Mallawindy (14 page)

Their group expression gave her excuse to return to the punch-bowl. They were still laughing when she wandered back. Perhaps having left the clique, they now laughed at her. Maybe someone here knew she used to be Dummy Burton, or perhaps she looked as drunk as she felt. Apart from the woozy na
usea, drunk was a delicious feeling. Never before had she seen people with such clarity. From the outer circle, she studied Tony.

He looked more like her father than Johnny. She laughed alone then, giggling for minutes while wondering who her father might have been sleeping with twenty-odd years ago. Everyone in Mallawindy knew he slept around. Had he passed on that noble brow, that straight aristocratic nose, hair as black as a raven's wing ... or a crow's wing.

‘Old Ted Crow, where did he go? Gone in the trees, like the birds and the bees,' she said. No-one took any notice. ‘Who is Ted Crow, little Annie? Who cares who he is tonight,' she said, and she giggled again.

Tony turned to her. Again his hand reached out to claim. A hand like her father's. Long fingers, clean well-shaped nails. ‘By the way Tony, did your mother happen to know your father's name?' she asked.

The question seemed innocent enough, but like well-oiled, wind-up toys, jaws dropped all around her, telling her plainly that
she'd hit a nail directly on its head, if she could only concentrate long enough to recall what nail she'd hit – . Maybe she should stop saying whatever came into her head. Try to concentrate. Johnny used to always keep telling her, ‘Concentrate. Concentrate, Annie love.'

She tried to concentrate as she watched the people take fast mechanical steps backwards, but Tony didn't step back. His fingers tightened their grip on her arm and he hissed, close to her face, ‘You smart-arsed, bitch. Give me a night or two with you and I'd make you crawl for it.' And he pinched her breast.

She wasn't concentrating when her glass of pink couldn't-give-a-damn juice hit the self-satisfied face. She was as surprised as he was. Just a reflex reaction. She didn't mean it to happen, but she giggled as she watched a ball of watermelon land on black hair, slide slowly down, hit the floor.

No-one else was giggling. The host was beside Tony. David took Ann's arm, but she'd been dodging this man all night, and she wasn't going to run any more. Couldn't, a
nyhow. Her legs weren't quite right. She giggled as the room silenced. Glasses froze, half raised to lips; even the crooner on the record-player stopped crooning and started to hiccup. Some comment was necessary. Ann looked around her at the plastic people dissolving in alcohol.

‘Aunty Bessy always says that the next best thing to a knee in the right place is a glass of water in the face,' she said.

The crooner gave a heart-stopping hiccup, an amazing trill, jumped a few tracks, then crooned on, and glasses continued their pathway to lips.

David drew her into the kitchen. He sat her down on the tiled floor, sat beside her. ‘Did you know him before tonight?'

‘Not personally.'

‘Then who told you about his mother?'

Her head was at peace on his shoulder, and she yawned. ‘He looks like my father – acts like him too. I just thought he might
have known Tony's mother ... in the biblical sense.' She yawned again.

‘Who are you? I picked up a girl at a bridge in Mallawindy this afternoon, a shy kid I planned to spend my life with. You are like a stranger. I don't know you, Ann.'

‘I like you not knowing me. But he knows me. Look at him, David.' Tony had followed them to the kitchen. He stood at the door, his eyes shooting daggers.

‘I'd better get you out of here. He's a bad drunk, and so are you.'

‘I bet he is, but I'm just a happy drunk. It's turned my worry knob to the off position, so everything looks just fine, except him. Ever since I got here, he's been after me. Every time I take my eyes off the floor or the ceiling, he's staring, like he knows everything about me.'

She looked at the door to prove a point. Tony caught her eye. Quickly she dropped her chin to concentrate again on the tiled floor. Minutes later, when she knew how many tiles it had taken to cover this floor, she looked up again and his lips mouthed two little words she had seen many times before.

‘See. I'm right. How does he know I can lip read unless there's some ancestral brain-cell link?'

