by R. L. Holmes
‘Who’s Charlie?’ my mother asks, her mind circling with more thoughts of perversion.
‘You remember Charlie,’ Gran says, a little stunned that her memory is failing her. ‘The teddy bear you gave to Sara when she was a baby.’
‘Oh? But......,’ she drops her head and stares at the pattern on the carpet. ‘It was me,’ she says, looking terribly disappointed. ‘It was me who rubbed menthol on your temples when you had that awful migraine. I was so concerned about you.’ Her bony fingers run across her chin to a red pimple that had been annoying her all day.
Gran chuckles. That’s the first time I have seen her laugh in quite a while. In fact the last time she laughed was with that psychotic Raven-Face and I’m sure she was faking it.
‘I always contacted your mother when you were sick, Sara. That migraine you had was a terrible thing. We even had the doctor in to check you out.’
My mind flickers back to all the imaginary friends I’ve ever had and wonder how many were actually my mother nursing and chatting away to me. ‘But Seth, is not you,’ I finally say.
‘No, he certainly is not me,’ my mother says, still fiddling with her pimple.
I turn my back on them and walk up to the kitchen window that overlooks the rambling array of colour and textures that is our garden. Seth is just outside the window in the strip of garden next to the porch, tending to low-lying pansies, small pink rose bushes and daisies. I watch him for a few moments, feeling the weight of their eyes on me. Then, after taking a deep breath I turn back around to say, ‘He’s here.’
‘Who’s here?’ mum asks sighing.
‘Seth. He’s just outside the window collecting snails and slugs.’
Gran chuckles again. Her body jolts slightly from the pain of her damaged arm. Everything she does affects her arm. She can’t even laugh without hurting it. As quick as lightning, mum races over and peers with much scrutiny out of the window. Her fists are tight, ready for a fight.
‘Where?’ she asks, her eyes running all over the yard.
‘He’s quite short and wearing olive-green overalls.’
Out of curiosity, Gran wanders over. But she too is left disappointed.
‘What are you seeing him do?’ mum asks.
‘He’s doing what he always does; garden. That’s all he cares about is gardening and the weather. He hates Brambles, cos she kills everything.’
‘Oh.’ My mother blushes. ‘None of this makes any sense.’
‘Why?’ Gran asks. ‘You know Sara has a powerful imagination, remember? I have been telling you that for years. I don’t think she knows the difference between what’s real and what’s not.’
‘Yes I do!’ I yell, in offence by these words.
Mum gives Gran a glare. I know this look so well - the lowered eyes, the flared nostrils; a signal to say that she wants to speak to Gran alone, without me being there. Oh, how I hate this look with avenges!
‘Just say it in front of her. She has already seen more than any twelve year old should see,’ Gran blurts out.
Mum pauses for a moment. I can tell she’s feeling awfully uncomfortable about what she is about to say. She sighs and fiddles again with that dreaded pimple.
‘Well, the man arrested was doing not nice things to children. He apparently would lure them in to see his garden of fruit trees and berries. He’d let them in to pick some fruit and that’s how he got friendly with these kids.’ She pauses again, taking a deep breath, then leans into Gran, lowering her tone. ‘Sara described the house and where he lived.’
‘No!’ I snap, holding back my fury. ‘I made all that up, so the police wouldn’t hurt Seth.’
‘But Seth can’t be hurt. He is invisible to everyone except you,’ Gran says in a caring tone. ‘So why did you feel you needed to lie?’
‘Cos, Seth is my friend. And he kicked the policeman in the shin and he felt it. So he can’t be that invisible.’
Ignoring the shin kicking comment, mum shakes her head and hums, ‘So you were just scared in case others could see him.’
‘Yeees.’
‘So how did you know about the man by your school? Have you been there?’
‘No, I made him up. I told you.’ This conversation is getting incredibly frustrating. Nothing makes any sense to me. I made up a fictional character to protect Seth and he turns out to be a real person. But not only is he real, he is feeding children on sweets and fruits and becoming best friends with them. ‘I wouldn’t become friends with a stranger,’ I finally say.
