Joyful

by Robert Hillman

  Daniel shook his head, still smiling. ‘Hey, Leon, you are an angry man. Okay, my friend, I understand.’

  Leon walked from the shop sick with abhorrence. He had still to purchase a pistol but was not so foolish as to inquire about it in his present state. He drove three circuits of the town before he located the road to Beechworth. Had Craig Wilton said on the left or on the right? And how far? Leon wobbled all over the road in his attempt to scan the properties on both sides, alarming an oncoming driver who sounded his horn in a long, diminishing scream.

  chapter 15

  At Joyful

  HE FOUND the property he took to be Joyful sitting a long way back from the road, screened by foliage. He tried eight keys before he could open the padlock on the gate. The track to the house dipped to cross a timber bridge over a small creek lined with willows, then ascended beneath a canopy of overarching elms. It dipped and rose again before expiring twenty metres from the marble steps of the house.

  Leon was surprised at the size of the place. He had been picturing a love nest. In his bulky mass of keys he searched for one that looked as if it might open heavy double doors. He walked with echoing steps down the timber floor of a hallway walled in rich panels, the sort that might lead to the mayoral chambers of a town hall. With a new key, he opened the door to a small chamber leading to a sitting room with tall, divided windows in the north wall, upholstered seats below them. The house was absurd. Who on earth had his great-grandfather thought he was, the Anglo-Armenian squire of some bush manor?

  Everything was scratched and worn and peeling—panels, plaster, window frames, skirting. Or so it seemed at first. But as Leon stalked about the house searching for some sign of his wife’s touch, some fragment forgotten in a corner, a shoe (was that likely?) a handkerchief (she didn’t carry handkerchiefs) he saw more and more signs of repair. The timber floors had been polished with beeswax at some time in their history, and the polishing looked to have been renewed fairly recently. Rows of tiny holes in the planks of the sitting room revealed that coverings had been pulled up. Half the panels in the library had been stripped and prepared for restaining. In a room off the library that may have been intended as a study the ceiling, cornices and roses had been carefully repainted. Was this the infernal Daniel? How dare he! Leon kicked spitefully at one of the stripped panels, then kicked harder until he’d left a worthwhile sort of mark.

  The four downstairs bedrooms, opening off a hall that ran the length of the house from east to west, were haphazardly furnished with what looked like the left-behinds of a century of tenants: an iron-frame bed without a mattress in one bedroom; a varnished dresser with a cracked mirror in another; a couple of bentwood chairs. There were cheap plywood tables and chests of the sort Leon’s great-grandfather had turned out from factories in three state capitals and sold in his national chain of furniture stores. Not a single item of much value; almost everything superior to the junk in Enchanted. So why hadn’t Daniel stolen it for his shop? In the strangely L-shaped dining room, three marble mantelpieces and a huge, recessed mirror with an ormolu frame had also survived theft. But how? The mirror and mantels dated from the time of the house’s construction and would be worth thousands of dollars. Leon might have conceded that he hadn’t yet uncovered exactly what sort of scoundrel Daniel was, maybe he wasn’t a thief. But the loathing was too strong for him to stand back and think straight.

  The house had a basement. Leon found it by opening a door below the staircase. He took the steps gingerly, twelve of them, but the darkness was too thick to see anything and he couldn’t find a light switch.

  Among the rooms of the upper floor he discovered an observatory, with a sliding panel in the ceiling and a pedestal where a telescope would have been mounted. The mechanism that controlled the sliding panel still worked—a small, cast-iron wheel fitted to a metal plate on the wall. The screw concealed within the wall made a noise like a Mixmaster on low speed when the wheel was turned. The panel was drawn along tracks until an aperture a metre by a metre-and-a-half was opened. The mechanism wouldn’t have worked at all unless it had been serviced over the years or refurbished recently. Daniel again? Leon wondered whether it was possible to prosecute.

  That aside, what sort of man had his great-grandfather been? A canny businessman, yes, and a scientist by training, but it had been said—hadn’t it?—that he’d also been something of an experimenter with domestic relations? Dorothy had mentioned once—on what occasion he couldn’t imagine—that Charlie had kept a ‘harem’. An exaggeration, surely. But gazing up at the shiny, mid-afternoon blue of the sky, Leon had to wonder whether his family had been chosen by a different experimenter, a cosmic one, to test extremes of avidity. He, Leon, came at the end, after salacious Charlie; after Jennifer, the great-aunt with the appetite for salvation. So what was his hunger? And what sort of data did he provide?

