Tree Palace (14 page)

Rock, paper, scissors for the right to be up the back of the wag with the seat down and more space, the rear door left down for breeze and more foot room. Shane won but gave the right to Midge because of his bad hip. They’d brought cardboard and bubble plastic for wrapping anything delicate and Midge used some for a mattress. They wanted more food but decided to keep incognito. Country shops have long memories for strangers.

Shane gave Rory the back seat and did his best to get comfortable cramped in front.

Sleeping was the last thing the boy wanted. He was so excited he had to get up twice within the hour to pee.

‘We’ll be leaving at 1 a.m. Go to sleep, Rory.’

Rory didn’t think he had a chance of sleeping.

Next thing Shane was poking him. He didn’t want to wake, confused by the darkness.

Shane poked him again—‘Wake up and pay attention.’

He spoke close to Rory’s face, finger to chest as if reprimanding. He thought finger to chest made him teacherly. He enjoyed having something to teach. A man of knowledge with a sleepy-eyed student.

‘First thing we do is lay bubble plastic along the back of the wag. Second, we’ll drive with the lights on until we get close and then we stop and get our eyes adjusted to the starlight. Then we drive with no lights. We need to be invisible. Third, we’ll get to the third in a minute. Now, up you get.’

They pulled onto the road, all three in the front, squinting to follow the dim sheen of the bitumen and not talking in case it broke Shane’s concentration at the wheel. The road was all theirs. Only two cars passed head-on as they travelled.

A mile from the estate gates they switched off the lights and continued on.

‘The third thing, Rory, is we only have till sunrise. We have to hurry but we can’t be rough as guts. That means we don’t get greedy and overstay into daylight. We only take what we can manage.’

They took gloves from the glove compartment and put them on—gardening gloves thin as kid leather that let their fingers bend natural. Shane told Rory not to take them off. ‘They’re your best friend. Protects you against fingerprints and blisters.’

Midge took the bolt cutters and sliced the gate chain free. The gate squeaked as it opened but there were no houses within half a mile, no one to hear a gate creak or a voice speaking at ordinary volume. There was swaying wind in the driveway’s trees. ‘That’s good,’ said Shane. ‘Wind and trees muffle hammer noise. We’ll have that on our side while we’re busy.’

They eased up the narrow arc of darkness, the trailer rattling and the tyres crunching along. It got darker the further they went into the dense tree tunnel. They slowed almost to stopping where the black air left them blind. Midge got out and walked ahead for guidance, feeling his way with a tapped toe and tapping with his hand on the bonnet for the wag to keep left or veer to the right a bit. Then the stars shone again where trees were sparser. There was the homestead spread before them. Arms of many rooms held out each side of a steeple-shaped entrance. A verandah all the way around, pitched low and wide with overgrown briars for a fringe. And lawn let grow so long it encroached like a paddock needing cropping.

‘Midge, give the front door a go,’ Shane said.

He explained to Rory that by go he meant give the doorbell a ring. And if there was no bell give a knock to be sure the place was empty. ‘If you’ve stuffed up by chance and someone answers the door then you say you’re lost and please could you get directions into town and you get the hell out of there.’

Midge shuffled back to the car and said the place was all theirs.

‘Let’s get to work,’ Shane said.

He took a crowbar from the tools wrapped in a blanket-quiver behind the front seat. He handed Rory a torch and showed him where the button was on the handle for turning on. He wasn’t to turn it on yet, not until they were positioned at the back door ready for yanking the lock out. Even then it was important not to spray the beam around too much. Beams spray for miles at night and must be kept to a minimum.

The back door was two doors—tall oaken French doors that closed together into one, wall-like. The kind you could sell for thousands if you could lift the bloody things and cart them. Shane had Rory turn the torch on and point it at the lock so he could work out the weak spot. He dug the blade end of the crowbar above the brass fitting, stabbed at the lock plate and wrenched it off. He dug again and got the blade deep in between the doors and all three of them heaved in time until the lock gave way with a splintering of wood.

A cool puff came at them, pent-up air rushing out of the place. It smelled of mould and the whiff of something dead, a possum or rat in the walls. Shane told Rory to point the torch around. The shaft of light flashed on curtains drawn across the windows. Long and velvet, red with gold ropes dangling beside. A lounge room perhaps, empty of furniture and rugs. ‘The curtains can come. Midge, get the ladder.’

