The Silent Inheritance (22 page)

Back at her workstation early, she was about to turn on her computer when she felt the huntsman spider on her shoulder. Had to stop flinching when he did that. He was a gentle person with gentle hands. He only touched her to let her know he was there.

She turned to him, reading what he was about to say by his expression. ‘April, Bob, or I leaving,’ she said.

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re a team—’

‘Team is for games, netball, football. I work here, not playing game.’

‘He’s in a crap mood and won’t give an inch,’ Bob said.

Crow hadn’t been his dimpled self since the day he’d had his face on the front page of the
Herald Sun
, with Barbara Lane’s face. The reporters had stolen a photograph of his wife and printed that the next day.

‘If I can get him to agree to you taking the school holidays, will you consider it?’

‘No. He agree before to April.’

‘All holidays have been delayed, not only yours.’

And Sarah turned her back and started emptying her drawers, stuffing what she removed into her tapestry bag.

And his hand was on her again. This time she shook it off.

‘I am very sick. This place making me very sick. I will get him a certificate – for all of April, or maybe six week like he is owing me – before I leave.’

‘You can’t leave,’ Bob said.

‘Very easy.’

‘You’ll be sorry five minutes after you walk out the door.’

‘No, you will be. You have to do his payroll.’

And Jackie was back. ‘Having a lovers’ tiff, folks?’

‘Stay out of it!’ Bob said and he gripped Sarah’s arm, not so gently. ‘Sit down for a minute. Give me a minute.’

‘What’s going on?’ Jackie asked.

‘I can’t have holiday,’ Sarah said and continued stuffing her bag, which didn’t want to hold what was already in it, and maybe didn’t want to leave. It toppled from her chair and spilt its load.

Jackie helped pick up the scattered items. ‘How are you going to live?’

‘I can.’

‘If I could, you wouldn’t see my heels for dust.’

She’d miss Jackie, and Shane, and Rena. She picked up the mobile she didn’t need, that Marni had demanded she buy. Marni was in love with her own. She collected new contacts daily. Sarah had six. She checked her phone after its bounce. Its glass hadn’t cracked. It was working. She checked her contacts.
Bob
,
Ben
,
Jackie
,
Marni
,
Rena
,
Shane.
Ben was her driving instructor. He didn’t text. His wife did but Sarah didn’t know her name. His wife sent emails she signed
Ben
.

They’d spent almost three thousand of their winnings on mobiles and a new laptop that had six hours of battery power and a touch screen. They’d bought a non-stick electric frying pan and half a leg of lamb to roast in it, and it had roasted it perfectly, and roasted potatoes and pumpkin, carrots and onions, then made a delicious gravy. Marni had baked scones in it, inspired by the recipe book that came with the pan.

They hadn’t bought plane tickets to Dreamworld.

And Bob was back. ‘Crow wants to talk to you,’ he said.

‘So he can sack a very sick person and save him some money for long service leave?’

‘When you’re ready,’ Crow’s yes-man said.

She was ready. Twelve years ago, when she’d come in for her first interview wanting that job so badly, she’d vomited in the Ladies’ before entering Crow’s office, and her breath had smelt of vomit. She’d sat across from Crow, his wife and the manager and shown them her hearing aid, knowing that as soon as they saw it, they’d know she wasn’t good enough, that as soon as they heard the way she spoke, they’d want to get her out of their sight.

Didn’t even tidy her hair today. Didn’t tuck her shirt in, just settled her bulging bag on her shoulder and followed Bob.

‘Take a seat, Mrs Carter,’ Crow said. She took a seat, Bob’s translation not necessary. She didn’t look at him when he sat beside Crow, on his side of that flashy desk. She sat on the other side, where she’d sat that first day. Crow’s hair had been less grey then, his wife had been younger, slimmer, a mousy blonde, but no mouse.

She settled the tapestry bag on her lap, one arm wrapped around it to hold its load in, and she looked Crow in the face.

‘A large office is like a machine, Mrs Carter. Each cog is interconnected, each one driving the next. One cog falls off its mount and the interdependent cogs still …’

Sarah waited until he was done with his monologue then replied. ‘I am owe holiday from before Christmas, Mr Crow.’ Should have said
owed
but that
mister
had always been a tongue twister, as had
Christmas
, and she’d been thinking ahead of how to say them and said
owe.
Perhaps he didn’t care what she said. Probably hadn’t understood her anyway.

