‘Not Nicholas. Mrs Thompson, can I ask you to keep a secret?’
‘You can ask. I won’t promise.’
That would have to do. ‘The person who killed that man may have saved my life. Saved other women. We owe him something.’
Matilda Thompson glanced at her, curious and intent. ‘Yes.’
‘I met Mrs McAlpine’s brother at the billabong the night before I first came to Drinkwater. He said he was a ghost. He said he’d been hanging around off and on for years since World War II, watching his sister, her family. Checking that they’re safe, I think. I met him at the wedding reception too. Hiding. Watching. A good man, even if he’s strange.’ She thought of the blood. ‘Was strange.’ Her poor ghost, finally truly dead now.
‘Why are you telling me?’
‘If Mrs McAlpine’s brother has died, should I tell her?’ He deserves to be mourned, she thought, and by more than me.
‘That he has been alive all these years? Spying on her? Might have killed a man?’
‘It sounds terrible, putting it like that.’
‘Or you could tell his sister that he loved her enough to watch her being happy. That he saved you and other girls. But choose the right time to tell her. And the right way too.’
‘Thank you. I . . . I thought that too. But I didn’t want to, didn’t think I could . . .’ She tried to find the words.
‘Take the responsibility for the decision on yourself? That is what we old people are for,’ said Matilda Thompson lightly. ‘But you have reminded me that Mrs McAlpine’s brother, whenever he died, deserves a memorial, here where his family live. I think perhaps this is a good time to have one made.’
‘You’ll see to it?’
‘I’ll see to it.’
‘I don’t think they’ll find his body,’ said Jed.
‘Why not?’
‘He’s lived for so long without being seen. I think he may know how to die without being seen too.’
‘He may not have had the chance,’ said Matilda Thompson dryly, then was silent, thinking perhaps of the man who lay at Drinkwater, dying with all he loved about him. ‘I have been so blessed,’ she said quietly. ‘Tommy and I have been so very blessed.’
The car turned into the Drinkwater drive. Jed stared at the stranger’s car parked at the front door.
Chapter 70
JED
The investigator was waiting in the sitting room, Mr Jeffries with him. The Dragon walked swiftly up the stairs to see her husband, then returned a minute later and followed Jed in. ‘No change,’ she said quietly to Jed.
It wasn’t fair, thought Jed, looking at the two men, one in a too-thin Queensland-style light jacket, the other man in an expensive-looking suit. He was presumably the one who had left the overcoat on the hall coat-rack. Tommy’s death should be undisturbed, and his family’s lives while they were with him. But then the world never did apportion dramas neatly throughout your life so you had time to digest one before being flung into another.
The men stood as they entered. ‘Mrs Thompson, I apologise for appearing unannounced, but I thought I’d best bring this to you before —’ The solicitor stopped.
He means before Tommy dies, thought Jed. She sat, feeling giddy.
‘Tea please, Anita,’ said Matilda as Anita peered in questioningly. She sat on the sofa next to Jed. ‘Well? I presume you have news that is important enough to bring us in person. Don’t keep us in suspense.’
Am I an imposter? thought Jed.
‘Mr Thompson . . .’
‘Is no longer conscious. But this is of course important to his great-granddaughter who,’ said the Dragon clearly, ‘is now very much his great-granddaughter, no matter what your evidence may prove. Will what you have to say prove anything, or simply imply?’
‘Er, prove.’ The investigator seemed as cowed by the Dragon as everyone else who wasn’t her family or neighbour.
Jed stared at her. Had Matilda Thompson really meant . . .?
Matilda reached over and took her hand. So much touching, thought Jed vaguely. ‘Your home is here, if you wish it, wherever this investigation has led. If you choose to live elsewhere, we will help you, and always be your family.’ She raised a dragon-like eyebrow. ‘Even if at times you find us interfering. Now that is settled.’ Matilda Thompson looked at the two men. ‘What do you have to say?’
The investigator held out a leather folder. Matilda Thompson took it and opened it. ‘What am I looking at?’
