by Joy Dettman
Anyway, what the hell did a bridegroom of three months think he was doing, leaving his pretty little wife alone at a party? That’s looking for trouble. And a thirty-six year old bloke who looked fifty, had a gimpy leg, the personality of a cod and the face of a mangy fox in winter, had no right in marrying a pretty little girl of eighteen, and Nicholas and fat Olivia Squire should have stopped her from doing it too. And what the hell had that little girl been thinking of, wanting to marry up with him for, anyhow? ‘Which, I suppose, is none of your flamin’ business, Thomo.’
He glanced in the direction of Dolan’s hotel, only a few hundred yards away – if you followed that short cut through the bush. There was a party down there every Saturday night, which no respectable young lady would be seen at for love or money, though not all of the young ladies in town were respectable, even some of the more respectable ones. Tom shook his head, aware that thought hadn’t surfaced in quite the way he’d thought it, but it was a fact.
With that swarm of pickers in town, he should have had a poke around at the pub last night. Hindsight is a bugger, but he’d got Rosie settled early, and in such situations you make certain decisions. Not that he’d got much sleep. Again he scratched. That damn helmet made his head itch. He removed it, raked at his scalp. His hair, once a nondescript brown, was greying at the temples, so why did his whiskers still grow through black?
‘Go home, have some breakfast and spruce yourself up a bit,’ he said.
At the gate, Tom considered his options. A ride straight up Railway Road would take him home to Rosie. A right hand turn and down over the railway crossing would take him to the swimming bend and to the pickers’ camp. Squire’s land was on the far side of the river, miles of it, forests of it, sheep by the thousand, beef, fruit trees, a manor house surrounded by the finest garden you’d be likely to see outside of Melbourne. Nicholas Squire had money to burn, and he’d never done a hand’s turn to earn it.
The Johnsons ran the place. When Tige, their oldest son, was alive, Tom had knocked more than a few times on the Johnsons’ door. Kids everywhere, heads popping out from beneath tables, around doors – like a plague of redheaded, red-eyed mice. He’d seen the lads shearing sheep before they were as big as the sheep they shore, had seen little girls standing on boxes hanging out the washing while fat Olivia and her daughters lived the life of ladies.
As the crow flew, the Squire house was less than half a mile from Kennedy’s gate, but Tom couldn’t fly, he wasn’t dressed for swimming and his legs didn’t feel like making the ride up that hill, out over that bridge, all the way around and back again – or not before telephoning and making sure they were there.
‘A man of my age, expected to cover the territory he’s expected to cover, shouldn’t have to push a bike,’ he said. ‘A man of my age should be driving a car.’
About to mount and ride, he noticed the imprint of a woman’s high-heeled shoe in the dust. Rachael had been wearing shoes with heels, and one of those shoes had probably made that print.
‘So she walked away, she wasn’t carried from this place.’ He found another print, and a good one, and it was heading for Merton Road.
‘She’s walking,’ he said, moving forward, eyes searching the dust. ‘She’s still walking here, and still alone, Thomo. And there she is again.’ He tracked those shoe prints ten or twelve yards up Kennedy’s Road before he lost them.
‘You’ll never make a black tracker, Thomo.’
With Merton Road and the hotel close by, he stopped. He’d have to have a word with the widow Dolan sooner or later, a waste of time or not. Why not do it while he was down this end of town?
‘Go and get her out of her bed, Thomo,’ he said.
Tom had knocked on Harry Dolan’s door more regularly than he knocked on his widow’s door. Born and raised in that pub when pub hours had been pretty much as you like it, Harry had considered six o’clock closing as a personal attack, brought in by the government purely to ruin his business. He’d ignored it.
His widow, city born and bred, made a good show of complying by the laws of the land, closing her bar room door at six on the dot on weeknights, but every Saturday night she had a party in her cider pit, and had some lying coot lined up who’d swear black and blue that he was throwing the party, that the drinks were on him. She had a fundraising get-together every Sunday afternoon, served tea and scones in the cider pit – or so she said. He knew she was selling grog in there. Where she hid it, he didn’t know; he’d wasted a lot of time during the early months of her widowhood, creeping up on that pit and trying to find out.
