“I’ll check the letter box and see if Dad’s sent a card. Remember Dad? Your husband?”
I smile brightly at Merv Bull. “I used to be married. Kids can’t let things go, can they?”
He laughs. Jake is welded to his left leg, gazing up adoringly. I think about how strange it is that he didn’t react this way with his own father.
“Mr. Bull, can I pleeeeeeeese look at the yellow machine?”
“Sure, mate.”
Melissa pushes the mail at me and storms inside. I watch as Merv lifts Jake onto the seat of the bulldozer and lets him try to move the gear levers. Jake’s so excited he’s laughing like a hyena. I hope he didn’t get that laugh from me.
When we all get inside and sit down at the table for tea and lemonade and biscuits, Merv tells Jake about the different types of bulldozer he’s worked on. He turns to Melissa, who has been sipping her lemonade and nibbling her biscuits with her face turned aside, as though even the sight of Merv Bull could ruin her appetite.
“I met your dad. Worked on his car. He seemed like a great bloke,” Merv says.
It’s as if he has turned on the sun.
“Yeah, my dad’s great.” Melissa nods vigorously. “Even though some people don’t think so.” She glares at me. I glare back. I know she’s putting this on for Merv. She’s as disappointed in her father as I am. The other night she took the postcard off her bedroom wall and put it in her secret box in the wardrobe. It made me sad when I found it.
“Anyway, I did want to have a word with your mum about some stuff,” Merv says pointedly.
Now she’s been appeased, Melissa gets up and herds her brother off to his room before settling into her room to do her homework.
“So,” Merv says when the kitchen is quiet. “I wanted to say I’m sorry about Norm. He was a champion. I know I haven’t been in town that long, but it was clear from the get-go that Norm was a bloke you could rely on.”
I have to wrinkle up my face to keep the tears from coming.
“He did a couple of favors for me and I won’t forget that,” Merv goes on. “Which is why I’m here.”
“Oh?”
“That Unsightly Property Notice business was out of line. Everyone knew it was dodgy.”
“It was Samantha Patterson. I heard this morning. I don’t know how she’s involved with that development, but I’m going to find out.”
“I might be able to help. I’m not allowed to talk about the development, because I signed that confidentiality agreement. But I can talk about some other things I’ve noticed.”
This is so exciting I feel a hyena laugh coming on. “Such as?”
“Such as the ’dozer I’m towing into town today. Do you know where it’s going?”
I shrug, still trying to keep the hyena laugh inside.
“It’s going to the house of John Ponty,” Merv says triumphantly. “The heavy-equipment moving firm that does a lot of work for the place I’m not allowed to talk about was supposed to pick it up and deliver it, but they had a breakdown and I said I’d do it instead. Then I found out where it was going.”
“John Ponty? The name sounds familiar.”
“Council officer? Planning Department? Currently having major renovations done on his house?”
“Ah.”
“And commonly known to be bonking a certain married female councillor.”
“No!” How come I never know any of the real gossip in this town? “You mean Samantha Patterson?”
“Oh, yes. And here’s the icing on the cake. I know my machines, right? I often work on them myself, don’t only leave them to the apprentices. And I can tell you that someone has been swapping plates around on the ’dozers and the trenchers and the other machines. We note it all down, of course, for our records. Plate number and engine number on the repair sheet. And back when they started the shire swimming pool renos, I saw this very ’dozer on that site. Different plate, same ’dozer.”
“I don’t get it. What’s the swimming pool got to do with it?”
“I’m no wiser than you. I can only tell you what I’ve seen. But those machines belong to a big company with fingers in a lot of different pies, and I’ve seen them on jobs that shouldn’t be connected.”
How can I start to figure this out? It’s so complicated. No wonder they’ve been getting away with it, whatever it is.
“Thanks, Merv. I really didn’t know anything much, so this is a great start.”
“Happy to help, Loretta.”