‘Photographs of Mrs Rose Zambriski and Mrs Rose or Violet Skellowski. We obtained the first one from Mr Zambriski, resident of Texas . . .’
The words vanished as Jed looked at the photos. She had never seen a photo of her mother, nor one of her father. She wondered if any existed of herself, except the ones taken at school. Her parents had not been given to photograph albums.
Three photos: a portrait of a young woman with blonde hair in an old-fashioned style, red lipstick, red cheeks — the photo strangely tinted, the colours too vivid; the next another studio shot, with the colour more subtly done but still not quite real, the same woman, thinner, a scragginess the additional make-up couldn’t hide; and the third a snapshot, the woman in a mink stole, red-painted mouth open in a laugh. Suddenly Jed could almost hear it, that too-loud drunken laugh.
She was going to be sick . . .
She felt something pressed into her hand. Warm tea. ‘Drink,’ said Matilda, and Jed did.
The nausea faded. Matilda’s hand rested comfortingly on her shoulder.
‘They are all of the same woman,’ Jed said quietly.
‘Eat a pikelet,’ said Matilda, as if pikelets were more important than mothers or family or belonging.
She ate. It had strawberry jam and cream on it.
‘That is my step-granddaughter, Rose, in those photographs,’ Matilda stated formally, as though someone were taking notes in the corner. ‘Please go on.’
She was Tommy’s great-granddaughter. She hadn’t realised how much she had doubted she was until now. She was his great-granddaughter!
The investigator talked. He must have a name, but no one had thought to tell it to her or if they had she hadn’t heard. Just as she hardly heard the words now.
‘According to Mr Zambriski, Mrs Rose Zambriski, as she was then, told him that she wanted a divorce about three years after they married. Mr Zambriski agreed to the divorce, but Mrs Zambriski insisted that they be divorced under California law, which would have given her half of Mr Zambriski’s estate as well as alimony. Mr Zambriski therefore sought to prove his wife had committed adultery, which would mean he did not have to pay her alimony, nor would she receive anything in the settlement. That is when Mrs Zambriski just disappeared. It is probably why she called herself Violet on Miss Kelly’s birth certificate and why she did not put down her maiden name, as Miss Kelly’s birth would have been proof of adultery.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Mr Zambriski presumably didn’t want to mention this before — it gave him too good a reason to bump off his wife. But now there is proof she died naturally he’s opened up. He’s tried to have his wife declared dead several times since then, as that would have allowed him to marry again. He has been . . . grateful . . . to have the matter finally settled.’
‘I can imagine.’ Matilda glanced at Jed. Her grasp on her hand tightened. ‘But I don’t think we need to hear any more about Mr Zambriski now. Jed may have questions later, if you wouldn’t mind staying in Gibber’s Creek for a few days? Thank you,’ said Matilda Thompson, rising. ‘Please, enjoy your tea. I’ll be down in a short while. But Jed and I need to tell my husband what you have found out.’
‘But you said he was unconscious —’ said Mr Jeffries.
‘Of course he is,’ said Matilda. ‘But he will still want to know. Jed?’ She held out her hand.
Jed took it. They climbed the stairs together.
Chapter 71
JED
26 JULY 1969
The two men stayed, not in the house, but at the
Waltzing Matilda Motel in town, which Matilda simply called The Motel in withering tones, as if she refused to speak its proper name. Jed wondered if the investigator was impatient, wanting to go back to Brisbane. Did he have a family waiting there?
Strange, she thought, sitting once more in Tommy’s room, Nancy next to her resting her hands on her vast lump like a camel’s but in the wrong place, to think of Brisbane still puttering on without her. Her school friends who would be at university, or Teacher’s College. One had wanted to be a dentist. Weird to choose to work with other people’s rotting teeth . . .
She had no wish to go back there. One day, perhaps, in many years’ time, to see palm trees against that particularly Brisbane blue sky, the Glasshouse Mountains rearing up on the horizon. To meet the teachers who had been . . . kind. Interested, which was even better than kind, because they had shown her without her realising it that there was life beyond school, beyond her life as it was then. She had always had the idea of ‘when I am at university’ as a talisman for the future.
