by Gordon Reid
‘I’ll be out to see you, Ray. At Bert’s place.’
‘I might not be there.’
‘You’d better be, or I’ll have you slammed up faster than you can take a piss on a cold night.’
‘Jesus!’
‘For indecent assault, that can get you six months.’
‘Ah, Christ!’
‘Jesus Christ ain’t gonna help you, Ray. Get back there and finish your steak.’
She patted him on his way, then looked at the others. ‘Time for lunch? Want to eat here?’
‘I can’t stand pub food,’ Laura said and stood up. ‘I’ll get a sandwich and sit in the park.’
They followed her out. Dave didn’t say anything. He was that kind of fellow.
Becker said: ‘I’m going home, Chook—’ Too late, he caught himself.
‘Chuck,’ she said.
‘What?’
‘It’s Babchuck, not Babchook. It’s fuckin’ Ukrainian and we say chuck, not chook.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Ignorant dickheads!’
For a moment, they stood there, smiling at her. She sure had a way with her, even when angry. And a sense of humour, when you got to know her.
‘Who started calling you Chook?’ Becker asked. ‘Was it Polly?’
‘The bitch, the bitch,’ she said. ‘Why did she have to die?’
Chapter 18
When he arrived home, he got a surprise. No-one was at home when he left. Which was not surprising, the two kids being at school, Wendy in Wagga and the Terry still at the little bush school at the turn-off. Which had a name, Old Man Creek. Unsurprisingly, there was a creek of that name, quite a big one, which was not a creek at all, but an anabranch of the Murrumbidgee River. Which had several good fishing spots. From there on, out past Lockhart, past Boree Creek, past Wybilonga, there was nothing but plains, red plains, sandy plains. Plains which went on and on. Good for nothing but wheat and sheep. Then, no good for wheat, just sheep. Then, nothing but the endless saltbush plains and the mythical outback. Out in the back of beyond. The back country, as they called it out there. Beyond the rivers and beyond endurance. Frequently beyond hope. It was said of the back country that it was littered with the bones of little men who’d tried to get big.
The surprising thing was that Nutty was on the front verandah. Normally he was tied up out back, when no-one was at home. If not, he’d be at the side fence, barking himself hoarse at Blue. Then, as he drove in, Becker saw, sitting on the verandah, behind the old pepper tree, a woman and two children. They were patting Nutty, or trying to. He was excited, dancing this way and that on the verandah. He looked happy, as if he’d found new friends.
Becker got out of the BMW slowly, surprised.
‘Addie?’ he said.
‘Yes, Harry,’ she said. She looked a perfect picture of misery. Or what she thought or hoped was a perfect picture.
‘What’s happened?’
‘We had to come,’ she said.
‘What has happened?’
She had been his wife. His first wife, before she’d kicked him out. After what he’d done good for her years before. Told him in the patrol car in Sydney that she was up the duff and did not know what to do. Told him while he was driving her home after a smash and grab in Hurstville. He wasn’t the father. Just doing her a good turn, a woman in distress. She’d said her father would skin her when he found out. He would have found out pretty soon, she being three months gone and beginning to show. She’d burst into tears and said no-one’d marry her now. So, he, Harry Becker, stupid mug, had said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll marry you instead.’
‘I hope you don’t mind, Harry. We couldn’t find anyone at home but your lovely doggie. So friendly he was, all chained up and wagging his tail. And begging us to let him off, so we did. And smiling at us, even though he had hurt in his eyes, the way doggies do, when everyone has gone and left them all alone. So affectionate, isn’t he? We let him off and have been sitting here, haven’t we, kids? Waiting with him and he’s been so good to us, going to the gate now and then, looking up and down, then coming back and saying, No sign, no sign. With his eyes the way dogs do.’
‘Jesus,’ Becker said.
‘I’m sorry, Harry, but you’ve got to help us.’
It was the word ‘us’ which made it sink in. The two girls were his.
