Love, Honour & O'Brien

by Jennifer Rowe

  Made cautious by adversity, she transferred her suitcases, bedding and china goose to the car, just in case Mr Land pounced on the house earlier than expected. Then, gritting her teeth, she set off for 16A Stillwaters Road, Mealey Marshes.

  Twenty minutes later, following in the tracks of thousands of ill-fated adventurers before her, Holly was turning off the highway at the small but confident ‘To Mealey Marshes’ sign. The road off the highway began with a flourish but quickly degenerated into a narrow strip of crumbly bitumen. The ‘To Mealey Marshes’ signs, thick on the ground at first, dwindled to nothing, but since there were no side streets, Holly moved on determinedly, certain that eventually Mealey Marshes would be revealed.

  The bitumen eventually ducked under the railway line by means of a very low, very narrow underpass. A sign tacked to the blackened stone warned ‘Oncoming Traffic Has Right of Way’, as if the council believed that at any one time many more cars would be trying to leave Mealey Marshes than wanting to enter it.

  Beyond the underpass a deserted, unnamed road straggled away to left and right, roughly following the line of the railway track. On one side of the road was a wire-fenced, weedy railway embankment. On the other side was scrubby bush pocked with occasional timber and fibro houses that bore no numbers and showed no sign of life.

  Holly took a punt and turned right. This turned out to be a mistake, but as she discovered ten minutes later, turning left wouldn’t have done her much good either. In both directions the road was a snare and a delusion, tempting the driver on by appearing to be going somewhere, then abruptly ending at patches of vine-hung bush and a ‘Dumping Prohibited’ sign surrounded by rusted supermarket trolleys, bald tyres, sodden armchairs and broken slabs of concrete.

  Refusing to be defeated, Holly turned the Mazda in to one of the dubious-looking side streets that wandered away from the railway road. The streets all seemed to head downwards, more or less, and she reasoned that as Mealey Marshes was in a valley, it probably didn’t matter much which one she took.

  It did, in fact, as she was soon to discover. In no time she was hopelessly lost in a maze of featureless dead-end roads, sweating and cursing as she tried to claw back her usually reliable sense of direction. During this ordeal she saw only one street sign. It was at a small intersection, was half veiled by the drooping, speckled leaves of a gum tree, and bore an arrow and the legend ‘Baptist Church’.

  In desperation Holly followed the arrow. She never found the Baptist Church, but as she and the Mazda idled, bemused, back at the intersection to which, somehow or other, she had returned without realising she was driving in a circle, a white ute with a brown cattle dog in the back rattled past.

  Galvanised by the first sign of life she had seen for ten minutes, except for a few parked four-wheel drives (black), two goats (white) and a couple of magpies, Holly wrenched the wheel, put her foot down and set off in reckless pursuit. The ute clattered on for about fifteen seconds, braked noisily, turned abruptly left, then right, and pulled into the kerb just below a war memorial at the top of a broad, gently sloping street lined on both sides by quirky little two-–storeyed shops with old-fashioned awnings. A faded sign in the garden surrounding the war memorial read: ‘Welcome to Mealey Marshes’.

  Holly wiped the sweat from her forehead and blinked. Here, it seemed, was Stillwaters Road, large as life. There was (of course) no street sign, but ‘Still Waters Cakes: Tasty Pies Since 1929’ was painted on the awning of the cake shop into which the ute driver was already disappearing.

  Holly caught a flicker in her rear-vision mirror and became aware that Mealey Marshes’ apparent vehicle of choice, a black four-wheel drive, was idling at a polite distance behind her, obviously waiting for her to move on. She flapped her hand in flustered apology, drove shakily past the ute and backed the Mazda into a parking spot halfway down the street. Thrusting thoughts of Brigadoon from her mind, she got out of the car.

  The street had a strangely melancholy air, but this might have been due to the greyness of the day and the plaintive accordion music being squeezed out by a pinched-looking busker standing outside the chemist’s shop with an upturned top hat at his feet. Ordinary-looking people meandered along the footpaths, strolled across the road and stood chatting at the doors of shops. Dogs tied to awning posts sat dreaming the dreams of dogs, looking animated only when another dog passed by.

  There was no bank. There appeared to be no post office. There were no strollers, and no one was wearing a suit.

