Siddon Rock (8 page)

Allison laughed out loud.
Yes
, she said,
what fun.
She saucily swung her handbag on its chain and stepped out, confident now that if she saw any man he would tip his hat politely to a beautiful woman. She drew level with the pub, and for a moment the façade changed from timber boards to solid grey stone blocks with wide windows. Allison pressed close to the window-pane, peering around the ‘Railway and Traveller's Hotel' written on the glass, and could clearly see the interior where tables were set at a discreet distance from each other and covered with white damask. Attentive waiters hovered solicitously over the diners, pouring wine, shaking napkins. In the open kitchen white-hatted chefs were busy. As she watched, a man in a tall chef's hat and carrying a large book entered the back of the restaurant through a door that he locked after him.
The Executive Chef
, Allison thought.
Maybe tomorrow's menu is written in the book. Or the provisions required at the markets. He will, of course, shop for these himself.
The man looked up and saw Allison watching. He walked towards her, his face lit up with a strange smile. The intimate interior light in the room made his one brown eye glow but the other, blue, eye was cold and empty. Allison turned away quickly, pleased that she had been acknowledged.

Is it Rome or Paris?
Allison asked herself.
Not London, I think. Maybe it's Madrid, it's certainly warm enough.

Back she went down Wickton Street, Siddon Rock, swinging her skirt and smiling, and all the while the strange light wavered around her. Back past the brightly lit windows
of the Farmers' Co-op, devoid of the usual bags of sugar and flour and now stacked high in a display of baroque excess. An impossible pyramid of brown eggs towered over walls of cheeses of all sorts: gruyère, camembert, gorgonzola nestled side by side with bowls of olives, stacks of onions and bright green and red vegetables and grey herbs. The picture it made, Allison said as she walked by without stopping,
should be an exhibit in an art gallery.

As Allison drew closer to Meakins' Haberdashery and Ladies' & Men's Apparel the light became stronger and began to flash with short and urgent beats, as if caught and reflected in a rotating mirror, urging her on. She refused it, purposefully slowing to a longer, more languorous pace and, as she reached the edge of the display window, paused for a moment before stepping close. From somewhere outside the lights, dogs howled.

Yes
, Allison breathed,
oh yes.
There in the window stood a tall, thin model wearing the dress from the photograph on the wall of the dressing room. In splendid isolation the model changed poses, holding each one briefly as if for a fashion photographer. As she moved, the dress took on a life of its own and the full skirt flowed and swayed from a tight bodice cinched at the waist, swirling so that white lace petticoats were exposed under the demure surface of grey faille. Allison trembled, she could see nothing else, just the dress and the posing model; all desire was held in the moment.

This is the House of Dior
.
This is Avenue Montaigne. This is Paris.

The flashing, pulsing light softened and slowed to an occasional fluctuation, and in the display window the posing Parisienne in the Dior gown faded away, and plaster models wearing Alistair Meakins' choices for the ladies of Siddon Rock appeared in stiff and formal postures. Allison smiled tremulously at them, but found she could not speak to reassure them of their worth.

Quietly now, Allison walked on. At Barber's Butchery & Bakery a
charcuterie
and a
pâtisserie
competed for display space, fading in and out in slow and ever-diminishing ripples; but she merely glanced in the window as she passed. Next door in the telephone exchange Tommy Hicks dreamed an impatient dream of long-legged dancers clothed only in feathers and spangles, as Allison turned the corner into the soft dust and dead grasses of the back lane leading to Alistair's home.

Allison discarded her dusty shoes on the back verandah and went into the closed-up house. She relit the candles in the bedroom, unfastened the long row of buttons on the
crêpe de chine
frock and stepped out of it. Then she removed the hat, and as she put it tenderly into its box the reflected flicker of candlelight in the mirror drew her gaze and she glanced up. There in the glass was a short, soft looking, middle-aged man with greying hair and garish make-up melting down his face. Black silk underwear, crumpled from the heat of his plump body, cut into the folds of skin on his belly. Allison stood straighter to confront the image but the surface of the mirror fluttered like water under a teasing breeze. From the disturbance emerged the image
of a tall, thin woman with straw-coloured hair framing a white mask. The woman raised her arms to the mask, and Allison peered closer to see her face; but when the mask was down, there was no face to see.

In the dark Alistair cried ribbons of make-up into his immaculate bed.

From the shadows of the war memorial Nell watched Allison walk up the street and pause briefly before she made her perfect turn. As she did, all the light in the street gathered around Meakins' Haberdashery and Ladies' & Men's Apparel and Nell could see movement in the display window. The strange light pulsed across the street to where Nell sat, and further to the edge of the railway station-yard. The restive dingoes either side of her whimpered so that Nell put her hand on their heads to reassure them.

