by Toni Jordan
‘There is evil in the world, Rachel. There are black depths in the soul of mankind.’
‘Do you know where Helen is?’
‘Ah, well.’ She hears a scratch and the tinny sound of a match flaring. A pause for him to light a cigarette. ‘I’m sorry to say that I was badly deceived by that young woman. But that’s not a matter to be talking about through a door, nor is it for children’s ears.’
‘Everyone’s been worried about you both.’
‘She preyed on my kindness, Rachel. She was alone in the world in her condition and in an act of Christian charity I gave her my protection even at the expense of my own family. But I’m home now, the lord be praised.’
No, Rachel, Mary mouths.
‘I knew if I turned my back on that girl in her hour of need I could never look your mother in the face, not ever again. Your mother is a saint on this earth.’
Mary stands and starts toward the door. ‘Where is she, Walter? Where’s the girl?’
‘Is that you, my darling wife? Open the door, there’s my sweetheart.’ Then, when none of them moves, a thump and then a kick. ‘Open it, I say. I was deceived, that’s what happened. She was revealed to me as the worst kind of loose woman. As if I can’t count to nine, as if I’m some kind of fool. She took advantage of me to cover for her actions with another man. A trolley-load of other men, most likely.’
Mary shuts her eyes. George sits back on his bottom and wraps his arms around his shins, kneecaps in the hollow of his sockets.
Rachel draws air deep to the bottom of her lungs. ‘Go away, Papa.’
‘It’s not your house. It’s nothing to do with you. I’m staying here until I hear from my Mary.’ His words are warm and sweet like treacle. ‘If she has truly forsaken me, I’ll go, of course I’ll go. But I know my Mary. My Mary wouldn’t cast me out because of the wicked character of some whore.’
‘Rachel,’ Mary whispers. ‘I don’t know.’
But Rachel knows. This, she knows.
‘Go away, Papa,’ she says. ‘Mr Dimley’s given Pat McClure your job and we’ve become accustomed to things. Best you make a fresh start somewhere else.’
There’s a mighty smack, a strong shoulder against the door. A run up, and then another. The three of them flinch, but the door holds.
‘Let me in, Rachel or you better pray to god to stay my hand.’
The back door is locked and solid, Rachel knows. The windows too. They are two women alone with only a boy; Rachel took the precautions herself.
‘If you stay out there making a spectacle, someone will tell Helen’s brothers and they’ll come for you, Papa. They’re worried sick, and they’re angry and things might not go so well for you. Best you be gone now.’
Another slam. Another kick.
‘I need to lay down before I faint,’ Mary says.
George does not go to her, nor Rachel. Mary stands on legs of water. She teeters down the hall with a hand on each wall.
‘Papa,’ Rachel says. ‘Papa, we don’t wish you any ill. But you need to go, with all our blessings. Please, Papa.’
There is silence outside for a minute. George raises his head and looks at Rachel. She creeps toward the window and pulls the curtain aside. The porch is empty: nothing but a crumpled Lucky Strike pack and the core of an apple. She pulls the curtain wider and looks toward the street. Nothing, up or down. Her father will be fine, she tells herself. It’s warmer now, he won’t freeze. He’ll find work as a miner in Luzerne County and everything will be well.
Then a noise so loud the house seems to shake on its foundations. The taste of acid in her mouth, a mad desire in her legs. Run, run, run, they say.
They’re still saying it as the back door slams.
11
Brisbane, Queensland, 1986
When Caddie was ten, she fell in with some neighbouring children from a subsection of Christianity that disapproved of grandeur. One Sunday afternoon she went with them on a scavenger hunt around their church, a peeling weatherboard hall in the middle of a dusty park.
The minister who’d organised it, a bearded and bejeaned type with a tie-dyed shirt, handed them the first clue in a used envelope that had once held a gas bill. It said: ‘Find your direction in Isaiah 38:8’, which meant nothing to Caddie but was understood at once by the other kids. Off they ran in their ironed jeans, jostling and giggling with not a little un-Christian tripping. Caddie followed. They found another note hidden at the back of the church, under the tenth step from the top, and on it went. It should have been fun but the competitive desperation seemed out of proportion to the ultimate prize, which was a pop-up book of David and Goliath.
