Siddon Rock (11 page)

The day after Macha came home, and twelve years after Alf Barber left town, Sybil hired Jack Mulligan and his brother Jimmy to bring their tractors into town.
Come tomorrow morning
, she said.
Bring a clearing chain at least fifty yards long.
And so at six o'clock on a still winter's morning –
and on a Sunday, too
, the town whispered, when the story was told and re-told – the Mulligan brothers slung a chain around the dilapidated shack where Alf Barber had lived, and slowly pulled it forward into a tumbled heap of sticks and tin.

Drawn by the roar of tractors in the streets, people stood in the gravelled road watching the demolition. They saw remnants of the Barbers' domestic life – the bent iron of a bedstead, an unbroken porcelain chamber-pot with improbably pink roses twined among bright green leaves, several flattened saucepans, some tin plates, and other battered utensils whose uses were difficult to identify. A wardrobe with its door swinging from one hinge leaned against the remains of the fireplace, the cracked mirror reflecting crazy angles of broken timber, townspeople and sky as its momentum slowly worked the remaining hinge out of the cabinet. As the door fell it revealed to the town Alf Barber's two pairs of trousers and three shirts still hanging from the rod, and a tumble of blue-and-white-striped aprons on the floor of the wardrobe.

Jack Mulligan made to switch off the engine of his tractor but Sybil waved toward the back fence where the outdoor lavatory still stood, and shouted above the engine noise that the rubble should be pulled into a tighter heap.
On the second pass of the chain the cracked boards of the lavatory disintegrated into the pile, as did the wooden seat and toilet can it contained. The onlookers, not expecting any smell from the old can after so many years, gasped and moved back with hands held to mouth and nose as a foul miasma rose. Alistair Meakins – ever one for taking care of a sensitive nose and stomach – retched violently and left the scene, giving in to the sudden urge for a pot of tea in the calm of his own back verandah.

Brigid Connor covered her nose and commented to Granna that it was just as well a ghost's sense of smell wasn't good, as the stench of Alf Barber was like nothing she'd ever smelt before.
Can't smell a thing
, Granna said cheerfully. Maureen Mather, in her bed at the other side of town, struggled into her wheelchair and tried to close the windows against the sudden gust of malodorous wind. Even Kelpie Crush paled slightly, and found that using shallow, panting breaths made the odour a little more bearable. Kelpie, though, was more drawn forward than pushed back, wanting in a vague sort of way to find the source of the corruption.

Sybil directed the tractors into the street and well away from the rubble. In the silence after the roaring engines were turned off the bells from the Catholic church were suddenly loud, but no-one spoke and no-one moved. The play was not finished yet. Sybil picked up a bucket and threw kerosene over the pile, splashing it around well. She crouched down and from her pocket took a packet of matches, struck one and touched it to a piece of saturated wood.

Two minutes
, they say in the telling,
two minutes and that old shack went up like a beacon. Old wood it was. Mainly deal and pine from those packing cases the Farmers' Co-op used to get machine parts in. And one room was made from the big container that Ford sedan arrived in for old Thomas Aberline.

Flames followed the rivulets of kerosene into the heart of the pile and at first there was a smokeless blaze. Then the fire found Alf Barber's shit, dried and refined to a fine fuel by time, and a ball of purple and orange smoke burst into the sky and spread across the town, dropping black ashes on the exposed heads of those watching. Upwards and outwards it spread, the sudden wind catching the ash and residue.

Sybil retreated from the flames and looked at the people standing in the street.
A good barbecue now
, she said.
But this was Alf Barber's house, and you knew what he was doing in it. All of you knew, and not one of you tried to stop him.
And Sybil Barber left the ashes of her father's house for her own home near the salt lake.

On the evening of the day Alf Barber went off with the boxing troupe those twelve years ago, Sybil had walked out to the lake whose surface glinted icily in the setting sun. At the edge stood eucalypts petrified by the salt water into stark grey sculptures: ghosts of trees past reflecting in the surface of the salt lake.
I wonder how long the lake has been here
, she thought, but no-one in the town could have answered this
had she asked; as far as the town remembered, the lake had always been there.

Sybil also saw that the salt had crept across the ground and closer to the road since she had been here the summer before, and was climbing the wooden posts of Brigid Connor's boundary fence. Sybil went to tell Brigid about the fence, and at the same time she asked if she could lease a small tract of land near the salt lake, to build a house for herself.
That piece of land's no bloody use to man or beast with the friggin' salt encroachment
, Brigid said.
It's not worth anything to me, so why don't you just use a bit wherever you want.

Sybil chose a small rise that was hardly discernible to the eye to site her house, which was small and round with doors opening to the pale soil patched with crystals of white.
It's round
, she told anyone who asked,
so that I can see the whole world around me and no-one can catch me by surprise.
Walls were built of sun-dried bricks made from a small clay-pan between the lake and the piece of bush known as the Yackoo. She made these herself with the help of the lovers who repaid her with a day's work.

