All of this would have happened just moments before the well-dressed man sat down on Valley Road. And it infuriated Benny ever after that she couldn’t remember seeing him as she came in, but of course she didn’t, she was too busy looking around at the main road of the town. She drove past a post office, a pizzeria, a hardware store, a bookstore, and she felt good about the general feel of the place and the look of the people. A man in a brimmed hat and a flannel shirt was reading a newspaper in a neat park. Benny saw how wide the main street was—it was immensely wide—and she took in the handsome brick shopfronts with verandahs above them. There was a crowd of people outside a shop called Fran’s World Famous Pies, and a big pub sat on a broad corner, painted pink and yellow and green. A truck rattled past, filling her car with an unfamiliar aroma that Benny would soon recognise as horses.
But Benny didn’t see a man in a well-made suit, and she didn’t notice the gold leaf letters that spelt out CEDAR VALLEY CURIOS & OLD WARES either. Small street trees were planted along that section of Valley Road, and there was a particularly low awning that obscured easy vision from passing cars.
Benny merely drove by, turned left at the grocery store, past the weedy vacant lot, and soon found the pale green house, the key in the letterbox.
She unlocked the door and stood for a moment in the living room that smelled of dust and closed windows. There was a slow-combustion fireplace in the corner and a pile of logs and newspapers in a basket beside it. Odette had told her the house was furnished, and it surely was: long couches with large cushions, a coffee table, an armchair, everything tasteful and old. There was a wooden sideboard with a record player on it, and paintings in antique frames on the walls.
Benny went along the hallway to the kitchen, put her bag on the table and read a note Odette had left on the bench. It said she’d been over yesterday to turn the fridge on and that she’d left some milk and cheese in it. Benny saw fresh bread on the counter, some peaches, and dirt-smudged eggs in a bowl.
Possum may still be living in the shed, he sleeps in the washbasin on the shelf. Python lives in the roof—don’t worry, he can’t get into the house.
Benny read this and glanced up at the ceiling worriedly. Then she unlatched the double doors that opened out onto a little deck, and she sat down on the slats and ate a peach.
The garden was overgrown with trees and weeds and vines, and the shed at the back was an old slanted thing with a corrugated-iron roof and a door hanging off one hinge. Behind it was bush, dense high gum trees with cicadas singing in them and bird calls she didn’t recognise.
Benny contemplated the wild garden and thought of sending a letter to Jules to tell him where she was and what she was doing, but as soon as the thought occurred to her, she knew she most probably wouldn’t.
Instead, she went back inside and decided on the front bedroom, which was smaller than the middle one, but she liked the picture window facing the street. She made a few trips to the car, bringing in her suitcases and boxes, and she unpacked her sheets and made the bed. A quilt was folded on the seat of the picture window so she spread it out on top and thought the bed looked nice. She opened her box of treasures, setting her collection of interesting rocks and stones in a neat line along the bedhead. Then she pulled out her favourite photo of her mother and put the silver frame on the bedside table.
Benny Miller sat still in the quiet room and stared at the picture.
‘Hi, Mum,’ she said. ‘I miss you.’
The walls were cream and the room was quiet. Benny’s mum—whose name was Vivian Alice Moon—smiled back from the photo.
‘I miss you too, Benny,’ said Benny aloud to herself, as if it were her mother talking, and she lay back on the coloured quilt.
Benny was not much of a crier.
She was more given to quiet rumination, or spells of busied distraction, buoying herself with some activity or another, finding relief in her capabilities, keeping herself afloat with a valiant kind of independence.
But being so far from home—perhaps that’s what it was—the newness of it snuck up on her. She pulled her knees up to her chest, squeezed her eyes closed and, though she did everything she could to hold it in, out it came, the hot tears and sound. Benny lay on her side and made a cocoon of her body there on the bed, curling herself up as small as she could as if trying to disappear. She wept softly at first. Then she creaked open, like the door of an old shed, and she sobbed with all the elemental sadness that a person can only feel when their mother has newly died.
