Ghost Child (23 page)

I never forgot the Cashman kids. Lauren, especially, had some kind of hold on me, and don’t ask me how, but I knew – I just knew – I’d see her again one day. When I did, I saw her, like everyone did, on the front of the paper, under a headline that said ‘Love Aide in Family Tragedy’. They had a photograph of her coming down the court staircase. She still had that hair. I was curious to hear what had happened to her. I knew that her mother had gone to prison, and had died before she could be released. The boyfriend had gone to prison, too, but I had no idea what had happened to him. Paroled, probably, and when that happens, you lose track of them until they commit some other crime. The kids had gone into care and become state wards, and the Department doesn’t feel obliged to tell the cops what happens
to them after that. You just hope you don’t have to turn up ten years later and arrest them because they’ve gone off the rails.

About a year after Jacob died, a petition went around the Barrett Estate saying the house should be demolished. Nobody had been living there and the place had become an eyesore. There were rumours about bloodstains on the walls. All nonsense, but you can’t stop that stuff going around. One group of people, still angry about what happened to Jake, I suppose, wanted to burn the place to the ground. They actually put that up as a proposal; they seriously thought they should be allowed to set fire to the joint, as an act of revenge or some sort of catharsis. The fire brigade said, ‘Look, there is just no way we are allowing people to set fire to a house on a suburban street, with neighbours on both sides, so just forget about it.’

That didn’t put people off, though. The house mysteriously caught fire one night. Kids had been through the place, ripping out the oven and anything else they thought they could use. The fire fighters put out the fire and boarded up the windows and nailed up the front door, and, boy, did it look like crap then. The house had always slumped, and now it was blackened and the windows were bare, and people really started to complain. It was a prime target for local teenagers, who would dare each other to break in there. Parents didn’t help matters much. They used to tell kids that the place was haunted.

After about five years, which is around as long as it takes the Department of Housing in Victoria to do anything these days, they came in and replaced the windows and painted the frames and dragged out the burnt mattresses. They said they were going to put more tenants in there! I could hardly believe it. The first family that arrived were Somali. They came straight from the refugee camp in Kenya to DeCastella Drive! There were nine of them, including six children and a cousin, and it was about four weeks before neighbours got them to understand what happened in that house. They fled. A lot of those refugees are Christian, but some of them have the old black-magic beliefs and they said they couldn’t stand it. They heard noises, and they were sure the soul of the child who died had remained in the house.

The place stayed empty for a while after that, but then the Department noticed somebody was tapping into the power grid from there. They sent us to investigate, and when we knocked down the front door we found every room filled with hydroponics and marijuana plants. They were growing in rows of pots in the kitchen, the lounge, even in the bath. We cleaned the place out again, boarded it up once more, and now we keep it on our rounds, which means we drive by occasionally to check on it and make sure nobody moves in there without permission.

I told the kids at the local schools, ‘You stay away from that house on DeCastella Drive. It’s been set fire
to, and it’s not safe.’ I’m not sure they took any notice. To them, it was haunted, and what kid doesn’t want to believe in a haunted house?

Truth be told I’ve heard the noises in there, too. I go in from time to time. I tell myself it’s to make sure squatters haven’t moved in, but yeah, I mostly just stand there and look around and maybe remember a few things. The place creaks and moans. Obviously, it’s not a ghost. It’s the timber in the frame of the house. It stretches and cools, and that makes a noise. There’s wagtails in the roof, too. I’ve seen them twisting on the lawn, and they’ve got into the eaves and they make a racket. That’s what people hear, not ghosts. There’s no ghosts, not real ones, anyway.

I woke before dawn, and why wouldn’t I? I was in a strange bed with a strange man beside me. I was disoriented. Sitting up in the dark, I thought, ‘Where am I again? Where is this bed? Where is this room, and how does it fit into my life?’

Then I remembered. I was in a queen-size bed in the Gundagai Motel on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River, and the breathing body lying next to mine wasn’t that of a stranger: it was my brother, Harley.

He was stretching his whole body, pointing his big toes out and putting his arms – or rather his arm, and the other stumpy thing – over his head and grunting.

My instinct was to nestle down and spoon against him, but he broke his pose and fished around the floor for a cigarette.