Len Larkin spent half his life at the pub, though he wasn’t a heavy drinker. Other than losing half of one arm, Larkin was one of the few returned boys who’d come through the war unscarred. He, Dave Kennedy and Tige Johnson had been the only survivors of Molliston’s 1914 football team, until Tige went mad one night and blew his brains out on Squire’s front lawn.
Tom parked his bike in the shade of an overgrown pear tree, heavy with fruit, remembering the last time he’d parked it there when he’d ended up threatening to charge the widow with everything from selling grog after hours, to selling herself. That woman always put him at a disadvantage, always sent his good sense scattering like a flock of cockatoos off a wheat paddock.
He checked his watch. No sign of any life down here – however, it was now well past rising time for normal folk, and if the widow wasn’t one of the normal folk, then that was her problem, Tom told himself as he marched to her front door and rapped hard on it.
No sound from within. He hammered that door, near ringbarking his knuckles before it opened and a wild frizz of red-gum auburn hair came through it.
‘Oh, it’s just you, lovey. Drop your trousers in the hall and put your two bob on the table,’ she greeted him, one amber eye mocking him, the other hidden behind that hair.
He lifted his chin, but not his helmet, which was on a level with the top of that hair this morning, only because the doorstep gave her an extra five inches, though the widow Dolan was no midget; Tom had touched six foot two and a half when he’d joined the force.
‘A sensible word or two this morning, thank you, Mrs Dolan.’
‘Oh, don’t go all official on me now, lovey. They call me Red in the bedroom.’
‘They call you a menace to decent flamin’ society, that’s what they call you! Your mouth needs hosing out with turpentine.’
Shouldn’t have said that. Always saying the wrong thing with this woman, but she had a tongue on her that drove him to it. Every time he had to deal with her, he ended up suffering from foot-in-mouth disease.
He’d known her in the city a long time ago, and knew a bit too much about her. That was half of the problem. And she knew that he remembered her – and that was the other half of the problem. Not that he’d told anyone in town what he knew – or ever let her know he remembered her. She’d come to Molliston as Mrs Harry Dolan, so he always made a point of calling her Mrs Dolan.
The drinkers liked her, the teetotallers wanted to be rid of her, but that pub had been in the Dolan family since the coach service to Merton ceased, when the Dolans went into the production of apple cider. Harry continued the family tradition, and had gone through a lot of his own cider in sixty-odd years. He’d gone through three wives too, then wasted no time in finding his fourth, who he’d wed in the Molliston Catholic church. This one, apparently more than a match for him, had him back in that church in a box twelve months after the wedding.
After the funeral she’d committed the unforgivable sin of selling Harry’s twenty acre bottom paddock to Joseph Reichenberg, which had got a lot of the old guards’ backs up. There were a few in town who’d prefer to lose money than sell to a German. A week after the sale, she’d taken off in Harry’s truck, grinding gears and raising dust out on the Willama Road, leaving four lodgers down here to fend for themselves. Tom had been relieved to see the back of her, but she’d returned, driving a little green roadster which she’d had no
licence to drive. He’d given her one, with reservations.
‘Take it slow,’ he’d warned. ‘And keep it out of town until you can control the thing, Mrs Dolan.’ He might as well have told the man in the moon when to rise.
By the bejesus, he resented that car, or resented her owning it, and him still pushing a bike – resented her whizzing past him, spraying grit and tooting her horn while he pushed those pedals up that hill.
‘Who did you have in that ambulance this morning, Thomo?’
He ignored her question. ‘I’m here to get a list of the names of those you had at your alleged party last night, Mrs Dolan.’
‘It was Len Larkin’s mother’s birthday party. I just supplied the music.’
‘I hope she enjoyed it.’
