Goodwood (14 page)

And then—with a distinct change of tone, like winter blowing across the table—there was Carl White. He always used to be so good for a barbeque lunch. He'd bring such lovely topside. The man can really cook beef. Very tender. Just the right amount of pink. Gosh, him and Jude, they were so in love! But then, time carries on, over the years. The kids get older and you just don't socialise as much. It's hard to put a finger on. He didn't seem to like her going out as much, maybe that was it. And now, honestly? It's peculiar only because you just can't tell what he's feeling. Not peculiar as in off; or maybe it
is
a bit off? It's just, that even living right next door and seeing him come and go, you can't tell anything's even
happened
.

Ken Jones looked at Mack apologetically.

‘Exactly!' said Denise. ‘That's what I said to Celia,' and Mum nodded to indicate that Denise had indeed said that. Denise breathed deeply and calmed herself. ‘I think he's a bit cold. Don't you think, Mack? Given the circumstances.'

Mack dipped a chip in his mushroom sauce and didn't venture an opinion.

‘It's just
very
sad,' said Opal Jones, ‘and such a mystery.'

The table fell quiet and hung on the last word.
Mystery
. Knives and forks became audible. I pushed my cannelloni
around my plate. And Mack deftly moved the conversation on to Jasper who, unfortunately for him and Tracy, had just learnt to whistle.

‘It's like living with birds,' said Tracy, looking exhausted, and Jasper demonstrated, making an avian sound with his tiny lips.

‘Aaaaaw,' went Denise.

After drinking two Cokes I needed to pee. I excused myself and headed to the toilets, past a nice portrait of the Queen and then the poker machines, which announced themselves with little rings and jingles. I walked the same route that Mrs Bart had when Carl White had groped her. And sure enough, like it was his second home, there was Carl White, sitting at the poker machine closest to the ladies toilets.

The mess of him in the Bowlo that night was a sight I would not soon forget. He looked like a blank man. Like his brain had stopped working some time ago and the rest of him was just sitting around unawares. He pressed an illuminated button, and another, and another. The machine went
bling bling
. Coloured lights flashed on and off. Scrolls of kings and queens and cherries and moneybags went flipping around like a windmill, stopping in different formations, promising the world. The blank man just stared and pushed and slotted; and every now and again he raised his schooner glass and drank.

I walked past him quickly and was glad he didn't look up. I was gladder still that the jangly cartoon noises of the machines drowned out any stray voices from the bistro.

•

On the way home, Mum was tipsy and Mack was quiet. The Bowlo was on the road out of town, along past the oval. Mack drove the short distance slowly and looked to be having faraway thoughts.

‘You all right, Mack?' asked Mum.

‘Yeah, yeah,' he said, watching the road.

It didn't seem like Mack was all right. The back of Mum's head looked concerned. She endeavoured to cheer him up.

‘I could take or leave Opal Jones,' she said, deadpan.

Mack laughed.

‘I could leave her just fine,' he said. ‘Poor Ken. The poor bugger.'

‘What a thumb to be under. In that nail polish?' said Mum.

Mack chortled. The mood lifted a millimetre. Mack turned the gentle corner into our street and, as he did, as if Fitzy had willed it, it started to rain. Little droplets, falling widely on the windows.

‘It'll come together, Mack. They're out there somewhere. Both of them are out there somewhere,' said Mum.

Mack was quiet.

Mum went on, full of wine, ‘And you're gonna find them. I know you will, Constable Mackenzie. Hey, did you ever find anything out about Bart's Corolla?'

We pulled up outside our house, the engine idling.

Mack looked through the windscreen at the dark road, lit dimly by the moon, and the raindrops like pencil lines in his headlights.

It seemed like he wasn't going to say anything. It seemed like he'd sigh or evade or say you-know-how-it-is. But he didn't. He stared at the road. He shook his head. ‘Ah, Ceils, bloody hell,' he said. And quite unexpectedly he unburdened himself slowly, while we sat in the warm police car and the rain fell.

