Mallawindy

by Joy Dettman

  Narrawee was his. Liza should have been growing there. Should have been. Could have been. She would have been a second Ellie now, her beauty unspoiled by work, her gumption not knocked out of her by that bloody church.

  ‘Oh, shit,’ he moaned. ‘Shit. How could a man have done what he’s done? How can he keep on living, knowing what he’s done? God, you bastard, help me. Somebody help me.’

  ‘Hello man.’ His grandchild walked towards him, the complaisant kitten looped over her shoulder.

  ‘Hello yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Is you a bad man?’

  ‘No. I’m just poor old Jack Burton,’ he said.

  ‘I dot a pussy cat.’

  ‘You take him around the back. You go around the back to Mummy now, or pussy cat might get out on the road,’ Jack said.

  ‘I done go on a woad.’

  ‘No. You mustn’t go on the road. You go and find Mummy.’

  She was close. Too close. Close enough to touch, and his hand rose, wanting to touch the golden curls. But he didn’t touch. He backed away and returned to his car.

  His wheels screamed away from the kerb, and he burned rubber back to the highway, burned off the last of his tread, then broke every road rule through the town.

  He wanted fate to wipe him out, and when it didn’t, he considered aiming the car at a telephone post or a tree. Get it finished, like his old man wanted it finished. ‘Bloody hard old bastard,’ he howled. ‘Bloody old mongrel bastard. It’s your fault. It’s all your fault. You stole my bloody dreams.’ The road home was a blur before his eyes, as he screamed out his hell, his hate, his hopelessness.

  Malcolm Fletcher met him in the middle of the bridge. His big Ford refused to give way, so Jack faced him, front bumpers duelling. Malcolm had more weight behind him, and heavy duty tyres. Slowly Jack’s Camira was forced back, pushed into the bridge, pushed off to the verge of the road. Malcolm waved his hand and drove off into town.

  The Camira wasn’t going anywhere. Jack had never lifted its bonnet; motors and greasy hands were for mechanics. The motor moaned and coughed until the battery died, and he climbed out of the car, looked at the damage. He’d never liked the Camira, so he kicked in its door, finishing what Malcolm had started. He walked back to the bridge, and kicked the bottom rail, stained by the car’s paint. He kicked it until it broke away and fell to the water. He considering taking the big dive himself, but Ellie had insured his life years ago. She’d end up winning by his death.

  ‘I’ll shoot the cold bitch first. I’ll take her with me. If I’m hanging on to her apron strings, she might bloody get a man through the pearly gates.’

  He was limping when he walked into the kitchen and picked up his gun. ‘Say your prayers, you praying bitch,’ he said, the barrel against his wife’s ear. ‘Let Jesus know we’re on our way to glory.’

  ‘Bronwyn’s been here. Jack. She took your cartridges out.’ Ellie’s newspaper was open at the crossword, a pencil in her hand. She watched him slide the drawer open, snatch up two cartridges and slip them into the gun. But the urge to die had left him. Fate. Snide bloody fate always foiled his plans. The trouble was, he didn’t want to die. He wanted Narrawee. He wanted the grandchild to come to him, lift her little arms to him. He wanted a new start for poor bloody Jack, where someone would love him. He wanted his mother.

  ‘What’s a five letter word, ending with D, meaning harvest, love?’

  ‘Yield, you ignorant halfwit.’

  ‘Thanks, love. It fits in with eleven.’

  ‘You wouldn’t miss me if I were dead, would you?’

  ‘Of course I would. Jack. Don’t say silly things. Goodness me, I miss you every time you go away.’

  ‘Miss me like you miss a bloody boil on your bum, you lying bitch.’

  While she pencilled in the y-i-e-l, he walked back to the bridge where he sat and patiently waited for his neighbour. And he let him have it. Let him have both barrels in the radiator.

  Ellie offered to pay for the damage, but this time Malcolm refused to settle for money. He rang the local cop, then Ellie used his phone to ring the NRMA. The cop and the mechanic arrived together and Jack’s car limped off home to Narrawee, but only after Ellie put on her sunglasses.

  Ben drove her to Warran the day after. ‘Make her sell up, Annie,’ he begged. ‘Go and throw a match at the house. Bum her out. Don’t let her go back.’

