Cora closed her eyes and Fred held Cora’s foot on the couch, and he rubbed it while she lay there.
‘I think Therese’s hair is ridiculous,’ she said. ‘Nobody wears it like that anymore.’
‘Does that make you feel better?’ asked Fred.
‘No,’ said Cora plaintively, and she was silent for a while before she said, ‘How do you think Vivian died?’
Fred sat there with his big hand around her toes.
‘Well, I don’t imagine she was murdered, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he said. ‘Come on, Cor. Why don’t we have some of those fried chip potatoes with the chops? Those crispy ones you like that I do on the barbie?’
45
Next door, Benny had made a delicious pasta and Odette really thought it was very good. Benny had sprinkled chopped olives and fresh herbs on top, and she set the table somewhat nervously. Odette Fisher seemed to eat so expertly that Benny found herself adjusting her table manners in order to mimic her. They had a salad made of leaves from Odette’s garden, and at one point Odette hummed along to ‘Unchained Melody’ on the radio. Nothing pleased Benny more than having Odette there, and Odette thinking the pasta was very good.
Benny didn’t have any wine—she regretted this, she must get some—but she offered Odette some beer and Odette accepted. Benny poured two glasses from a longneck she’d bought after her first shift at the Royal Tavern. Their conversation, after Benny asked Odette about Vivian Moon working at Curios, had gone like this:
‘At Curios?’ Odette said, surprised.
‘Yes, did she work there?’
Odette sat at the table and put a hand to her mouth, thinking. She didn’t say anything for several moments and Benny just stood there waiting. Then Odette took her hand away and looked up and said, ‘I think she did. I’d forgotten that. Maybe Cora was being neighbourly and offered her work. I can’t quite remember how it came about. But yes, you’re right, she did work there.’
‘Right,’ said Benny, disappointed in some way by the information.
‘Oh, Benny. I wasn’t not telling you. I just forgot. I think maybe it didn’t go well for some reason, because it certainly didn’t last very long. Maybe only a few weeks or so. Did Cora tell you this? She would obviously know more than me.’
‘I haven’t spoken to Cora about it,’ said Benny.
‘I guess Cora and some of the other women in town—Cora’s friends—they didn’t really like Vivian all that much,’ said Odette. ‘I think she rubbed some people the wrong way.’
‘But she was in the book club,’ said Benny, holding her glass of beer. ‘She was in Cora’s book club with you.’
‘That was because I invited her, but she didn’t fit in very well. Some of those women are very conservative. They can be friendly, and I do like a lot of them. I like Elsie Simmons very much, and Mary Anne. But some of the others weren’t very welcoming to Vivian. And then, later on, some of us defected. But it wasn’t because we didn’t like the people; we just got sick of reading schmaltzy books.’ Odette smiled.
‘Why didn’t they like her?’ asked Benny.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Vivian … The more I think about Vivian, the more I wonder about the way she presented things. Maybe she didn’t always present things as they were. Do you know what I mean? Maybe she just never told me the negative things. But the more I think about her doing that, the more I think that’s what everybody does. People present themselves in the way they want to be seen. And maybe Vivian was just better at it than most people.’
‘Oh,’ said Benny, and she sat there with this idea: that Vivian was someone who made herself out to be a certain way, when she wasn’t that way at all.
Bessel got up, stretched, and then walked over stiffly and sat down again next to Benny’s chair.
‘I’d forgotten about her working at Curios. Probably because she never talked about it. And, you know, I was quite distracted at the time. I do remember her working at the chemist, though, she talked about that. She’d go on about Dieter Bernbaum and how weird he was; she’d catch him staring at her from behind his little pill shelf. I always found it odd that it didn’t bother her—I would have told him to bugger off—but she was just fine about things like that. She worked there at the chemist until she went back to Frank.’
Benny poured some more of the beer into Odette’s glass, and then she poured the remainder into her own.
‘Didn’t Cora ever talk to you about Mum? About why the ladies didn’t like her?’ Benny asked.