3
Cora Franks generally shut Curios at four-thirty, but on that day it was a while after. She’d got stuck into the book organising and decided to make new signs for her sections: Romance, Crime/Horror, Action, Fiction, Cooking and Misc. The signs were good, she thought, since she’d used a ruler under the letters to make the bottom edges straight, and she’d made them out of fluoro cardboard, so they stood out from the front of the shop if you were looking back towards the bookcases.
What stood out when you looked at the front of the shop, though, now that Cora was on her way towards the door, was the silhouette of the man in the suit, who had sat down there—how long ago now? A long time. What on earth was he still doing there? Begging? Cora Franks shook her head in annoyance and stepped out the front door, closing it behind her, and while she was in the process of locking it she began speaking, very sternly, to the suited gentleman on the ground. ‘Excuse me, sir. That is not the best place to sit.’
The man stared calmly forward. His eyes were fixed on the chemist across the road. They were blue—his eyes—or they were grey; it was hard to tell in the five o’clock light.
‘Sir?’ said Cora, looking across at him now.
She finished locking up and shuffled on her brief legs the three or so metres to where he was sitting.
He was leaning back so his head was propped against the glass. His legs were straight out in front of him and his feet, in polished shoes, splayed out to either side. Looking at him front on, the gold lettering of Old Wares appeared to go right through him like a stake, impaling him sideways. His body covered most of the W. He looked so peaceful it seemed almost a shame to disturb him—and he had such a likeable face. Cora was already feeling bad for thinking ill of him. He was the kind of man who made you feel safe just to look at, like a gentlemanly hero from an old movie. He would know the way out of a difficult situation, a man like that. And what a nice suit it was, a properly authentic vintage suit.
‘Sir?’ she said again, more gently.
‘Not one for conversation, is he?’ said Lil Chapman, who had wandered out from the quilting shop next door to have a cigarette. ‘I’ve seen you sitting there most of the afternoon, doing your stretches. You like to stretch, do you? Are you from out of town?’ This last part was said slowly in a loud voice, as if he were either a moron or lacking basic knowledge of the English language. Lil Chapman, her hair faded and her cheeks creased with age, looked up to the sky and blew out a line of smoke.
Cora just stared downwards. Perhaps she went a little pale.
‘Sir? Please!’ she said, urgently this time, and waved her hand in front of his face.
The man did not blink. His chest, under a wide-striped tie that looked moderately expensive, was perfectly still.
‘Lil,’ said Cora, ‘I think we’d better call someone.’
4
Benny Miller had stayed on the bed awhile, inert, staring out the picture window, and then she’d got up and looked around the house.
She opened every cupboard in the bathroom and inspected the scant contents: a bag of cotton buds, an old loofah, oatmeal soap, some Gumption. The wardrobes in all the bedrooms were empty, except for coathangers and spare blankets. The third bedroom, at the back, had a single bed and an old easel in the corner. There was no television, no tape player, and the record player didn’t work. But Benny did find a small radio and an old jaffle iron in one of the kitchen cupboards, and she made a cheese jaffle. She ate at the out
door setting on the small wooden deck.
Benny had plugged the radio in and found a local station but outside she couldn’t hear it above the cicadas. The air teemed with their tremendous singing. And every so often a sound like a branch breaking off a tree came from the bush behind the shed—crack!—and loud rustling would follow. Benny wondered what creatures dwelt in that bush, and she was surprised to find these noises—the rich aliveness of them—quite calming.
•
Cora Franks, meanwhile, was not calm. She opened Curios again, her hand shaking as she inserted the key in the lock, and went directly to the telephone to call someone. Cora couldn’t decide if she should request an ambulance or a policeman, so she dialled triple-o and asked for both.
‘A man has died,’ she said. ‘A man is dead on the street!’
The operator, a dour woman, responded in an untroubled voice with a series of rehearsed questions. Had the man been checked for signs of life? Were there dangers present to other persons? Had the man met with foul play?
‘Yes, we checked him, kind of,’ said Cora. And, ‘Oh. Well—hold on and I’ll have a look.’
