Mallawindy (17 page)

He didn't need her words to steal away his magic, so he slapped her face. She whimpered, and he kissed the whimpering mouth, and entwined his long fingers in the silk of her hair, buried his face there.

It smelt of egg, and of countryside, of still waters. There was a time when she used to condition her hair with egg yolk. He remembered it, remembered being young with her, in love again. He was king, and Ellie his golden queen. No kids. No bloody kids. Sam might have got May and Narrawee, but he had his Ellie.

If he could only stay in this place, hide from age and memory in this place, driving deeper and deeper into her. If he could only – .

She was pleading now, her thighs pushing against him as her feet slapped and strained against the floor.

‘Yes. Yes. Yes! Blessed art thou ... Yes! Blessed ah ... Jesus!' He screamed as his strength flowed out of him.

She took it, took his strength, and his youth. She took it, and absorbed it, and gave him back to pain and memory. He pushed her from him, took two more Aspros and returned to bed, fifty-bl
oody-four, going on ninety, hating her again, hating her for defrauding him of his youth. But he slept well enough.

It was close to five. Ellie cleaned up the broken eggs, and washed the ones she could save. She tossed her nightgown in the wash, had a shower, and went out to start the milking. When Ben arrived, he didn't bother asking why she was wearing her sunglasses. He shook his head and helped her finish off the cows.

All morning she went about her work with the sunglasses in her pocket, just in case someone came to buy eggs, or Bessy rowed over. But no-one came.

She changed the sheets on Bronwyn's bed, just in case her job
didn't work out and she came home. Then at nine, the magpie she had taught to whistle came for his breakfast.

At ten she woke Jack for his. She was wearing her sunglasses. Over the years, those big dark glasses had hidden a multitude of his sins.

‘It's ten, love. Brekky is ready.'

‘Have you got any cash in the house?' he said. He didn't look at her glasses, or her sagging breasts.

Ben returned late in the afternoon. They looked at the kitchen, spoke of a ceiling, of getting someone in to plaster the walls. The need for new fences was more important. He fixed the fly-wire door so the snib caught. He unblocked the sink, and put a new washer in the dripping bathroom tap. Ellie followed him around while he worked. Like a child starved of toys who had fallen head first into a toy box, though somewhat bruised, Ellie was now happy. Jack had probably gone to Narrawee, so Ben could move back home. Her Ben would never leave her like the others did. His trees had grown so tall too. One day he'd build his bridge. One day he would.

Jack always ate at six, so when he hadn't arrived home by seven, Ellie knew he'd gone. The vegetables were drying out in the saucepans. She served her meal and placed the left-overs into bowls to put in the fridge. She was about to sit down in front of the television when she saw the lights of a car jiggle down the track. It wasn't Jack's car. She put her sunglasses on.

‘Hello, love,' she greeted the young man in blue. Jeff Rowan was the new town constable who'd replaced Bob Johnson. He was only a boy, no older than Benjie.

‘Good evening, Mrs Burton. Jack about?'

‘No, love. He didn't come home for his tea,' she said, swinging the door wide as she spoke. ‘Will you come in?'

‘Any idea how long he might be, Mrs Burton?'

‘He's probably gone to Narrawee. He's had a bad toothache
and he goes to a dentist in Melbourne. I was just about to have my tea. Will you have some with me?'

‘I ate with Ben at the hotel. Take your glasses off for me will you, Mrs Burton,' the young constable said, following her into the room, and when she didn't, he removed her glasses, touched the swelling, and stood waiting for an explanation.

‘I fell against the wall in the dark this morning. Broke a pile of eggs too. I should have put the light on,' she said.

‘That's not what Ben tells me, Mrs Burton.'

‘Ben wasn't here at the time, Officer, but he did see the broken eggs.' The sunglasses reclaimed, Ellie placed them determinedly on her nose.

‘Ben asked me to come down and have a talk to you and Jack, but my hands are tied unless you're prepared to charge him. No woman has to put up with abuse. Not these days.'

‘I don't know what you are talking about, love.'

‘You're a fool, Mrs Burton.'

‘Yes, I am, but I've learned my lesson. Next time I go wandering in the night, I'll put the light on. Have a slice of cake with your tea. I made it this afternoon.'

the gold coast

‘Hon. Come here, quick.'