  The glasses hid Ellie’s eyes, but Ann could see beyond them. ‘Can’t the cops pick him up in Narrawee?’

  ‘They don’t want him. Fletch refused to take her cheque, but she gave it to the cop. It’s an unwritten law at that bridge, Annie, that the bloke on the river side gives way to the bloke on the town side. We all do it. Fletch does it too, with anyone else. The old coot has had a running feud with the old man for twenty years, and everyone in town knows it.’

  ‘He mined your Dad’s car. It sounded like death warmed up when he drove away. I hope it got him to Narrawee,’ Ellie said, more relaxed today – even with her blackened eye. Happier today, more talkative.

  ‘And for once in his life he was stone cold sober, Annie. Fletch was drunk as a lord. He belted into the old man with his walking stick.’

  Ann laughed, but Ben wasn’t laughing today.

  ‘Jack is all right if people would just leave him alone – ’ Ellie started.

  ‘Don’t give me that drivel, Mum. I’m sick of hearing it. Sick of the whole stupid farce.’ Ben turned to Ann. ‘And sick of seeing her like this, too.’

  Ann had stopped smiling. Ellie was studying her fingernails and twisting the worn gold band on her finger. Almost worn through, dented now, but it wouldn’t come off. The ring would have to wear off.

  ‘Sell the farm, Mum. Buy a unit up here. Let us live out a few of our years as a normal family. Do you think I want Mandy to see you like . . . like that?’ She snatched the sunglasses. Ellie covered her eye with the hand that wore the dented ring.

  ‘That’s my father’s land, love. And it’s my life. Your Dad never means to hurt me, and I never ask any of you to worry about me.’ She reclaimed her glasses.

  ‘Have you any idea what our childhood did to all of us? The old cry, “Run for the river, loves.” The old lie, “He doesn’t mean it, loves.” The old plea, “Don’t drink any more, Jack. Please Jack, I’m sorry, Jack.” For Christ’s sake, Mum, what had you done to be sorry for? I never knew. Why do you stay with that maniac bastard?’

  Mandy, momentarily forgotten by all, now nodded from her perch on Benjie’s lap, ‘Dat manat basad. Mummy.’

  Ben laughed, he laughed until he cried. Then there was no more laughter, only silence, and the old clock wearing time away. Ann stood helplessly there. Her hands reached out, but they didn’t know what to do. Should she hold him like she held Mandy, pat his back and whisper soothing words? He’d break in her arms.

  Mandy knew what to do. She knew about the magic of baby kisses, and she kissed the freckled hand that hugged her to him. ‘Das all bettered now, Unka Benny. Maddy tissed him all bettered. You hab a look at my pussy cat, Unka Benny. Nanna said her is going to get some babies, fwom her tummy.’ Wriggling to the floor, Ben’s finger held fast in her hand, she led him away.

  Later, his tears locked underground, Ben returned to the kitchen door, Mandy in his arms. Ellie picked up her handbag. ‘Are we ready to go then, love? The cows are waiting,’ she said.

  ‘You go your own way to hell for all I care, Mum. I give up on you. This little one is worth ten of you,’ Ben said softly. He kissed the golden curls, then placed Mandy down.

  That night Ann spoke of many things. She spoke of Johnny and of the day he ran. She told David of her recurring dream of Johnny, of walking with him through a field of bones, a golden ring of light over his head. She told him of Ben’s visit, and her voice trembled when she spoke of her brother’s tears. ‘Dad was down here, David. He told Mum that he saw Mandy playing out the front with the kitten. He’ll come back one day when he’s drunk, and he’ll do so
mething. He’ll steal her from us. I want to take her and run. I want to hide her away, safe from him.’

  ‘If you see him, call the police.’

  ‘For looking at his granddaughter? They’d laugh at me.’

  ‘Then laugh at yourself, Ann. What did he do apart from look?’

  ‘I don’t want him to be able to look at her. I don’t want him to think she looks like Liza. She’s mine. Mine and yours. He’s polluted this place, David. He knows where she is, so she’s not safe anymore.’

  ‘She belongs to Ben and Bronny too, and old Fletch, and Nanna. They love her. They all love her. Would it be fair on them, fair to Mandy, to take her away from this safe little pool of love that surrounds her? No more smuggled chocolate frogs from Aunty Bronny. No more of Nanna’s special baby eggs.’

