North of Nowhere, South of Loss (6 page)

Though there was no return address on the letter to Laurence Voss, Laura marked it “Return to Sender. Forwarding address unknown” and dropped it into a mailbox. Let the post office open it, send it to the dead letter office, whatever they did.

No more personal correspondence arrived, but every week or so junk mail came. To Mr Voss or Occupant, to Laurence Voss, sometimes to L. J. Voss. It was very classy junk mail: glossy garden catalogues, magazines for orchid fanciers, kits for gazebos and teak garden benches, mail-order kits for grandfather clocks and harpsichords, brochures for leather-bound sets of Tolstoy and Goethe. You could tell a lot about a man from the mailing lists he was on, Laura thought. You could feel great fondness for a man of such elegant tastes.

She filed all the catalogues in a carton in her study, but kept one or two on her bedside table to browse through at night. Once, she was startled and excited to turn a page and find a photograph of Caliban with identical bulging eyes and knowing smirk. You could have him delivered. He had a companion piece, a sylph-like cast-iron sprite with wings, a stooped figure who could be placed in such a way that he appeared to be drinking from a cupped hand.
Ariel
, she thought with delight, and decided to order him. She would put him on the opposite side of the pond: Beauty and the Beast, so to speak.

She used the catalogue order form as it was, imprinted with the name of Mr Laurence Voss and his address – which was also hers – at Settlement Road, The Gap. She filled in her own credit card number.

She felt she had stepped into the envelope of Mr Voss's life. She felt they were kindred spirits. She felt his presence most strongly by the pond.

“The Spicers said he was weird,” Jilly said. She babysat fairly often for the neighbours, who had a real pool. “They hardly ever laid eyes on him, but they were glad when he went. The police had to come, Mrs Spicer said.”

“The police?”

“Yeah. He wouldn't leave when the bank foreclosed.”

“I don't blame him,” Laura sighed. “After you've spent your life building the perfect garden. Poor old man.”

“He wasn't all that old,” Jilly said. “Same as Mr Spicer, they reckon. And he only came a few years ago and planted all that fast-growing bamboo and stuff. Pretty suspicious, they reckon. Like what was he hiding? He was kinda spooky, Mrs Spicer said, a real loner. The kids called him the bogeyman.”

“Suburbanites don't understand the desire for solitude,” Laura said. “They probably think I'm a bit weird too.”

“Yeah, well,” Jilly shrugged. “I told Mrs Spicer you were on sabbatical, writing a book. She said that's different.”

“How kind,” Laura said drily.

“She asked me what your book's about, and I said Patrick White and literature and stuff. I couldn't remember exactly.”

“It's a study of authors who become reclusive. Patrick White, Emily Dickinson, J. D. Salinger, Thomas Pynchon. The way they create solitary characters and personae and then disappear into their fictions.”

Jilly mimed a theatrical yawn. “Oh wow,” she said.

“Or maybe it's the other way round. Maybe the characters swallow up the author. You know, move in and take over. With both White and Pynchon, you get a sense in the later novels of
invasion
, and there's a line in Dickinson –”

Jilly groaned. “I wish I had a
normal
mother. You know, who plays tennis and stuff, and has people round for barbecues.”

“We'll have a barbecue,” Laura offered guiltily, quickly.

All the neighbours came to the barbecue, and all Jilly's friends from The Gap high school. Also a man whom nobody knew. The man nobody knew looked vaguely familiar to most of the neighbours, but everyone assumed he came with somebody else. Laura wasn't aware of him till Jilly pointed him out: “Mum,” she said urgently. “That's the man who stares at me at the bus stop.”

Laura was disturbed. She'd seen him before somewhere, but she couldn't think where. “Does he do it every day?” she asked Jilly.

“Almost
every day. He drives past in this red Toyota. Sometimes he drives round and round the block and stares when he goes past, and sometimes he just parks and stares. He gives me the creeps.”

“Men who stare are usually harmless,” Laura said with a lightness she did not feel. “That's all they do.
Stare”

(“Don't think I won't be watching,” her ex-husband had promised after the custody case. “Don't think you'll get away with this.”