‘What?'

‘Jung.' She scrambled to her feet, pushing herself off from the wall, negotiating the space between her and the door. David wasn't as fast to his feet.

‘Please repeat your last words after I find a full glass,' she said.

‘Fuck you, you smart-arsed bitch.' Tony spat the words at her. ‘I'll get you.'

‘Would you know what to do with me? I've heard it ... on the best authority, that your other appendages are as limp as your wrists. They tell me that your wife has an annual ... an annual stud booking with the local bull – '

David was between them. He tossed Ann over his shoulder and
carried her through to the laundry and out to his car, then he poured her into the back seat and drove towards Mallawindy, his laughter non-containable. At the halfway mark, he pulled off to the side of the road, and climbed into the rear seat with her.

‘Your mother says I'm dangerous.'

‘I thought you were asleep, and I wouldn't touch you tonight with a ten-foot pole,' he said, drawing her head to his lap.

‘Melissa told Penny something like that.'

‘Shut up, Ann, and sleep it off. I can't take you home like this. Your father will castrate me.'

‘More likely to shoot you, if he was home. But thank God, he's not home,' she said. ‘Hey, is the world spinning or is it me, David?'

‘It's you. Close your eyes and count sheep.'

‘Bessy took some pigs down to the Daree show last year and Branny and I went with her. We went on one ride where they put you in this little room like a barrel, then it spins around and around until you can walk up the walls like a fly. We did. I bet I could walk up the walls of the world tonight. I'm spinning, spinning, spinning.'

‘Close your eyes.'

‘I'll fall off if I close my eyes.' She giggled and lay watching the world turn. ‘Annie,' she whispered. ‘Little Annie, give me a hic
cup to let me know you're still alive. Yoo-hoo, Annie. Come out, come out wherever you are and meet Ann of inebriation.'

A smile twitched his lips, but he held his silence, hoping the lack of an interested audience might put her to sleep. Better to arrive home late than to take her back like this.

‘Melissa hates me, you know, David. All the time she was charming me with London this, and London that, her eyes were slicing off bits of my flesh and feeding it to the goldfish.'

‘I hate you too. Turn your brain to the off position and go to sleep.'

‘Is it safe?'

‘You're safe. I don't make love to drunks.'

‘But you ride penny-farthings. That's what Tony called Melissa. He didn't know we were distantly related. He said she was a pneumatic penny-farthing. A bit more class, a little older, well pumped-up tyres, but basically the town bike – anyone could get a ride since you parked her back on the street.'

‘Ann. This is not you, and certainly not the you I love. Watch your mouth.'

‘He said I was a red racing car and – '

There was only one way to shut her up. He kissed the mouth, relaxed by spiked fruit punch, and she spoke against his lips. ‘You said you wouldn't touch me with a ten-foot pole.'

‘My anatomy has been much exaggerated.' He kissed her again while his hand traced a pathway from face, to throat, to breast. ‘God, I love you. I've been seduced by you, Ann, ensnared by you. Who are you?'

‘Love me?' she said. ‘Even when I'm drunk? Even when I insult your friends?'

‘Even more when you insult my enemies.' Again he kissed her and his fingers worked their way beneath her shoulder strap.

‘David.'

‘That word will be your downfall. Call me Dave, or Davey. Learn to say it with a nasal twang. I love you. I want you.'

‘What if I don't love you, don't want you?'

‘You do, and you talk too much.' His lips stopping further protest.

Hang the consequences. The ring was in his glove box. Perhaps this was the way to get it on her finger tonight. He slid the zip of her frock down. He unhooked her bra, and she lay in his arms like a rag doll, her lips opening to him. It had been a long time since his last back-seat lovemaking, and the last time he'd had a little assistance. His hand found the silky slip of stockinged thigh, crept higher.

She was eighteen, old enough to make her own rules. Let her
stop it if it must be stopped. He'd had too much to drink too. Blame the beer. Blame the moonlight and the lonely road. His hand slid up to the elastic of her briefs.

