by Robin Storey
We bought fish and chips and went back to the beach to eat them, finding a secluded spot near the rock wall. It occurred to me that if Gisbourne had his spies watching us, it would be easy for them to get the wrong idea.
My appetite had been sharpened by the exercise and sea air, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d tasted anything as delicious as the fresh, tender fish and the chips cooked to crispy perfection. Frankie ate voraciously, licking the salt off her fingers.
A flock of expectant seagulls gathered around us. She threw a chip to one of them and laughed as they all squabbled over it.
‘That’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh,’ I said.
‘Maybe I don’t have a lot to laugh about.’
‘I can understand that. How do you cope, with your boyfriend in jail?’
‘What you really mean is, how do I cope without sex.’
‘I guess that’s part of it. But it wasn’t what I was specifically asking.’
‘Don’t bullshit me. If you were a woman, maybe not, but when guys ask me that question, what they really want to know is what I do when I’m horny.’
‘And what do you tell them?’
‘I tell them to mind their own fucking business because they’re usually thinking that I must be so desperate for a shag that I’ll take anyone who asks, which means them.’
‘You need to hang out with a better class of man,’ I said.
‘Like you, for example?’
‘Why not? Women have been known to phone me and wait for days for the chance to see me in person. By the time I’ve gone through all the clauses of section 56B of the Bankruptcy Act, they’re practically ripping my clothes off.’
She burst out laughing and I laughed at her laughter. It was one of those moments of connection when you feel at one with every living thing, and all is right with the universe.
#
At the Sandy Beach Motel we were booked into rooms 10 and 11. It overlooked the ocean but our rooms were at the back, with no view. Frankie disappeared into her room to have an afternoon nap and I made a cup of instant sawdust from the supplied coffee sachets and watched an old James Bond movie on TV. I peered out the window several times, checking the car park and surrounds for vehicles that looked familiar or suspicious, though I really didn’t have a clue what I was looking for and felt like a paranoid, curtain-twitching old biddy.
Frankie knocked on my door at a quarter to six. She’d changed into a summery dress and a lacy cardigan. Her hair was out in all its glorious mess and she looked as if she’d just stepped out of a Scandinavian ad for shampoo.
‘Wow! What a transformation!’ I said.
She looked sheepish. ‘I just thought … in case he’s there...’
In the car on the way to the house, I said, ‘I’ll wait in the car, if you want.’
She didn’t reply but as we pulled up in front, she said,’ I’d like you to come with me, if you don’t mind.’
I felt warm all over inside, though I was nervous for her as well. Daylight saving had begun and the afternoon was still clear and bright. A battered, early model Toyota was parked in the carport. As we stood at the front door, the insistent blaring of a TV mingled with children’s screams. Frankie took a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. After a few moments, the door was whipped open by a lumpy, harassed-looking woman. The noise from inside was deafening.
‘Hi,’ Frankie said. ‘Sorry to bother you. Does Jake Magarry still live here?’
‘The Magarrys moved about four years ago.’
She turned around and yelled, ‘Will youse kids stop that racket!’
‘Do you know where they went?’ Frankie said.
‘They went to Avalon, but I dunno if they’re still there.’
‘Did they leave a forwarding address?’ I asked.
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Are youse the cops?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘we’re friends of Jake’s, we want to catch up with him.’
She looked at us disbelievingly. ‘Nope, got no idea.’
And slammed the door in our faces.
Chapter 13
FRANKIE and I looked at each other.
‘First time I’ve ever been asked if I’m a cop,’ Frankie said.
‘Me too.’
As we got back in the car, Frankie said, ‘Where’s Avalon?’
‘It’s a little coastal town – I don’t think it’s far from here.’
Frankie looked it up on her phone as I drove off. ‘It’s 82 kilometres to Avalon Beach. I’ll see if I can find any Magarrys in the White Pages.’
After a minute she said, ‘Hey, what do you know? There’s a C and L Magarry in Avalon. 26 Seagull Ave. The only Magarrys there – that has to be them.’