‘I won't be a minute,' the other half of the couple replied from the motel bathroom, where he was scraping a safety razor over a face sacrificed to Queensland's sun. Red as a boiled yabby, only the eyes peering back from bathroom mirror held colour other than red. They were bloodshot, but they were blue.

David Taylor loathed the ocean, and had no liking for the Queensland Gold Coast. Rivers were what he liked, rivers with their shading trees to creep beneath when the sun grew too hot.

‘You're too late. You missed it.'

‘What did I miss?' he asked, running a comb through his hair, peering closely at the temples for the grey hairs, not too bothered by what he had missed.

‘That girl. You remember that girl you took to Paul's New Year's party. She was on television.'

David walked from the bathroom. He stood beside the bed, close to the small screen where Romans were spilling blood. With a shake of his head, he turned away. ‘Hardly likely, Melissa. She wasn't born when that one was made.'

‘Not the picture, you fool. It was a commercial for something,'
she said, one foot held high while she painted her toenails a vibrant red to match the rest of her.

‘You'll have to stay out of the sun tomorrow, Liss.'

‘I'll be brown by tomorrow. When you come up here for a holiday, you have to go back with a tan or people think you haven't had a good time. A bit of sunburn isn't going to kill you.'

‘Neither will it help prolong my life,' he replied and sat gingerly on the bed, stacking his pillows and easing his parboiled back down, his eyes on the Roman chariots, his mind far away.

‘What happened to her anyway?'

‘I have no idea.'

‘Did you know she was into this sort of thing?'

‘I knew her eight years ago. She was only a kid.'

‘She had the shape to be a model, I suppose. They like them dumb, with that half-starved look; which you were obviously pretty keen on yourself for a while,' his bed-mate said, finishing with one foot and starting on the other.

‘No-one could possibly accuse you of having that half-starved look, Melissa, and you are the one I am here with,' he said, his concentration on the foot with its many sunburnt faces.

‘But I'm dumb enough. Is that what you're saying?'

‘We came up here for a holiday, not to wage war.'

‘Sorry Hon. She was with a little girl, the absolute image of her. It had to be her own. Don't shake the bed. You'll make me smudge.'

The couple sat through two blocks of commercials before being rewarded. Both sprung upright as a wild-haired nymph rose from out of the waves to the thunder of a full orchestral backing. In slow motion, she glided up the sand to a sewing-machine, then stood lonely there. Frowning, shaking her head at the camera, she appeared puzzled. A mermaid, beached.

David swung his legs over the side of the bed, crowding the television as the screen filled with Ann's face. There was time
enough to see puzzlement exchanged for mischief. He knew that expression well. She lifted a seashell to her ear. And he knew that hand, had held that hand, had chosen a ring for that hand. In the other, she held a scrap of fabric, edged with embroidery. She studied it, comparing it to the seashell; then she began speaking, her voice near lost against the background of waves.

‘She sews seashells by the seashore. The shells she sews are seashells, I'm sure, but does she sew seashells by the seashore? No ... ' Her eyes sought the camera, and with a sh
rug, she turned to the ocean. ‘No,' she repeated, the puzzle solved. ‘Her mermaid machine sews the shells.' The fabric dropped to the sand, the orchestra built to a crescendo as the mermaid dived back into a wave and was last seen swimming out to sea.

His sunburn forgotten, David sat over the box, willing the Romans and their chariots gone, willing the box to spit out the next commercial.

‘It's different to the one I saw. She had her hair up – looked a bit more normal. How long since you've seen her, Hon?'

‘David, Dave, or Davey, please, Melissa, call me anything but Hon. I loathe that term, and I last saw her on the night of the party. I've told you a thousand times. She disappeared. Go to the library and read the old papers.'

‘I remember it. Her mother and brother were attacked by a bull.' Her eyes slitted, she looked at him. ‘If she hadn't disappeared, then you wouldn't be here with me now, would you?' She turned the television off.

His finger recalled the Romans to war. ‘How old was the child?'

‘About five, but she's so tall; she might have made the little girl look younger. Why the interest? You didn't get her pregnant, did you?'