We teeter into a sudden, awkward silence. I can hear Jake singing to himself in his room, and the tapping and beeps of Melissa on the computer. Terror and Panic clatter up the steps of the back veranda and peer in the back window. They must be hungry.
“Liss,” I call. “Did you feed Terror and Panic?”
Merv raises his eyebrows when I say “Terror and Panic,” then looks behind him and jumps when he sees the two long bearded faces in the window.
“Lawn mowers from Norm,” I explain.
“Maaaaaaa, maaaaaa,” Terror calls. It works far better than my call and Melissa trots through the kitchen and out to the veranda in the automatic manner of a mother summoned by her baby’s cry.
“Suppose I’d better deliver this ’dozer,” Merv says, standing and stretching.
I follow him out to the truck.
“Thanks again, Merv.” I’m getting that same feeling I had when I went to his garage ages ago. Something hanging in the air. His gaze resting a moment too long on the footpath, then the horizon.
He stands beside the door of the truck. Brushes his hand through his straight shiny brown hair. Turns to the truck and turns back again.
“I’m heading to Halstead for a drink and some dinner on Saturday. Don’t suppose you’d like to come?”
He speaks so fast I want to ask him to say it again. Slowly. I think he asked me on a date.
“Halstead? Saturday?” I mumble. A thought occurs to me. “Aren’t you . . .? Isn’t . . .? Maxine . . .?”
“Maxine’s great,” he says. “She’s a good mate. Kind of turned out that way.”
I open my mouth and wait for the yes to come out, but it doesn’t. The silence becomes uncomfortable. I should say yes. I’m being asked on a date. But as I keep failing to answer, the realization dawns on me. He’s not what I want.
“If you’re busy,” Merv says. He reaches for the truck handle.
“It’s a bit hard to find babysitters. You know.”
“Yeah, sure. It must be a problem. Well, maybe another time.”
“Yep. Maybe another time,” I reply. My heart is beating fast. If I tell Helen about this she’ll kill me.
He climbs into the truck and starts the engine, which shakes and grunts as it strains away from the curb, pulling the ’dozer on its trailer. His arm reaches out and waves from the cabin of the truck, and I feel a small twinge of regret.
But I could never go for a man who drives a Bedford.
32
THE MAIL MELISSA brought in is fatter than usual. I sit back down at the kitchen table and open an envelope from the council. Inside is a letter and a wad of paper.
In response to your Freedom of Information Application No. 2/84/556, please find enclosed council documents relating to the Forest Springs Leisure Resort area rezoning and building application.
Please note that the protection of the public interest and private and business affairs may cause some information to be exempted from access.
It’s signed by Bree Howarth, another girl who used to babysit my kids while she was at school. I didn’t know she was an admin assistant at the council now. How handy.
The wad of paper is thick. I think about putting it aside until after tea, but I can’t wait so I start to leaf through, which is when I find out what they mean by “some information to be exempted from access.” About two-thirds of every page is blacked out. They’ve left phrases like “from the zoning regulations” and “pertaining to the regulatory framework” and “in the” an
d “with reference to.”
This makes me madder than ever.
Next afternoon I leave the Neighbourhood House at lunchtime, jump in the car, and race to Halstead. After a quick appointment at the Legal Aid office about my assault charge, I scoot over to the park across the road from the shire offices in Halstead to eat my sandwich. Around me a few pigeons burble. The fountain sits dry and empty in the center of the park, shut down by water restrictions. The plants are struggling and the grass is brown, but people still sit here in the dappled shade of the gum trees, eating and chatting and reading newspapers. At half past one, Bree trots down the council steps and heads in the direction of the shops.
“Hi, Bree,” I say chirpily as I hurry up beside her. I hope I haven’t got curried egg on my face. It wouldn’t be the first time.
“Oh, Mrs. Boskovic.” She looks at me in shock and starts to walk faster. I have to trot to keep up. Kids these days have beanpole legs. She’s probably also heard that I’m a maniac who goes around assaulting people.
