Goodwood (9 page)

Rosie White and Davo Carlstrom. Sitting in a tree.

•

That night Mum and I went to Nan and Pop's for dinner. Nan made a lentil soup that was so warming I took my jumper off at the table. Pop went back to the shed after dinner to potter around, and Nan and Mum and I sat in front of the fire. I was permitted to watch television while they drank wine.

Nan was terribly upset about Bart. So was Pop, but he hid his feelings about it in the shed. He was quieter since Rosie vanished; and quieter still about Bart. But Nan could not be quiet about any of it. She had talked non-stop at dinner and then non-stop after. How could this happen? Why can't they
find him? She took a big sip of wine and slouched back in the armchair, shaking her head at how big the lake was.

Mum tried to coax Nan out of her low mood by teasing me about Ethan West.

‘Jean had a hot date this afternoon,' she said.

‘We looked at cows,' I said, without turning around from the television.

‘They looked at cows. This is what the kids do these days,' said Mum.

‘Don't marry a dairy farmer,' said Nan. ‘It's a chancy business.'

Nan got up and put another log on the fire. She pushed it around with the poker and stood up for a while with her arms folded. Then she sat back down, deep in thought. Pretty soon she was talking about Bart again.

‘Do you remember Don's 70th? Bart brought over
all
those scotch fillets. And he wouldn't take any money. He was just like that. He has time for everyone. Remember when he gave Mrs Bart a rose garden? And that piano? He was so generous. Oh dear, Celia. I think it must've been his heart again. Do you think? He's had another heart attack and gone over into the water.'

Nan went on for quite a while like that, switching confusingly between the past and present tense when she spoke of him.

‘There was no one he didn't have time for,' she said.

‘Except . . .' said Mum, and there was a pause. Then the silent sound of a penny dropping and Nan saying, ‘Oh. Yes,' and crackles from the fire.

‘Except who?' I asked, turning around from the TV.

‘Jeannie, honey, don't be a creep,' said Mum. ‘This is our conversation.'

‘Except who?' I asked again. ‘Nan?'

They both looked at me and said nothing, and then Nan looked at Mum as if to apologise for what she was about to say.

‘Except Carl White,' she said.

12

After almost three weeks without a daughter, Judy White began making brief appearances in town, having finally left the house where she had hovered, in and out of view—sometimes in front of the living room windows, sometimes just inside the screen door, sometimes in the wooden frame of Rosie's window, and always in her dressing-gown.

I saw her go into the Grocer on the Saturday, properly dressed, and saw Nance anxiously fumble with the arrangement of her counter display, as if it was suddenly quite urgent. Then, when Judy had chosen her grocery items and arrived at the counter to pay, Nance clasped her hands together as if in prayer and offered her worried condolences. Judy tried her best to smile but her face could not make one. She looked grim.

I passed her as I went in and tried to make eye contact, so I could offer a look of support, but her head was hung low,
as if her shoes were the only horizon she could find to quell her seasick heart.

Then she crossed the street and started off on what I assumed to be the long way home, so she didn't have to go past Woody's.

•

Davo Carlstrom had also been keeping a low profile, and had only been seen at the Wicko once since Rosie vanished. Smithy had to ask him and his bogan uncle to kindly leave, because Davo got so drunk he was threatening to lose consciousness in the front bar.

Perhaps due to his rebellious disposition, people looked sideways at Davo now. People spoke about him in tones of disapproval, heavy with question marks and the occasional accusation.

‘It's just like “Hazard” by Richard Marx,' said George.

George didn't really look sideways at Davo, though. George looked sideways at Davo's bogan uncle, every time she walked up her street. Especially since he dressed most days in an Adidas tracksuit and had lined up a row of empty beer cans on the front fence, as if waiting for the energy to fetch his gun.

