Ripples on a Pond (44 page)

‘If nothing else is achieved out here, they'll clean this place out tonight.'

Whether they cleaned it out or not was of no account to Cara.

You'll keep, moll.

Was he over there, watching her? Was Tracy over there, being eaten alive by mosquitoes? Cara had taken her to a barbeque at Peg Macy's one night and Tracy had been covered with coin-sized mozzie bites for days.

You'll keep, moll.

She had kept.

A flashlight found her face. It swung to Georgie's then back again. ‘What's your business here?' the torch bearer asked.

‘She's the missing girl's mother and I'm her cousin. And I've got a headache already without you shining that in my eyes.'

Cara didn't doubt Georgie's headache. In the light from the torch she could see the bloody elastoplast placed over her brow minutes ago, the eye beneath it already closing.

There'd always been more to Georgie Morrison than her face. The beam of light found her hair. With no rubber band to hold it, it hung round her shoulders.

‘Gina?' the torch bearer asked.

Georgie looked up at that name. Only one man had dared to call her Gina and lived to tell the tale. She shaded her good eye with a hand, attempting to see behind the light.

‘It's me. Jack. Jack Thompson.'

To Cara, he was just another middle-aged cop, balding, thickening around the waistline. Not to Georgie. She hadn't spoken to him since '59; she'd dodged him at the centenary party – or dodged his wife and boys. He had two; she'd seen a birth notice for his first in the newspaper.

Thompson. Dianne and Jack are delighted to announce the safe arrival of John David, first grandson for Tom and Katie. Seven pounds, eight ounces.

At the time it had given her the whisper of a heartache, but only for an instant, then she'd sent his parents a congratulation card.

When she'd started studying with Shane Murphy, she'd thought about Jack, or about the son born to him, a son she might have produced with him. He was the only bloke she'd ever got close enough to to be in danger of reproducing.

‘How have you been?' he asked. Same voice.

‘Currently concussed,' she said. ‘Play your torch beam over the creek. I can feel them over there, watching me.'

‘They're saying she was half-naked when she ran.'

‘If she'd been wearing a shirt, Jenny might have got a grip on her.'

‘What did she hit you with?'

‘Something hard.'

‘We've got a bunch of locals down your end of town, working their way through to here. One of the Halls said it's not far.'

‘Teddy,' Georgie said. ‘He knows the bush like the back of his hand.'

They turned as a herd of women and kids started protesting about something.

‘There's more kids than sheep out here these days,' he said.

‘There's more money in the breeding of them.'

‘Your wound is leaking.' He played the torch beam again at her head. ‘You need it seen to.'

‘I will.'

‘You're not doing any good sitting down here.'

‘I am if she's over there. The mozzies will be eating her alive.'

‘You didn't see their car?'

‘I saw her and that's all I saw. But they need wheels, or they wouldn't have been trying to get Jenny's.'

*

Joe Flanagan's shed had given up a half-full four-gallon drum of petrol. Collins spilled a cupful in his haste to get it into his tank, but he got the car started before he heard the cops' sirens. If he gave any thought to Raelene, it was to hope that they'd got the crazy bitch. She'd got him into this.

He drove up the lane that led to the old Willama Road, a dirt track he'd ridden a few times on his bike. It offered him safe passage for twelve or fifteen miles, then fed out to the sealed bitumen highway.

Melbourne 264 K

Should have stayed in Melbourne. Had to get back there.

To the left and right, the bitumen road looked clear. He made a right turn, and was rounding a bend when he saw a line of tail-lights ahead and a flash of blue light. The bastards had him boxed in. With no thought as to what might be behind, he did a handbrake U-turn and got his nose pointing back the other way.

Back to the dirt track he went, cursing that mindless bitch. She'd found her kid's address, or paid a cleaner to find it. Kill two birds with the one stone, she'd said. He'd promised to get that moll.