  He left the observatory and peered into kitchens, bedrooms, a toilet finished in tiles of a mossy green under a coating of dust thick enough to plough. In a second, more modern, toilet in the back northern corner of the house he gazed down at the evidence of recent defecation, pressed a lever to empty the bowl then relieved his own bladder. He thought of Tess maybe seated here, of her lack of squeamishness about bodily function (‘I’ve stunk the dunny up like a stable, darling, apologies’) and smiled to recall an emergency in a park in St Petersburg, when she’d squatted behind the meagre camouflage of a flowering bush to pee with a long sigh of pleasure.

  The bedrooms along the northern side of the house downstairs were duplicated upstairs. The first and biggest of the upstairs bedrooms was bare, floorboards exposed and, by the looks of it, readied for waxing. The second of the bedrooms was not bare, and not empty.

  Leon stood in the doorway gazing down at two sleepers wrapped in each other’s arms on a plump mattress, covered almost to their chins by a vivid orange sleeping bag unzipped and opened out to form a blanket. The sleepers were boy and girl, or man and girl. Leon thought they might be Aborigines, but never having seen an Aborigine in the flesh, he couldn’t be certain.

  The sleepers did not look as if they were about to wake. Leon remained in the doorway watching.

  The debris of a meal was strewn about on the bare boards of the floor, Ski punnets, a plastic container of Coon cheese slices, mixed-grain sliced bread, IGA butter, a kitchen knife resting on a flattened sheet of deli wrap, Tim Tams, Diet Coke. A collapsed blue and red backpack sat against the wall beneath the nearer window. Two pairs of jeans lay entwined on the floor, mimicking the embrace of their owners. A guitar case artistically covered in the tiny stickers found on supermarket fruit stood upright in a corner.

  Leon recognised a device fashioned from a plastic Cottee’s bottle as a bong of the sort that Justin employed.

  How softly they slept in the muted afternoon light, boy and girl! The girl snored faintly with a rippling rhythm. The young man’s head was turned into the crook of her half-raised arm. The smell in the room was dominated by dope fumes grown heavy and stale, but mixed with it was the tang of bodies not too freshly washed, and not at all unpleasant. Watching the sleepers, Leon became aware of a diminishment of grief, or more a changeover from grief to mere misery in his heart. He had slept like this with his wife many times, her head against his skin. He had known something of this pleasure, Tess’s golden hair disarrayed by sleep and the slow curling and uncurling of her fingertips against his neck. Strange how he had come to love touch when once it had made him sick. She had trained him, yes, even to the point where he could bear, could enjoy, her unconscious hand drifting down his chest and over his abdomen to close in contentment around his penis as if it were a child’s soft toy, a teddy.

  He checked the remaining two bedrooms on tip-toe, left the house quietly.

  Out in the open air, melancholy hardened to grief once more. He had nowhere to go.

  He turned his mobile back on, intending to ring someone, the Beechworth Chamber of Commerce perhaps, to inquire about gun shops in t
he region. A censorious message appeared on the display telling him that twenty-one calls had been missed and eleven messages were waiting to be heard. He listened to the messages out of respect for Susie at the shop, who would be worried and would have to be called.

  ‘Susie. Leon, a policeman called from Northern Traffic and says your car has been in an accident! You better call me if you can!’

  ‘Susie. The policeman’s name is…Howlett, Senior Constable Howlett. Now he is saying that you left the scene of the accident and didn’t make arrangements for your car to be towed somewhere. Bad thing to do apparently. You are in trouble with the police so call me straight away after this message, please.’

  ‘Your car is at Clifton Panels. It is in 23 Combrey Street, Northcote, and the telephone number is nine four two eight one six one six. Ask for Hassan. Policeman Howlett is saying now you are not in trouble maybe. I have telephoned to nine hospitals for you! You call me straight away after this message.’

  ‘Susie. Very worried! Bad behaviour! Telephone me straight away after this message.’