‘Due to illness, she couldn’t attend – and when you start ringing bells out the front of my place at the crack of dawn, then come knocking down my door and waking me up again a few hours later, I’d say I’ve got a right to know why.’
‘I doubt you would have been in your bed at the crack of dawn, Mrs Dolan, and if you were, by the sound of your greeting this morning you were up to no flamin’ good in it –’ He bit his tongue, closed his mouth, looked over his shoulder and scratched at his jaw. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. As I was saying, I want a list of the guests, male and female, and I want to know what time they arrived and what time they left.’
‘Then you’re wanting to know more than I’m knowing, Thomo, my lad.’
‘If I can give you the respect of your dead husband’s name, then I’ll thank you to reciprocate, Mrs Dolan.’
‘Yes, officer. To be sure, officer.’ She curtsied, lifting her colourful satin dressing gown enough to show one long white leg with a mole above the knee. He turned his back fast.
‘Get that list on my desk by noon, if you please.’
‘That ambulance was out front of Reichenberg’s place. Did old Joe finally murder one of those boys?’ He made no reply, so she shrugged and stepped outside, leaving the door gaping wide as she walked to the eastern end of the low-slung veranda where a breath of cool was coming off the water tank.
The hotel, constructed room by room over a longish period of time, wasn’t much of a hotel as hotels go. Its roof was low, its rooms small and its veranda floors rested against the earth. The floors inside were not much higher, and the place smelled of age and beer, tainted by mushrooms. Out here, the air was thick with the scents of her garden.
Tom watched her fill a bucket from the tank tap then meter out good drinking water to pot plants, pouring a little around the roots of a wisteria that formed a solid green wall on the western end of the veranda and was well on its way to taking over the north side. A nice spot this, and that cane lounge waiting in the shade, inviting his legs to sit a while. He didn’t sit, but walked determinedly into the sun.
Verandas sheltered all four sides of the hotel. Harry Dolan had put in six big water tanks, needing a reliable supply of water for his lodgers. She’d evicted them and was now using that water to keep the close surrounds of this place blooming – and tank water as precious as liquid gold these days, and him not having any.
He sniffed at the air. That circle of belladonna lilies had no fear of drought or sun. In full bloom, their perfume this morning resurrected memories of a small back yard in Melbourne, which he didn’t want to think about.
‘There are families in town dipping their drinking water from the river and lugging it home in buckets, Mrs Dolan.’
‘What do you want me to do about it? Buy a Furphy and start deliveries?’
He walked away from her, walked down the eastern side of the building; she followed him with a second bucket of precious water. Plants by the dozen down this side, strange plants he couldn’t name, bearing strange flowers he’d never seen before.
‘Were either of the Reichenberg boys at your party last night?’
‘Ask Len Larkin who his mother invited.’
He took a tobacco tin from his vest pocket, prised the lid off and packed a tight pipe, his mind pondering the pros and cons of coming to the point and telling her about the Squire girl. He wouldn’t get any information out of her unless he told her. What to do next, that was the question.
She emptied her bucket and placed it down, her hair falling forward as she bent, her hand going to that hair, finger-combing it from her brow, her arm bare to the elbow. She was in her early forties, but that arm was still as firm as a girl’s, as was the rest of her. Gutter-born, maybe, but a raving beauty in her time – certainly, the years were starting to show, though not forty-three years, and given the early life she’d led, the years should have been showing more. Time had stayed well clear of those amber eyes. They were looking at his pipe, looking at his matchbox. She liked a fag. He sighed, took the cigarette packet from his pocket and offered the lone white cylinder.
‘As you know, officer, I was never a one to take the last lolly out of a baby’s mouth.’
He kept offering it. She shrugged a shoulder and took it. He lit it for her then lit his pipe with his last match, letting the match burn down, curl, turn black before tossing it. Turning on the heel of his boot he followed a narrow path to the cider pit, scattering a motley assortment of chooks pecking for what they might find.
