It’s clear Mr Kincaid thinks they’re alone. He shows himself – he is bare-knuckled, shirtsleeves up, punching over and over again, manic, into the side of Nigel’s head. He hits him anywhere he can, kicks him when he’s down. He spits in his face, says, his voice hoarse, choked with anger, ‘Feed that shit to my wife? You really wanna try me?’
Nigel staggers, slips on the gravel; all sense has been knocked out of him. It’s been a gallant effort, but you can tell even he was not expecting such an onslaught, a volley of hits. It’s been too vicious.
Mr Kincaid comes in again. Nigel puts his body close to him; he sways against him. He holds him in a bear hug and fights for consciousness. Rebecca gets out of the vehicle. She holds up her hands. ‘Please … Stop!’
Mr Kincaid sees her. His eyes flash darkly, and then cloud with thought. He shoves Nigel away. Nigel staggers.
There’s a quiet moment. Birds chatter. The motor of Mr Kincaid’s car ticks as it cools. Nigel leans forward, his hands resting on his knees. He coughs, and spits out blood.
He says after a moment, ‘What
is
your fucking problem?’
Mr Kincaid straightens his shirt and walks to his car. He is shaking though, trembling as he reaches for the door; adrenaline affects him like everyone else.
‘Psycho,’ Nigel says hoarsely after him. He spits again in the dirt.
Nigel shrugs Rebecca off as she goes to touch him.
They both look up as Mr Kincaid pulls away, the steady crunch of his tyres somehow more insulting than if he’d spun his wheels and had them eat his dust.
23
This time Aden’s room isn’t locked. Nigel sits on the bed. ‘I need a smoke.’
‘Should I go and get Aden?’
‘In a minute.’
Rebecca goes to Aden’s bedside table and opens the drawer. She notices Aden’s cricket gear is washed, ironed, and hung up on the door of his wardrobe. The doona cover is freshly washed. She passes the smokes to Nigel.
‘Ta,’ he says.
Rebecca sits down on the bed. The books are still by the chair leg where she stacked them.
Nigel’s face is starting to swell, his left eye is closing. He has a bad graze on his forehead and a split bottom lip. There is dried blood in his nostrils, and blood between his teeth. He opens his hand, and then clenches it again, testing the pain.
‘I wish someone would kill him,’ he says. ‘Someone should have gone out there and drilled the bastard. That’s what a person should’ve done. That’s what needed to be done.’
‘What was done?’ Rebecca asks.
Nigel shakes his head.
‘I think …’ she says. ‘I think I just want to know if Mrs Kincaid and Aden are more than friends?’
Nigel winces as he leans forward and flicks his ash in the dirt of the pot plant.
‘I’ll be bloody pissed off if they are.’
‘Is it you and her together?’
He scoffs. ‘No.’ He presses his thumb to his bleeding nostril. ‘What I mean is – if there is a female in the town Aden might not have screwed, surely it’d have to be Joanne Kincaid. You would reckon he could leave one girl standing.’
‘Why was Mr Kincaid so angry with you?’
‘He probably found out I fixed Joanne up with dope, sometimes delivered it out to her. He probably figures the last thing someone like her needs is a steady stream of pot.’
‘So … has she left him?’
‘You know what the problem with Aden is?’ Nigel says, distracted. ‘He wants everything. He wants his mum happy, he wants to get back at Kincaid, and now he wants you happy. He wants to be the good guy in this. But he can’t have everything.’
The back door leading out onto the veranda creaks open and slams shut. Two people talk, one of them is Aden. Nigel’s ute is parked in the backyard and they must see it. Their voices lose the playful ring.
Rebecca hears Aden say, ‘If you can’t find it, leave it and I’ll have a look in a minute.’ His footsteps start towards the door.
Nigel stubs out his cigarette. He prods with gentle fingers along his jaw; he glances at Rebecca, and manages a wink with his swollen eye.
Aden is dressed for work in the restaurant. His shirt collar is unbuttoned and he has a silver necklace on. The sun is streaming in through the windows and shining in his eyes; he ducks to avoid the glare as he enters.
‘I don’t know if I like you two in here alone,’ he says before he’s properly seen them. ‘I’ve been thinking what a bad idea it was sending you, Nige … Christ. What happened?’
