by Gordon Reid
He was still thinking about it while they drove up to Norwood Park. Very few were at the service. The usual people from a few miles away, like Gunning and Crookwell, and a little place called Laggan. Becker had been to Laggan on one of his wandering trips, when he had to get out of Canberra for a few hours. Nothing there but half a dozen old houses, some crooked stone walls, a broken-down mill, some potato fields. Good potatoes came from Laggan. They’d have to have Irish potatoes in a place with a name like Laggan. An old man had been leaning on a rusty gate, smoking a pipe and looking up and down the road, waiting for something to turn up. Not that it mattered what turned up, as long as it did. Plus, a boy on a bike, doing circles.
So they sang a few hymns and an old man, who could have been the same old man, said a few words about Martin Scowcroft. How he’d always been a good boy, a friend of everyone in the district. And had served his country. That was the important thing, he had served. The old man was wearing a medal, very old, tarnished and drab and dark brown, almost black with age. He must have won it in the desert or in the jungles of the last big war. More than twenty years before Long Tan. Everyone looked around, but no-one else wanted to speak or, if they wanted, dared not. Then they looked at the funeral director, who looked at the old man, who nodded, not without a sort of cry, a snuffling squeak.
As if of its own mind, the coffin moved back and through the curtains and disappeared. Carrying Martin Scowcroft to his last firefight.
Driving home, Robyn was more than usually quiet. She was fretting, he knew. Now and then she would blow her nose, not so much to clear it as to wipe away a tear or wipe at least a shadow of a tear, starting to brim. They’d just passed Yass, when she spoke.
‘Harry, why do you think he did it?’
‘In his car? Up the lane?’
‘Oh, no, no, I don’t mean that. He’d left us and walked down the road. He must have been thinking that, when he walked out. Because I would never go with him, not now—’
‘I don’t know what was in his mind.’
‘I can’t stop thinking. When you and Terry came running home that day after that shot up the creek, I had a feeling. I don’t know why, but I thought, I just thought, it might be him. Shooting at you, to kill you—’
‘Forget, it Rob.’
‘So he could come and drag me back to Canberra and I’d somehow feel I’d have to go with him, because we’d had a relationship. That’s what they called it nowadays, don’t they? It sounds so cold and matter of fact, doesn’t it?’
‘Stop thinking about it.’
‘I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!’
He eased off on the pedal and began to edge over.
‘What are you doing, dear?’
‘Going to stop for a while. There’s a comfort stop here.’
There were trees and a few cars parked beside a small building, which everyone knew. Men one end and women the other.
‘Oh, no,’ she said. ‘Please don’t, I’m so sorry. I don’t have your strength and calmness and pressure under fire or whatever policemen have, always knowing what to do.’
He drove in slowly and stopped, uncertain. He’d intended to put an arm about her and let her blub for a while—until she got herself together, the way women do. But she said: ‘No, no, I feel better now.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘We can stop at the next town and have a cup. Or at a pub and have something. Might calm you down or give you a break or—’
‘Oh, no, no. I’ve had my little cry.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes, dear. I know I’m sentimental. If I didn’t have you—If you’d not been so calm and in control, he would have killed us, wouldn’t he? All of us.’
He wanted to say it was just part of the job, looking after women and children. But he didn’t. She was looking directly at him now.
‘I love you, Harry. I really and truly love you—’
She was rubbing his left leg, not sensuously but gratefully.
‘My dear man.’
They drove on, around the northern end of the Brindabellas, and began the run along the Hume toward the south, thinking not about the funeral but what Chook had said about a little operation. A drugs bust? He was not sure. He didn’t wish to get involved. Yet, whatever it was, he had to do it. She had risked her job for him and them and had done something no cop who played by the book would ever do. Dispose of two bodies and, apparently, she’d got away with it. Where had she disposed of them? And how? He did not know. He might never know.
