The White Tower

by Dorothy Johnston

  She said suddenly, ‘I’ve written to some of my Irish relatives.’

  ‘Did you write to Fallon too?’

  Moira smiled. ‘He wrote back. A nice letter.’

  There was no breath of wind. In an hour, or less, it would be too hot to sit outside. Just so the summer had arrived, cold one day, hot the next. The wisteria blossoms were long gone. The vines were covered with a mass of healthy, dark green leaves.

  ‘It will be winter over there,’ I said. ‘He’ll take you to see Dunluce castle in the snow.’

  Moira’s smile faded, but she didn’t contradict me. Before she could leave Australia, she had police interviews to get through, court appearances.

  I left her in a garden that had not been able to help itself turn green. Whenever I wished to, I could think about that, and how Moira might go on breathing in and out, might make it through the next day and the next.

  Pictures can tell a simple story. Perhaps we don’t give them enough credit for that. The Telstra Tower and Fallon’s castle were connected in a dozen different ways, each an edifice behind which games were played, of threat and counter-threat, played in the mind and on the nerve ends. But were human motives simpler when you boiled them down—pride and fear together? Where did love come in? Once the play-acting began, did love enjoy the view? Or did love become its own dance down a mountain, not stopping for the gum trees? Who had understood this best? Sorley Fallon? Alex Fenshaw? Colin Rasmussen?

  If Fallon’s existence on that Antrim coast was proof of anything, then it was proof that unexpected contacts might be made. What would Moira Howley find when she visited his jewellery shop? Would she be the only visitor? When Fallon took her walking on the cliff path, would she look up, or down?

  . . .

  To walk into Brook’s house was to experience seasons coming at me in waves of different coloured air, light and heavy, cold and hot. Brook hated being stuck in bed. The women in his life took up positions round the sick room, along with Bill McCallum, Ivan too. We who cared for him stood round about and waited, while seasons rumbled at each other through rooms that had lost their heart. Brook sat up in bed and complained at our attempts to wait on him. His eyes, when they were open, said he could not bluff anybody any longer.

  I brought Katya over in the afternoons, when I knew that Sophie, who worked part-time for an insurance company, wouldn’t be there. Sophie had asked for reduced hours in order to do her share of the nursing. I did not mind meeting her on my way out. We could be civil then, each of our meetings recalling, in a sadder way, that one on the steps of the city station, on a day of furious retrograde winter, day of happiness, a woman in a good suit and high, high heels walking up some steps to meet her man.

  When Brook was awake and had the energy, he liked holding Katya, or letting her crawl up and down the bed, making a tent for her out of the sheet, which she hid in, shrieked and laughed, understanding perfectly, and all at once, the intense duality of pleasure in hiding and anticipating being found.

  Other days, I watched Brook breathing with his eyes closed, and shrank into myself, and wished my daughter would be quiet, and felt too tense to read or look about me while I waited for him to wake up, if indeed he was asleep, and hated myself for feeling relieved when I left to pick Peter up from school.

  We talked about Colin Rasmussen and Fenshaw, Sorley Fallon and Niall Howley. Our talk had an air of unreality about it, the same air that moved, too compressed, too mixed-up, through the house. Yet Brook wanted to talk. Wondering aloud about these men, one dead, one awaiting trial, one being questioned by British and Australian police officers, one so far escaping culpability, made Brook feel his mind had not closed down. His voice gained some of its laconic confidence, though always with a shadow underneath.

  ‘Do you think you would’ve liked him?’

  ‘Fallon?’ Brook said, thinking this was who I meant.

  ‘Niall.’

  ‘Probably not. I don’t know what kids are coming to these days.’

  I bit my tongue. Here was another warning that I should look after mine.

  ‘Niall was brave,’ I said.

  ‘But crazy. That Fallon’s crazy too, if you ask me. And Rasmussen. Jesus.’

  ‘Colin had an older, calculating mind behind him.’

  We’d reached a stalemate over Fenshaw’s involvement, which Colin was denying vehemently.