‘You are aware that Mrs Lane had a nervous collapse and was taken by ambulance to hospital yesterday morning?’

‘I am very sorry for her,’ Sarah said.

‘I believe you have a daughter of a similar age to Danielle.’

Sarah nodded, but his cold blue eyes were on her face, expecting more than a nod. ‘She is have … having school holiday. We will go to Sydney.’ She said
Sydney
because it was easier to say than
Queensland
, and tonight Marni might decide on Darwin. With the whole of Australia suddenly accessible, she couldn’t make up her mind which bit of it to see first.

He offered a nod before continuing. ‘Given the best possible outcome, it is unlikely that Mrs Lane will be returning to her position.’

‘I am very sorry, but … but what position?’ she said, and felt the blush rising and was pleased when Crow looked away from her to Bob.

His full face was difficult to lip-read, his partial impossible. She sat a moment, hugging her overflowing bag, but with four and three-quarter million dollars in the Commonwealth Bank she was no longer desperate for his job, for her holiday pay or her long service leave, so she stood.

That got their attention. ‘Sit down, please, Mrs Carter.’

‘You decide. You send me email.’

‘Please,’ he said.

She didn’t sit, but waited, the bag’s strap over her shoulder, an arm holding the bag’s contents in.

‘Bob assures me that you are more than capable of filling the vacancy we again find ourselves with,’ Crow said. ‘If given the responsibility, would you—’

He was offering her the job she might have sold her soul for in February, and she turned her back before he was done, and walked out. He wasn’t offering it because he knew she deserved it. He was offering it as a bribe, the title, the office with its window, the extra money in exchange for her holidays.

His offer had come too late. Her soul was no longer for sale at his bargain basement price, but because Bob believed it should have been, the floor and the walls blurred. She didn’t howl, wouldn’t, not in this place. Walked out, her chin as high as a millionaire’s.

No lift waiting with its doors open. Bob came, and he dared to put his hand on her.

‘Go!’ she said. She wasn’t being walked from this building like a thief, as Eve had been walked out like a thief. She moved to the second lift and hit its button, and when he followed her to it, she walked back to the first.

‘Go away from me, Two face,’ she said, knowing he’d suggested that bribe and hating him for it. Unable to look at him, she searched her bag for her sunglasses. Couldn’t find them amongst the clutter, and didn’t dare disturb it.

The lift doors opened. He stepped in beside her. She closed her eyes until it stopped, then stepped out fast, walked fast towards Museum Station.

‘Talk to me,’ he said at the traffic lights.

‘Go, Two face,’ she said.

‘I was proud of you—’

‘Bullshit!’ she said.

‘He offered you his prize and you turned your back and walked. I was proud of you.’

She spoke faster, louder, and not clearly when she was angry. ‘You tell him offer me bullshit prize. You think he will buy dumb Sarah’s holiday very cheap. You get stuff, Bob.’

‘He tells me what to do. I don’t tell him.’

‘You crawl for him. Yes, Mitter Crow. No, Mitter Crow.’

‘He pays me well to crawl,’ he said.

‘And talk bullshit,’ she said, this time stressing
bullshit
with an old sign once popular at Perth’s school for the deaf where she’d been old enough, had stayed long enough to learn many satisfying signs. This one required both hands and the left elbow, and with a little imagination was self-explanatory. Even her father had understood it.

She crossed over with the green, with the crowd, then offered that sign twice more before he caught the strap of her shoulder bag. Her hands busy, grabbed too late. Her bag slid.

It spilled her sunglasses. She snatched them, put them on, picked up her library book and bag and ran for the station. He followed her down the stairs with her blue lunchbox.

‘You don’t want to do this.’

‘Very much I want this. Tell him he can get new dumb blonde for my job. Tell him get one for you too.’

No train. She’d wanted that train to be there, waiting.

He removed his jacket, loosened his tie, undid his collar, shedding the office with its fake atmosphere and stepping down into the cavern world of the workers who kept the wheels of this city turning. Or was this face the fake and his office face real? Sarah didn’t know any more and didn’t want to know.

