‘Well. It didn’t last,’ said Cora. ‘A few weeks, maybe a month. But I had to let her go.’
They turned the corner and walked towards the weedy vacant lot behind the grocery store. The sun was still hot and Benny began to sweat with the heat and the conversation.
‘Why?’ asked Benny.
‘Oh, well, Benny,’ said Cora, and Benny could not determine her tone—it was either reticent or stealthily pleased. ‘She gave me no choice really. I found out she was stealing.’
The last bit came out just as plain as day.
‘Oh,’ said Benny.
‘I don’t know the extent of it,’ said Cora. ‘But she was definitely stealing.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because things went missing! I know my stock, obviously, I know it very well, and of course I’d notice if something was missing. And I’d also noticed how she’d keep her handbag very private. She’d always have it a bit hidden away and zipped up. Well, I couldn’t have it. I know she didn’t have any money, but that’s no excuse. I just said to her, I said, “I can’t have it.”’ And Cora gave Benny a resolute look as they crossed the road to the pub.
Outside the Royal, Cora stopped on the footpath next to a yellow-framed window, hoping to continue the conversation in privacy before they went in. Benny stood there uneasily, confused by the information, her shoulders as even as a fence top.
When Benny didn’t say anything, Cora said, defensively, ‘You understand.’
And Benny—who did not understand why a person being a little private about their handbag amounted to stealing—nodded. She said, ‘Well, I’m sorry about that.’
‘Oh, Benny, you needn’t be sorry,’ said Cora with sudden kindness. And, in the clarity of having heard herself explain it out loud—all these years later—Cora suddenly wondered if the infamous instance of Vivian’s thieving had ever really happened. For the first time in twenty years, Cora doubted it. And, of course, Vivian had protested at the time. She’d seemed to think she was so misjudged. And now here was her daughter, who Cora allowed herself to look at properly for the first time, without prejudice: her pure olive skin and the small glow of her that sat somewhere under the heavy sadness she wore like a coat.
A surge of maternal warmth overtook Cora Franks. She thought: this poor girl is even more beautiful than her mother was, and she doesn’t have any sense of it.
Then Benny said, ‘I’d better go in,’ and she walked through the big yellow door of the Royal.
‘Bye-bye then, Benny,’ said Cora Franks, the words rushing out of her, and she stood on the footpath and caught her reflection in the pub window. There she was, next to an old sign for VB—her worried expression, too many necklaces, legs like little pylons. Good heavens, she looked completely ridiculous.
53
Tony Simmons arrived home from work and went directly to the fridge for a beer. He stood at the kitchen bench, his back aching, and swallowed close to half the bottle in his first sip, the coldness being such a blessing, and he looked out at the yard through the window. Jenny was out there, sitting on the grass in her house clothes—those unbecoming shapeless things she bought cheap at the Clarke Plaza—watching the girls in the shell pool as the day was getting on towards evening.
Jenny had left a box of Christmas decorations half unpacked on the dining table, and he could see she’d long forgotten about her tea. Her mug sat between two small bowls of spiral pasta, only somewhat eaten, and a messy pile of textas. Beyond that, on the side table, was a photo Jenny had proudly framed several years earlier: the two of them, all dressed up on the night he took her to Sydney to see Torvill and Dean.
Simmons finished his beer and opened another, and he poured Jenny a glass of white wine from the bottle in the fridge door and added two ice cubes to it, just the way she liked it, and when he brought it out to her—the girls squealing and splashing in the pool—the look on her face was as if he’d built her a castle made from diamonds, and he felt a crinkle of guilt at her gratitude.
They sat a while in the yard, the girls hollering, Simmons on a lawn chair, a cushion stuffed in behind him for his back—and he was about to ask after dinner when the phone rang. He went inside to answer it and heard Constable James Hall breathless on the other end with news from the station.
‘You’re still there?’ said Simmons.
‘I just thought I’d stay back a bit,’ said Hall. ‘You know me.’
‘What have you got?’ asked Simmons, a hand to his face, rubbing at his temple.
