threw down the magazine with a bored air. She climbed on the bed and lay on the pillow, humming to herself, holding Gooby out before her.
‘You don’t have to tell me,’ Macauley said. ‘I’ll tell you. Mrs Callahan, Mrs Callahan. That’s where you got the drum. Mrs Callahan told you. Mrs Callahan went to see you while she was in Sydney. She spilt the beans over the teacups. Didn’t she? Told you I was looking extra good. Told you the kid was fine. Told you where I was heading. Wasn’t hard for you to pick up the trail. Wouldn’t have been hard if I’d have left here. Only what’d you come for?’
She turned to face him. She took off her hat and turned it in her hands. ‘You know why I came. For my child.’
Macauley gave a grunt of amused contempt.
‘It’s true,’ she flashed. ‘She’s mine and I want her.’
‘So you come all the way up here to steal her – steal her like a lowdown sneak.’
‘That’s the way you took her. You stole her from me. Or maybe you don’t remember that night.’
‘Remember it? I remember it,’ Macauley said. ‘It reminds me of a French postcard every time I think of it.’
Her lips quivered with fury. Her eyes were cold and hard with hate. Her fear had drifted away, both the real and the spurious, and she was giving herself over with growing confidence in her antagonism.
‘Of course,’ she sneered, ‘you’re so clean and holy. You’re such a saint.’
Macauley stood up, and for a moment she felt a momentary fear. He pulled up the eiderdown over Buster’s sleeping form. He walked round to the woman and stood looking into her face.
‘Listen,’ he said quietly but with a cold anger. ‘I’m no saint. I’d be the last man to claim it. I’ve had women. I’ve had ’em from one end of the country to the other. And that’s not the skite of a eunuch, or some poor galah that can’t get it any more. But I played the game by you, and it wasn’t easy.’
‘Huh!’ she gibed. ‘Are you trying to tell me you didn’t go round sleeping with other women all the time you were away?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you. Bloody mug, wasn’t I?’
‘You’ve got a nerve – expecting me to believe that. What do you take me for? A fool?’
‘I married you and I did the right thing by you,’ Macauley repeated, grimly emphatic. ‘In the whole five years I never touched another woman.’
‘Oh, that’s wonderful! That’s marvellous! You ought to tell the world about it. You must be mighty proud of yourself.’
He ignored the heavy sarcasm. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I had no complaints to make about you. You suited me.’
‘Yes,’ she snarled, her voice shaking with rage and hostility. ‘I’ll bet I did. Someone to drudge while you had the good time. Someone to come home to when you felt like it. Someone to sleep with at your convenience. I run the house while you have the holiday.’
‘I
had to work. I wanted you all right.’
‘Yes, your way. On your terms. That’s how you wanted me.’
Macauley bridled. ‘I sent you money. I kept you. You never knocked that back. You had clothes, pictures. You never starved. You never went short of the rent. I was your breadwinner.’
‘So you should be. It was no favour. That was your responsibility.’
For a moment the illogicality of the remark confused him. ‘Was it?’ he said. ‘Then it was your responsibility to see that you deserved it.’
She gave him a look of satirical pity for his blind selfishness.
‘A cheque every week, and I’m supposed to be grateful. Do you think that’s everything?’ She faced him, storming. ‘Do you know how much married life I had with you? Do you?’
He stared at her raging bitterness, unable to frame an answer, knowing that she was plucking at the heart of his guilt.
‘I’ll tell you,’ she said. ‘Six months. Out of that five years. Six months’ married life. How do you like that?’ He didn’t answer. ‘No, it never struck you like that, did it? Three, four days home and you were away again. I counted those days. I had plenty of time to count them. And add them up. Six months! And you wonder why I went off the rails.’
‘You never let on it was that bad, if it was that bad.’
‘Not much I didn’t. I was always at you to get a job so we could have some life together. You used to laugh or get cranky and say you couldn’t stick it in the city. How many letters did I write to you telling you how I wished you were home and wouldn’t you think about settling down?’
‘Right,’ Macauley snarled, facing the truth, ‘maybe you did. Even admit I was at fault. People don’t bust up their lives over things like that.’
‘Don’t they? That’s all you know.’
He knew differently. He knew people did, and for less than that. But he had to fight his guilt, and defend himself against her knowledge of it. The mockery made him sick at heart. The way he had been sick at heart that night he discovered her perfidy and recalled with a jolt how he could agree smugly that this sort of thing could happen to people, and did, and ruined their lives, looking at people as though he was not one of them, forgetting about that, and never dreaming of it happening to him. He sat down and rolled a cigarette.
The Shiralee Page 19