‘It looks promising,’ I agreed. ‘It will probably take us an hour and a bit to get to Avalon, so it’s a bit late in the day to turn up out of the blue on their doorstep. What about giving them a call?’
Frankie shook her head. ‘I don’t think we should ring them at all. It’s too easy for people to tell you to piss off on the phone. I think we should just turn up on the doorstep first thing tomorrow morning.’
I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea to turn up without warning – it could put the Magarrys offside. But I said nothing. From now on, it was Frankie’s call.
As we pulled into the motel car park I said, ‘Do you want to go somewhere for dinner?’
‘Is this on the pro bono expense account as well?’
‘Of course. Rest assured all these expenses are tax deductible.’ Even if they weren’t, I didn’t care.
The motel restaurant was cramped and noisy, so we walked a couple of blocks to the Empire Hotel bar and grill, an unpretentious but cosy restaurant that served the usual pub fare.
As I ordered our meals at the counter and bought our drinks from the bar, I surveyed the other clientele for anyone who looked as if they didn’t quite fit in and might be staking us out. But as there were a number of people who could have fitted that description, I gave up. If there was anyone following us, they were too damn efficient at their job.
I handed Frankie her wine and clinked my beer to her glass. ‘Here’s to finding Jake.’
‘To finding Jake,’ she echoed.
‘I don’t want to put a damper on things, but have you considered what Lyn Andrews said? That Jake might not want to see you? Or even that his adopted family might not know where he is, or that he might be living in another country?’
Frankie nodded. ‘I have thought about it, but I don’t want to dwell on it because it might not happen. I’d rather wait and see, and then if I can’t see him for some reason, I’ll deal with it then.’
It sounded a reasonable way to look at the situation if I didn’t suspect that Frankie was simply avoiding the issue, and that she still expected that she and Jake would run into each other’s arms, as if the years dividing them had disappeared on sight.
‘So tell me about Jake,’ I said. ‘What do you remember about him?’
‘Everything,’ Frankie said. ‘Sometimes at night when I’m having trouble sleeping I’ll imagine myself back to my childhood. I’m six and Jake is four and we’re sitting on the back porch waiting for Mum to get drunk and pass out so we can play Tarzan. There was a vine hanging over the porch and we’d hold on to it and jump off the railing. I’d always insist on being Tarzan and Jake had to be Jane. He hated it but he always gave in.’
I smiled. ‘I can just see you bossing him round mercilessly.’
‘Don’t worry, he got his own back. I had a phobia about grasshoppers – still do, horrible gangly things. My mistake was letting Jake find out. He’d collect them then put one down my back when my guard was down. They were the only times I ever got really mad at him.’
‘Sounds like a typical sibling relationship. My younger sister annoyed the hell out of me when we were kids but we’re pretty close now.’
Frankie traced a finger down the condensation on her glass. ‘It was more than just a brot
her-sister relationship. I was his mother as well. Jake had just turned two when Tom left Mum and she sank into this really depressive state, drinking all day and hardly even seemed to notice us – only to yell at us for doing something wrong. Most of the time it was me who looked after Jake, dressed him, fed him and kept him amused. When I started school I’d pretend to be sick a lot so Mum would let me stay home, because I knew if I didn’t, Jake wouldn’t be looked after properly. In the end, that was why the child safety officers came out, because I’d missed so much school.’
‘It doesn’t sound like much of a childhood.’
‘I didn’t know any different at the time. When you’re a kid you just think your family’s nothing out of the ordinary. It’s only later when you get to see what other families are like that you realise how fucked up yours was.’
She looked around. ‘When’s this steak coming?’
Right on cue, our meals arrived – we’d both ordered the rump steak and garlic mash. Frankie demolished every morsel of food on her plate, even the sprig of parsley, and finished my garlic mash as well. She then picked up the menu to peruse the desserts.
‘I’ve never known a woman to eat so much,’ I said. ‘Where do you put it all?’