Now, it seemed, she might truly get there.
‘Jed, could you fetch Matilda, please?’ asked Nancy quietly. ‘And Michael and Jim?’
Jed blinked. Tommy’s breathing had changed. It was hoarse, almost panting. His nose and eyes looked too large for his thin face.
She hurried from the room. Matilda Thompson was in the kitchen, helping dry the dishes. She took one look at Jed’s face and there was no need for words. ‘Will you get Michael?’ she asked Anita. ‘He’s over at the shearing shed. Jed will get Jim. He’s in the study.’
Anita nodded.
Jed knocked on the study door. ‘Mr Thompson, Nancy asked if you would come . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Would you mind if I stayed in the room too?’
He looked surprised. ‘Why would you not?’ He preceded her up the stairs.
The room had three chairs. Nancy stayed in hers. Matilda Thompson took another. Michael stood next to his wife, his hand in hers. Jim Thompson stood behind his brother. When Jed looked at him again his face was wet with tears.
One breath. Another. And another.
Jed waited for another, but it didn’t come. She began to count, had reached twenty when she realised the room was frozen. Not just the dead man on the bed but all of them. Nancy’s arms were around Michael now, awkwardly loving. Jim Thompson moved first, putting his arms around his mother. She leaned back into his embrace, her eyes dry. ‘Could you leave me alone with him awhile?’
‘Of course, Mum.’ Michael helped Nancy up. Jed followed them down the staircase. She was halfway down when she heard the scream.
It was like a dingo wailing, like grief torn out of a body and flying free. She glanced at the others. But they looked carefully down the stairs, not at Jed. She had reached the bottom of the staircase when she noticed that her cheeks too were wet.
Chapter 72
JED
JULY 1969
Five days to the funeral. Frost turned the grass white and whiskered the barbed wire; the sheep looked reproachful every time Jed passed, as if they blamed humans for frozen grass. A new dress arrived for her, black linen, almost school uniformish, and black shoes. For Tommy’s sake, and his family’s, she would wear them. She hated black.
And what then? No one had asked her to leave yet, or even to move to Overflow. They seemed to take it for granted she knew her future. Or perhaps no one had had time to think of her at all.
Except Nicholas. He visited each day, at the end of Matron Clancy’s shift, while she drove on to Overflow to check on Nancy, then picked him up on her return.
There were no words of love, nor any more kisses. She felt too numb to want them. They talked of Tommy, a little, but mostly of economics for her schoolwork, the Gross National Product and how to calculate it, Xerxes’s battle against the ancient Athenians, and the water cycle. He asked her questions from old exam papers, and mostly she got them right. It was still strangely easy to learn by herself, memorising the textbooks, even easier than listening while it was recited to her by a teacher.
He brought her more of his novel too. She read it; told him it was brilliant, but knew her mind was too numb to assess it truly now. Or rather that her body was too firmly here, at Drinkwater, to roam in his space battles among the stars.
She studied mostly because everyone else seemed to find comfort in the jobs they had to do, paperwork and funeral arrangements and cooking for the wake. Twice she helped Michael put out hay for the ewes in lamb, hauling the strings off the bales and tumbling them from the back of the ute, taking a strange new joy in outdoor work, the sheep scents of lanolin and droppings, the glint of the river, the high sky, the pelicans swooping down like small seaplanes to land on the water.
On the third day after Tommy’s death, when she came down to breakfast, she found Mr Jeffries in the dining room, eating scrambled eggs and fried tomato. Two more women had arrived to help with the housework now that Jim’s wife, Iris, was staying, with their sons Toby and Philip. One of them looked in at the sound of Jed’s footsteps. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’
‘What is there?’ She still couldn’t get used to being asked what she’d like to eat.
‘Eggs and bacon? Scrambled eggs? Sausages, lamb’s fry?’
‘What’s lamb’s fry?’
The woman looked shocked. ‘You’ve never eaten lamb’s fry? Goodness gracious. You’ll have to try that.’
