Henry’s Daughter (30 page)

‘Where is she?' he says.

‘Doing the washing,' Lori replies, quick as a wink.

There is the sound of metal being nailed now and more muffled yelling from Mavis. Alan gets up, Jamesy follows him out. They close the back door.

Vinnie is watching that door, staring at it, sort of expecting Mavis to come through; he's still drinking his beer, though, and the little ones are watching him drink, watching
him roll a smoke.

‘Go outside and play,' Lori says. They don't move, just stare at Vinnie as if he's flown in from Mars. His eyes are glassy and he's rubbing at his bald head. Lori wipes her tablecloth. She'll have to take it outside, spray it with Mr Muscle then hose it clean. Or buy another one.

Then Henry's radio starts playing on the fence and Mick and Eddy come back to the kitchen. This
time they leave the door open.

It's going to happen. It's going to happen soon the way Vinnie is putting away the beer. It's going to happen and they can't wait for it to happen. Mick's eyes are smiling but he's whistling softly, stopping his mouth from smiling. Eddy is just leaning on the sink, wiping at the taps with the dishrag.

Vinnie gets up, flicks Eddy's ear, calls him moron, calls him
Sadie, the Cleaning Lady. Eddy doesn't say a word, just keeps wiping at the taps until Vinnie swaggers by him and out to the brick room. Alan and Jamesy are leaning, one on either side of that bolted door. They watch Vinnie pull the bolt, step inside to use the loo, then Alan pushes him in the small of the back, Jamesy slams the door, and Alan rams the bolt home.

‘How about that, you great, ugly,
bald-headed, computer-crashing moron mongrel?' Eddy yells. And he's sure getting to sound more like Willama.

‘How about that, shit-for-brains?' Jamesy adds.

‘You're dead. You're stone dead. You just don't know it yet. Shit!' Vinnie screams. He's found Mavis and she's not doing the washing, but Mick's drill is drilling again. He's got three lengths of four-by-two front fence railing which he's
already cut to length and drilled. Now he's screwing them to the doorframe, and no one is forcing him to screw them either. He's screwing them fast, using long screws, strong screws, barricading that door which Vinnie is throwing himself at.

He's not going to get through, but it's probably better for the little ones if they don't hear what is going on behind that door, so they leave the dishes
in the sink and go over the railway line to town, eat ice-cream at McDonald's.

The kids come home late – but not late enough. Mavis is vomiting, and moaning. They hear Vinnie. ‘I told you. I warned you, you mad bitch.'

‘You've killed me, you bastard.'

‘Shiii-eeet,' Eddy says. ‘He's bigger than I thought he was.'

‘You took it. I didn't make you smoke it.'

‘She's got into his stuff,' Lori says. She tosses the little ones in the bath, closes all the doors
because Mavis is punctuating her bouts of vomiting now with calls on God to save her. It's sort of funny – from the other side of the door – sort of non-Mavis.

‘How long will it last? How long?' Mavis is begging Vinnie to say five minutes, but he doesn't; he never could tell a lie.

‘I dunno, I told you. A few hours, that's all. And don't you thump me again, or I'll thump you back. I didn't make
you do it. You lay off of me, you mad bitch.'

There's more vomiting, and more calling out for God's help. They have to get the little kids out of hearing range because the bathroom isn't out of hearing range.

‘Get into bed. All of you. Quick.'

‘Vinnie was bad, so he got put in with Mavis,' Neil says, his eyes staring at that door.

‘That's what happens, see. I told you. Now you get into bed
with the little ones and tell them a story, then go to sleep. All of you.'

In the brick room the noise goes on for hours. Mavis is losing it – she's lost it. She's talking crazy stuff, screaming at Vinnie like he's someone else, like she's somewhere else.

‘We'll have to get the doctor,' Mick says. ‘I'm going over to Nelly's.'

‘We can't get the doctor. Wait.'

It doesn't get any better. Mavis
is bawling and talking and Lori is finally learning some stuff about Mavis's father. She's crowding that door, learning a lot and wishing Vinnie would stop his bawling so she could learn more.

It sounds terrible. There is stuff coming out of Mavis that no one knew she had in her, like she's a tap blocked up with gunk and it's turned on and pouring out black slime. ‘I loved you, you perverted
bastard. You were all I had to love. They didn't tell me. Nobody told me what you'd done.'

There is stuff about her mother trying to kill her too, but Lori can't make head nor tail of that bit. Like, ‘Why didn't you let the crazy old bitch drown me at birth instead of slicing my life away, bit by bit?'

They set the radio volume louder and it pretty much cancels what Mavis is screaming. Mick
walks out to the street, looks at Nelly's house, now in darkness. Jamesy and Alan head for the potting shed to sample the noise level there while Lori and Eddy remain at the green door. They are getting a word or two when the music stops and the announcer cuts in; they are looking at each other, sort of wide eyed, when Mick comes back.