She shrugged. ‘I burn it all up – nervous energy. Mum used to tell me I had a tapeworm in my stomach and I believed her. That was my excuse when she caught me with my hand in the biscuit jar – I was feeding the tapeworm.’
‘Did you have any contact with her after you went into the foster home?’
Frankie shook her head. ‘She was too far gone into the alcohol – I don’t think she was capable of thinking of anything except where her next drink was coming from. She died of cirrhosis of the liver when I was 15. A woman from the Department came out to my foster home to break the news to me. I’d been so angry with her for so many years for abandoning us, then when I heard she was dead, I just felt numb. The picture I had of her in my mind had faded over the years and I got to the point where I couldn’t see her face at all. And I thought, how can I hate her when I can’t even remember what she looks like?’
Her voice wavered. She put the menu down and stood up. ‘I’m going outside to have a cigarette.’
I finished my drink and ordered another for both of us, by which time Frankie had returned. She reeked of cigarette smoke, which I tried to ignore. In any case, it seemed to have worked as her face had softened and her eyes were brighter.
After dessert and another wine, Frankie was even laughing at my stock of what Steph calls my ‘Dad jokes’. When she laughed, her face looked fuller, as if she’d just had a collagen injection, and her eyes lost their defensive expression. The change mesmerised me and I tried hard not to stare.
‘You’re really different,’ Frankie said. ‘I’ve never met a lawyer with a sense of humour. Not that I’ve met that many,’ she added. ‘Only Legal Aid lawyers.’
‘Some of us hide it well,’ I said. ‘But a sense of humour is imperative. Do you know any other profession that has a whole category of jokes, all told at its expense? It’s why when lawyers die, they’re always buried under 20 feet of dirt.’’
Frankie looked puzzled.
‘Because deep down they’re really good people.’
Frankie groaned. ‘I take that back about your sense of humour.’ She cocked her head on one side. ‘Do you like being a lawyer?’
Her question took me aback. No-one else had ever asked it. People assumed you liked being a lawyer; otherwise you wouldn’t be one. Or you liked the money, which in the eyes of most amounted to the same thing.
The disquiet in my subconscious that I’d suppressed for so long came to the fore. The answer was there in all its simple, perfect clarity. ‘No,’ I said.
‘I thought so.’
‘How did you work that out?’
She shrugged. ‘Women’s intuition. When you talk about your work, it’s like you’re detached from it, as if it’s something you have to do, rather than want to do.’
I considered her remark. Was that how I came across to my clients as well?
‘What about you?’ I asked to change the subject. ‘Do you like cleaning?’
‘I don’t dislike it – it’s a way of earning money. Better than a lot of jobs and you get to work on your own a lot, which I like.’’
‘You seem pretty intelligent – have you ever thought about doing more study?’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. What are your interests?’ I thought of the classic question the vocational guidance counsellors ask. ‘What did you like doing as a kid?’
She traced her finger around the rim of her wine glass. ‘I liked running away to my special hiding place under the house with my favourite book, where my foster father couldn’t find me. Could I make a career out of that?’
#
When we got back to the motel, I said, ‘I was serious about the singalong. Do you want to come in for a while?’
Frankie hesitated. The walk home had sobered her up a bit and her wariness had returned. ‘Okay, but I’m not singing. I’ll just listen to you.’
‘As long as you don’t throw rotten tomatoes.’
Frankie sat on the edge of the second bed while I made us a cup of sawdust each, served up with a cardboard biscuit from a cellophane packet. I took my guitar out of its case and tuned it.
‘Here’s a little ditty I wrote myself and it goes something like this.’
I played her two of the songs from my album in the making, Life’s a Stage.
They were both catchy tunes with a good beat and Frankie was soon tapping her foot.
‘They’re not bad,’ she said. ‘A bit too folksy for my taste, but you could ramp them up a bit. Play the first one again, a bit faster.’
