Goodwood (2 page)

Some people in town thought they should've spent more days searching. It was just the two. But the police who attended, apart from Mack, seemed to hang a big question mark over whether Bart had drowned at all, and there was speculation among the police from Clarke that he'd done a runner. We saw one officer giggling in his flippers. The indignity of laughter in the face of such tragedy was not appreciated by the local huddle. The general consensus among the community—some of us gathered by the lake on the browned grass near the boat wharves, others sitting hopefully in the safety of their houses while Mrs Bart paced and paced—was that Bart had certainly not done a runner. How could he? And how could he leave Pearl?

No. The people of Goodwood knew Bart McDonald. And Bart McDonald did not leave of his own accord.

The Thursday after he vanished, the McDonalds' son Joe arrived from Sydney. On the Friday morning, promptly
at nine, he opened up Bart's Meats again, in an attempt at familial support. The fluorescent lights flickered on. Lamb and beef were piled high on the silver trays, and price tags with smiling sheep and cows were inserted among burly Joe's meaty display. Mrs Bart stopped pacing and started sitting, on a stool in the corner behind the counter. She did not serve customers. She just sat, staring out the window, as if Bart might materialise, covered in lakeweed, and wander into the shop asking for a towel.

Coral, from two doors up, said that when she went in on the Friday afternoon, Joe was holding Mrs Bart against his generous chest while she wept, and he appeared teary himself when Coral asked for two lamb cutlets. Suffice to say, buying meat became a sombre affair and some people in town were subdued into reluctant vegetarianism, or drove the forty minutes to the big Woolworths in Clarke.

In the week preceding, when it was just Rosie missing, there were no divers. There was no evidence she was in the lake. There was no evidence she was anywhere. Mack, accompanied by Sergeant Simmons from Clarke, made a formal visit to the White residence, with formal manners, to alert them that a missing persons report had been formally filed.

‘It's just a formality,' said Mack. ‘She'll show up.'

Judy White, clad in blue denim, sobbed on the front steps. Later, Opal Jones from next door, leaning out her living-room
window with both ears cocked, heard Judy wailing somewhere indoors, a sound that continued well into the night.

The day after Rosie vanished, I rerouted my walk to school to take me past the Whites' house, with clouds for breath and my face stinging with cold, hoping for a glimpse of
something
. A clue? A lonesome light on? A suggestive silhouette at Rosie's window?

All I saw was Terry, Rosie's brother, sitting in the passenger seat of Judy's car in the drive, behind a frosted windshield, wearing Rosie's cardigan. He just sat there, covered in pimples, with no destination or driver, for as long as it took me to get to the end of the road, and who knows for how long after.

•

That's how it all started.

First Rosie, and then Bart. Two people from Goodwood—two very different people—inexplicably gone. And the rest of town holding its breath.

After that, a lot of things happened. There was a mess of conjecture, and a great many theories and stoushes. Dozens of beer glasses were set down in misery, precious hopes were forsaken, and blood spilled from the most unlikely. All the while, gallons of brown water ran along the river, filled with fish, and surged under the bridge into the lake.

It was not until later that we finally found some answers, and Goodwood was given the slow and elusive gift of a
conclusion. But before going on to everything that happened next, it's best to go back a fraction. It makes sense to start two days before Rosie vanished, which was nine days before Bart did. That was when Goodwood was still peaceful: a modest town under a mountain and beside a river.

That was the day I found the money.

2

Backflip and I were walking along the bank of the river on a Friday afternoon after school while birds sang in the branches overhead. Goodwood was about a half-hour drive inland from the coast, and the Gather River, flowing generally south and then sharply north, was imponded near Goodwood by the lake and eventually relieved itself into the Tasman Sea.

The clearing was half a kilometre from the back fence of the oval. It was a nice walk and Backflip and I made it often. I would go on the pebbles and sand and she would splash along beside me with the water up to her furry belly. She was a Labrador and always wanted to be in the river. The clearing lay ahead as if waiting: an open area with a natural pool that was perfect for swimming, where the bank fanned out, and the river widened like a snake that's eaten a cow.