  ‘I never worked on fair principles, or what was right or wrong for others. I just know that it’s right for me, for us. I’m not strong enough to protect the whole world, David. Just us. Let me protect us.’

  ‘I love this place, the neighbourhood. I’m not prepared to pull up roots and head off into the unknown. Given time to consider, I don’t believe you are either, Ann.’

  ‘There’s something on the wind, David. I can hear it. I can hear little Annie whispering in my brain. “Run. Run. Run.” ’

  brief candle

  December 1990

  Heat was on its way, but this day personified the word fine, and Ann felt fine. Seated high on the patio, she was embroidering a tiny blue dress with deeper blue rosebuds, and nursing a secret she could barely contain. She should have been down there at David’s side, pulling weeds in the sun, but on this day of days, she wasn’t brave enough to move. Time, a mad whirr of a thing that never stood still for a second, had gone on a go-slow strike. She wanted today gone, and the next, then she’d scream her secret from the roof tops. But not yet. Too soon yet to raise a false hope.

  ‘Mummy. Mummy. Daddy gived me a worm,’ Mandy chuckled as she ran up the stairs and placed a fat worm in her mother’s hand.

  ‘Yucky,’ Ann said, as all mothers must say ‘yuck’ when confronted by earthy surprises. ‘Put him back in the garden, sweetheart. Worms make our garden grow.’ She stitched on. The frock was almost finished, only the hem left to hand stitch. For that she would need to fit it. Mandy was growing fast, her frocks and tiny shoes outgrown in weeks. The red playsuit she was wearing today was already too small; still, this dress should fit through summer. The frock folded across her lap, she sat looking down at her family, and listening to the tinkle of Mandy’s voice discussing the habits of worms.

  ‘What work does him do, Daddy? Mummy said him do’s good work.’

  ‘That particular bloke is a special weed worm. His job is to make the weeds grow tall in our lawn. He does his job very well, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Does bees do some good work? an’ butterflies? an – ’

  ‘Fingers away from bees. Bees sting.’

  ‘But him do’s some good work, Mummy said.’

  ‘He makes honey. Special honey just for you, but he also stings tiny fingers if they try to stop him making his honey, so don’t touch.’

  ‘I love honey. Dat’s a nice bee.’ Minutes later the bee struck and further weeding was cut short. ‘I don’t like dat bee. I like just worms. I won’t get him’s honey, just some honey fwom da shop, Daddy.’

  They had been too successful with her. Wanting her to grow brave and free, they’d allowed her to be free to explore her world. She swam like a fish, she climbed trees like a monkey and poked sticks at jumping spiders for the pleasure of watching them jump. Strong-willed and lion-hearted, Mandy was stalking bees again within minutes, her hands held behind her. David, never a sun lover had joined Ann in the shade.

  ‘Mandy! Put Daddy’s shovel down before you cut your toe off. Remember, Daddy told you about the bee, and you didn’t listen.’ They laughed, watched the shovel hastily leaned against the fence, wide eyes peering closely at a swollen finger. ‘She learns from experience.’

  ‘Perhaps one of the more wilful three-year-olds, do you think?’

  ‘She’s a Taylor,’ David replied. ‘We always get our own way in the end – although some things take longer than others,’ he added meaningfully, planting a kiss on Ann’s laughing mouth.

  Mandy saw the kiss. ‘Why did him tiss you for. Mummy?’

  ‘Because you did what Daddy said. You made us happy. Come up here in the shade for a while – or put your hat on for Mummy.’

  ‘I done want hats on.’

  ‘Daddy wears a hat. Put your hat on and be just like Daddy.’

  ‘In a minny.’

  ‘So much waste in my life, David,’ Ann said, sipping orange juice while waiting for the bee chaser to grow bored with her game. ‘I could have had six babies by now.’

  ‘You would have if it had been up to me. Anyhow, you still look sixteen – and a bit,’ he tempered his statement.

  ‘A big bit. By the time Mandy is twenty-one, I’ll be almost fifty.’

  ‘I feel ten years younger than I did ten years ago.’

  ‘Mister Fletcher never changes. Mandy called him Papa the other day. He’s always with Nanna, so she put two and two together in her own little head, and decided he was her Papa. You should have seen his expression. I thought he was going to howl.’