  Holly saw, with a thrill of excitement, that the hair salon beside which she’d parked actually bore a number—5. All right, O’Brien, she thought. Here I come, ready or not. She crossed the road and set off on the track of 16A like a bloodhound who’d been given a scent.

  O’Brien’s address wasn’t what she had expected. It turned out to be a narrow passage between a butcher’s shop and a place that sold secondhand books. The passage was painted with grinning white daisies, their fat green leaves spread incontinently against an iridescent mauve background on which pink clouds floated. The sign over the entrance read:

  Abigail Honour, Clairvoyant & Psychic

  Tarot Readings, Aromatherapy, Marriage Celebrant,

  Justice of the Peace

  Peering into the passage, Holly could just make out a door on the right-hand side. The door, which bore a rainbow with the sun shining over it, clearly marked the entrance to the clairvoyant’s rooms. The remainder of the passage was shrouded in darkness.

  She hesitated, considering the possibilities. One, despite the sign on the cake shop awning, this wasn’t Stillwaters Road at all. Two, she had misread the number on O’Brien’s card. Three, O’Brien had given a false address, and made off with her hundred dollars. Four, O’Brien’s office was somewhere further down the passage.

  All these theories had their merits, but the fourth appealed to her the most. She moved forward and immediately, it seemed, lost contact with the outside world. The sound of the accordion receded. Mauve engulfed her, and leering daisies closed in. There was a faint smell of fried onions and patchouli.

  She reached the rainbow door and paused. Music, heavy on the panpipes, was playing in the room beyond. The door bore a notice that was a miniature duplicate of the one facing the street. Inside, then, the clairvoyant lurked.

  Holly bared her teeth at the door, then screamed as it abruptly flew open. A plump woman with dangling earrings and a curly mass of violently red hair stood smiling in the doorway. She seemed to be clothed in an assortment of scarves.

  ‘Welcome, Christobel!’ she cooed, and beckoned invitingly.

  Her heart pounding with shock, Holly backed away, babbling about looking for O’Brien. She could feel her face burning. The woman must have seen the bared teeth, yet she hadn’t seemed surprised. Perhaps people snarled at her all the time. Or perhaps she just assumed Holly had Tourette’s Syndrome.

  ‘Oh.’ The woman, presumably Abigail Honour herself, went on smiling, but the smile had lost its gloss. ‘I felt searching,’ she said. ‘I thought you were my ten o’clock.’

  She pushed back the scarf that hung over her wrist and blinked shortsightedly at an enormous watch. ‘Twenty minutes late. Chickened out, I suppose. They’re always doing that. I wouldn’t mind, if only they’d ring and let me know.’

  Holly resisted the ill-natured impulse to ask why that should be necessary. Now that her eyes had adjusted to the dimness, she could see that the corridor ended in a steep, narrow stairway. The stairs were decorated with painted green vines, and seemed to split near the top, leading away to left and right.

  ‘Mr O’Brien’s office is up the stairs, to the right,’ said Abigail Honour helpfully. ‘I’m sure he’s in. I sense his life force. Very powerful. Like the beating of great wings.’

  Grinning and nodding idiotically, Holly turned, walked rapidly towards the stairway and began to climb. As she reached the place where the stairs split, she glanced up.

  The four left-hand stairs led to a landing
featuring a green door screened in white wrought-iron, a letterbox labelled ‘E.N. Moss (Mrs)’, a flowered doormat that read ‘Welcome to My Home’ and a large china donkey, its saddlebags sprouting plastic fuchsias in full pink and purple bloom.

  The right-hand flight led to a broader landing, the uneven boards of which had been painted grass green dotted with red-and-white-spotted toadstools. Here the mauve of the wall had been relieved by a large red heart, in the centre of which was a door.

  The back of Holly’s neck was burning. She looked behind her and saw that Abigail Honour was still standing in the corridor, watching her. The woman clasped her hands as if in prayer, and nodded encouragingly.

  Holly scurried up the right-hand stairs. A line of yellow circles led through the toadstools to the heart like a row of stepping-stones. A prudent device by the artist, no doubt, to minimise the effects of wear and tear, but following the yellow circles made Holly feel even more like Dorothy in Munchkin Land than she had before.

  She raised her hand to knock at the door, then froze as she heard a cracked, crooning voice coming from inside.

