Return to Moondilla

by Tony Parsons

  ‘Who’s paying?’ she asked, crossing her arms.

  ‘Me,’ he said and smiled.

  ‘What’s your angle, Greg? You should know by now that you don’t have to take me out for a meal to have sex with me.’

  ‘I know that, and you should know by now that I’m not looking for sex. I told you, I’m a writer. I’m interested in how you react in different situations.’

  She gave him a steady look, then laughed softly. ‘You’re a queer bugger, Greg. Queer but nice. You’re not a poofter?’

  ‘Definitely not. So, have a meal with me?’

  ‘It would have to be lunch. I’d miss too much custom at night, and Alan wouldn’t like that. There’s always some girl trying to take your spot, and they seem to be getting younger and younger.’

  ‘All right, lunch. And there’s just a couple of things I’ll ask of you.’

  She stiffened, her eyes turning suspicious. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing much—just please don’t wear a skimpy skirt like the one you’ve got on now, put on something that covers your top part, and don’t overdo the makeup. Dress more like an office girl. Can you do that?’

  ‘No worries,’ she said, looking relieved. ‘I’ll do the best I can.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He scribbled out the address, added the phone number and handed it to her. ‘You get a taxi and I’ll pay for it. When can I expect you?’

  ‘Tomorrow at noon?’

  •

  So that was how Frances Baxter came to meet Rosa.

  Baxter hoped not only to get some nutritious food into her, but also that contact with another section of the community might cause her to think twice about carrying on her trade. When she arrived, he told her that she was being personally attended to by the woman who owned the restaurant. ‘What a classy lady,’ Rosa whispered, when she caught sight of Frances. Baxter didn’t tell her that the classy lady was his mother.

  The Great Woman smiled kindly as she presented Rosa with her most famous delicacies, setting the fine china down on the white tablecloth.

  ‘It’s lovely food but I can’t eat all of it,’ Rosa told Baxter under her breath, blushing with embarrassment while she picked at the meal. He could tell she was enjoying the taste, but years of deprivation had probably shrunk her stomach. At least the ice-cream dessert disappeared.

  Dressed in her best clothes and wearing very little makeup, Rosa looked quite presentable. That was until one looked closely at her, which the worldly-wise Frances did. ‘Rosa won’t make old bones, Greg,’ she said later, shaking her head.

  Baxter sent Rosa back to the Cross in a taxi and said he’d see her in a few days.

  •

  The next time Baxter followed Rosa into her bedroom, he found Alan waiting. The pimp lunged at him with a knife.

  Almost nonchalantly, Baxter pushed Alan’s arm aside and slapped him hard on the face. Alan stumbled. But after managing to steady himself, he had another go, this time swinging his knife in a big arc. Baxter hit his arm midway between wrist and elbow—hit it so hard that the bone snapped. Alan’s knife flew across the bed as he clutched his broken arm, folding at the knees and groaning in agony.

  ‘Do you really like this creep?’ Baxter asked with palpable contempt in his voice.

  Rosa was standing as still as stone. ‘How did you do that?’ she gasped, watching Alan writhe and moan. ‘Like he was a child. I’ve never seen him lose.’ Then her amazement was quickly replaced by another emotion—it looked like fear. ‘You’d better go, Greg,’ she said shakily, starting to hustle him out of the bedroom. ‘You can’t be here anymore. I’ve got to take care of Alan. It looks like he needs a doctor.’

  ‘He’s fortunate he doesn’t need an undertaker, Rosa.’

  Baxter tried to stay where he was, but she was so insistent and he didn’t want to hurt her or make her feel threatened. He let her push him from the room, then turned to her and asked, ‘Why don’t you dump the mongrel? He’s nothing but a low-life parasite.’

  But Rosa shook her head. Her face was pale and her whole body was trembling. ‘You still don’t understand how it is for me. Maybe you can’t.’

  ‘Rosa—’

  ‘Just go, Greg,’ she insisted. ‘Please.’ With that, she went back into the bedroom, slammed the door and started soothing Alan. Baxter felt he had no choice but to leave.

  •

  A few days later, Greg and his mother were having dinner at the restaurant when the phone rang. It was a nursing sister at St Vincent’s, asking for a Mr Greg Baxter.

