Last Bridge Before Home

by Lily Malone

  The pressure of Brix’s fingers on her knuckles increased. ‘If he so much as touches you—’

  ‘Ssshh. Don’t worry. I can handle it and it’s not much longer. I just don’t want to tempt fate, you know?’

  Then the double doors of the club whooshed and automatically Jaydah glanced up.

  The monster walked into the bar and she dropped Brix’s hand like it burned.

  * * *

  Keith Tully hitched up his khaki trousers, pinch-faced and soulless as ever, as he let the glass door suck shut behind him. Brix had never liked the man, and he truly hated him now.

  Keith glanced at the table where his parents sat, Jake and Abe distributing drinks, and he blew past without acknowledging any of them, arrowing straight for the bar.

  ‘You want me to get out of here?’ Brix asked Jaydah.

  ‘No point. He’s seen us now.’

  So he stayed put as JT strode down the bar to meet her father, and inside Brix was glad. He was so tired of being that little boy who tiptoed around Jaydah’s dad.

  They spoke briefly and then JT grabbed a six-pack of bourbon and cokes from the bar fridge and shoved it on the bar. Her father put two hands out to gather the pack and tugged it into his gut, reminding Brix of how a crab dragged its prey into its mouth.

  He couldn’t hear what Jaydah said next, but he saw Keith smile around a set of yellowing teeth and shake his head before he swaggered out of the bar.

  The club president, old Bill Kennedy, turned his head slightly and his eyes slipped from the TV screen to the till and Jaydah bent to where she’d stashed her basket beneath the bar and took out her purse. It was Jaydah who stumped up the cash to pay for Keith’s booze.

  Brix was off his bar stool before he’d had a chance to blink.

  ‘Brix!’ JT called at him, but he wasn’t stopping, not even for her.

  He strode past his family without looking at them, and the entry door hadn’t settled in its frame before Brix launched it wide again.

  ‘Keith!’ he called.

  The man slowly turned. ‘Yeah?’

  Brix stopped a metre shy of Keith Tully, and thought how small he was. The Keith of his memory had been a towering figure, red-faced with rage. This Keith got old all those years Brix hadn’t been looking. He’d always been wiry, but now he was wind-blown and weathered, with more sunspots on his head than hair. His teeth weren’t just yellow, the bottom ones were crooked and twisted, one of the top ones long gone.

  Keith’s tongue moved to wet the thin line of his lips. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I know about you.’

  ‘Whaddaya think ya know?’

  ‘I know you’re a gutless prick.’

  He laughed in Brix’s face. Then he turned his back and kept walking. A laugh curled from his lips, dry as desert smoke. ‘She’s got you sucked right in. She’s a liar. Like her mother.’

  The glass door blew open behind him. Jaydah shouted his name.

  ‘Don’t speak about your daughter like that!’ Brix put both his hands on the back of Keith’s shirt and shoved.

  And then things got strange.

  Keith was no longer there. The man seemed to melt beneath Brix’s hands and the force of his shove met nothing because there was no longer anyone there to shove.

  ‘Don’t, Brix. Please,’ Jaydah said, putting her hand on his shoulder and pulling him back.

  ‘You been telling him lies about me, Jaydah?’ her dad said.

  ‘You should have paid for your own drinks,’ Brix said, still trying to work out how his shove missed its target. Hell, Keith had been right there then he was just … gone.

  ‘Got your knickers in a twist over who paid for what, hey? Reminds me of your old man. Well guess what? I’ll pay her back when she gets home.’ His gaze found JT and the smile dimmed. ‘I didn’t get a chance to ask you to pick me up a six-pack this morning, you flew out the house so fast. Not many bowlers here for a bowls tournament, come to think of it. You didn’t lie to your old man about why you had to leave for work early, did you? It wasn’t so you could hang about with this loser, was it?’

  The skin around Jaydah’s eyes pinched tight. ‘Of course not, Dad. Brix is here with his family, not with me. Stan and Val got back from their trip this week.’

  ‘You hold hands with every man comes in the bar?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Are you threatening her?’ Brix demanded.

  ‘Mate, I ain’t gonna touch a hair of her head.’

