One Sunday (17 page)

They'd wanted to go together; they'd done everything together – the best of mates, those boys, his best mates too. Tom thought they'd be safe together. ‘Look after each other,' he'd yelled. Bloody April. Bloody Anzac Day. Bloody godforsaken war.

He almost joined up when word came through about Ronnie. He could have got in. He was fit enough, young enough back then. He should have gone. Clarrie Morgan had gone over, but Tom went looking for Katie Monahan, ready now to toss in his job – there was no marriage left to toss in. Someone told him she was dead, another told him she'd wed. He found no sign of her.

Joan interrupted his maudlin thinking with two glasses and a bottle of ale, which she placed on a small table at his elbow. He was pleased the room was dark.

‘He'll be down in a moment. Keep him sitting for as long as you can, Tom. I'll have to get back and relieve Irene. She's been on since six last night.'

‘Who is going to keep you sitting, lass? I'll guarantee that you're as tired as I am.'

She laughed, poured him a glass of the amber ale, and as he took it from her hand, he wondered at the sort of life that might have been his, had he wed such a woman.

He took a swallow, and liquid had never tasted so good. ‘I called in to the dairy early on, had a word with Willie, and I found the widow Dolan there, having a heart to heart with him. Everywhere I go lately, I seem to be tripping over her, or seeing signs of her.'

‘She's hard to miss, Tom. You see a bit of colour on the street and you know who's coming.'

‘You see her car on the street and you run for the nearest flamin' tree.'

‘That too.' She laughed again, and he laughed with her. Beer, laughter and the company of a fine woman – it was good medicine, but she was pinning that veil in place, preparing to move into her other life.

‘The news of Rachael's death is spreading like wildfire. It appears that Jeanne Johnson did more preaching at church than Rob or the priest,' she said, backing away.

‘That girl knows more about Squire's business than Squire himself, but she offered to sit with Rosie this afternoon, so for that I'm grateful.'

‘That's one weight off your mind then. Here's Rob now. Enjoy your beer.' She turned on her heel, and with a prod at two determined curls still trying to escape her veil, was gone.

‘Who's with your missus while you're over here drinking my beer?' Rob greeted him.

‘The door is locked. And that beer was fixing my headache until you came through the door.' Rob had claimed the bottle and was filling his own glass.

‘I read an article yesterday I wanted to show you,' Rob said, placing the bottle down and picking up a journal. ‘It was written by some chap in Melbourne who's been working with those shell-shocked boys. He's set up a clinic down there and apparently he's having a lot of success –'

‘Rosie isn't suffering from shell shock. I'm the one who's been dodging the missiles, which I didn't come over here to discuss. I was given instruction by your wife to make you sit down and put your feet up, so sit down and put your feet up.'

‘We could hear her over here this morning. She's getting worse –'

‘She got a bloody sight worse when she was down in that asylum, suffering their treatment for a month, I can tell you that much. She's my wife! She was the mother of my boys.'

‘She'll be your widow within six months.'

‘Lay off me, Robbie. You're making me forget what I wanted to ask you – Oh yes, Squire, did he mention seeing Kennedy?'

‘Not to me.'

‘Well, the news is out and I haven't seen him either. I hung around out there until after eight, and when he didn't come home, I thought Squire must have met him on the road,' Tom said, and Rob sat down.

‘From past experience, I'd say that anything Squire met on that road today is now dead. I've had occasion to ride with him. He gave me a lift to Willama last month and he got us there in not much over forty-five minutes, and by God, I kept my eyes closed for those forty-five minutes. It was hair-raising,' Rob said.

‘Amazing the speed some of those cars can do these days. Did he have anything at all to say about his daughter's death?'

‘He's blaming Chris Reichenberg. He said that she was known to be with him late last night.'

‘I've got to admit to agreeing with him on that. Kurt came in a while back. He told me his brother was with her at Dolan's party.'

‘I didn't say anything about this to Squire, but I don't think it's going to be as simple as that, Tom. I took a call from the young doctor at the Willama Hospital before we started the transfusion. He'd already taken a look at Rachael and he was saying there was evidence pointing to abuse, of a sexual nature –'

‘Rape? It didn't look like a rape to me.'

‘I said the same thing, but he was speaking of earlier, possible ongoing abuse – said he'd found bruising and partially healed lacerations.' He took a cigarette from the container on the table and lit it. ‘From my experience, a woman doesn't return to her abuser for more of the same unless she's tied up in some way with him. And she was with child. Well into her fifth month, so he said.'

‘Those poor bloody people!'