  ‘Yes, Sister, how can I help you?’ Baxter asked.

  ‘There’s a girl here in a bad way—I believe her name is Rosa. Another girl, Prue, came with her and brought her handbag. There are a couple of phone numbers with your name next to them. I asked Prue about you, and she said Rosa trusts you and would want you to come in. Then Prue left—just up and left her friend.’ The sister sighed. ‘Well, I couldn’t see the harm in contacting you.’

  Baxter’s heart was pounding. ‘How bad is she?’

  ‘Very bad,’ the sister said gravely. ‘She’s overdosed on heroin.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘I’ll come straight away,’ Baxter said, slamming down the hone and rushing to pull on his jacket.

  ‘What is it, Greg?’ his mother asked. When he’d explained the situation, she touched him lightly on the arm and asked, ‘Would you like me to come with you?’

  ‘Would you do that?’

  ‘Of course. You might need some support.’ Frances picked up her handbag.

  ‘You’re a bottler, Mum,’ Baxter said thickly.

  ‘I’m your mother, Greg. This is a situation you can’t solve with your martial arts.’

  •

  Rosa was a shocking colour and lay as still as death. Festooned with tubes, she no longer presented as a girl, but instead as some nightmarish form of life from another planet.

  Baxter pulled up a chair beside the bed for his mother and then found another for himself. He sat down and cradled the girl’s limp hand in his own.

  ‘Rosa, this is my mother,’ he said gently. ‘Frances Baxter. It was her restaurant I took you to for lunch, and it was Mum who served us. When you get over this, there’s a job waiting for you with her. You could learn to cook and maybe become a great chef. You just have to be brave and throw the habit, and I’ll take you to where you can do that. You won’t have to worry about that creepy Alan bothering you.’

  Rosa’s eyelids flickered and she opened her eyes briefly, saw Baxter and gave him what was clearly a smile. It was the smile of a young girl, and it was the last smile of her nineteen years of life.

  Baxter and his mother sat with her until well into the early hours of the morning, when a Sister came in and shook her head.

  Frances touched her son’s shoulder. ‘She’s gone, Greg.’

  ‘What a bloody awful way to die,’ he said, his voice rough. ‘Rosa should have had her family with her. She didn’t even have her girlfriend because Prue was too busy screwing to get money to buy more heroin. God help this country if that’s what it’s come to. By God someone is going to pay for this.’

  ‘Shh, Greg. You cared about her and I’m very proud of you.’ Later Frances told him that she was prouder of her son at this moment than she had ever been.

  •

  Neither of them spoke on the drive home, as Frances handled the BMW in her usual efficient manner. ‘I could use a drink, as late as it is,’ she said when they arrived. ‘And as much as you’re against spirits, I think you could use a brandy, too, Greg.’

  Baxter took the brandy his mother handed to him, his mind elsewhere. He thought that every kid who believed it was cool to use drugs should be forced to stand beside the bed of a drug victim as their life ebbed away.

  Frances looked at him pensively. ‘Why this girl, Greg? Why Rosa? Why was she different to the other street girls you talked to?’

  ‘She reminded me of Elaine,’ he admitted.

  France
s sighed. ‘Poor Elaine. You haven’t had much luck with women, have you?’

  ‘Not much. But you have to know, I never thought of Rosa as a girlfriend—only as a lost soul I’d have liked to save.’ He drained his brandy. ‘By God, I’m angry, Mum,’ he said fiercely. ‘There’s a mountain of misery out there so some grubs can make a lot of money. They don’t care, Mum. They just don’t care.’

  ‘Prostitution isn’t a new development, Greg. It hasn’t been called the oldest of professions for nothing. I happen to think that, as demeaning as it is for women, it serves a very useful purpose—and many women go on the game with their eyes open.’

  ‘It’s not the prostitution as such that disturbs me, so much as the way girls like Rosa and Prue are inveigled into it. Creeps like their pimp get them started on heroin and in no time at all, they’re hooked. Then they’ve got no recourse but prostitution.’