  ‘Or Rosalie’s head,’ Brix ground it through his teeth. ‘I know about your deal.’

  Keith juggled the six-pack into his ribs with one hand and held the other wide, like he had nothing to hide. ‘What makes you think I’d hurt my girls?’

  ‘Jees, I dunno, maybe the cuts all across your girl’s back.’

  ‘Please leave it,’ Jaydah whispered beside him. ‘You’ll make it worse.’

  ‘You want me to pay her back? Well I will. When she gets home,’ Keith said. ‘The minute she steps in the door I’ll pay her back.’

  But there was something nasty about his mouth as he said it.

  ‘You mean pay her back for the drinks?’ Brix said.

  ‘Of course for the drinks.’

  ‘You hurt her ever again, I’ll kill you.’ It almost choked him just getting out the words.

  ‘I tell you what. You even get a finger on me, we’ll call it a win for you. I’d have fun watching you try.’

  ‘I’d die trying.’

  ‘Jesus, listen to you, hero.’ Finally, Keith stepped forward into Brix’s space. ‘You think you know everything about what goes on at my farm? You don’t know the half of it, mate. I bet whatever she told you, it ain’t the full story. You don’t know anything at all. I’ll see you at home, Jaydah. Don’t be late. I’ll deal out a hand of Snap for you.’ Keith turned lazily on his heel and strolled down the concrete access ramp.

  * * *

  ‘Why would you do that?’ Jaydah hissed at Brix as her father rounded the brick wall of the clubhouse and disappeared from sight. She pinched his arm. She didn’t mean to hurt him, but she couldn’t help it. She was shaking. ‘You don’t know what he might do!’

  ‘It’s bullshit, JT! I won’t stand for it. I won’t let him hurt you or your mum. Why don’t we go out there right now? We can take Jake and Abe with us. They’ll help. Hell, we can take every bloke in this club! You can both stay at the farmhouse tonight and we’ll work everything else out tomorrow. You’d be safe!’

  ‘It’s not that easy.’ Oh, God, what had he done?

  This was her chance to tell him about Jaz. Her father had left the door open but she was too scared to step through it. Would Brix want to marry her if he knew she had a sister? A secret twin sister she’d kept hidden from him all these years?

  She hesitated, torn between telling him now and keeping her family safe, and then the clubhouse doors whooshed yet again and Abe shot out of them like a cannon.

  ‘What the hell’s going on, you two?’ Abe said, hands on hips. ‘Mum is completely stressed out and crying that she wants to go home and this was supposed to be a fun night out for her and dad. We can all see you through the windows and now instead of relaxing, Mum’s had to stop Dad from bursting out here to punch Keith in the jaw! You know how he feels about that bloke!’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Jaydah said, and the possibility of telling Brix about Jaz slipped through her fingers like sand. ‘Your poor mum. You’re right. The last thing Val needs is to be worrying about me and my dad. He’s gone now, Abe. We’re coming back inside. I’ve got to get back to work before Bill Kennedy docks my pay.’

  ‘He wouldn’t want to,’ Brix said, staring down the line of the club, feeling like he’d missed something big.

  Keith knew something he didn’t, something big about JT, and Brix didn’t like it one bit.

  ‘What did he mean about dealing you a hand of Snap?’

  ‘Nothing. He didn’t mean anything. He’s just being an arsehole.’ Jaydah follo
wed Abe into the club.

  * * *

  Brix rang her late that night. He was still in Chalk Hill staying at the farmhouse but he’d be getting up early in the morning to drive home. She had her phone set on silent in her room, and she spoke to him with the covers pulled up over her head and the light of the phone screen washing everything white-blue in her tent, whispering so soft so that no one in the house would hear.

  ‘Are you okay?’ was what he wanted to know.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Thank God.’

  ‘No, Brix. Thank you.’

  When she’d got home, her father hadn’t said a word. He’d been watching TV, like any other night, like he hadn’t just busted her holding hands with Brix Honeychurch in the club.

  ‘I think it’s made him pull his head in, that someone knows,’ she whispered down the phone. ‘I think you kind of put him on notice. It feels really strange. But it’s a good strange, you know?’

  Of course, he didn’t know, not really, because he’d never lived in a house where you could get hit for being late home, or yelled at for not covering your teeth when you laughed.

