Mallawindy

by Joy Dettman

  He watched her slam wardrobe doors and open locker drawers, her jaw tense but determined. Aware that he’d said more than he should, he waited until the case was packed, closed.

  ‘Why won’t you stay here? Just for a few days. Pop back into bed, please. You’re worrying me. You’re as white as a ghost.’

  She picked up the case. He took it from her.

  ‘Leave me here for another night and I’ll be a ghost, or in a nut house. Hospitals are for the dead and dying. I’m going to live, David, and with a bit of luck this baby will too – if you get me out of here. I hate hospitals and poking, prying doctors. I hate them. They make my head crawl.’

  ‘Have you spoken to Doctor Williams today?’

  ‘Get me out of here! Now! I’m falling into a black pit, and there’s a tonne of dirt pressing on my lungs. I can’t think about it or I can’t breathe. I’m suffocating in here.’

  ‘Sit down while I telephone him.’

  ‘You pick up that phone and I start walking, and when I get home, I start driving.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ he moaned. ‘What am I going to do with you?’

  ‘I can’t change what I am. I wish I could. I don’t want to lose the baby, and I didn’t do anything wrong. I sat with a lonely old man who has no-one else to sit at his side, and he held my hand as if it were a precious thing. If you find something in me to love, then know that he alone planted it there. He is part of my life, David, and apart from you, the major part. He can become a part of our life, or you can continue to see his bloated old exterior and hate him each time I run to his side – but know, know now, if he needs me, run I will.’

  David’s mother thought her new daughter-in-law was intolerable. She said it often. Said it loudly. She and her husband arrived in Warran on the Saturday, having packed for the duration. She had decided to tolerate the intolerable because of the pregnancy. Beggars with an only son couldn’t afford to be too choosy.

  Three days after the senior Taylors moved into the second bedroom, Ann moved Bronwyn and her cigarettes into the third. Marge Taylor couldn’t tolerate smoke. Within days of Bronwyn’s arrival, Ann began stealing the occasional cigarette, as she had when she was with Roger.

  It was too much for Marge. The bomb had been fizzing since she arrived. Now it went off with a bang. Ann took off in her car and David drove his parents to Sydney and put them on a plane back to New Zealand.

  Bronwyn remained. She was twenty, temporally unattached and unemployed, and Ann loved having her around.

  ‘Get off your feet, Annie,’ she’d demand. ‘You think I want to see another baby born on a kitchen floor?’

  It was working. For free board and lodging, Bronwyn became David’s built-in watchdog. Ann was resting, but her hands were busy beading the gown she’d once intended sewing for her own wedding. Some bride in Melbourne would wear it now, but they wouldn’t wear the old lace. Ann had posted it back to May.

  If it wasn’t quite the life David had imagined for himself, he made few complaints, and he got on well with Bronwyn. The sisters had some physical similarities, but Bronwyn was an open book, where there was a wall of glass beneath the facade Ann showed to the world. He couldn’t break through it.

  ’That girl is hiding something,’ his mother said, when he left her at the airport. ’You mark my words, son.’

  Maybe she was right.

  In late June, Mallawindy was hit by another spate of deaths. It was an old town, where aged pensioners ruled. Bessy’s husband was the first pin to fall, and Mr Mack the third. Ellie Burton’s childhood home went to auction, and Ben bought it for a song. The house was a wreck, the property run down.

  Ellie came with Bessy to look at the house; they wept as they walked neglected rooms, then Bessy went home to the no-frills farmhouse she’d shared with Bill for almost forty years. Ellie stayed on. Jack was in Narrawee again, so she came each day with her scrubbing brush and bucket. She ordered wallpaper and paint, and she scrubbed and pruned. Ben worked at her side, a half smile on his lips. He had played the last ace in his hand and he’d finally won the game.

  Ellie shed ten years in as many weeks. She climbed ladders, hanging wallpaper as she had with her father so many years ago. She hadn’t forgotten how it was done, how to cut and trim like a professional. She polished windows and watered dying creepers, and she drove with Ben to Daree where they ordered linoleum for the floors and a new rug for the lounge room.

