New Australian Stories 2 (12 page)

Despite having managed to empty my stomach of any potentially troublesome contents before we got to the church, as I tottered down the aisle on Dad's arm I was assailed by an ominous buzzy feeling. Breaking out in a cold sweat, I clutched at Dad's elbow. ‘Dad, I feel funny,' I hissed. ‘I think I'm going to faint.'

With impressive presence of mind, Dad stepped on my toe. The shock of this was enough to get the blood rushing back to my head and keep me upright long enough for him to donate me to Doug.

I would like to say it all worked out well after that, even with the rocky start. And really it wasn't so bad. If you don't count the reception where my little brother ate so many of the CWA ladies' lamingtons that he vomited over his new shoes. Or the fact that the bride's and groom's mothers refused to appear in any photos together, because somehow they'd ended up wearing the same hat. Or that Doug and his best man, Bruce, having made total messes of themselves at the previous night's bucks party, decided to see who could down the most hairs of the dog, and ended up passed out in the gents. Doug revived enough to consummate the marriage that night, although it was pretty much a moot point by then.

It's the Cheroot

MARION HALLIGAN

It's the cheroot, he said, tapping it with the scarlet painted nail of his middle finger, it's the cheroot that will solve the mystery. We looked at this smoked-down stump, soggy in its plastic bag. Not this, he said, this is a cigar, true Havana; I am talking about a cheroot. He stood up and walked away. His short swingy red jacket showed off his small waist, his slender hips rolled very neatly as he walked in his brief skirt and stiletto heels. He turned as he reached the end of the wharf and flashed a smile, the whiteness of his teeth dazzling in his plum-dark face.

Not your problem, he said, and walked up the steps to the boat, his heels clicking on their wooden planks, the muscles of his calves made round and taut by the highness of the heels, and stood in the prow while it cast off and headed down the river.

We watched the old steam launch lumbering through the oily swell. No, it was not our problem. We went on with the card game. There wasn't a lot of money at stake, none of us had any to speak of, but that made the prospect of even a small amount more enticing. I picked up my newly dealt hand; the boat was nearly at the bend of the river. It blew its horn, a melancholy sound, old and patient and elemental as the river itself. My cards looked promising. I stared out at the greenish water, the greenish mangroves along the bank, the absent boat. Not our problem. She was young, and pretty enough; she should have had a life. I concertina-ed the cards in my hand. The death of one diminishes us all. The beautiful young man with his clue — or perhaps it was a warning — of the cheroot might not have said that, but he would act accordingly.

The Lizard lost as usual. He mooched off down the wharf. Spangle as usual won. He picked up the small pile of coins and slid them into his pocket. Every week we played cards, and it seemed as though Spangle always won. Was he a better player? I didn't think so. But luck was with him, and that was all that counted. He had a pretty wife, too. He took his winnings home and gave them to her. Maybe that was what protected his luck. I went and stood beside the Lizard, where he leaned on a post, gloomily staring at the greenish water heaving itself around the piles of the wharf. Even the water is tired, in this place. I imagined I could see a shimmer at the bend of the river where the launch had disappeared. It wouldn't be back for another week. No one much wants to come here. And nobody seems any good at leaving.

Sometimes I imagined the Lizard bending over and just sliding into the water, like some scaly amphibian. Except of course he wasn't, did not even look like one, not like his namesake even. The water was deep here, and as with most of the people who lived along the river he couldn't swim. The water did not make you want to get into it for any reasons of pleasure.

Suddenly he said, with surprising vehemence, How can she work, like that? It's not natural, I don't see how she can do it.

After a minute I guessed him to be talking about Andrea. Like the rest of the people here he thinks she is a woman. You mean the heels, I said. It's a skill they have, women.

Still seems funny, for a police, said the Lizard.

Plain clothes, I said, and he laughed.

Spangle's wife came up the track. She was wearing high-heeled sandals, with skimpy shorts and a shirt tied at the waist. Her skin was very brown, we're all burned by the sun here, but hers was somehow natural-looking, as though she'd have been born like that, and her eyes were enormous and dark with bluish whites. She took little steps, sort of mincing, that's what the high heels did. See, I said, they just can.

She paused by the store, which in this place is pub, and café, post office, grocery, you name it; if it is to be bought it has to be bought here. There's a sign across the front, painted by Slide, the fat man who owns it.
Emporium of Broken Dreams
, it says, in dripping red letters on an old piece of timber. I heard Spangle's wife say once how she thought it sounded like a poem.

Slide's boy was carrying in the boxes the launch had unloaded on to the end of the wharf. A lot of grog. Tins of food. It's grim if the stores run out, and I'll say this for Slide, things might run down but they don't usually run out. You might end up eating hearts of palm out of a can when what you wanted was baked beans, but at least it's food.

I once asked Slide, How come hearts of palm? He replied, Why not? There are a lot of things in the world, Ken.

The opium doesn't run out. So far it hasn't, and everybody has faith that it never will. Nobody ever questions its just always being there. Maybe they're superstitious; better just to go on having faith. Maybe things would be better if it did, I said to Slide once. He laughed at me. After everyone had killed each other, you mean?

Andrea never notices the opium. Well, I suppose he notices, just pretends he doesn't. The fact is the place runs smoothly. Well, until the girl was murdered. It'd be good to think that it was some passer-by, but we never have those. No tourists come here. The boat is the only way in. Occasionally there's somebody who may be official, but they don't stay, they leave on the same boat. It comes in, unloads the stores, takes the venom and goes again.