He turned left and turned his lights off. On this dead-flat bloody land, you could see forever at night. There was moon enough to see the road ahead. He was searching for a back route into Willama and came on one too fast. The car slewed in the dust as he made a sharp right turn onto a goat track that led vaguely north. He didn't know it, and followed its wending way slowly, passing a few farm gates. He followed that track for what seemed like miles, each mile sucking up petrol he didn't have. Hoped each curve of that bastard of a track would lead him to Willama. Plenty of cars there – or a bike – a big powerful bastard that would take him anywhere.

The track dead-ended on Stock Route Road, half a mile from the mission bridge. The cops would be watching it.

He'd never handled being boxed in. It sucked the breath out of him.

He sat eyeing that strip of bitumen, the motor off, conserving his little petrol. He rolled a joint and thought of the warm beer he hadn't bothered loading. Got the joint burning and inhaled a lungful of acrid smoke. Held it, held it long, while considering his options.

Lie low with the blacks for a week or two. He'd done it before. They weren't fond of cops.

Or swim. He'd done that before, then caught a lift with a truckie.

Needed the car, or what was in its glove box. It was plastic-wrapped; he might get it across dry.

He started the motor and drove into the blacks' settlement; drove by a group of them sitting in a dusty front yard around a campfire. The government had built them rows of small houses, with fences, but, like him, the blacks didn't like being boxed in. Tonight he wanted to be black and free to sit with them, to pass around the flagon, then sleep where he fell.

Two rose as his car crawled by. He kept on going. Blacks and grog wasn't a good combination – unless you were supplying the grog.

He parked in scrub beside the creek, and saw a larger mob drinking down by the water, the women as drunk and loud as the men. Locked the car, then left it to walk the few yards to where the build-up to the bridge began. Someone had complained about the name of that bridge.
Blacks Bridge
maybe, he thought.
Settlement Bridge
. Stood at the railing, staring across, seeking the bastards' roadblock.

Blinding lights of something coming across. A transport. It kept coming, unhindered. The bastards wouldn't be interested in stopping vehicles heading in, just those heading out. Turned his back until the lights went by.

Minutes later, a ute came through, overloaded with blacks. The general store, white-run, didn't sell grog. Plenty of pubs in Willama did. If the cops were waiting on the far side, they would have pulled that ute over. There must have been a dozen clinging on it – though blacks were becoming the new untouchables to cops.

Watched two more transports cross that bridge before one came from his end. That one he watched with interest. It kept going, its tail-lights disappearing into the forest on the far side. That truck made the decision for him.

He walked back to his car. Committed to crossing that bridge, he planted his foot. If they were over there, he'd drive right through the bastards and go out in a blaze of glory. They weren't locking him up again.

He got across. No trail of tail-lights, no lights at all. He thought he'd done it.

They were there, their car parked at an angle across his lane two hundred yards beyond the northern approach to the bridge. With too much speed to stop and no room to turn, he pushed the pedal to the floor and swerved around their puny barrier.

An international truck carrying a load of half-grown calves got Dino Collins. It wasn't travelling fast. The impact didn't kill him, but it didn't do him a lot of good either. They closed the Mission Bridge to traffic for an hour while they cut him out of the wreck.

A W
ASTED
L
IFE

J
ack Thompson had driven up from Melbourne at midday. He'd arrived at Monk's sometime after three and had been on his feet since. He was still on them, drinking poor coffee, when the news came through that they'd got Collins, that he'd been alone in the car, that no sign had been found of the missing child.

The time now close to eleven, it was too late to be knocking on folk's doors, though getting Collins might be reason enough to knock on Georgie's. Seeing her sitting beside the creek, looking the same as when he'd left her, had jolted something hard inside him. His mother had once told him that you never get over your first love. He'd never got over Georgie, just given up on her. And he wasn't sorry. He had a good life, a good wife, a nice house and two boys – hardly boys. Johnny was already taller than he. He wasn't sorry, just suffering a mild case of delayed first-love concussion.

