The Party Line

by Sue Orr

  A breeze touched Nickie’s skin. In all the time she’d known Gabrielle, this was the first time Gabrielle had broken down. She sat, too, and put her arm across Gabrielle’s shoulders. She didn’t understand how the rescue women came into it, but she would wait. They were both okay to wait, sitting out there in the middle of a dry paddock that was a field of thick green grass in spring and a stinking sloppy mud pool in winter. Nickie watched a cicada bumble up through a crack in the dirt from the centre of the Earth and remembered that they only had a few weeks of life above the ground before they died.

  Gabrielle lifted her head. ‘Dad’s face was all cut. There was so much blood that I thought he would die. I thought he’d die before Mum died. He just stood there, saying nothing, doing nothing. Blood everywhere. Then he hugged her. He hugged Mum. That’s when I stopped being scared, I knew it’d be alright.’

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Mum got back into bed and she went straight to sleep. Like a little baby. A deep deep sleep, she looked so … She went back to looking like Mum again. The real Bridie, the beautiful one. I helped Dad get all the glass out of his face and helped him get all cleaned up.’

  ‘Did you have to go to hospital?’

  ‘We should have gone to the hospital, but he wouldn’t. He said it was private stuff and that the cancer had made Mum attack him. The cancer was in her brain, remember. We both knew it wasn’t the real Bridie and you only had to look at her sleeping, afterwards, to know that that was true.’

  ‘But … weren’t you scared? That it might happen again? Or it might be you next time?’

  Gabrielle clambered back to her feet. She dusted off her green dress and flicked a quivering cicada off her arm.

  ‘I was scared. Until she woke up again and she saw what she’d done to Dad. I could see then that she was so upset, so angry with herself … She was already making plans to stop it happening again. She rang up a friend in Auckland and a lady came and talked to us — talked to all of us, including Dad. She came with Mum’s doctor and they worked out a plan, a phone number to ring. It belonged to a lady who lived just five minutes away from our house and if anything viol— anything horrible ever started to happen again, and I was on my own, I just had to ring up the number and someone would come.’

  They started walking again. Nickie could smell smoke. Up ahead, she saw tiny puffs coming out of the ground. Nearly a week after the fire had been discovered, it was still burning.

  ‘Wow, that’s so neat,’ said Gabrielle. ‘Like Hell’s leaking.’

  ‘Did it?’ Nickie asked.

  ‘Did it what?’

  ‘Did it ever happen again? Did you ever have to ring the number?’

  ‘No. She died. The next week, she was dead.’

  They tiptoed to the middle of the paddock with the fire and lay down on the ground. The sunshine burned their backs and the warmth from Hell spread through their stomachs and legs and arms and the two heats met in the middle of them.

  ‘This must be what it feels like to be a toasted sandwich, getting cooked from both sides,’ said Gabrielle.

  ‘Most probably.’

  ‘We should have brought a spade. We could have dug down to the flames.’

  When the heat became too much, they went down to the river’s edge. They walked along the edge of the water, away from the fire, following the current.

  The breeze from earlier had gone. Maybe, if there’d been a breeze, they would have noticed the body sooner. They would have smelled something off and looked up and seen it in the distance. But they walked with their heads down, lost inside their thoughts. Then, they were standing next to a stinking pile of clothes and skin and meat and eels slithering from their feast back into the river.

  Joy Walker

  Joy knelt in the shade, collecting the fruit off the ground. The first of the apples had fallen early. Worms were already making a meal of them.

  The clatter of the ute over the cattlestop startled her. She stood too quickly, her hand seeking the tree trunk for support as her head swam, then cleared. A white butterfly flickered against her face. Eyes still closed, she brushed it away.

  It was Ian Baxter. Joy drew her forearm across her brow and ran her fingers through her hair. Beads of sweat from her head dampened and cooled her arm.

  On the back of the vehicle was a child’s bike. Nickie’s. Joy’s heart tumbled through the cascade of possibilities: accident, something worse …

  The ute veered too far left, then right, along the driveway up to the house. Was he drunk? It slowed down as the cat crossed its path, then stalled. The engine caught again and then it lurched forward, reaching a final stop by the house.

