Darkwater

by Georgia Blain

  ‘They’ve interviewed Joe again. They’re doing it to everyone.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Nicky put his board on the ground. ‘But with him it’s different. They asked him to come into the station.’ The surprise on my face must have made him wish he’d never said anything. ‘Don’t go telling people.’

  I promised I wouldn’t.

  ‘He tells me stuff ’cos we’re always in that hole together.’ He gestured back towards F Block. ‘I don’t know what went on with him and Amanda but she used to meet him after detention sometimes, and on the days she did, well, he was all up. So there was something, you know? And now she’s gone and he thinks everyone is accusing him. He must feel like shit.’

  As he began to push his board up the hill, I stayed where I was for a moment, watching him. And then he was gone and I was once again alone outside the schoolyard, ill at ease, and eager to get out of there. I turned my bike towards the road, walking it up to the peak, before I swung my leg over and began the ride home.

  It was when I turned into Alexander Street that I saw him again. Lyndon. He was at the bus stop. For a moment I thought about turning back, but if he caught me I would feel like a fool. I pedalled on, hoping he wouldn’t look up. It was impossible to hide, and it was just as I rode past that I knew he’d seen me. He stood up, and I veered away from the gutter, ashamed at my alarm, as he spat on the ground with an aim that was sure.

  twelve

  Fact: Amanda had arranged to meet someone on the afternoon she died.

  Or at least that was what Joe believed. Which made it a theory really.

  I wrote these words late at night, unable to sleep. Downstairs, Dee’s party continued, despite the police having come with a noise complaint. There was no more music, just loud laughter, shouts of farewell and the occasional smashing of glass on the slate floors. From outside, there was the slam of a door as another person left, followed by the screech of car tyres. I wished they’d all hurry up and go but I knew it would be a while before silence finally descended.

  It was a Sunday, the week after the Greenwood Bush victory. They’d originally planned a celebration in the pub opposite the reserve, a get-together after the fact to thank everyone for their work. Dee was looking for her bag, swearing under her breath as she lifted up the cushions on the chair and checked, one more time, at the foot of the stairs, when the phone rang.

  ‘Bugger,’ and she picked it up in the hall, wanting only to get out the door.

  I didn’t hear the beginning of the conversation, but I did hear her as she swore, loudly and clearly.

  ‘What an arsehole.’

  I paused in my pan clattering (I was burning chops for dinner), aware that this had the potential to be interesting and wanting to make sure I didn’t miss out on a word.

  Dee laughed then. ‘I guess you have to see the funny side. Why let him ruin our night? Tell everyone to come here.’

  Joe asked me who she was talking to, and I shrugged my shoulders, slapping the chops onto the plates, making sure he got the blackest one. The peas followed, still sitting in a pool of water, and then the pumpkin.

  He poked at his meat with his fork. ‘That’s bad. Even for you.’

  ‘Well there’s nothing else.’

  Dee had hung up. She stood at the doorway, arms folded, and told us there’d been a change of plans.

  ‘I know.’ My mouth was full of peas and my words garbled. ‘All those builders union guys are coming too?’ I remembered them at the demonstration, covered in tatts.

  She nodded. ‘If they’re good enough to help us, they’re certainly good enough to come and celebrate with us.’

  ‘What happened to the pub?’

  She had to do a ring-around so she didn’t have much time to explain. It was Len Atkinson, Cherry’s dad. Apparently he owned the Pier Hotel and had told the manager the Greenwood Bush people were barred from entering. If they were going to stymie his development proposal, there was no way they were going to have a party at one of his pubs.

  ‘Not that we’d want to anyway,’ Dee added. ‘If we’d known, it’s the last place we’d have picked. We don’t want to be putting any money into his coffers.’

  Everyone arrived within the hour. I had never seen our house so crowded. I’d also never seen so many plastered adults. Dee turned the stereo up and there was dancing on the patio, mothers of our friends doing the Hustle with builders, builders doing the Bus Stop with each other, and at one stage I even saw Dee in the kitchen smoking a joint with the guy who was head of the union. Dee was laughing. ‘We won,’ she kept saying and although he was grinning, he did eventually lean in and tell her it was only the battle they’d won, the war was going to go on and on.