Back in Canberra, he’d walked up to a door of a posh sort of house. He’d pushed a bell button and waited. Nothing had happened. He’d pushed again. Then the inner door had opened, a solid door, not the kind you could break down. A shape was standing there behind the screen door, the security door. It was a woman, or it looked like a woman, but he could see only a face. A fascinating face, the kind that you see passing by, maybe on a train like they said in the song. Or footsteps in the night. It was not a complete woman, just a lot of dots seen through a screen, suggesting a woman. Good afternoon, ma’am, he’d said. Are you Mrs Crowley? Yes, I am, she’d said. I think I have something of yours. He’d held up the bag. Oh, so you have…
They drove on and on. He began to think about Arnold Sheldrake, who’d driven down this same highway, time after time, fighting to keep his eyes open. Until one day, he couldn’t resist. He’d gone to sleep, and veered off and gone over. Over and over and hit a tree. The truck bursting into flames. The conflagration, horrific, some witnesses had said, Whoosh! What had old Bob said? There were no brake or skid marks? And: Who would want to leave a beautiful girl like that? Why did he say leave? Did he know something?
Becker straightened up and breathed deeper and willed himself to steer straight and true. They had to get home before it got too late. It was past five o’clock now. The kids would be wondering. Asking each few minutes when they’d be home. And Muriel would be making scones and cocoa for them. Except that only Wendy was with Bob and Muriel in Wagga, whereas Terry was with Hank and Anika next door to the farm. No doubt getting up to no good, whatever he was doing. He wanted to grow up and be a soldier and have guns and shoot at everything. Which everyone thought stupid. But he was a boy and would grow out of it. Or so they hoped.
Becker relaxed, wide awake. His wife was beside him and all was right with the world. She was sitting up straight now, her hands on her bag on her lap. Her head up, as if she’d got over it, and could see straight and calmly into the sullen hills and dales and the westering sun lingering over the limitless plains of wheat and wool. And fat cattle.
‘If only I could have done something for him,’ she said.
Chapter 14
It was a good day. Not a cloud in the sky and the sun not too hot or bright, a cool breeze fluttering up from the south, and birds having a ball in the trees. You could almost imagine fish jumping in the creek. There were no fish, of course, but there were yabbies. Small crustaceans you could eat if you were desperate, or doing it for the fun, boiling them in an old pot. The kids were down there with two boys, grandchildren of Hank and Anika, trying to catch yabbies, enough for a feed between four, but not much luck, the creek being down now. It had been a long, dry summer. But there was hope, the end of summer having about it a comfortable intimacy, like a bed out of which you have just arisen, and would like to go to for a few minutes more. Putting in the weir, as Robyn had suggested, soon after she had arrived, had worked for a while. A weir made of loose rocks, gathered in the hills to the south, had held enough water back in the good times. Not now, not after six weeks without good rain. But it didn’t matter.
The neighbours didn’t have a creek, and a creek attracted kids like bees to nectar. In the background, the radio was playing and Nat King Cole was singing: Roll on those lazy, hazy days of summer...’ It was Bob Elliott’s birthday. They we
re all out there on the eastern verandah, away from the sun. Including Anika and Hank.
Robyn had wanted to invite Bert Henschke from the western side. Bert was a garrulous old man who talked a lot, but never said anything really intelligible. His face and figure were worn and eroded in the way an old fence post is worn and weathered and splintery and dangerous to touch. His loose and feathery hair hadn’t had the mother’s caress of a comb or brush or a lick and spit in years. And, if he did have anything intelligible to say, it was only when he was arguing with God. Or talking to his dog. It was an awful dog named Blue. A blue heeler, a cattle dog which is really blue. Or is not blue, but grey. The blue being a chromatic effect. And with black and tan markings. Fortunately, Bert had not turned up.
They’d had a good lunch, a cold salad made by Robyn augmented by sweets and delicacies and special treats from the cake shop in town—all free of charge, Anika and Robyn being as thick as thieves. Even though Anika was twenty years older. They smiled and chatted, often looking over their shoulders, saying secret things, the like of which you could guess, if you could be bothered. Becker could not. Never listened to gossip, on principle. He said and thought and believed only what could be proved to be true and would, he hoped, stand up in court. In which case, if it couldn’t, he wasn’t interested in gossip.
