Return to Moondilla (12 page)

‘I won’t tell him on the phone, but if I get him here, he’ll have to know how his daughter came to be on the game. It can’t be helped.’

‘I suppose so,’ Prue acknowledged, and let him go. ‘Mister, I don’t know why you’re doing this, but I’m real pleased you are.’

‘Get out of this game, Prue. The heroin will kill you just the same as it killed Rosa. Buck the habit and do something else.’

‘I think it’s too late for that,’ she said.

‘Baloney. You can do anything if you set your mind to it.’ But then he realised his mum was shaking her head at him sadly, her eyes telling him to let it go. It seemed there was no use trying to reason with Prue. ‘You’ll be at the service?’ he asked her.

‘Of course. Rosa was my only real friend.’

•

Baxter rang Albury Police Station and told an officer that he needed to locate a man by the name of Craig, who held an executive position in the railway and whose daughter, Rosa, had left Albury about three years ago. Baxter provided his number and asked the officer to have Craig phone him directly.

Inside two hours Baxter’s phone rang, with Ronald Craig at the other end. ‘Mr Baxter? Albury police asked me to contact you with respect to my daughter, Rosa. Is there something I should know about her?’

‘I’m afraid to say that your daughter passed away early this morning.’

There was a silence. Then Craig asked, in a rough voice, ‘How?’

‘I’d rather explain that in person.’

Impatience crept into Craig’s tone. ‘We’ve had very little news of her since she left here a few years ago. Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘What was she to you?’

‘I wasn’t Rosa’s boyfriend, if that’s what you’re wondering. I’m a journalist and I met her while I was doing some research—’

‘
Research?
On what?’

‘It’s a long story, Mr Craig. My mother and I were with Rosa when she died. She was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital last night. Her friend Prue gave me your name.’

‘You’ve seen Prue Hunter?’

‘Yes, she and Rosa were flatmates. Prue’s helping to organise Rosa’s funeral. I don’t have the details right now, but if you give me your phone number, I’ll contact you. It’s up to you, of course, whether you come or not.’

‘I’ll come,’ Craig said curtly. ‘Rosa was my daughter.’

A bit late to recognise that
, Baxter thought.

•

No more than a dozen mourners attended Rosa’s funeral, but at least there was a service. The church was beautifully decorated with flowers and greenery paid for by Frances Baxter. Half a dozen young women were present, and Baxter had talked with most of them at the Cross. There was, to his surprise, a female officer from the vice squad to whom he’d spoken on a couple of occasions.

At Baxter’s insistence, Prue Hunter sat beside his mother and himself in the front pew. Ronald Craig sat with them.

Afterwards, Craig was invited to the Baxter house, where he was told of his daughter’s fall from grace. Baxter gave Craig as much information as he knew, while Frances served coffee and cake, then looked on with sympathy in her eyes.

‘I had no idea what Rosa was doing,’ Craig said, tears in his eyes. ‘She sent a card telling us that she was in Sydney, then one each Christmas. Nothing more.’

‘I don’t know the full story,’ said Baxter, ‘only what Rosa told me, but I’m sure she and Prue didn’t leave Albury to become prostitutes.’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ Craig said, his head in his hands. ‘She just wanted a better life for herself, more independence. Everything was all right until I remarried. Jo and Rosa didn’t get on, and I probably sided too much with Jo. She was too hard on Rosa. My poor daughter. She wouldn’t take it anymore and cleared out.’

‘If it’s any comfort,’ Frances said soothingly, ‘you aren’t by any means the only father this has ever happened to.’

‘That’s true,’ Baxter put in. ‘There have been a great many girls who finished up like Rosa, and there’s heaps more unaccounted for.’

‘Thank you, both of you, but the fact is that my Rosa is gone, and I shouldn’t have turned my back on her. I’ve learned my lesson too late. You should never turn your back on your kids, especially when they need you.’

•

Baxter was sick to the stomach of the whole sorry mess. He felt great admiration for social workers and charity organisations—if it weren’t for their efforts, the situation would be far worse. As it was, hundreds of people died from drug abuse each year.

A lot of it, Baxter believed, could be sheeted home to uncaring and irresponsible parents. There was Ronald Craig—a man in an executive position—who’d allowed his younger second wife to assume responsibility for his teenage daughter, and who hadn’t been concerned enough about her when she’d left to try and locate her. Craig had been unbelievably slack, and now his daughter was dead. It was such a waste of a life.