  ‘And it’ll get dirtier and dirtier.’ He drew back on the joint and then stubbed it out on the edge of the sink, the sizzle of damp leaving a trail of wet black ash. ‘We’re up against an almighty force. The developers who want to keep ripping up our cities and making more money are hand in hand with politicians. How else do they keep getting the green light for their projects? They hand money over to the right people, get the go-ahead, start developing and everyone’s happy. That force isn’t going to let a bunch of builders stop ’em. Not when they’re doing so well out of it all. We refuse to work on their sites and they bring in the non-union guys, the scab labour who’ll do the job for them. So we pull our men off their other jobs in protest. As our blokes lose more and more work there’ll be rumblings of discontent, and then, who knows? I just hope we don’t become ripe pickings ready to be pulled apart.’ He wiped his forehead, surprised by his own doom and gloom, and then held out his arm to Dee. ‘But tonight we celebrate...’

  I watched them weave their way through the crowd, Dee picking up Tom on the way, and then out to the dance floor.

  In other corners, people gathered, smoking, drinking, talking. I overheard Amanda’s name more than once. Sometimes there were guesses as to what had happened, snippets of overheard conversations. She was involved in drugs (this from a woman drawing back on a joint), she’d topped herself, she was raped, it was a serial killer; the gossip grew wilder and wilder as the night wore on. I walked away.

  Upstairs Joe was in his room. He’d stretched the phone through from the hall, the cord trailing along the corridor and under his door.

  If I leant close to the wall, I could overhear him, his voice a low murmur above the David Bowie playing on his stereo. He was talking to Kate, not saying much at first, just idle chat about school, work, the weekend, and then as I was about to go and lie on my bed and read, I heard him mention Amanda’s name. She was gone but it seemed she was still always there, right at the centre.

  Lying on my bed, I took out my journal.

  Fact:

  I crossed the word out as soon as I wrote it.

  Theory?

  We were in a land that lay between the two. There had been something between Amanda and Lyndon. Whether they were secretly seeing each other or were simply friends, I didn’t know. I remembered Lyndon’s anger and my conversation with Nicky. If I were in the police force, I’d be wanting to dig a little deeper, to find out more about what their relationship was.

  I looked at the blank page in front of me, and decided I would dispense with any attempt at classification. I could only write what I heard, taking care to weed out what was clearly improbable and, from what was left, draw my own conclusions. As I wrote the date, there was a knock on the window.

  Joe was outside on the sunroom roof, the summer evening heavy, the sky smattered with stars. I swung my legs over the ledge and dropped down next to him. From below us came the sounds of the party, the boom of the music, the high laughter and shouts, and the pop of champagne corks. Someone lifted the needle off the record player, the scratch loud through the speakers and then dropped it down heavily on the same song. There was a cheer of appreciation and a chorus of voices singing in unison.

  Joe looked at me, raising his eyebrows. ‘Don’t reckon we’ll get much sleep.’
>
  I drew my knees up to my chest and scratched at a sore that had only just healed. I’d got it practising on the board the other day.

  ‘I was in detention this afternoon.’ When I spoke it was partly to impress him, but also because I wanted to open up a conversation about Lyndon.

  He took a moment to reply. ‘What for?’

  ‘Castle.’

  He nodded in understanding.

  ‘Lyndon was there as well.’

  He looked across at me, his eyes glinting in the light from the bedroom above us. ‘So?’

  I remembered when Lyndon used to come and stay. They both must have been about eight, skinny boys with knobbly knees and freckles, and gaps in their teeth. Today, in the detention room, when he’d had me backed against the wall, Lyndon had seemed like a man. Over six foot tall, muscular, and the smell of him thick and sour. I’d been scared.

  ‘He said none of you hang out with him any more.’

  Joe stared out across the rooftop. He picked up a small piece of gravel and flicked it towards the gutter, where it landed with a ping.

  ‘It’s different.’

  ‘Because of Amanda?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Apparently Amanda used to meet him after detention.’

  He glanced across at me, his look sharp and quick. ‘Who told you that?’

  I recounted the fight I’d had with Lyndon.

  ‘On the afternoon she died, I asked her to meet me at about four-thirty.’ Joe spoke slowly. ‘She told me she couldn’t, she’d arranged to see someone. She was all agitated.’

  ‘Did you tell this to the police?’

  ‘Of course I did.’ He turned sharply. ‘The very first time they spoke to us at school. I told them everything. That I didn’t know who she was meeting, that she was anxious, all of it.’

  ‘Didn’t she tell anyone?’

  Joe was quiet. From below us there was a shriek, and then the smash of a bottle. The record player was turned up another notch, and then there was a loud crackle from the amp, followed by a low boom as the speakers blew.

