Goodwood (23 page)

Coral was quite distressed by Nance's uncaring tone and the content of her oral dissertations. She wheeled her tartan trolley out of the Grocer to the bench on the pavement and sat in the sun while tears rolled down her rouged cheeks. ‘It's too soon,' she told Mum when Mum was on her way out. Mum had been quite interested in Nance's revelations. For example, some substances fluoresce under certain laser lights; and some bodies that have been exposed to the elements for an extended period make cause of death impossible to determine. In certain cases, a psychic may be consulted.

‘He's barely out of the water,' said Coral, and Mum sat with her for a time in the sun, while Backflip sat tied to the pole.

‘Nance's just being stoic,' said Mum. ‘Everyone grieves in their own way.'

Poor Coral. At eighty-seven, she'd been positively girlish when Bart was alive. She'd blushed and winked and slapped his counter. Now she looked every one of her years, and like a few more had come crashing down upon her from some crack in the sky. She heaved her way through town with enormous effort.

•

Smithy, Big Jim and Merv stood outside the Wicko in the long-sunned afternoon with a handful of Wicko regulars. Val Sparks emerged from the Vinnies and joined them.

‘How did we miss him?' said Big Jim. ‘We did The Horse, me and Merv; I thought we went round every inch of it.'

‘We did, BJ,' said Merv. ‘Every nook and cranny. If he was in The Horse this morning, well—that's where he was. But I swear blind he wasn't in The Horse when we looked there.'

Irene Oakman arrived, harried and dressed in crushed velvet. She'd rushed straight to the Wicko when she'd heard the news, clutching her house keys.

‘He was in The Horse?' she asked, incredulous and out of breath. ‘
No
. I checked The Horse. Didn't I, Smithy? You went right, around the little inlets, and I went left in the tinny. I checked all over The Horse.'

‘Same as us—we checked it a couple of times, I reckon,' said Merv. Big Jim nodded.

Val Sparks prayed silently. She said, ‘God taketh away,' and blessed herself. Smithy put his arm around her and she worried she'd be forever infected with sorrow.

They expected to see Roy Murray. Where was Roy Murray, anyway? He and Bart had been good mates, fishing buddies, drinking companions on occasion.

‘Where's Roy?' asked Smithy. ‘Has someone broken the news?'

‘I haven't seen him round a whole lot,' said Big Jim. ‘Derek's been working mainly. Since—' everyone looked at their own feet ‘—since Rosie.'

Irene Oakman looked like she'd recovered a distant memory. ‘Oh yeah. Roy. Why didn't he come out and search with us, I wonder?'

‘Same reason Paulie and a lot of guys didn't,' said Smithy. ‘It wasn't a pretty sight as I understand it. I spoke to Paulie. He said Bart was in a horrible way.' Smithy shook his head and said with intense solemnity to the small gathering: ‘God is good, but never dance on a small boat.'

Val Sparks looked set to faint. How the grief and horror encroached upon her. She took herself back inside the Vinnies where she turned up her little silver radio and dusted. Her votive candles burned aimlessly. She fretted as to whether to blow Bart's out.

•

Helen stood in the doorway of the newsagent, talking with Bill while he smoked a cigarette on the pavement—Marlboro Reds, because he fancied himself as similar to the rugged man in the advertisement. He wasn't. A pile of newspapers behind him announced more on the search of the Belanglo State Forest, which Nance thought was certain to hold clues of Rosie. On that point, Coral could agree. What were the odds? they thought, shuddering at the notion. Two girls. A similar age. Belanglo was not so far away. What if there were more in there?

Derek Murray was behind the counter at Woody's. He
looked like a ghost boy, waiting for an order, an unpleasant expression on his face.

It was revealed much later that that day was the worst day of trading Woody's ever had. It was no wonder. The news of a rotted body made no one hungry; and it was later considered ironic that the discovery of Bart turned the whole town off meat for the best part of September.

Three doors up, Bart's Meats was closed. There was no sign on the door and no sign was expected. Burly Joe stayed back at the McDonald house with Mrs Bart and Pearl and Jan, who had extended her visit to be with her sister until news came. Any news. That's what sisters were for.

