Benny looked up at the lofty, rafted ceiling and saw a patch of blue through a high skylight. She looked down and saw the dog staring back at her, and she noticed the grey hairs that sprouted around its mouth and eyes. A fireplace in the far corner had a small dark window on the front and a long black chimney pipe that extended upwards from the top, and hundreds of books lined the walls on long wooden shelves. Odette, standing by the stove, lit the gas under the kettle and talked away, but Benny was so taken by the loveliness of the house that she barely heard the words. Odette had to ask her twice if the cottage was okay before Benny said oh yes, that it was. She thanked Odette for the food she had left and told her she’d chosen the front room with the picture window.
‘I hope the python’s not too noisy,’ said Odette. ‘A friend of mine stayed in the cottage for all of last year and I think he grew kind of fond of it in the end. It eats the rats, you see, which is always helpful.’
Odette fetched a tin off a shelf and opened it up and began spooning tealeaves into a teapot. The dog hovered, watching Benny, and Benny reached down and patted its head—it closed its eyes and lifted its chin when she did that—and she felt very inexperienced all of a sudden, very green, like a new shoot of grass in a big old field.
Odette talked so easily—her voice deep and educated—about the things you get used to, living in the country, and Benny stood there self-consciously, as straight as the chimney pipe. She glanced around the room and saw that interesting artefacts were everywhere: ornaments, pottery, religious-looking icons, an ancient upright piano. There was art on the walls, too—paintings—and photographs in frames, some of them of colourful landscapes and others black-and-white, with people in them. She wondered if any of Odette’s photographs were of Vivian Moon.
‘I just got off the phone,’ Odette was saying. ‘What a day for you to arrive! Did you hear we had a man die on Valley Road?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Benny.
‘Well, that’s not something that usually happens,’ said Odette. ‘I just spoke to my friend Maureen, and before that to Annie. People like to talk in the valley. It’s very reverberant, you’ll notice that.’
‘I saw him,’ said Benny.
Odette put the spoon down.
‘You saw him?’
‘Just before they put the sheet over. I went for a walk to look at the shops.’
‘Benny, that must’ve given you a fright.’
And in some strange way it had—given Benny a fright—but in such a peculiar and indirect fashion, bringing up such gruesome thoughts of Vivian. Benny couldn’t have explained it even if she’d wanted to. ‘He had very shiny shoes,’ she said instead.
Odette smiled. She returned the tea tin to the shelf and set two mugs on the benchtop.
‘Funny how that stuck out to everyone so much,’ she said. ‘What he was wearing. More than that he was dead.’
The dog left Benny’s side and settled stiffly on a rug, and Odette raised a hand towards the couches and told Benny to make herself comfortable, so Benny wandered over to a brown couch and sat down, and the dog rolled over onto its long side and let out a groan.
Benny watched Odette moving around the kitchen. She didn’t want to miss anything. The wide windows above the bench looked out over the grass and fence and paddock and bush. What a wonderful thing, she thought, to have a view across a paddock from the kitchen.
‘He really looked quite peaceful,’ she said.
Odette lifted the kettle and poured steaming water into a teapot, keeping half an eye on the unassuming young woman sitting in her lounge room.
‘Aren’t you funny,’ she said, and she brought the mugs over, set them on the coffee table, and then went back for the teapot.
Benny sat on the couch and wondered what she could add to the conversation, wanting very much to say something charming or clever. She wondered if it was morbid to go on about the dead man, but she had thought so much about him since the previous evening. Her mother, the dead man—how could she explain her sense of the two of them? How she felt it oddly fortuitous, the way she had arrived there yesterday and wandered up the road and seen him. As if there was a lesson in it, or a sign. Benny was sure of that. And she was sure, too, of how she felt there in Odette’s living room: which was suspended, in some liminal space between disparate feelings. Benny had never felt so at home and yet so nervous at the same time.