  Frances nodded. ‘You’re right, that’s a terrible thing.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t want you to worry, but that grub who supplied Rosa with heroin, Alan, got it into his head that I was trying to take away one of his meal tickets. This was after Rosa had lunch with us. The creep came at me with a knife.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Frances gasped, and gripped her son’s arm. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I broke the mongrel’s arm, that’s what happened. It should have been his neck,’ Baxter said savagely. ‘For two pins I’d go back and give him a proper hiding.’ Frances was alarmed, so he took a few deep breaths, calming himself. ‘I’m going back there anyway. I need to tell Prue about Rosa. Maybe she knows where Rosa’s people are.’

  ‘I’ll go with you, Greg,’ Frances said quickly. ‘In the mood you’re in, I don’t want you going there alone.’

  ‘It’s not a good scene, Mum.’

  ‘I believe you, but I’m going anyway,’ she said, her voice firm.

  •

  After a couple of hours’ sleep and an early breakfast, Frances drove her son to Kings Cross. They parked in a street behind the girl’s flat and walked the rest of the way.

  The front entrance of the flats was open and they walked up the stairs to the first floor, where they found a tearful Prue lying on her bed. Alan, his arm in plaster, was sitting in a chair in an adjoining bedroom, smoking a cigarette. His face changed colour when he saw Baxter in the doorway—he looked like he’d seen a ghost. Then his eyes caught on Frances, who was very smartly dressed, her auburn hair in a neat bun.

  ‘Is that a cop?’ Alan asked and scowled, getting up and stubbing out his cigarette on a dirty ashtray. ‘You brought a cop here?’

  Baxter advanced into the room. ‘Listen to me, you grub. One of your meal tickets died early this morning. My mother and I were the only ones with her.’

  He heard Prue let out a loud wail and start sobbing, and then his mother’s footsteps as she went to comfort the girl.

  Alan didn’t say anything, and he didn’t look surprised. This seemed to confirm what Baxter had guessed—that Alan didn’t belt Rosa to punish her, but kept her off heroin until she literally crawled to him for a fix. This time, when he’d given her the stuff, she’d gone away and promptly overdosed.

  Baxter got right in the pimp’s face. ‘You’ve got one chance, and one chance only, to show you’ve got a trace of good in you. You’ve been living off these girls for more than two years. If you don’t pay for Rosa to have a decent funeral, I’ll come back here and there’ll be another funeral . . . YOURS. Pray you never see me again, because if you do, you’ll wish you’d never been born.’

  Alan flinched and held up his hands, cowering. ‘All right, all right.’

  Baxter heard a noise and turned to see that Prue and Frances were standing in the doorway behind him, listening. Tears were rolling down Prue’s face, her shoulders hitching. Baxter walked over to the women and closed the door on Alan. The three of them stood crowded together in the tiny living room.

  ‘Prue, can you tell me if Rosa’s father and stepmother are still alive and living in Albury?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said between sobs. ‘Probably.’

  ‘Can you tell me Rosa’s surname?’

  ‘It’s Craig. She was Rosa Craig.’

  ‘Do you know what her father did?’

  ‘He was some sort of a bigwig in the railway. Are you going to contact him?’

  ‘We’re going to try,’ said Frances.

  ‘Look, he wouldn’t know anything about what Rosa’s been doing,’ Prue said urgently, gripping Baxter’s arm. ‘If you’re thinking of getting him to come here for the funeral, you’d better not tell him what Rosa was doing or he might not come.’

  ‘I won’t tell him on the phone, but if I get him here, he’ll have to know how his daughter came to be on the game. It can’t be helped.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Prue acknowledged, and let him go. ‘Mister, I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I’m real pleased you are.’

  ‘Get out of this game, Prue. The heroin will kill you just the same as it killed Rosa. Buck the habit and do something else.’

  ‘I think it’s too late for that,’ she said.

  ‘Baloney. You can do anything if you set your mind to it.’ But then he realised his mum was shaking her head at him sadly, her eyes telling him to let it go. It seemed there was no use trying to reason with Prue. ‘You’ll be at the service?’ he asked her.

  ‘Of course. Rosa was my only real friend.’

  •

  Baxter rang Albury Police Station and told an officer that he needed to locate a man by the name of Craig, who held an executive position in the railway and whose daughter, Rosa, had left Albury about three years ago. Baxter provided his number and asked the officer to have Craig phone him directly.