  When it was fit again to inhabit, and Ben bought his small case of possessions to stay, he asked which room had been Ellie’s.

  ’I always had the little attic room, love,’ she said, then she saw his expression. ’Oh no. I won’t be moving. I could never have your Dad here. He hates this house and all it ever stood for.’

  ’I bought the house for you. Mum.’

  ‘I know why you bought it, and you’re the best son any mother could ever wish to have, but I can’t leave your Dad. He needs me, love. I’m the only one in the world who accepts him as he is.’

  ‘What about when you need him? He leaves you, Mum. Every time a letter comes from that rotten place, he goes off and leaves you for months.’

  ‘I know, love. I know. But he’s not happy here. His roots are in that land, like mine and yours are here. Now I’ve got my old home cleaned up for you, it will be like having my Dad living here again. You’re so much like him. Just think, love, when you get your bridge built, I’ll be able to run across and cook your dinner, just like I used to do for my Dad. I’ll sit in your front parlour, have the church ladies down for afternoon tea. You’re such a good boy, Benjie. You’ve made me so happy, knowing I can walk straight in that front door again. I don’t know what I would have done without you all these years.’

  Ben moved into the house alone, and he stocked his thirty acres with heifer calves bought cheap, and he measured the height of the gums trees he’d planted half a lifetime ago.

  ‘We wait hundred year for tree will grow tall.’ Annie had signed.

  ‘When I’m thirty they’ll be tall enough. I’ll chop them down and they’ll land on Aunty Bessy’s side and I’ll hammer a few planks on them, that’s all.’ A small boy’s dream. It had seemed so simple back then.

  Each year he trimmed his trees, only allowing the top canopy to grow. His care and cow manure had paid dividends. The trees were tall enough to reach his side of the river. He’d chosen his site well back then. The banks were high, the river narrow. They’d reach. But – . ‘Give them year,’ he said. ‘Another year and I’ll give it a go.’

  Jack sat in May’s parlour, drinking coffee. May wouldn’t give an inch on her house rules and she could sniff out smuggled bottles with the perspicacity of a bloodhound on the scent of a decomposing bone. Through the years too much money had been emptied down her sink; he even stopped hiding them in the sheds. His mother still lingered here in odd places. Maybe she helped to keep him sober here; maybe he didn’t want her ghost to see him drunk.

  He was looking at her photograph now. Tall, and too fine, she was already sick when the photograph was taken. He placed the picture to one side and sorted through an old box of photographs. May leaned over his shoulder as he reached for a professional study of Ann and Liza. He turned to her. ‘Is there any more of that shit in the pot?’

  ‘Try calling it coffee, dear, and you’ll never sleep tonight.’ She refilled his coffee cup, handed it to him.

  ‘Thanks.’ He took up a sepia photograph of his grandmother. ‘That’s who she takes after,’ he said. ‘She’s breeding, they tell me.’

  ‘Is she happy? What is David like?’

  ‘Who’s happy?’ Jack’s hand reached for a professional shot of twin toddlers. Even at that early age, he could recognise himself. Identical in feature and dress, Sam was sitting straight, his smile fixed. Little Jacky had been trapped with one hand reaching for a bribe off camera. ‘A wild little bugger, even back then,’ he said. ‘Look at good little Sammie sitting up there as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Why did you
marry that mongrel?’

  ‘That’s enough of that subject. We do not discuss Sam.’

  ‘Bugger your rules. May. When is the perverted bastard’s appointment?’

  ‘Stop this. Jack! And it’s at two.’

  A disintegrating rubber band held a collection of yellowing newspaper cuttings in an envelope. Jack opened the envelope and slipped the papers out, reading again an old tale he knew well. He lit a cigarette and spread the papers before him on the table. ‘The world screwed me good. This is my bloody land.’

  ‘It belongs to Sam and to me.’ He laughed, and she added, ’We all have to make the best of what life hands out to us, or we rot. I learned that early. You have to decide what your priorities are, or you go down whingeing, blaming the world for your own mistakes. Put those photos away now. They always upset you, always get you started on Sam. You were fine until you started looking at them.’

  ‘Why did you keep them, then?’