He told Rory to turn off the torch while he checked behind the curtains for viable windows. No good. They were a square kind, the kind he called standard and modern. Shane worried the whole trip was a waste of petrol if there was nothing vintage. But then he found a sunroom with chateau-style windows and little nooks of rooms with miniature arched windows. These rooms had small fireplaces, nugget-black with leaf designs in the iron’s mould. Sailing ships on the flue flaps. Their mantelpieces were of dark wood.

In the largest room the fireplace took up half the wall. Much too big to consider taking. Except the carved timber sides of its mantelpiece. The top was a marble slab. Lovely but too weighty and out of the question.

The kitchen was empty except for the sink and an Aga stove in a tiled enclave. Aga stoves fetch a pretty penny. Shane tried rocking it but it was pure cast iron and didn’t budge and never could be made to. Floorboards fumed with dust wherever the torch was pointed and creaked under every footfall. The staircase had a balustrade of liver-brown timber. Its anchor posts had been crafted as a series of bulbous cones. These Shane had never seen before and would dismantle. He noticed a hat rack of blackish wood on the hallway wall. He decided he’d take that and hoped it was walnut.

Upstairs rooms had nothing in them but more small fireplaces and some old-style light switches, round and porcelain with a brass nipple and worth having. Rory went to turn one on. Shane snapped, ‘Don’t be stupid. We only see by torch.’ In a moment he would check the fuse box, he said. Make sure it was switched off so they could cut into electrics.

They went to work on the place with Shane explaining the tricks of the hammer and chisel. How you use the big chisel to chip out plaster and brick. A hammer to knock in wood wedges along the windows to help them be prised. Shane and Midge put thin torches in their mouths to light their work. Plaster spat into the room at the chisel blows. They levered the frames out and tipped them to the floor. Cobwebs tearing away like sinews. The tiny windows had leadlight glass, some of which was cracked or had sections missing. They smashed the glass out. Windows with lead-light intact got the better treatment: Shane cut cardboard shields to protect it for travelling. Midge taped bubble plastic over that and they carried the load to the trailer.

The chateau windows had normal glass. This they knocked out by laying the frame down and using a blanket to cover the glass for the hammer. The crook of the hammer was run around the edges to smooth off shardlets. They had no A-frame in the trailer to strap windows upright but in lieu of that they stacked them flat with cardboard and strips of plastic in between. The trailer was six strides long by three and half across and the chateau windows were almost as big. Five could be stacked, Shane decided. The light fittings, curtains, balustrade posts and hat rack would be tucked down the sides. Three more windows could go on the roof rack. A few of the little arch ones could be laid on top.

Three of the smaller fireplaces could fit in the wag. They used the same principle with them as with windows: biggest chisel and hammer for the brickwork. There was more chiselling to do than with windows because a fireplace went deep in. You had to smash well into the chimney base to get the thing free. Keep a watch for redback spiders. But it was easier to chip at because it was a fireplace—all iron and unbreakable to your blows. Shane looked at his watch as he handed the tools to Midge for a turn. It was 3.45 a.m. They had to work faster. He took the tools straight back from Midge and made Rory stand clear and hold the torch still.

By five o’clock they had two fireplaces pulled clear and loaded. The mantelpieces had come away too and though not particularly fine timber they were waist-high and narrow and fitted inside the car when jammed and twisted. A third fireplace was out of the question given that dawn was near. It was starting to glow like milky fire through the tree line.

What they had wasn’t a bad load so they got ready to leave, flinging a sheet of black polythene over the top and a blue tarp over that. Then the ladder to hold the covering down. They threw a rope lengthways and criss-crossed it through the trailer rails until the swaddled heap was tightly bound.

A quick check through the place in case they’d left equipment. A shame they couldn’t come back tomorrow for seconds.

Dawn was brightening the curtainless windows. You could see without a torch now.

Shane noticed something in the corner of the long room beside the kitchen. There poking out where red wallpaper had rotted from rain leaks and curled to the floor. He kicked the paper aside and gagged on the dust it made. A shininess beneath the thick peelings.