‘I think the world's stopped spinning because I'm falling off it.' She rolled to the floor, and he gave up on the back seat.

‘Will you come to a motel with me, Ann?'

‘No motels in Mallawindy. Anyway, I'm sober now. Maybe next time.'

‘A life of celibacy doesn't suit me.'

‘You could go back to the party and get Melissa. I'll walk from here.'

‘Jesus. Jesus. What have I done to deserve this?'

‘Mum's always saying that. She doesn't know that Jesus never listens.' She opened the door and tumbled out to the road. ‘You know, I once asked him to do one tiny little thing for me. I made a bargain with him, and he tricked me into reading all but thirty-seven pages of the Bible, then behold, Jack Burton arose from the dead and shot Mickey ... and Father Fogarty still had the stinking audacity to expect to re-do me Catholic. Can you believe that?'

‘Get in the car, Ann, and who was Mickey? Some other poor fool who fell for you?'

‘He was my dog. He was fourteen, and he would have lived to seventeen, because I looked after him. We buried him near the willow tree,' she said, heading off into the moonlight, straightening her dress as she went.

‘Get back in the car, Ann.' He walked to the front seat and started the motor. ‘Get back in this car, Ann.'

For half a kilometre he followed her before she agreed to get back in. On the remainder of the trip, he learned more about her than he had in five months. She told him her brother had run away when he was nearly sixteen, and one day she'd have to find him because he remembered all the things she'd forgotten, and she told him her father was away in Narrawee, so she probably wouldn't
get murdered tonight. She told him her mother owned the farm, and her father just boarded there, part time.

‘Do you love, me?' he said when they were at the gate.

‘I'm too young.'

‘You're eighteen, allowed to vote, allowed to love, even allowed to drink.'

‘I'm sixteen,' she said.

‘What?'

‘Sorry. Sixteen.'

‘You're not. You said you'd turn eighteen in December.'

‘No,' she corrected. ‘You said you thought I was eighteen or twenty, so I took the eighteen. I knew you'd run a mile if I told you the truth.'

‘Oh, Christ.'

‘What's it matter? Some people know all about life when they're six and some are still spoilt kids when they're forty. Life gets handed out like bunches of grapes, and we have to eat the bunch we're given, and keep eating them until we're dead, so it doesn't matter if a few of us get little sour bunches, and some get big sweet ones. When they're gone, they're gone and there is no more.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can you walk a straight line yet?'

‘I can do what I have to do, when I have to do it.'

‘If you want to do it,' he said meaningfully. ‘Hop out and walk around for a while. Get your head straight before you go in.' Guilt was riding him now. He could see the lights still burning in the Burton house. Her mother was probably worried sick.

‘Hop in. Hop out. Sit down. Roll over. Woof. Woof.'

She was only a kid and it was almost two o'clock. He'd picked himself up some half-grown thing from the Mallawindy forest and got her drunk. ‘I wish you'd told me the truth months back, Ann.'

‘Then you wouldn't have come back.' She was out of the car and not walking well, the rough ground not so stable beneath her platform soles. She walked to the gate, flung it wide, then rode it to a bone-jolting crash against the post.

He stood watching her. She was more the child tonight than he had ever seen her, and he loved her more. ‘Do you still want me to come back, Ann?'

The gate closed. She was in, and he was out, locked on the other side by a rusty loop of wire. He hated that bloody gate ... he wanted in, wanted her. Wanted to rape her on the grass in the moonlight.

‘I don't feel any different at sixteen to what I felt at eighteen five minutes ago.'

‘Saturday?' he said, kissing her across the top rail.

‘At the bridge,' she sighed, and she ran.

Ellie had been leisurely packing her hospital case when Jack arrived home two hours ago. She was tossing the last items in. The birth was near. Maybe she'd left it too late to get to the hospital.