  ‘I don’t know. To read whenever I start to forget. I don’t know. Why did I do what I did that day? If I could go back, Jack, I would go back, and undo every mistake I ever made, but I can’t go back, and neither can you, so we have to keep on going forward.’ She reached for the cuttings. He pushed them out of her reach. ‘I don’t ever want to forget what I did that day. Give them to me.’

  ‘Bum them.’

  ‘No. Give them to me. Jack,’ she said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You’ve been drinking today, and I know it.’

  ‘You want to castrate me. Lead me around like a spayed bloody pup.’

  ‘I am not going to live my life in fear of what you may do while outside of a pint of whisky, and the sooner you accept that, the better for all.’

  He ripped the photograph of the toddlers in two. Placed his cigarette on the face of the twin who wore the smile. ‘I hate that bastard. I hate his very name.’

  ‘For God’s sake. Will you ever grow up?’

  Three weeks later the same yellowing newspaper cuttings, plus photographs were tossed to the kitchen table in Warran. Bronwyn stood back, dusting her hands, well pleased with herself. ‘It’s all the old stuff about you and Liza, Annie. The old man brought it from Narrawee. We can get some copies,’ Bronwyn said.

  Ann stood at the door watching David’s eager hands searching, selecting, rejecting. ‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble – ’ she said, then she left the room, left them to the papers and the past.

  They heard the car engine fire, heard the car roar away.

  ‘I probably should have shown her first. I thought she’d be . . . be interested,’ Bronwyn said, but David was deep in the photographs.

  ‘Look at her expression. She’s looking out on a world filled with magic, Bron.’

  ‘Yeah. From all accounts, it turned into a nightmare. I shouldn’t have done it, David. At least I should have warned her. I thought she was over it. I thought she’d like to have some shots of when she was a kid. Mum never took any of her.’

  David sat, reading and re-reading the old news. He could remember the case. As a youth he’d followed it for weeks in the papers. The child he had read of then, was now his wife. How had he forgotten the name? And his mother, how had she failed to associate the name? Distance? Liza Burton was the one they’d never found, thus hers was the predominant name.

  He read each cutting, shuffling them into order before him, remembering the boy he had been when he first read of the missing children. His mother’s comment, ‘They’ve found one of the Burton girls – ’

  ANN ELIZABETH FOUND BURIED ALIVE IN CELLAR

  FATHER TELLS REPORTERS ‘I TRUSTED MY MOST PRECIOUS POSSESSION TO A PROTECTOR OF PERVERTS’

  POSSIBLE SIGHTING OF LIZA AND EDWARD CROW IN SYDNEY TINY ANN ELIZABETH STILL IN COMA

  Ann Elizabeth Burton. Wife of David Taylor. It explained much.

  David’s mind was miles away when Bronwyn walked back to the room, placing Ann’s watch on the window sill. ‘She still hasn’t got that catch fixed. She’ll lose it one of these days.’

  Without a word he took the watch and walked away.

  ‘I’m going to nick up to the library and get some copies before I take them back, David.’

  She followed him to the bedroom, watched him drag the briefcase from beneath the bed. With no second thought, he fitted the small key into the lock, and the case sprang open, revealing a strange nest of treasures. Small fabric scraps entangled in the key of a wind-up mouse. A handkerchief. Old envelopes. A stained dog collar. And pages, hundreds of pages, folded small.

  ‘I’ve stirred up a bloody hornets’ nest,’ she said, and she left him to it.

  He was still sitting amid the litter when she, and the scent of food, breezed in an hour later. ‘Annie not back yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I got some Chinese. Come and get it.’

  ‘Come here,’ he replied. She walked to the door, frowning at the bed covered in papers. ‘It’s unbelievable,’ he said. ‘They go back to the sixties. This one is from 1967.’ Keeping up a running commentary, his hands continued their search. ‘Here. Read it, Bron.’ He was tossing the pages down now, one after the other.

  Bronwyn leaned against the door jamb, shaking her head. ‘You know if she sees you, she’ll be hopping mad. She used to keep all her stuff in a golden syrup tin when we were kids. No-one considered touching it.’