  ‘Leon, Paul Newsome. I’ve come across a Pewlett and Hargate, Shetland Littorals, 1822, folio, twenty-one plates, five coloured, tissue interleaves intact, perfect condition but for slightly burred spine at top, not significant, inscribed by author and artist for Lady Wembley, November third 1822, quote, Madam, Please accept our gratitude, and six more lines of fol-de-rol but excellent because Ma Wembley is the inscribee of the Chapman set I showed you last year. Anyway, say eleven thousand, twelve? Give me a bell.’

  He rang Susie at the shop.

  ‘Leon Joyce Fine and Rare Books, Susan Lwin speaking.’

  ‘Susie, it’s Leon.’

  A yelp came down the line, very loud, perhaps a mixture of relief and anger.

  ‘About time! Leon, I am so upset with you, this is very bad. Policeman Howlett is looking for you, all of the police, but he is saying now you are not in trouble but must ring him. If you are in the hospital, okay, I understand, but I don’t think you are in the hospital, I think you—’

  ‘Susie, I do apologise. I’ve just gone up the country—’

  ‘The country? Why? What are you in the country for?’

  ‘I don’t know. See Greg Parslow at Burton and Parslow, he’s just down the way before Ormond Road. You’re not to worry. I’ve made…arrangements. You’re not to worry. Greg Parslow, understand?’

  ‘What are you talking about, Leon? What are you talking about arrangements? I will come and get you. Let me close up and I will come and get you, okay? Where are you?’

  He ended the call but had no sooner done so than the phone gave its text burr. He read the message, in case it was something that might forestall Howlett from bothering Susie. It was from Evie, not Howlett:

  Hd cll susi hr ago mad stuff cops whaa?

  Other messages were waiting but remained unread. Leon turned the mobile off and wandered back to the car, head on his chest. A gun was not crucial. If he could reach a hardware store before it closed he could pick up a length of hose, and gas himself with exhaust fumes.

  A voice called, ‘Oi!’

  Leon turned in surprise to see the girl from upstairs hurrying along the stone path. She was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a faded red windcheater so loose that it reached almost to her knees and left her skinny shoulders exposed.

  ‘Better bugger off!’ she said. She had stopped a few metres away with her hands made into small fists. She was more than a child. Seventeen, eighteen; quite tall. ‘This’s private property, if you can’t read!’

  Read what?

  ‘I’m entitled to be here,’ said Leon. ‘This is my house.’

  The young man appeared at the top of the marble steps holding a pair of elastic-sided boots in one hand. He sat down on the top step and pulled them on.

  ‘This is Duduroa land, buddy!’ the girl said. ‘So that means you’re trespassing.’ She added after a few seconds, ‘Technically.’

  The young man laughed. ‘Technically?’ he said. He had his boots on now but remained sitting on the step.

  The girl glanced back at him. ‘Yeah, technically he is, well!’

  ‘And what? You’re Duduroa, are you?’

  ‘Maybe,’ the girl laughed and put her hand into her curls, ‘Smartarse!’

  They took a moment to smile at each other, the young man on the steps, the girl with her arm raised. The young man must have been five or six years older than the girl, and though he seemed far more concealed than her, more private, he was still soft about the mouth and the mirth in his face was not adult mirth. He stood and came down the steps, holding his hand out to Leon and at the same time drawing his arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘Lucas,’ he said.

  Leon said, ‘Leon Joyce,’ and shook his hand.

  The girl said, ‘Kristobel, with a K,’ and stuck out her hand. Leon shook it.

  ‘This is your place?’ said Lucas, nodding at the house. He offered Leon a pouch of Drum from which he’d drawn a small wad of tobacco and a packet of papers. ‘Want one?’

  ‘I don’t quite know how to do it,’ said Leon.

  ‘Give it to me,’ said Kristobel. Leon and Lucas waited while Kristobel rapidly rolled a cigarette, fitting a filter at the tip.

  ‘Wet the paper with your lips first,’ she said, ‘or it’ll stick. Just quick, not too sloppy.’

  She flicked a lighter and held the flame to the cigarette, smiling encouragement at Leon. ‘Good for you!’

  ‘This is your place?’ said Lucas.