‘What about Cornelius?’ he asked. Cornelius being the bun she’d had in the oven in the patrol car.
‘He’s with Mum,’ she said.
He sighed. He’d always thought he’d never see her again, Adeline Atkins as she was before they’d married. Never see her again after paying her off with some of Evelyn’s money. And setting her up with her live-in lover and a house all paid off, and worth a million dollars now, if what you read about house prices in Sydney, or at least in Maroubra by the sea, was true. And now, of all the rural paradises she could have walked into, she’d walked into his.
‘Although,’ she was saying, ‘I shouldn’t have, she being now in a shocking state with the lupins.’
‘The what?’
‘She means lupus,’ one of the girls said.
‘It’s all over her body now, isn’t it, kids?’ They nodded. ‘Her face too,’ she added.
He sighed again, but perhaps unconsciously or perhaps prompted by some deep-seated compassion for even the worst of humans, he went up the steps and sat in a chair, and rubbed the ruff of the puffing and loving and always forgiving dog.
‘What do you want, Addie?’ he said.
Not really waiting for an answer, but looking at the two girls. The elder was ten and the other was eight. Or at least he thought so. He’d lost track of birthdays. He hadn’t seen them for years, not since Kat’s confirmation. Not in the Baptist church on Stoney Creek Road, Hurstville, where he and Addie had been married, but in an Anglican Church on Anzac Parade, Maroubra. Not because of any change of faith, but because her father, who’d done time for burglary, having said, ‘They’ve got more money, and gold candle sticks, that’s why.’ Just joking, he was. But not necessarily. Her father was a man of grim humour. And a criminal mind.
‘How are you, Ches?’ he said to the older girl, she being Chesney.
‘Starving,’ she said.
‘How are you, Kat?’ he said to the younger. Not Katrina but Ekaterina. Adeline had seen a movie on the Czar and his wife and children, who had died at some remote place called Ekaterinburg, far out east on the Siberian railway. She too had died when they were all shot. In the freezing snow. Next day, Addie had given birth to the second daughter. And that’s how she got the name, Ekaterina. Which, of course, in Russian means Katherine.
‘We haven’t had anything since we left home,’ she said.
‘Long trip?’
‘Twelve hours.’
‘Twelve hours? From Sydney?’
‘It went via Canberra,’ she said, as though that explained everything.
‘And they let you off here?’
That was a stupid question, he knew. If they’d not been let down in his place, they would still be on the bus. Which he wished they were. He did not want them. They were intruding. They did not go with Robyn and the farm and the new life. He didn’t like Chesney. She had an insolent manner and was argumentative for the sake of being argumentative. The young girl was better, not so smart or insolent or scruffy. She wasn’t chewing gum. He’d always thought she was bright. There was some hope for her. He should do something about her, send her to a good school. Get her away from Addie. Her mother was a disaster, always had been. He should never have married her. She, Adeline, was predatory, like some large, iridescent insect which devoured everything it touched. Even its own mate.
‘He wasn’t going to, Harry, it not being a recognised stop. All the way to Adelaide, the sign on the front said.’
‘What did you do? I
f he wouldn’t let you down?’
‘Well, we argued and argued all the way out from Wagga. He was not going to stop, the frog-necked old b—that he was.’
‘How did you know he had a frog neck?’
‘Oh, Harry, I was standing behind and hanging onto the back of his seat.’
‘And?’
‘Finally, desperate and seeing the sign coming up, I said: ‘If I give you a look—’ ‘Yeah?’ he said. He took a look, trying to keep one eye on the road. That sign was coming up fast. I was scared we’d go right past.’
‘This is not another of your sob stories, is it?’
‘Harry, as Dad used to say, by all that’s holy and not nailed down, I had to do it.’
Becker almost laughed. It wouldn’t have been fair. Adeline was naturally pretty, but dim-witted. She was born that way. Born into a family of incorrigible thieves, liars, conmen and women and shonky dealers and shifty shysters. For which she was not to blame. She couldn’t help being stupid. A real ditsy, if ever you saw one. She saw the world as an emporium of lollipops, into which she had to get her sticky fingers.
