by Joy Dettman
She shook her head. He spoke of his office, and her eyes spoke of disinterest. She had talking eyes. She sat with him until he emptied his coffee cup, then lifted the strap of her bag over her shoulder and stood.
‘Thank you for coffee. I have driving test soon.’
‘Can I drive you …?’
‘My instructor … Thank you.’
‘What time is your test?’
‘My test will be on twenty-fourth. It is coming very fast.’
He handed her his card as she was leaving. She dropped it into her handbag without a glance.
Gone then. He followed her, at a distance. She went up the escalator. He went up. Followed her until she walked across to the bus stop. He walked then to where he’d parked his Ferrari, and when he drove by the bus stop, she was still waiting for her instructor, or the bus. He double-parked where he could keep an eye on her, and he thought of his mother, who’d spent her life worrying about that girl who wasn’t being educated. She’d learnt something, somewhere. Crows? The company was worth millions.
There was a man who’d had it all, a decent wife and four kids and he’d gone and buggered up everything with his womanising. Freddy was and would ever be a one-woman man, but he’d buggered up his life anyway.
The bus arrived. He didn’t see her board it, but when it moved away, she was no longer waiting, so he tailed it, followed its stops and starts to a roundabout, where she left it to walk.
He drove by her and parked opposite a school entrance. Watched her approach in his rear-view mirror. She glanced at his Ferrari as she passed. Most did. Its windows were darkened. He dropped his chin, turned his face until she walked by.
She turned into a residential street, and he started the motor and followed again, slowly, which was the only way to traverse a narrow street with cars parked on either side. A van approaching from the other direction was prepared to play ‘chicken’. Freddy, ever a ‘chicken’, slid into a driveway and allowed the van through.
She stopped to empty a letterbox. He stopped well back, saw her disappear in behind a neglected garden. There was no mistaking that garden, but he got the number from the letterbox, keyed it into his organiser beside 24 April, then drove on, and for the first time in weeks he wasn’t thinking about faulty heart valves, bowel cancer, DNA or Alzheimer’s.
*
The bank receipts safe in the cake tin, Sarah glanced at Frederick Adam-Jones, Barrister’s card. She knew that name, hadn’t known he was one of her unknown uncles. He was the image of Uncle Bill – or the image of the only photograph she had of Uncle Bill – taken over twenty years ago.
‘Stupid,’ she said, and thought of Marni, who would have adopted him, would have taken his photograph to add to her gallery of family now decorating the refrigerator door.
She’d wanted to put the print of Oliver and the Clark girls on the fridge door, but had settled for a photograph of the photograph – then taken another of eight-month-old Jillian and her father. Peter Clark and the group photograph were now beneath magnets, decorating that fridge door, which may have been why its freezer had stopped freezing ice-cream.
The business card returned to her handbag, she forced her eyes to her baby self. She’d looked like every other smiling baby. He’d looked happy too. Her mother had told her once that they hadn’t found out about her hearing loss until she was fifteen months old. Maybe that’s when he’d bought that tent and hit the roads.
The family gypsy … Frederick Adam-Jones had said.
They’d been gypsies, always moving on – and of all the people at Forest Hill she could have bumped into, she’d had to bump into someone who’d known her, known him.
That 666 no longer showed up on her bank receipts, but that bulk of money was still there, still pushing her into situations she wasn’t ready to handle, like Mrs Vaughn’s death was pushing her to buy a house. She wasn’t ready for that either.
Bob had suggested they move in with him and his mother. Marni thought it was a good idea.
A life-changing amount, the TattsLotto man had said.
World changing. They’d gone to Perth because they could afford to. If they’d stayed home, Mrs Vaughn might still have been alive. That money had made her go to Forest Hill and bump into an uncle.
She’d seen him on television during the Swan trial. Hadn’t looked at him, or not at his face, hadn’t wanted to. Never in a million years would she have believed that he was connected to her family.
