Mum tried to coax Nan out of her low mood by teasing me about Ethan West.
‘Jean had a hot date this afternoon,’ she said.
‘We looked at cows,’ I said, without turning around from the television.
‘They looked at cows. This is what the kids do these days,’ said Mum.
‘Don’t marry a dairy farmer,’ said Nan. ‘It’s a chancy business.’
Nan got up and put another log on the fire. She pushed it around with the poker and stood up for a while with her arms folded. Then she sat back down, deep in thought. Pretty soon she was talking about Bart again.
‘Do you remember Don’s 70th? Bart brought over all those scotch fillets. And he wouldn’t take any money. He was just like that. He has time for everyone. Remember when he gave Mrs Bart a rose garden? And that piano? He was so generous. Oh dear, Celia. I think it must’ve been his heart again. Do you think? He’s had another heart attack and gone over into the water.’
Nan went on for quite a while like that, switching confusingly between the past and present tense when she spoke of him.
‘There was no one he didn’t have time for,’ she said.
‘Except . . .’ said Mum, and there was a pause. Then the silent sound of a penny dropping and Nan saying, ‘Oh. Yes,’ and crackles from the fire.
‘Except who?’ I asked, turning around from the TV.
‘Jeannie, honey, don’t be a creep,’ said Mum. ‘This is our conversation.’
‘Except who?’ I asked again. ‘Nan?’
They both looked at me and said nothing, and then Nan looked at Mum as if to apologise for what she was about to say.
‘Except Carl White,’ she said.
12
After almost three weeks without a daughter, Judy White began making brief appearances in town, having finally left the house where she had hovered, in and out of view—sometimes in front of the living room windows, sometimes just inside the screen door, sometimes in the wooden frame of Rosie’s window, and always in her dressing-gown.
I saw her go into the Grocer on the Saturday, properly dressed, and saw Nance anxiously fumble with the arrangement of her counter display, as if it was suddenly quite urgent. Then, when Judy had chosen her grocery items and arrived at the counter to pay, Nance clasped her hands together as if in prayer and offered her worried condolences. Judy tried her best to smile but her face could not make one. She looked grim.
I passed her as I went in and tried to make eye contact, so I could offer a look of support, but her head was hung low, as if her shoes were the only horizon she could find to quell her seasick heart.
Then she crossed the street and started off on what I assumed to be the long way home, so she didn’t have to go past Woody’s.
•
Davo Carlstrom had also been keeping a low profile, and had only been seen at the Wicko once since Rosie vanished. Smithy had to ask him and his bogan uncle to kindly leave, because Davo got so drunk he was threatening to lose consciousness in the front bar.
Perhaps due to his rebellious disposition, people looked sideways at Davo now. People spoke about him in tones of disapproval, heavy with question marks and the occasional accusation.
‘It’s just like “Hazard” by Richard Marx,’ said George.
George didn’t really look sideways at Davo, though. George looked sideways at Davo’s bogan uncle, every time she walked up her street. Especially since he dressed most days in an Adidas tracksuit and had lined up a row of empty beer cans on the front fence, as if waiting for the energy to fetch his gun.
After some effort, we discovered his name was Lafe and that he’d been a mechanic in Albion Park, where he’d fallen on some kind of hard times, hit various kinds of bottles, and ended up in Goodwood, mostly drunk and living in his brother’s crap caravan. This only added more cause to the fact that the Carlstroms were not particularly appreciated in town. Davo’s mum, Linda, worked at the Ingham Further Processing Plant, which was a good hour away—or four hours if you stopped at the Royal Tavern in Cedar Valley every night on the way home. George and I were horrified by whatever ‘further processing’ meant when it came to chickens; and mothers in town were, historically, horrified by the fact that Linda was never home.
‘No wonder,’ said George’s mum, Spray n’ Wiping their counter. ‘He’s been left there while Linda goes out drinking his whole life.’
‘No wonder what?’ asked George.
Noelene paused and said, pointedly, ‘You know.’ Gravid with disfavour.