‘It's never-ending for them. Squire made no mention of the grandchild to me, but he did say his wife and daughter were prostrate with grief. I offered to go back out with him but he's got the priest staying there.'

Tom helped himself to a smoke, and the room filled with a blue haze. Minutes passed before he broke the silence. ‘Correct me if I've got this wrong, Robbie, but I'll swear that I heard somewhere – I'm not certain where – but someone was saying to me that a gimpy leg was not all Kennedy brought home from the war – or didn't bring home, so to speak. What I heard was, he'd got himself ruined as a man over there.'

‘That's something of an understatement, Tom.'

‘So he didn't father that child.'

‘I can state that for a fact. With what that chap has got left to work with, I don't know what he was thinking about marrying that young girl – or why she wanted to wed him.'

‘From what Kurt was saying, she didn't have much choice in the matter.' Tom related his earlier conversation while Rob sipped his beer and nodded. ‘Kurt reckons she told him last night that she was leaving Kennedy, leaving town, and she wanted Chris to go with her.'

‘Maybe we begin to see the light,' Rob said, and he drained his glass.

‘Maybe we do. Kennedy found out she was leaving, he did his block and killed her. And he's taken off, and that's why I haven't been able to find him?'

‘Or he's holed up in the bush, waiting for nightfall so he can go after young Reichenberg,' Rob said.

As Tom and Rob Hunter emptied the bottle and the conversation turned to other likely scenarios, Tom's new prime suspect made a right hand turn into Railway Road, taking his usual route home from Willama. He'd done two extra runs for the cannery this morning. There was good money to be made during the fruit season, and Dave never refused it.

He had to get down from the truck to open his gate, get down again to close it, and when he parked in the shade of a stand of blue gums and turned off the motor, his bad leg didn't want to get him down again, so he slumped forward, resting his head a while on the pillow of his arms. He needed sleep, needed a year of sleep, but had forgotten how to sleep for more than an hour or two. Unless he took his pain powders, that leg and hip never stopped aching.

He'd inherited a decent patch of earth and not much else, a hut and a few sheep, a couple of worn-out horses and a worn-out gig. He hadn't inherited a lot of height, or good looks. If he'd been half an inch shorter, the army wouldn't have taken him in that first intake. They'd been fussy back in August 1914, accepting only the cream of the crop. Not much cream left in Dave Kennedy, rusty hair working its way further back each year, exposing more brow for the sun to freckle. Too much pain, too much time working and not enough eating had fined him down to skin and bone.

He looked at the house, thought about that piece of beef in his meat safe, thought about lighting the stove and cooking it, but dismissed the thought. He had to get down to his pickers. His trees were loaded, and a lot of that fruit was getting too ripe for the cannery, which could afford to pick and choose these days. Everyone along the river had put in fruit trees. He'd freighted a dozen crates to Melbourne on this morning's train and he'd get more on tomorrow's. Those top trees would be stripped today.

Like a man of twice his years he climbed from the cab, easing himself from the running board to the earth, placing his good foot down then, with will alone, forcing his bad leg to bear weight. His upper thigh had been shattered. He should have bled to death in the mud but the mud had stopped the bleeding and some cursed vision of an orchard had kept him breathing while he lay half buried for a day, shielded from flying shrapnel by mud and bodies. Somewhere in France he'd seen that orchard. Somewhere in France he'd wandered down a narrow grassy lane with a girl called Yvonne, and they'd come upon an orchard, rows of gnarled old apple trees, a vision of blossom.

Pretty Yvonne of the soft voice and the softer mouth, he hadn't been able to speak her lingo and she'd spoken even less of his, but he'd climbed the fence, and helped her over, needing to walk amongst those trees, to smell that blossom and wash the scent of death from his nostrils. Little old stone cottage behind that orchard, little old couple, watching them from a window. Something eternal about that old place and the ancient couple living there, safe in a world of no safety.

He'd gone overseas in the early days of the war, him and most of the other young blokes in town. They'd joined up together, trained together, sailed over on the same boat, eager to see a bit of the world. They'd seen Egypt and sampled its delights, considering war a bloody marvellous game until the shells and bullets started flying.

Maurie Larkin fell in that first hail. Dave tried to get him up, but that wasn't the way it was done in wartime. Bodies, bits of bodies everywhere, and which bit belonged to whom was anyone's guess. Step over them and save yourself – that had been the name of the game. Three other mates fell before that day was done, but not Dave, not a nick, not a scratch, bullets curved around him, bombs blew others apart – blew two of the Macdonald boys apart a few weeks later.