‘Oh, God no. I mean Cora does likes to talk, but she’d never talk to me about Vivian. She would have known not to! I would’ve defended Vivian Moon till the cows came home.’ Odette smiled and lifted her glass. ‘We didn’t do a cheers.’
The two women clinked their beers together.
‘Cheers,’ said Odette.
‘To my strange mother,’ said Benny.
‘To Vivian,’ said Odette, and then she reached across the table and rubbed Benny’s shoulder. Her hand was strong and firm and she kept it there for a moment, and it wasn’t so much the thought of Vivian—of commemorating Vivian—but the feeling of Odette’s comforting hand that made the smallest of tears come into Benny’s eyes and well there.
‘Who can tell why people like other people?’ said Odette. ‘This is a small town, Benny. It was 1970.’
‘1971,’ said Benny.
‘Then it was 1971—in a small town,’ said Odette. ‘The women around here, especially back then, they would have been threatened by a woman like Vivian. She was smart and she’d travelled and she’d talk about women’s lib and the Sydney Push and all that stuff. I’m sure those ladies all thought their husbands would fall in love with her.’
‘Do you think they did?’ asked Benny, a grain of pride in her now with this fresh image of her mother. Her smart and worldly mother.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Probably,’ said Odette.
‘Is that what happened with Lloyd?’ asked Benny. The question had come out before she had time to consider it. Perhaps the glass of beer had loosened her inhibitions. What an inconsiderate question it was; how hurtful and insulting.
‘Oh,’ said Odette, taken aback. ‘No. Lloyd wasn’t interested in Vivian like that.’
Benny felt herself sink inside with regret. She looked across at this woman who she respected so much. Did she look hurt or insulted? Benny couldn’t tell. Odette merely sat serenely, wearing the look of self-possession that Benny was so fond of.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Benny. ‘I just—I know you weren’t close with her anymore.’
Odette sipped at her beer, swallowed and nodded. ‘No,’ she said. ‘We weren’t close anymore. But that had nothing to do with Lloyd, honey, and I don’t mind you asking if it did.’
Benny shifted in her chair. The kitchen was aglow with afternoon light, streaming in the double doors that led to the garden.
‘You know, Benny,’ said Odette, ‘meeting you and getting to know you a little—it’s helped me. It makes me sad in a lot of ways, about how things could have been, and I’ve found myself going over that in my mind, in the way people do. But it’s helped me to understand what happened—all this stuff that’s bothered me for such a long time now. It’s difficult to explain, and I’ll explain it better when it feels more settled. But it is becoming a little clearer to me now, after all these years, what happened with Vivian.’
46
Tony Simmons lay in his bed that evening, while Jenny read stories to the girls in the next room, and he was flooded with uncomfortable feelings, and memories that he had always wished would go away.
Jenny’s voice was muffled and he could hear his youngest, Dawn, asking, ‘Why, Mumma? Why?’ as she was so prone to ask of everything.
Tony lay there and had visions of himself as a boy. Young, small Tony Simmons. Jenny found the childhood pictures of him so funny—that he was such a twig of a kid, compared to the big man he became.
But Jenny didn’t know a lot of things and
she didn’t know that Simmons spent his teenage years making sure he got bigger. He ate loads. He lifted heavy weights. He ran and boxed and played footy, aggressive in his every pursuit, and he ate more. He was a hulk by twenty and Elsie Simmons lamented it. ‘I can hardly get my arms around you!’ Elsie would say.
For before Simmons was big, he was a particularly small and defenceless child. His chest was sunken, his legs not much thicker than their bones. And his voice, birdlike and sweet, so high-pitched that he was often picked on.
But that wasn’t the worst thing in the world, to be picked on by other kids. The worst thing in the world was to be picked on by his father, Neville Simmons, who would sneer at Tony’s curly hair and thin body. ‘You look like a girl. Are you a little girl?’
