For the first few weeks she never said a word, just came into class, sat down and looked straight ahead to where old Murchy was writing notes on the board. Tom would sneak looks at her every now and again. He liked her profile: the long straight nose and well-defined mouth, skin like honey-blonde polished wood. In the early weeks she never gave anything away, but it was odd to have someone almost as old his parents and teachers sitting in class with them.
As first term progressed, before he’d even spoken a private word to her, he would find himself looking forward to Friday mornings.
And Jonty was the same. ‘Wonder what the wacko aunt will be wearing today,’ he sometimes mumbled on their way into class.
Tom had shrugged and changed the subject. He knew that the woman was Jonty’s aunt but it somehow didn’t seem credible. She was way too hip and interesting to be the sister of Jonty’s, fraught, shy and harried-looking mother. Besides, in those early weeks, Jonty rarely spoke to her, except for a polite smile and hello. No family chitchat between them. No easy familiarity. A cool understanding seemed to be in place. Tom was curious but didn’t pry. Gradually, he learnt that there had been some kind of falling-out between the two families and that the sisters had only minimal contact with each other.
Tom could remember the first private conversation he’d had with Lillian. It was about midway through first term and it was hot. He was sitting in the library trying to complete a maths assignment that was not going well when he saw her walk in. The library was pretty busy, but by this stage people were used to Lillian being around the place in all her skirts and earrings and silk scarves, so no one took much notice of her. Tom found himself watching her walk around the shelves trying to locate a book. She couldn’t seem to find it. He watched her look over at the librarian’s station every now and then, as though on the verge of going to ask for help but then at the last minute chickening out. Eventually, he got up and asked her if she’d like some help. She was flustered at first, embarrassed about not knowing how to do such a simple thing, and then, once he’d shown her, she was overly grateful, which made him embarrassed. They stood by the stacks for maybe five minutes after they’d found the book, talking awkwardly about history and then in a more relaxed way about the literature course, which she obviously loved.
Tom never spoke about what touched him that day. Not to anyone, not even the police. It was one of those moments you mull over privately when you’re walking home or sitting alone waiting for something to happen. There had been an essay on Hamlet due the next week and she’d obviously read and re-read the play and knew it well. But she seemed terrified of actually sitting down to write the essay, and wanted to know if he, Tom, had any tips on how to begin. She started raving on about the divergent points of view of the two main commentaries they’d been given. Professor Blogs said blah, but Doctor Whatsisface said something else and none of it was quite the same as what the teacher said, so which one should I go with, Tom?
He smiled, pleased that her problem was so easy to solve and went on to tell her that, because she knew the play so well and had thought about it, she should try to work out her own ideas and go with them. This suggestion threw her at first.
‘But what would I know?’ she said. Tom could tell she was being totally genuine, and for a few moments he didn’t know what to say. It was almost embarrassing.
‘But that’s what all this is about,’ he said, waving at the stacks of books and the computers and all the kids sitting down with their heads bent over books. She said nothing for a while but her face was pulled into a deep frown.
‘How do you mean?’ she asked politely.
‘Hamlet and . . . the rest of it!’ he laughed. ‘History, politics and literature. You do the reading. You find out what other people say about it all. You think about it some, and then you write what you think.’
This seemed to shock her. She looked away, opened her mouth to speak a couple of times and then turned back to Tom, a thoughtful frown clouding her features.
‘You’re sure about that?’
‘I’m sure.’ Her wariness had him smiling. Not often did he get the chance to give such good news to an older person.
‘God! That makes it all . . .’ The frown lifted and she looked over at the light flowing in through the window, smiling a slow delighted smile, as though something that had been murky and troubling was suddenly crystal-clear. ‘Of course you’re right. I see that now. And it makes it even better than I thought.’ She turned the smile on him then, and something deep in his chest rushed up to meet it. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about this play, Tom! I’ve got some ideas about it. I really . . .’ She paused and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I really love it!’ she whispered, looking straight into his eyes.
‘So go for your life!’ Tom said, feeling a hammering in his chest. ‘Write ’em down!’
‘Okay!’ They were both laughing.
In spite of her carelessly thrown-together, flamboyant style of dress, Lillian was quiet and super-polite in class. She didn’t give a lot away, which had the effect of making the rest of the class want to know more. Much later, when he got to know her better, Tom asked her seriously why she dressed the way she did, but Lillian’s response was only to laugh and tell him that she didn’t see why, after all the hard times she’d been through, she couldn’t have a little fun. Hard times? She was open about the fact that she worked hard to make a living for herself and her daughter. Tom had done pub work himself and knew about long hours, bad money and no benefits. But of course he and Jonty wanted her to elaborate on the rest of it – they were both curious. Jonty had heard all kinds of stories about her husband, Mad Mal, over the years and he passed them all on to Tom, but Lillian wouldn’t elaborate. Her previous life with her family, her mother and sister and then the husband and daughter was only ever mentioned in passing. What she was interested in, and what she liked to talk about, was the present, particularly her studies. And she loved Tom and Jonty introducing her to all their favourite music and films and books.