She knew of a John the Baptist, a minister. She knew his address. She’d known and loved Uncle Bill the electrician, had seen Clarry the truck driver once, or she’d seen his truck driving into the farm. Gone for a long walk that day and hadn’t come back until that truck was gone. She didn’t know the other brothers’ names. Someone must have mentioned them. She knew there were seven of them.
The jug filled and plugged in, she went to the refrigerator for milk – and saw him again before she opened the door, saw his eyes, his smile. She could remember his face when it hadn’t been smiling, could remember screaming thief at him when she’d been eleven, and screaming worse when she was twelve. He’d had crutches beneath both armpits, policemen at his side that day. Remembered his grimace, his flinching eyes, not because of what she’d screamed but because of how she’d sounded. He might have smiled more often if she’d been a deaf mute.
When she allowed herself, she could remember many things about him. Driving his green station wagon too fast down a dusty road, raising a cloud of dust behind them. She’d believed they’d been chasing a rainbow, that he had to go fast to get there before the rainbow disappeared or he wouldn’t find the pot of gold.
He’d had good teeth, had been easy to lip-read.
Shut that bloody whistle up!
She could remember tumbling on soft green grass in a park where they’d stopped one day, halfway between rainbows, and she’d lost the hearing aid that had whistled. Her mother had known they’d find it. They walked backward and forward, searching that soft green grass, looking for its pink.
Get in the car.
He would have liked to lose that aid.
She’d never heard any of her aids whistle. Marni did. She said, ‘You’re whistling, Mum.’ Gran had heard it. Let me fix your ear, Jilly.
Remembered running down to Daddy who was digging holes, not for pots of gold but for posts so he could make the fence strong enough so the baby cows couldn’t get out on the road and get run over. She’d tried to tell him no more rainbows because Gramp had many pots of gold in his shed.
She’d had a fistful of sticky honeycomb and she’d put her sticky hand on his trousers so he’d look at her.
He’d washed her in the dam, all of her, but he’d got her out, and Gramp had seen what he’d done, and there was roaring, and Gran hadn’t cared that he’d got Jillian out, only that he’d put her in.
Get off my land!
It was Gramp’s land and his father’s. It was Gramp’s rifle, but roly-poly Gran had known how to use it.
You leave them where they are, you bastard of a man.
Not the green wagon at the farm, a white sedan with red on the sides and a boot for their tent that wasn’t a boot. Boots were for feet, not cars. Seven when they’d left the farm that time, when she’d learned that the same word could mean two things.
Many different roads. Many different cars. A red utility once, then a white sedan. It had almost made it across the Nullarbor before it died.
The kid’s deaf and dumb. We’ve got to get her into school.
Kind truck driver patting her head. He helped load the tent and case and bags into his truck so they could get their deaf and dumb kid to school.
In Perth her father had to work, had to put new tyres on other men’s cars, so he could get money to buy a new car. He hadn’t liked staying in one place or working. Her mother had. She’d liked cleaning their cabin that had its own bathroom.
Then that final car, the dark blue Ford.
Get in the car.
Very good. Every week they’d given her a little envelope full of money, until he’d taken it and she couldn’t pay the man in the office his rent for their cabin and the next day, her mother couldn’t go to work.
Peter and Lynette Clark had understood without words, and when her mother was better, Peter had driven them to his bank to open the account so no one could get money out unless both Jillian and Stephanie Jones signed a piece of paper.
A school day when it happened. She was sitting in the classroom beside her friend when Lynette Clark came in with the principal.
Accident, Lynette’s mouth said. Hospital.
And Sarah ripped happy him and smiling baby from the refrigerator door and shredded them, pitched the pieces into the rubbish bag, tied that bag tight and ran it out to the green bin. Buried him in the rubbish where he deserved to be.