As Allison drew closer to the shop the light changed to a throbbing beat and the steps of the war memorial moved beneath the woman and the dogs, becoming broader and wider. A spray of water misted the air, even though there were no clouds in the sky. The dingoes howled in protest at the alteration of their world.
Let's go home, fellas
, Nell said to the dogs.
That Alistair's dreamin' something we don't wanna know about.
But the dingoes had already fled to the safety of Nell's hut in the ancient creek-bed.

Kelpie Crush was always the last to leave the bar. Every night he closed and bolted the doors, picked up glasses, washed them and left them to drain dry. He wiped the bar and threw the towels into the wash-house behind the kitchen. When all was ready for the next day, he would take the key to the Strangers' Room from his pocket and fit it into the lock.

A week or so after he had started at the pub Kelpie Crush spoke to Bluey Redall.
I collect things and they should be away where they can't get damaged,
he said.
The Strangers' Room's not used at all – too dark for anything, with no windows. If I cleaned it up, d'you think I could use it?

Bluey Redall, anxious to keep such a deft and already popular barman happy, said,
Seeing no bloody strangers ever come to Siddon Rock anyway, you may's well use the room.
Then, remembering that he knew nothing about this bloke except that he was a good barman, added,
And don't go lighting any bloody fires in there either.

Kelpie Crush seemed to be liked right from the start. Sinclair Johnson, the owner of the
District Examiner & Journal
, who always propped at the street window of the bar so he could keep an eye on the comings and goings in the town, asked the new barman what his name was.

Robert, never called Bob.

Sinclair Johnson looked at the barman's wiry body, dusty-brown colouring and slicked-down hair.
You look like a bloody sheep-dog. A kelpie
, he said.
Should be out there
rounding up bloody sheep.
And so Robert Crush became known as Kelpie at the pub, and then through the town, until his original name was forgotten.

The pub regulars also agreed, but out of range of Kelpie's hearing, that it was quite off-putting to talk to the man at times because a bloke didn't know if he was being looked at with the blue eye or the gingery-brown one. Most felt that it was better to stand slightly on the side of the brown eye, which seemed to be less confrontational than the other.

Kelpie blended well with the town. He played hockey on Saturday, where his darting turns of speed and low-lying attacks placed him in the forward line; and football on Sunday. He got to know Harry Best quite well after the little talk about starting a cub scouts pack. Well enough, anyway, to play poker each Tuesday evening with Harry, Sinclair Johnson and Abe Simmons. He joked with the three men that between them they controlled the town –
education, information and power
, he'd say.
Forget the bloody Shire Council, you blokes run the place.

The thing Kelpie did not discuss with the poker players, or anyone else for that matter, was his collection of moths and insects. Sinclair tried, several times, to draw him out on what he was actually doing with the specimens caught by the cub scouts on their camps near the salt lake, or by other interested people. He'd just shrug it away like a nuisance fly, and once snapped at Sinclair when the newspaperman wanted to do an article about what Kelpie had found out about the local species.
What I do is my
business
, he said, and the usually warm gingery-brown eye looked quite cold.
If I want the whole bloody town knowing about it I'll have an exhibition in the foyer of the bloody Shire Hall.
And so the people of the town came to understand that Kelpie Crush would, at some time in the future, make an exhibition of his collection for them.

Very early in the poker relationship, Sinclair Johnson had suggested that he write a short ‘Welcome to Siddon Rock' article on Kelpie Crush, complete with photograph. The response was short and sharp.
No
. But Sinclair was not a man to take no for an answer, and wrote a few brief paragraphs on what he thought he knew about the new man in town. When he typeset the page he found that there was a space just large enough for a photograph and thought that one of the hotel would be suitable. To get a good shot of the elegant iron lace verandah Sinclair set up his camera in the station-yard opposite the pub, and as he pressed the shutter Kelpie Crush opened the door of the bar and stepped into the street.

Sinclair lay the negative in the developing fluid, expecting to have to throw the print straight in the bin because Kelpie's blur of movement would make it unusable. But when he took it out the print was perfect, with no indication that Kelpie Crush had been in the photograph at all.

As Sinclair considered the strangeness of the photograph Abe Simmons walked in to pay his poker debt. Sinclair showed him the space in the photo where Kelpie Crush should have been.
Maybe the bloke just doesn't exist
and we're all seeing things
, Abe said as he counted out a small pile of coins.
But the amount he took off me last week makes me think you'd better get your camera seen to.

Sinclair's words stayed with Abe Simmons, and he pondered over them for the rest of the day, later discussing them with Harry Best at the pub. Harry talked to him about Plato's cave, so that by closing time Abe had decided that everyone was just a reflection of something or somewhere else and nothing could be considered real.