Everyone from school used the clearing in summer. You could drive a car right up near the tree line and park under
a grove of eucalypts, or in the cul-de-sac at the end of the road. If self-confidence allowed, you could sun yourself on the sparse lawn that hugged the bank. The weeping willow had a low-hanging branch that hovered over the water and was popular to sit on. The drooping leaves parted there and allowed a good view back up the bank. After a lot of rain, you could dip your feet in the current, and see all the way back to the goalposts on the oval. Lots of kids, from times past and present, had carved their initials in the trunk.

I had never seen one other person at the clearing in winter. In hot weather there were always kids from school in the deep water, on weekday afternoons and all weekend long, but when it was cold it was ours, mine and Backflip's, and sometimes we'd meet George. It was peaceful and private. Only the cows looked on, when they wandered close enough in the adjacent paddock.

That day, the cold wind chopped at the shining water. Backflip roamed the bank, sniffing, and I climbed up to sit on the branch of the willow, and watch the river run underneath. The birds were loud in the canopy above. I looked up at them, squinting in the dappled light. Just below, where the trunk bent inwards among the branches, something was glinting. It was a bag: white, plastic, poking out just a fraction from a hollowed-out hole in the trunk.

I stood up carefully, holding onto the trunk, and pulled the bag out of the tree-hole. It had a knot tied in the top and
something bundled inside in a brown paper bag. I tore the plastic and reached inside the paper, pulling out the contents. There, folded over in a wad and held together with an elastic band, was more money than I'd ever seen. Five hundred dollars. Ten fifty-dollar notes. I counted them, after pulling the band off and spreading them out like a lucky hand of cards.

I looked around the clearing. There was no one. Just Backflip and the birds and the cows. Some ducks near the bank opposite. I sat down on the branch again and stared at the water.

Wow
.

How thrilling it was to find a small fortune—and for it to be mine. I began smiling—beaming—on the verge of laughing, sitting in the weeping willow. It was more money than I'd ever had in my life. I was exhilarated as I laughed aloud into the clear day.

But where had it come from and who had hidden it there?

Backflip waded into the water and swam out to the middle where a branch was drifting, half sunken. Her body made little ripples in the water and I looked down at her and then across to the other side of the river. The trees were dense there: thick bush that grew close together and made good spots for hiding. The cold wind that chopped the water was moving through the branches. There was rustling here, and stillness there, and sounds that could be animal or human or wind.

My heart beat faster as I peered over at the dark places in the bush. I knew there was nothing ordinary about finding five hundred dollars hidden in a tree, especially in a place like Goodwood. It was not ordinary and nor did it seem right. I could not imagine there was an innocent explanation. I began to wonder if it was stolen. Everything under the high sun on that cold day seemed suddenly untoward. Then Backflip dragged herself out of the river and shook herself so hard I almost fell right out of the tree. She stood, oblivious, dripping into the dry leaves. A cow snorted loudly behind us in the paddock and broke the air with sound.

If I'm honest with myself, I know the decision I made was not noble. It was not a good deed done to honour the rightful owner of the money. I did what I did out of fear. I folded the wad of bills, and wrapped the elastic band around them. Then I stood up and put it all back just how I had found it.

I would wait.

I would leave it there, go home, and wait. For how long, I was not sure—a few days, maybe. And then I would come back again, and see if the money was still there. I had always mocked Mrs Gwen Hughes, who worked in the front office at school; she wore amethyst crystals and spoke earnestly of their power. But, much like Mrs Gwen Hughes, on that day I was sure I could sense
something
. Animal, wind, or human—there was something in the bush across that wide
water, and I was not going to be chased from that clearing by anything or anyone, not even for five hundred dollars.