Baxter had seen enough of Sydney’s seamy side to last him all his life. His final conversation with Mr Garland had been swimming around in his head for days.

Although I won’t be here to see it,
the old man had said,
I reckon that one day you’ll return to Moondilla. That’s the kind of young man I think you are. You’ll come back here and do things that people remember.

‘This is the finish of Sydney for me, Mum,’ Baxter told her that night.

‘What do you mean, Greg?’

‘As soon as I can, I’m going to move back to Moondilla. Sydney might be all things for some people, and I know you
love it here, but I want some peace and quiet. And the truth is, I’ve dreamt of returning to the town ever since we left.’

‘You should think about this a bit longer, Greg,’ Frances advised. ‘Right now you’re in an emotional trough.’

He shook his head and tried to sound firm enough to convince her. ‘No, that isn’t it. I don’t want to leave you, Mum, but I’m going to have to. I need to distance myself from Sydney. I want to go back to where fishing rates higher than heroin.’

Of course, he’d known that Moondilla wasn’t Brigadoon—the unchanging town of Scottish myth—but he couldn’t have known just how much it had changed.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

It was a jewel of a Sunday morning. There was a heavy dew and every drop of moisture seemed shot through with irradiated light. The early fog over the river had evaporated in the sunlight, and now a very blue sky contrasted against the lush green banks of the river.

Baxter had packed his Esky with tucker and taken it down to the
Flora Jane
before Steve Lewis arrived. He also loaded a big plastic container of water, mostly for Chief, and the dog’s stainless-steel water bowl. They’d filled up the tank two nights before, when Lewis and his family had dropped by Riverview for dinner, and the engine started immediately.

‘Sweet as apple pie,’ Lewis said and smiled as he listened to the engine’s beat.

‘You do the steering, Steve,’ Baxter suggested. ‘You know
where you’re going and the best way to get there, and I’m still on a learning curve.’

Lewis nodded and climbed into the boat. ‘You’ll definitely need a bit of practice to learn how to handle her in the swell.’

There was no one else out on the river at this early hour. Out beyond the river’s mouth, several boats were kellicked close to the shore of the southern promontory that formed one arm of Moondilla’s harbour. Steve waved to the occupants of some of these boats and then headed the boat out into the bay.

‘What would they be fishing for?’ Baxter asked.

‘Blackfish, maybe. They’re using light rods, so it would be that or bream. Some of those blokes might’ve been out all night. You need green weed to catch blackfish, as they have a tiny mouth. You use very small hooks, too. The others would be fishing for anything they could get . . . flathead, maybe the odd snapper.’

The boat didn’t begin to rock until they left the harbour and came under the influence of the ocean’s ceaseless swell. Lewis steered for the Islands and Baxter saw them up close for the first time: a group of large rocky outcrops, six in number, separated by channels of varying width. This was the favourite place of the more intrepid fishermen, because fish congregated around the bases of the outcrops. Weeds, kelp and cunjevoi grew thickly there and attracted a wide variety of sea life.

If a nor’easter was blowing, the shot was to get in behind one of the islets so as to stay in the relatively calmer water, because each islet acted as a block to the wind and current.
If there was a run-in tide, the drill was to try and kellick to a rock and fish on the Moondilla side—that is, with the boat’s prow pointed towards Moondilla harbour. But how and where you fished, Lewis had explained, really depended on the wind and the tide and being aware of both.

There was no telling what kind of fish you might catch. You might come away with a young shark or—depending on your bait and the strength of your line—even an older and larger shark. Not that amateur fishermen wanted sharks, which most regarded as a damned nuisance, but the trawlers caught plenty and sold them too. They were marketed under different names, so most people who bought shark flesh didn’t realise what they were eating. It was pretty good tucker with chips anyway.

Around the Islands you had to be very careful that you didn’t allow your boat to be thrown up against a rock. This was most likely to happen if you fished on the open or ocean side, because a freak wave could come out of nowhere. Most fishermen didn’t head to the ocean side unless there was a westerly wind blowing strongly from shore, which tended to flatten out the sea—at least to some extent. Every small child who fished with his or her father learned the facts of ocean fishing very quickly.