Tony tried to keep his distance when Nev was in a cutting mood—and of course that wasn’t always. Neville Simmons was the elected mayor of the Gather Region. So Elsie Simmons would duck and smile in public and, in private, Tony would hear the icy sounds of Neville’s scolding. How Nev kept his voice at such an even pitch while uttering his vile rebukes was somehow more terrifying to Tony than outright violence. The seething tension of it, so palpable—and then something of Elsie’s would inevitably be broken. Neville would neatly smash an heirloom, or a new perfume he’d treated her to at the Clarke Plaza. Over the years, every piece of Elsie’s mother’s tea set, so prized by her, was shattered one by one. Neville Simmons was such a controlling and punitive man.
But Elsie was a tough old thing. She would sweep up pieces of porcelain without a word. And on bad nights she would tuck Tony up in bed as early as possible to keep him out of the way. Twice she made her son a morning promise that they’d leave, only to lose her resolve by the afternoon and be all smiles by the evening.
But Elsie didn’t know what went on when she wasn’t home. She didn’t know and Tony never told her. What could he say? That he too endured Nev’s precise and brutal humiliations? Like the time Tony, aged nine, missed the toilet and left some droplets on the seat. Nev took him into the yard and forced Tony to drink from the hose. He made Tony undress and wait by the back fence until he was ready to pee again, and then he made Tony urinate on his own bare feet as some kind of lesson.
It felt like all afternoon that they’d stood there in the cold yard—Nev in his suit and tie, thin Tony naked—waiting for the water to go through Tony’s little body.
Simmons lay now on his bed, a grown man, remembering the warm indignity of his own urine as it splashed on his toes and seeped under his feet on the bricks.
Knock knock knock.
From the next room, knocking came through the wall, and then the quiet sound of waiting.
This was a game the girls liked to play. And even though Tony felt so nauseous that he might be sick, lying there in his memories, he lifted his arm up and knocked back.
Knock knock knock, he went, and hysterics came through the wall. The girls were squealing and Jenny was laughing too.
Tony smiled.
He closed his eyes and listened to the girls and Jenny laughing together, and it was nice. But then the thoughts of Vivian Moon came to him, too. They were clearer in his mind. The night she looked after him, and how it left him so full of humiliation. He could not quite picture her face, but he remembered her body all too well, and the sense of it was excruciating.
Vivian Moon. Or, as she was in his memory, Viv. And yes, she’d lived next door to Cora Franks in Cedar Valley. Elsie had left him there for the night when she and the Franks went out, and Viv had made up a bed for him in a spare room. There was a wardrobe in it, and a window that looked over the back garden. Recalling it now, he remembered the sound of wind chimes. Vivian Moon—Viv—had made the two of them something to eat, and afterwards he sat up in the spare bed reading comics while she tidied up in the kitchen. He was to stay the whole night. He had an overnight bag and a chest full of nerves.
Tony remembered with regret how he had stared at Viv while she cooked their dinner. He couldn’t remember what she cooked, but he knew he had stared at her and then looked away when she addressed him directly. He shook his head now, disgusted at the memory of himself, and noticed that, in the room next door, Jenny and the girls had gone quiet.
Knock knock came through the wall.
Tony smiled. He waited, waited, and then knocked back.
Knock knock.
The girls and Jenny erupted, squealing and laughing.
Tony Simmons, full of his awful memories, sat up and put his legs over the side of the bed. He was so sweaty that he got his towel from the back of the door and he wiped himself down with it: his face and neck, his chest and stomach. Then he sat again, hunched over, and for the first time he let himself think about what had happened next. With Vivian Moon.
He recalled how a man had come over. There was a knock on the door when Tony was reading his comics, and then a man’s voice talking and Vivian’s voice whispering. It was the whispering of lovers, as he now understood.
The man left.
And Viv came back into the house and, knowing Tony was busy reading in the spare room, she went to the bathroom and had a shower. She left the door a little ajar, and light and steam was coming out of it when Tony got out of bed and crept into the hallway.
Oh, he was so desperate to see her. More than anything in the world he wanted to see her naked body. The way he’d watched, earlier in the kitchen, a white sweater tight against the perfect curves of her.