The uncle, Lafe, had only been in the caravan for three months, and had apparently been given a further three to sort himself out and move on. Davo’s dad was loyal to his brother, but his loyalty was strained by the renewed attention on his family. While previous decades had shuffled past in the sleepy town of Goodwood with little interest from law enforcement, suddenly it wasn’t such a good thing to look like a criminal, especially when your nephew was ‘connected’, as they said, to an ongoing investigation.
In an attempt to create a more positive impression, or maybe just because he needed the assistance, Davo’s dad—Dennis Carlstrom—soon wrangled Lafe into helping him fix the comatose cars that he bought at the Clarke Wreckers or through the Trading Post, planted in their yard, and covered with tarpaulins. I thought it was an improvement when Lafe changed from his Adidas tracksuit to his khaki coveralls and actually started doing something with his days, but George said that he often left his buttons undone in particular places, so you could see a bit more of Lafe than you were supposed to. Towards the end of that second week after Rosie vanished, George walked past the Carlstrom house to see Lafe leaning against his caravan with his buttons gaping, looking her right in the eye, leering, and then down at his nether regions. George was horrified and ran home.
•
On the better side of town, Carl White’s routine seemed largely unchanged. He went to work, driving up Cedar Street with his radio on loud enough to hear through closed windows. He did whatever it was he did in his shed till the wee hours, as faithfully reported by Opal Jones next door, for she could see the fluorescent light from her bedroom window, and the tiny cloud of moths and night bugs that hovered there, well into the night. Mainly, though, Carl White sat in front of the pokie machine nearest to the ladies toilets at the Bowlo and slotted in coin after coin after coin.
Carmel Carmichael, who had a good view of Carl’s favourite pokie from her spot behind the bar, said that to look at him going about his business, you couldn’t tell if the man was upset in the slightest. You couldn’t tell if he was anything at all—except gambling, he was certainly doing that. But the more people thought about it, the more people felt that Carl White’s lack of emotion—given the recent gaping hole in his family—indicated something unsavoury.
When Mum and I were returning books at the library, Mum’s friend Denise the librarian said, ‘He’s a bit cold, don’t you think? Given the circumstances?’
Mum said diplomatically, ‘Well, we don’t know what they must be going through,’ which didn’t seem to satisfy Denise at all.
Only a few months earlier, Mum and I had been watching the news when the government awarded Lindy Chamberlain over a million dollars in compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Mum had said to me, speaking over the television, ‘Do you know why they convicted her, Jean? Because they thought she was unemotional. That and her religion, which people didn’t like. Everyone thought she was in a cult and should’ve been crying more. You know what I think? I think everyone grieves in their own way.’
So I wasn’t sure what to make of Carl White. Except I did have some feelings when I walked past the White house, which I was prone to do at that time, and saw Judy, hovering in the bay window in her dressing-gown. She looked seasick, like she was standing on the deck of a ship, swaying in the still air. I felt that it would’ve been nice if, at least one time, Carl had been there beside her.
•
Mack, Tracy and little Jasper came to our house
for a barbeque on the Sunday, two weeks after Bart had vanished, with a potato salad and a bag of sausages. Mum invited Mrs Bart and Pearl too—through Mack, who was visiting the McDonald house most days—but Mack advised that Mrs Bart had thankfully declined, and the only outings she had any room for, emotionally, were either CWA- or horse-related.
Backflip and I went walking through the foothills that morning and passed Pearl and Oyster on the trail. Oyster and Backflip weren’t natural friends, so we kept a wide berth, but I waved at Pearl and she waved back and I could smell Oyster’s horsey aroma.
I wanted so badly to offer my condolences. I wanted to say something comforting, but—much like Helen with Terry White that day at the newsagent—I panicked and got flustered and said, ‘Have a good one!’
Have a good one. Her dad had just been swallowed by the lake—and she was going to have a good one?
Pearl rode out of earshot. The smell of Oyster receded. I felt foolish, verging on heartless, all the way home.
After everyone had eaten, I stacked the dishwasher and Mack brought in the empty meat tray, dripping with bloody juices. I rinsed it and he got another beer from the fridge, and I was on the verge of telling him about the money when Mum and Tracy came in laughing together with more plates, and Mack hugged Tracy from behind tenderly, and everyone settled on the couch while Mum made tea.