After some effort, we discovered his name was Lafe and that he'd been a mechanic in Albion Park, where he'd fallen on some kind of hard times, hit various kinds of bottles,
and ended up in Goodwood, mostly drunk and living in his brother's crap caravan. This only added more cause to the fact that the Carlstroms were not particularly appreciated in town. Davo's mum, Linda, worked at the Ingham Further Processing Plant, which was a good hour away—or four hours if you stopped at the Royal Tavern in Cedar Valley every night on the way home. George and I were horrified by whatever ‘further processing' meant when it came to chickens; and mothers in town were, historically, horrified by the fact that Linda was never home.

‘No wonder,' said George's mum, Spray n' Wiping their counter. ‘He's been left there while Linda goes out drinking his whole life.'

‘No wonder
what
?' asked George.

Noelene paused and said, pointedly, ‘
You know
.' Gravid with disfavour.

The uncle, Lafe, had only been in the caravan for three months, and had apparently been given a further three to sort himself out and move on. Davo's dad was loyal to his brother, but his loyalty was strained by the renewed attention on his family. While previous decades had shuffled past in the sleepy town of Goodwood with little interest from law enforcement, suddenly it wasn't such a good thing to look like a criminal, especially when your nephew was ‘connected', as they said, to an ongoing investigation.

In an attempt to create a more positive impression, or maybe just because he needed the assistance, Davo's dad—Dennis Carlstrom—soon wrangled Lafe into helping him fix the comatose cars that he bought at the Clarke Wreckers or through the
Trading Post
, planted in their yard, and covered with tarpaulins. I thought it was an improvement when Lafe changed from his Adidas tracksuit to his khaki coveralls and actually started doing something with his days, but George said that he often left his buttons undone in particular places, so you could see a bit more of Lafe than you were supposed to. Towards the end of that second week after Rosie vanished, George walked past the Carlstrom house to see Lafe leaning against his caravan with his buttons gaping, looking her right in the eye, leering, and then down at his nether regions. George was horrified and ran home.

•

On the better side of town, Carl White's routine seemed largely unchanged. He went to work, driving up Cedar Street with his radio on loud enough to hear through closed windows. He did whatever it was he did in his shed till the wee hours, as faithfully reported by Opal Jones next door, for she could see the fluorescent light from her bedroom window, and the tiny cloud of moths and night bugs that hovered there, well into the night. Mainly, though, Carl White sat in front of the pokie machine nearest to the
ladies toilets at the Bowlo and slotted in coin after coin after coin.

Carmel Carmichael, who had a good view of Carl's favourite pokie from her spot behind the bar, said that to look at him going about his business, you couldn't tell if the man was upset in the slightest. You couldn't tell if he was anything at all—except gambling, he was certainly doing that. But the more people thought about it, the more people felt that Carl White's lack of emotion—given the recent gaping hole in his family—indicated something unsavoury.

When Mum and I were returning books at the library, Mum's friend Denise the librarian said, ‘He's a bit cold, don't you think? Given the circumstances?'

Mum said diplomatically, ‘Well, we don't know what they must be going through,' which didn't seem to satisfy Denise at all.

Only a few months earlier, Mum and I had been watching the news when the government awarded Lindy Chamberlain over a million dollars in compensation for wrongful imprisonment. Mum had said to me, speaking over the television, ‘Do you know why they convicted her, Jean? Because they thought she was unemotional. That and her religion, which people didn't like. Everyone thought she was in a cult and should've been crying more. You know what I think? I think everyone grieves in their own way.'

So I wasn't sure what to make of Carl White. Except I did have some feelings when I walked past the White house, which I was prone to do at that time, and saw Judy, hovering in the bay window in her dressing-gown. She looked seasick, like she was standing on the deck of a ship, swaying in the still air. I felt that it would've been nice if, at least one time, Carl had been there beside her.

•

Mack, Tracy and little Jasper came to our house for a barbeque on the Sunday, two weeks after Bart had vanished, with a potato salad and a bag of sausages. Mum invited Mrs Bart and Pearl too—through Mack, who was visiting the McDonald house most days—but Mack advised that Mrs Bart had thankfully declined, and the only outings she had any room for, emotionally, were either CWA- or horse-related.

Backflip and I went walking through the foothills that morning and passed Pearl and Oyster on the trail. Oyster and Backflip weren't natural friends, so we kept a wide berth, but I waved at Pearl and she waved back and I could smell Oyster's horsey aroma.