  Gabrielle was driving. Nickie got out of the passenger side. Joy’s anger turned to fear as she watched the two girls stand quite still, by the truck. Not moving, not talking.

  ‘We found Mr Gilbert. Down by the river. He’s dead.’ Gabrielle broke the silence with thick, flat words. ‘It looks as though he drowned, maybe.’

  ‘No … are you sure? Are you sure it’s him?’ Joy looked at Nickie. Her daughter’s face had the vacancy of a sleepwalker.

  ‘It’s him, definitely, Mum.’

  Joy gathered both the girls to her and led them inside to the lounge. They stood side by side, like strangers waiting for a formal invitation to sit down.

  ‘He was all swollen like a walrus,’ Gabrielle said suddenly. ‘The eels were eating him.’

  Bile rose in Joy’s throat. How strange this moment was. Time suspended between two deaths of equal monstrosity — Neville’s and Jack’s.

  ‘Sit down. I’ll get you a hot drink. Shock …’

  They sat, the three of them, on the couch and sipped sweet tea. No one cried. It had been a long time since Joy witnessed trauma — Neville’s death — but she remembered now that it evoked a response both less and greater than crying.

  ‘Tell me what happened,’ she said some undefined time later.

  ‘We went for a walk to see the peat fire. We got right down to the water and then we went along the side of the river.’

  ‘Where was your father, Gabrielle?’

  ‘At home. Cleaning up after the party.’

  ‘Party.’ Joy glanced at Nickie, who stared back through her.

  ‘And,’ said Gabrielle, ‘so we were just walking along and … he was so swollen his clothes were bursting off him. We ran back to get Dad, but he’d gone somewhere, down the farm. We looked around, across the paddocks, but we couldn’t see him. I’ve driven the ute before, I knew I could drive it here.’

  ‘We didn’t touch him,’ Nickie said. ‘But his eyes were wide open and not blinking and blowflies were on them. Bits of him were missing, Mum.’

  Joy picked up the telephone receiver without knowing who she was going to call. Eugene was at the rugby club organising the upcoming training. There was no telephone there. The police? An ambulance?

  Audrey. Joy was the person for that job, the only person. She would drive around there and stare down the rabid dogs and put her arm around Audrey and tell her that her life of torment was over and never mind about that strange animal love she’d thought she’d had with Jack Gilbert.

  She picked up the car keys, then stopped in the hallway, held her breath and listened. The girls had been silent, but now, as she passed the doorway, Joy thought she heard giggling. She craned to hear what was being said. The giggling stopped, as though the girls knew she was eavesdropping. She listened to them, they listened to her, and no one said a word.

  Eugene whistled as he got out of the truck. ‘Baby Blue’, which meant he was tipsy.

  ‘Where’re you off to, love?’

  ‘To the rugby club. To fetch you.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ He looked at Ian Baxter’s ute, at the bike on the back, and frowned.

  ‘It’s Jack Gilbert. He’s … I think he might be dead. The girls found a dead man down by the river. They say it’s Jack. That’s who they think it is.’

  ‘Jesus … Whe
re are they? The girls?’

  ‘Inside. They’re in shock, I think. I gave them sweet tea. That’s what you do. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Ian Baxter’s still here?’

  ‘No. He’s on the farm somewhere, the girls couldn’t find him. I’ll tell you about that later.’ Joy nodded at the ute. ‘Do we ring the police, Eugene? What do we do?’

  Eugene took his hat off and scratched his head. ‘Are you sure it’s Jack?’

  ‘That’s what the girls said. But I haven’t seen him … He’s in Hamilton, I thought. That’s what Audrey told me.’

  ‘I’d better go and have a look. I’ll pick Baxter up on the way.’ Eugene started for the house, shaking his head.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Joy quickly caught up. She grabbed his arm.

  ‘Ringing him.’

  ‘Don’t,’ said Joy. ‘Don’t use the phone. Just drive there.’

  ‘It’s fair to warn him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Warn him, and tell everyone else.’ Joy took a deep breath. ‘God knows who will be listening, Eugene. Elsie Shanks, for sure, maybe even Audrey—’

  The dust cloud marked Eugene’s progress down the road. Joy watched until it disappeared.

