Goodwood (16 page)

Mack had arrested Carl White first thing that morning, as Carl was sitting in his shed drinking a beer. He hadn't slept. Mack told Tracy, who attended the meeting, that Carl had said, ‘You don't understand her. She did most of that to herself. She's lost it.' Mack was disgusted. He was, that afternoon, preparing an Apprehended Domestic Violence Order on Judy's behalf.

The Goodwood Progress Association was in deep shock. How could this be, in Goodwood? How could this be, in such a
safe
town? And what did it all mean about Rosie White?

‘You know what I always thought was a bit funny?' said Carmel Carmichael. ‘Jude used to come in for a wine with the girls—but only if Carl dropped her off and picked her up again. Like she's a big old baby!'

Faye Haynes snorted in disapproval.

Smithy chimed up with his opinion: Bart never liked Carl. He knew there was something off about him. But Bart was a gentleman. He didn't say a bad word about other people. He just made it clear that something was off and we were to make up our own minds about that. Now Bart's gone, so we can't ask him, God rest him in that beautiful lake. But Rosie White and Judy White. Now, what's this terrible business? What kind of man puts a belt to his wife? Puts her in the emergency department? That is not a man: that is a monster. He has the demons inside. ‘I have a mind to think Carl White has done something awful last winter,' Smithy concluded. ‘And now he's done this to Judy to keep her quiet. May the cat eat him and may the devil eat the cat.'

Mum resisted the urge to take minutes.

Tracy nodded as Smithy spoke, then took her turn to offer an opinion, which was hotly anticipated given her spousal proximity to Mack.

The meeting leaned in.

‘That Lafe Carlstrom is a piece of work,' she said. ‘I seen the way he looked at me at the Wicko one time. I did
not
like that look in his eye.'

That was all from Tracy. She never was a woman of many words.

The meeting leaned back. Smithy put a hand on Tracy's shoulder in commiseration. Carmel Carmichael, crestfallen, had another Scotch Finger. The Community Hall creaked with memories. Mum found herself anxious and had the urge to rearrange something. The meeting wound up early and everyone shuffled out into the warming air, with grief lining their light spring jackets.

•

The next day, Mrs Bart got up early. She rode Apples and Pearl rode Oyster, and they caught the first of the white morning light as it capped the top of the mountain like snow. Pearl had been distressed for weeks now and Mrs Bart wasn't faring much better. The two of them had made a pact to ride every morning together, in a concerted effort to make facing the day less of a concerted effort. So far, ever so slowly, it had been working. Pearl spoke more about Bart, now that she had a riding partner. Mrs Bart listened. Then Mrs Bart spoke about Bart, and Pearl listened, the sound of hooves interrupting them pleasantly. More often than not, though, they spoke of the horses, which was a much easier subject to broach before breakfast.

After they'd eaten, Pearl performed her morning dressage ceremonies with her My Little Ponies, then joined Jan to
muck out the stables and check the pasture for fireweed. Mrs Bart backed the Mazda out of the carport and headed out of town towards Clarke. She drove the long road along the river, bumping over the dead kangaroos before the bridge, then she soared high above the brown water, trying not to look at it or to dwell on what might lie beneath. She sped along the two kilometres of fast flat road in a blur. And then she made sure to accelerate even faster as she approached the browned grass near the boat wharves. This was the first time since Bart vanished that she had been able to set wheel anywhere near the lake.

As she sped past the fishing spot, she couldn't help but turn her head. There among the bobbing boats was Bart's half-cabin cruiser, ghostly and floating. She swallowed hard and two tears let themselves out, stinging as they left her eyes and rolled down her cheeks. Later, Mrs Bart told my Nan that, involuntarily, she'd said, ‘Oh no, no, no,' aloud to herself in an effort to push on.

When Mrs Bart arrived at Clarke Base Hospital, she was shown to the shared ward that contained Judy White. The nurse who escorted her shook her head and said, ‘It's unspeakable,' as they pushed through big white double doors. Mrs Bart agreed, and therefore did not speak.

Judy White was sitting up in bed staring out the window. She was as surprised to see Mrs Bart as Mrs Bart was to be there.

When Nan asked Mrs Bart, ‘Why did you go?', Mrs Bart just said, ‘I felt compelled,' and Nan left it at that.