This excursion feels just like that. What would evidence of a female typesetter prove, even if they could find it? She tells herself to be sensible, and then she thinks about Philip and his breath on her neck. She knows what she is running from, even if her goal remains a mystery. Philip has research assistants, graduate students, undergrads. Caddie knows, better than anyone, that he has a way of organising people to do what he wants and making them feel like it was their idea in the first place.
Saturday morning, and she meets Jamie out the front of the undergrad library. He is in a white shirt this time, jeans and Wayfarers. The wind is picking up. There are students milling on the stone stairs and the grass, smoking, waiting. They all look similar—big tousled hair, baggy pale jeans, polos in various shades of blue or checked flannel shirts—except for one or two mature-age students who could be dentists and a solitary Boy George fan who must have woken at dawn to apply his makeup. When the doors open they all leave their bags in the racks and pass through the turnstiles.
Caddie and Jamie stride with a sense of purpose. They might be one of those TV detective pairings: Laura Holt and Remington Steele or the Hart to Harts. It feels like a road trip. She should have brought a bag of snakes.
Since she was last here black card-catalogue cabinets have sprung up, squat as beehives, in every conceivable space. Smoking is banned now so there are no pinprick flares among the gloom of the stacks as they pass but dancing milky sunbeams still weave from the high windows to the floor. It is always crowded, this library: built when it seemed impossible that there was anything more to discover. More than fifty years of ad-hoc extensions and mezzanine additions and compactus shelving—so much wallpaper over inadequate timber. Caddie has always felt welcome here. This is a place for people who want to find things out. She has always been a person like that.
The library hush settles on them like a quilt. That smell—mouldering cellulose with a touch of cut grass and vanilla—calms and focuses her. The carrels fill quickly but they find a table that’s almost empty close to the microfiche readers. Jamie tackles the catalogue while she assembles notepads and pens to keep track of their efforts.
‘Here,’ he says, returning with an armful of cardboard boxes. Inside are reels of black film, rolled tight. ‘Where do you want to start?’
A small current runs through her. Her muscles feel alive beneath her skin, she can feel them twinge and sparkle. She hopes she isn’t coming down with something.
‘1935,’ she says, without really knowing why.
The challenge was to not be distracted. In the 1930s the New York Times had advertisements for alligator bags and Safari Alaska Sealskin coats and ermine and stories about exotic and impossible crimes. Eight thousand dollars’ worth of jewels recovered by the cops in a ‘tedious search’ of a storm sewer after they were lost by Princess Mdivani on her way home from the Navy–Yale game at New Haven. Caddie didn’t know which seemed less likely: a) a princess living in your city, b) a princess going to the football, c) while wearing her jewels, or d) the police searching a sewer to recover them. In 1980s Queensland, if you own something worth stealing, the last people you’d tell would be the police.
She reads the public notices: New Jersey Building Loan Shares; College Graduate Will Purchase Salesman’s routs; Must Sacrifice Complete Kitchen. She reads the weddings and ra
dio guides and obituaries. She reads the employment: Dependable married man sought; Canvassers (4) experienced in selling newspaper subscriptions; Be a fashion model, Empire Mannequin school. If only she could do this for a living. Every day, the thrill of this mental hunting and gathering.
Two hours later, though, she no longer feels like a television detective. She’s skimming, as she’s sure Jamie is on the machine beside her. When she shuts her eyes the light box is still there, busy with black type, etched on her retina. There’s also something existential going on. Pages and pages of things that mattered so much at the time, that kept people awake, frantic, devastated, ecstatic; all of it worth nothing now. No one cares that those jewels went missing, or that the princess got them back. We are specks in time, Caddie realises, and it’s liberating. There’s nothing to worry about, not really. The best part of five decades makes an excellent filter for the dimensions of her preoccupations.