Odette brought over the mugs, and then she brought over the teapot and milk and sat down on a velvet armchair opposite. She poured tea for them both and settled back, holding her cup, and told Benny that this was going to keep the town busy for a while. Everyone was wondering who he was, and no one seemed to understand how he came to be dead. Maureen Robinson, Odette’s friend who worked at the chemist, said the man in the suit had looked perfectly healthy. ‘I can’t imagine it’s normal to just sit down and die, but there you go,’ said Odette. ‘And I can’t believe you saw him. Your first day in town and that’s what you see.’
Benny poured some milk into her tea, picked up her cup and leaned back in her chair too, trying to appear as relaxed as Odette did. Then, when the elegant woman began asking questions, Benny found herself talking about her studies (an arts degree at Sydney University), and her share house in Glebe. Odette was generous in her questions, and very focused, and soon Benny was speaking a little of her interests (books, music, geology). They talked and, all the while, Benny was yearning to make a good impression, hoping that Odette Fisher would like her.
The dog got up and went to the door and scratched at it, so Odette went over and let it out, leaving the door open then, and when she returned she seemed to take the opportunity of the lull in conversation. She looked quite serious when she said, ‘Benny, I am so sorry,’ And then—slowly, warmly—‘I am just so sorry about your mum.’
Benny’s mind went still and she looked down at her teacup and its milky contents.
Odette hesitated. She cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry if that makes you upset, for me to mention it.’
‘It’s okay,’ said Benny, and the older woman and the younger woman sat there opposite each other, while the sound of unfamiliar birds came in through the open door.
‘Benny, do you mind me asking, what was she like, more recently? Vivian—was she in good spirits?’
Benny was confused as she sat there on the couch. What did Odette mean? How could Benny have any idea about her mother’s spirits, before her death?
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said.
And then it was Odette’s turn to appear confused. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I guess that’s a difficult question to answer.’ ‘It’s just that I didn’t know—’ said Benny, and the phone began to ring over near the kitchen, startling them both.
Odette swiped the air with a hand and said, ‘I don’t need to get that,’ and the two of them sat there awkwardly for the extent of the ringing, Odette with a puzzled look on her face, and then she shook her head, as if silently dismissing some preposterous notion.
‘Well, I guess no one really knows anyone, do they?’ she said kindly.
Benny sat uneasy on the couch. ‘Yes, but I haven’t seen her,’ she said, and her face flushed then with shame. ‘I haven’t—I hadn’t—seen her in years. I really didn’t know her at all.’
9
In his office in the Cedar Valley police station, Detective Sergeant Simmons said, ‘Gussy! Jimmy! Sit rep!’ to the open door and a moment later Franklin appeared, and then Hall.
‘That was Clarke Base,’ said Tony Simmons, indicating the telephone.
‘What’d they say?’ asked Hall.
‘They said you should sit down and tell me more about what happened yesterday,’ said Simmons with a wonderfully fake smile.
So Constable Gussy Franklin, a wardrobe in a uniform with a somewhat offhand manner to him, and Constable James Hall—the opposite, a weed—sat down.
It amazed Simmons that Gussy Franklin got around so effortlessly, given his proportions. His was an enorm
ous man, always a little pink in the face and with no discernible neck. But he had a languid kind of casualness about him that made him a popular person to drink with, if a slightly lacklustre policeman, and Simmons found his presence oddly affirming.
Hall, on the other hand, thin-hipped, with a sunken chest, struck Simmons as a man who felt he was of very little consequence in the world. Perhaps he had, at some point, set about overcompensating with an earnest diligence that matched his eyes, which popped out a bit too far from his face and gave him a look of constant surprise. Jenny Simmons reckoned Hall was far too eager for any woman to take him seriously—and he did seem bereft of female attention. James Hall once told Tony Simmons, after a few beers (which he did not handle well), that he’d been dacked in high school on a near continuous basis, and Simmons—who had been known to dack in his time—had laughed his head off at the bar.
Now Simmons stared at Hall and then at Franklin, and he said, ‘This is your one, boys. Yeah? But why don’t you enlighten me. Tell it all over again from the start.’
