by Joy Dettman
dinner for four
Sunday, 6.30 pm
Father Ryan liked to eat an early evening meal, which left more time for drinking. He sat tonight in Arthur’s place, tucking into cold cuts, potato salad, greens and sliced tomato. Nicholas grazed, Olivia ate with famished fervour, while Helen’s stomach growled. It had been growling all afternoon so she was feeding it. Bodies were built to live and stomachs needed to be fed, though the food hit that solidified scream and congealed around it.
Her skin felt stretched, her scalp crawly. Mrs Johnson had washed and plaited her hair, pinned it high for Percy and his parents, who wouldn’t be here before eight. She was wearing the grey striped frock she’d stomped on earlier in the day. A modest dress, it came up to her neck and made her look like an old maid, but her father was pleased with it – or determined to keep her well covered until he got her into a wedding dress.
He’d come out to the quince tree with Mrs Johnson while Father Ryan was bathing, and he’d turned on the garden hose and sprayed Helen out. No bribe to pay, which was just as well – she didn’t have any money, hadn’t been given one penny of her allowance since she and Rachael tried to leave home.
Father Ryan asked how she was feeling when she sat down for dinner, and what a stupid question to ask. ‘Very well, thank you,’ she said. Ask a stupid question and expect a stupid answer. As if he cared how she was feeling, anyway – he was more interested in his wine. His face, always pink, turned a brighter shade of pink with each glass, which Olivia watched, her mouth watering. She drank water tonight – had to stay awake to greet the judge and his wife at eight.
Nicholas included her in every conversation. ‘Olivia believes…’ he’d say. ‘Olivia and I feel . . . Olivia said earlier today that…’ It had been a long time since Olivia believed, felt or said much at all. He’d extinguished her spirit long ago.
It was interesting, studying her father, listening to him. So many of his sentences began with things other people thought: ‘I read recently…’, or ‘The judge was saying to me…’ Like one of those plates of leftovers Mrs Johnson took from the kitchen to her house each night, except Nicholas had everyone’s leftovers from weeks back, all heaped up on his plate, bits of this and bits of that and nothing much of anything. Worth a fortune, but he had no self-worth. It wouldn’t have mattered if his son-in-law was the King of England, the stain of his birth would still be there, hidden beneath layers and layers of appliqué.
And it didn’t matter how often he denied Arthur’s scars, he saw each one as clearly as Helen and loathed them as much as she did.
The conversation turned to Arthur. ‘He was very fond of Rachael,’ Nicholas said. ‘It was a mistake, perhaps, taking him out to the site, but he had expressed his need to go there. He appears to be resting more easily now.’
Arthur had eaten in his room. Nicholas would have mixed a spoonful of that opiate into a glass of wine, hoping he’d sleep until Mr Clark got back on tonight’s train – if he came back.
Helen’s stomach growled. She swallowed twice, drank a glass of water, which made it groan like a black bear trapped in its cage.
‘Your son-in-law, Nicholas. I thought I may have had the opportunity to say a word or two to him this evening.’
‘He’s not handling it at all well. Preferred to be alone.’
And beneath those bits and pieces of people’s mouldy leftovers, there was a pile of gristly lies that took a lot of chewing. Dave wouldn’t want to come near this place ever again.
‘Clark seems to be working out?’
‘Yes. An excellent relationship developing there – exactly what the boy needs. Olivia is quite impressed with Clark. He was educated in the Old Country, you know, as was she. A well-read man. Of course, Arthur was a great reader in his youth. To lose one’s sight…’
Poor Arthur, poor Mr Keeper Clark too, coming back tonight to share that room. Helen glanced at the window. He’d be on that train by now, watching this day turn to night – or he wouldn’t be on it. He’d probably spent his days off looking for other employment. Sooner or later he would. They all did. Having to look at Arthur, dress him, guide him, be with him all day and night, was too depressing. Most of them didn’t even say they weren’t coming back. They took their month’s wages on the Thursday night, packed their bags, got on the Friday morning train and didn’t come back on Sunday night. Some of them didn’t even bother to telephone and say their wife was sick or their father had died.