When the words start to dance before her eyes, she concentrates on scanning for the word typesetter. She finds a story about workers striking at a newspaper in Illinois because the publishers refused to assign a union member to operate their new ‘teletypesetter’ machine (whatever that was); an obituary for a former editor of the Chattanooga Times who began his career as a typesetter; and a tiny piece about a ‘Negro’ typesetter who is unable to read or write but still produces perfect copy by matching the shape of each character with the typewritten pages he’s given. She finds nothing about a woman.
As if he can hear her thoughts, Jamie pushes his glasses up on his forehead and rests his hands flat on the small of his back. ‘This is some kind of mediaeval torture device.’
She nods. ‘You can stop any time.’
‘I volunteered,’ he says. ‘I have only myself to blame.’
‘Perhaps if we look at the article about the fire. Just for interest.’
After some rifling, he finds the film they need. He pulls out the tray and places the new film on the spindle and threads it under the glass and into the take-up reel. He winds the reel then fast-forwards to the first image.
He finds the fire quickly enough: it’s a huge piece on the right of the front page, surrounded by articles about the arms race with Japan and Republicans urging Democrats to cross the floor against Roosevelt’s higher taxes for business. She stands behind him to read his screen. She bends forward. His neck is tanned. She finds this strange in such a bookish sort.
NOVELIST INGA KARLSON MISSING AFTER WAREHOUSE FIRE
Tributes flow for Pulitzer-winning writer and her publisher
The body of a woman in her twenties of slight build and a man were found yesterday severely burned at the Cleborn Publishing warehouse in Division Street, following a huge fire. The bodies match the descriptions of Miss Inga Karlson and her publisher, Charles Cleborn, neither of whom have been seen since Tuesday afternoon. The personal effects, found on the bodies, have reportedly been identified. Police are also said to be in possession of a telegram from Mr. Cleborn to Miss Karlson requesting her attendance at the warehouse at the time of the fire. Police are expected to formally identify the bodies today. The warehouse contained over $100,000 of books and paper, staff at the Cleborn Company said.
The fire was discovered at 7 p.m. by a passer-by and, after a desperate battle, was brought under control by the four engines attending by 2.30 a.m. There was initial concern that a neighboring tenement was at risk from the flames, which shot through the roof. Three firemen of Searchlight Company 1 were injured by falling glass. Two required transportation to hospital where they underwent stitching and the other was treated at the scene and remained on duty. A thorough search of the ruins has failed to find evidence of any further victims. The cause of the fire was undetermined.
The story went on to give details of Inga’s life and career, as well as a brief profile of Charles. Inga, it said, ‘has no living relatives in this country. Efforts are currently underway to determine if she is survived by any family in her native Austria’. Charles was survived by his wife, Madeleine, two daughters and a young son. There was expected to be an outpouring of grief worldwide at the loss of Inga. Funeral details to be announced.
They skip forward two days.
ARSON EXPERTS AID KARLSON INQUIRY
As widespread mourning grips the city following the identification of the body of novelist Inga Karlson, three arson experts from the New York City Police Department arrived at the Division Street warehouse to aid local officials in determining the cause of the fire. The officers declined to comment on the direction the investigation might take but said that more than thirty persons had been questioned in an effort to uncover the person or persons behind the fire. They also refused to comment on allegations that officers had been seen removing boxes of documents from the offices and home of Charles Cleborn, Inga Karlson’s publisher, who also died in the fire. Mr. Cleborn’s widow has also declined to comment, except to say that any rumors about the identity of the arsonist are wholly unsubstantiated.
‘It’s a lovely day outside,’ Caddie says. ‘It’s unfair to keep you.’
They’re a long way from the windows. It is a lovely day, despite the wind, but she doesn’t need to look outside to know this. Where they live, it’s always a lovely day.
‘I told you, I volunteered.’
From the far end of the long table, a man in trackpants looks up with the intensity of a brain surgeon interrupted mid-cortex and shushes them, then rearranges his perspex ruler, row of ballpoint pens, three coloured highlighters and bottle of liquid paper.