He turned away as the screen filled with a labrador pup and a little girl, falling out of her frock. Her hair was thick and black, her wide eyes dark. Baby fat still clung to her chubby limbs. Five,
maybe, or less. She looked like Ann – could have been hers.

David laughed outright when a scatterbrain version of the one he had known came on screen. She was doing all but stand on her head as she struggled with an antiquated machine. He remembered too much. He remembered the party girl, high on spiked punch. He remembered the silk of long limbs that day at the river.

In silence the couple watched the last frame. The mother and child were together, a modern machine between them.

‘If that's not her child, Hon, then I'll eat my hat.'

‘Yes,' he said, hitting the on/off switch before crawling into the double bed with his wife. ‘It's certainly a very clever match.'

melbourne

For three years now, Ann had been using the office box number as her postal address, ever since the cheque from the bridalwear shop had gone astray. It was safer for a wanderer. The office was the only permanence in her life. She was a fictional character in a play on the grand stage of Melbourne; the rooms she slept in were props in the temporary roles she lived until she found Johnny and the play ended, then the costume trunks could be locked away, and she could take Johnny home.

Jan dropped a letter on her desk as she walked through, and Ann looked at the handwritten address, turned it over. No return address. She received little mail that didn't have windows. The handwriting looked familiar. It was like her mother's, large, not well formed. Had Ellie seen the ads, tracked her to this box number? Had Johnny gone home?

It was possible. Eagerly she ripped it open, wanting it to be from her mother, wanting her to have cared enough to write.

Dear Ann Burton,
It wasn't from Ellie.

In reply to your advertisement for information regarding John Lawrence Burton, born 1952. I work with John at
Box Hill Sales and Service. I have heard him speak of family members in Mallawindy, and in particular, about his sister, Ann. I hope this information may be of value to you.

Best of luck, Dave Jones.

‘Jesus,' she said. ‘Jesus.' No contact number. Nothing, but the letter sounded genuine. She picked up the phone book. Practised fingers found the used-car listings, and it was there. Box Hill Sales and Service, Maroondah Highway, Box Hill. ‘Let it be,' she whispered as she dialled the number, tapping her pen on her desk while the phone rang. Rang. Rang. ‘Please. Please. Please answer it, Johnny. I will know your voice. Please God, let it be.'

‘Box Hill Sales and Service. Tony speaking.'

‘Good morning. Could I speak to John Burton, please?'

‘John? No, I'm sorry. John is at lunch. Can I give him a message?'

‘Yes ... No. No. Thank you. I'll call back,' she said.

‘He should be back by two.'

Her hand now shaking out of control, Ann placed the phone down. So easy. Too easy? She looked at her watch. One thirty-five. Box Hill was only half an hour away on the train. The letter tossed in the black hole of her bag, she stood and walked to the office next door. ‘I have to go out, Michael. I'll take a long lunch.'

‘Did you get onto Roger the Red?'

‘Yes. He's flying over in two weeks.'

‘Okay. Don't forget we've got Davis coming at four.'

‘I'll be back by three,' she said, and she ran for the stairs.

Five flights to the ground. Running up and down them kept her slim, she said. They kept her too slim. She was all legs and arms and hair. At fifteen, many had believed her to be twenty; at twenty-four, she sometimes looked fifteen.

She didn't like lifts – refused to use them – got the blind unreasonable panics every time she looked at a lift door. Michael thought
she was mad. She knew she was, but apart from the lifts, she hid it well. She played the city girl now; at home in this hub of noise and movement.

She jumped a tram to Flinders Street, and raked at her hair with a wide-toothed comb before catching the Box Hill train. The station was only a block from Maroondah Highway. She had a Melwa
y Street Directory with her, the city man's bible; few Melburnians moved without their directory. Now her finger tracked Maroondah Highway through its pages until she found Box Hill. She circled it with red.

‘Let it be,' she prayed to her new bible. ‘Let it be.'

How many phone calls had she made in the past years? Countless. Systematically, she'd worked her way through the Burtons in the telephone book, then she'd started calling large companies, giving her spiel. She'd called the Education Department. Since the night of the party in Warran, she'd often imagined Johnny as a school teacher – but a used-car salesman. Never. Hundreds of phone calls, and none had borne fruit until today. Apart from her call to Sam. She'd come across her uncle's Melbourne number on a wet Sunday afternoon.