  David checked his watch, then quickly repacked the briefcase. He kicked it deep beneath the bed he shared with its keeper. ‘She’s probably gone up to see the old slug.’

  In the kitchen, he poured two glasses of beer, and they drank, and they ate, their heads together, looking at aged photographs, reading old headlines. When the bottle was empty and the plastic containers bare, he took an old motel breakfast menu from his pocket and handed it to Bronwyn.

  She blew a smoke ring at the ceiling, her eyes following it. ‘That’s her stuff, David.’

  ‘Just this one. Read it for me Bron. Tell me I’m paranoid if you like.’

  Bronwyn shrugged and she read the words aloud.

  Blood red on the white on a summer night, drawn forth by a jokers lance

  Black were the wings of the demon things, frenzied by the dance –

  ‘I didn’t know she wrote that sort of stuff. I like – ’ She caught David’s expression, and knew she’d said the wrong thing. ‘But I’ve got rotten taste in literature. Ask Ben. I’ve read everything Chef-Marlet has ever written and I’m sweating on his next one.’

  ‘I didn’t ask for a critical appraisal. She wrote it the night we got back together. I found her at dawn sitting on the bathroom floor, scribbling on the back of the breakfast menu. She said she was making a shopping list.’

  ‘So it’s a bit . . . Annie. You have to know her; you’re married to her for Christ’s sake! She’s always been different. She couldn’t talk for the first six years of my life. We all thought she was deaf and dumb. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about her, Bron. I learn more about her when she’s asleep than when she’s awake. She talks.’

  ‘You know she even talked one night before she could talk. I know that sounds a bit wacky, and I’ve never told anyone else, but we used to share a double bed, and one night she disappeared, didn’t come home. Showed up at dawn and ran off again with some milk. I was about seven, but I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles she was talking in her sleep that night. I couldn’t understand it all, and I was going in to wake Ben, when she stopped. A month or so later she spoke in church. “I don’t want to,” she said, as clear as day. Everyone nearly died of shock. Best church service I ever went to.’

  ‘I suppose Ben would have been old enough to remember what went on at Narrawee,’ David said thoughtfully. ’I might go up and have a word with him.’

  ‘No-one knows what went on. That’s the trouble. Ben remembers her coming home though.’

  By nine-thirty, David was sitting in Ben’s back room at the newsagent’s. ‘It’s t
he business in Narrawee that I’m trying to get a handle on,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t help you. I haven’t got a clue what happened to her.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Mum was in hospital. Bronwyn had just been born. Dad was off on a binge somewhere and Mum sent a telegram to Narrawee. May arrived. Johnny was fourteen, I was about eleven. We stayed home to look after the cows and chooks, and May took both girls back with her.’ Ben silenced, shrugged. David waited.

  ‘Well, that’s all I know. Mum came home with Bronwyn. She wanted the girls back. Dad was still missing. Sam kept making excuses. They couldn’t get away at the moment. They’d be up next Friday. Then when Friday came, they’d be up the following Wednesday. He sent up some classy photographs of the girls.’

  ‘Like this one?’ David took the photograph of Ann from the envelope. He handed it to his brother-in-law.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ben said, his eyes darting to the door, to the window. ‘That’s the one Johnny took with him. Is he back?’

  ‘No. No. Bronwyn found them down at the farm. There’s other stuff too. She got some photocopies.’

  ‘Johnny’s probably dead. Dead six months after he left home, or he would have been back for Annie. For months after she came home from Narrawee, he wouldn’t make a move without her, then he ups and goes, leaves her screaming on the road – but that’s not what you’re here for, is it?

  ‘Johnny got into awful strife when Dad found out the girls were in Narrawee. I reckon he would have killed him if Ponsford hadn’t turned up. Anyway, both girls were missing. It was all over the papers. It’s a wonder you don’t remember it.’

  ‘I remember, but I had no idea that one of the kids was Ann.’

  ‘Annie’s always been pretty close-mouthed. There was a bloke, a worker missing too. They reckoned he’d taken the girls. Dad caught the bus down to Melbourne the next morning. He was too upset to drive. Then Sam found Annie and took her to hospital.