by Debra Oswald
It was a cast-iron doorstop in the shape of an owl, with a sharper protruding piece of metal that formed the stand. The thing was heavy and Zoe wasn’t sure where the strength came from for her to lift it. She swung the metal owl up until it slammed into the side of Mick’s head. He lurched sideways and his hold on her weakened sufficiently that she could roll out from under him. She got up on her knees and smashed the doorstop down on his temple twice more.
Holding the cast-iron owl against her belly, she dragged herself across the tiles, out of Mick’s reach, and gulped air back into her lungs. He lay completely still, and there was a lot of blood. She watched his chest move with a few meagre breaths and then stop entirely. The lizard eyes were open but opaque, dulled.
Once Zoe was certain he was dead and couldn’t come after her, she got to her feet and ran out of the house. Her throat was scalded by every intake of breath, but she kept running until she reached a big enough road to hitch a lift.
*
Sheena had always figured there was a high likelihood someone would bash Mick’s skull in one day. She hadn’t expected it to be a sixteen-year-old princess.
The girl was shaking, holding her hands in front of her to make the others back off, not wanting Joe or her mother to touch her, not wanting them to come too close and be contaminated by the story she’d just told them.
‘Does Kieran know what happened to Mick?’ Sheena asked her.
‘He didn’t know. But I told him last night.’
So when Kieran left this morning to hand himself in, he knew this. He knew the police had found a dead man in the house, as well as the slaughtered dogs. Sheena sank onto the sofa and considered the full weight of the load her little brother had decided to take on. She had to respect it – he was a crazy fucker, but she had to respect it.
Zoe’s voice was surprisingly steady. ‘I didn’t know Kieran would do this . . . try to take the blame, I mean. I have to go to the police now and say what really happened.’
Sheena watched Celia, who stared at the floor, pale and silent, not even looking at Joe. Maybe the woman was contemplating allowing Kieran to take responsibility for this. It occurred to Sheena that the way things usually went, he could tell some plausible provocation story and it wouldn’t go too badly for him in court. Celia could be weighing that prospect, tempted to let her daughter slip away from this trouble.
‘Mum. Listen to me, I need to go to the police straight away and tell them.’
Sheena waited for Celia to argue against the plan, but instead she looked at Zoe and nodded.
‘I’ll come with you,’ Celia said. ‘If you want me to.’
‘Yes. Please.’
Roza was relieved the summer of 1977–78 had been blessedly mild all through December and most of January. Today was the first baking-hot day and her limbs felt heavy, like wading through molasses.
She was absurdly old to be still working as a fruit packer and the job was becoming burdensome – the early starts, the walk up from her house to Celia’s place, long days in the packing shed – although she would just laugh and wave her hands airily if anyone else mentioned it.
For this harvest, the old picking team was in the orchard and moving through the pick at a good speed. Mind you, Roza observed that Roy, the team boss, was being cautious with his crumbly spine and she hoped the poor man would manage through the weeks of hard work ahead of them.
Not so many peaches to pick this season, because the trees had been left to go almost into ruin during the winter. Even so, there would be enough fruit to pay off some debt and begin to pull the business back onto its feet. No one could deny that Celia had worked tremendously hard since she came home – first making up for the neglect around the property and now throwing her effort into the harvest.
Celia steered the tractor with full bins of fruit up to the shed just as Josef drove his air-conditioned car into the yard. The two of them smiled hello and did a little pantomime to each other about the heat.
Joe kissed Roza. ‘Hi, Mum. I dropped another carload of boxes on your back porch.’
He was moving into his mother’s place, just for the months it would take to restump and then renovate the house he had bought in town.
‘Have you laid your eyes on the ugly hovel Josef has purchased?’ Roza asked Celia.
Celia laughed. ‘Yes.’
‘What can you say when you discover your child has no taste?’ Roza asked. Sandor had brought Josef up looking at books about the great cities and their fine buildings, appreciating what was well proportioned and elegant. ‘I had always thought Josef was a man of good taste.’
Celia shook her head with mock disbelief. ‘And yet now he buys an ugly house.’
‘We are talking make-you-want-to-slit-your-throat ugly,’ Roza added.
She saw Celia exchange a smile with Joe. She knew the two of them talked about how to handle her. She knew this very well.
‘Mum, I explained to you. It’s a matter of finding a place I can afford that’s near the boys, where I’ll have room when they stay over.’
‘None of my business.’ Roza put her hands in the air, surrendering.
Roza then saw Celia’s gaze shift to the orchard. Zoe was walking between the rows of trees, up to the yard. The girl filled her water bottle from the big container, then sploshed water over her face and neck to cool off. She was filthy, sweaty clothes stuck to her, face greasy with sun-cream, hair squashed under a cap, but no one with eyes in their head would say she was not a gorgeous creature.
There had been many talks with police officers and lawyers, explanations given, allowances made, charges answered in the court. Zoe received what is called a suspended sentence, but not for killing the fellow. In the end, no one thought that should be on her head. The judge warned Zoe that she must be of good behaviour. (Roza wasn’t convinced many people in the world would last long if they were supposed always to have good behaviour.) Because of Zoe’s age, none of the criminal matters would stay on her record.
Of course, there were matters that would stay in a person’s mind for a long, long time, and no court rules could change that.
