by Joy Dettman
He stood on his veranda looking west, listening to a vehicle grinding its gears near the top of the rise. Only Andy Morrison bringing the searchers home.
‘Did you find those kids?’ Tom called as the truck pulled in beneath the tree.
‘Not a sign of them.’
‘What a bugger.’ He watched the men disperse to their homes and he turned again to the west. Come on, Morgan, he urged silently. Where the hell have you got to? You couldn’t drive a blind horse in flamin’ circles. I’ll end up sending out a search party after you next. And you’re not doing much good standing out here, Thomo. And you’re not doing your legs much good standing on them when you could be sitting, either.
He’d had good legs once, legs that could run for miles, and run fast too. He’d been good at his job – been good at reading folk, at watching their hands, their eyes, the way they walked. And he knew that lying little mongrel in his cells was lying about his mates taking off at dawn too. It had come out too fast, too neat and easy. Vernon Lowe had never been easy, and he’d never given up his mates either – that’s about the only thing Tom would say for him.
An amazing thing, a man’s brain. Amazing too the pile of memories and information that got mixed up together in there, each man creating his own life’s encyclopaedia, with coloured illustrations. He could bring up a photograph of Lowe at fourteen, surviving on the streets by pimping for a couple of girls who might have been his little sisters. He could bring up an image of him at sixteen, the first time Tom had run him in for robbery with violence. He hadn’t been one of the more successful crooks, spent a bit of time in the pen, but always had friends to get him out, or to look after him while he was in.
A funny old world, the way folk could start out even, be it in the gutter or a mansion, and one could make a go of life and the other never crawl out of that gutter. It had to be something to do with nature, something inborn that drove a man up or down. Rosie’s father had been a loafing old coot, but her mother worked her fingers to the bone to raise those girls decent. Rosie’s sisters turned out well, but even before the war, Rosie never had what might be called a healthy mind.
He’d have to bite the bullet, make a phone call in the morning and take her down when Morgan went back. Transporting her by car would be a damn sight easier than trying to take her down there on the train. He had to do it, for her sake as much as his. Had to get in touch with her sisters too, let them know what was going on with her, though they’d pretty much lost contact with her these last few years.
He stood listening to Jeanne, talking to her charge as if she was caring for a little kid. ‘Now, won’t you be pretty for your visitors?’ she said.
‘Ronnie’s coming home,’ Rosie mumbled.
‘Is he now? Tell Jeanne all about your Ronnie.’
‘Ronnie’s coming home.’
Tom smiled. That stickybeaked little bugger, always on the lookout for information. She wouldn’t get much out of Rosie.
He checked the stove for wood, poked a small bit into the firebox and closed it up fast. The kitchen, with its window looking west and the sun burning in, was hot enough to broil tough mutton at this time of day. He helped himself to a chilled peach, knowing he shouldn’t have been eating it. They were going straight through him now, one in and two out, but he took it with him to his office, stood a while dripping peach juice onto his growing pile of notes earmarked for Morgan.
‘It’s damn near dinnertime. It’ll be too late to do anything soon. What the hell happened to him?’ he asked his watch.
And he heard a motor out front.
getting to the truth
It wasn’t Morgan. As Tom unlocked and opened his front door, the widow pushed by and flounced ahead of him to the lifted end of his counter.
‘I said half an hour. I take it you haven’t got a clock down there, Mrs Dolan?’
‘I came up here this morning and I told you all I knew about that Squire girl and I haven’t learned anything new since this morning, and if you’ve got any thoughts of charging me for serving afternoon tea and raising money for the orphans, then just try discrediting an eighty year old, churchgoing dairyman when I put him on the witness stand.’ She glanced around his office, obviously not seeing who she was expecting to see. ‘Where is he?’
‘He’ll be here any tick. He’s going to enjoy meeting up with you again,’ Tom said, picking up the chair Vern Lowe had been cuffed to. As he set it on its legs, offered it, he noticed the wobble in one leg and withdrew his offer. She sat on his chair and started rummaging in her handbag for cigarettes and matches.