  What had she expected? A silent room with growing shadows as the sun dropped below the big windows. Two girls sitting in silence, tea cooling in the cups. Tears, maybe, a delayed reaction to their grotesque discovery.

  But Gabrielle was lying on the sofa with her feet propped up on the armrest. Nickie hovered over them, a bottle of bright red polish in one hand, the tiny brush in the other. She’d completed one foot and was gently painting Gabrielle’s left big toe.

  ‘What did Dad say? Has he gone to the river?’ Nickie continued painting as she spoke. ‘Who’s going to tell Mrs Gilbert?’

  Joy blinked at the scene, trying to make sense of it. Gabrielle’s attention was fixed on her right foot, she was straining to hold her toes apart to stop the wet polish from smudging.

  ‘Tell me again, please. Exactly how you came across him …’

  They chattered on as they primped and painted. They’d gone down to see the underground fire, and after touching the ground to feel the heat, walked along the river’s edge. And, they said, changing positions on the couch so Nickie’s toenails could be painted, that’s when they’d found him.

  ‘The police’ll probably be called. They’ll want to talk to you both about this,’ Joy said.

  Gabrielle sat up, bumping Nickie’s hand holding the little bottle. ‘That’s so neat! I’ve never been taken in for questioning before. That’s what they call it, on TV—’

  ‘That’s what they call it if they think you’ve done something bad. It’s not what’ll happen to you two.’ Joy, biting her bottom lip, took the nail polish out of Nickie’s hand before it tipped on the floor. ‘You’ll just need to tell them what you’ve told me — how you found him. That’s all, nothing else.’

  At seven o’clock Eugene returned. Ian Baxter was with him. Ian greeted Joy with a nod and a murmur, without meeting her gaze.

  ‘So,’ Joy said. ‘What’s the story?’

  Eugene pressed past her, reaching for two bottles of beer from the fridge. He stank — beer and river mud and rot. ‘It’s him alright. Jesus. Jesus Christ … We rang the police. They’re on their way now. They’ll come here first, I said it was best, seeing as Audrey doesn’t know …’

  Chairs scraped against the lino and the two men sat down. Big rough hands around the brown bottles — both men clung to them, as though they were the only things keeping them steady in their chairs.

  Joy’s heart thumped. She turned away. ‘The police … they’ll want to talk to the girls, won’t they?’

  ‘All the girls have to do, Joy, is say what happened today. Nothing else.’ Eugene’s eyes fixed on Joy, then Ian. ‘None of that bloody carryon from before Christmas. That goes for your daughter, too, mate.’

  Ian picked at the label on the bottle with his thumbnail. He didn’t speak.

  ‘How long since you’d seen Jack?’ Eugene asked Ian.

  ‘He went away a week or so ago. I needed his help with the water, but he’d gone to Hamilton. Before then, I guess. Sometime before then, I would have seen him.’

  ‘Audrey thinks he’s in Hamilton, too,’ Joy said. ‘I saw her the other day … She said she didn’t know when he was coming back. I didn’t think anything of it … you know what Audrey’s like.’

  Three moths flew into the kitchen. Their meaty bodies slapped at the plastic lightshade hanging low over the table.

  ‘The girls said he was … swollen, bloated. Did he drown? Do you think?’

  ‘I’d say so,’ said Ian. He took a long drink. ‘I reckon that’s what’s happened.’

  ‘How, though? I mean … he’d have to have gone in there, in that muddy river … What, for a swim? When he was meant to be in Hamilton?’

  Joy looked at Eugene and Ian, backwards and forwards, waiting for one of them to speak. The clock above their heads ticked on, each second louder than the last.

  ‘There’s something else, Joy. We rolled him over. Jesus …’ Eugene was rubbing his red eyes with the back of his filthy hands. ‘We rolled him over. His pockets were full of rocks. Heavy ones, big buggers. Every single bloody pocket, weighed down with them. It looks as though he drowned himself on purpose.’

