The Wrong Door (23 page)

Moving around the house with her eyes closed required Gwennie to focus on her body and her surroundings and, as long as she was walking, she wasn’t thinking. Round and round she shuffled. Slowly, deliberately, each step a victory over her crushing grief. She didn’t count the number of circuits she did but instead kept her mind blank, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other in the dark. Hallway, kitchen, past the benches, through the living area, avoid the coffee table, down the steps, turn around and back again.

Finally, exhausted and numb, unable to go any further, she stopped at the bedroom door and leaned her head against the cool wall. Her back ached and she wanted to rest. She caught her breath then lay down on the bed.

The first thought when it came was sharp and loud, stabbing her consciousness, causing her to cry out. The rest of her life without Pete. A desolate, bleak future.

In the top drawer of her bedside cupboard were the refills to his razor. It was a new unopened packet of half a dozen, which she had put there when she cleaned out Pete’s things from the bathroom cabinet. Knowing they were there was a kind of insurance, a last resort if it all became too much. She had always liked to keep her options open.

Marla squared her shoulders and took a deep breath. Her apricot satin robe seemed decadent, its hem skimmed the wooden floor and on the breast pocket was a stylised Μ in glass diamante beads. It was like something a 1930s starlet might wear, as she draped herself over a chaise longue in her boudoir. Marla looked – as she often did – slightly incongruous in the surroundings of the dilapidated suburban kitchen.

Her voice, as she started to speak, was quiet and without the histrionics she was sometimes prone to. The emotion and pain were evident in every breath and gesture. She spoke quietly, whispering the words, her eyes wide and animated. From the moment she started Clare was transfixed.

‘When I was fifteen I fell in love. Micky was a bit older, eighteen, and working as an apprentice mechanic in Katoomba. It was wonderful. He used to pick me up from school in a different car every day. The boys at school thought that was pretty cool. And Micky was so handsome and charming that all the girls thought he was pretty cool too.

‘Mum, Dad and I lived in a huge old house on
Hat Hill Road at Blackheath. A laneway ran beside my bedroom. The window had a security grille. I used to leave the window open to get fresh air and Micky would poke things through the grille on his way to work at about seven each morning. Sometimes it was a love letter, or flowers he had picked from our next-door neighbour’s garden, or chocolate bars. Once he put a feather in, another time he tied a balloon to the grille. He would leave something for me every day, just to let me know he was thinking of me.’

Marla looked off into the distance somewhere above Clare’s right shoulder as she spoke, her eyes flicking occasionally to her mother. Peg stared resolutely at the table, her face expressionless.

‘We had so many plans for our future. He was going to buy a van and fit it out so that we could take it touring. As soon as I finished school we planned to drive all around the coast of Australia. We had both grown up in the country and desperately wanted to experience the beach. We were convinced we were really world champion surfers trapped against our will in the mountains. We planned to get a dog to take on the road with us and guard the van while we went surfing.

‘We had to keep our plans – and our relationship – a secret from Dad. I knew he wouldn’t approve.’

‘Why not? Didn’t he like Micky?’ asked Clare.

Marla took a deep breath. ‘Mum and I don’t talk about Dad because … because … it is just easier if we don’t. It brings up too many bad memories.
Mum and I would rather forget all about him. He was … a nasty man.’

She looked again at Peg, who was sitting very still.

‘He used to drink and when he drank he was violent,’ continued Marla.

Clare sensed a subtle change in her mother. Peg’s eyes dropped to her lap and while her body didn’t move, she seemed to shrink.

‘He used to beat up Mum. Once so badly I had to get the neighbours to come over and take her to hospital. I was about thirteen at the time. He cried the whole time she was gone … kept telling me how much he loved her, and me. How we meant everything to him and he was going to quit drinking. After Mum came home he was good for a while. But it didn’t last. He got back on the booze and … well … it didn’t take long before it was the same as before.

‘He never used to hit me. I was his princess, his precious little girl. He used to lock me in my room when he would go after Mum. He didn’t want me to see it. But I could hear the sounds. I used to bang on the door and scream out for him to stop but he just ignored me. I don’t think he ever even heard me. When he got like that it was like you couldn’t reach him.

‘Micky knew Dad was violent and that I had been scared of what he would do if he found out about us and it made him really angry that I should be scared. Micky had said he would protect me, put his life on the line to keep me safe and so on. But it wasn’t me who Dad went after, it was Mum.
Micky didn’t seem to understand that. But he agreed to keep our relationship secret.