Tom pushed a rung back into its hole, a leg back into the seat, gave each a hammer with the heel of his hand, then tested the chair with his weight. It wasn’t going to hold him, so he walked to his desk and propped his backside on the edge.
‘Open the window and let some air in.’
‘It’s jammed.’
‘Then open your doors.’
‘The department won’t supply screen doors and there’s too many blowies about,’ he said, emptying the contents of his pockets onto his desk, searching for his tobacco tin, which he must have left in the kitchen. He stuck the pipe in his mouth, unlit, and continued his search. Out came his notebook and pencil, the connecting string tangled.
‘Well, are you charging me or not?’
‘I’m still thinking about it, Mrs Dolan, though I’d have to lock you in with Vernon – which wouldn’t be the first time you two shared accommodation, if I remember rightly. Is that why you didn’t tell me you were robbed – didn’t want to rat on your boyfriend?’
That got her wound up. He liked winding that woman up. While she was getting a few things off her chest, he made a big play of scribbling in his notebook.
‘I’ve just added abusive language to my list, Mrs Dolan. Anything else you’d like me to add while I’ve got my pencil out?’
He continued his scribbling until she stood and started waving her finger in his face, becoming very personal. ‘Sit down, you redheaded hellion, and keep your voice down, unless you want what you’re saying broadcast all over town.’
‘As if I care.’
‘Well, I do,’ he hissed, pointing to the crack in his ceiling. ‘That crack goes right through to the other side and Jeanne Johnson and Rosie are in there.’ He raised his voice then, and louder than necessary. ‘So, what exactly was taken from your premises last night, Mrs Dolan?’
‘What’s it to you?’
‘I need to make a list of what they got away with before I put in a report.’
She blew smoke at him. ‘A couple of bottles of whisky, half a loaf of bread and a cooked leg of lamb.’
‘What do you know about Mo Riley?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Did he make a donation to your orphans today?’
‘I wouldn’t know him if I fell over him,’ she snapped, ashing her cigarette on his floor.
He passed her an ashtray, and dropped his voice to a near whisper. ‘Young Ruby’s misfortune. What do you know about that – and keep your voice down.’
‘Nothing.’
‘You drove her and Willie to the hospital last night.’
‘So you say.’
‘Mrs Green says so too – or she says you came by her house around eleven last night looking for Willie, and this morning I saw you at the dairy talking to him. You either know something about Ruby’s situation or you’re doing a line with Willie, who’s less than half your age, so I reckon it’s the former.’
‘Variety is the spice of life,’ she said, studying the framed picture of old King George.
‘You’d know about that, Mrs Dolan.’
Wrong thing to say. She was on her feet again, and she wasn’t trying to keep her voice down this time. ‘Yeah,’ she said, ‘and given what I know about a certain birthmark that looks like a serviceable map of Australia with a black mole sitting right where Tasmania ought to be, I’d be watching my mouth if I were you.’ Her voice rose, and Tom rose, not know
ing how to turn her off. ‘Thomo Thompson, the true patriot, stamped made in Australia at birth. And given that I know exactly where you were stamped at birth, you’ve got a bloody lot of nerve with your Mrs Dolan this and your Mrs Dolan that. All I can say is, you’ve got a bloody short memory.’
‘I’ve got a memory like a bloody elephant. Now, you cool down,’ he said, walking to his water jug, pouring most of it into the mug, offering it to her. She took it, turned her nose up at it, but drank. He drained what was in the jug, placed it down and returned to his perch on the desk. ‘I didn’t bring you in for a sparring contest, nor to argue with you – or charge you. I know that you know something about young Ruby. Have you had her staying down at your place?’
‘No.’
‘That O’Brien girl at the hospital reckons she heard your car at the hospital last night, and Irene Murphy told me that someone drove Willie and his sister up there at midnight. Given those facts, added to your visit to Willie this morning, I’d say that you were the one who drove them there. Whoever got her into trouble has committed a crime. You probably know who it was.’
