Yesterday's Dust (25 page)

‘Yes. Certainly. Indeed.' The cemetery road was narrow. Malcolm considered attempting a doughnut turn, but thought better of it. He did a careful three-pointer and drove away, one eye on the rearview mirror.

‘Father Fogarty said it wouldn't matter, I mean, Jack not being Catholic. I mean, adding his name to the stone . . . on the Catholic side. It's not as if he's – '

‘Rightly
so. Rightly so, Mrs Burton.'

‘I don't know what I should do, I really don't. I wouldn't do anything until after Christmas, of course. It's seven years this Christmas.'

‘It is indeed.'

‘Johnny says not to do it. He says it would be desecrating hallowed ground. He refuses to believe that his father is dead. And he says it like he knows he's right too. I always had the feeling that him and Annie
knew more than they were letting on about that night, but the two of them are like clams wearing padlocks.'

Clams wearing padlocks? He nodded. Maybe there was hope for this woman yet. He liked that line and tucked it away in his memory bank to use, perhaps, on another day. A good image that one.

‘We all believe what we wish to believe, Mrs Burton.' He made a careful right-hand turn onto the
highway and proceeded on. The police van cruised by, heading out of town. Once it was out of sight, Malcolm increased his speed.

‘He would have come forward, wouldn't he? He wouldn't have let me go through all of this worry.'

Malcolm found it impossible to agree with that one, so he turned the conversation away from Jack. ‘John. He has cut his ties with the church, Mrs Burton?'

Ellie looked
back towards the cemetery, waved a hand, blew a kiss.

‘Yes. Yes he has, Mr Fletcher. Completely. He refuses to set foot inside a church door. Except for Bronwyn's wedding. And if I didn't know better I'd think that he broke his foot that morning trying to
get out of going to that too.'

‘What does he plan to do with his life?'

‘I'm sure I don't know.' She peeled away a broken fingernail, levelling
it with her teeth. ‘I'm sure I don't know. He told me a while back that the church was just a hole he'd crawled into – like an injured rabbit going to ground, he said, and he said that one hole was as good as another as far as he was concerned. He's a worry to me, to tell you the truth. And with his broken foot, he can't get away from the house much. We're tripping over each other all day.
I don't know what I'm going to do with him.'

‘There are times, Mrs Burton, when we all need to first go back before we can go forward. And sometimes, having gone back, we realise what little we had to go back to.'

He was speaking from experience. Too many hours lately had been spent in the classroom, filling in for Norman O'Rouke. And he'd be back there again tomorrow. Too old for it now, he
was out of touch with youth. Still, today he was free of the Wests and the Dooleys; Thursday was sports day and young Kerrie had roped in a dozen parents to assist her. Malcolm was on his way to Warran to view the new arrival, and the trio of tyrants.

‘Have you viewed the new granddaughter, Mrs Burton?'

‘Not yet. Benjie was going to drive me down on Sunday, but we had two cows calving, so we
put it off. I should have gone down with Bessy on Monday, but I've been so busy, Mr Fletcher. Benjie saw her the day after she was born. They called her Bethany, you know. Bethany May.'

‘Yes. Yes. I am on my way there now. You would be most welcome to accompany me.' Responsibility for another life usually kept his concentration on the road.

‘That's very nice of you. I suppose I could go. I'd
have to let Benjie know where I've gone, though.'

‘Certainly.'

‘Annie is home, you know. She up and left the hospital on Saturday night, Bessy said. Wouldn't stay away from her boys, and
it's far too soon. They've kept the baby in for a while, because of its size, but she goes up there every day to feed it.' She sighed, then added, ‘It's lucky she's near the hospital, really.'

‘Yes.'

‘She
was born early, you know. Annie, I mean. I had to leave her at the hospital for months. She'd start picking up and then she'd have a setback. I think it might be right what they say these days on the television. You know, how you need to bond early with a baby. I never thought she'd live, Mr Fletcher, to tell the truth. I suppose I just sort of left her to God and the doctors, and expected every day
I'd get word that she'd died. She was two-and-a-half months premature, just a little scrap of a thing barely three pounds. Bethany was almost five pounds. It makes a lot of difference to a baby, those few pounds.'

‘I'm sure it does.'