‘Somehow, in Dad’s head, anything I did that he didn’t like was Mum’s fault. She was to blame for everything and I could do no wrong.

‘That was right up until the day he found out about Micky. Someone mentioned to him that they had seen me in his car and Dad came home, took off his belt and …’

Marla paused. ‘He called me a slut and a whore and a whole lot of other things. He lay into me with that belt buckle. I thought he was going to kill me. Then Mum came home and tried to stop him.’

Marla walked over and stood behind her mother, putting her hand on her shoulder. ‘We both copped it. Charles Dayton was a big man. And strong. When he had finished with us he went to the pub. We didn’t have any broken bones, nothing that would require a doctor. But it was the final straw. We decided we would leave the next morning after he had gone to work. Mum was sure he would kill her for taking me with her so we knew we had to get it right. Mum looked up the number for a women’s shelter in Sydney. We thought we would go there for a day or two then catch the train to Perth and just disappear. He would never find us. We wouldn’t say goodbye to anyone or take anything more than a few clothes – just a suitcase each.

‘I telephoned Micky at work to say I couldn’t meet him that night as planned. I told him Dad had found out about us, he was very angry and Micky
wasn’t to come near me or ring, in case Dad answered the phone. I said there had been an ugly scene and it was best if we stayed apart for a few days and I would ring him as soon as I could. I figured I would call once we were safely at the shelter.

‘Micky got really angry. He argued with me and said there was no way Dad would get away with hurting me. He threatened all sorts of things. I told him I wasn’t going to see him for a while and he just had to accept that. Then I hung up on him.

‘Micky knew better than to ring me back but he wasn’t going to let it just be. It wasn’t in his nature. Instead he dropped a letter through my window insisting he would be waiting at our usual spot as arranged. He signed his name with a handprint of blood.

‘I found it when I went to bed. I was terrified that if I wasn’t there he would come to the house so I sneaked out and went to our spot.

‘Micky and I used to meet at the end of the lane. There was a big old barn on the land behind our house. Dad used to rent it as a workshed. It was far enough away from our house that you couldn’t see it. Dad stored a whole lot of junk there, second-hand furniture that he used to restore in his spare time. He built me a doll’s house there thinking it would be a surprise but I knew all about it.

‘I waited until Dad was in bed before I snuck out but he must have been expecting that. He checked on me, saw my bed was empty and went back to find out from Mum where I was.

‘He beat her with his belt until she told him.’

Peg slumped forward and put her head in her hands.

Marla stroked her shoulders. ‘It’s okay, Mum,’ she whispered. ‘It’s not your fault. It was never your fault. You did everything you could to protect me and you have done everything possible since. Please Mum, don’t blame yourself.’

Peg didn’t answer. Her face was hidden while her whole body heaved with silent despair. Clare’s eyes filled with tears. Usually Peg was in command of her environment, keeping her daughters and everything else under some kind of control. Clare had always thought her mother had ruled the world. It had both frustrated and amazed her. Now she realised what an illusion that had been. She was a scared and vulnerable woman, just trying to protect her little family any way she could.

Marla continued stroking her mother’s shoulders as she returned to the story.

‘Dad listened outside to me and Micky arguing. I was telling him we were going to leave and he was begging me not to. He was telling me he loved me, that we were meant to be together, that Dad was a bastard and ought to be reported to the police. He vowed to get revenge on him for hurting me.

‘What happened next happened so quickly it is all a bit of a blur. Dad came through the door purple with rage. When he got angry the two veins on either side of his forehead used to stand out more prominently than usual. I used to see those veins and feel sick. I still can’t go near a man
with protruding veins. I remember how his veins looked that night.’

She shuddered. ‘He came in yelling that he would kill Micky. He flew at him and started to beat him in the head with his fists. Micky wasn’t a well-built man but he was strong and fit and a lot younger. Still he was no match for Dad. Charles Dayton was a big fat oaf.’

Marla paused for breath. Peg stood up and put her arms about her daughter. The two held each other for a long moment. Clare looked away.

‘And Micky killed Charles and took off,’ finished Clare. She thought she could piece together the rest from the newspaper stories. Wanted by police for Dayton’s murder, he didn’t want to go to jail so went on the run, possibly making it out of the country and was never heard from again, even by his own family.