A long piece of lettuce was caught in the corner of Father Ryan’s mouth. Nicholas dabbed at his own mouth with his serviette – hint enough for Helen. Ryan didn’t take the hint. Mr Paterson, the third last of Arthur’s keepers, would have caught the priest’s eye, smiled and quietly told him. He’d been one of those honest men. When he left mid month, he told Nicholas he was leaving. He didn’t blame influenza, his sick mother or his dying father. He didn’t care that he’d lose a week’s wages either, because he cared more about people than money. Most people cared more about money than people, so if you paid them enough, they’d do anything to get it.
The Johnsons had been paid three hundred pounds not to care about Ruby. It was written in Nicholas’s account book as if it was a loan, but Jeanne told Rachael her father had received a cheque for three hundred pounds the day Ruby was taken away.
Every penny Nicholas spent was in those books. Dave had an entire page devoted to him. The cost of the truck was there, the house, furniture and the loan. He’d cost a fortune, and he hadn’t been worth the money – like the expensive ram Nicholas bought that hadn’t earned his keep, and couldn’t even be slaughtered for eating, due to his testicles not being cut off. Helen knew what they did to cattle and horses if they didn’t want to breed from them. She’d read it in one of her father’s farming books. Dave had been gelded in the war. He was no good for breeding.
Then it happened, and with no warning at all. She broke rule number nine million and ninety-nine: Squire daughters do not burp. It kept on coming and coming, because it wasn’t really a burp, it was that congealed scream getting out the only way it could. Rachael would have killed herself laughing. She would have had to leave the table.
‘Excuse me, Father.’
‘It is considered by some cultures to be the height of good manners,’ Father Ryan replied, noticing her for an instant before dismissing her.
She was easily dismissed. They didn’t even know she was there. They didn’t know anything about her. They sat at this table, discussing the world and the problems of the world, not considering for a moment that she might have an opinion. They didn’t know she read their books, didn’t know she’d read Percy Cochran’s law book. That’s how she’d found out that once the ring was on the wife’s finger, then the wife went from being her father’s property to being her husband’s.
Rachael hadn’t known that until Helen had told her. She kept coming back, begging Nicholas to let her come home, begging Olivia too. And she’d come at odd hours. Some nights Nicholas was in bed and didn’t know she was home until morning. One night the previous week she crept into their bedroom and hid in there all day while Helen smuggled food in from the kitchen. Another night she swam home and Nicholas saw her walk in dripping wet. He shook his head and returned to his reading, didn’t bother driving her back to Dave.
Last night, just after Helen finished writing to Percy, she heard Dave’s truck drive in and knew Rachael had run off again. She looked for her out the window, then opened her door and crept down the dark passage in time to hear the courtyard door open.
No greeting for Nicholas. ‘Is she here? I had seventy-eight pounds saved, and she took it,’ Dave said.
‘I don’t raise thieves, and these disruptions cannot continue. Have you any idea of the time?’ He led the way back to the sitting room, and he must have seen Helen’s white gown in the dark passage. ‘Back to bed, Missie. This is no concern of yours.’
She didn’t go to bed. She crept to the partially closed sitting room door and, by
placing her eye to the gap above the hinge, gained a slim view of the men.
‘Sit down and calm yourself, man. You’ll wake the house.’
‘I had seventy-eight pounds –’ And he tossed Rachael’s small case onto the table.
Nicholas opened it, searched it methodically, each frock shaken then hung over the back of a chair – even her underwear shaken, and her shoes. He was wasting his time. If Rachael had taken that money, it wouldn’t have been in her case. It would have been in her handbag, in a secret place where she’d cut two stitches. Helen had watched her roll one of Chris’s notes into a thin tube, tie a loop of blue cotton around it and slip it into the lining – then try for half an hour to get it out by fishing with a fine crochet hook. She’d had to cut another stitch.
‘Go home and get some sleep, Dave. I’ll bring the girl back in the morning.’
‘Keep the unprincipled little whore, and take that seventy-eight pounds off what I owe you. I want out.’
Nicholas poured two glasses of something and offered one to Dave. ‘I admit the arrangement doesn’t appear to be working as I had hoped, but let us not be hasty here. She won’t be going anywhere without her belongings.’