I climbed down from the tree and called Backflip and we ran flat out back along the bank, up the sandy hill, and through the metal gate to the oval. I was out of breath by the time I got to the bright grass. There, out in the open, with the goalposts all set for a weekend game of football, we fell back to walking. Beyond the gate that we left behind, on the silty bank of the river, no one materialised. Over my shoulder, no one followed.

•

Up on Cedar Street, everything was normal. There was no portent of things to come, no eerie feeling. I went past Woody's and there was Rosie, salting a pile of chips laid out on butcher's paper while Emily Ross and Terry White looked on. Terry—covered in pimples—and Emily, taking asthmatic puffs from her inhaler.

If I'd have known that was the last time I'd see Rosie I would've stopped and looked properly. At Rosie White salting the chips. At beautiful Rosie White in her navy apron, her face inscrutable.

Instead, I went straight on by and didn't even think to notice her at all. No one in Goodwood thought to on that day—no more than usual. Terry White looked on blankly and Emily Ross gently wheezed and everything carried on
under the deep green mountain as Backflip and I went across to the Grocer.

Established by Nance Hagan long before I was born, the Goodwood Grocer was the only store of its kind in the vicinity and was thus visited, with great frequency, by every person in town. Men, women, children—everyone went in and out like the tide. As such, Nance's counter was the site of many a conversation. Nance liked to
know
, which was something I could relate to, although I didn't much like the way Nance dispersed her knowledge. Many people came out of the Grocer grasping more than they had bargained for, given all they'd wanted was milk and eggs. Nance dispensed playground gossip, health reports on the sick and elderly, sports scores, implications of impropriety, uncharitable opinions regarding driving skills, her own personal crime book reviews. Nance Hagan had an opinion about everything; and Mum said there was a reason it said
Mixed Business
on the awning—Nance liked to mix everyone's business with her own, and with everyone else's in town.

But the curious thing at the Grocer that day was nothing to do with Nance. It was a girl standing out front who I'd never seen before. She was pale-skinned and willowy and had no expression. I walked past her to tie Backflip to the telegraph pole. The girl looked up at me—she did not smile, she did not frown, she just looked—and then she went back to the book she was reading as she leant up against the glass.
Faded signs for confectionery hung in Nance's windows. The community noticeboard was covered with handwritten advertisements for trailers, lawnmowers, bantam versions of Australorp chickens. The girl read her book and ignored everything around her completely.

There weren't often strangers in Goodwood. It wasn't a town in between anywhere good and anywhere else. Cedar Valley was to the south, and Clarke was to the north, but there was a more direct highway between the two and Goodwood was, on the map, like a vein off the main artery that pulsed gently without the larger organs even knowing it was there.

I went inside and Nance was serving a man my mum's age. She was ascertaining all she could from him with a hail of questions.

They had just moved to town, apparently. Just settling in. Oh yes, that funny-coloured house on Sooning Street. A very long drive—lots of boxes—but a big truck's coming tomorrow with the rest of it.

‘We don't get many new people moving here,' said Nance. ‘But most people are dead set on staying. It's a lovely little town.'

Nods from the man. He fumbled with his money.

‘Have you had a look at the lake? We sell live bait—prawns, pilchards, worms; they generally come in on a Monday. You'll find the soft plastics are best for flathead though.' Nance
indicated a revolving rack near the counter hung with tiny coloured lures.

‘Ah yes, very good,' said the man, who looked like he wouldn't know the first thing about what to do with them.

The girl out the front kept reading her book like she could've been anywhere. I could see her through the glass. She had a duffel coat on that was a bit too big, and gloves without the fingers. Black nail polish covered her nails and was chipped off in parts. She looked like a little hobo, except her hair was so golden at the ends it glowed white in the sun. She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen in real life.

The man went out and the girl bent her page down and followed him off down the street.

‘G'day, Jean. How's your Nan?' said Nance, as I stood before the stacked shelves, trying to remember what Mum had asked me to get. My heart had calmed down after my running. I looked at the rows of cans, thinking about what was waiting back in the tree-hole. Thinking of all the books and tapes that I could buy with five hundred dollars.