Marla stepped back from Peg. ‘No, Clare. Micky didn’t kill Charles Dayton. I did.’

Clare stared at her mother and sister. The air was charged, like someone had just turned off very loud music, leaving behind a heightened silence. It seemed to grow and swell.

‘I killed Charles Dayton,’ repeated Marla. She gripped the back of a kitchen chair, her eyes locked on Clare. ‘I picked up the clawhead hammer from his toolbox, and hit him … here.’ She pointed to her right temple. ‘I killed my father. It’s called parricide, or more specifically patricide. A very rare crime. Usually perpetrated by sons with an oedipal complex. One of the most heinous of crimes you
can commit. Our whole culture is based on that biblical command, honour thy father. To kill thy father strikes at the very root of civilisation.’

Marla’s voice started to rise and her words came out in a clipped staccato. She didn’t sound like herself. It was as if she was repeating something from a textbook that she had read and re-read so many times that she had learned it by heart. ‘In the time of the Romans, the punishment for patricide was to be sewn up in a sack that had a monkey, snake, rooster and dog inside, and then to be thrown in a river.’

Her eyes were wide with the imagined horror and she trembled.

‘The significance of the animals was to torture the perpetrator as he died a slow and agonising death. The snake symbolised evil. The rooster is primarily known for his crowing, and he was to remind the son of his guilt. The dog was to howl, not only to be deafening and frightening, but also to evoke the wrath of the gods. The monkey would mimic the son’s behaviour and re-enact the murder.’

Peg put a steadying hand on Marla’s arm but she didn’t appear to notice.

‘The sack itself was believed to increase tenfold the agony the father suffered. And the son was thrown into the river so that he could feel his father’s panic when he realised that his own son had turned on him. The sack was tied so no matter how much the son struggled, he couldn’t get out. That was to show him …’

Peg slapped her daughter hard on the left
cheek. The sound was like a thunderclap, ricocheting around the kitchen walls. Marla froze mid-sentence, holding her breath for a moment in shock. As she let it out, her whole body slumped.

‘These days they just send you to jail,’ finished Peg.

The three women sat in silence at the kitchen table, each in their usual position. Peg was at the head of the table, nearest to the stove and the telephone. Marla sat to her right and Clare on her left, where she had a view straight down the garden to the tree where she used to sit with Mr Sanjay. The only sound was the ticking of the stately grandfather clock in the hallway.

Each of the women tried to absorb the brutality of Marla’s revelations. Marla was shaking with the force of her guilt and shame. She took short sharp breaths to regain her equilibrium. Peg was pale but composed. She gripped her own forearms, pressing her fingers hard into the flesh, as her mind was forced to return to a time and place she had long ago buried. Clare was dumbstruck. She had imagined her father to be a dignified and honourable man. He had been an ambulance driver for God’s sake.

And his death. Family folklore had it that he died in an accidental fire – a terrible tragedy that had devastated Peg so much she couldn’t bring herself to talk about him. Since she was a child Clare had carried a fantasy of her father. He was the compassionate ambulance driver who liked trains. She imagined him heading off to work each day from this house, leaving each morning at eight o’clock, like the man up the street, to catch the 8.07 train into the city.

In reality Charles Dayton had been a bully and a thug who beat up his wife and daughter. Peg, her gutsy mother who ran her world from the dining room table, had once been beaten and cowed, living every day in terror.

And Clare’s beautiful innocent sister, just fifteen and in love for the first time, had picked up a clawhead hammer from his toolbox and hit her father so savagely in the temple that it killed him. The horror and revulsion that Marla had lived with every day since hit Clare like huge waves. Her sister had been right. The truth was ugly.

Marla continued relating the events of that night. It took every ounce of effort to keep her emotions under control and she sounded dispassionate, almost matter-of-fact, as she spoke in a small squeaky voice.

‘Micky told me to leave, he would take care of everything. So I did. Dad was lying on the ground with blood pouring from his head. He was moaning and looking grey. I knew he was in a really bad way. I ran home and told Mum what had
happened. We should have called an ambulance, I know, but we didn’t. We waited and waited for Micky to appear. But he didn’t come. We waited all night. At about midnight the barn went up in flames. We didn’t dare go and investigate. Shortly after dawn the police came. They told us there had been a fire in the shed and Dad had been trapped inside. It looked like an accident. The cop was Dad’s old mate Steve Parry. He was a drinking buddy. He assumed Dad had been working late on one of his handyman projects when the barn caught fire.