‘Only an imaginary one,’ Gran chuckles again.
A small pebble smacks the window, frightening us all. Our black cat Brambles flew through the door and flung herself under the dining table, with a look of pure fear.
‘See!’ I bellow. ‘That’s Seth. He hates Brambles. That’s why she wees inside and is losing her fur, cos she’s scared all the time of him. He’s forever chasing her with pebbles and dirt.’
Gran clumsily reaches under the table to calm her beloved pet down. ‘Oh my poor cat,’ she says. ‘Is Sara’s friend being mean to you?’ She tries to grab Brambles with one arm, but is unsuccessful, so she resigns to patting her gently on the head instead. ‘You know Tanny, she has been acting bizarrely for quite some time. I just put it down to her getting older.’
Mum continues to search out the kitchen window for Seth. She is completely confused by all of this and desperately needs a logical explanation. But in a world of imaginary friends, dope growing and mysteriously, frightened cats, there is nothing logical that one can grasp.
‘It all must be a coincidence,’ she suddenly says.
‘Of course it is,’ Gran says sarcastically. ‘We will resign it all on a coincidence.’
¥
Mid December 1998: Stranger
¥
That old bastard. How did they find out about him? This ruins everything. Damn.
I planned for him to be the first to go. An unfortunate accident involving fire of course - a malfunctioning electrical appliance or even a gas leak was going to be the cause. Now he’s in prison. With all the damage he has done to women and children, he should be locked up in some hellish confinement for a hundred years.
But no, this weak ineffective justice system will probably have him out in a year. And if that does happen? I will find him. Of course they do not know of his past, like I do. They do not know about the torture, the threats, and the beatings. But to be a paedophile, I never would’ve guessed. He only ever seemed to be interested in terrifying women. I guess he grew too old and loss the strength to control an adult.
I was surprised to find him living locally, after twenty years. He followed me here many years ago, you know. I guess something about this place kept him here, after I left. Perhaps he thought I would return. Perhaps it was Sasha. But when I discovered, purely by accident, that he had made his home in the City, I was most pleased. This way I could keep an eye on the two people I despise the most, the two people who ruined my life and scarred me forever.
I will never forgive them, I simply can’t. Too much of my life has been wasted, running and hiding, changing my identity, changing my home.
Once again the gossips of the town keep me updated. They say a girl dobbed him in. Perhaps one of his victims? A Fenton girl who attended Lowry Intermediate, they say. This is interesting. Fenton has a population of only 2000 people and I would say; only a handful are at intermediate age. One of course is my Saracen.
¥
Early January 1999: Saracen
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The holidays are here. No more school for three more weeks. Yes! Things have quietened down at our place. Christmas and the New Year came and went, Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys and Prince’s 1999 are playing on the radio and mum decides to head north for a few days to see her two other children, Austin and Lu.
The drama of the confiscated cannabis plants circled Fenton briefly, but there really wasn’t much of a big deal about it. I’m assuming that’s because so many people already knew an
d probably frequented here themselves. This has caused a bit of a problem, though, with finances. With Gran still not well enough to see clients and the added income of hiring the shed gone, we had to start thinking about other sources of income.
We made a list of a selection of edibles and skin care that can be sold at the farmer’s market and Gran began restoring the shed back into our manufacturing lab, not this time for cannabis but for herbal and fruit wines, preserves, and for making herbal medicine like before.
Our kitchen has suddenly become a busy, colourful place where, Russian and chocolate fudge and coconut ice is to be made on Tuesdays, plums, apricots, rhubarb, apples and berries stewed or made into jams Wednesdays and on Thursday’s and Friday’s Gran makes moisturisers, skin cleansers and body butters. These are all of her recipes, either handed down in the family or created after much trial and error by her. Because Gran’s arm often caused problems, mum became an important part of our business, having to lift the heavy pots and buckets filled with fruit.