The cider pit door, designed for broad midgets or fat barrels, was padlocked. A man had to bob his head low to get inside that door. Plenty didn’t mind bobbing.
The widow hadn’t followed him. She leaned against a veranda post, drawing on her fag and holding her gown around her, holding most of her in. All greens and reds and blues, that gown. Colour. The last Mrs Dolan had been a black-clad toothless mouse.
He turned to Reichenberg’s land, looked at the whitewashed buildings. No sign of life over there – other than the red steers and those horses, beautiful animals, in beautiful condition. Tom wasn’t in the mood to face their owner, not before breakfast.
Making a wide circle around the widow, he was on his way back to his bike when he ran into the wheelbarrow and almost fell on his face.
She laughed, and that woman had a bugger of a laugh. Even as a kid, she’d had a bugger of a laugh on her.
‘Get that list of names on my desk by midday – if you please, Mrs Dolan.’
‘And what if I don’t please, Thomo?’
the reichenbergs
Sunday, 8.05 am
Kurt placed the billy of milk on the work table and Elsa, her hands busy, offered her cheek for his kiss.
‘Wake your brother. He’s already been threatened with a bucket of water.’ She spoke English this morning, only Kurt to hear her, and the cat, a sleek bilingual black she’d named Katze. ‘The constable is at the public house. I heard the ambulance vehicle close by this morning. Was there an accident there?’
‘Close by, Mutti,’ Kurt replied, peering out the kitchen window. It faced east, giving an optimum view of the comings and goings from Dolan’s hotel. No sign of the constable, but his bike was still there.
‘Did you see?’
‘I was late to work this morning,’ Kurt replied as he walked out to the passage.
He and his brother, Christian, shared a bedroom at the rear of the house, each year becoming more annoyed by a third bedroom, empty, its door locked, its boarded-up window like a closed eye, refusing to acknowledge Dolan’s hotel or the rising sun.
Through the open back door he saw his father walk from the barn, answering his stomach’s call. Each morning Joseph worked at his art. He’d served his time with a master furniture maker in Germany before catching gold fever. It was over fifty years since he’d come to Australia to seek his fortune with a pick and shovel, his woodworking tools travelling with him, good tools made in Germany. They’d put food in his mouth during the bad times. At seventy-eight, his eyesight not so keen, it took longer to achieve the results of his youth, so he worked longer hours. A perfectionist, Joseph Reichenberg, the German dealer in Willama paid well for the privilege of selling each piece those old ha
nds produced.
Kurt had great respect for his father, but he didn’t wait to greet him. He stepped back and into his bedroom where Christian lay, sprawled on his stomach, limbs spread like a starfish, the stink of grog oozing with the sweat from his pores.
‘Have you been bathing in it?’ he asked, shaking his brother’s shoulder. ‘Wake up, and wash yourself.’
‘Clear out,’ Christian moaned, rolling onto his side.
The slam of the screen door, heavy boots on wood, the slap of a hand on their door and a guttural growl. ‘Steh ouf!’
‘He is up, Papa,’ Kurt replied in German, the only language allowed in this house when his father was within earshot, the language both boys had been familiar with until entering the classroom. Christian, thirteen months Kurt’s junior, now refused to speak his father’s language.
‘Get up.’
‘What’s the time?’
‘It’s after eight.’
‘It’s Sunday too. Go to buggery.’
Kurt grasped the corner of the pillow and dragged it free. ‘It’s Sunday and a bloody Sunday, brother, and I need to talk to you.’
Christian sat up for an instant. ‘Oh, shit,’ he moaned, and he was down again, his face buried in the mattress.
‘You drink, you suffer. Your brain is pickled by grog, the room stinks of it, and if he comes in here, you’ll get his bucket of water, and our mattress will be wet again. Get out, wash yourself and gather your wits. We have to talk.’
‘I like them better scattered.’
‘What did you do after I left last night?’
‘It’s none of your business what I do.’
‘Not mine, perhaps, but it has become police business. Rachael was taken to Willama in the ambulance this morning.’