He hadn't lost touch with Tige Johnson and Len Larkin at Anzac Cove. They got out of that one together, them and two Macdonald boys. Henman got out of that one, the two Walker boys. They'd come to know the trenches well, to know the rats and the smell of the Germans' gas, or he, Len, Tige and Ned Walker had. Bloody maniacs, they'd been, the invincible four – until Ned got a lungful of gas, and then there were three. Until Len had his hand blown to smithereens. Then there were two.

Tige Johnson had sat down in the mud that night and ground the barrel of his gun deep. ‘They're haunting me, mate. They're all talking at me. And all those blokes I've killed are talking too, and I can hear their wives and mothers yelling at me. I'm not doing it anymore.'

He'd been too young when he joined up, a lanky sixteen. Growing up on those killing fields might twist any kid's head. Dave had let him talk it out.

‘Religion is a rich man's bloody conspiracy, mate. Those toffee-nosed bastards realised that there was too many of us who never had nothing and had no hope of ever getting nothing, so to stop us taking what they had, they invented the God dream, then paid the priests to shove it down our throats until our guts got so choked up with religion, they had us beat. You see what I mean, mate? They tell us thou shalt not kill, and we don't. Then they tell us to kill, and we do. Do you get what I mean, mate? We're their bloody brainless sheep.'

Lying side by side in that trench, staring up at the same moon that hung over Molliston, Dave listened for hours to his rambling about priests and rich bastards.

‘There is no God up there, mate. I mean, if there was, and he was looking down at this, he'd blow his own bloody brains out, if he was a decent sort of bloke, wouldn't he?'

At dawn he said he was taking off, going to have a look at the country while there was still some of it left to look at. Dave meant to keep an eye on him but that wasn't how wars were fought. When Tige was reported missing, Dave knew he was dead, his gun barrel loaded with mud.

He marched on with strangers then, marched through hell, and the fires hadn't burned him. Then he'd walked for a day in paradise with Yvonne. Thereafter, he'd made a point of forgetting all but Yvonne and that apple orchard. It was the only way he could keep on marching, keep on killing, keep on wading through blood.

A born leader, Dave Kennedy. What a bloody hero. Chaps dropping like flies around him, but he didn't drop. Just killed those bastards, got as many as he could, any way he could – had to get that carnage over so he could go home, plant his orchard and send for Yvonne.

Then the Germans made a special batch of bullets, engraved his name on them, gave them into the hands of a blond-headed, baby-faced boy who couldn't even shoot straight.

Someone carried Dave to a tent when he refused to die in the mud. If the injury had been lower, they would have cut that leg off. Instead, they waited for him to die. When he didn't, they took him to an old church, turned hospital. He refused to die there too, so they shipped him to England, stuck him in a ward with bedpans, suppurating sores, the stink of sulphur, and broken men with distant eyes who remembered every one of the thousand miles they'd marched through hell.

During the last days of the war, Dave had been as close to death as a man could get. He couldn't remember much about it, other than opening his eyes one day and seeing Tige leaning over him. He thought he was dead, that he'd met up with Tige in some halfway station. He raved about the orchard he'd plant, and the stone house he'd build for Yvonne, about the half-a-dozen kids playing in that orchard, confetti blossom in their hair.

‘Hold that dream, mate,' Tige said. ‘Just hold that dream. It's all over, mate. They're sending us home – if they've got any bloody boats left to take us home in.'

Dave hadn't been speaking his dreams to a ghost. Listed as missing for months, Tige turned up when the war ended, hundreds of miles from where he'd gone missing, claiming he couldn't remember his name or where he'd been, so they'd shipped him over to the same hospital.

He remembered Dave, and maybe he kept him alive too, while those doctors cut out rotting flesh and muscle, lanced and drained abscesses bigger than tennis balls. He came in to say goodbye the day Dave woke up long enough to learn there would be no more soft-mouthed girls for him. That little German bastard's aim had been good. He'd castrated him like a dog. Tige sat by his bed for hours that day, gripping his hand and talking, talking, talking about that orchard they'd plant together, talking, talking until Dave slept.

They carried him onto the boat that finally brought him home, or home to a hospital in Melbourne where they gave him crutches and told him he'd never walk again. Dave was there for months before he realised that the big bloke in the bandage face mask was his cousin, Arthur Squire. He was still there when they took those bandages off. Seeing Arthur's wife's reaction to what the Germans had left of her husband, Dave had found something to be grateful for. At least he didn't have a wife to cringe from the sight of him. That was the day he decided he'd walk again. He ordered that leg to carry him and in time it did.