We decided to call our business, Three Generations. We all work hard together, three generations of women, to raise our income and patch up our home from the awful things that has happened recently. We are assigned specific jobs, mine being the harvesting and stoning of fruits which is tiresome at times, but I still do it.
Quickly the business grew and even Potts has started coming over to help. We turned the shed into a shop and sold some of our goods from there, as well as convincing small dairies and supermarkets to take them on.
This of course, is summer, when the weather is warm, it rains only briefly and our fruit trees are laden. Everyone begins to smile as our skin bronzes and the money keeps rolling in. Potts, who is surprisingly a very good sign writer, designed our labels that eventually become stickers on a roll. Over a short space of time we created 20 products which include, carrot cake, chocolate and Russian fudge, five different types of jam and marmalades, two different chutney, four different wines and six different skincare products, including two moisturisers, a cream cleanser, a herbal toner, a body butter and a herbal healing cream made out of chickweed and calendula plants.
There are three different berry vines growing behind the camellia hedge, raspberries, blackberries and boysenberries. We attempted strawberries as well, but the birds keep eating them as they reddened, yet left the vine berries alone. Remembering what Seth said about Moley’s roses - ‘give the aphids three plants and they will leave the rest alone’, I managed to convince mum and Gran that we should leave the strawberries to the birds. Reluctantly they agreed and as a result we have an abundance of vine berries, but absolutely no strawberries.
The vines were planted many years ago and have always done well, provided they were pruned properly. The strawberries on the other hand are just a last minute thought, the plants bought at the farmer’s market, by my mother who is enjoying all of this productiveness immensely.
Every night, she calls my brother and sister who are still residing at my nana’s place. She doesn’t mention dad much, probably because she doesn’t know where he is. She did though; receive one phone call from him, 9.45pm on a muggy summer’s night. It was a very short call, but it left my mother looking like she had the blood drained out of her. He didn’t ask to speak to me and he seemed to be the one doing all the talking, as she only said a few words. When she got off the phone, Gran asked where he was living and working. Mum just shrugged and quickly exited the room to blow her nose.
We didn’t mention dad much after that. Well, it’s not like he’s playing a major role in any of our lives, anyway. He, as usual, just wants to do what he wants to do, running from large corporations who suck your income dry, and the government who are dishonest thieves and our family who are noisy and distract him from his important thoughts of conspiracies and corruption.
Men haven’t played an overly positive role in my childhood. The only men I had anything to do with, are either sick, absent or dead. So it’s no wonder we created a strong and powerful bond with the surrounding women who don’t have much to do with men either, possibly for different reasons. Instead we throw ourselves into being busy; busy stewing, sampling, bottling, baking, and fermenting, whatever we need to do to raise money to live a good life. With our talents combined, we try to grow a business that we hope will flourish from year to year.
The summer of course is an active season. We bottle many fruit, to keep us going a while and just when we think we are going to run out, another fruiting season will come along. Such as autumn fruits of feijoa, tamarillos and some apple varieties.
At the moment our best edible sellers are the fruit wines and the fudges. The jams are delicious, but there is a fair amount of competition from the old ladies at the market in Fenton, so we have to be a little more experimental with our flavours.
So Gran composed boysenberry and ginger, apricot and rhubarb, plum and feijoa, and blackberry and apple with a hint of lemon rind. She also threw in a grapefruit and lemon marmalade and a lemon curd. My fingers stain red from harvesting the berries, but I love it. The smells that waft through the house are simply delectable, and every day is a different batch, with a different recipe, using different fruits.
Gran decided to sell her Valiant to buy a van and when we can afford it, get it sign painted. This seems to make our business official. Once a fortnight, when I’m at school, Gran and mum drive up north to convince supermarkets and bottle stores to take our products. Sometimes they are successful sometimes they’re not. But our popularity is definitely growing in our little town.
¥
As this warm, sunny January floats along, the double homicide drifts further from our minds. We are so busy being productive; we have almost forgotten that there is still a killer on the loose, who happens to be handy with flammable substances. The police seem to be no closer in finding this murderer, as we are in suspecting who did it.