Rather like a large mushroom
, Young George Aberline commented as the roof of Sybil's new home took shape. There it sat above the shortened tower that was the bulk of the house. Its extension was as wide as a verandah and protected the windows from the rain and all but the very low sun. From here Sybil, looking north-west, could see over the lake to farms on the other side. To the north she looked across paddocks and small patches of remaining bush, and
when she turned eastwards she saw the thick bush of the Yackoo. The town was hidden by the rock, and this was how she liked it.

When Macha began to regularly patrol the borders of the town to keep it safe at night, she found that Sybil's house was too isolated to include in the circuit. It was, however, on the route to the Yackoo or to Nell's hut, and each time she walked these paths Macha checked the house, whether Sybil was home or working at the shop. Sybil found that having Macha Connor peer in the windows and check the doors was actually a comforting thing, and she never objected.

It was a strange thing with Nell – the people of the town knew her name and knew she worked at the hospital or cleaned the school, because this was when her name would come into the conversation. But ask anyone to say when they last saw Nell, or to describe what she looked like, and there'd be clicking of tongues, thoughtful expressions and, eventually, an admission of
Well, can't say really
, or
Don't quite remember.

Harry Best the headmaster knew her, of course, because she cleaned the school; as did Bert Truro the hospital orderly and town grave-digger; and, of course, the matron of the hospital. But generally she was an unseen name. Even when she sat with her dingoes on the steps of the war memorial at night she was invisible. There were
complaints to the Council on several occasions about the dingoes coming into the main street of the town, mutterings of
What about the children?
or
Bloody things are spooky, they just sit there and watch ya
. Inevitably, someone from the Council would be dispatched to do something about it, and just as inevitably the dogs would disappear for a while. But as sure as the sun rises and sets they'd be back. Yet no-one saw Nell there, talking to her dogs and keeping them quietly at her side.

Nell made sure the dingoes stayed at her hut when she went to the hospital where she was employed, under sufferance, by Matron Sullivan. Matron knew that she could not find anyone except Nell to spend as much time cleaning and cooking for such a mean wage.

Matron Sullivan, as she regularly told the Hospital Board of Directors,
tried to instil some idea of time into this person
, but to no avail: Nell arrived and left seemingly at will. Matron even went to the lengths of giving Nell an old alarm clock from her own store of things, but this charitable act did not achieve Nell's arrival at the same time each day, and Matron told the Board that Nell was too stupid to understand time. It was just as well, then, that Matron did not see Nell throw the clock into the salt lake.

Matron Sullivan was an onlooker at the clearing of Alf Barber's house. On the way back to the hospital she talked at Bert Truro, who walked with her.
What could be so bad
, she said,
as to make someone so vengeful?
She conjectured about such a hate as she mounted the steps of the hospital verandah, and did not see Nell washing the floorboards
with long, slow strokes. Matron Sullivan tumbled, spilling water and profanities over Nell and across the verandah. Nell tried to close her ears but from the bucket sloshed a river of insults and arrogance that adhered to her skin like un-rinsed soap, clogging her pores so that she could not breathe.

Bert Truro, bending to help Matron from the floor, glanced up to see what Nell was doing, and was surprised to see a woman he didn't know, a woman bigger and more angular than the rounded softness of Nell. He decided, when thinking about this later, that it was a trick of angle and light, as it was definitely Nell who spoke soft words of apology and helped him carry Matron Sullivan to a bed in the women's ward.

The sprain to Matron Sullivan's foot was slight, in keeping with the gentle fall over the bucket of dirty water, but she was laid up for several days. Nell, in an effort to cheer her, prepared the hearty soups and stews that she knew Matron liked so well. However, Matron Sullivan became angrier and more agitated after each meal, snapping at Nell about over-cooked meat and under-cooked vegetables; about the thickness of the gravy and the thinness of the custard on the steamed pudding. She even complained about the slipperiness and hardness of the starched sheets – a condition for which she blamed Nell, although it had been Matron herself who specified that bed linen was to be starched. And after each meal and each complaint Nell felt her skin become more clogged and her breathing more laboured.

On the morning of the fourth day, Nell lightly boiled two eggs and toasted the white bread that Matron said made the best toast. She prepared a breakfast tray by covering an ordinary ward tray with a small embroidered cloth and matching serviette. On this she placed two small plates from the set usually kept for official lunches and a silver teaspoon for the eggs. She added a pot of tea and a cup with a little milk in it, covered the tray with another white cloth and carried it down the long passageway to the women's ward. There she placed it on the bedside table, as Matron was still asleep, and left quietly, thinking she should not wake her.