  Katya had been tired that afternoon. While we were talking, she’d dozed off in my arms. She was at the stage of resisting an afternoon sleep, but I’d sat her on my knee with an open cardboard book, the kind she liked to pat and hold a conversation with. I didn’t want to move in case I woke her.

  Brook closed his eyes. While I waited for him to gather the energy to continue talking, or let me know he’d had enough, I watched the progress of the afternoon across a back lawn Ivan had mowed the previous weekend. Mowed seemed to precise a word for the scrawly lines across thick grass he’d managed to incise.

  The year was nearly over. Soon the school holidays would begin. Peter would be home all day. Soon these long afternoons, their anxiety and moments of companionship, would be interrupted by a Christmas nobody seemed ready for. Through Brook’s bedroom window, the hot, settled air approached midafternoon.

  I heard a noise and turned round.

  Sophie stood just inside the door, a plastic bag of groceries in each hand. Her expression said what mine must have too, that for once our system of avoiding each other hadn’t worked. The bags looked heavy and her face was flushed. There was a line of sweat around her hairline and along her upper lip. I pictured her emptying the bags, tidying their contents into cupboards, taking care of her face and hair in Brook’s small bathroom mirror. Then what? Sitting as I had just been doing, while the shadows lengthened?

  Words stuck on the roof of my mouth. Katya wriggled in my arms and made a short, sharp sound.

  ‘Come into the kitchen.’

  I shut the door behind us, and sat down again with Katya on my knee. Sophie had not acknowledged my daughter, not so much as glanced in her direction.

  ‘It’s bad isn’t it?’

  Sophie stood with her hands hanging loosely by her sides, a woman who despised empty hands.

  ‘They’re talking about a bone marrow transplant.’

  ‘I thought he was too old for that.’

  Sophie moved her head and shoulders, half a nod and half a shrug of helplessness.

  ‘It’s less effective the older you are, but—’

  ‘What about more chemo?’

  ‘It’s an alternative.’

  ‘How much longer would it give him?’

  ‘The doctor wouldn’t say.’

  ‘I wish—’

  Sophie did not want to hear my wish. ‘He needed to keep well for you. And your daughter. He wasn’t going to let anything spoil that. He wouldn’t have more tests. I tried to make him and he just got angry. He said he wasn’t a patient any longer, wouldn’t be a patient.’

  She raised her hands again, this time vigorously, a person who’s suddenly decided to do something after a long period of inactivity. There were the groceries to put away. There was Brook’s afternoon tea.

  Katya made a fist of one hand, raised it to my cheek and gurgled.

  I said, ‘I need to get my bag.’

  Brook’s eyes were still closed, and he was lying in the same position I had left him in. I bent for the cardboard book and put it in my bag. Then I leant again, over the bed this time, and kissed him gently on the forehead. Katya was staring into my face, her black eyes wide and, perfect mimic, she pursed her lips exactly as I’d just done, and kissed the air.

  . . .

  Over the phone, I told Bernard Howley that there was no record of Sorley Fallon ever having been in Australia.

  ‘In spirit maybe, but that’s all.’

  There was a silence which felt like Bernard was searching for a way to contradict me. I’d already told him that the friendship society had been thoroughly checked out
, and it was no more, or less, than what it appeared to be, a fundraising organisation. There was no record of money having found its way into bombs or guns. I told Bernard that Detective-Sergeant Bill McCallum would be happy to talk to him about it any time he wished, and to go through the results of the investigation. I was pretty sure that he would not take up the offer. For Bernard, it was enough that Moira had gone behind his back and sold those concert tickets, continued an association that he disapproved of, and encouraged Niall to do the same.

  Bernard wasn’t in a position to challenge anything I said, but that didn’t make him like it, or approve of me. I hadn’t expected him to thank me, but a slight unbending in his manner would have been welcome.

  In a reflective mood, I called Sorley Fallon and thanked him for sending me Fenshaw’s memo to the hospital board. I apologised on behalf of Brook and his colleagues for the sudden arrival of a carload of police demanding to know about the kidnapping of a ten-year-old boy.