‘We’ll put in an hour or so here while the wind is down,’ Lewis said, ‘and if it stays down we’ll head over to the northern point and have a lash there. I’ve got some fish berley and I
could drop some here, but it’s not a lot of help in deep water as the current washes it away so quickly.’

He was working away as he spoke, his voice loud and brimming with enthusiasm.

‘I’ve also got some prawns and whole bait fish, as well as the lures. It’s not a good place for lures—you lose too many and they’re not cheap. I’ll throw in a couple of light lines and see if I can hook some tiddlers for bait. First, I’ll bait up a line and get you started.’

Baxter nodded and kept watching Lewis at work, taking it all in.

Then his mate paused and glanced at him. ‘How are you handling the swell?’

‘No problem. I don’t feel sick at all,’ Baxter said and grinned. He found he loved being out here—he loved the salty breeze, the blue sky and the view of the land. It seemed as far from the grit of Sydney as he could get.

‘That’s a relief,’ said Lewis. ‘Some people can’t take this swell. It never stops when you’re on the ocean. It’s just that some days it’s bigger than usual. The tide is about two hours off the turn. It’s on the run-out, so it will take your line out pretty fast.’ Lewis shot Baxter another glance. ‘How do you reckon Chief’s handling things?’

‘He’s all right. The swell doesn’t seem to be worrying him,’ Baxter said, as he looked at his dog lying in the cabin. ‘He’d complain if he didn’t feel well.’

Lewis threw out some berley of chopped-up fish, prawns, pollard and bread, and dropped two light lines down alongside
Flora
. Then he hooked a bait fish through the tail and cast out on the opposite side of the boat to Baxter’s line. It had hardly hit the water, or so it seemed, than Lewis announced that he had a strike.

‘Shall I have a go reeling in, Steve?’ Baxter asked.

‘Might be as well. Appears to be a fair fish.’

Baxter began to reel, then saw his own line tighten and announced that he too had a fish hooked.

‘How big?’ Lewis asked.

‘I can handle him okay.’

‘That doesn’t tell me anything! We’re not all powerhouses. But if you can bring him in alone, do it. I’ve got a big one and it may take a while to land him.’

It took longer than Baxter expected to reel in his snapper, because it was certainly a decent-sized fish. Lewis was still fighting his catch.

‘What type do you reckon it is, Steve?’ Baxter asked.

‘It feels like a bloody great shark. Ever used a gaff?’

‘Never. What do I do?’

‘Hook it when I get the bugger alongside and then hold on real tight,’ Lewis explained. ‘Don’t lean over too far or you could end up in the water.’

‘I see it,’ Baxter said as his mate’s fish rose to the surface for a second.

‘So do I. I think it’s a jewie. They call them mulloway now. They eat pretty well.’

Baxter pulled it in with the gaff, and Lewis said he reckoned it would go close to twenty kilos.

•

Inside two hours the men had caught fifteen good-sized fish, including two ugly red rock cod. When Baxter brought up the first one he said he’d toss it back, but Lewis stopped him. ‘No fear, Greg. They’re great eating fish. They only look ugly.’

Baxter was enjoying himself no end—and when he hooked what he thought might be the biggest fish of the morning, he felt really good.

It took some battling to get it to the boat, and he was hugely disappointed when Lewis shook his head and announced that he was going to cut the line.

‘Why?’ Baxter asked urgently.

‘It’s a tiger shark—we don’t want it.’

‘Ah, all right.’ Baxter noticed something. ‘I think that might be his momma or poppa out there,’ he said, pointing to where a triangular-shaped fin was cleaving the water on the port side of the boat. The last fish Lewis had caught had been bitten in half, which they’d attributed to a shark—it seemed they’d been right.

Then Baxter realised that Lewis couldn’t see the fin because he had his back turned and was too caught up with dislodging the emasculated fish on his line. ‘Let’s pull off, Greg. The
wind’s starting to strengthen and we’ve got enough fish for one outing.’

Chief, who’d come out from under the cabin, had his nose pointed into the wind. He barked twice—the kind of bark he employed to warn of approaching vehicles.

Obviously there were no cars, but Baxter had become so used to every nuance of the dog’s behaviour that he immediately looked at the shepherd to find out why he was concerned. ‘What is it, mate?’