The only consolation for Pearl was that Bart had been found in The Horse. Of all the alluvial beds and sheltered inlets and boggy corners, her dad had chosen the Horse: the best-named place in all the lake. At that, Pearl looked content for almost a whole moment. Then she cried with difficulty while Oyster, Pears and Apples neighed a dirge in their stables.

•

Meanwhile, Nan was properly teary for the first time since Bart disappeared. Mum and Backflip went over there after the Grocer and dropped off a bag of vegetables for a light spring soup. Pop hid in his shed with his feelings. ‘Terrible thing,' was all he could muster. Pop had receded further inwards since Bart had been found. He became quieter and
more removed. It had been weeks since he'd asked Nan to dance after dinner.

Nan started chopping. Then she stopped. ‘No one will be hungry for this.'

She put the knife down on the board, gripping it still, looking out the little stained-glass window over the sink.

‘Mum?' said Mum.

‘No, no. I'm all right, Celia,' said Nan, gripping the knife, her fingers going white and red from the pressure where the blood was and wasn't.

Backflip wagged her tail, expecting a liver treat.

Mum stayed quiet while Nan recovered. Nan wasn't one to loosen her grip on her emotions.

After a few minutes, she resumed chopping and fetched the soup pot and put the gas on.

‘At least he's been found,' said Mum. ‘At least we know what happened.'

Nan turned around. She was blotchy and red and very stern. She said, ‘What do we know? That he's been in the lake this whole time? Celia, we have
no idea
what happened.'

•

Mack went back to the station after he'd visited with Mrs Bart and Pearl.

‘I'm so sorry, Flora. Pearl,' he had said. ‘This is not how we wanted to find him.'

Mrs Bart just stared. While once she had paced, now she stared. She stared holes in the walls, in the carpets, in the bed linen, in the back of the bathroom door. She'd taken to sitting on the toilet, with the lid down, just like it was a good old regular chair. ‘Just in case', she said blankly, as if sickness may escape her instantly without her even sensing its approach.

Of course it was too soon for a formal identification. That would probably require dental records at this point. But Mack could be fairly certain—he could be sure—given what he saw, given Bart's windcheater, given Bart's boot. He was sure it was Bart, and the family needed to brace itself for a formal identification stating that fact.

Back behind his pinewood desk, Mack felt helpless. He had Paulie Roberts come in and give a formal statement. Mack took it down longhand and typed it up later on the station's handsome new computer. He noted many details: Paul thought Bart was a log; Paul didn't disturb the log/ body in any way; no one else was present at the time of the discovery; the smell lingered.

Paulie proved nauseous throughout his delivery. He stopped now and again to breathe out like the old bellows that Lang Mackenzie had used to stoke the fire when Mack was small. Paulie swallowed air in big gulps and saliva flooded his mouth. He turned his head to the side, searching for relief.

Mack emptied his metal rubbish bin and set it down next to Paulie's chair. ‘Just in case,' he said.

Paulie thanked him greenly and seemed happy when the whole thing was over.

‘Why me? I don't know. Just bad luck I guess,' he said, on the other side of the counter now, heading for the door.

‘Worse luck for Bart,' said Mack.

•

At school, George and I sat on the grassy hill in the sun and pondered the universe in the gravest tones we had ever used. We spoke as deep as the lake, and as wide as our seventeen-year-old horizons could fathom. I'd never seen George so serious.

Death.

It was our first experience of it as almost-adults. George and I were five when Grace Mackenzie shed her translucent skin and escaped her sadness. We were eight when George's elderly dog, Digger, dug his last hole and lay down inside it. We hadn't had a death since. And Goodwood had not lost a man of such note—a man so revered—ever.

The news was filtering in to school slowly. Some parents had heard it early on Cedar Street and spoken it to their children. Some teachers had gleaned it from classroom chatter, or had stopped by Nance's on the way to school and been given an unexpected lesson in forensics. By that stage it was conjecture and rumour for some, and dire certainty for others. Who else could it be? said the believers. Paulie
Roberts saw him good and proper. Was sick down the side of his boat. It was no log, June told us.