She saw the car lights at the gate as she closed the case, fixed its strap in place. It must be Annie and David. Jack saw the lights too. He'd been cursing his brother's name since he walked in the door, determined to start something too, but Ellie had aborted it so far. And now Annie was home, and God help her. Jack was waiting in the yard, priming his belt.

‘Where have you been, you little slut?' he yelled as she wandered through the chicken-wire gate.

‘Celebrating New Year.' Ann, dodging around him, ran for the rear of the house.

‘Who drove you home?' he roared.

There was no reply, but Ellie heard the bedroom door close. She sighed, relieved. At least Annie had decided against taking him on tonight. He never went into the girls' bedroom. If Annie stayed in there. If she just stayed in there.

Ellie lifted her hospital case to the floor, then grasping her stomach, crouched over the table, riding down a contraction. They were coming fast. She'd have to go.

‘Who was she with?' Jack was at the passage door. ‘I asked you, who was she with?'

The pain eased. Ellie took two short breaths. ‘She's sixteen, Jack. He's a nice boy. It's good for her to mix with people.' She picked up her case. ‘Can you get me up to the hospital, love? I think I'm running out of time.'

‘A nice bloody boy. You wouldn't know nice from shit. Get in here, you black-headed little slut,' he roared. ‘Get back in this room now.'

Shoes off, Ann came to the eastern door, stood leaning there, the length of the room between herself and her father. Ben was up too. Bronwyn followed Ann from the bedroom, stood behind her in her nightie.

‘I'll have to go, Jack,' Ellie said. ‘The baby is coming.'

‘Bloody baby-bearing bitch. A poor bloody man drives all night and gets home to this.'

‘Yes. You're probably worn out, love. I wasn't thinking. You go to bed. Benjie can take me.'

‘Don't tell me to go to bed like your bloody kids. I'm God here. No-one tells me what to do here.' He picked up a chair, threw it. It hit the case, which hit Ellie's knee. She tripped over it, grabbed for the table, but fell heavily. Ben ran into the room. He stood between his parents. ‘I'll take her up to the hospital, Dad. Go out to the ute, Mum. I'll just get dressed.'

‘You'll take her. You bloody mummy's boy, mealy-mouthed little bastard. Get out of my bloody sight.'

‘Yeah. Yeah. Well, you get out of our sight too. If you're going to be like this every time you come home, then don't bother coming home. Stay at your stupid Narrawee and just leave us alone here.'

Jack stepped forward, his closed fist aimed at Ben, who ducked beneath the blow and picked up the fallen chair, using it as a barrier as he tried to go around his father. Jack snatched it, tossed it into the passage, then flung Ben after it.

Ellie was grasping the table, trying to regain her feet when he
hit her. She went down again. She lay on her side, protecting her stomach with hands and drawn-up knees. ‘Don't, Jack. For the love of God. I've got to get to the hospital.'

But he was out of control now. It had begun and wouldn't end until it ended.

Ann edged inside, edged along the wall to the wireless corner. She watched Ben run at the mad man, try to hold him. Jack caugh
t him by the collar of his pyjamas, ripping the garment from him, exposing Ben's too thin chest.

Ben was the wrong build to play hero, all heart and guts, but no killer instinct. Blood streaming from a gash below his hairline, he sprang to his feet, dived at his father's shoulders, locking his arms around his neck. Jack swung around, slamming him against the wall.

‘Get up, Mum. Run,' Ben screamed, but Ellie lay where she had fallen. Too late to run. She'd done it again. Waited too long. She lay on the floor and wept.

Noise was everywhere. Screaming. Bronwyn's scream disappeared into the night. ‘I'm going for Bessy. I'll ring up Bob Johnson . . .'

‘Get back here, you little bitch. Get back in here now.'

Separate, Ann watched the players from her corner. She was away from it, in that other place. Reality, life, was out there with David. Life was parties. Life was love and arms to hold. Not this. Not this. This wasn't real. Just a picture of a pregnant woman, moaning on the floor. Just a mad bull, rampaging. Bellowing.