FOR SALE
They were celebrating Sarah’s new licence with Bob and his mother, and they’d had to unlock Mrs Vaughn’s house and borrow two of her chairs for them to sit on. Bob moved the table out from the wall. Marni found enough glasses. Bob and his mother had bought a bottle of wine and one of orange juice, a big bunch of flowers and a cream cake with Congratulations Sarah written on the chocolate icing and Bob’s mother invited them twice to move into her spare room and Sarah thanked her twice but didn’t say she would. They might have to. They’d spent last weekend looking at units, large and small, old and new, for rent or for sale. They toured Danni Lane’s house on the internet. It was being auctioned the same day as Mrs Vaughn’s. It was empty. Barbara Lane had gone home to Sydney with her father. Martin Lane was living on his brother’s yacht, down here somewhere. They’d seen it on television, seen Martin Lane and his brother speaking to a reporter.
Bob was opening his bottle of wine when they heard Mrs Vaughn’s doorbell.
‘The agent will be showing someone through,’ Bob’s mother said.
There were no lights on at the house. About to close the door, Marni heard someone at the gates.
‘Anyone about?’ a male voice called.
‘Who’s there?’ Marni yelled.
‘Uncle Fred,’ he said.
Bob opened the gate. He brought him inside, and whoever Uncle Fred was, his shape in the doorway looked like Alfred Hitchcock’s – and his posh voice in that kitchen made it look more ridiculous than usual, and Marni had to borrow a third chair.
*
He’d bought an expensive box of chocolates, and their table and its assortment of glasses looked ridiculous, and one glass still had part of its cheese spread label stuck to it. She held on to it while Bob poured in half an inch of wine then filled it with orange juice. The others drank pure bubbles.
She saw Bob’s second face that night. Her mother always said that he had two faces. He put on his office face and manner for Uncle Fred, who was a barrister, who was the Frederick Adam-Jones who was still trying to get Michael Swan out of jail.
And it was ridiculous that he was her uncle, and Marni kept eyeing her mother, who kept evading her eyes.
They drank the champagne, drank coffee, Sarah cut the cake and Marni found ridiculous plates to put it on and didn’t give anyone a fork because they only had three. It was nice cake. Uncle Fred’s chocolates were nice, and there were a dozen left when their visitors left, which was when Marni let fly.
‘You’re still doing it, aren’t you?’
‘What?’
‘Hiding things from me. That’s what. How many more relatives are you hiding from me?’
‘I talk to him at Forest Hill, only because I think he is Bill, then I say about my driving test, walk away and forget him.’
‘You could have told me.’
‘I don’t want him, Marni. I don’t tell him where we live!’
‘He probably got a sleazy private investigator to snoop around and find us. Where are his brothers?’
‘I know Bill. I thought he was Bill. I don’t know, Marni.’
‘You said John before. Where’s he?’
‘In church somewhere. He is Baptist minister, at Dubbo before you were born. I don’t know where now. Clarry is driving a big truck somewhere. I don’t know where. I don’t know their face, Marni.’
‘Your family is crazy.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah said, then went into the bedroom to get the cake tin. The lid off, she tossed a packet of photographs to Marni. ‘Find one with seven little boy,’ she said, and she started her own search through the second packet.
Marni found the boys, posed for the camera, three small ones seated in a row on a table, four taller ones standing beside and behind them.
‘Him,’ Sarah said, pointing at the smallest, an infant with oversized eyes. ‘Frederick.’ She stabbed the photograph again. ‘Bill. See. Already the same eyes.’
One was a fat, wide-eyed cherub, who looked like a perfect model for one of those old religious paintings. Bill may have been ten, a chubby ten.
‘Which one is your father?’ Sarah pointed to a taller, thinner boy standing beside Bill. ‘How come you don’t know the other ones’ names?’
‘I can’t hear. I know only thing if people tell me. I don’t see them so no one say their name. I know John. He is writing letters to Gramp. I know Clarry. He coming one day in a big truck and Gramp talking about him,’ Sarah said, then started packing the photographs away.
‘You should buy an album for these.’
‘Better in there. I like that lid on tight.’
‘Tell me about your father.’