There was no sign of danger or foul play as far as Cora could see. But now that these things had been mentioned, Cora began to wonder. She looked around for intimations of violence or an impending threat, and was a little disappointed to report that she couldn’t see evidence of either. No discarded weapon, no trail of blood. Not even a lonely drop of blood. Just a man leaning against her window, who looked perfectly fine, apart from being dead.
Lil wandered in wanly and she listened as Cora was describing the scene, even managing to get in a comment about the weather (it was getting a little windy) and lamenting the fact that death had taken this particular man, who clearly had an old-world sense of style.
‘He must’ve been on his way in to buy something,’ said Cora, as the thought occurred to her.
The operator remained unmoved.
‘Nerves of steel, have you?’ Cora asked as the conversation drew to its natural close.
‘It’s been a long day,’ said the operator, and Cora hung up.
Then she and Lil, arms folded, waited on the footpath beside the man, as if guarding him from potential predators, while a small crowd gathered.
‘He’s passed,’ said Cora to the congregation while the dead man stared at the shops opposite. ‘We’ve checked him,’ she added reassuringly. ‘He’s very dead.’
The wind was picking up a little, Cora had been right about that, and across the road, on a high verandah, washing flapped around in the breeze.
With numb detachment, Lil Chapman noted that the dead man’s eyes were a kind of ‘pea green’.
Cora said, ‘Imagine just being dead like that with your eyes open? Everyone can just look right inside.’
And Janet Avery, the nurse, commended his healthful appearance. ‘I walked past him at lunch and thought how good he looked,’ she said to Keith Hand, who ran Cedar Valley Brake & Clutch up on the corner. ‘I thought: there is a man who has good blood pressure. He looks a bit like Kerry, don’t you think? Tall Kerry from the RTA?’
Keith tilted his head and looked at the dead man. ‘I guess he could be a cousin of Kerry.’
‘Does Kerry have a cousin?’ asked Maureen Robinson, who worked across the road at the chemist. ‘Should we call the RTA?’
Several shopkeepers stood around then and began discussing the strangeness of the scene. The out-of-town-looking lady who Cora had served earlier appeared again and hovered by a tree. Indeed, the small flock who’d assembled only served to attract more—many of them tourists—and there were about twenty-five people in total when the police arrived.
Constable Gus Franklin and Constable James Hall—both in uniform, Franklin’s a little tight around the torso—were first on the scene. They’d strode the brief distance from the police station. Not long after, the ambulance arrived, followed directly by a fire truck. The ambulance officers got out and walked over steadily, as if there wasn’t a day in their lives that they didn’t see a dead man on a footpath. They knelt down beside him and administered some basic checks. The female officer consulted her watch and made a note of the time.
‘He’s passed,’ Cora said to the officer.
‘Shuffled off,’ said Lil.
‘He’s been here all afternoon,’ said Janet.
The female ambulance officer looked back at Janet, puzzled. ‘And you only just called?’
‘Yes, he’s long gone, love,’ said Lil to the officer, by way of explanation, her thin hair blowing about in the wind.
Then Janet added, to clarify, ‘Oh no, I didn’t call.’
The ambos exchanged glances before standing up and speaking to the policemen in low voices. There was nothing that could be done for the man, that much was obvious. There was no point in producing a defibrillator or rushing him off at high speed to the nearest hospital in Clarke.
Someone went back to the ambulance to collect a white sheet. The firemen, having established the futility of their attendance, crossed the wide road to buy pies. Therese Johnson, who seemed slightly put out by the disruption to her afternoon, stood impatiently near a street tree, her arms folded. And Betsy Dell, of ample breast, talked loudly about the nature of heart attacks.
‘I’d say that’s what’s got him,’ said Betsy, who owned the grocery store and whose husband had died in ’91. ‘That’s what gets them,’ she said, nodding, and Janet said, ‘Oh, Betsy,’ in commiseration. Then, when Betsy had returned to the store, Janet announced to the crowd: ‘I think it was more likely an aneurysm.’