Joe had organised legal help for Kieran. Roza suspected he paid the young man’s costs without telling Heather, who would most surely have disapproved. Kieran spent some months in prison and when they released him two weeks ago, he travelled up north to find work on a prawn trawler, wanting to stay away from unhelpful influences and earn himself some money.
Zoe and the young man wrote letters to each other while he was in jail and had pledged to keep in contact. Roza wasn’t sure if it counted as a romance anymore. Nobody would say it aloud, but Zoe’s future and that young man’s future were likely to be very different. But there was a love between the two of them, a loyalty, a bond, whatever somebody might want to call it, and there was surely a chance that would last in some fashion.
And who could say what would happen to Kieran in the long run? Roza sometimes pictured bad things for a boy like that – rolling his car on a dirt road, stumbling into the path of some angry man at the worst moment. But no one can see into the future. Roza hoped that anyone hearing the boy’s story might join her in wishing the best for him.
Celia was still in contact with the sister, that Sheena. At first the two women needed to speak about legal matters and such. But since then, Celia had made a point of ringing Sheena every few weeks for a chat – if you could call a conversation with that sharp creature a ‘chat’. Celia persevered, believing the young woman appreciated their connection deep down. It was not for Roza to judge this or offer any comment.
Apparently, Sheena was doing well. She had moved to Melbourne for a fresh start and had been quickly promoted to manager of a bar there. She had recently acquired a new boyfriend who, as far as Celia could assess from the phone calls, was not a bad fellow and was in no way a dickless wonder.
Roza looked out into the orchard to see that the sun had started its swing down from the midday point and there was now a ribbon o
f shade alongside the fruit trees. Zoe was standing half in shade and half in sun, with the light flaring off her fair hair as she tipped her head back to drink from the water bottle. Celia’s eyes were fixed on her daughter, soaking in the sight of her, hoping to make it last for the months they would be apart.
‘Zoe’s all packed,’ Celia said to Joe. ‘Her suitcase is just inside the kitchen door.’
‘Right. We’ll need to head off in half an hour or so.’
Joe was giving Zoe a lift into town to catch the Sydney bus. During the remainder of the past year – after all the trouble – Zoe had attended a high school in the city, living with her aunt Freya. She had returned home for the summer holidays but today she must leave again and Celia would have to do without her for the school terms.
‘Zoe!’ Celia called out. ‘Time to go soon. Better hop in the shower. Which means you can stop working now.’
Zoe stretched with exaggerated relief, miming that her back was aching from all this slave labour. She peeled off the sweaty cap, tipped the rest of the water over her head and shook her wet hair from side to side. Celia laughed, adoring her.
So. It seemed there was to be no vodka for Roza this coming winter, since she would have her son living with her. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Josef could help around the place, and more importantly, he could keep Celia company when Zoe went back to the city for the next months.
Of course, when Celia and Zoe were separated, they had regular phone calls. The girl was stronger, no doubt about that, but Celia said she only needed to hear two syllables over the phone line to detect the blackness in her daughter’s voice, if Zoe was in one of her wretched moods. Other times she would sense a distance and know Zoe wasn’t telling her something. But Celia couldn’t drive down to Sydney and demand answers, take over. She would have to let the phone call end and just sit with it. Some problems could be solved by throwing effort at them, but some necessary things – like letting your child go out into the world, the beautiful, perilous world – required you just to sit with things gnawing in your belly and learn not to do anything.
Roza knew that Celia still had some sleepless nights, hours in which she would imagine and catalogue all the possible dangers. But now, according to Celia, she made the effort to add extra moments to the conjured scenes, envisaging how Zoe might escape trouble by her good judgement, quick wits, strong heart. There was comfort in that – urging her daughter to be strong – as if all the hours of worrying and urging would distil and harden into a small amulet Zoe could wear around her neck, wherever she might be.
Debra Oswald would like to thank Michael Wynne, Kerrie Laurence, Annabelle Sheehan, Karen Oswald, Michele Franks, Les Langlands, Anthony Blair, Shelley Eves, Dale Druhan and Noel Franks for their help. Thanks to Currency Press who published The Peach Season in 2007 and to Rodney Seaborn, Christopher Hurrell, Stephen Collins, David Berthold, the cast and creative team of the Griffin Theatre production; Ben Ball, Rachel Scully and the team at Penguin Random House. Huge thanks, even more than usual this time, are owed to Richard Glover.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Debra Oswald is a two-time winner of the NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the creator/head writer of the first five seasons of the TV series Offspring. Her stage plays have been performed around the world and are published by Currency Press. Gary’s House, Sweet Road and The Peach Season were all shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award. Debra has also written four plays for young audiences – Dags, Skate, Stories in the Dark and House on Fire. Her television credits include Police Rescue, Palace of Dreams, The Secret Life of Us, Sweet and Sour and Bananas in Pyjamas. Debra has written three Aussie Bite books for kids and six children’s novels, including The Redback Leftovers and Getting Air. Her first adult novel, Useful, was published in 2015.
VIKING
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First published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd, 2018
Text copyright © Debra Oswald 2018
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
Cover design by Alex Ross © Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd
Cover photograph by Shutterstock
ISBN 978-0-14378-826-3
penguin.com.au
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