‘I’ve been in a cage for the past twenty years,’ she said once, when they played her one of Radiohead’s early albums, marvelling that she’d never even heard of the band before. ‘Now I’m out, and I don’t want to look back.’
Those two VCE subjects were her first foray into formal learning in over twenty years. She’d left school when she was fifteen and had wanted to go back for years but hadn’t been able to manage it. After a couple of months of being very quiet and tentative in class she gradually found her feet and would speak up and ask questions.
It wasn’t just how to use the library and the net, Lillian needed help with a lot of the simple stuff. Together Tom and Jonty showed her how to set out essays and keep to word lengths, as well as more complicated stuff, like how to suss out the guts of an argument. Once she got the hang of it she began to do really well.
Jonty and Tom started to eat their lunch with her on Fridays. That was a lot of fun, too. They’d talk about what they’d learnt that morning in class. Lillian was friendly with other kids and everyone liked her, but she sought out Tom and Jonty because they were interested in the ideas behind what they were learning. Lillian did lots of extra reading for the class and that goaded Tom and Jonty to try harder. They wanted to keep up with her and it felt good to stretch their brains. The three of them topped both subjects in the exams at the end of first semester and that set the pace. For the first time in a long time it became cool to try really hard. After those mid-year results the whole class just got better and better. Even the teacher got excited. Alan Murch was on the verge of retirement but he made it plain that the threesome of Lillian, Tom and Jonty had made his last year of teaching really interesting.
Halfway back to the car, Tom sees the one other visitor – an old man, short and fat and balding, in old dungarees and rubber boots – standing on a grave not that far away, furiously polishing the headstone with a piece of cloth. Intrigued by the bizarre quality of the scene, Tom stops and prete
nds to read a nearby headstone. The guy has to be one of the seven dwarves. He is squat as an orange, and as round. Tom smiles as he watches the little guy pick a can from his pocket and carefully, almost reverentially, open it and dip the rag in. Then he starts rubbing the stuff along the angel wings in long slow movements, like he might be waving off evil spirits. Shit! In the low light one wing looks as though it’s fastened to the guy’s back. The image is funny, weird and tragic all at the same time. Tom makes a rough square with his hands and tries to frame it. With that big dark sky behind him and a hint of light catching the headstone it is so . . . nice! He has time to run back to the car, grab his Leica and catch it on film.
But at the car, camera in hand and about to head back, he stops. Amanda’s mocking, angry voice in his head confuses him utterly. All you care about is images, Tom! Real stuff is too much for you. At the time he’d dismissed all she’d said as the crazy ravings of a jilted girl. But he puts the camera back in its case again. What if she was right? Without my work, the photography, without that cold shimmering pylon of ambition holding me up, what do I amount to?
He starts the car and drives back to the main road, thinking of how he’d first got hooked. Probably he was around thirteen, that first afternoon in the darkroom with his grandfather, watching images emerge in the bath of the developer. Magic. Pa had shown him how the camera worked, shown him how to print and get the effects he wanted. There was always something new to learn, and Tom was keen.
Every picture tells a story, Tom! So you’ve got to make your pictures tell a story worth telling. His grandfather’s respect for the power of the image made photography seem an almost holy thing to do. He knew all the technical stuff but he cared about the history, too, and introduced Tom to the images that had changed the way people saw and felt about the world.
By Year Twelve, Tom knew where he was headed. His heroes were those photographers in the thirties and the Second World War. People like Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Capa. They captured the important stuff: wars and famines, floods and earthquakes, births and deaths; but also the small moments between people: the funny, the bizarre, the sad and the ridiculous. That’s the kind of photographer Tom wants to be.
The rain is really pouring down now and Tom has to concentrate. It’s still light, but all the cars have their headlights on. Tom switches on his own and smiles, thinking of Pa taking him to that Time Life exhibition. The very first truly great photo he ever saw. How stunned he’d been, moved beyond words and not quite knowing why. Maybe that iconic one of Dorothea Lange’s was the very first one. A head and shoulders shot of a woman holding a baby with a little kid pushed in close on either side of her. It was one of the key images that opened the eyes of the rest of America to what was really happening during the Depression. At fifteen years old, Tom had only a hazy idea of what the Depression was, he’d certainly never thought about what life had been like for a desperately poor mother with nowhere to go, but . . . that picture told him everything. His Pa hadn’t said very much at all as they walked from one picture to another. It was as if they were in church.
The one of the little girl running naked down the road during the Vietnam War, screaming, the napalm sticking to her skin, burning her alive. The other of the handcuffed Vietcong prisoner being shot through the head. And the Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in protest against the war. They were all there. When those key images were reproduced all around the world they changed people’s minds and they changed the course of history, too. It all comes down to the one still image, Tom. One picture which makes whoever is seeing it just shut up because suddenly they understand something new.