‘A woman called from Sydney,’ said Hall. ‘She runs a little hotel near Central.’
‘She saw the sketch?’ said Simmons.
‘She saw the sketch,’ said Hall.
‘Very good.’
Simmons looked out the back door at Jenny on the grass and, seeing her like that in the twilight, he felt that she was still a good-looking woman. She hid herself away since having the girls, always getting about in some tent-like thing so he couldn’t see the edges of her. It was his fault; he knew that. He had criticised her carelessly and absented himself whenever possible. And when they fought, he heard the coldness in his voice as he reprimanded her over some minor detail. Tony Simmons, he disgusted himself no end—he was sticky with disgust—and it covered his vast body like sweat.
‘The woman says our guy stayed there on November 30th—the night before he came down here on the train. He didn’t say much, apparently, and he paid cash. But get this: he gave his name as T. Keane. You remember the name Keane?’ Simmons focused. Keane. Kean. T. Keane.
It was the name police had found on the clothing in the unclaimed suitcase at Adelaide railway station in 1948. The suitcase linked to the Somerton Man. It contained tools, stencilling equipment—Simmons had read all the reports. A tie, a laundry bag, maybe a singlet—all had some variation of the name ‘Keane’ written on them. At the time the police had thought it was a misdirection: a false name left deliberately to send them off on a wild-goose chase.
Simmons smiled to himself.
‘I remember,’ he said. ‘He really went all out, didn’t he?’
‘And get this, boss,’ said Hall.
‘He had an accent?’ Simmons said.
‘How did you know that?’ asked Hall, and Simmons could picture Hall on the other end of the phone, so keen, so lacking in cynicism. ‘The hotel lady said he had some kind of European accent.’
54
Throughout Shop Night, Cora Franks could see Benny Miller though the glass doors of the bistro, serving drinks and chatting with the customers at the bar, like she’d lived in Cedar Valley her whole life.
Cora, at the head of the table, was surrounded by proprietors of the shops along Valley Road, who met in an unofficial capacity on the first Tuesday of the month for dinner and drinks, and to talk shop. That evening, Cora was much quieter than usual, rattled by her conversation with Benny, and fearing, as ever, that she had been misunderstood.
The conversation around her went through Christmas opening hours, the recent armed robberies of bottle shops in Clarke and now Barrang, the issue of drainage on the corner of Patsys Flat Road, and the upcoming Quilt Festival. Cora only half listened. She ate her fish and chewed slowly. And soon everyone was discussing the dead man, and Cora sipped her chardonnay and wondered: had Benny been there that night the man died? She had. Cora had an image of the crowd that was gathered there, everyone gaping and talking, and she suddenly remembered that yes, Benny Miller had been standing there among the local people, watching the whole thing impassively, thinking her very private thoughts.
It was Betsy Dell from the grocery store and Fran from Fran’s World Famous Pies who brought up the idea of a funeral for the unknown gentleman. It’d been Betsy’s idea originally, she’d taken it around to a few sympathetic townsfolk and now Fran had co-opted it and taken charge.
‘And since no one’s claimed him,’ Fran was saying, ‘he is ours. He’s our responsibility.’
‘I guess that’
s true,’ said Maureen Robinson. ‘He’s a bit like the unknown soldier.’
‘What a lovely comparison, Maureen,’ said Betsy, who was having the schnitzel. ‘And, as I said to Fran, finders keepers. He’s ours and we need to honour him.’
Fran and Betsy explained their plan to the gathering, which included Carol and John Hargraves of Hargraves Books, Maureen Robinson from the chemist, Janet Avery and two general practitioners from Valley Road Family Medical, the owners of the video store, the bakery, the camping supplies store, the pizzeria and the cafe, and Yvonne Lourigan from Tender Thoughts. Therese Johnson, who was sitting next to Cora, had spent the whole night turning her head to check where Ed was.
Fran was the dominant speaker. The service was to be on Thursday at 5.30 pm at the Cedar Valley Public Hall. It would be an agnostic service, considering no one had any clue as to the denomination of the man in the suit. Betsy, an atheist since her husband had died, was very strong on this point. It didn’t have to be churchy. Just a service. Betsy and Fran had organised everything, and all the rest of the town needed to do was show up.