It carried him down to his shed now, where he stopped, stared at his trees. Not a picker in sight.

‘You lazy bastards,' he said, and he ordered his leg to carry him further. ‘Vern?' he called. ‘Riley! Are you sleeping on the job?' No reply. They hadn't been here. Nothing had been picked. The peaches were falling off the trees. ‘You unreliable bastards,' he said. ‘I should have had more bloody sense – should have had more bloody sense about a lot of things.'

He spread his feet and reached down, picked a perfect peach up from the earth, smelling it, dusting it off on his sleeve, eating it. He'd have to get back in the truck, get down to the camp and round up those loafing bastards. But he couldn't do it. Couldn't pull himself up into that seat again. Couldn't get out, open that bloody gate again.

Three months ago he thought he had it made. Three months ago he thought Rachael reminded him a little of Yvonne. Those Squire kids had been raised with too much of everything. Dave had never had enough of anything, and how the hell did a bloke who had nothing refuse manna from the gods when it was offered to him on a silver tray?

His family's big old weatherboard house had burned to the ground while Dave was overseas. His mother gave up and died a year later and his father had taken to spending his days at Dolan's hotel. Barely able to walk when he came home from the hospital in Melbourne, no father to greet him at the station, Dave found the old man sleeping it off in a two roomed servants' hut. Then followed days of walking that neglected property, just walking. He couldn't mount a horse, couldn't shear a sheep, couldn't dig a post hole. He had his army money, though, and ended up paying others to do what he could not. Then five years ago, he'd buried his father, and that land became his land. He wrote to the Returned Soldiers League about a loan. He was going to put in some fruit trees.

Word spread fast in Molliston. Tige, now the drunk local madman and hermit, hadn't shaved or had a haircut since he came home. He lived in a humpy in Squire's wood paddock, surviving on fish and rabbits and the few bob a week pension from the army, but he turned up on Dave's doorstep ready to work, and working harder blind drunk than half sober – and the harder he worked, the harder he talked.

‘Bugger the priests and their God dream, mate,' he'd say. ‘I'm living your dream, and nothing has felt so bloody right to me in a long time.'

They prepared the land and planted those trees, row upon row of them, and they walked those trees in spring, watching the green buds swell and burst free.

‘Wait until next year,' they said.

Dave bought an old truck while he waited. Bill Morrison got it running. He bought a water pump to set up down by the river, and Tige came back again to dig trenches and lay half a mile of pipes. He camped with Dave that spring to watch the first sparse blossoms open, then wandered off for a month or two, causing what havoc he could, needing to retain his madman reputation, and thus his pension.

They shared the first apricot, picked a peach or two.

‘Just wait until next year, mate. If you can hang on here until next bloody year, you'll have a crop. We'll pick them together.'

Dave had hung on. He sold a few more sheep, paying the interest only on the loan, while watching the trees bud up again, smelling the first blossom. Then the weather turned on him and a gale blew in direct from the south pole, bringing hail as big as golf balls to whip his trees, bringing winds to snatch the remaining buds, howling around that hut for days, laughing at futile dreams.

He could see Tige now, standing out in that storm, shaking his fist at the sky and screaming, ‘You vindictive bastard. You're jealous of a little man's big dreams.'

He stayed the night, raved for most it, and at dawn when the rain abated, they walked those rows of battered trees together, Tige holding on to his hand like a little kid might. ‘I want you to know, mate, that it's been a bloody pleasure sharing your dream, even if it was just a dream. I want you to remember that, mate.'

Then he walked back to Squire's, took one of his father's shotguns and blew himself out of his private hell.

Dave's world started leaning to the left of centre the day Tige died. He went to church one day, maybe wanting to appease Tige's vindictive god, or just searching for a crutch to stabilise his lean. He'd sold most of his stock, had no friend to talk to, no light to read by, and nothing to read anyway. He owed the grocer, the butcher, the baker, owed Bill from the garage, owed the interest on his loan. Unless God took pity on him and sent down some miracle, he was going to lose his grandfather's land.

Nicholas Squire had approached him outside the church and invited him to dinner. Dave, in need of a decent meal, accepted the invitation.

In the next weeks he'd eaten a few decent meals there, taken Arthur walking, the crippled leading the blind, but the blind walking straighter, stronger. They were cousins, of similar age, had been boyhood friends until Arthur went off to college to become a gentleman. A great orator, Arthur, he'd wanted to go into politics. His speech was now a distorted confusion of sounds Dave could rarely decipher. Better not to speak to him, better to walk. Arthur never tired of walking.