‘Go to bed. You got school tomorrow.’
‘I haven’t. It’s Anzac Day. Are car places open tomorrow?’
‘Bob will drive us on Saturday.’
‘Will we get one like Bob’s?’
‘I will get a bit old one – so it not hurting too much when someone scratch my paint.’
‘Buy Mrs Vaughn’s. It’s got ready-made scratches.’
‘I will very fast if he will sell to me. He won’t.’
‘Because we stopped him putting his mother in a nursing home.’
‘Yes.’
Marni went to bed. Sarah turned on the computer to browse the internet. She didn’t find Mrs Vaughn’s car advertised on eBay. She found a red Hyundai with fifty-five thousand kilometres on the clock, a used Mazda that looked new. She’d find something on Saturday.
Before closing down, she sent Raymond an email, not about his mother’s car, but because the estate agents she and Marni had spoken to about rental properties had asked for rental references. All she had was an old diary listing the dates and amounts of cash she’d handed to Mrs Vaughn. It was a futile exercise asking Raymond for a reference, but she had to try.
A futile exercise to ask about the car too, but she added two lines at the bottom.
If you are selling your mother’s car, I would be interested in purchasing it.
She hit send then, and it was gone, and second thoughts or not, she couldn’t get it back.
It was close to midnight when she returned Mrs Vaughn’s chairs, and while the house was unlocked, she did a load of washing. She’d be back at work next Wednesday, and soon after that, they’d be homeless.
They owned no furniture worth moving. If they bought a car, they could load what was worth taking into it and live at a motel.
Bob and his mother wouldn’t allow that.
It would be easy to give in, and, as Marni said, just go with the flow. Living with a family changed your relationship to that family. After a time, you became a part of that family.
Used to love being a part of the Clark family, loved watching Oliver’s hands pulling apart computers. Had loved his hands before she’d loved him. She didn’t love Bob’s hands, didn’t feel anything when he kissed her.
In some cultures parents arranged their children’s marriages and the bride and groom didn’t kiss before the wedding. Some of those
marriages must have worked. Bob was a good man. He had a good job and was good at it – and maybe he needed two faces to be good at it.
Marni liked him. She liked his mother. Maybe people grow out of that first-love rush of feeling when touching a hand can take your breath away. Maybe it was time to put Oliver away, to grow up and do the sensible thing.
She hadn’t kissed a boy before Oliver, and she’d only done it that first time to stop his mouth trying to find words. After that, they’d talked with their bodies and it had been a better way to talk than with words. He’d been so happy, and better too. He’d been better from August to December.
Then he’d got worse.
The day the ambulance came to take him to the hospital, his eyes had known he wouldn’t be coming home. He hadn’t known what their body talking had done. She’d known. Hadn’t told anyone. Hadn’t known what she was going to do.
Then Gran and Gramp’s Christmas card had arrived. Their usual twenty dollars was inside it but the writing on it wasn’t Gran’s.
Dear Jilly,
Gran hasn’t been herself for a while now, but we’re struggling along and hoping things get better.
Love, Gramp and Gran
She’d withdrawn money from Jillian’s bank account, booked a seat on a bus to Melbourne then bought her own Christmas card, her own stamp.
Dear Gran and Gramp,
Thank you for the twenty dollars. I would like to visit you for Christmas. I will be in Melbourne on Thursday 23rd. Can you please pick me up at Eltham Station at two o’clock?
Love from Jilly (Sarah)
She’d gone to the hospital to see Oliver one last time but he’d already gone to that sleeping place where hurting people go before they die. She’d kissed him, put his hand near the place where his baby was growing, then walked away from him.
Found Gramp old-man thin, toothless and almost blind. He hadn’t understood her, and when she’d written him a note, he’d been unable to read it without his magnifying glass.
No dogs to greet her, no Gran, only an angry little lady locked inside, and when they’d unlocked the door, that angry little lady hadn’t wanted Sarah in her house – and Sarah hadn’t wanted to be in it.