If he'd thought about Georgie these last years, he'd seen her married and gone from Woody Creek; had seen her aged too. Where he'd been, time had moved too fast. This place appeared to have stood still since '59.

Ten past eleven when he got to the house. It dragged him back a year or two. He'd been in on the birth of the deformed construction. The chicken-wire fence was down, as it had been down during the days of the working bee. Had no lights been burning, he would have turned the car around, but every light was on, indoors and out. He parked beside the ute he'd watched driven away from the commune and got out, opened the chicken-wire gate.

Same sign over the same old door. He'd been at Georgie's side when she'd painted that length of leftover floorboard white, then added her black block letters. He'd helped screw it to the wall above her front door. She hadn't liked what they'd done to her grandmother's rooms.

The door was closed tonight. He knocked twice before a bolt was drawn and the door scraped open, over cement.

Harry Hall standing there, long and skinny, as unchanged as Georgie. Jack had seen a fair bit of Harry and his wife back in '59.

‘You've found the little girl,' Harry said, his voice low.

‘No. No. We got Collins though, out at the Mission Bridge.' He offered his hand. ‘Jack Thompson. You knew me when I had a bit of hair and carried a few less stone.'

Woody Creek had known a lot of cops since '59, but Harry remembered Georgie's first and only boyfriend. He led him through
The Abortion
to the kitchen, to where Georgie sat, to where Jen Hooper stood, little changed, to where Elsie stifled a yawn, very changed. Then he saw a second, older Jen Hooper sitting beside Jim.

‘Tracy?' the one who looked like Jen but wasn't said.

Same posh voice as the cousin he'd met in the dark, the missing baby's foster mother. Obviously some sort of close relative of Georgie's mother. She was taller, but had her hair.

He shook hands with the older version, shook Jim's hand, while telling them there'd been no word yet on the little girl.

‘Collins had a head-on with a loaded transport and they reckon he was going like the clappers. They say he could have spinal injuries. He lost a lot of blood.'

No one cared about Collins or his loss of blood.

‘Raelene wasn't with him?' Jenny asked.

‘No sign of her either.'

The foster mother had lost interest. She sat, a makeshift sheeting sling supporting her right arm.

‘The fact that the little one wasn't in the car is good news,' he said, wanting to offer her a little hope. ‘It took them an hour to cut him out of it.'

Georgie's one good eye was looking at him. Her left eye had closed. The lump of bloody plaster he'd seen out at Monk's had been replaced by strips of white plaster, pink plaster now, the wound still oozing pink fluid. A roll of toilet paper on the table before her. Plastic bag of used pink tissue beside it.

‘That needs stitching,' he said.

‘We can't tell her anything,' Jenny said.

They were drinking coffee. Jack wouldn't have refused a mug had it been offered. It wasn't. They wanted him out there, searching for Tracy. He wanted to look at Georgie.

‘I'm off until daylight,' he said. ‘I'll drive you down to the hospital. It looks as if your cousin needs to go down there too.'

‘I'll drive down in the morning,' Georgie said.

‘The sooner it's stitched, the less of a scar it will leave.'

‘I've already told her that two dozen times,' Jenny said.

‘Tomorrow,' Georgie said.

She wasn't leaving Cara, and Cara wasn't going anywhere until they found Tracy.

Robert's car wouldn't be going anywhere for a while. Along with the corner window, one headlight had been smashed, and the radiator rammed back onto the fan. It was gone from the yard now, towed into town by Teddy Hall.

Margot was in bed. She'd moved faster than they'd seen her move for a while when Teddy had walked in. He hadn't been inside that house in ten years, but he'd had a coffee with them tonight before looking at the cars. Jenny's he'd pronounced ‘driveable'. Its driver's side door had been brutalised and its boot was now roped shut, but they'd built those old cars solid.

‘Coffee?' Georgie asked Jack.