  Inside two hours Baxter’s phone rang, with Ronald Craig at the other end. ‘Mr Baxter? Albury police asked me to contact you with respect to my daughter, Rosa. Is there something I should know about her?’

  ‘I’m afraid to say that your daughter passed away early this morning.’

  There was a silence. Then Craig asked, in a rough voice, ‘How?’

  ‘I’d rather explain that in person.’

  Impatience crept into Craig’s tone. ‘We’ve had very little news of her since she left here a few years ago. Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘What was she to you?’

  ‘I wasn’t Rosa’s boyfriend, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’m a journalist and I met her while I was doing some research—’

  ‘Research? On what?’

  ‘It’s a long story, Mr Craig. My mother and I were with Rosa when she died. She was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital last night. Her friend Prue gave me your name.’

  ‘You’ve seen Prue Hunter?’

  ‘Yes, she and Rosa were flatmates. Prue’s helping to organise Rosa’s funeral. I don’t have the details right now, but if you give me your phone number, I’ll contact you. It’s up to you, of course, whether you come or not.’

  ‘I’ll come,’ Craig said curtly. ‘Rosa was my daughter.’

  A bit late to recognise that, Baxter thought.

  •

  No more than a dozen mourners attended Rosa’s funeral, but at least there was a service. The church was beautifully decorated with flowers and greenery paid for by Frances Baxter. Half a dozen young women were present, and Baxter had talked with most of them at the Cross. There was, to his surprise, a female officer from the vice squad to whom he’d spoken on a couple of occasions.

  At Baxter’s insistence, Prue Hunter sat beside his mother and himself in the front pew. Ronald Craig sat with them.

  Afterwards, Craig was invited to the Baxter house, where he was told of his daughter’s fall from grace. Baxter gave Craig as much information as he knew, while Frances served coffee and cake, then looked on with sympathy in her eyes.

  ‘I had no idea what Rosa was doing,’ Craig said, tears in his eyes. ‘She sent a card telling us that she was in Sydney, then one each Christmas. Not
hing more.’

  ‘I don’t know the full story,’ said Baxter, ‘only what Rosa told me, but I’m sure she and Prue didn’t leave Albury to become prostitutes.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right,’ Craig said, his head in his hands. ‘She just wanted a better life for herself, more independence. Everything was all right until I remarried. Jo and Rosa didn’t get on, and I probably sided too much with Jo. She was too hard on Rosa. My poor daughter. She wouldn’t take it anymore and cleared out.’

  ‘If it’s any comfort,’ Frances said soothingly, ‘you aren’t by any means the only father this has ever happened to.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Baxter put in. ‘There have been a great many girls who finished up like Rosa, and there’s heaps more unaccounted for.’

  ‘Thank you, both of you, but the fact is that my Rosa is gone, and I shouldn’t have turned my back on her. I’ve learned my lesson too late. You should never turn your back on your kids, especially when they need you.’

  •

  Baxter was sick to the stomach of the whole sorry mess. He felt great admiration for social workers and charity organisations—if it weren’t for their efforts, the situation would be far worse. As it was, hundreds of people died from drug abuse each year.

  A lot of it, Baxter believed, could be sheeted home to uncaring and irresponsible parents. There was Ronald Craig—a man in an executive position—who’d allowed his younger second wife to assume responsibility for his teenage daughter, and who hadn’t been concerned enough about her when she’d left to try and locate her. Craig had been unbelievably slack, and now his daughter was dead. It was such a waste of a life.

  Baxter had seen enough of Sydney’s seamy side to last him all his life. His final conversation with Mr Garland had been swimming around in his head for days.

  Although I won’t be here to see it, the old man had said, I reckon that one day you’ll return to Moondilla. That’s the kind of young man I think you are. You’ll come back here and do things that people remember.

  ‘This is the finish of Sydney for me, Mum,’ Baxter told her that night.

  ‘What do you mean, Greg?’

  ‘As soon as I can, I’m going to move back to Moondilla. Sydney might be all things for some people, and I know you love it here, but I want some peace and quiet. And the truth is, I’ve dreamt of returning to the town ever since we left.’