  Fallon said he was sorry for what Peter had been through. ‘Give him my best wishes.’

  ‘I will.’

  I heard a young male voice in the background. Of course, it could be a customer. It was the middle of a working day in Ireland, but I’d never seen much evidence that Fallon bothered himself with ordinary work.

  He mentioned Moira Howley and said he was glad that she’d made contact with him. When I referred to the possibility of her visiting Ireland, he surprised me by saying, ‘If business picks up, I might even make it to Australia next year.’

  ‘We don’t have any ruined castles. Plenty of natural attractions though.’

  Fallon laughed. Again I heard a voice, or voices, though I couldn’t make out any words.

  ‘I’d like to see where Niall lived.’

  He didn’t need to add, and where he died. The image of the tower was strong between us. I said I’d look forward to meeting him again, and then goodbye.

  I rang Bridget next, clocking up a phone bill. At this rate, I’d use up all of Moira’s last cheque. But I needed to hear Bridget’s voice, as I’d needed to hear Fallon’s, that Irish sibilance, a way of saying ‘Sandra’ that they had in common. I needed to keep convincing myself that there was more to them than sleight of hand, ciphers on a screen.

  I told Bridget, thinking that she’d probably already got the news from Fallon, that Colin Rasmussen had confessed to Niall’s murder, and that when it came time to enter a plea he would be pleading guilty. I said I was afraid that no one would get to the bottom, the extent of Dr Fenshaw’s responsibility. I asked Bridget if she was still giving tours of the factory, and she replied that her father had finally put his foot down. She didn’t sound disappointed, and I recalled her telling me that she was getting bored with it. I had no doubt she’d find another game, another bit of acting to amuse her for a while, even another MUD, or some kind of net impersonation. The possibilities, after all, were endless, and the attraction always there. She didn’t share Sorley Fallon’s guilt. She’d taken Niall’s side, supported him as much as she was able to. Somehow with Bridget though, I had the feeling that guilt would never cut deep, or dissuade her from a course of action that she’d set her heart on.

  . . .

  By the weekend, when Ivan and I headed off for a few days at the coast, I’d seen Brook’s doctor and discussed his treatment. They were going ahead with the bone marrow transplant. When the doctor spoke to me, it was always with a slight frown between his eyebrows, not knowing where to place me. Clearly I wasn’t family, yet I persisted in asking questions that only family members had the right to ask. Just as clearly, there was no wife around to ask them. There was Sophie, and there was me.

  I couldn’t pester Brook to contact his ex-wife and children. He’d made it clear in the past that he didn’t want to. But I pestered McCallum on Brook’s behalf. I was determined to track them down, one way or another. I didn’t discuss this plan with anyone except McCallum. It had arrived perfectly clear and fully formed, and I knew it would succeed.

  I watched Fred and Peter running in the surf. Peter was determined that Fred could learn to catch waves. Never mind that Peter couldn’t catch a wave himself. Fred was the cleverest dog, and he would learn.

  It hadn’t been easy finding a place that would take dogs, but eventually we did—a small Bed and Breakfast the other side of Moruya. Too far south for the main tourist trade, and a couple of kilometres inland, it was a farm rather than a beach house. Fred had to stay shut up in a small yard when we were at the house, but we headed off to the beach early each morning and, luckily for us, the weather held.

  Ivan spent as much time as he could under the umbrella, set up as close as possible to the water line so Katya could dig in the damp sand. What Katya loved most was for her father to dig holes, so she could watch the water seeping in.

  We had the beach practically to ourselves. I divided my time between lying in my crescent of shade, squinting at the roistering dark shapes in the water that were my son and his dog, looking for shells along the tide line, and short bursts of swimming. After one of these quick swims, I flopped down on my towel next to Ivan, listening to the soft sounds of spade and hands as he dug yet another hole.

  ‘There’s planning that goes with an ability to take advantage of ­circumstances,’ I said. ‘Surely that was Fenshaw’s kind.’

  Ivan looked up from his digging reluctantly. ‘You’re still insisting he told Rasmussen what to do?’