‘It would go down well,' he said.

Jenny made it. ‘That's the last of your milk, Georgie.'

Elsie had milk. Harry went across the paddock to fetch two bottles. They planned to sit drinking coffee until daylight.

*

Old Joe Flanagan, or his dogs, broke up their night watch before Jack had emptied his mug.

Joe owned a pair of red kelpies and the buggers had been barking on and off all night. They rarely barked at night. Joe had taught them not to. They'd barked while he and his missus had watched an old movie, and when it ended and his missus turned the television off, he'd gone out back to shut the barking buggers up.

‘Lay down, you pair of mongrels,' he roared, and when his roar failed to settle them, he knew that some bastard was about.

He and his missus had little to do with anyone in town, and nothing to do with their nearest neighbours. They knew that something big was going on over there tonight. Rarely saw any light from that house. Tonight he could see plenty glinting between the trees.

He'd had two cops knocking at his door ten minutes after the movie had started. They hadn't told him why, but they'd wanted to search his outbuildings – and were still probably around somewhere. The dogs would get rid of them.

Never one to take chances, he returned to the house to arm himself with a loaded rifle, then unclipped the dogs' chains.

‘Sic'em, Red. Sic'em, Rusty.'

The pair took off, not towards the back fence, but towards the road. He followed behind them, rifle at the ready.

His dogs had found something. They were yelping, pawing, peeing on a pile of rubbish some bastard had dumped near his front fence.

‘What is it, Joey?' his wife called out the front door.

‘Rubbish-dumping bastards again,' he called back.

Beer in a carton – four full bottles – and a larger cardboard carton beside it. The dogs weren't interested in the beer. They were yelping at the larger carton.

‘Sit, you mad mongrels!' he roared.

They sat, and he rolled the carton over, seeking a way in. There was something heavy in it. Someone had wasted a lot of tape in sealing it, then punched air holes through one side.

He thought pups, some useless bastard's litter of unwanted mongrels, and yelled to his missus to bring him a sharp knife.

Joe Flanagan, his missus and their dogs found Tracy King curled into that cardboard carton, unconscious but breathing.

At eleven twenty-five, Joe ran through Gertrude's orchard, bellowing like his bull.

*

Tracy was on her way to the Royal Children's Hospital by air ambulance, Cara at her side, when at two thirty Jack Thompson drove Georgie home from Willama hospital, her wound numbed and closed by eight stitches, her mind numbed by two sudden-death painkillers a sister had fed to her. She was having trouble keeping her good eye open.

She weaved when she got out of the car, and Jack got his arm around her. He held her all the way to the kitchen, which was much as they'd left it three hours ago. Elsie was asleep on her chair, but still holding her fan of cards close to her chest.

‘Take her home,' Georgie said.

‘We're not leaving you down here by yourself,' Jenny said.

‘Our chaps will be down here all night,' Jack said.

Georgie didn't wait for the outcome of the argument. Holding on to walls, she made her own way to her bedroom, where she kicked off her shoes, sat down to pull her jeans off, then fell onto rather than into bed.

Maybe she heard Elsie and Harry call their goodnights; maybe she heard Jack's and Jim's footsteps on the old kitchen's concrete floor, heard them muttering when the sitting room door refused to open. Norman's comfortable chairs were in there – his old leather couch had always made a reasonable bed. Door locked by Margot, to lock Teddy out. For a lot of years, she'd locked him in.

Georgie was dead to the world when the Ford's motor started up, when Jen and Jim drove home to their own bed.

Red ute standing alone in Gertrude's yard then, a slim moon sliding beneath a cloud, an owl whispering by on silent wings, a mouse squeaking, then gone, while Georgie's subconscious attempted to sort out that crazy night in crazy dream.