Cora Franks, a bundle of nerves who hadn’t stopped talking to anyone who’d listen, took a moment to examine the man again, in case a closer look could help her to solve the mystery of him. She hunched down and edged forward, her silver necklaces clinking together, the proximity of herself to the dead man making her wonderfully anxious. Then, just as Cora was beginning to feel a twinge of recognition (did she know this man?), a gust of wind swept across the footpath with such force that it ruffled the tops of the dead man’s trousers, giving the appearance that his legs were moving.
Well.
Cora Franks squealed like a schoolgirl and reared back in terror. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ she said, grabbing Lil by the arm and then falling about laughing at herself. ‘Ha ha ha. Good heavens!’ said Cora. ‘I thought he moved.’
5
Benny Miller locked the door of the pale green house, and walked with the twilight towards the main road of the town.
It was coming on to a warm evening, if a little windy, and Benny wanted to acquaint herself with her new surroundings, to look at every shopfront and see what was on offer. She passed a fibro house with garden gnomes on the lawn and an old man sitting on a little concrete porch. He raised an arm and waved, as if Benny were an old friend, and she waved back and smiled to herself as she continued on.
At the corner of Valley Road, Benny considered her options. To the left was a florist called Tender Thoughts and a police station in an old sandstone building. Opposite that was the park. A Driver Reviver van was positioned alongside the rose garden and Benny could see two women packing up polystyrene cups and biscuit tins from a collapsible table. The big pink pub was the Royal Tavern, and coloured lights hung along the wooden fence of the beer garden. Benny crossed the wide road and read the dinner specials on a sandwich board. A handwritten sign was stuck up inside the window, advertising a job. She decided on going there for hot chips and a beer later, after her walk.
In the grocery store, Benny wandered up and down the short aisles, trying to work out what she most immediately needed. She had only a few hundred dollars saved and would have to make it last. She bought bananas, a small box of Weet-Bix, a can of tuna and a packet of ground coffee. Benny paid the woman at the till, who had sparse blonde hair and an enormous bosom.
‘Hooroo, love’, said the woman as Benny was leaving. And then: ‘There’s been a bit of an incident down the road, if y
ou’re heading that way.’
‘Oh, okay,’ said Benny as she left, and it was such a nice evening, even with the wind, and Benny liked the town very much already. It had a sense of history to it—she could see that in the old brick buildings, their lofty grandness—and the air smelled clear and different. A hairdresser called the Old Paris Coiffure seemed to have very little to do with Paris, apart from an image of the Eiffel Tower on the sign. A restaurant next to it offered Chinese, Thai and Australian cuisine. Beyond that was a small cafe, dark and closed.
Benny was busy looking in through all the shop windows and it wasn’t until she’d passed the cafe that she saw the commotion ahead: a crowd of people gathered around. Benny noticed them, the people, before she saw the ambulance and the fire truck.
Well, this was a lot more dramatic than she’d expected. She passed a quilting shop and came up upon the backs of a small crowd, with everyone leaning in and gaping at something. There must have been thirty people there, speaking among themselves.
Benny nudged her way in and looked—and she was just in time to see the man in the brown suit slumped slightly against the window of the antique store, his eyes fixed on some destination across the street. Without thinking, Benny followed the man’s gaze to see what he was staring at. She guessed it to be the Cedar Valley Pharmacy, a little chemist across the way that looked like any other chemist, except it was in a stately brick building, and some clothes were hanging on the verandah above it, several white shirts blowing in the wind.
Benny looked back to the man and stood and watched him until she knew he was dead. She knew it by his stillness: his chest that didn’t breathe and his eyes that didn’t blink.
An ambulance officer draped a sheet over him and then went back to the van to fetch a stretcher. Two policemen wandered over to the ambulance and held a short conference there, around the stretcher, and when they’d finished they went across to the dead man and gently lifted the sheet, just enough to slip a hand under and pat the areas where one would expect a pocket: the sides of his trousers; the outside of his jacket. Lifting the sheet higher still, they squinted at the face, trying to stoke some sense of recognition. Apparently finding none, the men patted a little more thoroughly around the outside of the clothing, and one dared to put a cautious hand inside the jacket for a quick check. Empty-handed, they restored the sheet to its former position and turned to the small crowd.
Cedar Valley Page 2