The conversation over lunch had touched on various topics. Mum, who worked as a proofreader at the Gather Region Advocate, had gone up to four days working at the paper; Myrtle had learnt her own name; Ethan West had taken me to look at cows and wasn’t that hilarious and isn’t he tall; and Mack had been doing the work of several officers for the past two weeks, while the Clarke station was slowly reducing its support. Meanwhile, Jasper fed pieces of apple to Backflip under the table and Mum and I pretended not to notice.
Everyone was trying to talk about nice things, but everyone was dying to talk about Rosie and Bart.
Luckily, one curious item of information had come to Mack’s attention since the last time we had all spoken. And against his better judgement—with the encouragement of several afternoon beers and Mum’s persistent questions—he eventually told us. Apparently, about a week before Bart disappeared, which was around the time that Rosie disappeared, the McDonalds’ old Corolla—the one that sat unused most of the time in the carport—had been stolen.
Mrs Bart hadn’t gone to town on the Monday. She’d stayed home, glazed two ceramic salad bowls, and gone riding with Pearl. On the Tuesday morning she had secretarial business at the CWA so she packed her purse and went to her car—the Mazda—only to realise the Corolla wasn’t in its spot. The bulk of the Hilux had been concealing its absence.
Bart had driven off in the Commodore earlier and was already at the shop, so Mrs Bart went back inside to call him.
‘Bushka, the Corolla’s gone,’ she had said.
‘Is it now?’ Bart had replied.
‘Yeah, you didn’t notice?’
‘I don’t reckon I did,’ said Bart. ‘The Hilux is in the way.’
‘Why wouldn’t they’ve taken the Hilux? Or the Commodore?’ said Mrs Bart, very confused about the whole thing.
‘Maybe they were after fuel efficiency,’ Bart said, in an amused tone.
‘Bush, the car’s been stolen, what are you? Cracking jokes?’
‘Sorry, honey, I’ve got people here—we’ll talk about it later.’
‘I’ll call Mack,’ she said.
‘No, no, no—I’ll pop over there in a minute and fill him in,’ said Bart, and they hung up.
Mrs Bart assumed Bart had popped over to the station. In fact, Bart told her that evening that he had; that Mack had filed the relevant paperwork; that they’d have to wait and see, and if it didn’t turn up then he’d call the NRMA and file a claim.
The problem was, Bart never went to the station.
Mrs Bart had been satisfied that the matter was being taken care of, and remembers mentioning it maybe one other time towards the end of the week. ‘Any news from Mack about the Corolla?’ she’d asked Bart over one of their steak dinners. To which Bart had said something along the lines of, ‘Not yet, but I’m sure it’ll turn up,’ and didn’t seem concerned about it at all.
Then she’d been distracted with Pearl, and Jan had arrived, and Bart had gone fishing and never come home, and she hadn’t thought of the old car since. Until Mack was visiting and it dawned on her, as she was seeing him off in front of the carport, that she’d never spoken to him about it directly.
‘I don’t suppose it matters,’ she said absentmindedly, staring at the horse sheds, ‘but did you find anything on the Corolla?’
And that was the first Mack had heard of it.
Since that confusing conversation, Mack had gone over the events around the stolen car with Mrs Bart thoroughly, a line of inquiry which alarmed her a great deal, for she’d never known of any other instance, in their long and good marriage, when her husband had lied to her.
‘Why would he? What’s going on?’ she pleaded, as Mack sat at her table making notes.
After ascertaining what Bart had said about the car, and what Bart had, or in this case, had not done, Mack didn’t know how to pose the next question, for fear of alarming Mrs Bart further. But all he could think of was Constable Simmons’s mocking face.
‘Flora, do you know—I mean, from what you gather, did Bart know Rosie White . . . well?’
And just like that Mrs Bart burst into tears.