She vanished. Mr Jeffries stood politely till Jed sat down, then went back to his meal. He nodded towards the teapot. ‘Good morning, Miss Kelly. The tea’s just made.’
The table was set as usual with teacups and bread-and-butter plates, a rack of toast, milk jug, sugar, brown sugar, salt, pepper, mustard, jams, butter, honey, Vegemite and a prosaic bottle of tomato sauce as well as cutlery. Jed helped herself to tea and tried to think of the investigator’s name. She compromised with, ‘Your companion isn’t with you?’
‘Mr Henderson went back to Brisbane. But if you’ve any questions, he will be in his office next week — you could phone him there.’
She shook her head. One day, perhaps, she might want to know more about the man her mother had married, know more about her mother too. Just now her mind and heart were overwhelmed.
The door opened. Michael came in, rubbing his hands. ‘Breakfast! Morning, Jed, Mr Jeffries.’
‘Didn’t you eat at home? How’s Nancy?’ asked Jed.
‘Nancy is as big as a whale. Moira’s taken leave and is staying with us for the next month. Nancy’s mum’s there too.’ He grinned. ‘I left them washing the starch out of the new nappies. That baby’s going to have more clothes than I do. And breakfast was cornflakes. Could I have an omelette?’ he asked hopefully, as Anita put a plate in front of Jed and another rack of fresh toast on the table. ‘Tomato and cheese and maybe a sausage? And bacon if there is any.’
Anita smiled, nodded and went out. Jed looked at her plate. Two flat grey slabs covered with brown gravy, a grilled tomato half, and a large cake of what looked like leftover vegetables fried together.
The grey slabs smelled like the stockyards behind the shearing shed. She took a cautious bite of one of them. It tasted even worse. She tried the fried vegetables. To her relief they were good, a hint of egg and onion. She reached for the tomato sauce to remove the last taint of lamb’s fry.
Michael helped himself to toast and half the bowl of strawberry jam. ‘Jed, would you mind if we had a chat after breakfast?’
She put down her knife and fork. Was this when the family asked her to leave? No, she thought, looking at the calm and cheerful kindness on Michael’s face. He wouldn’t look like that if he thought it was going to be something she wouldn’t like. Maybe he was going to suggest she move to Overflow; start work at River View again to support herself.
‘Of course,’ she said.
‘Good. Thanks,’ he added as a piled-high plate was slipped in front of him. ‘Has Mum eaten?’
‘Lamb chops and gravy and tomato and two s
lices of toast,’ said Anita: the whole house was checking that Matilda Thompson was keeping up her strength. ‘And two biscuits with cheese and tomato for early morning tea.’
‘Good. How’s the food going for tomorrow? Do you want me to pick up the ice from town?’
Jed let the talk wash over her. She felt like she was floating, for the first time in years letting life happen to her and around her, allowing others to make decisions for her. It was restful. Comforting. Good. A place where even the lamb’s fry had been given to her with kind intentions.
She hoped that whatever they had planned for her later that morning wasn’t the equivalent of lamb’s fry.
Three Thompsons sat in the sitting room with Mr Jeffries. No, four, thought Jed, as she sat in the armchair opposite Jim Thompson and Michael on the sofa. She was now a Thompson too, even if she didn’t bear their name. Mr Jeffries held a manila folder. The others’ hands were empty, apart from Michael’s, which held a teacup with a final slice of toast balanced on its saucer.
‘Jed,’ said Jim, ‘we’ve called you here to —’
‘You make it sound like a board meeting,’ put in Michael.
‘Mike, this is a serious matter —’
‘Shush, the pair of you.’ Matilda Thompson could still silence her sons effectively, but she looked . . . not frail, exactly, but still in shock at a world that did not have her husband in it. ‘Jed, excuse the formality. We thought it best if we were all here when you heard this, so you know that we all agree.’
‘I . . . thank you, Mrs Thompson.’
‘It’s probably time you called me Matilda. Or Grandma, like Jim’s boys.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘What name do you use when you think of me?’
The Ghost by the Billabong Page 37