Rudie showed her, and she took it under a street light to see better. ‘Yeah, I reckon it’s the bloke I know,’ she said, looking up at Rudie. ‘But this ain’t a good photo of him.’
Rudie knew then this one really was on the ball. ‘No, it’s an old one taken three years ago,’ he agreed. ‘I expect his hair’s longer than that now, it’s a dark auburn and curly. Does that fit the bloke you know?’
She nodded, and Rudie gave her the ten shillings. ‘There’ll be more if you can tell me anything useful.’
Strangely enough, she shoved the note back into his pocket. ‘I only did business with him once. He always makes for Mary, so offer her the money.’
‘Which one’s Mary?’ he asked.
‘She’s got someone with her right now, but she’ll be out soon,’ the girl said. ‘You a mate of this bloke?’
There was something about the way she asked that which made Rudie sense she hoped he wasn’t.
‘Not exactly. I just need to know a bit of stuff about him. Does that change your mind about introducing me to Mary?’
She grinned mischievously. ‘Whatcha want to know, a bit of dirt on him?’
‘Do you know some?’ Rudie couldn’t help but like this woman, her eyes sparkled, she radiated warmth and she was very attractive.
‘You tell me why you want to know and Mary and me might help you,’ she said, putting her head to one side like a cockatoo. ‘It’s a slow night tonight, you’re better-looking than most of the blokes that come down here, you’ve got class and all. Bloody Nora, I’m just being a sticky beak.’
Rudie laughed. She had leapt up in his estimation by being so honest. ‘How does a fiver between you both and a few drinks sound?’ he asked. ‘But I want straight talking, no making up fairy stories!’
She looked him up and down for a second. ‘We don’t want no fairy stories from you neither!’
‘Done,’ he said, holding out his hand to shake hers.
While they waited for Mary to appear, the woman introduced herself as Dolly, and told him that Mary was half Aboriginal. ‘She was one of them kids taken away from her folks by the Holy Rollers,’ she said. ‘She tells me about the mission they took her to, run by nuns it were, cruel bitches. They had this idea, see, that if they took the kids that weren’t full blacks they could make them like whites. Bloody silly idea, but they did it to thousands of kids. Mary got raped at her first job as a maid, only fourteen she was, she told the woman she worked for, but all she did was kick her out. That’s how she ended up here.’
Rudie wondered if the similarity in backgrounds was what attracted Ross to Mary. ‘How about you, Dolly, how did you end up here?’
She just shrugged. ‘Wrong choices of men, short of money, nowhere much else to go. Same as most of us here.’
Dolly shot off back up the road suddenly, and Rudie saw her talking animatedly to a dark woman who had just come out of one of the houses. She had all the Aboriginal features – the squat nose, the thick lips – but coffee-coloured skin and lovely long black curly hair worn loose on her shoulders. She looked round at Rudie, then turned back to Dolly. It looked to him as if she needed some persuasion.
But then just as he was beginning to think she was going to refuse, the two women came towards him. He guessed they were both in their late twenties, they still had good figures and skin, but the first flush of youth had gone.
‘Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,’ he said. ‘Can we go to a bar to talk?’
It was apparent even before the girls took him to a bar just around the corner that the two women were very close friends, and had been for some years. Mary wasn’t attractive, or striking like Dolly, she was also far less talkative, but he got the impression she was sharp-witted and kind.
Once in the bar, three glasses of scotch in front of them, the women lit up cigarettes and sat back waiting for him to explain himself.
‘I want to know about this man because he is married to my sister-in-law,’ he began. Calling Dulcie that wasn’t so much a lie as needing to make the story simpler. ‘I already knew they weren’t really happy, but when I came over from Sydney with my son to visit her, I was told he comes up here regularly.’
He explained as briefly as he could about Ross and Dulcie’s background. ‘I am very fond of my sister-in-law, and I think she’s got a real raw deal,’ he went on. ‘But she is so caring and loving that she’ll put up with almost anything rather than leave her husband.’
‘You want me to tell you something that will persuade her?’ Mary said. Her voice was very unusual, for though she had a strong Australian accent, the sound of it was soft and melodic.
‘I guess that’s about the size of it.’
‘Where’s your wife?’ Mary asked.
‘She’s dead, it happened a year ago in Sydney. My sister-in-law came over then to help me with my son. He was only a baby.’
‘You want her to leave this man, then, for you?’ she said, looking at him hard.