The first song, ‘The Day I Sacked My Best Friend,’ was about a young boy who’d discovered his best friend had betrayed him. I sped it up and added more strum to give it a more full-bodied effect. Frankie joined in the chorus. Her voice was mellow with an edge, like a throaty version of Stevie Nicks. And she harmonised perfectly. Her voice gave an extra dimension to the song that I could never have imagined.
As I faded out, Frankie said, ‘I’m a bit rusty.’
‘You were fantastic. Have you done this professionally? Because if you haven’t, you should be.’
‘I used to be in a rock band with Eddie – he was the lead guitarist. We called ourselves ‘The Heebie Jeebies.’ We did the pub scene for a while, but the drugs and alcohol finished it in the end. We were always stoned or pissed, everyone in the scene was, and when the drummer, who was also Eddie’s best friend, jumped off a building after dropping acid, it all just fell apart.’
‘Do you miss it?’
‘What, the drugs and alcohol?’ She grinned. ‘I gave all that up after the band folded. I could see where it was leading to and I decided to get out while I still had half a brain. But the singing –yeah. I didn’t realise how much until just then.’
Come and sing with me, I wanted to say. We’ll make a great duo. You’d give my songs the depth they could never have with just me.
I played some more of my own stuff. Frankie only needed to hear each song once and she could pick up the melody. If she didn’t remember the words, she hummed, which sounded just as good. Then we got into the covers – Powderfinger, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam. As the strains of Pearl Jam’s ‘Better Man’ died away, I noticed in the dim light of the bedside lamp that Frankie’s eyes were watery.
‘I gotta go.’ She jumped up and looped her handbag over her shoulder.
Although I was used to Frankie’s abrupt changes of mood, it still jarred me out of my zone.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning – say, seven? We can have breakfast on the way. ‘
She nodded. I opened the door for her, letting in a gust of cool air.
‘Thanks,’ she said. I wasn’t sure what she was thanking me for. Was it dinner, the music, the night as a whole, or just opening the door for her
? I watched her walk to the next-door unit and let herself into number 11.
Chapter 14
WE WERE on our way to Avalon by 7.15 am, stopping halfway at a roadside cafe for a greasy bacon and egg roll and coffee. Frankie only had a couple of bites of her roll. Avalon was a small, sedate coastal town whose main claim to fame was good surf. Although the waves were sparse and choppy, a bunch of optimistic surfers was lined up past the swell, looking like seals in their black wetsuits as they waited for a decent wave.
Twenty-six Seagull Ave was a five minute drive away and one block back from the beach – a two storey brick home, framed by palm trees with a patch of velvety green lawn in front. A late-model Toyota stood in the driveway.
‘Someone’s home,’ I said. I looked at Frankie. She’d hardly said a word all morning. ‘Are you nervous?’
‘No, but my stomach is.’
I took her hand. It was icy cold. She didn’t pull it away.
‘Do you want me to come in with you?’
She nodded. At the front door she stood unmoving for some time, then reached out and pressed the doorbell.
The door opened. A man peered out at us. Large, untidy build, rumpled face, thinning hair.
I stepped back to let Frankie do the talking. She cleared her throat. ‘Are you Mr Magarry?’
‘Yes,’ he said warily. ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m Frankie Slater. I’m Jake’s sister.’
He stared at her. ‘His ... sister?’
‘Half-sister. We were both taken into foster care at the same time but we never had any contact with each other. I never knew where he was and it’s taken me all this time to find him.’
‘Jesus.’ He looked as if he were about to slam the door in our faces, so I stepped forward. ‘I can vouch for Frankie, she’s telling the truth. I’m Will McPherson, her lawyer. I’ve been helping her.’
Magarry turned his head and bellowed, ‘Leonie, you’d better come here!’
A tall woman with ash-blonde hair appeared in the hallway. He met her halfway and they spoke in low voices. Magarry stepped back as Leonie appeared in the doorway and looked us over. Her warm eyes belied her no-nonsense demeanour. I sensed instantly she’d be good foster mother material.