‘Someone is going to call the cops in a minute. You can hear
the noise up at the corner. We're going to have to turn the radio off. It's just making it worse, Lori; it sounds like a mob of druggies brawling at a party, and half the neighbours are out at their gates looking down this way.'

They turn the music down, wait, pray for silence – and don't get what they pray for. Mavis is going on about combing her father's hair. There's no sound at all from Vinnie.
Maybe she's killed him. They turn the light off, hoping the lack of light might shut her up.

It doesn't. It gets her screaming. ‘Help me. Somebody open the door.' They think she's back in the present until she starts screaming for Daddy. Like, ‘Help me, Daddy. It's dark, Daddy. I want Daddy.'

They run, turn the light on fast. ‘I was only a baby,' she's sobbing, and it's plain cruel awful. ‘I
didn't know why they hated me. They lived with you, you perverted bastard. They covered up for you and let me love you.' She's a demented thing, howling like they've never heard her howl before. She's raw inside, chewed up and raw and her guts are full of black slimy gore that keeps spilling out. Lori is getting scared. She's never heard of plain grass doing that to people. Maybe it was spiked and
she's overdosed. Maybe Vinnie had some of Greg's heroin or something mixed in with it.

They check on the little ones and they're out cold, all three curled together in Mavis's ex central sag. It looks like a whole bundle of little heads, close and safe. Their door is closed tonight. The bunk room boys give up and go to bed, close their door too. Mick and Lori walk a while, but they're tired.
They go to Mick's room, close his door, just to keep the noise in, then they sit on the beds, listening through the wall, through the open wardrobe doors, through the hole Mick drilled for the power board and extension cord. They learn a lot. Maybe they learn enough.

At three they know that Vinnie is still alive. ‘Lie down and sleep it off, for Christ's sake,' he moans.

Lori takes his advice,
lies down on Neil's bed. Maybe she dozes, but it's dawn before Mavis stops bawling and flakes, which allows them to turn Mick's light off and grab a few hours of sleep.

All quiet on the southeastern front come morning, apart from Mavis's raucous, flat on her back, chain-saw snore. They get out of the house early. It's Jamesy's day on house-watch duty, and it's not safe to let Neil go to school
today. He's sure to dob. It's not safe to stay in the house today either, so Jamesy and the little ones head for town with the high school kids. They've got money for lunch at McDonald's.

‘Everybody will meet up at the little park beside the post office at four, so no dawdling,' Lori says. ‘Don't go home. Don't go anywhere near the house. If we open that door now, then that's the end. We've just
got to ride it out. Nothing else we can do.'

There is no way to get food into the brick room because Mick has also barricaded the window with his four-by-two's and he's hammered a sheet of corrugated iron over the barricade, hung the shade cloth over the iron to disguise it. The prisoners are in lock-down mode. With the light off, maybe they'll sleep all day. They've got tap water, so they won't
dehydrate. Mick is going to work out some way to feed them tonight – anyway, a day of fasting can cleanse the system, the old diet book says, and by the sound of the slime coming out of Mavis last night, she sure needs some deep cleansing.

It gets to four o'clock, but it's a slow day. Jamesy and the little kids are tired out with looking for something to look at. They're waiting at the park,
and together the kids walk home, creep to the barricaded window. The brick room is silent, its occupants either dead or sleeping.

They wait until five. Dead silence. Mick drills two holes between the central boards of the green door. It's pitch dark in there, the occupants wouldn't know night from day. He gets Eddy's torch, shines its beam through one hole while peering through the other. And
he sees Mavis's leg move. He gets a better angle and sees Vinnie on the couch. He's intact.

‘His chest seems to be rising and falling,' Mick says, drilling more holes, to a pattern, then an ancient keyhole saw, which might have belonged to Jesus before Mick bought it at the market, works hard to cut out an eight by twenty centimetre slot. A terrible stink pours out.

‘Nothing we can do about
it. Mavis has got soap and stuff. Let them clean up their own mess.'

By six-thirty there are sounds of movement behind that door, sounds of the loo flushing, so they turn the light on. Lori has made two medicated custards; there is no way they can get a mug of cocoa through. She knocks on the door, offers a slim, sealed circular bowl through the slot. The cellmates are slow to move. Mavis comes,
takes the bowl, tries to take the slim, square bowl as well.

‘Is that you, Vinnie?'

‘Bloody no, you rotten little mongrels. Let me out,' Vinnie yells back.

‘Let him take his custard, Mavis, or you don't get your drink.'

Then Vinnie is at the door and he's not interested in the custard or the extra spoon. He's throwing himself at the door, threatening murder.