  Brix had no idea. But Jaydah did, and the worst thing about her father’s unexpected tolerance was the question in her head: if she’d asked for help long ago and someone confronted him, would it have made a difference?

  CHAPTER

  10

  ‘So the big question is: do we do the good bit first or the bad bit second?’ Brix asked a few weeks later, holding Jaydah’s hand as they sat in a café on Albany’s main street, trying to ignore the Christmas carols. How many times did a bloke have to listen to ‘I’m Dreaming Of A White Christmas’ anyway?

  ‘What’s the good bit?’

  ‘We’re going to find you a wedding ring.’

  Her lips curved in the slightest smile and he was glad he’d been able to distract her. She’d been so nervous since he’d met up with her that morning in the café.

  He didn’t blame her for the nerves. Fronting a Magistrate’s Court to take out a Violence Restraining Order against your dad took guts.

  ‘I don’t want to do the bad bit at all. I’m peaking about the bad bit.’ She shuffled the papers that had been laid across the table, neat handwriting all over them; a paperclip attaching photographs to the affidavit and VRO application.

  He didn’t need to read what she’d written or see the photographs of her whipped back even though they lay right there. If he never saw those welts across her back again, it would be too soon, and he didn’t want to read about what she’d been through. It was bad enough hearing it from her lips. Seeing it written down in her sloping handwriting in plain black and white was worse.

  He squeezed her fingers. ‘You’ll be fine. I’ll come in with you.’ He stifled a yawn. He’d been up since 4 am to drive across from Margaret River so he could do this with her today.

  ‘I don’t think you can come into the court with me. That’s what Lynne Farrell said.’

  He nodded agreement because he couldn’t argue. Jaydah said Lynne was the expert. He hadn’t quite worked out the woman’s exact title, and JT had been a bit vague about which government department she worked for but he’d assumed it must be one of the domestic abuse helplines. Jaydah had confidence in Lynne, and that was enough.

  Lynne told Jaydah that once the VRO came through, she’d coordinate with police about the timing of it being served on Keith.

  He’d breathed a sigh of relief at that. Keith was such a crazy bastard, a little assistance from the boys in blue on Christmas morning to make sure Jaydah and Rosalie got out safely would be welcome.

  He leaned across the table, pulled her forehead to his and rested there. ‘So if I can’t come in with you I’ll wait while you’re in there. I’ll be there when you come out.’

  They held the pose until she checked her watch, already twitchy. ‘We should go. Lynne said I had to make sure I get the affidavit signed first and she said we could have a while to wait at court.’

  She picked up another paper which listed available Justices of the Peace in Albany.

  ‘Come on then.’ Brix stood, keeping hold of her hand. ‘We got this.’

  * * *

  If Brix was honest (and he was) there really wasn’t much about ring-shopping … make that shopping of any kind … that could be considered a good bit. Especially when that shopping had to happen in the manic Santa-vibe of Albany two weeks out from Christmas.

  JT was moody, subdued after her session in the Magistrate’s Court where they’d sat for close to two hours while a world of people young and old, men and women—some better dressed than others, others barely dressed at all—dribbled in, drifted out.

  The outcome was positive, though. They had what they wanted. The Magistrate had granted them a Family Violence Restraining Order against Keith Tully that would keep him away from Jaydah and Rosalie, and from the Chalk Hill Bowling Club and from Whale Rock Winery once they moved there.

  Jaydah had already been in touch with Lynne to let her know.

  ‘I thought you’d be in a better mood,’ he said once, as she pushed through the door of yet another jewellery store filled with watches and rings and mannequins wearing any multitude of gold and silver bling. He’d barely had a chance to get his sunglasses off and let his eyes adjust to the light in the store before she’d whooshed out of the shop again.

  ‘None of these are right for me. I knew the second I set foot in the place.’

  On that, he had to agree, but they’d been in most of the bigger jewellery stores by now. Brix pulled his sunnies from the top of his head to cover his eyes and scanned the street. ‘That little vintage place the celebrant told me about is just around here somewhere, I think.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s not important.’ She checked her watch. ‘I should get back.’