Gussy Franklin, in his amiable fashion, took the lead. Yesterday had started off pretty normal. The boys had been doing paperwork all morning. The other officers from the area were out on various matters—there’d been a heck of a car accident on the coast road, traffic was backed up for hours—and someone had pinched two hunting rifles from Nigel Haling, who had a small farm next to the river. At lunchtime, Hall went down the street for a pie and Franklin ate a delicious ham on rye on the bench outside, next to the hedge. Franklin had been married one year and his wife still made his sandwiches.
‘That’s nice for you, Gussy,’ said Simmons.
‘It was, mate,’ said Franklin. ‘And that’s when I saw Les come past and he said there was a bit of a weirdo down the road.’
‘Ah, lovely,’ said Simmons. ‘Les.’
‘Yeah, I know.’ Franklin did a quick roll of his eyes. ‘Les said the guy was doing something funny with his arms—weird kind of stretching and whatnot. Les did a little impression of him. He said, “I think he’s had a few. You should see his outfit.” And then, later on, we got the call that we had a dead ’un. And that’s when we went across to have a look.’
There they’d found quite a scene: a small crowd of locals gathered, and Cora Franks carrying on like a pork chop. Everyone was standing around a dead man in a brown suit on the footpath outside Curios. He was just sitting there with his eyes wide open. He didn’t even look that dead, really; he could’ve been lost in thought if you’d only glanced in his direction.
Franklin and Hall found the whole thing most unusual.
‘It was odd as a sock, boss,’ said Gussy Franklin.
So Franklin stood around, taking the temperature, and Hall returned to the station to fetch the camera. He took a roll and a half of shots, everything down to the neatly tied, near-new laces on the dead man’s shiny shoes.
The ambulance officers couldn’t offer an opinion as to cause of death. It looked natural, they said, but it didn’t feel it, and they weren’t sure why that was. He was young, perhaps that was it. The man looked to be in his mid-fifties at the most. And he was so composed, no signs of distress or discomfort. He hadn’t vomited or bled; he hadn’t even collapsed. He was slightly slumped, sure, but surprisingly upright for being so dead.
Plus, there was the groomed look of him—recently shaved and his hair brushed back neatly. His fingernails were filed and clean. Hall had logged all this diligently in his notepad, the tidy appearance and the clothing, so oddly formal: brown trousers, a white shirt, a wide-striped tie, a pullover and a jacket. He would certainly have been warm. But more to the point, he looked like he’d stepped into Cedar Valley from another era, let alone another town. Everything about him looked antique. And wasn’t that a funny place for a man like that to sit: in front of an antique store?
The boys had done a quick canvass, but they’d need to get more statements. The ambos were good enough to drive the body to the morgue at Clarke Base, and Franklin and Hall had met them there. Then Dr Ping Williams, the government medical officer, had strolled in wearing her white lab coat and thick-rimmed glasses, a tiny woman who spoke so softly Gussy Franklin had had to bend his hulking body down to hear her, while Hall stood nearby taking prints.
Finally, Franklin logged all the property the dead man had in his pockets: cigarettes, a box of matches, half a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, a bus ticket, a train ticket, and three combs. That was it. No ID, no wallet, no bags, no money, no wedding ring, nothing that gave any indication as to who on earth this gentleman might be.
‘Cold to touch, was he?’ asked Simmons.
‘Dead for at least an hour before we got there,’ said Hall.
‘Did you give him a whiff, Jimmy?’
‘I did, boss,’ said Hall. ‘You know me. He didn’t smell like booze, though. Or even cigarettes actually, even though he had cigarettes.’
‘What kind of man carries combs?’ asked Franklin.
‘A poofter,’ said Simmons, and he and Franklin snorted.
‘Judging by the outfit, too,’ said Franklin. ‘A real fancy pants.’
Hall moved in his chair uncomfortably, and Simmons grinned. Then he frowned—Detective Sergeant Simmons, so mercurial—and he looked down at the property book in which Gus Franklin had listed the dead man’s belongings.
‘A bus ticket.’
‘I’m waiting for a call back from the company,’ said Hall.
‘Very good,’ said Simmons.
‘What did Clarke Base say?’ asked Hall.