An eye to the slot, Lori watches
Mavis slurp her custard, clean the bowl with the edge of her finger. Then she does something very interesting. She grabs Vinnie's arm and sort of throws him away from the door so he slams against her bed. And boy, she looks about as sprightly as old George Foreman! She looks as if she could go a round or two without dropping dead!

‘Last night didn't do her any physical harm,' she says to Eddy,
who is waiting with a plastic cordial bottle, soft enough to dent. ‘But how she can eat in there, I don't know. It stinks like something's dead.'

‘Throw out your dead. Throw out your dead,' Eddy keens, his hands cupping his mouth to the slot. He gets Mavis's custard container, no lid, shoved in his face. He tries to force the bottle through but it won't go, so Mick has to cut out a bit more wood
in the middle of the slot. Mavis snatches the bottle neck the next try, and she tugs, fractures the plastic and wastes half the slimmer's cordial but, more important, wastes the dissolving orange flavoured vitamin in it. They cost a fortune.

‘Share what's left, Mavis,' Lori yells. ‘And give us back the lid of your custard dish or you won't get any dinner tonight. And both of you, you clean up
that mess in there. I can smell sweat and sick and stinking feet from out here so it must be ten times as bad in there.'

They leave them to share or not to share and Lori puts the unused medicated custard into the fridge. Vinnie might eat it later, and if he won't, Mavis will. It's obvious that he's losing the war. He's big, but Mavis has got a psychological advantage.

That night the fence
radio is playing and the neighbours are out watering their gardens. They've missed their entertainment. The language coming from the pen is more normal today, though Vinnie is doing a bit of pleading to be let out. It sounds so okay out on the street that Lori takes the opportunity to walk over and catch up with Nelly, who is weeding her front lawn and getting an earful.

‘Vinnie came home drunk
and smoking marijuana. Mavis is keeping him in the house,' she says. It's true enough. She stands looking towards the house that used to look about as bad on the inside as the outside. For some reason it now looks really terrible from across the road. No wonder Karen turned up her pig-nose at it.

‘How is she?' Nelly asks, sort of fishing for details.

‘She was okay until Vinnie came home. He's
stirred her up again – the only thing that settles her down a bit is music.'

‘Well, it's not settling me down, I can tell you that much. I can't stand that thump-thump-thump jungle beat crap.'

‘We'll change the station.'

They have a good talk later, and Nelly tells Lori how to make syrup dumplings, which are easy. The kids have them for dinner. Mavis and Vinnie get a container of Donny's tinned
sausages and vegetables, and toast, or maybe Mavis gets the two meals. And who cares if she's over her thousand calories?

Three days later and their new selection of slot-sized containers with lids are coming out of the brick room with the lids on. Vinnie is tame. There is no more calling Mavis a mad fat bitch – he's promising to leave the house and never to set foot in Willama again. He's promising
to take Greg's stolen DVD player and the other stuff to the cops and give evidence against him; he's promising he won't touch Eddy's computer and he's slurping his medicated custard like a lamb. They are giving them one Valium each, twice a day, and they're counting the rest at night, and it's so much trouble medicating the two of them and making sure the right one gets the toast with the
Aropax that they give up, take Mavis off her antidepressants. She doesn't sound a bit depressed. Maybe she's enjoying the company. Maybe they should have got her a dog or something months back.

Eddy reckons Vinnie had speed pills, and Mavis is having a go at them. She's, like, on a high. She's Speedy Gonzales with a foul mouth.

‘Bringing bloody drugs into my house, feeding me bloody drugs, you
skin-head little bastard.' She's got the adjective wrong. ‘Sit down and shut up or I'll finish you off now and save the bloody hangman the trouble in a few years time. I should have drowned you at birth.'

‘You tell him, Mave,' Eddy eggs her on. ‘You tell him.'

‘He's exactly what she needed, a bit of exercise to tighten up the flab,' Jamesy says. ‘He couldn't have come home at a better time.
I mean, if we'd given her that treadmill for Christmas, she probably would have broken her neck the first time she used it, but a few weeks of this, and by Christmas she'll be ready for it.'

They squirt air-freshener in through the slot, push in a clean tent for Mavis and one of Henry's singlets and a pair of his underpants for Vinnie. They poke in the thinnest towels and try poking a worn blanket
through, but even with Mavis pulling, it won't go. Vinnie has got the tartan one from the couch, and Mavis's winter blanket cape, and she must have donated one of her pillows to him. The kids know they should have thought about blankets and pillows – they should have thought to toss a mattress in before they barricaded the door – even built a feeding hatch. Nothing much they can do about it
now. If they make the slot any bigger, it will weaken those central boards, Mick says.

They spend a lot of time away from the house and when they're home, turn the television volume up a notch. They serve the prisoners three slim meals a day and life goes on.