‘If not for Johnny, Annie would have died the night she was born. You know he held her all the way to the hospital? They said it was because of the hot night and
that he'd held her to his warm little chest that had saved her life. He told the matron at the hospital that she had to keep her alive and that her name was Annie Lizabeth.'

She drew a deep breath and bit at a fingernail. ‘Poor little thing. She was so different to the others when Jack brought her home. So skinny and her little face looked so old; she used to just sit there, watching everyone
with those big black eyes of hers. My goodness. My goodness. Where have all of the years gone to, Mr Fletcher? It seems like only yesterday.'

The car had stopped in front of Ben's shop, but Ellie made no move to get out. Malcolm had never known her so talkative.

‘It's funny, but I could always see the other children as grown up, as married, having their own children, but I could never see Annie
as a mother. But my word! And isn't young Tristan the wild one?'

‘Hopefully he will become tamer as he grows older,
Mrs Burton,' Malcolm said.

‘I don't know how she's going to cope with the four of them when she gets the new baby home. She'll have to lock that baby away from young Tristan.'

‘She has a good husband.'

‘Oh, yes. Yes she has. He's so good with those children, I'll say that for
him. He is a divorced man, of course. Not that I've ever held that against him. I get on quite well with David. He's very respectful – and a very good dancer, you know.'

Friday 22 August

‘A jerry hat trick, Mr West? I realise your grasp of the English language is far in advance of the other students, so can you enlighten them on the meaning of jerry hat trick?'

‘You, you fuckin' jerry hat trick old dickhead.'

‘Ah, ah. We see the light, Mr West. We see the light. Geriatric:
GERIATRIC
.' Malcolm spelt
the word as he wrote it on the whiteboard in large red block letters, which was less effective than large letters gouged into the old blackboard with chalk. He missed his chalk, the squeal of which had sometimes been enough to cool his ire – or quell a riot.

‘Which differs considerably in meaning to a jerry hat trick. Can you give me the meaning of a common hat trick? Forget the jerry.'

‘Fuck
off.'

‘No. Not quite. Anyone? Can anyone give me the meaning?' Hands went up in his fifth and sixth grade rows. ‘Miss Dooley. Enlighten our friend, please.'

‘In cricket. Like when a bowler gets out three in three balls.'

‘Stupid moll,' the pinheaded bastard in his grade six row sneered, and Malcolm had had enough for one morning.

The mentality of old Robbie West's grandson was not dissimilar
to that of his son's. Malcolm had handled them. He'd taught a few to read and write. He sighed and made his slow plodding way to the six grader, on whom he tested out the concealed elbow jab to the ribs. And he had not lost his touch but, unlike his predecessors, this
West kicked back, with big boot and mouth.

‘Fuckin' touch me again and my father'll fuckin' do you.'

‘Ah, so you do have a father,
Mr West?'

The barb missed its target. Children these days knew more, but much less; however, their ears were still sensitive appendages, and the West ears, ever large, offered an excellent grip. An ear in hand, Malcolm marched the kicking beast to the verandah, where he continued to twist the ear until the West stopped kicking to scream. Quite satisfying it was too, until the infant mistress
saw to the somewhat swollen ear's release.

Kerrie dismissed the senior students for an early lunch then sat on Malcolm's table explaining the likely repercussions of corporal punishment, of manhandling students. Malcolm nodded, his attention divided between his smiling lecturer and his half cup of brandy, which, to the uninitiated with a poor sense of smell, might have been mistaken for weak
black tea. Kerrie's nose was good. She picked up his trusty green thermos and gave it a shake.

‘I could get into trouble for this too, Fletch – even if I could use a nip.'

He didn't offer a nip, but reclaimed his thermos and topped up his cup. ‘Where is the fool of a man this week?'

‘That body they found at Albury – they think it's Amy. He's gone down there, and God knows when, or if, he'll
be back. And I've had it, Fletch.'

Malcolm said no more, but he thought of his own wife, and he thought of his days in the classroom after Jillian's death, the small thermos filled morning and afternoon. Better to give up perhaps, take to one's bed and weep – as O'Rouke had done. Let someone else carry the load. Perhaps. He had chosen a different method.

He glanced at his thermos, weighed it
in his hand. A trip home may be in order.

That afternoon Kerrie moved her brood into the seniors' room for a pictorial lesson, via video. Freed for an hour, Malcolm sat at his table, his attention divided between Kerrie and his tea cup.