‘Want one?’ he asked, and I said, ‘I told you, I’m giving up.’

‘I noticed that,’ he said, handing me the packet, and I took one.

We’d eaten a family-size pizza the night before, but Harley said he was hungry.

‘You want breakfast?’ he asked, and I said, ‘Sure.’

He told me he’d take me to his favourite place, the place he always stopped at on the road to Melbourne, and then we’d go to ‘Mum’s’.

‘She’s probably already got the jug on,’ he said.

Did he really think this was a good idea? To just bowl up at his mum’s place and expect her to be pleased to see me?

He seemed to think it would be fine. He said, ‘Mate, we’ve been expecting you for a while.’ He was trying to put me at ease. ‘I called her. She’s looking forward to meeting you.’

I didn’t believe that. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and went into the bathroom. I must have been nervous because I remember I found it hard to open the plastic packet that the white soap came in. I dropped the face washer by my feet and let water pool around my ankles. I was thinking to myself, ‘How is this going to go?’

The café wasn’t far from the motel – maybe half a kilometre. Harley drove. He seemed pretty excited.

‘Mum and Tony used to take me here when I was a kid,’ he said. ‘We’d get yabbies from the Murrumbidgee,
and come here for milkshakes. And they taught me that song …’

He started to sing, ‘There’s a track winding back, down the old forgotten shack – ’

I said, ‘It’s an old-
fashioned
shack.’

He continued, ‘Along the … road to … Gunda … gai!’

The café was called the Niagara. It had curved glass windows, and silver metal lettering – N I A G A R A – above the counter and I remember thinking, ‘What is this? Some 50s-style milk bar from
Happy Days
?’ It had a vinyl booth and the walls were papered with cuttings from newspapers. The stories were all about an Australian prime minister, John Curtin, who had stopped at the Niagara one night in 1942, in the middle of the Second World War. He had been en route from Canberra to Melbourne and, according to the clippings, he’d knocked on the door. The owner told whoever was knocking to go away, but then he saw Curtin through the glass door and let him in, and made him steak and eggs at a table in the kitchen.

We ordered steak and eggs, too. A waitress brought some coffee.

Harley said, ‘You want me to get a newspaper?’

Did I want him to get a newspaper? He and I both knew they’d be filled with stories from the inquest. Did I want to read whatever was now being said about me – the ‘Love Aide’ – in the newspaper?

No.

But then, Yes.

I couldn’t decide, so I didn’t say anything. Harley said, ‘Okay, look, I’ll get one, and if it’s real bad, I won’t tell you what it says.’ The minute he was gone, I found myself thinking, ‘Come back.’ And then he was back, and sliding into the seat, saying, ‘I guess you’re not important enough to make the front page any more.’ He turned a few pages, then said, ‘Here we are.’

There was a photograph of me – upside down from where I was sitting, coming down the steps of the court. There was a photograph of Stephen, too, the one from the hospital’s website. The headline said ‘Bass Admits Affair’.

Harley said, ‘You want me to read it?’

I said. ‘Just give me the short version.’

He cleared his throat and began to read.
‘Top obstetrician Stephen Bass last night released a statement acknowledging a sexual relationship with the so-called Love Aide, Lauren Cameron.

Mr Bass, who is married with adult children, said his relationship with Lauren Cameron, also known as Lauren Cashman, was a private matter and he would not comment further.’

To myself, I thought, ‘Did he say “relationship”, I hope he said “relationship”.’

Harley went on, ‘
Ms Cameron
– that would be you, mate –
has this week been giving evidence at the inquest into the death of Baby Boyce.
And that’s it. That’s all it
says. The rest is just blah, blah, blah, stuff we already know.’

I wanted to ask, ‘Do you think it means anything that he says we have a relationship,’ but I knew it would sound pathetic. Harley said, ‘What a shithead your bloke turned out to be. There’s not even an apology to the lady who lost her baby.’

Harley stirred his coffee and studied the picture of Stephen. He said, ‘What I really don’t get is why you’d want to go with such an
old man
.’

I said, ‘Fifty-one is not old.’

He said, ‘It’s ancient, mate. Seriously, look at this geezer. He’s a pensioner. What did you see in him?’