‘If I knew that, he’d be down the bottom of a mine shaft today – with a few vital parts missing.’
‘So, I’m right about the other. You drove her to the hospital.’
‘She came in on the train last night, and the silly little bugger jumped off, down near Kennedy’s crossing. I found her on Railway Road when I was driving back from dropping Rachael at the station.’ She sucked on her cigarette, waved at the smoke. ‘She was a bit scratched about, but seemed all right at the time. I drove over to Green’s, picked Willie up, and we took her back to my place. I left them in my parlour while I went down to check on the party and when I got back, I noticed she was bleeding all over my couch. I drove my car up to the front and Willie carried her down to Hunter’s side door. When I saw him go inside, I drove off, and that’s all I know about it.’
‘So, why not tell me all of that when you came down this morning?’
‘What difference does it make, knowing how the girl got home? She’s dying.’
‘It’s a great pity that she didn’t stay where she was.’
‘Maybe if you tried living in one of those places, you might change your attitude. Squire had her in a Catholic home for wayward girls. She and two others took off from it a week back when they found out the nuns took their babies away as soon as they were born.’
‘Well, what was she planning to do with the poor little tyke?’
‘How the hell would I know? I was with her for half an hour and she’s not much of a talker.’
‘Keep your voice down. And I still can’t fathom why any unwed girl would want to raise a baby – or want to come back to her home town to have that baby. As far as I can see, Squire was looking out for the girl’s best interests.’
‘It was in the girl’s best interests to be protected – and it was her mother’s business to protect her. And why didn’t that little girl want to go home to her mother last night? You tell me that. All she wanted was Willie, the other family outcast. “Mum will murder me for not staying where Mr Squire put me”, she said. “She’ll make me give my baby away”.’
Tom sat back, his lips buttoned. She had tears in her eyes, and that was a first. He glanced up at old King George, who needed dusting and straightening up, so he walked across and straightened him up.
‘You’ve no idea who got her into this mess, Mrs Dolan?’
‘No, I haven’t,’ she snapped. ‘And I’ve already told you that I’m sick of your Mrs Dolan. You know my name.’ She reached into her bag for a smoke, forgetting she already had one burning. Then she was on her feet and leaving.
‘I know your name,’ he said. ‘Sit down and calm down and tell me every word that girl said to you.’
She didn’t sit. She stubbed out her smoke with unsteady hands, placed the new cigarette in her mouth, struck a match, but when she tried to light up, her lips couldn’t hold on to the cigarette and it dropped to the floor. As she stooped to pick it up, the match burned her fingers. She swore, dropped it, ground it into the floor, tossed the cigarette at him and walked to the counter. ‘She’ll be dead by morning. What does any of this matter to her?’
‘It will matter when we get whoever did it. He’ll be up on a statutory rape charge and we’ll put him away for twenty years.’
‘You’re daydreaming, like you always daydreamed, Thomo. Do you think that any one of those Johnsons will speak out against Nicholas Squire?’
‘You reckon he did it?’
‘No, but Willie swears it happened out there, and Ruby said to me, when I first saw she was pregnant, that it wasn’t her fault. I asked her who had done it, but she shook her head and howled. Willie is pretty certain she never even had a boyfriend.’ She walked back, stood leaning on the chair. ‘She worked inside Squire’s house, pandering to Olivia, even slept on a cot in her room when they had guests. She had to help dress and undress her. Willie reckons it was one of Squire’s guests that got at her.’
‘The judge’s son?’
‘Could have been. Could have been the judge himself. A lot of old blokes like young girls. But unless she tells us, we’ve got a snowflake’s chance in hell of finding out.’
‘So she told you it wasn’t her fault?’
‘She said Mr Squire knew it wasn’t her fault, that he promised he’d look after her and the baby when it was born, but she thought he meant she could keep the baby – then she found out that none of the girls at the home even got to see their babies. And I’ve got to get out of here. I don’t know how you can stand being in here with no doors open.’