The news about Kevin Fairley had Mum and I quiet. Mack told us of his drive out to the lake; of how helpless he felt when he went there. He told us how he'd driven back to Goodwood past the Fairley Dairy and, being reminded of its proximity to the road out of town, had felt compelled to stop in. He told us about the Corolla that Kevin Fairley had reported seeing on the road next to his south paddock, just near the clearing, parked alone in the cul-de-sac of trees.

Mum stared out into the night.

‘That is weird,' she said and thought for a time. ‘That's definitely weird.'

‘Isn't it,' said Mack.

I sat in the back and said nothing, hoping they might forget I was there—which seemed to have already happened, given how unusually forthcoming Mack was being.

Mum was quiet a while longer, then she asked, ‘So it was sitting there for over a week?'

‘Nah, I said it
could've
been sitting there for over a week,' said Mack. ‘It might've just been a couple of days. We don't know. But it might well've been over ten.'

‘Ah,' said Mum, and did silent calculations.

‘It's just—it's really funny that Bart didn't report it,' said Mack.

The rain got harder. Our house, with the front light on, looked sodden and heavy with grey mist.

‘I guess the obvious reason not to report a stolen car is when it wasn't actually stolen,' he said.

Mum turned her head to look at him. I could see from the side that her brow was furrowed. She was almost squinting.

‘You think Bart stole his
own car
?' she asked, incredulous.

Mack shook his head like he didn't want to know the answer. He kept on staring straight ahead. He was silent for a time before he spoke.

‘Honestly? I don't know. I just think it's pretty strange for a car thief to steal a car from someone's house, and then leave it in that dirt road next to the clearing for however long it sat there, and
then
drive off in it,' he said.

The rain pelted. The gutters ran with water. Mack turned on the windshield wipers, even though we were parked.

‘Oooh-eee,' said Mum, and blew out a puff of air.

I thought about the Corolla, sitting on the road that goes right past the clearing. I hadn't seen it. But you can't see the cul-de-sac from the clearing because all the trees are in
the way; and I never walked the road way. I always walked by the river so Backflip could go splashing. I thought about the money, sitting in the tree, right in the clearing. I thought about the plastic horse. I thought about Ethan West, moving cows with Kevin Fairley at dusk.

‘Ethan West works for Kevin,' I said from the darkness of the back seat.

‘He's Jeannie's new boyfriend,' said Mum.

‘He is not,' I said.

Mack didn't say anything. He looked at me in the rear-view mirror, and then he turned right around in his seat to meet my eyes.

‘He helps move the cows,' I said. ‘At dusk.'

‘Does he now?' asked Mack. Then he turned back to the road. ‘Kevin failed to mention that.'

We all sat there and wondered what it could mean, if anything at all.

Then Mack broke the silence. ‘Fuck. I don't know,' he said curtly, and turned his blinker on to pull out again, in a way that summarily ended the conversation.

‘Well,' said Mum, ‘I don't know about that either. He is very tall, though, isn't he? Ethan. I might have to have another glass of wine.' She fumbled with her keys, and fumbled with her bag, opening the door to let the rain in.

‘Night, Macko,' she said.

Mum went in the gate and up on to the verandah, little raindrops catching in her hair, and stood there opening the front door under the light, not looking back.

‘Jean?' said Mack to my reflection in the rear-view mirror, because I wasn't getting out.

I sat there a moment longer, contemplated it, went through potential outcomes in my mind, dwelled a little on Mack's unfavourable mood, and decided that, no, this was not the time to tell him about the money.

I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out.

Mack pulled off into the rain with his right blinker flashing.

When I went inside, Mum had put the kettle on and was under the ferns in the living room, shushing Backflip, who went around in circles, crying with excitement at the very sight of us.

‘Backflip you're so
brown
,' said Mum, ruffling Backflip's ears. ‘Backflip Brown, Jean Brown and Celia Brown,' she said, in a very jovial mood. Backflip was delighted. The rain was heavy still and the muffled voices of Big Jim and Fitzy floated in from their little patio. I stood in our back doorway and listened.

‘How many millimetres do you reckon, hon?' said Fitzy's voice from over the fence.

Mum looked at me, cracking up. Big Jim and Fitzy, watching their rain gauge, making their estimations.