Robyn and Anika had been whispering in the kitchen, when Muriel was outside and he’d heard, through the window, a drop in chatter, a certain hush. In which Anika had said: ‘Really? Are you really? Oh, darling, how long?’
Becker had taken no notice. Perhaps he’d not wanted to notice. Not yet prepared for it. Instead, he was trying to listen to old Bob, who was talking about the first world war and the first soldier-settlers. In those days, the big pastoral spreads had been cut up and allocated to men who, before the war, hadn’t had a hope in hell of ever owning a piece of Australia—the country for which they had fought and died. And had come home wounded or legless or gassed. From Flanders’ fields, including Passchendaele. Or, as it was officially known, the third Battle of Ypres, which the boys had called Wipers, in which the British had suffered 275,000 casualties—if you included the Canadians and the Australians.
‘That’s what it was like,’ Bob was saying. ‘It was done so the returning boys had a chance.’
‘Your father was one of doze?’ Hank asked. ‘He came back vounded? And was allocated?’
‘He came back, not wounded or legless or anything like that, but shocked.’
‘Shell-shocked, you mean?’
‘No, shocked by what he’d seen at Passchendaele.’
‘It must have been awful,’ Robyn said, setting down tea. Bob always had tea in a pot, never coffee. He was like that, old-fashioned. And it had to be real tea-leaves, not those bags you bounced.
‘It was, my dear.’
‘He got himself a block out at Vybilonga?’ Hank asked.
‘As a returned serviceman? No, he got that after the war, but he was not eligible for the soldier-settler scheme.’
Bob was sitting back, eyes half-closed. His face was handsome and, in some lights, patrician. Not a rough and ready retired farmer, but a man who had known people and known things. Not so much about the first world war, which was well before he was born, not so much about the second, in which he’d been a captain with a DSO, as what it meant to be a decent human being. And officer and a gentleman, you might have said of him. He had about him the air of an educated man, although he’d never been to any college or university or subscribed to any would-be intellectual club or political cause. It was his care and precision and the love of words. He never dropping his aitches or his ‘g’s’. And his careful reading, slow and thoughtful, of the Sydney Morning Herald on a Saturday, even the literary pages, made much of his day.
Hank was mystified.
‘Your father did not qualify? A man who had served? In France?’
‘No, no,’ he said. He had a habit, plucking away at his eyebrows, particularly the right, searching for and finding at least one hair. Then thoughtfully looking at the hair as if it were important to know whether it was black or grey. It was a sign. He had so little to do with his life now, he had to pick and fiddle, if only to fill in time.
‘His wife, my mother, at the time had too much money.’
‘Ah, she vass ay rich girl, dis girl?’
‘She was indeed a girl, when he met her, only eighteen.’
‘And she voss an heiress?’ Hank pronounced it ‘hair-ess’.
‘No, not at all.’
‘Then how, if you do not mind my asking, Bob, did she get the money?’
‘Ah, yes...’ He was not going to tell them, but he did. He told them the story of Caitlin Maguire, an Irish girl, or not so much an Irish girl, as the daughter of a dirt-poor farmer near Derrinallum in the so-called Western District of Victoria not long before the first big war. Poor, more than poor, only just hanging on, eating potatoes and spinach and onions and herbs and drinking milk. Not much else, perhaps some beets and onions and herbs and shallots. Marvellously rich land, it would grow anything, including fat cattle and some of the best Corriedale sheep in the world, fluffy white and contented. Her father had a few acres, not too far from Derrinallum. When she’d turned eighteen, she got a position at Canley Vale, a big, old, pastoral spread near Mount Elephant. It was owned by Sir Ralph Mountford, who had two sons.