They exclude her from their conversation. They speak in code – unfinished sentences, eye contact, small shakes of their heads and half-nods. She has her first glimpse of the Aden Claas past girlfriends might have ditched – no concerns about her, a gaze as distant as Mr Kincaid’s out on the road, a body held back from her, made all the worse because there have been times he has revealed so much, only to push her out. She can’t hear properly what they say anyway, even if they do say things worth picking up; she’s looking down, running her fingers through the side of her hair, feeling like a kid, fighting back the tears, because he’s made her feel like a kid. He’s made her feel like crying – issues too complex for her, grown-up problems way above her head, all right to sleep with her though, all right to give her drugs, kiss her with what feels like love behind it, just not think of her as any different once he’s got her there.
It’s a busy night in the restaurant and she’s put to work. Washing dishes. Stirring bechamel sauce. Wrapping smoked trout in cling wrap. Kara brushes past her, asks after Nigel. Kara is also being kept in the dark – the half-dark, full of half-truths. She says kind things in her husky voice, goes off to find an apron and ties it on Rebecca while she’s elbow-deep in soapy water. The kitchen staff talk as though Rebecca’s a new-found friend, a sudden member of the Emily’s family; the waitresses call her
Becs
in their effort to include her, Marc sings her name –
Rebecca, Rebecca, beautiful Rebecca, for you I make wild mushroom risotto
– but Aden stays out in the restaurant. Word is, through the staff, he’s in a foul mood. The times he does come into the kitchen he glances at her only to see what she’s doing, as though her productivity is his main concern. Tough love. Something her mother dished up regularly, so she should be used to it. She realises she’s gone and hooked up with a male version of her mother – the same glossy skin, the shine of life, the same irrepressible wills, baby-faces, and behind it, anything but baby thoughts. No-one could say she’s gone and found someone to fill the missing father figure in her life – Aden’s no rock. She’s found someone with her mother’s flighty nature, the same string of one-night stands and weekend relationships, the same selfishness. And he’s not afraid to show himself to her, either. By not talking to her he’s saying he’ll do this, he’ll go back on his word, he’ll ignore her, he’ll expect a lot and do nothing in return, he’ll get nasty and not explain why, he’ll probably leave her … But like her mother, he will always love her. Won’t he?
He comes to bed, gets in behind her and curls around her back. He smells of deep-fryer fat, spilt spirits and Coke. The beer he had with the last of the customers is on his breath. He finds her hand and holds it, squeezes it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
The lights are off. His hands are cold and hers are swollen and wrinkled with the water, the front of her T-shirt and underwear damp from where her pelvis has been pressed against the sink. Her shoulders ache and her eyes sting with tiredness. He holds her tighter. He slips his other arm underneath her and pulls her into him.
‘I don’t know any more,’ he says. ‘You make me not know any more.’
‘It’s okay,’ she tells him.
‘No, it’s not. Nigel can’t get Joanne on the phone. We don’t know what’s happened to her. How does it work if a person only we knew wasn’t missing goes missing for real?’
‘Did you take her up there?’
‘How’s it going to look if we say something now? We can’t say,
Hang on, now she really is missing
. No-one will believe us. If Kincaid’s hurt her, if he’s done something to her … Well, I don’t think we can say anything.’
‘Is she really missing now?’
He breathes out heavily. ‘If we can’t get on to her, I don’t know what we’re going to do.’
Rebecca is motionless in the bed. Aden continues to hold her. His breath is warm and steady behind her ear. Crickets and frogs thrum down near the river. There’s the sound of the till ringing up the night’s takings and money being counted.
‘You’ll tell the cops Nigel and I were with you that night – won’t you?’
24
There’s bruising on Zach’s father’s knuckles, grazes on his face and body; he has two black eyes, a cut on his chin, tight purple skin on his jaw and cheek. He has, he explains, been fighting another man – Nigel Fairbanks – in a fist fight. But Zach sees beneath the bruises that there are other bruises.
His father is out of the shower, a towel around his waist, reaching for his shirt on the bed, and Zach can see there are scratches on his forearms and on the backs of his hands – scratches on his face, on his neck. Look under the most recent injuries and there are other marks. Zach says, ‘Where’s Mum?’
His father straightens. He frowns. He shakes out his shirt and pulls it on. ‘Let me get dressed.’