  ‘No, see,’ said Kristobel, ‘now you got it stuck. Each time you take a drag, make the tip a little bit wet. It’s not like ready-mades!’

  Leon freed the paper tip from his lips.

  ‘You reckon this’s your place, well?’ said Kristobel. She looked at Lucas. ‘Told you Danny’s full of shit!’

  ‘No,’ said Lucas, ‘I told you he’s full of shit.’

  ‘Bullshit! I told you he’s full of shit! You’ve got it arse-about. It was me told you!’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Lucas. ‘It’s your place, is it Leon?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leon. The tobacco was stronger than he was used to, but pleasing.

  ‘How’s Danny get into the picture?’ asked Lucas. ‘You know who I’m talking about? Mister Danny in Yack?’

  ‘He was staying here, at my wife’s invitation. He’s under the impression that my wife left the house to him. My wife died recently.’

  ‘Sorry about that, Leon,’ said Lucas.

  ‘She didn’t, but? Leave him this place?’ said Kristobel.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Full of shit,’ said Kristobel.

  ‘Thing is, Leon, Danny lets us stay here,’ said Lucas. ‘Charges us, naturally.’

  ‘You’re welcome to remain,’ said Leon. ‘There will be no charge.’

  ‘Nah, ’s not right.’

  ‘Be assured, I have no objection at all. I hadn’t seen this place before today. I have no moral right to it. But neither does your friend.’

  ‘Danny?’ said Kristobel. ‘He’s not our friend! Farrk!’ She frowned and put her head on one side. ‘Maybe in a way, I s’pose.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Lucas, ‘we’re off, Leon, so we won’t be taking up your offer. But thanks.’

  ‘As you wish.’

  Lucas went back into the house to get Kristobel’s shoes and the backpack and sleeping bags and guitar. Kristobel stayed with Leon. She smiled at him in a way that was meant to encourage him, as Leon realised, and odd though it was, he somehow wished to respond.

  ‘Bad luck, your missus passing on,’ said Kristobel. ‘Looks like you’re a bit fucked up about it, if you don’t mind me saying?’

  ‘No, no. Not at all. I miss her dreadfully, in fact.’

  ‘Yeah, ’s what I thought. Hope she wasn’t on with Danny, for your sake.’

  Leon threw his head back, astonished. ‘How could you possibly know that?’

  ‘Shows,’ said Kristobel.

  ‘But ho
w?’

  ‘Just does.’

  Leon had to smile, it was that ridiculous. This beautiful, skinny girl! He decided her insightfulness deserved acknowledgment. ‘Yes, he made himself indispensable to her, in some way I can’t understand.’

  ‘What himself what?’

  ‘He became…important to her.’

  Kristobel shrugged and looked away. Leon thought she was embarrassed for him. When she looked back, her eyes were blazing. ‘You know what you ought’ve done? You ought’ve punched him in the face! Farrk!’

  Leon felt moved by the girl’s anger and disgust. There was much that she didn’t know in mitigation of his failure, but none of it important. And he guessed, too, that she was not talking entirely about him. Some disappointment, some unpleasant experience of her own with men. Or perhaps it was within her family; some grief of her mother’s. He said, ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right.’

  When Lucas returned, Leon offered to drive the two of them into the town. But they were going much further than Yackandandah; they were off to Albury.

  ‘But how will you get there?’

  Lucas stuck out his thumb. ‘Hitch,’ he said. ‘We had a van, but it’s…not functioning.’

  ‘Rooted,’ said Kristobel.

  ‘Head gasket,’ said Lucas.

  Leon almost said, but didn’t: ‘No one will pick you up, you’re black.’ Instead, he said he would drive them to Albury. Kristobel accepted immediately; Lucas screwed up his face and scratched his head and said no.

  ‘Bullshit!’ said Kristobel.

  ‘No offence,’ said Lucas.

  They asked if they could leave some recording equipment in the basement. The basement was what they paid Danny for, Lucas said. Not for the house, mostly the basement. They’d come back for it in a few weeks.

  Leon said that he was happy to keep the equipment safe for them. He was sorry to see them leave. He wished, in fact, to give them everything he owned, other than what he’d set aside for Susie.

  Part way down the track to the highway, Kristobel stopped, felt in her backpack and came jogging back to Leon.