He was wrong thinking she wouldn’t leave without that case. As long as she had her handbag, she’d have everything she needed, her little hairbrush, her wedding ring from Chris, which she’d stitched safe beneath the lining where the strap was stitched in, the leather there bulky enough to disguise the ring. Her escape fund was also in her handbag.
The day after she came back from her honeymoon, she told Helen she had four pound notes rolled up tight in that secret place, and no threads attached. She’d bought two pairs of shoes in Melbourne, bought them a size too big so she’d have to return them, which she did the day they came home. She didn’t give the money back to Dave. It was Nicholas’s money anyway, so it wasn’t really dishonest.
At Christmastime, Helen had been given a pound note to put in the collection plate at church. She didn’t put anything in the plate – they added it to Rachael’s escape fund instead. Dave’s money would be in that secret place, because these last weeks Rachael had become desperate enough to do anything, honest or dishonest.
Only two days ago she told Helen she had seen Chris, and that soon they’d be leaving. She said she probably wouldn’t have time to say goodbye, she’d just grab her handbag and run: ‘Everything that is important to me is in this bag, except you, Heli, but you’re too big to fit, so I’ll send for you later.’
How small could you make seventy-eight pounds? If it was in ten-pound notes, they wouldn’t be too bulky. That bag had pleats in the leather, so from the outside you couldn’t tell what was pleat and what was behind the pleat. A stiff pocket, stitched to the lining, hid the bulk from within.
Seventy-eight pounds was plenty of money for three. When they’d climbed out that window back in September, they only had about ten pound between them. As soon as Dave went home, as soon as Nicholas went to bed, she’d get that case, squeeze a few of her own things into it, and take it to Rachael at the railway station – be a heroine, like the girls in the moving pictures. It was like watching a moving picture, looking through that gap above the door hinge. Like sitting in the dark, watching the screen where nothing was real, knowing that the heroine was always saved from the villains, though you were never quite certain until the very last reel was played.
So engrossed was Helen, she didn’t see Arthur come barefoot from his room and down the passage towards her. He didn’t care if it was day or night – couldn’t see if it was day or night. If he woke up at midnight, he thought it was breakfast time. When his keeper was away, Nicholas usually gave him a late supper, then locked the door so he couldn’t get out and bumble around in the dark and hurt himself.
His hands feeling his way along the left wall, Helen flattened herself against the right, not breathing until he went past. But he misjudged the distance to where the little passage led to the walkway, and he ran out of wall, stumbled, slammed into a table, and finally Nicholas heard him. He came from the sitting room and saw Helen standing in the passage.
‘It’s Arthur. He’s gone down to the kitchen, Father,’ she said.
Olivia wandered out, her long hair hanging, her giant wrapper untied. She fastened it when she saw Dave. A procession then, down the passage, tailing Nicholas and his table lamp.
They found Arthur feeling around the hearth for wood. He’d placed the frying pan on the stove, which meant he wanted to make scrambled eggs – at two am. And if someone didn’t make them for him, he’d make them himself.
‘Did you hear Dave’s truck, and think it was morning, son? And it almost is. Sit down. We’ll fix your supper. Dave will sit with you.’
‘Mr Clark didn’t come back?’ Olivia, too muddled by heat, sleep and wine, didn’t know which day it was.
‘He’s due back on Sunday night. This is . . . was Saturday. Go back to your bed. You’re a sight to behold, Olivia. Helen, make yourself useful and beat up some eggs for your brother.’ He opened the firebox. A few embers still glowed amid the ash. ‘Sit down at the table, son, while I get this thing burning.’
That’s when Dave said it. ‘I thought I wanted to be a part of this. You don’t pay your minions enough, Nicholas. And you didn’t pay me enough to put up with your German-loving little whore either.’ He walked out, leaving Olivia blinking after him, leaving Arthur bumbling around in his brown striped pyjamas, leaving Nicholas pale and stone faced, poking bits of Mrs Johnson’s morning kindling into the firebox.