‘Where did you get those scratches?’
‘I told you where I got them.’
‘Why did you fight Nigel Fairbanks?’
‘Because he was there and he deserved it.’
Zach asks, ‘Why couldn’t you find Mum?’
‘What sort of question is that? I couldn’t find her because I couldn’t find her.’
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘Don’t ask me questions. I’ll tell you when something happens.’
‘Did you fight Nigel to cover up those scratches?’
‘What?’
‘Did you rape Kara Claas when you were younger?’
‘Keep it up, Zach, and I swear to God …’
‘Have you raped Mum?’
If not for the towel Zach’s father might have hit him then, he might have come forward and given him the backhander he no doubt deserved, but it seems the risk of being exposed from the waist down holds him back. It’s a shame, because without the reflex action of lashing out, Zach can see that his father is lost for a moment, not knowing what to do. In this instant something slips inside his father, something vitally important – and it truly shatters, because his eyes lighten, his face grows slack, and he caves in, chest, stomach, shoulders, doubling over, bending at the knees, going down. Zach stands and watches his father buckle and sees that his father is not a man from the past, caught in a hard world where hard things are done, but that he’s here in the present, he’s able to be cut down, to be gutted. He sits on the edge of the bed. The towel falls away to reveal his whiteness, an area of hip and leg – a horrible sight, because it’s the father you feared, now half dressed in front of you. Frightened of him up until the day he took it too far (a process – step one, step two, step … what?), standing there and realising you don’t fear him any more, and how it’s worse now, because all that is left is to see him.
‘I loved her,’ he tells Zach. ‘I loved her and she betrayed me. What she’s done, what she’s been doing … We can’t have her in our life any more. It’s not something to be forgiven. It’s not something I can forgive. Do you understand that? It’s for you. It’s the only way we can hold our heads up in this town. It’s better now it’s just the two of us.’
He takes Zach by the hand and has him sit down beside him on the bed. Zach sits stiffly. He turns his face away from his father’s nakedness.
‘Your grandfather was right – no-one outside the family can ever understand it. They don’t know what it takes. The expectations on us are huge. If we trip up, it’s not forgotten. I know I’ve not always done the right thing, but I’ve never in my life planned to hurt another person. I would never do that. I want to be honest with you, Zach. I have to say this …’ He wraps his arms around himself. ‘Your mother isn’t missing any more, not to us.’
Zach goes to stand, but his father holds him down.
‘We’re not waiting for her to return. She’s not coming back. I know it’s going to hurt you.’
Zach starts to cry. The tears drop freely down his cheeks.
‘But to us, son, to you and me, she is dead. It’s the only way. It’s how it is for us.’
25
A big blue day in Kiona, a perfect day for a grudge match: Kiona A-grade take on Kiona B-grade in what’s been touted as the Local Showdown.
Through the lace curtains Rebecca watches the first few cars pull in over at the oval: the Women’s Auxiliary again – hefty, bulky shapes taking trays and cardboard boxes from the boots of their cars, sturdy women full of purpose. Fog lingers in places over the oval, a groundsman walks the pitch, bending down to touch the earth and stamping with his foot. The river is hidden under a thick quilt of fog. Dew makes the reeds on the banks glisten and shine.
Rebecca eats her toast and sips her tea. She has the restaurant to herself; the lamps around the walls burn softly.
Kara sticks her head in, croaks in a morning voice, ‘Happy Easter.’
‘Happy Easter.’
‘Where is he?’
‘He went for a run.’
‘My guess is he didn’t surprise you with chocolates.’
‘He got me breakfast instead.’
As part of his run Aden circles the oval. Rebecca gets up and watches him. He does one lap and then cuts across and jogs onto the pitch. Like the groundsman before him he looks down, bends and touches the earth. He goes to one end of the pitch and does a dummy bowl: paces it out, runs in, and brings his arm through. He runs across the oval and then the bridge, doing this bowling action over and over again. His figure breaks in and out of the fog, making her think of the movie
Rocky
, where Sylvester Stallone shadow-boxed as he sprinted around the city streets. At the front gate he jumps up and down on the spot while swinging his arms back and forth. Unlike Sly Stallone, he doesn’t look to have worked up much of a sweat.
She gives him room to come past; he stops and leans against the doorframe, looking at her. ‘How was breakfast?’