  There was I, waiting at the church,

  Waiting at the church, waiting at the church.

  When I found he’d left me in the lurch,

  Lor', how it did upset me.

  Holly felt the blood rush to her cheeks. She rapped sharply on the door. The singing stopped abruptly, but no one came.

  Holly waited a few moments then knocked again. ‘Mr O’Brien, it’s Holly Love!’ she called sharply. ‘I need to speak to you.’

  Still no response.

  Holly pressed her ear against the thick red paint, listening intently. And through the feeble fabric of the door, she heard a faint, sly cackle of laughter.

  At that moment, something snapped in Holly Love. Perhaps, if she hadn’t heard the laughter, if silence had been preserved behind that flaring red door, she would eventually have turned and crept away, down the vine-twined stairs, along the grinning-daisy corridor, out into the melancholy street. Perhaps then, her mind numb, she would have got back into her car and driven away from Mealey Marshes, never to return. But she had heard the laughter. And after that, it was no more Miss Very-Nice-Girl.

  ‘I heard that! I know you’re in there, O’Brien!’ she screeched, beating at the door with the flat of her hand.

  She heard a noise behind her and swung around. The green door on the other side of the stairwell had opened. A small, sweet-faced, white-haired old lady—E.N. Moss (Mrs), no doubt—was peering curiously through the curlicues of her security screen. She was wearing a fluffy pink jumper, a pink skirt and delicate high-heeled shoes. A large ginger cat sat beside her, looking protective and disapproving.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Holly gabbled. ‘I just want to see Mr O’Brien. He owes me money.’

  The old lady’s eyes widened. Giving up on her, Holly flung herself back on the door, grabbed the bright red doorknob and twisted it viciously. The door jerked open, revealing a yawning, stuffy darkness beyond. There was an earsplitting shriek, echoed by the old lady on the opposite landing.

  Shaking all over, Holly fumbled for the light switch, found it, flicked it on. Light flooded the long, narrow room. Sitting on the back of a tattered office chair drawn up to a red-painted desk was a large white cockatoo, its sulphur-yellow crest spiked as rigidly as the heavily gelled mohawk on an eighties punk, its round eyes wild, its beak wide as it shrieked again and again.

  And lying on the threadbare carpet was O’Brien. Dead as mutton.

  5

  Things became confused for a while after that. Mrs Moss came tottering over, saw how things were and, convinced that O’Brien had been felled by the opening door, tried to give him the kiss of life. The fact that O’Brien bore no visible sign of injury, and in any case was completely stiff, made no difference to her. The parrot went on screeching. Abigail Honour, attracted by the screams, arrived in a flurry of scarves, believing that Holly had attacked O’Brien and floored him, possibly with her handbag. Abigail said she could smell the anger and fear in the room. All Holly could smell was whisky, but as she could feel her own stomach churning with anger and fear in approximately equal measure, she assumed that she was radiating potent vibes.

  O’Brien’s wallet, sunglasses and car keys lay in a rather pathetic heap on the red desk. A cardboard box sprouting a tangle of computer leads sagged on a garish green tartan visitors’ chair. On a table near the back window, beside the slit of a kitchen, stood a large coffee jar half full of bird seed and an empty parrot cage, its door fastened open by a butterfly clip.

  Two empty whisky bottles, a crumpled cigarette packet and a plastic carry bag emblazoned with the name Lorenzo’s Liquor lay beside O’Brien’s body. A greasy paper bag and a white cardboard box that looked as if it had once held fish and chips were crushed under his elbow.

  Behind the dead man’s head, three garbage bags hunched against the wall beneath a curtained window that presumably looked out onto Stillwaters Road. The bags were dented in the centre and disgorging what seemed to be a mass of clothes and miscellaneous household items. It looked as if O’Brien had been sitting propped up against his worldly goods, and had gradually slipped down till he was lying flat. Not surprising, if he’d drunk all that whisky.

  Mrs Moss was now pounding O’Brien’s rigid chest, attempting heart massage. Holly tried to pull her away, but the old woman clung to the corpse like a limpet.

  ‘It’s no good, don’t you understand?’ Holly begged. ‘It’s too late!’

  ‘While there’s life, there’s hope,’ panted Mrs Moss.