Dark shadowy old kitchen, only that small corner lit by Nicholas’s fancy reading lamp. Johnson’s dogs barking as Dave’s truck drove away, and no one telling them to sit down. Arthur being told to sit down, but not doing it. Poor Arthur, still a big strong man with a wife and son, but the wife couldn’t look at his face, and after she’d lost that baby girl, she refused to share his room. And Raymond, afraid of his father, screaming, kicking whenever Arthur tried to hold him. Poor Arthur.
Nicholas lit Mrs Johnson’s big old lamp and set it on the table. ‘That fool coming here at this time of night, disturbing everyone.’
‘She’s leading him a merry dance, isn’t she?’ Olivia commented, keeping the table between herself and her son.
Eggs from the pantry, milk jug from the refrigerator. Salt and pepper from the cabinet, bowl for mixing. Arthur was quiet now, recognising the sounds of their industry. Anyone could make Arthur’s scrambled eggs. He couldn’t eat toast, so he ate his eggs on breadcrumbs. Breadknife in the work table drawer, bread in the tin, Helen sawed off a thick slice then she broke it into one of Arthur’s blue-ringed bowls, broke the crusts up too. Once, Arthur had got a piece of crust stuck in his injured throat and he’d almost choked on it –
‘Helen! What on earth are you doing with that bread?’
‘Oh.’ Her head jolted up, her mind jarring back to the moment, back to the dining room table, where Nicholas, Father Ryan and Olivia stared at her aghast. She looked from them to the breadcrumbs, her plump lower lip pursed as she placed a crust on her plate.
Crumbs on her dinner plate, long pieces of crust spelling ‘INSANE’. She hadn’t known she was doing that! She’d been away, far away. Maybe she was insane.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, standing. ‘Excuse me.’ She walked quickly to her room.
man of little faith
Sunday, 6.50 pm
Tom hung up his whistle for the second time in half an hour, hung up the earpiece and rang off. Nicholas Squire had been onto Russell Street, wanting to know where Morgan was, so Russell Street had been onto Tom, demanding to know where Morgan was. Tom hadn’t liked the officious bugger on the line, so he’d got in a word or two of his own.
‘Well, sir, if I didn’t have half the local chaps out looking for two missing tots, and the other half out diving for a missing handbag, I would have organised a search party to go out looking for Morgan – if I had access to a vehicle, sir, other than my pushbike,
which I’ve already punctured once today. In fact, the way things are up here, I can’t really see my way clear to do much about finding him for you tonight.’
It was going on for seven o’clock, and no one had heard from Morgan for hours. There were a few hills between Molliston and Melbourne. The train went around them but the dirt track south went over them. Anyone driving a vehicle, if he had half a brain, would follow the main road up to Willama then cut back across to Molliston, even if it was fifty-odd extra miles. Knowing Morgan, he’d take the shorter route. He could have run into a roo, rolled his car, run off the side of a hill – and Tom remembered wishing that on him this morning. He hated the mongrel but he didn’t want him dead.
Someone knocking down his front door again. Probably Miss Lizzie with an earache – and do her good, the stickybeaking old bugger. He flattened his hair, straightened up his trousers, squinted at his watch and strode to the door, ready for war.
It wasn’t Miss Lizzie, or Morgan. Tom stood staring down at Mike Murphy and Billy O’Brien, struck dumb by what they were pushing at him. Maybe he was seeing things, but he was smelling it too, and it smelt of wet cow. His mouth gaping like a drooling fool’s, his jaw hinge refusing to function, he stood there looking at what they were dangling by a long plaited strap.
‘Having second thoughts about our two quid, Mr Thompson?’
‘No. No, by Christ, I’m not. You pair of little corkers!’ He wanted to kiss those faces, smile-split from ear to ear. He damn near couldn’t stop himself. ‘You bloody little heroes!’ He slapped his thigh, slapped their backs, his feet dancing as he took that plaited strap in his own hand and held the handbag high.
‘We gave up two times, didn’t we, Billy?’
‘Yeah, then we said, just one last dive, didn’t we? Two times we said, just one more dive.’
‘You pair of dinky-di little corkers.’ Tom headed for his office but changed his mind about leaving the bag in there; he didn’t want to let it out of his sight. Nor did those lads. They’d followed him in, wanting to talk. He wanted to listen so he led them through the residence door and down the passage to his kitchen.