“Got your letter, thanks, Bree.”
“Oh?” she says. She’s starting to breathe faster now with the exertion of running away from me. The shops are within sight. “I send out so many letters. They’re not really from me, they’re from the bosses.”
“Ah, I see. So you weren’t the one who blacked out everything.”
“I do what I’m told, Mrs. Boskovic. The documents come to me marked up by hand and I do it on the computer. I don’t read anything.”
“All I need to know is who gave you the marked-up documents.”
“I don’t know if I should say, Mrs. Boskovic. Isn’t council business private?”
“No, Bree, it’s not. The council is supposed to be working for us. It’s our business.”
We’re outside the fish and chip shop. The colored straps of the fly curtain are flapping in the breeze. Three young men in blue overalls lean against the walls inside the shop, leafing through car mags as they wait for their orders.
“Who did the blacking out? You will never be mentioned, Bree. Not one word. You can trust me.”
“I do trust you, Mrs. B, but . . .”
“If there’s corruption in the council you have to make sure no one can accuse you of being involved, Bree. When it comes out, I can only back you up if you’ve been honest with me.” I don’t want to frighten her, but this is urgent.
Bree begins to sniffle. “I don’t want to get into trouble. That horrible John Ponty made me do it and he’s not even my boss! He’s always telling me to do things and not to mention it to anyone. It makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong.”
“No one will know you told me, Bree, unless you need me to stand by you when it comes out. I promise.”
It’s starting to fit together. I need to sit down and work it out properly, and I need space to concentrate. Child-free space. Helen’s busy minding the Tim Tams. Brianna already has Kyleen’s little girl because Kyleen’s working in Halstead. In the past I would have had Norm as my emergency babysitter. After I’ve dabbed away the tears that welled up at the thought of Norm, I decide to call Justin.
“You don’t need to do anything,” I tell him. “If you come over and sit with the kids in the lounge to watch TV and I can have some time to myself, that’ll do the trick. Two hours maximum.” I nod at the phone encouragingly, as if he can see me. “Or three or four,” I add, realizing how many years it is since I attempted sustained intelligent thought.
“I don’t know anything about children,” he warns me. “I’ve spent the last fourteen years living in close quarters with violent, damaged men.”
“Well, this will obviously be a bit more of a challenge, but I’m sure you’re up to it.”
He arrives bearing lollipops and a teen fashion magazine. He’s a natural. I usher him into the lounge room, where the zombie children are watching a cartoon, and when he sits down on the couch Jake scoots across and snuggles up against him exactly the way he used to with Norm.
• • •
NEXT DAY AFTER work, I hop in the car and race over to Vaughan’s shop in Halstead. These trips are costing me a fortune in petrol. I wait until the customer in the shop leaves with a kettle under her arm, then wander in, peeling a banana. The shelves are stacked with the kind of labor-saving devices and luxury electrical goods people buy as presents for Mother’s Day that end up in the back of the cupboard until they’re discovered, twenty years later, by a grandchild who thinks they’re fabulous and retro.
A young salesman comes to offer assistance, but Vaughan has seen me and he sends the salesman away.
“Need a word with you, Vaughan.”
I’ve never seen Vaughan angry. He’s a good mayor because he doesn’t get riled up. He sits like a Buddha through the stormy meetings where councillors are throwing accusations at each other, and when they’ve worn themselves out, he stops patting his stomach and starts negotiating.
Today, I am seeing the mayor angry. He’s a gorgeous pinky orange, the same color as a cocktail I had once called a Tequila Sunset, and he’s patting his poor stomach so fast it’s like watching the flitter of butterfly wings.
“No food in the shop, Loretta. And I’m not sure I should be talking to you. Aren’t you being charged with assault?”
I wrap the banana back in its skin and drop it into my handbag. “I’ve been to Legal Aid. They’re going to try to get me a bond.”