It should be noted that a few of the shopkeepers present that night were not overly enthusiastic about the idea, and a few voices were raised in mild protest. Some people just didn’t know how to come at it. But Fran, ever the diplomat, quelled the dissent, and had an answer to every potential objection.
‘What about this business with the other man who died back in Adelaide?’ asked Janet Avery.
‘What about him?’ said Fran. ‘That’s got nothing to do with us holding a funeral for our man. This is about our man, Janet.’
‘What about the body? Don’t the police need it for their investigation?’ asked Keith Hand from Cedar Valley Brake & Clutch.
‘We don’t need the body,’ said Fran swiftly. ‘We’ll just gather together and send him off. Everyone deserves some kind of funeral. Yvonne has been kind enough to donate flowers—thank you, Yvonne; they’re going to be beautiful—and we’ll make it all look nice. And then we’ll have the wake here after. Cora, we were thinking that since you found him, maybe you could say a few words?’
Cora Franks, holding a glass of chardonnay, didn’t hear her at first; she was irritated by the way Therese kept turning around every two minutes—who cared where Ed was?—and upset about Benny and the way she’d just walked off like that, with no goodbye. It was so dismissive, so ill-mannered. Cora was certain that Benny hadn’t believed her, that Benny didn’t believe her mother was a thief and she thought Cora had just fired her for no good reason.
‘Cora?’ said Fran, a little louder. ‘We think you should make the oration.’
‘Me?’ said Cora, returning her attention to matters at hand. ‘What would I say?’ She was terrified at the prospect, and delighted to be asked.
‘He had a lovely face,’ said Lil Chapman. ‘You could talk about how nice he looked.’
‘Just anything you think,’ said Betsy. ‘But we have to do something. He died on Valley Road, and no one in Australia seems to miss him. Imagine if that were one of us? Just popping off like that and no one caring?’
‘You’re right,’ said Cora, nodding thoughtfully, realising that she had the attention of the whole group. ‘I’ll put some words together. We have to do something.’
55
Odette had suggested to Benny that they drive to Clarke on Wednesday morning, since Benny wanted to buy seedlings at the garden centre—herbs and some different types of lettuce—and Odette needed to visit the agricultural supply to get some shell grit for her chickens and a new hoof knife for her cows.
Benny heard the car horn just after nine and she went out to find Odette there in her dusty old Land Cruiser (fawn-coloured with brown stripes along the side), and Bessel sitting in the passenger seat. He scooted into the back when Benny opened the door.
The three of them drove north out of town, along the coast road, with the windows down. Odette had a cassette of classical music playing and Benny watched the scenery pass and change; she found the mountain, to the west of the town, imposing and magnificent.
‘It’s very beautiful, isn’t it?’ said Odette. ‘I remember thinking how striking it was when I first came here—the escarpment in particular. Driving in the Hay Plains used to bore me to death when I was a child. All there was to look at was sky.’
Benny looked up at the thick white clouds that hung above the mountain. ‘Sky can be interesting,’ she said.
‘It can, but after half an hour it palls a little,’ said Odette. Long grey hairs had blown loose from her braid and were whipping around in the wind. ‘Did you hear they’re having a funeral for the dead man tomorrow? Some of the women in town have organised it.’
Benny had heard about it; Fran from the pie shop had been up at the Royal talking to Tom about it on the weekend. ‘Will we go?’ asked Benny, and Odette said that of course they would, they would go together.
Everyone was going, as far as Odette could gather. Well, everyone who lived and worked in town and considered themselves a part of the community. Of course, some people in Cedar Valley were not so agreeable, and not everyone had a sense of occasion, but Odette was sure it would be a nice service—she loved the idea of it—as long as someone didn’t come forward first and claim the dead man as their own.
The tape ended and Odette ejected it and turned it over and pressed play. And Benny listened to the music—just a cello by itself—and looked out the window as the trees rushed past.