She was lost in a labyrinth of tunnels beneath Charlie's shop. Couldn't find her way out and couldn't turn back. The ground was falling in behind her. And Raelene, a five year old, screaming as she ran ahead through the labyrinth. Always running away, always hiding, but she had Georgie's handbag and Cara's address was in it, and Georgie needed that address. Without it, Cara was lost again.

‘Georgie.'

Someone wanted her. Not Raelene. She tried to call out. Couldn't make her vocal cords work.

‘Georgie.'

Tunnel walls closing in, squeezing out the air. Glass breaking. Raelene could always find a way in, a way out.

Where had she found glass to break in that tunnel? She'd let in the light.

Had to open her eyes and find out where that light was coming from. Couldn't open them. That doctor had sewn her lids down.

‘Georgie!' Harry's voice in the tunnel.

And Jack shining that light in her eyes again.

Not Jack. A stranger's voice behind a roar of wind. ‘You're on fire.' Hands grabbing at her. Georgie didn't like hands grabbing at her.

She rose up from the pillow, and her head kept on going to slam into the ceiling and shatter. Hands dragging her from the bed as bits and pieces of her head attempted to land back on her shoulders. Ghosts flying in the light – wispy smoke ghosts.

Then awake. The stink of smoke. The roar. The light. Granny's old kitchen was burning. A fine breezeway when there was a breeze. A wind tunnel of fire tonight.

Jack's nautilus shell. In Granny's top dressing-table drawer.

Pulled away from grabbing hands, yanked the little top drawer free, then dived headfirst with it towards a torch beam. Hands shoving her from behind, more hands pulling her and Granny's top drawer through the window.

Elsie was there, awake and screaming. Georgie's bare feet walking on fallen chicken wire. Sharp chicken wire. Harry, drawing her forward. Mud beneath bare feet.

She had thirty pairs of shoes inside. She'd counted them two weeks ago. She had books in there, correspondence-college certificates, and she was clutching a drawer because Jack Thompson's nautilus shell was in it.

Someone took the drawer from her hands. Elsie's arms were around her, Elsie bawling. Harry's arm around both of them. Pyjama-pants-clad Harry. Scrawny, bare-chested Harry.

And strangers. Two. More than two. One of them had dragged her out of bed. Now he was telling her to move further back.

Her ute was too close to the blaze. No keys to move it to safety. Keys burning in there, with her handbag, her shoes, her books and certificates. She'd been proud of those certificates. She'd paid thirty-five dollars for one of those textbooks. Her new jeans too.

Looked around, behind her, at the wood heap. Looked beneath the walnut tree. Broke away from Elsie's arms to look for . . . to look for . . .

‘Margot!' Georgie yelled over the roar of flames. ‘Margot!'

‘She'd locked the doors,' Elsie howled. ‘She's locked in there.'

‘We tried,' Harry said. ‘We tried, Georgie.'

Open-mouthed, Georgie stared at Harry, well lit by the roaring fire. Stared at Elsie, knowing now why she was crying. Stepped back from them and back again, away from those tears, from the knowledge. Kept stepping back and back and back until her back was to the walnut tree and she could go no further.

Stood shaking in the demon light of the yard, shaking and staring at the shape of the burning rooms, at the flames that reached towards the stars. Stood shaking and staring, her hair glowing red in that demon light, her checked shirt barely reaching her thighs. Stood bare-legged, barefoot, mouth open, one eye open, watching Margot burn.

*

The fire truck came too late. Nothing the firefighters could do but stand well back and watch the roof of Gertrude's bedroom fall. A yard full of watchers saw that cloud of sparks rise up to join the stars in the sky.

Joe Flanagan and his missus watched. Their dogs watched.

Smoke gets in your eyes
. Jenny used to sing that song.

Smoke gets into an eye swollen shut, making it shed tears in sympathy with its mate. It had been a long time since Georgie had cried. She'd cried for Granny. She'd cried the day she'd swum away from Jack Thompson.

Fifty men, women and kids watched Margot burn, and saw Georgie Morrison cry.