  ‘There isn’t any life!’ bawled Holly. ‘Can’t you see? He’s cold! He’s stiff!’

  The parrot shrieked. Holly scrabbled in her handbag and found half a chocolate chip cookie. She held it out, murmuring.

  ‘Yum, yum, buttered bun,’ said the parrot appreciatively. It nodded several times, and Holly had the strangest feeling that she’d met it somewhere before. It took the cookie in its beak, delicately transferred it to one of its claws, and began nibbling.

  Abigail had bent and was gingerly poking O’Brien’s hand with one finger. After a moment she sighed, carefully wiped the finger on one of her scarves, then tapped the old lady’s heaving back.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve lost him, Enid,’ she said gently.

  When Mrs Moss paid no attention, Abigail sighed again, seized her around the waist with both arms and heaved her up, carefully balancing her on her high heels before releasing her grip.

  ‘He’s at peace, Enid,’ she said firmly. ‘He has gone on to a higher plane.’

  Holly doubted that, but thought it unwise to say so.

  ‘We’ll have to call the police,’ said Abigail. She glanced sideways at Holly. ‘Enid and I are going to turn our backs, now,’ she muttered out of the side of her mouth. ‘We’ll count to a hundred.’

  ‘I don’t want to run!’ said Holly indignantly. ‘I didn’t—’ ‘

  ‘I know,’ soothed Abigail. ‘You didn’t mean to kill him. I can feel that. But, let’s face it, he is dead. You can’t deny that.’

  ‘I don’t want to deny it!’ Holly said.

  ‘That’s very brave of you, dear,’ said Mrs Moss. For the first time Holly noticed what a sweet voice she had. Soft, high and very slightly husky, like a flute.

  ‘It’s probably just as well, anyway,’ said Abigail. ‘You’re sure to have left fingerprints and fluff and hairs and things everywhere. We’ll say he attacked you first.’

  ‘We won’t!’ Holly found she was gnawing her bottom lip and forced herself to stop. ‘He didn’t attack me.’

  ‘He didn’t, you know, Abigail,’ sighed Mrs Moss. ‘He didn’t know what hit him, poor fellow. It was the door, you see. I saw the whole thing. It swung very violently, and—’

  ‘It wasn’t the door!’ shouted Holly. ‘And it wasn’t me!

  Don’t you see? He’s stiff!’

  ‘Now, try to think calmly, dear,’ Mrs Moss said, whic
h Holly thought was a bit rich, coming from her. ‘Mr O’Brien is certainly a stiff, but that’s our problem, isn’t it, really? That is, Mr O’Brien has carked it. And you’re here, not denying anything, which is very wise and brave of you, but—’

  Holly held up her hand. Mrs Moss paused courteously and waited, her head on one side. Abigail clasped her hands.

  ‘Mr O’Brien is cold,’ Holly said, slowly and carefully. ‘His limbs are rigid.’

  ‘He didn’t seem to me a very relaxed sort of person,’ Abigail agreed. ‘Not that I knew him at all well. He only moved in—’

  ‘His limbs are rigid because rigor mortis has set in,’ said Holly, gritting her teeth. ‘Rigor mortis—have you heard of that?’

  The other women glanced at each other.

  ‘Of course,’ murmured Mrs Moss, with dignity. ‘We do read you know.’

  ‘Okay.’ Encouraged, Holly went on. ‘Rigor mortis takes hours to set in,’ she said. ‘Mr O’Brien is stiff as a plank. Therefore, Mr O’Brien has been dead for hours. He died sometime last night.’

  She looked from one face to the other, willing signs of understanding to appear. ‘Long before I got here,’ she added, to be sure.

  Finally Mrs Moss nodded again. ‘That sounds very reasonable,’ she said approvingly. ‘We’ll stick to that.’

  ‘It’s not a matter of sticking to it!’ shouted Holly. ‘That’s what really happened!’

  ‘I think you’re right.’ Abigail was looking at her finger, gently prodding the air with it as though calling back to mind the sensation of touching O’Brien’s only too solid flesh.

  Then another thought struck her. ‘But he only moved in yesterday afternoon. If he died last night, what did he die of ?’

  Holly shrugged. ‘Heart attack?’ she guessed. ‘Stroke? Drug overdose? Who knows? Maybe he had some fatal disease.’