‘He asked us if we had smelled the fire and Mum said no, we were both asleep. He didn’t question us further. I don’t know why. I guess it didn’t occur to him that Charles Dayton’s little princess could have been involved.

‘It wasn’t until they did the autopsy a few days later that they discovered Dad had died from head wounds inflicted before the fire. Only then did they start asking questions. Mrs Barraclough, whose bathroom window overlooked our laneway, told police that she was getting ready for bed at about 9.30 and had seen Micky go past.

‘So the police started to look for him but Micky was nowhere to be found. It made him look very guilty. According to his brother, he didn’t return home that evening. He didn’t come back to get clothes or say goodbye. Nothing. He had gone.’

‘You never saw him again?’ asked Clare.

Marla shook her head. ‘He told me to go home, he would take care of everything and that was the
last time I ever saw him. The police had a few sightings of people fitting his description, from all over the country. They couldn’t pin any of them down and they don’t have proof but they believe the most likely scenario was he hitched a lift, probably with any one of the thousands of trucks that would have been travelling the route that night, and was halfway to Sydney by the time Dad’s body was found. But I don’t know. I just don’t know.’

Clare digested the information slowly. Something Marla had said jarred.

‘You mentioned Micky’s brother. Did you know him?’

‘Pete, yes, of course.’

Clare thought of Gwennie. Paranoid, jealous and grief-stricken. Poor, sad woman.

‘He was the husband of the woman who came here last night.’

‘I guess so,’ said Marla. ‘I never met her. When I knew Pete Darvill he was twenty. I haven’t seen him since Dad’s funeral.’

‘Gwennie said Pete didn’t have a brother. She said that he was an only child.’

Peg and Marla shook their heads in unison.

‘They were very, very close,’ said Marla. ‘They lived together in a house on the main street. Their parents had died a year earlier in a car accident and it was just the two of them. They were great mates.’

‘Well, according to Gwennie, Pete told her he was an only child. She has a photo of you and Micky. It’s the same as one you have.’ Clare realised what she had said as soon as the words were out of her mouth.

‘What photos do I have?’ Marla asked.

There were no words to placate the look on Marla’s face. Clare put her hands up in supplication.

Marla’s voice was cold. ‘You mean the photos in the tin in my wardrobe? How do you know about those?’

‘I … uh … I was snooping. I’m sorry. I just wanted to know what was so secret.’

Marla raised an eyebrow, considered it for a moment, then let it pass. It didn’t seem so significant in the wake of the morning’s revelations. She shrugged.

‘She has a copy of the same photograph but thinks it’s Pete,’ continued Clare.

Marla looked confused. ‘That doesn’t make sense. How could she not know about Micky?’

‘Perhaps Pete was ashamed and didn’t want to let on he had a brother that had been wanted by police for murder,’ said Peg.

‘Maybe,’ said Marla. ‘Doesn’t sound like the Pete Darvill I knew. He was terribly protective of Micky. Pete was the responsible one. Being the oldest he assumed the role of parent. If Micky got into trouble, which happened every now and then, it was Pete that would bail him out.’

‘What sort of trouble?’ asked Clare.

‘Oh the sort of stuff eighteen-year-old boys get up to. He was caught by the police a couple of times. Nothing serious. Driving before he had a licence. Drunk and disorderly in the main street of Leura at 3 am on a Sunday.’

Peg sniffed. ‘He was a hothead. Always in trouble.’

Marla gave her mother a threatening look. ‘Don’t start, Mum,’ she warned.

‘He was trouble from the moment you met him.’

‘Leave it, Mum. He might have been a bit volatile on occasions but he had had a rough time, losing his parents when he did. He had more guts and integrity than anyone I have ever met.’

Peg shook her head but stayed quiet.

The undercurrent of tension was familiar and for the first time Clare felt she was starting to understand. ‘So why did you change your names? Marlene to Marla. Dayton to Dalton?’

‘That was Mum’s idea,’ said Marla. ‘To protect me.’

‘I thought it would be better for Marla if we started a new life with new identities,’ said Peg.

Clare frowned. ‘Well, moving to the city would have done that. Why go to the trouble of changing your names?’