‘So, what happened?’
‘I did it,’ she said. ‘Slowly at first, I lifted my—’ She did not say it, but slowly lifted her skirt, showing an inch or two of stocking. ‘He took a quick look, saying, Strooth! But it was too late, wasn’t it, girls?’
‘What was too late?’
‘We were running off the road!’
They said nothing. One was holding her belly and grimacing. They were really ugly children. Perhaps they were not his at all. Perhaps she’d deceived him all along. Shagging one footballer after another. And only eighteen when he’d met her.
‘Off the road?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it, girls? He tried to get it back up, but too late.’
‘Mum, I’m gonna be sick.’
‘You crashed?’
‘Yes and no. Ches says it was a crash and Kat says it wasn’t.’
‘Well, what was it?’
‘A smash,’ the elder said.
‘A run over,’ the younger said.
‘What’s the difference, smartie?’
‘There is a difference, if you think about it, Miss Ignoramus.’
‘Girls, girls,’ Adeline said.
‘So, what was it?’
‘The bus ran over the sign.’
‘There!’ the younger sneered.
Becker was surprised. He’d not noticed as he had returned from Wagga that the sign was not there, fifty yards before the bridge. But had sensed that something had changed about the environment, about the world. The sign that had been there forever: Kettles Creek. Without an apostrophe. He’d never noticed the missing apostrophe. It was strange how you could see something every day of your life and not notice it.
‘Kat, you may be the genius in the family, always getting top marks. But there is a limit to what Mummy can take on a hot and lonely and possibly fatal expedition to plead and bespeak from your father both of you some sort of—’
Becker was fed up. ‘For Christ’s sake, Addie, get to the point!’
‘The bus stopped suddenly. I was thrown forward, there not being seat belts on buses, when there should be, shouldn’t there? I could have been killed. And me with no panties.’
‘No panties?’
‘They were all in the wash.’
‘So the bus stopped? And you got out? One hundred yards from my gate?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
Becker was bemused. He did not know what to do. He looked at the gate, but no sign of the Nissan. ‘Addie, what do you want?’
‘Sucker, Harry, sucker—’
‘You mean succour, Mum.’
‘Hush, darling. Not so much for myself, but for your children. For our children. Aren’t they lovely?’
He took another quick look. They weren’t lovely at all. They had the snub-nose and the pussy-cat eyes of their mother, plus a few freckles.
‘We’re done for, Harry, done for.’
‘In other words, stuffed,’ the elder said.
‘Broke,’ the younger said.
‘Stuffed!’
‘Broke is the right word.’
‘Girls, girls, please stop it. Daddy’s thinking.’
Becker did not know what to think. He had to get rid of them, but he didn’t know how. Adeline tended to stick like a leach. She was the whining kind. She rose, hands clenched and pressed down almost into her groin, and weaved and wove before him, begging, even supplicating.
‘Harry, to put it frankly, we are your wife and—’
‘I have a wife.’
‘Your first wife—’
‘What do you want, Addie?’
‘A home for our children.’
‘And food, I suppose?’
‘Oh, only what you can spare.’
‘Dog food, I bet,’ said Ches.
He got up, exhausted. Put a hand on a verandah post. Stood looking at the gate, and listening for sound. Robyn would return any minute. The Nissan did not make a sound, not when it was slowing down for the gate. He was stumped, he knew. He had an obligation to his children, if they really were. But he would never accept his former wife. She was a thief and liar, who’d taken him for all she could get. And so sweet and innocent with it. Last thing he’d heard she was living with a heavyweight boxer. But that was months ago.
‘What happened to the boxer?’ he asked.
‘You mean Boris? Oh, Harry, he’s dead.’
‘What happened to him?’
‘Knocked out in the ninth, the coroner said.’