Judy White was a wrecked ship. There were no flowers. There were no vases. There were no sympathy cards. Just Judy, who quivered at the sight of Mrs Bart, a look of shame and humiliation filling her swollen face.

In an instant, Mrs Bart regretted her visit. She stood there not knowing what to say. Judy White had attended her floral art workshop; they knew each other to say hello, like everyone in Goodwood knew everyone. But that was really it. They had no bond whatsoever. They were not friends. Mrs Bart was not expected. Only then, in their shared losses, did Mrs Bart feel some kind of connection; only that day, upon waking, had she felt herself compelled.

Judy White said, ‘Mrs Bart, you didn't have to come.'

Mrs Bart said, ‘Call me Flora.'

Judy quivered, and stuttered, and began to make excuses. ‘I'm such an idiot,' she said.

Mrs Bart replied, plain and firm: ‘No. You're not.'

Then, pulling up a cheap plastic chair, Mrs Bart sat, and Judy lay, and Mrs Bart took Judy's hand, and the two women sat in an uncomfortable silence, until time passed and they no longer felt uncomfortable. They willed themselves into a state of ease. Just the two of them. Without having to plan it. There was nothing to say. All of it was unspeakable.
They merely set themselves there together—these two very different women—in unexpected solidarity.

Eventually, when the quiet current between their palms had exhausted itself, and their restorative silence was complete, Mrs Bart took her hand from Judy's, giving it a gentle squeeze as she did, and left.

Who knows what Judy White thought of the whole episode.

But Mrs Bart—Flora—felt compelled, and then regretful, and then empowered, and then somehow absolved.

21

During the afternoon while Mrs Bart and Judy White held hands in silence, Nan did her shopping at the Goodwood Grocer, stopped for a middy of shandy at the Wicko, looked in on Val Sparks at the Vinnies, and baked a silverbeet lasagne. Our phone was ringing with a dinner invitation as I got home from school.

Nan's cooking was generally thought to be the finest in Goodwood. When the CWA ran bake sales, Nan's cakes sold out by lunch. When she was still interested in competition, in the form of the Clarke Show, Nan held first prize in Biscuits and Muffins from 1984–1990. When Denise needed advice on updating the cookbook section at the Goodwood Library, she consulted with Nan, and hoped Nan would bake for the occasion.

When Rosie White went missing, Nan left a shepherd's pie on the Whites' doorstep and rang the bell before rushing off to her idling car.

‘People need to grieve without bother,' she told me. ‘But hot food always helps.'

When Bart went missing, Nan baked a banana bread (Pearl's favourite) and left it with Jan while Pearl was in the stables. Then she drove to Bart's Meats, where Mrs Bart was pacing, and left a spinach and cheese pie (Mrs Bart's favourite) on the front step. She gave a wave to Mrs Bart through the glass. Nan had wrapped the pie in a tea towel and left a note on top. It said, in cursive,
Flora, I cannot imagine. I wish you every strength. From Joyce Mackenzie
. That evening, when Nance closed the Grocer and walked home along Cedar Street, she was pleased to see that Mrs Bart had stopped her pacing, for a moment at least, and was eating a piece of pie.

When Mum and I arrived for dinner, Pop and Mack were drinking Reschs on the front verandah. It was always Reschs for my Pop. He drank the Pilsener at home, because you couldn't get the Draught in a bottle. But it was Reschs Draught or the highway when Pop went to the Wicko—he refused to drink any other beer.

Nan set the lasagne in the centre of the table, alongside a lovely spring salad. Pop clinked Mack's glass as he sat down. His beer sat inside a holder that said
Goodwood's Good For Wood
, with a picture of the sawmill and a cartoon man winking at a blushing lady. Mum sliced bread. Cutlery sounded. I could feel Backflip's fur against my ankles. Everything was the same; but nothing felt normal.

Dinner conversation at Nan and Pop's used to be lighthearted and free. It was homey and sophisticated and sometimes gamy; peppered with little puns from Pop, and humorous forays into politics and town business. Mum and Nan would have a glass of red wine and practise their amateur psychology. Nan knew best about everything, without having to make a song and dance about it, and everyone agreed—even Pop, who voted differently and had far less tolerance for oddity. We all looked to Nan like she was an oracle.