I wanted so badly to offer my condolences. I wanted to say something comforting, but—much like Helen with Terry White that day at the newsagent—I panicked and got flustered and said, ‘Have a good one!'

Have a good one
. Her dad had just been swallowed by the lake—and she was going to have a good one?

Pearl rode out of earshot. The smell of Oyster receded. I felt foolish, verging on heartless, all the way home.

After everyone had eaten, I stacked the dishwasher and Mack brought in the empty meat tray, dripping with bloody juices. I rinsed it and he got another beer from the fridge, and I was on the verge of telling him about the money when Mum and Tracy came in laughing together with more plates, and Mack hugged Tracy from behind tenderly, and everyone settled on the couch while Mum made tea.

The conversation over lunch had touched on various topics. Mum, who worked as a proofreader at the
Gather Region Advocate
, had gone up to four days working at the paper; Myrtle had learnt her own name; Ethan West had taken me to look at cows and wasn't that hilarious and isn't he tall; and Mack had been doing the work of several officers for the past two weeks, while the Clarke station was slowly reducing its support. Meanwhile, Jasper fed pieces of apple to Backflip under the table and Mum and I pretended not to notice.

Everyone was trying to talk about nice things, but everyone was dying to talk about Rosie and Bart.

Luckily, one curious item of information had come to Mack's attention since the last time we had all spoken. And against his better judgement—with the encouragement of several afternoon beers and Mum's persistent questions—he
eventually told us. Apparently, about a week before Bart disappeared, which was around the time that Rosie disappeared, the McDonalds' old Corolla—the one that sat unused most of the time in the carport—had been stolen.

Mrs Bart hadn't gone to town on the Monday. She'd stayed home, glazed two ceramic salad bowls, and gone riding with Pearl. On the Tuesday morning she had secretarial business at the CWA so she packed her purse and went to her car—the Mazda—only to realise the Corolla wasn't in its spot. The bulk of the Hilux had been concealing its absence.

Bart had driven off in the Commodore earlier and was already at the shop, so Mrs Bart went back inside to call him.

‘Bushka, the Corolla's gone,' she had said.

‘Is it now?' Bart had replied.

‘Yeah, you didn't notice?'

‘I don't reckon I did,' said Bart. ‘The Hilux is in the way.'

‘Why wouldn't they've taken the Hilux? Or the Commodore?' said Mrs Bart, very confused about the whole thing.

‘Maybe they were after fuel efficiency,' Bart said, in an amused tone.

‘Bush, the car's been stolen, what are you? Cracking jokes?'

‘Sorry, honey, I've got people here—we'll talk about it later.'

‘I'll call Mack,' she said.

‘No, no, no—I'll pop over there in a minute and fill him in,' said Bart, and they hung up.

Mrs Bart assumed Bart had popped over to the station. In fact, Bart told her that evening that he had; that Mack had filed the relevant paperwork; that they'd have to wait and see, and if it didn't turn up then he'd call the NRMA and file a claim.

The problem was, Bart never went to the station.

Mrs Bart had been satisfied that the matter was being taken care of, and remembers mentioning it maybe one other time towards the end of the week. ‘Any news from Mack about the Corolla?' she'd asked Bart over one of their steak dinners. To which Bart had said something along the lines of, ‘Not yet, but I'm sure it'll turn up,' and didn't seem concerned about it at all.

Then she'd been distracted with Pearl, and Jan had arrived, and Bart had gone fishing and never come home, and she hadn't thought of the old car since. Until Mack was visiting and it dawned on her, as she was seeing him off in front of the carport, that she'd never spoken to him about it directly.

‘I don't suppose it matters,' she said absentmindedly, staring at the horse sheds, ‘but did you find anything on the Corolla?'

And that was the first Mack had heard of it.

Since that confusing conversation, Mack had gone over the events around the stolen car with Mrs Bart thoroughly, a line of inquiry which alarmed her a great deal, for she'd
never known of any other instance, in their long and good marriage, when her husband had lied to her.