‘Well, look,’ said Simmons, who had called Ping Williams specifically to check in on their dead man. ‘I just called on something else and Ping mentioned your dead ’un. She reckons it’s a weird one.’
Hall blinked with anticipation. Simmons—who was slightly irritated by the fact that he’d been having a very long lunch with some of the Clarke boys at Panda Garden yesterday, chatting away over too many Crown Lagers, and had missed the whole episode—was pleased to have regained the upper hand in regards to pertinent information.
‘Get this,’ he said, with a twinkle in his eye.
The boys leaned in.
‘This is what Ping says, right? You know the fancy suit?’ The boys nodded.
‘Well. Every label—are you listening?—every label from every piece of clothing he was wearing—trousers, jumper, underwear, everything—every label has been very carefully removed.’
Hall looked surprised, not that this was unusual for him.
Franklin stared at Simmons, mystified. ‘What does that mean?’ he asked.
Simmons laughed and shook his head. ‘I have no fucking idea,’ he said.
10
It had always seemed to Benny Miller that Vivian Alice Moon was like sand that slipped through her fingers. As a child she had sensed this, on the fringes of her mind. And as she had grown older, Benny had spent much fruitless time trying to hold on to some fragment of her mother, even one tiny grain. But, of course, the holding only led to spilling. Confusion and doubt always won. And any idea of Vivian Moon as one thing—her singular mother—only gave way to multitudes.
Now, sitting across from Odette Fisher in the farmhouse, Benny was so puzzled. Why would Odette ask her such a question? How would Benny know anything about Vivian at all?
The fact of it was this: Benny had never lived with her mother, not even for one year as a baby. According to Frank Miller, Benny was five months old when Vivian packed up her things and left them. Why? Well, Frank Miller was always hesitant to say. ‘Your mother loves you, Ben. She didn’t leave because she doesn’t love you.’ That was what he would offer. But that didn’t explain anything at all, it didn’t make the leaving any better, and it didn’t make sense to Benny when Frank would say nothing more, evading her questions in such a way that she eventually learned not to ask.
So young Benny would lie in her bed and ceaselessly wonder: What’s so wrong with me that she didn’t take me with her? What’s so wrong w
ith me that she won’t come for me now?
Benny Miller was convinced, in some deep core of herself, that all of it was due to some terrible fault of her own, and as a child she would go about in her quiet grief. She busied herself with her collections, fastidiously arranging stickers in an album, cicada shells on a sill, and silently blaming herself. And then she’d sit stupefied when Vivian would sometimes arrive on a rare visit, swanning in unannounced, full of glorious warmth.
Frank, in the kitchen, quiet and reproachful, then disappearing out the back for long spells, smoking a joint perhaps, on the seat near the barbecue.
Vivian, as familiar with the house as if she’d just returned home from a routine errand, would explode into flattery. ‘Benny, my baby. I’ve missed you! Aren’t you so big?’ And the smell of her was like nothing else in this world, the aching smell of her, and the way her long hair fell in Benny’s face when she hung her head over the pillow to say goodnight. Later, she would become involved in some hushed conversation with Frank—tense whispers behind a closed door—and by morning she’d be gone.
Vivian Alice Moon, when she left, drained all the light from the world.
But what did Benny really know for certain?
Well, not much at all; the vague, milky impressions of a child. A mother—fleeting, chaotic, sometimes apologetic—alighting occasionally, until she stopped doing even that.
Meanwhile, Frank Miller, who did not seem to have access to many words, was a well-meaning neglector. Some nights he would go out when Benny was still too young to be left alone, and he would not come home until she was too fretful to go to sleep. On Saturdays he would drive around Sydney, stopping to look in old furniture shops for bargains. The trips would last hours, and Benny would tire of going in and watching him searching around anxiously, looking for something of value, haggling with the shopkeepers. Lonesome and bored, she would wait in the car. Finally he would give up and be irritated about it, and they’d drive home again, where he’d grill fish fingers and mash a boiled potato in a bowl with salt and butter and Benny would eat quietly while he watched the television.
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