So, with a teenage boy’s compulsion, he snuck along the hall and ever so slowly put his head around the edge of the bathroom door.
The noise of rushing water and the sounds of her washing—she may even have been singing—and little Tony looked in and saw her there, standing in the shower, which had no curtain, just a big bath with a nozzle over it, and Viv was standing in the bath, under the nozzle. He watched her and was covered in pleasure. He could remember the exact sensation of it, like being in a warm shower himself, and knowing so well that it was forbidden. The mere sight of her had made him gasp: the gentle roundness of her breasts and the way the water poured down upon her. And then the jolt of her looking up, and yelping in fright at the sight of him, and Tony running back to the spare bedroom and diving onto the bed, switching off the lamp with his heart thumping.
He listened in dread to the sound of the shower going off, and Vivian Moon getting out and walking barefoot down the hall.
Then she put her head in, silhouetted in the doorway with a towel around her, and she said with little effort: ‘There’s no shame in it, sweetie, forget about it. See you in the morning. If you’re up early, your mum packed you some Weet-Bix.’
47
The next morning was a Tuesday and Constable Gus Franklin and Constable James Hall sat in the main common area of the Cedar Valley police station, watching over the sketcher while he worked away on a thick drawing pad.
Four photographs of the dead man lay across the table and the sketcher kept glancing at them as he drew. The face of the unknown man was taking shape there, in pencil, on his pad.
‘You want a biscuit or something?’ asked Franklin.
‘Water’s fine,’ said the sketcher, a bearded man in a gingham shirt. He took a sip of his water and looked up at the policemen.
‘If you wouldn’t mind not looking over my shoulder? It’s kind of off-putting.’
‘Sorry,’ said Franklin, and he rolled his eyes at Hall as they walked back over to Simmons’s office.
‘The drawing’s looking pretty good,’ said Hall from the doorway.
Simmons beckoned them in.
Hall sat down, upright, on the right, and Franklin sat down, slouching, on the left, and Franklin said: ‘They released a photo of the Somerton Man. Why don’t we just release a photo?’
‘Because we’re sensitive,’ said Simmons. ‘And I want him to look alive.’
Franklin said, ‘Oh yeah. Dead people look different, hey,’ and Hall nodded swiftly to agree.
‘I just had
a call from Maureen Robinson,’ said Simmons, who had been in an efficient mood all morning.
‘What did she say?’ asked Hall.
‘She said that Dieter Bernbaum saw our blonde woman last Wednesday.’
‘Did he now?’ said Franklin.
‘Dieter was on his break when we went in to talk to Maureen,’ said Hall. ‘But didn’t she say he’d been on his break when the blonde came in, too?’
‘He was on his break,’ said Simmons. ‘He was getting a pie, and then he sat outside Fran’s to eat it. Maureen mentioned the blonde woman to him at work this morning and he says, oh yeah, he noticed her coming out of the chemist, so he’s asked Maureen to give us a call. Maureen says Dieter often notices attractive women at the chemist.’
‘I bet he does,’ said Franklin.
‘But I bet attractive women don’t notice Dieter,’ said Hall, and the two of them had a laugh. But then Hall became serious. ‘Dieter Bernbaum’s really weird. I reckon there’s something off about him.’
‘I don’t know the guy,’ said Simmons. ‘But off or not, he’s got a memory. He sees the blonde walk out of the chemist, right, and then—you’re gonna love this—Dieter says she made a call from the phone box outside Fran’s World Famous Pies.’
Franklin clapped his hands together.
‘Oh, very good,’ said Hall, because Simmons always said that—‘very good’—and Hall wanted to be a little more like Simmons.
‘So after this, I want you to go and talk to Dieter—I’m sure you can handle it, Jimmy. Get the timing as accurate as you can, and then let’s get onto Telecom and find out what number she called.’
Smiles all around as the three men sat there, feeling like they were inching forward in some small way.
Then Simmons sighed and said, ‘I’ve been thinking more about these combs.’
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