‘Because Mum was scared Micky would come after us,’ said Marla quietly.

‘He knows what happened in the barn that night. He is the only other person, apart from Mum and I, who knows who is really to blame. I ruined his life. I let the police blame him for Dad’s death. I was a coward. He must hate me. Wherever he is, he must hate me for what I took from him. Mum always worried that one day he would come after me. He would realise how much he had lost and would want revenge. So we changed our name, moved here and have lived a discreet life ever since.’

There was more than a hint of bitterness in Marla’s words.

Peg appeared drained by the revelations. It was clear she felt she had endured enough and wanted to end the discussion. ‘I’m going to have my shower now,’ she said wearily.

Marla put a hand on her arm to stop her. ‘There’s more,’ she said, looking at Clare. Her gaze was strong and direct.

‘Don’t do this, Marla,’ said Peg.

‘Why not, Mum? Because of what the neighbours might say? Bugger them.’

Peg sighed and sat back down. ‘We have eaten a lot of meals here, the three of us. Clare, you ate your first solid food sitting in your highchair right there, at the end of this table. You were just six months old and the noisiest little baby. It was carrot, if I remember rightly.’ She sounded wistful.

‘Actually it was mashed pumpkin,’ Marla corrected. ‘She always loved her pumpkin.’

Peg looked away. She wasn’t going to argue. There was a strange sort of energy in the room. Marla seemed to have assumed a supremacy Clare had not seen before and Peg was giving in to her, allowing her that authority. The dynamics of their relationship had shifted. It was subtle but disconcerting.

‘What do you mean there’s more, Marla?’ asked Clare.

Marla started to fidget. She smiled awkwardly. It seemed she was having trouble finding just the right words.

‘We moved to this house a few months after
Dad died. And then a few months after that you were born.’

Marla stopped and waited. The conspiratorial way she was looking made Clare feel uncomfortable. She looked from Marla to her mother. Peg was sitting, half turned away, her mouth a grim line. There was something about the defensiveness, the feeling that she had given up, that struck a note of fear in Clare.

‘What are you saying?’

Marla stared at Clare in a knowing kind of way while Peg refused to meet her gaze.

‘What are you saying?’

‘You were
my
baby,’ said Marla quietly. ‘You’re my daughter.’

Clare stared at her sister in horror. That couldn’t be so. She looked from one to the other in disbelief.

‘You say you are my mother? My
mother?
’

She turned to Peg. ‘What is she talking about?’

Peg nodded, her eyes heavy and sad.

Clare shook her head vigorously, unaware she was doing so. ‘What are you saying?’ she shouted.

Peg opened her mouth to speak but Clare rounded on her before she got a word out. ‘And you are my
grand
mother?’

The shock gave way to disgust then anger. It was as if with Marla’s words, the last remaining vestige of Clare’s identity was ripped from her. She felt precarious, like she was in freefall. She wasn’t who she thought she was. In fact, the galling truth was she never had been.

‘You lied to me. All these years. About something so … so … fundamental.’ Clare was incredulous.
‘Why? How could you do that? What kind of sick, twisted people are you?’

‘Oh Clare, honey, it was the best thing,’ said Peg. ‘Your sister was just fifteen. She couldn’t take charge of you then. Nor could she be seen to have a baby. She was just a kid herself. And what do you think Micky would have done if he had found out? I couldn’t risk it.’

‘Micky? Oh my God. No. Is he … my … my …?’ Clare couldn’t finish the sentence.

Every happy daydream that she had indulged about her childhood came crashing down in an instant.

‘Micky is your father,’ confirmed Marla.

Clare felt the overwhelming urge to flee. Being in the same room as these women was suffocating. She flung back her chair and walked upstairs. Marla stood to follow her but Peg held her back. She shook her head silently.

Clare went to her sister’s wardrobe, pulled over a chair and took down the hat box. She knew what she was after. As she rifled through the contents she avoided touching the bundle of letters tied together with the lace ribbon. She found the sleeve of photos and took them out, tossing the box onto the floor where the rest of its contents spilled out. Clare stepped over the mess and walked out the door.

Peg and Marla were standing together at the foot of the stairs as she came down. They both looked concerned and questioning. Clare swept past them without a word or a glance.

‘Oh God, what have you done?’ said Peg.

‘What have we done, Mum, what have
we
done?’ said Marla.