‘John Lawrence?' the familiar voice replied. ‘You don't mean brother John William, do you? Jack Burton? What has he done? Won the lottery? Robbed a bank?'

Ann broke the connection fast, knowing the voice had to be Sam's. So like her father's voice. She'd checked the address. Toorak. Sandon Grove, Toorak. M A Burton. May Alice Burton, of course. She'd have the phone in her name. May had always been the boss. She'd carried the money, signed cheques, paid the bills – a liberated woman before it became fashionable.

Memory had come at her hard as she walked away from the phone box that day. Memory of May, driving into a small garage. It had a lift-up door that crashed to the concrete in a wind. May holding small hands on a tram. Little trains that were not trains, running down the middle of the road making sparks. May pulling
on a wire overhead when they wanted to get off. Noisy. Maybe she and Liza had been to the Toorak flat.

Many memories had returned in the past eight years, but they were floating things, colourful bubbles on the wind, that burst as she grasped them.

Ann checked her watch, then turned to the window as the train slowed. Camberwell Station. Not far now. Johnny would be back from lunch by the time she got there. Her he
artbeat was rapid, and her lungs kept asking for more air. She breathed deeply, held the breath, tried to calm the frantic heartbeat.

What does he look like? Will he want to see me? I should have waited, should have rung him first. He must have seen my ads. He probably doesn't want to be found.

Slow train, stopping at every station. Too slow, but not slow enough either. Hope was in the finding of him. What would be in the meeting? The end of hope?

Perspiration beaded her lip, but her mouth was dry. ‘Stupid,' she said, searching her handbag for gum, or sweets, something that might make saliva. Nothing there – or nothing she could find. Again she read the letter. He'd be there. At two, she would see him. ‘Relax. Just relax. You're an adult. He's an adult. If he doesn't want to see me, then at least I'll know where he is, that he is alive. At least I'll be able to stop wasting money on phone calls and ads.'

She found the car yard at the northern edge of the centre, and she stood scanning the lines of cars, seeking a tall dark head. No movement, apart from a youth with a blue bucket. ‘Where might I find John Burton?' she called to him.

‘Dunno. Ask at the office.' He pointed with his cleaning rag.

And she saw a tall man walk from the office. Dark, as she expected him to be, dressed impeccably, as his father always dressed. Her hand went to still her heart. His back was turned, and she watched his back, her own borrowing support from a powder blue Holden stationwagon, a few years younger than Ben's ute.

He was with a male customer, and appeared to be doing a hard
sell. She smiled, shook her head. She swallowed, licked her lips. Be calm, she warned. Take it slowly, just in case he doesn't want to be found. What did people say to a brother, unseen in too many years? Hello stranger. Or, got any bargains today, mate? Or, Johnny hold me. Take all the hell out of my head. Make it go away.

Her eyes were misting when his buyer left without buying, but her smile was wide. She watched him turn, sight her from a distance and walk quickly towards her.

He was laughing. ‘God is kind,' he said. ‘What can I do for you, Brown-eyes?'

He wasn't Johnny.

Brown-eyes?

The smile left her face. Her head grew cold, colder.

He wasn't Johnny.

The world leaned, she swayed to the side, attempting to level the ground.

He wasn't Johnny.

‘I'm looking for John Burton – '

‘And you found me instead. Isn't this your lucky day?'

Mad. Blood roared like the ocean in her ears. Then she recognised him. He was the mauler in the blue shirt at the New Year party she'd gone to with David. Tony. Tony George. He was the man who looked like her father, who had her father's hands.

‘By the way Tony, did your mother happen to know your father's name?'

‘What do you do for a crust, Tone?'

‘I sell cars.'

Die on the spot. Drop dead.

She cringed from him. Away. Get away. Reflexes swung the blue car door open, and she crawled inside it, needing to hide from his eyes, needing the dark place of her childhood. Disappointment sucked the air from her lungs, embarrassment leached the marrow from her bones. Crawl into a hole and die. Fool. Fool. Bloody fool.