The doubters were less vocal. Maybe it was someone else? We heard Jackson Harrington say that as he passed us. And Mr Berg was always quick to dissent. What if it was Rosie? If he or she—if the
body
—if it was so sick-making, then it can't have looked like Bart. Bart had such a kind face. It was too soon to jump to conclusions.

But it wasn't too soon, because the majority of the town had already bent its legs, readied itself and confidently jumped there, and in this instance the majority was right.

‘Pearl would be glad at least that he was in The Horse,' I said to George, just before the bell rang.

‘How could she be glad of anything?' asked George.

I shifted uncomfortably. ‘I just mean, it's nice that it's called after a horseshoe. Nan told me Pearl collects horseshoes.'

‘I guess,' said George. ‘Didn't turn out to be a lucky one though.' George frowned. She was not her usual self. She didn't talk as fast and incessant. She made few jokes. She'd become so serious, much like the rest of the town. It was almost holidays. Ordinarily the whole school would be abuzz with excitement. But instead there was a heavy feeling to everything—a communal gloom—and no one knew how to shake it.

‘I feel sick,' she said. ‘Do you want my sandwich?'

‘I feel sick too,' I said, and we left our lunches sitting on the hill between us.

30

The authorities were having a difficult time with Bart.

The fish had nibbled him, and the water had wrested the skin from his limbs, and bloated his trunk, and sunk his organs like tiny ships. In fact, the log-body of Bart McDonald had been through so much since anyone last saw him, that any messages it now tried to transmit—even to the most skilled medical examiner—were very hard to decipher.

Bart travelled all the way to the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Sydney, where he lay on a silver slab while a forensic pathologist did the best he could. But, as far as Mack could understand, the answers Goodwood longed for were to be confusing at best.

The merciful thing, which happened by Wednesday, was the relief of a formal identification. No matter how big a lake fish gets, lake fish don't eat teeth, and as much as Bart was diminished, his teeth were still intact. The forensic pathologist
in Sydney declared the teeth to be, without a doubt, the teeth of Bart McDonald.

Mack knocked on Mrs Bart's door and found it opened by Jan. Mrs Bart was busy, staring at the bathroom door from her seat on the toilet. Jan went to tell her sister while Mack waited in the hallway. There came no answer.

Jan said blankly, through the wooden door: ‘Flor. Mack's here. He's spoken to the doctors. It's him, Flor. It's Bart. They know for sure.'

All Mack heard was the sound of staring.

The rest of Goodwood, though, breathed a sigh of relief. The town could not take much more uncertainty. People were desperate. They were hopeless for some answers. No one could tolerate the question marks left by the missing.

‘God bless,' said Val Sparks to an impromptu gathering at the Vinnies counter, gently illuminated by her votive candles. ‘A conclusion.'

And yet there was still very little to conclude. As Nance had cleverly foretold from behind her all-seeing counter, the state of Bart's body meant that there was certain to be a problem. And, as Nance had suspected all along, that problem was cause of death.

•

Mack received the preliminary autopsy report on Thursday afternoon. It spilled out of the station's fax machine and landed
in a mess on the carpet. Mack spread it over his pinewood desk and read with his head propped up on one arm.

The medical terminology caused him a slight pain to the temples. First, the autopsy disclosed ‘minor degrees of pulmonary congestion and oedema'. Mack leaned back in his chair and puffed out some air. ‘Water on the lungs' was how it was explained to him later. Mack read the report from beginning to end and then called the forensic pathologist himself for an explanation.

Water on the lungs.

The lake was in Bart's chest.

A drowning.

That much Mack could gather.

But, as the pathologist explained, it was slightly more complicated than that. The lake shared Bart's chest with Bart's heart. And Bart's heart had not been a healthy organ.

Mack read on. ‘Severe coronary artery atherosclerosis with posterior wall myocardial fibrosis.' That sounded bad. It
was
bad. Bart was a heart attack waiting to happen, and it seemed that a heart attack had waited until just that moment—when Bart was on his boat, blissfully fishing.

Mack felt his own heart thumping. The voice of the pathologist was slow and muffled. Mack saw Bart in a quick vision, grabbing at his burning chest like he was patting out a fire. Old Lang Mackenzie was there too, stoking with his
bellows, his beetroot head and a lonesome raven. Mack closed his eyes and waited for it all to pass.