  ‘He loves her, and you. If he was forty years younger, I’d be jealous.’

  ‘He’s been a father to me. He has a right to the name of Papa.’

  ‘Mandy!’ David jumped to his feet, ran for the fence, grasping the escape artist as she attempted a quick getaway. Tossed over his shoulder, he carried her up to the patio and seated her on her own small chair. ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Sit. Look at your sensible Tiddy having a rest in the shade.’

  Tiddy was the magic word. The cat tolerated most treatment, but she wasn’t in the mood for games. From the comer of a slitted eye, she watched Mandy approach and as a small hand grabbed, the cat rolled over, did a quick side step and scuttled for the staircase, Mandy in hot pursuit.

  ‘Don’t run down those steps, Ma – ’

  But a bare foot slipped, and tiny hands grasped at a railing too far away. She twisted, and in slow agonising motion, rolled over, and over, around and around to slam headfirst onto the concrete path below.

  Ann reached her first. She picked her up, brushing the gravel grazed forehead with her fingertips as the world tilted, hushed. It was another time. Another place. The blood trickling from a nose. Blood on golden curls. The red bib. It belonged –

  Not here. Not in this place. Never in this place.

  She stood looking at the blood on curls, her hand drawing away.

  ‘Get her in the car, Ann. She’s not breathing.’ David’s voice cut a pathway through the swarm of hornets in her brain.

  He drove to the hospital, the horn blasting while Ann breathed her own life into the soft mouth. They ran with the child into casualty.

  Doctor Williams arrived minutes later in his golf clothes. He ushered Ann and David from the room. Stunned they stood in the long polished corridor, where nurses bustled and trolleys rattled and squealed. They heard no cry from the room with the swinging door.

  Then he came out. The man with the green smock over golf clothes. He walked alone through the swinging door. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  Sorry? Silly little word. They ignored it, their interest centred on the swinging door.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Hands held open, empty, useless to save or comfort the couple waiting at the door for their golden child to run to them. ‘We lost her,’ he said. ‘We lost her,’ his words repeated in an attempt to force the fact home.

  They looked at him then, and there was silence. A deafening silence.

  Shock waves started slowly, jarring, crushing heart and flesh and bone.

  Searing heat of flame, greedy for oxygen, sucked air from lungs. It burned them, dissolved tissue, depleted brain and limb of air to live.

  Run . . . I told you.


  Mouth open, gasping in a vacuum where eyes no longer saw, for there was nothing left to see.

  Swept away. All swept away.

  Disintegrated by the blast.

  Devastation.

  All gone?

  All gone.

  Run! You would not heed me.

  Disembodied hands, clutching, clawing, as sinews snapped. Nothing to hold them. Nothing to hold. Fend off the hands, shake them off like so much flotsam.

  Too cold. Shivering, teeth chattering cold, while icy fingers scratched and gouged the flesh from her soul.

  Run.

  Nowhere to run.

  Wasteland. All gone now.

  All gone.

  All gone.

  How soon a fine world can decay.

  The car was gone by the time the men reached the casualty entrance. Doctor Williams drove his neighbour home. Like one of the walking dead, David followed where he was led, and when his neighbour left, he sat, vacant eyes staring at a child’s swing-set swinging lonely in the breeze.

  Ann returned long after the sun had gone from the sky. Her hair was wild and windblown, her eyes heavy lidded, blood still stained her shirt. She refused to look at David. From the garden she had picked up the small blue frock she’d been embroidering. It was soiled. She placed it on the table and walked to the sink.

  He couldn’t look at her, look at the blood. His first words weren’t easy. She didn’t hear them anyhow.

  ‘Come to me. I need to hold you, to cling to someone. Come

  to me, Ann.’

  ‘Do you want a cup of tea?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Sit with me. Forget the tea. Reach out your hand to me, I’m dying, Ann.’

  She ignored him. Didn’t want to hear. She was functioning in a place outside of thinking. She placed two cups on the table, found sugar, milk, poured the tea, then seated herself on the opposite side of the table, out of his reach. He watched her stir her tea, watched her taste it, add more sugar. He saw her remove a pin from her lapel and place it in the tiny blue frock that lay between them on the table. Her gaze followed his to the frock. Again she took it in her hands.