  I thought of Sorley Fallon, and the extent to which a man should be considered responsible for his followers, the lengths such a man would go to repudiate them, if and when those followers became a nuisance.

  ‘“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”’ I said. ‘It’s odd how, in the play, you’re waiting for those words, you know they’re coming, yet they’re still a shock.’

  ‘What’s a shock?’

  ‘The coldness I suppose, the inhumanity.’

  Peter took a tumble and came up blinded by swirling sandy water. I called out. Peter rubbed his eyes and, still half blinded, managed a wobbly wave.

  I smiled at Katya, sitting perfectly straight and steady between us, talking to herself as she patted down the sand.

  ‘What do you think? In a minute it might be time to pack up and have lunch?’

  I called out to Peter to tell him we were going. He pretended not to hear me. After Christmas he was going to stay with Derek for a month. Derek was having his backyard dog-proofed and he’d bought a kennel. He was taking the whole of January off. Peter had permission to drop in to see his sister any time. She would miss him more than he could guess.

  I shook sand out of my towel and folded it. I clenched my teeth as I collapsed the beach umbrella. Our umbrella was old and vicious, and either refused to dismantle itself at all, or did so with such force and speed that I’d frequently had my fingers jammed.

  Peter came running up from the water’s edge with Fred, and both of them shook cold salty water over us.

  I laughed and handed him his towel. I hoisted the swimming bag over one arm and picked up the umbrella, which had for once behaved itself. I enjoyed the tramp back to the clump of trees where we’d parked the car, the trappings and slowings of parenthood. Even Fred’s nose pressed against the backs of my knees, announcing that it was dinnertime, didn’t bother me. In fact I found myself wishing we could spend the rest of our lives, or at least the summer, on a beach.

  I saw the frightened way Peter hugged Fred to him, in this expanse of sea and yellow light. I saw the way his eyes went blank sometimes when I spoke to him. We would be going back to Canberra all too soon for Peter, city of white towers and dark plunging verticals, a town built for men caught on a trajectory of love and duty, young men who had to learn to jump, and then to keep on jumping.

  — END —

  From the next SANDRA MAHONEY novel …

  One

  Eden Carmichael died on a hot Tuesday afternoon in January. He was found lying across a double bed at one of Canbe
rra’s best-known brothels, dressed in a blue and white flowered silk dress and a blonde wig.

  Carmichael’s loyal constituents felt betrayed by a death of such robust indignity. Not that he had many loyal constituents left. He’d never fully recovered from a spectacular public heart attack, and was rumoured to be retiring before the next election.

  Others, who’d never voted for him, were drawn to the politician’s death by a mixture of boredom and revulsion. A photograph had been printed in The Canberra Times a few days afterwards, of Carmichael in his flowered dress and wig. He stared at the camera from beneath a mass of yellow hair, one hand clutching the top button of his dress, with a dazed and wondering expression. He could have been drunk. Some of the people who sent protest letters to the newspaper concluded that he was. The most bitter and accusing of them reminded readers how Carmichael had argued that the ACT should change its laws and make prostitution legal, as though being found dead in a brothel was a logical consequence of this, and no more than he deserved.

  Others speculated about who had sold the demeaning picture to the paper, whether its publication constituted a breach of privacy, and if it been taken on the day he died. None of these questions was answered in the one editorial the Times ran on the subject, which concentrated instead on the issue of freedom of the press.

  More interesting questions, to my way of thinking, were: who had Carmichael been mocking that hot afternoon, besides himself? How had the joke of his last moments been shared?

  Details continued seeping out, though not ones that threw light on these particular concerns. I wondered if the published photo was the only one that had been taken, and concluded that it seemed unlikely.

  Canberra was a small enough city for any untimely public death to be felt personally. Cracks opened in the minds of citizens whose lives had in no way touched that of the Independent MLA. Television interviewers dug out anyone who had, or could claim, a connection with the man, or the club in which he’d spent his final hour, and the subject of prosti­tution, which had received little public attention for a decade, was daily in the news.