Bronwyn was miscast. Much too young for the role she had to play. They were all miscast. What is my role here? she thought. Do I have a role here? I should be in a motel bed with David, holding him inside me, loving him. Living life. Not here. Not in this place.

‘Annie,' Ben screamed. ‘Annie, help me, for God's sake. Help me. He'll kill her.'

Help? How? How do you fight a bull-man who has kicked out
a wall and tossed the table at the door? Don't get in his way. That's how. You stay out of his way.

The baby got in the way of his shoe. A worn wedding band, two hands, drawn-up knees couldn't protect it, and Ellie's scream wouldn't die.

Ann moved fast as Ben picked up a broom, tossing it between the mad bull's legs as he jumped on his back. The bull's feet entangled in the broom, he overbalanced, and went down, Ben riding him triumphant to the floor.

Ann picked up the gun that had lived for all her life behind the old wireless that no longer sang. Its weight surprised her. She looked at the red polished butt, at the barrel of gleaming metal. It was a thing of beauty, with a god-like power over life and death. Now her hands held it. They held the power of life, of death.

Slowly she raised the barrel until it pointed at her father's back. He scrambled awkwardly to his feet. ‘Bang,' she said. ‘You're dead.'

Slowly he turned to her, saw the gun pointed at him. ‘Put that down, you crazy-eyed bitch.' His smooth, dark-chocolate voice was confident, but his three fast steps back gave lie to that.

The barrel of the gun followed him. Her eyes followed him.

Ben's twisted face followed him. She saw her brother's hand go to his jaw. One hand, his other, was trying to lift Ellie.

‘It's not loaded,' Jack said, watching the hammers being lifted back.

‘It's always loaded,' she said.

Jack had loved this gun, his father's gun. He'd lavished care on it. His hands had cleaned it, oiled it, smoothed the polished wood that now felt warm and secure against Ann's shoulder. She loved it too. Always had. So now she held it, and her finger was on the trigger.

‘Put it down, you stupid bitch of a girl. Put it down.' But she laughed at his fear. Two drunks in the kitchen, and only one held the gun. It seemed very funny.

Do it, she thought. Do it. Squeeze. Blast him away forever. Make life possible.

But would the life it made be possible, or would it start a different cycle, a cycle without David? A cycle with barred windows. She remembered a barred window.

‘Annie. Help me. Jack. Help me.'

Poor Ellie. Ben was trying to get her up. He couldn't. He fell to her side, defeated, as she rolled to her back. ‘The baby. Help me!' Ben on his knees now, was holding his jaw with his hand.

Jack took two more paces backwards, glancing quickly from his wife to the gun.

‘Get me to the hospital, Jack. For the love of God. I'm bleeding. Help me.'

Ann watched her father's mouth snap shut, and panic race down the dark corridors of his mind to end in his eyes ... in his brown, soft as velvet eyes, his bewildered eyes. Panic brought sanity with it. His hand went to his mouth, to his pocket, to his car keys. He took two steps towards his wife, but the barrel followed him.

‘My nemesis,' he said. ‘My bloody nemesis.'

Ellie's mouth was open, ugly. ‘Put that gun down, Annie.'

Ann looked at her mother, saw the bloody pool staining the floor. A flowing river of gore, black red beneath the bright white light. Too much blood.

Blood. Liza. Blood. Liza.

And the world stilled. It slipped out of focus, slowed down to stop.

Open mouths screamed soundless words, while she stared at pictures. Pictures from Grimm's fairytales. Too harsh. Too cruel.

Close your eyes Annie Blue Dress. You don't want to look any more.

Ben slumped against the wall. Bronwyn, shivering, wet curls slicked around her face. Bessy. Bill.

No card game in the lounge room tonight, Annie Blue Dress.

The policeman.

Quick march. Quick march, through the door

Drag a tiny boy from a river of gore,

And place it down on the kitchen floor.