Caddie sits down again and pulls her seat closer to Jamie’s. She leans closer, so she can speak softer. ‘How long have you known Philip?’ she says.
‘Long enough. He was my tutor through my undergrad degree. He often…hung out with students.’ He blinks and looks back at the screen. ‘How long have you known him?’
She feels her face prickle and she picks up a pen and begins to twirl it. He’s not looking at her, and she’s grateful but she wishes that she were as tiny as the letters on the acetate film in front of her. If people needed a special machine to view her, that would be fine. She would be safe from everyone except those prepared to make an effort.
‘It feels like a very long time,’ she says.
He nods.
‘Why didn’t you tell him what I was looking for? The woman, outside the gallery?’
‘It wasn’t my story to tell.’
She nods. ‘So we keep going.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘We keep going.’
They go back to 1937 in their magic time machine. They begin again. They take it slowly.
It’s almost time for the library to close when she finds it. It’s not what she imagined: it has nothing to do with a woman typesetter. It’s barely an inch long, published three days after the fire.
LOCAL MAN KILLED IN MUGGING
Stabbed in struggle with suspected thief
Samuel Fischer, 45, a typesetter of Perry Avenue, the Bronx, was stabbed and killed in a suspected mugging near his home on Sunday evening. Some men passing came to Fischer’s aid and medical assistance was swiftly obtained but there was nothing that could be done for the victim. The assailant, described by witnesses as wearing a tan trench coat that flapped loosely about him, fled on foot. Police say the wound was deep. The bloody murder weapon was recovered by police at the scene. Residents have been increasingly concerned by an upsurge in violent crime in that part of the city.
One paragraph isn’t much for a man’s life, she thinks, and reads it again, and the black ink on film forms images in her mind. He’s here in front of her. Samuel Fischer. He’s a jolly fellow; he hasn’t always been prosperous, but typesetting is a fine trade for a man. He looks fine, too, in his grey suit and hat and best shoes. She can see this Fischer walking down a darkening street. He’s not coming home from work; he’s too spruce for that. Too jaunty, with a little skip in his stride. Dinner, perhaps, or a movie with a lady. There is a change in the air. Wind
blows. Papers whip along the street. He passes brownstones and telephone boxes and a small bodega. He passes a hot-dog seller, who feels the atmosphere change and packs up his cart. Men scurry past with umbrellas unfurled, ready. The sky is a steel grey.
Fischer turns a sharp corner into Perry Avenue—in her mind, a narrow, tree-lined street of apartment buildings with steps in the front and faded red awnings—and he almost collides with a man in a tan trench coat. This man does not step back. He continues to stand too close. Fischer does step back and to the side and the man follows him in a kind of dance. Fischer looks up to make that awkward grimace of strangers who unwittingly block each other on the sidewalk but then he feels the press of something sharp through his suit coat, through his shirt, through his singlet. He feels a needly point against his ribs.
Oh, he thinks. This is something else altogether.
He is startled but this, Fischer thinks, is the price of living in the most exciting city in the world. He’s grown up in these streets. This is a straightforward transaction, not unusual in these difficult days. He knows no one has to get hurt. It is a simple matter of handing over his wallet and perhaps his watch, that is all.
Yet somehow that is not what transpires.
Fischer drops to his knees. His tight fists clasp the man’s coat as he falls then—he’s surprised—his hands unclench of their own accord and the coat slips through his fingers and he finds himself on the sidewalk. This is a bad idea, he thinks. His trousers will be filthy. And then he feels the liquid pooling beneath him, running into the gutter, a red ribbon winding along the channels between the cobblestones on the road.
The man in the trench bends over him and extracts a wallet and slips the watch from his wrist, then he kneels and wipes his knife on Fischer’s trousers. He lifts his lapels and lowers his brim before hurrying away but there is no one on the street to notice. By the time a passer-by finds Fischer, the red liquid has formed a pattern between the cobblestones like the ink between rows of type.