I sat down on the couch and felt heavy and complex. The kettle started whistling. Mum turned on the radio in
the kitchen and cellos sang. She hummed along, swaying. I wondered about Ethan. Was it some kind of secret that he worked for Kevin Fairley? What else could he see from high up on the paddocks? Why did Kevin never come into town? And then there was Bart. That was the main concern. The Bart that was emerging compared to the Bart that I knew. The Bart that Goodwood knew. Councillor, butcher, pillar of the community. Loving father to Pearl; faithful companion to Mrs Bart.

I didn't think of him as a lying husband or a thief of his own car.

Mum sat down in our pink velvet armchair with her tea and Backflip joined us on the rug.

‘What do you think about what Mack said?' I asked.

Mum puffed out air again. Shook her head. Sipped her tea. Stared at the wall.

‘I don't know, baby,' she said. ‘On the one hand, I think: it's a big lake.'

It was a big lake. Bart could've been in there anywhere, dusting its silty floor, and no one would've been the wiser.

‘But, on the other hand, I don't know,' she said. She put her mug down on the side table and leant back in the big soft chair with her hands behind her head. ‘Maybe Mack feels like Bart might've been different to what we all thought.'

19

I sat on the bench outside the police station for close to twenty minutes after school the next day. I was determined to tell Mack about the money, and paralysed by the fear of what he might say.

Across the road, spring was sprouting flowers along the edge of Sweetmans Park, under the ancient fig tree. Burly Joe was in the window of Bart's Meats, organising sausages into separate flavoured piles: pork, thin; pork with garlic and herbs; pork, thick; beef, thin; and so on. Bill was outside the newsagent smoking his cigarette.

Goodwood was heavier than ever. It had a different feel of an afternoon. Even with the season changing and green shoots appearing in the dewy branches, everything felt dark and heavy with grief. There was grief in the awnings, and grief in the wheels of our cars, and grief at the bottom of
our glasses. Smithy, who served many a glass from behind his beer-soaked bar, told Nan it was just like
Watership Down
.

‘That book scared the daylights out of me when I read it to my son,' he said, ‘but that's how it feels around here now. Like we're the rabbits and the field is filling with blood.'

As a former English teacher, Nan appreciated the reference, if not the sentiment. I heard her telling Mum that Smithy was prone to malaise, and that people ought to pay attention to it, even if he shrouded it in charm and poetry.

But how were people to notice Smithy's sadness when it was so hard to differentiate between his and the rest of the sadness in town? Val Sparks knew it all too well. Her piety strained under such taxing circumstances. ‘It must be God's way,' she kept saying to my Nan, the atheist. But even Val seemed concerned about the kind of God we had, if taking people from their boats and their bedrooms was the right way to anything. When I went past the Vinnies, Val was standing in the doorway, holding her porcelain baby Jesus and staring fearfully at the Wicko next door, as if Smithy's grief might be infectious.

‘God bless, love,' she said to me.

‘Hi, Val,' I said back, and walked across the road to the bench outside the police station, where I sat and deliberated. I went over my story. I decided how I was going to say it all out loud. I considered the various excuses I could proffer for not having told Mack earlier. By the time I worked up the courage to stand up it was almost four o'clock.

When I walked in I could see the top of Mack's head above the pinewood counter. He looked up at me, starting to stand. He looked like Roy Murray did these days, which was tired in the eyes. I felt a pound of regret in my chest and wished I'd chosen a day when Mack was refreshed and bright-eyed with adequate sleep.

‘Jean?' said Mack.

‘Hi, Mack,' I said.

‘What are you doing here?' he asked. ‘Something wrong?'

‘No. I don't think so. I mean, maybe.'

So far it was going about as well as I had imagined.

Mack leant on the counter and said, ‘Why don't you come around here and sit down.'

I walked around, through the little pinewood gate that went up to my waist and presumably kept criminals from getting Mack. We stood awkwardly for a moment before Mack gestured to a cheap, black vinyl chair. The cushion went
whoosh
as I sat down. Then Mack settled behind his desk again, looking like he was preparing for bad news.