“Yes, well, don’t start on me now, Loretta. You’ve already ruined my reputation with that article. I have never taken an inappropriate trip. I haven’t had time to take a bloody trip at all since I’ve been mayor, except to Melbourne in the car.”
“I didn’t give the information to the newspaper, Vaughan. It was Norm.”
He shrugs. “What does it matter who did it? It made me look like a fool. Anyway, we’ve had an investigation and it’s all been explained. So you can get off your high horse. The report will be out next month.”
“Who investigated?”
“Leave it alone, Loretta. Why are you always stirring up trouble?”
“The whole thing stinks, Vaughan, and you know it. Why would you approve a development in beautiful local bushland that takes drinking water out of the ground to use in a bloody spa?”
He’s patting his stomach so fast now it looks like he’s got a motorized hand. The gorgeous pink has faded. He’s dead white. I hope he isn’t getting pains in his chest. I had to take a first aid course when I started work at the Neighbourhood House, but the dummy was half the size of Vaughan. I don’t think I’d even be able to turn him on his side.
“I didn’t approve it. It didn’t need to come to council because it met all the requirements of the code, so it was automatically approved in the shire offices. You don’t know what you’re talking about, Loretta.”
“Let’s sit down in your office.” I’m really worried. He’s about to keel over.
He swings around and stumbles to his glassed-in office. I call the salesman and ask him for water.
“You’re killing me, Loretta.” Vaughan collapses into his office chair, which creaks and sinks an inch.
Once he’s taken a sip of water and his color is back to normal, I pull out the diagram I sketched last night. At school I did a subject we called veggie maths, for the less mathematically endowed, and I excelled at these diagrams. They are pretty and easy to understand. Overlapping colored bubbles show things that are connected. There are bubbles inside bubbles. Bubbles inside other bubbles connected to different bubbles. A great big bubble picture like soapsuds mixing up in the wash.
“What’s this?” Vaughan says crossly, glancing over my carefully drawn and colored-in bubbles.
“See this bubble? This is Samantha Patterson. She is touching every other bubble in some way.”
“Bubbles?”
“It’s a Venn diagram, Vaughan.”
He stares at it for a moment. “Why is the John Ponty bubble sitting almost on top of the Samantha Patterson bubble?” he asks.
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“Don’t make me say it, Vaughan.” I’m glad I’m not the only one who didn’t know.
“You’re sure?”
“I’ve heard that if you drive to the motel at the Bendigo turnoff on a Thursday afternoon you can see for yourself.”
“Jesus.” He looks off to the side. “So I am a fool.” He looks again at the diagram. “Who told you this? And what’s the swimming pool got to do with it?”
“See the crosshatching of the linking bubbles here, here, and here?” I’m so proud of this diagram. It took me hours. “Same equipment used to do all these works. Equipment owned by the development company building the resort. No bets taken that John Ponty’s renovations are gratis and that the work for the pool renovations went to a favored contractor with a parent company based in Western Australia.”
“And that Samantha has some interest somewhere in this company or its development.” Vaughan lets out a resigned sigh. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t see any of this.”
“Norm thought she was too smart to have shares or anything obvious like that. But she’s involved. It’s clear from the diagram.”
“How could I have been such a fool? I didn’t have a clue.”
“You couldn’t have known. John Ponty must have made sure none of it ever reached a council meeting by approving it at staff level.”
“I hate it that you’re right, Loretta.”
“It wasn’t me, Vaughan. It was Norm. He knew something was up when he got the Unsightly Property Notice.”
Vaughan nods. “I was a bit surprised by that myself. But I thought it was a genuine complaint.”
“Will you do something now, Vaughan? We can’t let this go on. Samantha Patterson called Norm a filthy old junk man. And anyway, you’ll look good because you’ll be the one who exposes the corruption in the shire council.”
“Oh, hell.” Vaughan presses his hand against his belly and burps. “I get it now. Samantha’s husband told me they’d bought into some new businesses. The one I can remember was aromatherapy oils and soaps and cosmetics.”
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