But as we stack bottles of preserves in the shed, on this breezy summer’s day, Potts pops up over the fence and crassly says, ‘They’ve found out who that chick was.’
‘What chick?’ Gran asks, her spirits a little higher these days.
She clears her throat and spits on the driveway, then wiping the bits of spit from her mouth she says, ‘The chick that got burnt in the fire on Richardson’s farm.’
We suddenly stop our lifting and labelling. A shiver runs down my spine and my throat dries. ‘Who was she?’ Gran asks, stepping closer to the fence.
‘I don’t know that yet. I will keep you posted.’
‘Well, how did you come across this information?’
‘A guy I work with is brothers with one of the police on the case.’ In her usual uncouth fashion, she lights a cigarette, while dangling off the fence and blows the smoke into our section. ‘She’s from the City, that’s all I know.’
Gran waves the stinky smoke away from our beautiful jars of fruit, jams and wines. ‘Have they got any closer to finding who killed them?’
‘They have their eye on someone, but apparently don’t have enough evidence to arrest them. That’s all I know. When I find out more I will tell ya.’
‘Have you anymore of that feijoa wine?’ Mrs Rennie calls out, from the window.
‘Yes. Do you want some?’
‘Yes please,’ her voice always shaky from nerves.
Her words, ‘don’t have enough evidence to arrest them’, circles in my mind in a familiar fashion. That’s what Mrs Richardson said when I was in the post office one time. Her words knocked ol’ Moley off his post. I wonder if she knew something way back then. I begin to ponder on this new information. If this is all true, then the murderer must still be here in our little town. Or, they live in the City, 20 minutes away and perhaps know the murdered girl.
‘What was her name?’ I ask after much thought. ‘The girl that was with Daniel, what was her name?’
‘I dunno,’ Potts answers, as if that was an irrelevant question. ‘I’m not the town know-it-all.’ Ol’ Moley immediately enter
s my mind. If anyone knows anymore about this case, it would be him. Or at least, he would pretend to know.
Mum, grabs me by the shirt and leads me into the shed, to focus back on the task at hand. There are a number of jars of jam and marmalade that need labelling which is mostly my job.
Tomorrow is Saturday and we are heading to the farmer’s market to sell our wares. We still have a list of jobs to work through, one being to make fudge. This requires a large amount of sugar, which we have plenty of and some sweetened condensed milk, which we’re a little low on.
Mum gives me some money and I wander down to the dairy to get several cans. The awful jasmine that climbs over the cottage behind the dairy is dying down a bit, so I’m not so grossed out by the smell. I am though, very surprised to find Rachel there wearing a black scowl behind her thick make-up.
This is the first time I have seen her since the murder, since her mother sent her away to focus on her studies. She didn’t even return in the school holidays, and they all went away for Christmas, leaving Rachel’s Grandparents to run the dairy for a while.
I can tell, the break away from this little town didn’t do much for her personality, but she did look like she lost some weight, living on boarding school food, I suspect.
I send her a smile as I walk through the door and try to make conversation. As usual she glares at me, as if I’m going to steal something. I tell her that we are making fudge and that it’s the best for miles.
She says nothing.
I say that if she wants to have some for free, I can get some for her. She snorts and curls her top lip, still saying nothing. I place the cans on the counter and spot some sticks of liquorice in a box, next to rainbow lolly pops.
‘Daniel used to buy these for me sometimes,’ I say, trying to warm the chilly atmosphere.
‘So?’ she suddenly snaps with a scowl so deep I thought her head may collapse inwardly.
The door bell rings, indicating another customer has walked in. I’m relieved. I don’t look around to see who it is, but I can tell it’s a male. This male seems happy and friendly, whistling a tune that isn’t familiar to me. He wanders briefly around the shelves as if wasting time. Rachel gave him a rather flirtatious smile. Then, to my horror the male leans over the counter and kisses bad tempered Rachel, on the lips.