  At least that would shut them up for a while.

  With the music gone, we heard the police sirens coming up the main road and then turning into our street.

  Joe stood up. ‘I thought none of us knew who she was going to see.’

  It took me a moment to realise he was finally answering my question.

  ‘You know, it didn’t make sense at first. If she wanted to meet someone in secret, why would she pick the waterfront? And then it was only the other day that I realised Wednesday was the day none of us went there. Kate and Cherry had gymnastics, Stevie had to look after his little brother, and I usually have maths coaching.’

  ‘What about Lyndon?’

  The doorbell rang below. There was a theatrical hush as everyone waited for Tom to finish talking to the police. I could hear every word. There’d been a complaint about noise.

  ‘Probably Len Atkinson who called.’ There was laughter at the comment.

  Tom assured the policeman that it would be quieter now.

  ‘Stereo’s rooted.’ It was the same joker from the crowd. ‘Probably Len who pulled the plug. Len, Len, where are you, mate?’

  Next to me, Joe ran his heel along the tar, tracing a long swooping line over and over. He was thinking.

  ‘I don’t know if Lyndon was on detention that day or not,’ he eventually said.

  I didn’t quite get what he was trying to piece together.

  ‘If she was meeting him and he was on detention, he wouldn’t have been free till about four-thirty.’

  I stood up as well. ‘You don’t really think he would have killed her?’

  He didn’t answer my question. ‘Kate says Cherry knows.’

  ‘Cherry knows what?’ I was even more confused now.

  ‘Who she was meeting.’

  I looked directly at him. ‘Then she should go to the police and tell them.’

  He nodded. ‘I know.’ He looked out across the rooftops and the high tips of the trees, black, soft shapes in the night. ‘But she’s weird, Cherry. You know? She only just told Kate that she knew who Amanda was meeting. Kate asked her who it was and she wouldn’t say. I guess it was Lyndon. Maybe she’s scared of him. I don’t know. Kate told her to go to the police.’

  He paused for a moment. ‘She hangs around Kate all the time talking about Amanda. It’s like she never wants to go home.’

  From downstairs there was the sound of someone drunkenly singing, followed by the shatter of another glass.

  Joe had turned to me and was anxious now. ‘You should be careful.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. Don’t go saying this stuff. Don’t go stirring Lyndon up.’

  ‘Of course I won’t.’

  He hoisted himself back up the window ledge, swinging his legs around and dropping back down into his bedroom.

  ‘And you make sure Cherry goes to the police,’ I insisted.

  He didn’t answer.

  I slid back down against the wall and stayed out there on the rooftop for a little longer, our suburb spread out before me, a few lights on in some of the houses, others dark now, and beyond that, the river, like a long, dark bruise wrapped around the peninsula.

  thirteen

  The builder asleep on the couch didn’t even stir as I tried to find an unbroken glass the next morning. Every ashtray was overflowing, and there were sticky pools of beer on the floor, ants drunkenly weaving their way in wobbly lines across the slate. I opened the windows and the sliding glass doors that led onto the patio, hoping the thickness of the stale smoke and alcohol would dissipate. In the kitchen, the sink was full of empty bottles, the cereal packet was open on the bench and as I went to pour it out, I realised it had become an ashtray, all the Rice Bubbles gone, replaced by stubbed-out cigarette ends. I looked in the cupboard for bread but that was finished too.

  ‘It’s a pigsty,’ I told Dee, who had a pillow over her face and the curtains tightly drawn against the fierceness of the sun. ‘They were animals.’

  She didn’t look up. ‘Really bad?’ she asked.

  ‘Really bad.’

  Sammy was curled up at the end of her bed, taking advantage of the fact that Dee was oblivious to her presence. She thumped her tail gently, and I scratched the soft fur under her chin.

  I wanted Dee to write me a note saying I was excused from detention. Even after everyone had gone home, I had lain awake, anxious about encountering Lyndon again and trying to figure out a way of getting out of it.

  ‘It wasn’t fair,’ I protested. ‘You know what Mr Castle is like.’

  She did but she wasn’t interested. ‘I can’t do that.’

  She’d sat up now and she looked terrible, her make-up smeared across her face, mascara circling her eyes, lipstick cracked and bleeding in the corner of her mouth. I pulled back from the sourness of her breath.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I insisted.

  She glanced at me through the fug of her headache. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Then leave me alone.’ And she lay back in the tangle of bedclothes, pulling the sheets over her head.