‘Sit down and I’ll get us a drink.’
‘Make it something strong.’
‘Sit on that other chair, will you? It won’t hold my weight, and I’ve been on these legs since dawn.’
There was no sign of Jeanne or Rosie in the kitchen. They must have been in the bedroom, listening in to every word. He filled two mugs with cold tea and lemon juice, chipped off a couple of chunks of ice, stirred in two heaped spoons of sugar then carried the drinks carefully back to his office, giving one mug to the widow. She was seated on the visitor’s chair and had helped herself to a newspaper he’d previously used as a fan.
‘Are they still expecting the electricity to come over here this year?’
‘So they say. I’ll believe it when I see a light globe glowing. So will Rob Hunter. He’s talking about putting in one of those generators.’ He turned to the window as a car pulled in. ‘That’s probably Morgan now.’
‘I’ll go out your side door before you let him in.’
Tom nodded. Silence then, until Rosie started yelling a wall away.
‘Who’s murdering her?’
‘Jeanne’s probably combing her hair.’
Vern’s tins of cigarettes were still on his desk. Tom helped himself to one and offered the tin. She shook her head, studied the nicotine stain on her fingernail, her eye on the door. For minutes they waited. No knock, no Morgan. The car was leaving.
‘I’ve been hearing him all day. Every motor I hear, it’s him.’
‘Of all the blokes they could have sent up here…’
Tom nodded, watched her lick her finger, rub at the stain. Like her toes, her fingers were long. ‘He’s probably taken a wrong turn, run out of petrol in some godforsaken place.’ No reply. He was thinking of using her given name, wondering if he could get his tongue around it, when the telephone bell rang. They both near jumped out of their chairs.
‘That will be him, telling me he’s broken down again,’ he said, crossing the room to silence the thing. He gestured to her to stay where she was, even tried to block her pathway out, but she turned, walked to the other end of the long counter, boosted herself up, slid her long legs across and down the other side, and with a wave of her hand she was out the door.
‘Hello, and who wants me now?’ he snapped at whoever was on the line.
It was Squire, wanting to
speak to the inspector.
‘I’m not expecting any inspector, Mr Squire. Sergeant Morgan is on his way up here but he’s having car trouble. I’m hoping he won’t be too much longer. Anything I can do for you in the meantime?’
Obviously nothing he could do. Tom didn’t have time to offer his condolences, or to ask what he knew about Ruby Johnson. Squire was gone.
The line wasn’t dead, though. His ear pressed hard to the receiver, he waited for Miss Lizzie’s sniff or Miss Jessie’s breathing, for the flutter of the post office blind. Not a sound, until he heard the hollow caw-caw of a crow. Reaching silently for the whistle dangling on a length of twine he’d hung from his phone crank, he placed it to his lips and, for the second time that day, let loose an elongated, ear-piercing trill straight down the mouthpiece of that telephone and directly into an old maid Martin’s ear. That killed the crow’s caw-cawing and shut Rosie up too.
‘Kee-rist,’ he said, remembering Jeanne. She’d tell her aunts what he’d done.
The earpiece back on its prongs, the whistle dangling once more, he walked out to his veranda in time to see the widow making her getaway down the hill. Only her dust left to sting his eyes and get up his nose, though his eyes followed that dust until the trees, down past the school house, stole it from his view.
‘Life isn’t bloody fair,’ he said. ‘Life is a bastard, Thomo. A pure bastard.’
Then that smell came wafting across the town circle, hitting his nostrils and setting his mouth to work on the production of saliva. Hot bread, one of life’s few recompenses. The side door of the bakery was flung open, and folk ventured out, like Tom, led by their noses. He hurried across to take third place in the gathering queue, beating Miss Lizzie by a whisker, and by the bejesus, he wasn’t going to let that sticky-nosing, eavesdropping, old maid in ahead of him tonight. Be buggered to play-acting the gentleman when hot bread was the only warmth a man had to cling to.