What did I see in him? Solidity. Maturity. Respectability. I wanted him to marry me, and transfer to me some of the stability with which he lived his life. But when I told Harley this, he spluttered into his coffee. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘if you were looking for a
husband
, probably would have been best to find one that didn’t already have a
wife
. All this time you’re thinking he’s Sir Galahad, does it occur to you that he’s
married
? Can you imagine the conversation they’re having right now?’

I could imagine it. In Stephen’s version of events, I’d be the whore and he’d be the one who’d been
seduced
.

I wanted to think about something else. I asked Harley, ‘Have you ever done it with a married woman?’

Harley said, ‘Oh yes.’

‘Yes?’

Harley said, ‘I may
seem
perfect, but it ain’t so, Lauren.’

I said, ‘Did you feel guilty?’

Harley said, ‘No. I felt
afraid
, especially when one of them told me her old man kept guns.

‘But seriously,’ he said. ‘What’s the deal with this guy? I just don’t get why you’d be hung up on this dude. He’s, like, old, married and an arsehole, and you’re my sister, but, hell, you’re a hottie. I don’t mind telling you that. And you’re hangin’ out with a dude who was born, like, the same year as, I don’t know, our
dad
.’

I said, ‘Well, maybe I just liked the fact that he seemed to like me.’

Harley said, ‘Oh, man, he
liked
you. I bet he jerked off nine nights in ten, liking you. What I want to know is, can this bloke even
do
it, at fifty?’

I was excused from answering because the waitress came and cleared our plates. She said, ‘Would you like more coffee?’ I looked at her apron, and at the Jiffies on her feet, and thought of myself waiting tables not so many years ago. I said, ‘Yes please.’

Waiting for her to return with the coffee pot, I folded one of the napkins into a paper version of the Sydney Opera House, a trick I learnt from Pop. Harley went back to the newspaper.

‘There’s another story,’ he said. ‘You want me to read it?’

I shrugged.

He read aloud. ‘Love Aide in Family Tragedy.’

I must admit, it didn’t immediately occur to me what those words meant. I was thinking about Stephen, not about Jake. Harley was quiet for a moment, then he said, ‘It’s actually about Jake,’ and he started to read out the main points.
‘Lauren Cameron is Lauren Cashman, whose brother, Jacob Cashman, died in a house on DeCastella Drive on the Barrett Estate in November 1982.’

He glanced up at me and must have seen my expression. ‘That’s all it really says,’ he said. ‘It’s like somebody has joined the dots, and the rest is blah, blah, from the inquest.’

I remembered how close I’d been to talking to Stephen about DeCastella Drive. Had things gone better in the hotel room, had his pager not gone off, had the baby not died, I might have raised it with him. It would have been a mistake. Probably he wouldn’t have cared less. But Harley would care. I said, ‘How much do you remember about that house, Harley?’

He said, ‘Not much. Nothing, actually.’

I said, ‘Do you know what happened that night, with Jake?’

He said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I know.’

I said, ‘Do you know for sure, or do you just know what people told you?’

The way Harley looked at me then, I’ll never forget it. He looked right into my eyes and said, ‘Is there a difference?’

He went out to the car. I fixed up the bill. Outside, I found him standing with his backside to the ute, grinding a cigarette into the dirt. I said, ‘That’ll go into the river system, you know.’ He said, ‘Are you a hippy? You might think you’re a hippy, but wait until you meet Mum.’

Not for the first time, I thought, ‘
Your
mum.’

We got back into the car, and rode in silence for a while. I pulled a cap down over my eyes and dozed in the morning sunshine that was pouring through the windscreen. When I woke, Harley told me that I’d just missed a horse that had the ‘biggest donger ever’.

‘I should have taken a photograph,’ he said.

I said, ‘Right. And if you sent something like that to get processed, do you think you might get yourself arrested?’

‘Mate,’ he said. ‘It’s a digital camera. I’d email it around. In fact, mate, give me the email address of your boyfriend and I’ll send it to him. Tell him you’ve got a new bloke.’

Was this, I wondered, how siblings spoke to each other? Did they wind each other up like this and then laugh it off? Harley behaved like nothing he ever said could cause me any offence – I wouldn’t get angry, or upset – and he was right. But I wasn’t so sure I could do the same.