The Lizard has a tent, quite a fancy affair with its own verandah. Spangle and his wife live in one of the shacks; Slide has the best of them. The fisherman's is okay. There's a guy called Tarantin who lives round the bend of the track with his old mother. The Chinese have a kind of compound of huts and lean-tos and canvas shelters; I am never sure how many of them there are. Sometimes I squint at it, when the sun is glinting off the flattened paraffin tins that form their roofs, and see a fabulous palace of many pavilions, but that's hard work even for my imagination.

That's about it, except for a couple of old-timers further down the river. And the hippies that live by the creek, further inland. Creek; more of a swamp. There are kids with bites all over, but they don't seem to notice. And of course me; I was lucky there was a shack, more tumbledown even than most, but it was vacant. It belongs to Slide; I expect everything does. He put a tarp over the roof so it's fairly watertight.

Slide's store is closed by a wooden shutter that folds down to the counter. The shutter has a huge padlock that he never clicks home; even when it's down it doesn't necessarily mean that the shop is shut. On the evening of Andrea's visit he beckoned me over to what he calls the terrace, and put a bottle of his whisky on one of the rickety tables. I know if I sit with Slide often and long enough I'll learn all there is to know about this place. Slide's okay to talk to, the others are hopeless, you have to play cards. When you drink with Slide you know he's totting it up, it'll end on the slate with all your other purchases. Only yours, he doesn't expect you to pay for his.

Sometimes the whisky is some terrible moonshine that comes from a still somewhere off in the mangroves. Tonight it's halfway decent, not Scotch of course but some okay colonial imitation. The stomachs are strong here. I sometimes think that Slide likes me, and that's probably why the others accept me. We all look the same: me, Slide, the Lizard, the fisherman, Slide calls him the Fisher King but I've never thought he was that good at his job. If we depended on his fish to feed us we'd get pretty hungry. We're all burned mahogany by the sun, our eyes a bit watery, dressed in singlets and shorts and thongs, our bodies worn and sinewy. Even Spangle, who's probably the youngest, looks a scrawny old bird.

The dead girl is the daughter of the fisherman. If he's the Fisher King does that make her the Fisher Princess? She used to flit, down to the shop, along the edge of the river, a thin and child-shaped little woman with a great red frizz of bushy hair on her head and a poignant little face. She wore dresses like nightgowns and it's as well she didn't go out after dark or you'd have taken her for a ghost. I thought of her in the whisky as I took a pull of it, a kind of memorial toast. Wondered if maybe now her figure would flit through the dark nights of the river, really a ghost. I wished her spirit rest. I suppose you can't expect that until her murderer is caught.

Know what a cheroot is? said Slide. He pumped the paraffin lamp and lit it, casting a yellow gloom over the tables, the beaten earth of the terrace, the single tree that leaned over his yard. The whisky looked very brown in the glasses. I read somewhere that whisky in its natural form is colourless, that the brown is caramel. I suppose it's to make you think of peat and amber-coloured mountain becks. I often think of words like
beck
, and
brook
, when I look at this oily river and its sluggish creeks. But we can't choose the words we live with.

You smoke it, I said, it's like a cigar.

It comes from India, he said. It's open at both ends. Originally from India. Could be anywhere now.

Andrea said it would solve the mystery.

Andrea will solve the mystery. He's a clever girl.

I nodded. So Slide knew about Andrea.

Not least because he isn't a girl, said Slide, and no one twigs. You know, he said, his mother called him that. Apparently there's some Italian painter of that name. She looked at books of beautiful pictures before he was born; supposed to give her beautiful thoughts and so she'd have a beautiful baby. It's a bloke's name, there, apparently.

Slide looks sceptical at the best of times, and at that moment even more so. You have to wonder, he said. Maybe in Italy, but not here. It could have an effect.

Why doesn't anyone else know?

They don't know much, Ken. Better like that.

I suppose he is quite beautiful.

True.

Slide took out a packet, a yellow box with some pattern in red and gold. He opened the lid and slid back cellophane. Cheroot? he said.

Where did you get these?

I've got a lot of things in there.

He lit it for me. It was quite coarse, but it didn't taste stale, as it might have done, I thought, being something Slide had had forever. Do you sell a lot of these?

Not a lot, no.

I said if I sat drinking with Slide I'd eventually find out what there is to know about this place. But I should also have said that it could take a very long time.

Cheroot's a French word, he said. They got the word from India.

Slide's got three books in the store, has had for a long time, I reckon. The same three. But you often see him sitting on his terrace, reading. Not one of the three. I suppose that's where he gets to know about cheroots and such.

Why do you stay here, Slide?

Got to live somewhere. He blew fragrant smoke into the air. Why do you, Ken?

I shrugged. I was writing my book, but I didn't want to tell people that.

One day you'll finish it, he said. Then you'll see. Whether you leave or not. Can, or want to.

So he knew that, too. I laughed. But I could feel my cheeks getting hot. Shame-faced. I turned it towards the river, secretly flowing past the wharf. This immense burden of water, always flowing, always and never the same.

People are funny, he said. They get fond of the places they live in. Even so god-forsaken as this.

I looked along the track. The shacks were dark. Nothing to do at night, nobody reads, there's no television, they just go to bed when the light goes and get up when it comes back. The opium is not a night-time activity. Only the Chinese palace showed wavering slits of lamplight, or candle flame.

Why do we say god-forsaken, I wonder? I think God is more here than in most places I've been. What do you say, Ken? Will we find God here?

Maybe, if we look for him.

Good point.

We'd got to the stage where the conversation had become lazy; our voices were, and my brain, but the subject matter was too energetic for me. The level of the whisky had dropped considerably. I wasn't sure I could afford much more. I stood up, and stretched.

To our cots, said Slide, our virtuous cots. He drained his glass and stood up, too. He raised his hand and padded with the slow gait of the fat man round to the back of his emporium, the bottle under his arm.