The policeman can't make it breathe. Bessy can't make it breathe. What a clever baby, it even defies Jack Burton. No Johnny here to force life into this one, so it stays dead. Clever baby. Give it a pat on the back.

The policeman breaks the gun, removes the cartridges while he listens to the lies, believes the lies. He saw Bessy's bull in the fowl yard. He dodged Bessy's bull.

‘She got it to shoot the bloody bull. It's your fault. Keep the mongrel thing on your side of the river.'

Cast off blame, Jack. Give it to another. Stay blameless, Jack Burton. You must stay blameless. Not your fault. You didn't mean it. You never mean it. You always say you're sorry.

Benjie tries to place the blame where it belongs, but his jaw is broken. He can't talk. Bob told him not to talk. He sits, two hands now hold his face together, while his eyes turn to the mute in her corner, near the old wireless that was also struck dumb by a fall. Ben's eyes overflow as he tries to drag Dummy Burton back from that foggy, misty place where she is safe, that place where she went to before, where she wants to go again. Better there. Much better there.

Hear no evil. Speak no evil. Just file it away,

to polish up at leisure, use on another day.

The gun is leaning against the wall. The cartridges are on the table. The policeman doesn't know about this gun. It is a magic gun. Like Annie Blue Dress, it came from Narrawee.

Everything bad came from Narrawee.

Don't think, Annie Blue Dress. Don't think of that place.

We waited, little Annie. We waited, eating apples. We kept saying, Aunty May will open the door. We waited until there was no light to hope in. Remember.

Push me Johnny, push me high.

I'm a bird and I can fly

High up to the clear blue sky.

I made Liza Burton –

I made Liza Burton –

I made Liza Burton –

Hole in that piece of paper. Hole rubbed by a moistened finger. What did it rub away, little Annie? Lie? Cry? Sigh? Or was it Die? I made Liza Burton die. I made her die?

No! No.

I made her die? I remember the blood.

Shush. Don't think. Don't think, Annie Blue Dress. Hush now. Be still.

A face flew into semi-focus amid the mist clouding her brain. Branny's face. Her fists were punching, pounding a passage through the fog, her mouth screaming words.

‘You wake up Annie. Tell them, Annie. Tell them. Don't you go trying to pull your deaf and dumb act again. You wake up and talk to me.'

Ann stared at the younger girl's mouth. Remembered. Lipstick. David.

Branny. Strong little Branny. Let me be safe, Branny. It's safe here. I don't want to know. I can't live if I know.

‘Talk, Annie. Tell them what happened. Tell Mr Johnson that it's lies.' Bronwyn's small fists, pounding Ann's stomach, forced the air and one word out.

‘Yes.' Ann's voice was hoarse with tension, but free. ‘Yes. Lies. Everything he says. Lies.'

Bob Johnson knew. He knew, but he did nothing. He patted Ann's arm. ‘You get me some more towels, Annie. The ambulance will be here soon. They'll look after your mum. She's made of strong stuff. She'll make it.'

Ann looked from him to Bessy and Ellie, to the baby boy on
the table. She walked to it, touched it, spoke to it. ‘I made you a beautiful dress for the christening, then I went to a party, and I killed you too,' she said, and she walked from the room.

The night was black as pitch, the road deserted. Distant headlights gave ample warning of a vehicle's approach. She had time to hide. She was under the five-mile bridge when she heard the ambulance screaming towards Mallawindy, then she watched it scream back to Daree while she cowered wi
th her bike in a water-filled ditch. She saw the police car cruise by twice, her only cover the tall dry grass, and from behind a tree, she gripped the handlebars while she watched Bessy's truck slow, turn back, its spotlight scouring the sides of the road.

She would have to be off the road before dawn. Go bush. Leave her bike and follow the river.

She had her schoolbag, and her bankbook, her scissors and the midnight blue dress. She had her purse, and a battered golden syrup tin. She had her good shoes, and her old shoes. Her load wasn't heavy.