That night was different. Not about Nan, because she was still the authority on everything and sat at the head of the table to show it. But the tone had taken a turn. The talk was frenetic and sprawling. Voices were raised higher than usual. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone wanted to know about Judy and Carl; and Lafe and Davo; and Rosie and Bart.

Carl White was a deadshit, beyond all measure. An absolute disgrace of a man. No one thought ‘monster' was too strong a word; the guy was on par with the devil. Lafe was not much better, although no one knew exactly why they felt that so strongly—it just seemed to be a common understanding. Davo was questionable, but the general consensus was: innocent till proven guilty. Judy was a martyr, a quivering mess of loss. And Rosie was a mystery. Rosie was just
gone
.

‘Plus, I think Smithy's terribly depressed,' said Nan, cutting into the half-eaten lasagne when it was time for seconds.

Talk of Smithy led to a discussion about Goodwood in general, and the atmosphere that had overtaken Cedar Street and beyond. Everyone at the table was concerned, but no one more than Nan. Her trip to the shops that day was troubling. Everyone seemed to suffer. She could cut the air with a knife. The newsagent, the Bakery, the Grocer, Woody's, Bart's Meats. There was not a shop Nan had visited that didn't smell of grief. The corner block of our street, with the Wicko and Vinnies, was especially affected. Nan worried most about Val Sparks and Smithy.

On account of her piety, Val Sparks was particularly sensitive to the spiritual and emotional climate. Since the Vinnies was next door to the Wicko, she had come to believe that Smithy's melancholy was seeping through their joining wall. It was weighing on her more than the disappearances: this thing, this feeling—Smithy's heavy heart song—that hung in the air. It dusted her shelves with sorrow, and Val predicted that soon it would reside on every shelf and in every cracked brick in town.

Nan suggested that Val change her window display to make it look more sunny. She did. She rearranged her collection of Celeste Munch's pottery and made her pyramid of CWA jams into a square. She draped Coral's newest knit—a bright red scarf—across the foreground. Then she replaced the craft circle baby bibs with some general thrift items: two porcelain cats, one porcelain Dalmatian and a handsome wooden clock.
Quickly, she changed her mind about the clock. She worried that it would only point to time. And time—when people are missing and sad—is not a friend.

Nan said the new window looked very fresh. Then Mrs Gwen Hughes stopped in with her crystals and suggested Val burn a smudge stick of sage, in an act of cleansing. Val said, ‘What a good idea,' to Gwen, and Gwen left satisfied.

Then Val said, ‘I would never,' to Nan, and accused sage of being pagan.

Nan had looked out through the window, over Val's new display. The parking sign pole that Fitzy had crashed into with her car had been left slanting. It severed Nan's view of the street. She agreed with Val that it needed urgent straightening.

‘God bless that woman, but she's a walking accident,' said Val. ‘I look at that pole and think the whole town's askew.'

Mack piped up that he'd done what he could to talk to Smithy, but Smithy was acting strange. Mack had been into the Wicko the previous evening to ask about Lafe Carlstrom. Lafe had left sprinkles of grass under the bar stools from his scuffle in the yard.

Smithy told Mack all he had to tell and went back to humming ‘Whiskey in a Jar'. In regards to anything personal, he was unforthcoming. All Mack could muster was a cryptic statement, which may have been quoted poetry—‘the fields are filling with blood'—and Smithy had said it to the beer taps rather than to Mack directly.

‘Smithy'll be all right—I'm more worried about Terry and Jude,' he said. ‘And I'm mostly worried about what I'll do to fucking Carl White if I see him showing his face in town.'

The unusual instance of Mack cursing at Nan's table went by without comment. There was an aura of despair in the dining room. Mum leant back in her chair as if resigned to tragedy. Pop didn't have any puns. Mack looked exhausted. Backflip sat under the table waiting for someone to drop food.

‘Well,' said Nan to the lasagne, ‘most of you are too young to remember, but this whole time we're in right now? It reminds me of the war.'

•

When we got home that evening, Mum pulled up two chairs on the pavers and we sat and watched the garden. Big Jim and Fitzy had their back door closed and were quiet. Con and Althea were safe behind their roller shutters on the other side. Backflip sniffed around under the big flowering gum by the back fence, but she was too brown for us to see in the dark and all we could hear was her snuffling.

Mum made us peppermint tea and I held on to my warm mug.