His grandfather had worked as a family doctor in the same practice all his life. Everyone around had loved him. He told Tom once that it was better to die doing something important than to live and do nothing. Driving west along that highway with the rain pelting down and the huge bleak grey sky above, Tom is moved all over again by the idea, but oddly unsettled by it, too. Part of him wants to protest. Too extreme, Pa! Way too bloody extreme. What if you can’t do something important? What if you don’t have it in you? What if it’s all too hard? Amanda could be right. What if I don’t have what it takes?
The wind has died down by the time Tom turns off the main highway. He takes the two familiar right-hand turns into the quiet, winding street that leads up to the old house where he’d been brought up. There are only five other houses in the street and his old family home is the only one not visible from the road. But the big shaggy front hedge is totally familiar to Tom.
He hasn’t been back for eighteen months, but seeing the house in the dim grey light, he feels as though he’s never been away. He gets out and stands in the lightly spitting rain, rubbing his hands for a few moments. Nearly four hours it has taken him, but he is glad to be there. He grabs his bag from the boot; kicks open the slightly rusty, wrought-iron gate; passes a few withered pot plants on his way up the front steps to the open front door and peers into the lighted hallway.
‘Hey, Dad,’ he yells through the flywire. ‘It’s me.’
No answer, so he walks straight in, drops his bag onto the polished floorboards and heads down the shabby strip of carpet to the living area at the back of the house. It is a big room with a television blaring the news in one corner. The smell of meat cooking in the oven in the adjoining kitchen gives him a sudden jolt of hunger. It has only been a couple of hours since he’s eaten, and for the last month or two he hasn’t had much of an appetite. It is back with a vengeance now and maybe that means something. ‘There you are!’ Bess, the ageing golden retriever makes her way over from the heater to welcome him. ‘What are you doing inside at this hour, old girl.’ Tom bends to scratch her behind the ears, and she licks his hand to show that she understands exactly what he’s saying. ‘The privilege of old age, huh? I won’t tell, promise.’
Tom snatches up a roll from the bench, breaks it open with his fingers, slathers it with butter and stuffs it into his mouth. Then he takes a long swig of milk from the half-empty plastic container on the sink. The table is covered in newspapers and dishes. Everything is untidy and worn, in just the way he remembers. Even the smell is familiar. Tom swallows more bread, feeling the ache that had gripped his throat outside settle in harder as he stands there taking it all in. He’d forgotten about the frayed floral curtains and the sagging brown leather sofa, the battered silk-and-velvet cushions on the couch and the heavy carved coffee table, stacked high with board games and a pile of newspapers. The fridge and cupboards are still stuck all over with drawings, some of them his own, all stained and greasy from the years of hanging there. Even the table is covered in a cloth he recognises – red berries with long green stems. Christmas? Come on, Dad! What the hell is it doing here in July?
Tom stands for a moment or two, breathing in the childhood that he’d left behind so abruptly three years before. He can almost see the lot of them as they used to be – Mum, Dad, Nellie, Ned and Tom himself sitting around this old blackwood table; or on the big, comfortable, shabby chairs; or lying about on the sofa with its kicked-in cushions. How many times had he come bounding into this room to slump down to eat breakfast? He used to stick his feet up on the table and argue politics over dinner and tell Nellie to shut up when she insisted on reading out snippets from the newspaper. That sister of his had had attitude right from the time she was two! So much yelling had gone on here. All the years of stuffing his face, burping and fighting and laughing. This place was home in a way that his mother’s house in Carlton, full of all her stylish stuff, never would be.
The night his team won the under-nineteen’s footy premiership hits Tom right between the eyes. The First Eighteen came back to this room with their various parents, girlfriends and siblings, laughing and shouting at each other. All the team members kicking back in glory. Real men at last!
His mum and dad had been a united front, heating up pies and handing around chips and Cokes, laughing and pretend
ing not to notice the guys going outside to take slugs from hipflasks. Tom had been so proud that night, of himself and the team, of course, but of the big generous ramshackle house too, and the family who inhabited it. His family. He knew his team-mates were envious of what he had. Who else had a good-looking mother like his who was also the town’s most popular female doctor? (All their mothers went to Anna Mullaney’s clinic.) Who else had an old man who not only ran the busiest, most prosperous law practice around, but who also made his own dry risqué jokes that had Tom’s friends hooting with laughter? Luke could give them advice on which second-hand cars to buy, too, and could talk footy just as well as any of their fathers, who were mainly local tradesmen or farmers. He knew all their families. He’d presided over so many of their house sales and driving infringements, their divorces and petty disputes.
Jonty had been there that night, of course, stuffing the pies away with the rest. He was just another wild boy then, way brighter than everyone sitting around that table, for sure, but a hero as well that night because he’d played so brilliantly. The fact that he’d been off his face on a weed and tranc binge two days before was conveniently forgotten. It was hard to pinpoint when the shift between them started, but by September Tom had well and truly decided that he was going to do well in his exams. A night off his face on grass, or whatever else Jonty was into, just didn’t seem appealing anymore. That grand final night must have been three months before the murder.
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