But ... but John Burton was here somewhere. The letter said
so. The man said so, on the phone. Said he was at lunch. She looked at her watch, and Tony opened the passenger side door. He was in the car, filling the car, using up all of the air. ‘John Burton,' she said, her mouth too dry to say more.

‘I knew it was you, you bitch. We have some unfinished business.'

It made no sense. She stared at him. Nothing to say. Got to get away. Hide. Can't let him make me run from Johnny. Can't let him see me dying. Johnny is here. She had the letter. Who wrote the letter? Tony's was the voice on the phone. And she knew, but she didn't want to know.

‘Dave married Melissa, six months after that party. You didn't leave a very lasting impression on him, Brown-eyes, but you impressed me. I swore I'd get you one day.'

‘John Burton.' She sounded like a parrot, with a two-word vocabulary. She added two more. ‘I rang.' Too many hopes had been placed on this meeting. She couldn't let go of hope. She grasped her handbag, took the letter from it, pushed it at him, and watched the paper shiver there while a pulse in her stomach flopped around like a dying fish. She sucked in used-up air, sucked in the heavy male scent of his sweat, breathed it out too fast, as she offered him the letter.

He didn't look at it. Didn't need to. He wrote it. ‘Good old Davey Jones been up to his old tricks again. Tut, tut tut,' he said, and he laughed. ‘I got you a beauty, you smart-arsed bitch. I've seen those ads in the missing column for years, then last week I went to Mallawindy. Did some research. That's the day I decided you'd get your just desserts.'

Then the parrot learned new words. ‘Bastard. Vicious bastard.' She opened the door, sprang from the car, the contents of her open bag spilling to seat to earth.

He sat there, laughed at her fumbling attempt to sweep up the scattered junk. ‘No use running, Brown-eyes. I've only just begun.'

An older male wandered over to lend a hand. He knelt,
retrieved her wallet from beneath the car, handed it to her with a small box of tissues and a Burnished Spice lipstick, two pens and a roll of Butterscotch.

‘I'll take that wagon,' she said. ‘That's if I can drive it away in half an hour, and you can get his stink out of it. Someone ought to buy him a can of deodorant. Trying to test drive with him in the car would put off a lot of prospective buyers.'

She had killed two birds with the one stone, bought a long promised set of wheels and re-wounded an old enemy. But she hadn't found Johnny, and she'd had to give a home address where the car would be parked. She didn't think fast enough to lie, which meant Tony George knew where she lived. He was in the office when she ran back with her bank cheque, and by the look in his eye, he'd come knocking on her door with a cocked pistol in his pocket. She'd have to move again.

At five past four, she returned to the office – a car owner. Big car owner, and she couldn't parallel park the thing for love nor money. She told Michael, while they waited for their late four o'clock appointment to arrive.

She'd known him for five years, had worked with him once in a larger space, and when he decided to form his own company, he'd hijacked her. He liked her madness, used it. They were a good team.

‘You bought a ten-year-old Holden,' he said.

‘A twelve-year-old stationwagon, would you believe. It sort of ... sort of seemed like the right thing to do at the time.'

‘You're mad,' he said.

‘I thought we'd already agreed on that.' They laughed, and they drank bitter coffee, and they waited until five, but the man didn't show.

It was after six before Ann and the wagon found their way home to Collingwood, to the house she shared. Four girls in three bedrooms, a shambles of who owned what, and a bathroom no-one cleaned. The stink of age ruled each day and hung over into night.
The tiny backyard smelt of age; no sun could find its way there to renew the earth, allow it to breathe. A hundred years of living and dying had gone on in this street of narrow houses, packed together like out-of-date cartons on a supermarket shelf.

Her possessions were few; by seven most had been transferred to the street. It wasn't until she opened the wagon's tailgate that she realised she'd bought more rust than metal, the rust hastily covered by plastic filler. Still, the loading area took her kitchen table, her cases, boxes and blankets. She considered tying her
bed on the roof, but with no roof-rack, knew she'd probably lose it at the first traffic lights. ‘Live without it,' she said, eyeing each end of the street for a prowling vehicle. ‘Just cut and run.' The office box number was safe. If the mauler wrote again, she wouldn't open his letters. ‘Go.'