But anyone angry made that kind of threat. It meant nothing.)

“Who's that man?” she asked a woman she'd got to know in the supermarket, a woman who was wiping hamburger from a toddler's face.

“Oh, I see him in the library all the time,” the woman said. “I think he's a friend of the Spicers. Very shy, but rather nice. Gives the kids iceblocks and lollies.”

The man seemed shyly friendly, or perhaps cordially aloof, like someone dragged to a party by friends too soon after a divorce or a death in the family. He moved from group to group, he smiled, he chatted, he was charming, he kept moving. Laura heard someone say, “I didn't catch your name,” and he laughed quietly as though this were a particularly clever joke and moved on. She watched him gradually work his way further from the fringes of the crowd until he disappeared behind the bamboo.

Perhaps he was someone her ex-husband had hired. But then again, perhaps he was just a friend of the Spicers.

She slipped away to the pond.

The man was sitting cross-legged beside Caliban, with his hand on the gargoyle's head, staring into the water. Laura looked at his reflection and thought he had the saddest eyes she'd ever seen. It's
his
garden, she thought with sudden certainty. He's grieving for it.

Oblivious to Laura's presence, the man began stroking Caliban's head in a blind, desolate way, a gesture both intimate and … what?
Hungry.

Stricken, Laura said: “I ordered Ariel to go with him. Do you like him?” and the man started violently, as wild-eyed as Caliban himself. Laura felt momentarily frightened. She could not tell if the look was hostile, or haunted, or simply that of a man much disoriented by loss. Then he smiled, and Laura thought with a shiver that his smile was a little like that of her former husband, who could move from charm to threat to charm again without warning.

Caliban's reflection grinned at her from the water.
A real steal
, he smirked. She thought uncomfortably: it
is
a kind of theft, a foreclosure.

“I know how you must feel,” she said apologetically. The man's eyes unnerved her. She spoke to his reflection, which watched hers. “Look, if you want to come and sit here sometimes … well, that's okay. I'll understand.” She felt as though she were placating some capricious force, and couldn't tell if she spoke from compassion or fear.

“Mrs Spicer,” she said, when the flow of the party had reabsorbed her, “that man over there, just coming up from the pond. Is he Mr Voss?”

Mrs Spicer was startled. “Good God,” she said. “I shouldn't think so.” She studied him intently. “To tell you the truth, it's hard to say. We practically never saw him. I don't believe we ever once saw him face to face.” She squinted, and tipped her head to one side. “It
could
be … but no, I don't think so. That man's a friend of the Taylors, I think. I've seen him round. Mr Voss was stockier, heavier than that. Just the same, I wouldn't take chances. I'd notify the police.”

“The
police
?” Laura said apprehensively. “Why the police?”

“Well, confidentially,” Mrs Spicer lowered her voice. “I didn't want to alarm Jilly with the whole story. But I play tennis with Milly Layton whose husband's a cop. Voss was suspected of murder, you know.”

“
Murder
?”

“The story is that his wife ran off with another man. He got custody of their daughter, and that was the situation when they moved in here, Voss and his kid. She used to babysit for us, as a matter of fact, when Kev was a baby. Lovely girl. Just about Jilly's age. Could never get a word out of her about her dad or mum, though I poked around. Discreetly, you know. Then one day she just disappeared. His story was that the wife had kidnapped her, but the police weren't so sure. They couldn't find any trace of the wife or daughter, and for a while they had a theory he'd murdered them both. Came and dug up the pond because they thought he might have buried them in the mud.”

It seemed to Laura that she could feel the meaning of the gargoyle's leer seeping into her body like cold water. “But they never found anything,” Mrs Spicer said lightly, “so charges were dropped. Voss went a bit berserk, Milly says. They had to cart him off. All I know is, the police cars came and went, came and went, I don't know how many times. Then the For Sale sign went up. It was there for
months
you know. They couldn't sell it. Word spread, people had a bad feeling about the place. Quite frankly, I say where there's smoke, there's fire. You've got to wonder what someone was hiding behind all that jungle. I expect you'll be having it cut back.”