They went through a little town called Galarra, which just had a petrol station and a general store and a bakery cafe, and after that was Barrang. They passed a beautiful old building—the Barrang School of Arts—and Odette told Benny that Tom’s wife, Annie, would be exhibiting a selection of her ceramics there soon.
‘You should come along with me to the opening. Annie’s a fine artist.’ And Odette continued to talk about Annie Boyd for what seemed like a while—she and Tom were a fantastic couple, and their girls were gorgeous, very creative, very bold—and Benny listened and nodded and felt a kernel of jealousy lodge inside her chest at the fact that Annie Boyd got to be married to such a decent and handsome man as Tom. And it was such a familiar feeling, this jealousy, that Benny realised, with some surprise, she had always been a jealous person. She had been jealous of the world her mother had inhabited. She was jealous of Europe; jealous of the past; jealous of the bed Vivian had slept in; and even of Odette, and the time she had spent in Vivian’s company. It had always seemed such an injustice that Benny was denied entry to that sublime and sunlit world, and her mind swirled with it as Odette continued on talking about her renegade book club and how Annie always had such interesting opinions on books. Benny listened and made a noise of agreement every now and again, and she stared out the window as they went past a big lake, where a group of fishing boats sat together near two thin wharves. Then she closed her eyes for a time, her face in the wind, and when she opened them a sign announced their arrival at the outskirts of Clarke.
They visited the garden centre first and Odette advised Benny on her selection of seedlings. Benny bought potting mix and a pair of gardening gloves, and she politely declined Odette’s offer to pay.
‘You’re a free human being with an independent will, Benny Miller,’ said Odette, and Benny broke into a smile.
At Clarke Stockfeeds, Odette spent a while looking through the poultry supplies, wandering up and down in her navy overalls, and Benny went out to the large outdoor area, where there were piles of treated timber posts and steel tubing and metal gates. She looked around and eventually sat down on a pallet next to some hay bales and, when Odette finally emerged, she laughed at Benny and told her she looked just the part.
They stopped for fish and chips at a place near a metal bridge—a serve each of battered flathead—and Bessel sniffed along the riverbank and barked at the kayaks. Then they set off back to Cedar Valley, and they chatted about easy, everyday things for much of the way, and Benny felt so calm and full that
she wondered if she might drift off to sleep.
‘Do you have a boyfriend, Benny?’ asked Odette, out of the blue.
‘Oh, no. I did. But he moved to Canberra to go to ANU.’
‘That’s a shame. Do you miss him?’
‘Kind of, not really. We write to each other sometimes,’ said Benny, and she thought of Jules Cowrie, and how she had loved him in such a blinding flash and then spent close to two years trying to keep him at a safe distance. Benny hadn’t known how to trust a person who showed such an open interest in her. And it was only just beginning to dawn on her, so recently, that Jules Cowrie was someone who deserved her trust.
‘You know, Lloyd lives not too far out of Clarke,’ said Odette. ‘He has a shack up on the inland mountain. I guess that’s one of the reasons I don’t go to Clarke much. I always worry that I’ll run into Lloyd, even though I never do.’
They left a stretch of straight fast road and came alongside the lake again. Cars were parked now on a patch of dead grass near the wharves.
‘You asked me what happened with Lloyd, but there’s nothing much to it really. I pushed him away—that’s what happened.’ Odette shot Benny a look that was full of regret, and Benny didn’t say anything, hoping Odette would continue.
‘He was a wonderful man. I’m sure he still is. But I blamed him for everything. When I couldn’t get pregnant, I blamed him. When I had miscarriages, I blamed him. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, I never blamed him out loud. But inwardly. And he could feel it. Over time, I think I bored away at his resolve.’
Benny sat still, her jaw clenched, not wanting to disturb the revelations.
‘Vivian had all these adventures, you know. She had these experiences. And I would listen to her and, well, I guess I lived vicariously. She used to say Lloyd was “very dependable”. God, I can still hear her saying it! But it wasn’t a compliment. Even though she said it like a compliment, I knew it wasn’t.’
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