The first was a thorough young bastard. It was said he’d whipped a man in the main Street of Derrinallum—a man who’d laughed at him in his Derby cut of clothes and his spit and polished boots and his cocky little trilby. By contrast his young brother, Christopher, was a slow, dreamy sort of youth, who’d been at university or was still at university in Melbourne, no-one was it was quite clear. He used to spend a lot of time at home, mooning about the place, sitting under trees and reading the metaphysical poets. And thinking about the loveliness of the world into which he’d been born. And the mystery of young beauties like Caitlin Maguire.
Then, something bad happened, everybody knew. The elder son, Roderick, had been arrested or, if not arrested, questioned by the police regarding a certain matter. No-one knew exactly what. But, his father suddenly ordered him to join up and get out of the country as fast as possible. War had been declared against Germany only a few weeks ago.
So off to Egypt he went, this young heir to the Mountford fortune. Thank God, everyone said. Free at last of that strutting and rutting young buck from Canley Vale. Yes, rutting. He was noted for it. Down in Melbourne every week or so shouting everyone to a drink at Young and Jackson’s, or at the theatre kissing chorus girls and often, it was said. The life of the party at a famous house of ill-fame in East Melbourne. But, to everyone’s surprise, he returned a few months later. Apparently, he’d accidentally shot himself in an arm in Egypt during exercises near the Pyramids. None the less, he returned in a high mood, as if he were some sort of hero. But he was not. No-one welcomed him back. If they saw him in the street, they turned away. They knew about the police.
A terrible shock awaited Roderick. His father had disinherited him. Not a penny would he get when the old man died. This enraged him. He became abusive and violent. Sir Ralph told him to clear out—never show his face in Derrinallum again. Roderick went back to Melbourne, became a drunken fool and ribald clown. Running up debts, dishonouring the family. That did not stop him. He went on spending. Had to borrow from all sorts of people. They paid up, not for his sake, but for his father’s. To save him from the shame of having a debtor son. An insolvent son. A gaol-able son. But, one night the police found him dead drunk in the gutter outside the Melbourne Club, which had shut its doors in his face. They let him sleep it off in a cell. Then hauled him into petty sessions next day. Fined ten pounds, drunk and disorderly. His name in The Age. Sir Ralph was horrified; he had a reprobate son. He died of shame, everyone said. A grand old man like that.
Still, they did not know what had
set off this disaster in the first place.
‘So, Bob, what happened?’
‘This left young Christopher as the sole heir. But, a few weeks after receiving the deeds to the property, he killed himself. Everyone was astounded. My father was the groom. He came into the kitchen one cold morning and found all the staff in a panic. Young Caitlin had only then arrived and was putting on her pinafore and her mop cap. On the table was a letter Mrs Lane, the housekeeper, had been reading. She had got to one point, then had thrown it down in horror and hurried upstairs. Father said, ‘What has happened?’ No-one had any idea. They stood around, longing to pick up the letter, but dared not. There was an envelope lying by the letter. It was addressed to: ‘She who knows my heart.’ The envelope had not been sealed. They were all puzzled. What did it mean? Who was ‘she’? Then Mrs Lane came down the stairs slowly.
‘It’s the young master,’ she said. ‘I think he’s taken his life.’ Everyone was shocked.
‘Yes’, she said, ‘There’s a blue bottle on the floor by his bed.’
‘They all gasped. They knew what that meant. Poisons came in blue bottles back in those days. Mrs Lane said to go about your business, then resumed reading the letter. When she got to the end, she was the one to gasp. Even cried out. A real squeal. Slowly she put the letter back in the envelope and handed it to young Caitlin. ‘I think this is meant for you,’ she said. Caitlin was amazed. ‘Me?’ she said. Mrs Lane was barely able to speak. But she managed to say: ‘It would seem that you, Caitlin Maguire, are now the mistress of Canley Vale.’
‘Caitlin fainted, but Father managed to catch her. They carried her to a couch and called the doctor—for the young master, not Caitlin, who’d revived by the time he’d arrived. Then came the police, who demanded to see the letter. Then Sir Ralph’s solicitor came and read it and said, ‘No doubt about it. It’s perfectly clear. Miss Maguire is the sole heir.’
Anika was amazed. ‘But how, please, Mister Bob, is it that you have the letter?’