A pleasant girl, artless, her face bare of make-up, she'd been covering for O'Rouke since his wife disappeared, but the strain was beginning to show. The West's
mouth flapping, again or still, she spoke to him, once, thrice, assuming he had a brain.

‘Leave the room please, Robert.'

‘Make me, you lezzo.'

Kerrie turned her back, turned the volume higher and the West turned up his own.

Unreasonable anger stirred in Malcolm's gut. His blood boiled with anger. How was one supposed to teach these days? How was one expected to control the out-of-control?
What this bastard of a being needed was a sound clip under the ear.

‘Outside, West!' Malcolm bawled.

The infants cowered and the junior mistress gestured for him to give it up. But why should he allow this swine of a swine to control his classroom? Why should the Wests and their ilk be allowed to control the future? God help the world. God help this lass and others like her.

There were few
in town Malcolm tolerated, even fewer that he actually approved of, but he respected this girl who had battled on alone for most of this year, and he wanted to murder the vile-mouthed little bastard, certain, at this moment, that he could, without compunction, knock his pinhead off and peg it to the school fence by its ears.

He stood and waddled to the whiteboard. No multicoloured chalk missiles
awaiting his pleasure. He'd tossed a lot of them in his time. He picked up the whiteboard cleaner, a near relative of the old blackboard duster. It had a solid plastic base. Able to locate the West by its noise, Malcolm aimed the whiteboard cleaner.

And, my word, he had not lost his accuracy!

For three long minutes the class was convinced he had committed murder. Blinds rattled to the ceiling
and the watchers groaned at the abrupt loss of a video, while five pinheaded, big-eared, big-footed Wests emerged from various seats to bewail the
loss of their relative. By the time Kerrie had stemmed the bleeding and taped the wound, the beast of grade six was stirring into open-mouthed silence.

The juniors moved back to the safe confines of their own room, the seniors dismissed, Kerrie telephoned
Jeff Rowan. It appeared that the silenced one could require transportation to Daree and a stitch or two or three.

‘From a plastic missile?' Malcolm was amazed, if somewhat chastened.

Later, seated at his borrowed table, shamed into sham submission by the lawman but still in possession of his licence, Malcolm retrieved his trusty thermos from the table drawer and poured the last of its amber
contents into his tea cup, catching all the drips; he spread his thighs, leaned back and sipped.

He had missed teaching when he retired, or thought he had until dragged back into harness by O'Rouke's absconding wife. Malcolm thought of the body found near Albury, which led him to thinking of the skeleton with its full set of teeth, not as yet identified, which led him to thinking of graves and
his son's grave, and of Ann's sweet Mandy, which led him to Ann's boys and to the minute girl child he'd viewed yesterday in the hospital nursery.

He had visited with Ann, alone, after Ellie Burton left to do a little shopping. Young Benjamin at school, the tyrant sleeping, Matthew at playgroup and peace in the house. For an hour Ann had been his own. A wonderful hour. And for the first time
in many a year, Ann had spoken of the future, of one day returning to study.

‘So motherhood isn't necessarily a life sentence, Burton?' he had said.

‘I think it's a part of the learning process, sir.'

Always ‘Burton'. Always ‘sir'. Was he friend, father or teacher to this girl, this woman?

There had been a wholeness about her yesterday, too long missing. Pregnant last week, slim as a reed
this week. Jillian had spent three days delivering their son, and three years recovering.
Poor Jillian. These days he thought of her often, and of his son, of the baby he had held and dreamed for.

Malcolm shook his head, shaking memory away. Babies had little personality, but the wisp, Bethany, had frowned at him yesterday, recognised him. So new, yet her eyes had been old, as if her premature
birth had left intact the memories of her every former time on earth. What a world she will inherit, he thought. A world ruled by Wests.

Until three-thirty Malcolm sat in the empty classroom, sipping, thinking, until the electronic bell jangled, releasing him to waddle up to the Central for his daily refill. Safer to leave his car parked at the school today, out of view of the town dictator.
And his heart needed the exercise. He'd seen his doctor yesterday.

‘Walk,' the man had warned him. ‘Walk, and cut your food intake by half or you'll be dead inside twelve months.'

‘Promises, promises,' Malcolm had replied.