‘The tenth,’ Ches said.
‘If you say so, darling, the tenth—only eighteen seconds from the final bell. He would have won if he’d gone the distance.’
Becker was surprised. ‘The coroner said that, if he’d gone the distance?’
‘He was there, Harry.’
‘Who, the coroner?’
‘Yes, he was the doctor.’
‘What doctor?’
‘They always have a doctor. It’s the law.’
He was going to argue, but gave up. It was hopeless, he knew. You could never get any sense out of Adeline, she being she.
‘Where’s your luggage?’
‘Oh, Harry, we don’t have any, do we, girls? We had to leave in such a hurry. The bailiffs were coming. We owing six months and several eviction notices. We hadn’t even done the washing. Had to leave it all soaking in Vanish.’
Becker realised something. ‘Just a minute. You had a house, debt-free house, which I paid for. It was not fun. I had to work twelve hours a day to do that for you.’
‘Oh, Harry, I’m sorry, but it was all Eddie’s fault.’
‘Who is Eddie?’
‘Eddie Sweetwater, he was in real estate.’
‘Don’t tell me!’
‘He was standing outside a butcher’s shop in Fitzgerald Avenue one day, when he offered me a piece of fried sausage with herbs. It was a Saturday morning. They always do that on Saturday morning. Giving it away. To get the trade, you know. It was delicious. I told him, and he said, ‘So are you, darling,’ and gave me a wink. So I winked him back, and somehow he ended up at my place that afternoon, the girls being at the beach. Well, we were lying on my bed after you know what, and he said, looking around, How much would this place be worth? I don’t know, I said, but it’s all mine. Yeah? he said. I reckon I could get you a good price for this. At least twice what you paid for it. You could, I said? Yeah, I’ve got a mate in real estate. Benny would be interested in this. So, I said, Oh, do you really think twice as much? Yeah, he said. Got the papers? Yes, I said, somewhere in a drawer. Show ’em to me, he said, taking a thoughtful drag on his Phillip Morris, and I’ll see what I can do for you—’
‘You’
re a moron, Addie.’
She was panting, a hand to her breast. She was great at gestures, theatrical gestures. Adeline was a well-read idiot. Loved romances, especially those in which the girl always got the boy, especially by the balls.
‘Please don’t say that, Harry. I did not see him again. I had no idea what had happened until one day a furniture van pulled up. And a car. Someone got out of the car and walked straight in, a man. He had a key and the papers. It was my title, but all the names had been changed. At the Titles Office, they said. They had a certificate of registration, they said. And showed me something. It looked more like a receipt for dressed timber than a title. But, how could I argue? These people are experts.’
‘Experts?’
‘At conning people. Poor innocent women, like me.’
For some reason Becker began to sing to himself. It went like this: ‘Have you ever had your balls caught in a rat trap? In a rat trap?’ Apparently, it was a soldiers’ song. His father used to sing it before he went off to Vietnam. In the shower.
Addie was close to tears.
‘We had to move out, Harry. I found a little stone cottage in Botany Road, near the university, for rent, where, at wits’ end, I had to turn to doing you know what. Although it wasn’t all that bad, Chinese students looking for a quick one between lectures and the occasional professor between conferences. Some of them very well educated. That’s where I picked up bespeak.’
‘You’re lucky you didn’t pick up something else.’
She stopped, panting. ‘I’m so sorry, Harry.’
He did not know what to say except the obvious.
‘And so you turned up here?’
‘Well, yes, hoping—’
‘Get in the car,’ he said.
‘Mum, I’m gonna be sick,’ Kat said.
‘You’re not going to drive us back, are you, Harry? All the way to Sydney?’
‘Into Wagga to put you up in a motel.’
‘A motel? Oh, I hope it’s not one of those awful three-star places, where they never wash the sheets and the soap keeps falling out of the holder in the shower.’
‘They’d better have pool,’ Ches said. ‘Or I’m not stayin’ there.’