“Oh, well, I grew up in a house like this out past Samford, you see. Right in the rainforest. I like it this way. Mrs Spicer, Jilly says that man drives past when she's at the bus stop and stares.”

“Really?” Mrs Spicer studied him more intently. “You've got to wonder about some of the Taylors' friends. Bloody peeping Toms, it's disgusting. Listen,” she said, “I'd inform the police. You can't be too careful when you've got a daughter.” She looked obliquely at Laura. “Especially when you're managing on your own. Not easy, I'm sure, being a single mother.”

“No,” Laura said.

“Jilly says you're doing a book on Patrick White's
Voss
. Funny, isn't it? The name, I mean. The coincidence.”

“It
is
a bit weird,” Laura acknowledged.

“Read
Voss
in high school. Based on Leichhardt, wasn't he?”

“More or less, yes.”

“All those explorers were raving lunatics,” Mrs Spicer said. “Well …” She squinted across the lawn. “No, I'm sure that's not Mr Voss, he's too shrunken and pale for Mr Voss, but you must call the police. We don't want pervs in The Gap, it's a family place. Ask for Milly Layton's husband. As a matter of fact, I'll give Milly a tinkle myself.”

“Mrs White,” Sergeant Layton said. “Staring is not a criminal offence. I'm not saying there aren't loonies around, but if we followed up every phone call we get from a frightened woman, we'd never do anything else, d'ya see what I mean?”

“Yes,” Laura said. “It's just that … I thought it wouldn't hurt to have it on the record, you know, in case anything … He drives a red Toyota, my daughter says”

“Mrs White.” The sergeant spoke in the patient tones of one whose daily task involved fending off – wearily, kindly – hordes of neurotic women. “I have a daughter myself. I worry myself sick about her safety. Know what I do? Tell her never to accept rides from strange men. It's that simple. Train them to be sensible, know where they are, give them a curfew: that's all any parent can do.”

But look, she wanted to say. I think I may have done something stupid. I told this man he could come and sit by my pond. I could see he was hurt you see. I could see he was in pain. But that wouldn't necessarily mean he wouldn't do harm, would it? And now I'm worried that he'll read something into my offer, I'm frightened that …

But how could she expose such foolish behaviour to the police?
Women ask for it, you know. They're all masochists at heart, they're like children really.

She said: “Well, you see, I thought he might be Mr Voss, the former owner. My neighbour says not, and I suppose she would know, but I don't feel completely certain, and your wife told my neighbour that Mr Voss –”

Sergeant Layton laughed. “My wife,” he said fondly. “Listen, Mrs White. For number one: women embroider things, bless their souls. And for number two: I don't tell Milly everything. And for number three: we never had anything solid on Voss, he was a routine suspect, that's all. And as a matter of fact, we got the bodies and the killer on that one. Started off as a kidnap, all right, but then it seems the ex-wife's fancy boyfriend tampered with the kid – excuse my language, Mrs White, it's a dirty world. Anyway, the ex-wife threw a tantrum (jealous or maternal, we don't know which) and the boyfriend went off his rocker and killed them both. We caught up with him west of Port Augusta, found the bodies in the boot of his car. And for final: your Mr Voss cracked up, poor bugger. Stands to reason, dunnit? With his wife running off, then
pouf,
his kid disappearing, then the bodies.”

And with the police accusing him of murder, Laura thought.

“Your Mr Voss is in the loony bin, poor bugger, so you can set your mind at rest on that score, Mrs White. He's not the bloke who's staring at your kid. Set a curfew, and tell her never to accept rides from strange men. All a parent can do.”

“Yes, you're right of course, Sergeant Layton,” she said.

Jilly woke with a start. It was the middle of the night, quiet as death, so what had disturbed her? The French doors were open on to the verandah and a wisp of breeze barely nudged the humid air. Damp hot silence settled onto damp sheets. So why, Jilly asked herself, every nerve taut and her heart thumping like a rock band's drum, why do I feel like I'm being watched? Then she saw the man beside her dresser, standing in shadow.

She screamed.

Fast as thought, he left on silent cat feet, and when Laura came running there was no sign, not a single telltale sign save Jilly's fear.