He’d seen where she lived, how she lived. He didn’t know she could afford to pay cash for a McMansion, that she could fill it with million-dollar furniture, that she could buy a better car then his – and she knew that she too wore two faces, and more than two.

The train came, and as she walked away from him to board, the huntsman landed.

‘Let me drive you home.’

‘Train more honest,’ she said.

‘I love you,’ he said. ‘This is killing me!’

His words slowed her boarding. For an instant she looked at his face, searching for a reply to his declaration, but unable to find a word, she turned her back on him and boarded before the doors closed.

Saw him standing there, small and alone, frowning, looking for her on that not so crowded train. Wished he’d never come to Crows, that she’d never met him so she wouldn’t have to leave him standing there alone, so she wouldn’t have another image to add to the thousand images of loss and leaving that huddled in her head. There’d been too many leavings.

A
long wait for a bus. A long walk home that afternoon, and the weight of her bag heavier with every step. The hardcover library book made it heavy. Train travellers who could afford an ereader downloaded books to read on trains. Less weight to carry.

More cars than usual parked on Mahoneys Road. More visitors than usual at the rehabilitation hospital?

That hospital owned a huge acreage which should have offered space enough to park workers and visitors’ cars. Had until a few years ago, when some bean counter in a distant office had decided there was money to be made from car parking. Employees and visitors alike now used nearby residential streets. Mrs Vaughn’s street was nearby. Until three years ago it’d had a solid white line painted down its centre. Someone had come along in the night with a can of black paint and broken up that solid white line.

Sarah knew all of the road rules now, knew why that line had been broken, knew that drivers could be fined for straddling an unbroken line, but with cars parked nose to tail on either side of the street, straddling it had been the only way to go.

A dangerous winding street, Mrs Vaughn’s. An old street full of old houses, pink, red, brown or cream. They’d been built on large blocks, built in the sixties, long before the rehabilitation hospital, before the school, before the Forest Hill shopping centre had become so large.

A few houses had a second level. A few had modern driveways. Not Mrs Vaughn. Her driveway was old, uneven, not badly cracked, but worn old by fifty years of use – as was her house.

She had money. She could have paid a man to fix her downpipes, paint her windows, put in a new driveway so her house wouldn’t looked so embarrassed beside its neighbours. She could have bought a new stove for the granny flat.

‘You pay your rent,’ Bob had said when she’d explained why she’d bought the electric frying pan. ‘Demand she replace your stove. Stand up for yourself.’

She’d stood up for herself today – and felt desolate. Having money offered choices. Had she made the right choice? Didn’t know, and sighed for not knowing as she sidled by the Hyundai to the wooden gates.

And Mrs Vaughn must have seen her. She greeted her from her back door. ‘What are you doing at home at this time of day?’

In no mood to talk, Sarah told a lie. ‘Sick,’ she said.

The old lady was sicker and needed someone to care about her ills. She followed Sarah into the granny flat and sat.

Was still sitting when Marni came in from school, and came in smiling.

‘You left,’ she said.

‘Sick,’ Sarah said, then signed
silence
, a finger to her lips.

‘Mum.’ That three-syllable
Mum
. ‘Truly?’

They fed their landlady early, to get rid of her, and at seven they sat down to cheese and tomato sandwiches, fried in their magical pan, and Sarah spoke of her day, and of that Asian doctor she’d seen before, and how she might go to him and tell him she’d hurt her back because Crow owed her too much money to walk away from.

Marni spoke about Danni’s father and grandfather, who, according to Samantha was two metres tall and one wide.

‘What was my father like, Mum?’

‘Like you, a bit.’

‘What about my grandfather?’

‘White beard, skinny …’

‘You’re describing your grandfather.’ They had a photograph of Gramp. ‘I meant your father.’

‘Oh. Black hair. More taller than Bob.’

‘Everyone is taller than Bob. How much taller?’

‘I was twelve, Marni. I don’t measure.’

‘My father was your first boyfriend, wasn’t he?’

‘I tell you that many times,’ Sarah said, then searched the channels for something to watch.