He hadn’t thought of it that way, and he certainly hadn’t meant it to sound like that. ‘They’ve got a marriage in name only,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing between us, we’re just friends. We became close when May died. But yes, I suppose if I was really honest, I do want her myself. That isn’t the issue, though, I only want to get to the bottom of what is wrong with her husband.’
The two women exchanged glances, they seemed faintly amused and he hoped to God they weren’t playing him along for some kind of sport.
‘What d’you mean by
a marriage in name only?’
Dolly asked. ‘That he can’t get it up with her?’
Rudie blushed. ‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘He can’t or he doesn’t want to fuck her?’ Dolly said crudely, her eyes glinting as if she was enjoying his discomfort.
‘He couldn’t when they got married, right up till he had a sort of breakdown back earlier this year. She hasn’t said if there has been any improvement since then, but I doubt it somehow. That was why I was so surprised when I heard he was coming up here.’
‘Lots of blokes who come to us can’t get it on with their wives,’ Mary said. ‘To us there’s nothing weird about that.’
‘Why do you think that is?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘Sometimes they’ve married women they just don’t fancy. Now and again the bloody fools have put their wife on such a pedestal they can’t give her one. But most of the married men who come here either don’t get enough at home, or they just get turned on by sex with a whore.’
‘What do you think this man’s problem is then?’ he asked, pushing the newspaper picture over to her, so she would be absolutely clear who they were talking about.
She picked up the picture and looked at it for a few moments without speaking. ‘He’s a strange one all right,’ she said eventually. ‘I didn’t know he was married, I got the idea he was a stockman way out in the bush somewhere.’
‘He came to me the first time, I couldn’t do anything with him,’ Dolly said. ‘We don’t like that, they usually get nasty, but he cried and I felt sorry for him.’
Rudie saw that her face had softened. ‘I knew something bad had happened to him,’ she went on. ‘He kept muttering something about his brother. I thought maybe he’d died, stuff like that does affect men and they often come to girls like us because they haven’t got to sweet-talk us into sex. So I didn’t chuck him out, I gave him a drink and just held him for a while.’
‘I think he was talking about the Brothers, you know, the Christian Brothers,’ Rudie said. ‘He had a very bad time with them as a kid.’
‘That’s what I said when she told me,’ Mary butted in. ‘I know what some of them are capable of.’
‘So what happened after that first night?’ Rudie asked. ‘How long was it before he came back, and why did he go for Mary.’
‘It was exactly four weeks later in May when he came back,’ Dolly said. ‘I remember because I never expected to see him again. He wasn’t drunk either, they usually are on a Saturday night. He came right up to me and asked if I could recommend a girl for him. I got the idea he meant someone who would be kind to him if he failed again. So I suggested Mary.’
‘You’d better tell him what the bloke said when he saw me,’ Mary suggested.
‘I don’t want to tell him that,’ Dolly said sharply, and for the first time in their conversation she looked embarrassed.
‘Well I will then, ‘cos I reckon it’s important,’ Mary said. ‘He took one look at me and said, “I don’t want a bloody Abo.” Well I’ve heard that about a million times in my life, and it’s like a challenge to me now. So I said he’d find it easier to get it on with me if he thought I was way beneath him, and I pointed out that I had more regulars on the street than anyone.’
‘She does too,’ Dolly chipped in. ‘Anyway, he stood there wavering. I reckon he couldn’t face going up to anyone else. Then suddenly he agreed. He went off with Mary and they were gone a long time.’
Rudie looked to Mary. ‘Did he make it with you?’
She grinned. ‘Oh yes. It was a matter of pride with me to make sure he did. Twice in fact. Since then he’s been back every four weeks like clockwork.’
‘Would you say it was his first time with a woman?’ Rudie asked.
‘Yeah, I’d say so, he was so thrilled and excited afterwards. Like a young boy.’
‘Was he like any other man?’ Rudie asked curiously. ‘I mean, did he get straight into it, or what?’
‘You’re a bloody sticky beak, aren’t you?’ Mary said, but she laughed. ‘No, he didn’t get straight into it. I had to bully him. He seemed to respond to that. Still needs it now, or wants it, whichever way you want to look at it.’
Rudie got the women another drink, he didn’t want them rushing off now. ‘So what do you clever ladies reckon about my brother-in-law?’ he asked, leaning over the table towards them conspiratorially. ‘You must get like shrinks after a year or two at your game. Would he be going home to his wife after, and being the big stud?’