  She’d told him that she’d told her dad she had a doctor’s appointment in Albany and because she had to go there, a dentist check-up too, and when Keith asked what was wrong with her that she needed a doctor, she’d said, ‘Women’s issues, Dad,’ and it shut him up. Probably the only excuse that could.

  ‘Let’s just check. It’s just around the corner.’ He led the way, and JT followed a half-step behind.

  The shop window brandished a stack of pretty boxes he didn’t think would ever actually hold anything, a candelabra, and a mannequin without its head swathed in something that looked like a white lace tablecloth. The other window held a small penny-farthing type gold-painted bike and more pretty boxes and a ladder climbing nowhere but up the window—one of those old wooden ones like Nanna Irma used to use when she picked fruit out of the mulberry tree.

  It was cooler in the store than in the early afternoon December heat, with a step down onto a plush green carpet that smothered the sound of their steps. The owner glanced up, held his gaze, and smiled.

  ‘No Christmas carols?’ Brix said to her.

  ‘Not in my shop. They’re banned.’

  ‘Good for you. I’m all carolled out.’

  ‘I’m still carolled out from last Christmas,’ she said.

  Jaydah prowled the store with a little more interest, checking some crystal-covered boxes and picking up a lampshade with a black base.

  ‘Can I help you at all, or are you okay browsing?’ the shop owner said.

  ‘We’re fine—’ Jaydah began before Brix cut her off. ‘A friend of mine said you have some nice rings here.’

  ‘We do.’ She left the counter and bustled across to a shelf, bringing with her the scent of the incense she’d been burning. Brown sugar. Vanilla. She was a biggish woman, hips swinging under a bright green dress, and she looked happy in her skin. He liked her.

  Jaydah trailed them, drawing up to Brix’s left shoulder as the shop’s owner unlocked the glass cabinet and stepped back.

  A silver ring with twin rivers of blue stone—some opal maybe?—caught Brix’s eye as if he’d been a bowerbird.

  Jaydah’s silky hair tumbled
over her arm as she leaned closer into the shelf and raised her hands to pick up the tiny box. She’d grabbed the same ring he’d seen.

  ‘What’s the stone in this one?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s an opal,’ the lady said.

  ‘I love the colour. Is the band silver?’ Delicately, Jaydah picked the ring from its cushion, twisting it in the light.

  ‘It’s white gold,’ the lady said.

  ‘Can you tell us something about it?’

  ‘Well … I found it in Darwin when I was up there in November. I went to an eco-friendly candle-making exhibition there.’

  ‘Do you make candles?’ Brix asked.

  ‘Me? No! I was up there on a cruise,’ she said. ‘The candles were at a stand at the Twilight Markets.’

  ‘So you found the ring at the market?’ Jaydah said, and she moved to put it back because she’d already seen the price, and so had he. It was hard to miss the way the black writing bobbed about on the price tag and even though he thought the ring was Jaydah’s style, he wasn’t paying that much for something made by a candlemaker at a Darwin market.

  ‘No! Sorry, I’m not telling the story very well, obviously.’

  They blinked at her but said nothing and the store owner started again.

  ‘I went to the candle-making exhibition and I got talking with this lady who’d come to the conference from Tasmania. She sells her candles at the Salamanca Markets.’ She glanced between Jaydah and him expectantly.

  ‘I’ve heard of them,’ Brix said, because it seemed she wasn’t saying anything more without some type of acknowledgement about the markets. They must be a big deal.

  ‘So she had the ring with her, and she was on the way to a jeweller in Darwin, which is where the ring was made originally.’

  ‘Right,’ Brix said. This was turning into a long story.

  ‘Turns out her son proposed to his girlfriend at the Crocodile Park in Litchfield National Park earlier in the year. She said yes, and they bought the ring. But when they got all the way back to Tassie—they travelled in a four-wheel-drive and a tent the whole way, would you believe,’ she leaned in conspiratorially. ‘Just quietly, I think that might have been the problem. There’s nothing like six months in a tent to work out if you’re meant for each other or not. Anyway, apparently by the time they got all the way back to Tasmania, the girl didn’t want to marry him anymore. She wouldn’t even get on the ferry in Melbourne. She said Tasmania was too small and she gave him back the ring.’