He bent and blew on his find. It was like an octopus with tendrils of glinting glass buckled under themselves. He counted four layers, each strung with glass stones cut in diamond shapes. Some legs had broken off from the main body. Some single stones had fallen from the limbs but were undamaged. He tried to hoist it off the ground and needed help to keep it tinkling in the air.

Midge and Rory got underneath and took some weight on their shoulders. ‘What is it?’ Rory asked.

‘A chandelier.’

‘What’s a chandelier?’

‘A fancy light,’ said Shane.

They had to take this. This could be worth a small fortune.

They used the tool blanket like a sack to gather the chandelier up. It travelled in the front passenger side where feet would normally go. Midge and Rory had the dashboard for a footrest or could sit side-on with their knees up. They laughed that this was as good as fear can be, driving with a load behind them into the wakening day. The sky yawning open with a pink tongue as if they were life’s breakfast.

16

Moira was worried when they hadn’t got home by midday. She watched the sun edge across into afternoon and into evening and chewed her nails that something was wrong. An accident or police trouble. ‘They should be here by now,’ she said to Mathew. ‘They would have left Mortlake at dawn—that means they should be home.’

Zara began swearing about inconvenience. If they were stuck some place or locked in a cell then how would she get to the interview? Rory’s bike? Drenched in sweat and looking like crap?

‘We’ll think of something,’ Moira said, to stop the girl panicking. She felt like telling her to shut up and think of the men. But what would that do? Worsen her manner. Instead she whispered to Mathew that the bad side of the family was also selfish.

Then they did arrive in the bright night, headlights growing as if descending from the stars. The wag was weighed down so heavily that its belly scraped over the road’s ridges. Limpy ran out to meet them but shied off at the abrading noise. Moira put Mathew in the pram and wheeled him along as a greeting. Zara followed at a skipping pace, grinning and muttering how relieved she was.

Midge waved hello. He pointed at Rory asleep on his shoulder. ‘Rory’s knackered. But he did real good.’

Shane got out from behind the wheel and rubbed his eyes. ‘Sorry we were so slow. Big load. Plus we got lost on the back roads. Midge and his navigating.’

Moira embraced him and said she’d put the kettle on but Shane wanted sleep more than coffee and food. Rory was so drunk with tiredness he could hardly stand. Midge had trouble standing but that was from so much sitting. He gripped Rory in a walking embrace and passed him over to Moira who steered him to bed. Shane drove the trailer up to the shed, uncoupled it, and Midge followed trying to stretch the kinks out of his bones. They unloaded the car. A few winks of sleep and they’d be sparking again, they said. Ready to go into Alfie’s and inform him that things went well and organise a time and place to collect the truck.

Shane had a sleep for two hours and got up and ate, then slept till morning and was rested enough for action. Midge was deep asleep and Shane let him be. Moira decided to tag along into town and do chores. She wanted to bathe Mathew at a trotting track hose. And there was a particular matter to discuss while they drove. To do with Zara and her big Tuesday. Getting her made up properly with well-ironed clothes. Presentable in the shampooed-and-showered sense. They couldn’t use the town’s hotel. Hotels ban trants from going upstairs and using their showers—security reasons.

‘Why don’t I hire a motel room?’ she said. ‘Just for the Tuesday morning. That cheap-looking place near the bowls club. Offer them rent for a half-day and see if they’ll take it.’

‘Maybe.’

He bit his bottom lip and drove with his fingertips. He was proud of himself: a businessman with a stash of valuable goods he would soon drive to market. What a pleasing notion to know his family might indulge themselves in a little luxury. And on a sensible note, it was an investment.

‘Go ahead and do it,’ he said, puffing his chest out. ‘You got to spend money to make money. If a motel room helps Zara get income, that’s what I’ve heard called intelligent expenditure.’

Moira was in the back beside the little bed. She reached across and rubbed Mathew’s cheek. ‘Hear that, boy? Intelligent expenditure.’

She explained that intelligent was the opposite of stupid, and expenditure was the opposite of mean. She said that her trouble with reading words probably came from the bad side of the family. ‘I hope you don’t have that trouble, passed down from me.’