13
According to Mrs Bart, Bart knew Rosie White as well as he knew most people who worked on Cedar Street. Woody’s was two doors up from Bart’s Meats. The back of both businesses exited onto the same lane, which adjoined the same car park. They shared two dumpster bins, along with their immediate neighbours: the newsagent, Bookworm, and the Goodwood Village Bakery, where Bart bought his coffee scrolls. There was a big car park where Derek Murray sometimes did burnouts to impress his very few friends; and an awning that sheltered the back doors where Rosie, and now Derek Murray, would smoke on a fold-out chair. Bart also smoked, even though he continually promised Pearl he was giving up, and he occasionally allowed himself a cheeky one under the awning too, after he’d turned off the fluorescent lights, locked the front door, and put the garbage in the dumpster bins as the light faded over the mountain.
Mrs Bart said Bart was fond of Rosie, as he was fond of everyone really, but he just hadn’t spoken of her since she’d vanished, even though Mrs Bart had raised it at dinner every night that week. This—said Mrs Bart—was odd. It was something she kept coming back to in her mind. The thought of it came and hovered there—teasing her, testing her, confronting her. It was just so unlike him. For Bart to be uninterested in a person he knew? A person who was in some kind of trouble? A person who was missing?
‘He just didn’t say anything about it all, which was . . . odd. Because everyone was talking about it. I wanted to talk about it,’ she told Mack, sniffling, and he nodded. ‘But you know, he hated Carl, so I’m not sure. I mean, it’s probably nothing. It’s nothing!’
Mack did know there was bad blood between Bart and Carl. It seemed that a lot of people in town knew. For instance, when Bart was thrown a party at the Bowlo one time, just for being an all-round terrific guy, everyone knew not to invite Carl. Much like they knew that Carl never took his boat out on Sundays anymore, as of two years ago, because that was Bart’s day and they tended to avoid being on the same body of water at the same time.
I’m not sure Mum or Nan knew why, they just knew that it was; and similarly, as much as Mack had an inkling of it, this was the first time he’d ever ventured to ask, ever so gently, ‘Why did Bart hate Carl?’
Mrs Bart shook her lowered head.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it’s not good.’
Mrs Bart shuffled in her chair. She pressed her fingers against her temples and Mack waited patiently until she gathered the wherewithal to explain, slowly, the dark history of her husband’s ill f
eeling.
Bart and Carl had been cordial enough to begin with. The Whites and the McDonalds didn’t socialise together as couples, but both men drank beer at the Wicko and the Bowlo, and Carl bought a good deal of topside. Judy White had attended Mrs Bart’s floral art workshop at the CWA a few years back and had considered membership for a time, but never seemed to get around to it. Carl didn’t seem to approve—which was odd, come to think of it. What’s not to like about togetherness and craft? But in any case, Judy was busy seeing Rosie and Terry through high school and working as a nurse at Clarke Base Hospital. She was on duty the night Bart went to Emergency in the summer of 1990, after he’d suffered a mild heart attack while horseriding with Pearl. Bart had spent four days in the hospital and Judy was a nurse in his ward on two of those days. On the second occasion, she administered his medication and Bart asked her if she could please raise the blinds. She went to the window and lifted both her arms to untangle the cord, which Bart had made a mess of earlier, and Bart saw her dress hike up as she reached, and then he saw her thighs, which were black and blue and purple and red, like someone had taken to them with a belt and not let up.
Bart thanked her kindly and did not say a word. But he did go home and tell Mrs Bart that someone was laying a hand on Judy and he had a good idea who that person was.
‘What do I do?’ he had said. ‘What can I do?’
Mrs Bart had not known what could be done.
A few months later, after Bart had fully recovered, Mrs Bart met with Nance and Helen and Faye at the Bowlo for a chardonnay. Carmel Carmichael had brought out a delightful surf and turf platter and they’d had a lovely time. They sat at the table inside looking out the big window onto the green. Carl White was also drinking there that day, heavily, with Roy Murray and Mal West.
As she was getting ready to leave, Mrs Bart excused herself to use the ladies room, which was at the end of the carpeted hall past the pokies. Roy and Mal had left, and Carl was having a flutter on his favourite machine closest to the toilets. Mrs Bart said, ‘G’day Carl,’ as she walked past, and he hopped up and followed her to the bathroom door, which she only realised when she felt a hand on the back of her thigh, at which point she shrieked and turned to find Carl, hungry, smiling at her with glazed eyes, saying, ‘Come on, baby,’ and groping for the small of her back.
Goodwood Page 7