‘I doubt it,’ Dolly said. ‘If that was the case and he was cured he’d have a different girl every time he came here.’
‘It’s like I said, he can do it with me because he thinks I’m lower than him,’ Mary said bluntly. ‘Want my opinion?’
Rudie nodded.
‘He’d been buggered as a kid.’
Rudie’s mouth dropped open. ‘What makes you think that?’
She shrugged. ‘I’ve met a couple more like him in the past. Same types, brag about how strong they are, how they can do this and that. The sort that get drunk and pick fights. They don’t think much of themselves really, so they have to hide that with all the tough stuff. But you get glimpses of the frightened little boy underneath. This one, John he calls himself, but I don’t suppose it’s his real name, has come close to admitting it. He said he got crook after going back to his old school. He said stuff happened there that ruined his life.’
‘It could have just been the beatings and the semi-starvation,’ Rudie said.
Mary waved her hand impatiently. ‘We all got that, every bloody kid who got stuck in an orphanage, whether it was the Fairbridge Schools, the Sisters, the Brothers, or a bloody mission like they stuck me in. We can get over that. But rape, that’s something you can’t forget, can’t get over. It stays with you, it taints everything.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ Rudie said, wondering if she knew Dolly had told him that’s what happened to her too.
‘You think I like sex?’ Mary said, her dark eyes flashing. ‘I hate it. But sometimes, when I meet a man like this John, and I know how scared and sickened he is by it too, I don’t mind it so much, it makes me feel a bit better to see him getting over that hurdle.’
Rudie saw then why he’d decided she was kind – she was. And his heart ached for her and all the other boys and girls who had had their lives tarnished by people who were supposed to care for them.
He’d heard enough, it was time to go. He stood up and pulled out his wallet, handing Mary a ten-pound note, far more than he’d intended to give her.
‘I don’t want that,’ she said. ‘I talked to you like a friend.’
‘This comes from a friend,’ he said quietly. ‘You both buy yourselves something pretty from me. You’ve been a great help.’
‘What are you going to do with what we told you?’ Dolly asked.
‘I really don’t know,’ Rudie sighed. ‘My wife, her sister and her husband, all three of them, had been so badly scarred by their childhoods. My wife is dead, and the other two have no chance of finding real happiness if they stay together. You tell me, do I save one and let the other flounder in rage and bitterness? Or should I walk away and do nothing for either of them?’
The two women looked at one another.
‘Save his wife,’ Mary said, her dark eyes glistening with tears. ‘He won’t stop coming up here now. He can’t, it’s like a drug to him.’
‘But do I tell his wife he comes here?’ he said. ‘That will hurt her so badly.’
Mary stood up and moved closer to Rudie. She was very short, barely reaching the middle of his chest. ‘He’s a decent bloke at heart,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen that side of him too. Talk to him alone, tell him what you know, and ask him to let her go free.’
‘He won’t do that!’
‘He might,’ she said, looking up at Rudie, her eyes full of compassion. ‘He’s trapped too, remember, she’s a daily reminder of his failure. You never know what people will do for love.’
Rudie glanced around the pub. It was only half full, a grubby, sour-smelling place, and almost everyone in it – the whores, the miners from the gold field, stockmen from out of town – all looked like losers. Dolly and Mary belonged here, they were part of it, yet in all his life he’d never met anyone quite as astute and big-hearted as Mary. He bent down and kissed her cheek. ‘Thank you, Mary, it was a privilege to meet you.’
He turned to say goodbye to Dolly, expecting to find her laughing at him, but instead she was looking at her friend with pride.
Rudie left the Old Australia at five in the morning, leaving a goodbye note and payment for his room for Sadie on her desk. He had tossed and turned all night, unable to sleep for the images which kept thrusting themselves at him. He had no plan made, he almost wished he’d minded his own business and hadn’t found Mary. However, he looked at the problems ahead of him and he could only see them multiplying.
Any anger he’d felt at Ross had gone. He knew Mary was right about what had happened to him, for once he’d thought it all through, it all added up. Dulcie’s lack of explanation to anyone about what had happened at Bindoon, Ross’s breakdown, and her steely determination to pretend everything was fine. If he were Ross he might also have turned to a prostitute to comfort himself. He couldn’t help feeling glad it was Mary he found, for she like her biblical namesake was ‘blessed among women’.