  Joy nodded slowly, taking in Eugene’s words, his assessment of the situation. She had never seen him cry. Cry might be too big a word for what was happening anyway. Just a little tear spilling over, running down the side of his face. He brushed it away.

  ‘I took them out. The rocks.’ Eugene breathed in; Joy heard a shudder deep within the intake of air. ‘People don’t need to know. He … he just drowned, that’s all. That’s all people need to know.’

  Ian lifted his head. ‘It wasn’t right, Eugene. You should let the police do their job. Taking your own life … that’s the biggest sin of all.’

  ‘In the eyes of the Church. I know.’

  ‘Not just the Church. I understand why you did it, Eugene. But I don’t agree with it.’ Ian’s gaze was clear and strong. ‘No matter what it means later on. For anyone.’

  Unspoken words hovered between the men. Or maybe, Joy thought, they’d been said earlier. In the fading light, next to the bloated body of Jack Gilbert, or in the truck, on the way home?

  Joy saw movement out the corner of her eye, in the hallway. Just a flicker of white, there for a second then gone. She got up and went back to the fridge. As she moved behind the two men, out of their line of sight, she glanced into the hallway.

  Nickie and Gabrielle were sitting on the floor, just on the other side of the doorway. Their arms were hugging their knees, which were pulled up tight against their chests. They were listening.

  Joy caught their eyes and silently shooed them away. She made sure they were out of earshot before returning to her seat, without saying a word to the men.

  ‘I’d better go to Audrey,’ Joy said. ‘Someone should be with her, when the police come.’

  There was no easy way to break the news. That was okay. With Audrey, it was always best just to say what had to be said.

  ‘They’ve found Jack, Audrey. On the river bank.’

  The two women looked at each other for a minute. Maybe two. Joy watched Audrey’s pale neck, saw how the bruises were fading. They were so much a part of Audrey, and now Joy was looking at the last of them, ever.

  ‘You said he had gone to Hamilton. You remember, don’t you? When he left?’

  Audrey nodded. Her eyes were clear.

  ‘The police will want to know things. Details. They’ll want to check.’

  Audrey nodded again.

  They stood under the clothes line. The pile of white linen spilled over the top of the basket at Audrey’s feet. The night was black and still and a near-full moon was rising from behind Mount Te Aroha.

  Audrey bent down and pulled the top sheet from the basket. Joy caught one end of it and, together, t
hey stretched it taut along the outside wire of the line. All the pegs were white, too, and when the two women snipped them on to the tight sheet, they disappeared.

  The second sheet was dry in the basket; Joy could feel the warmth of the day’s sunshine caught in the crisp folds. But Audrey lifted the sheet and handed one edge to Joy. They pegged it to another of the four outside lines.

  A white tent was forming.

  They worked on, the darkness easing as the moon rose. Lifting, stretching, pegging, not talking. When the four outside lines were full, they used the inner ones. Finally the basket was empty.

  ‘Wait here,’ said Audrey, and she went inside the house.

  She returned with another armload of washing. Except it wasn’t washing, it was a pile of clean, ironed and folded tea towels. She put them in the basket at Joy’s feet.

  Joy blinked, craning to see Audrey’s face. There was nothing except industrious intent. Audrey carefully shook out tea towel after tea towel, before pegging them in the remaining spaces on the wires.

  ‘Audrey,’ Joy said quietly, reaching for her upstretched arm. ‘Shall we stop now? These can wait until the morning. Let’s go in and have a cup of tea.’

  Audrey shrugged Joy’s hand away roughly. ‘It can’t wait. There’s more to do. Much more, after this.’

  ‘Come on, Audrey. Come inside.’

  It was as though Audrey hadn’t heard her. Lift, peg, lift, peg, on she went. When every space was full, she stopped.

  Joy watched, then, as Audrey put her face into the folds of the very first sheet she had hung out. It’s happening. She’s crying. Joy stepped forward, ready to put her arm around Audrey, hold her as she sobbed. Audrey’s face lifted, a grimace of distaste passed over it.

  ‘Not clean,’ she said. ‘Not properly clean.’

  The dogs kicked off again. A police car was coming along the driveway. There were two men in it — a police officer and Eugene.