One Sunday (18 page)

It was late September when Dave's teetering world finally leaned too far and flipped over on its back. He'd gone to church, hoping for a free meal. Nicholas was waiting for him, alone. They sat together in the Squire pew that day, and he asked Dave to follow him home.

No sign of his wife or the girls, Arthur out walking with his companion, Squire had taken Dave to the library, closed the door and put the proposal to him – a young wife, a new house and a child, of Squire blood.

‘I'm not marriage material, Nicholas. I thought the old man would have made you aware of that.'

A hand brushed aside Dave's protest. ‘There is more to a marriage than what may, or may not, take place in the marital bed, Dave. Don't refuse without due consideration.' Dave was shaking his head, turning away, when Nicholas played the ace he always kept tucked up his sleeve.

‘I have a new truck on order, a Dodge. They are a remarkable vehicle. It would be yours and Rachael's.'

A new Dodge truck? A man would almost sell his soul for a modern truck. ‘She'd never agree to it, Nicholas. She's a seventeen year old kid.'

‘Eighteen in December. More than old enough to wed.'

‘She's been on with that youngest Reichenberg kid for years. Let her marry him.'

‘You're joking, of course. Will you at least consider –?'

‘I think you need to consider where I've been, Nicholas, then consider what it is you're asking me to do. I can't deny I'd like that truck – and I'd like to help you out, but I couldn't raise one of old Joe Reichenberg's grandkids. I can't. I'm sorry.'

Can't
was a word not included in Nicholas Squire's vocabulary. He poured two small whiskies. ‘We appear to have lost Arthur's son. God alone knows where his mother has taken him. Olivia and I want the infant Rachael is carrying, and we want to see her wed to a good man.' He sighed, sipped from his glass, lifting his eyes to his visitor. ‘She's fond of you, Dave. I believe you are fond of her.'

‘Your daughters are both beautiful kids.'

‘Before making this approach, Olivia and I spoke to Rachael. She has been made aware of your . . . limitation.'

‘Is young Reichenberg prepared to marry her?'

‘We are discussing my daughter and a child of the Squire blood – your own blood, Dave. We are discussing my daughter's reputation, and her sister's chance of making a good marriage – which we will not discuss in the same breath as German scum. The child will be your child. It will be born in Melbourne and the date on the birth certificate adjusted.' He had it all worked out. All he needed was a father's name on that certificate. ‘We would also make some arrangement regarding your loan. I believe you are experiencing some financial difficulties at the moment.'

Were there no secrets in this bloody town? Dave emptied his whisky glass, accepted a second drink. Here was the answer to his money worries. Wasn't saying ‘no' to Squire's proposal like saying no to first prize in the lottery? That girl had got herself into a fix. She must have known there was no way Nicholas would allow her to marry a German. What did a girl do in that situation? Most parents would have packed her off to the city, had the kid adopted, but Squire wasn't most parents. He'd chased Arthur's wife to England, trying to reclaim young Raymond. He wasn't going to let one drop of Squire blood get away if he could help it.

It would be blue eyed and blonde. Couldn't help but be, Rachael being a blue-eyed blonde. Dave's own eyes were blue-grey. Babies all looked much the same, didn't they? Who was going to argue if he claimed it? Only those who knew he couldn't father a child. Tige had known, but Tige was gone. Len Larkin and a few of the returned blokes might have known. Dr Hunter knew, not that he'd be broadcasting it.

‘Does the Reichenberg kid know she's in the family way?'

‘I can't be certain on that point. She's been in her room since we learned of the child, and that is where she will remain until she's wed.'

Rachael had known Dave all her life. He was a second cousin, or some sort of a cousin – their grandmothers had been sisters, the only daughters of old Molly Squire.

‘I can't see that an eighteen year old kid would agree to that sort of marriage, or if I'm prepared to agree to it, Nicholas, but if you can give me a day or two…'

‘Certainly. Sleep on it, Dave. Of course we'd want it done as soon as possible.'

Dave refused lunch and drove his crate on wheels home, where he wandered his land, one minute telling himself he was crazy even giving the idea head room, and the next telling himself it could be the miracle he'd been praying for to save his grandfather's land. Son-in-law of Nicholas Squire. A wife, a child – maybe in a couple of years he could get Rachael to agree to adopting a few more kids. A new Dodge truck might get him carrying work for the cannery. A new house, something fine standing where the old house had stood. No loan to pay off.

He didn't sleep on it. He didn't sleep a wink. Near dawn, he bathed, shaved, dressed in his old suit, and by nine he was back at Squire's. Nicholas took him to a bedroom where Rachael, pale and subdued, sat before the dressing table, brushing her hair. Her eyes met his in the mirror.

‘Your father tells me you're needing to get married, Rae.' Not much of a marriage proposal.

‘He's needing it, not me, Dave.'

‘That's pretty much the answer I expected…'

She stood, turned, looked directly at him. ‘This isn't about what I want, or what you may think you want. It's about what he wants. You win again, Father.'

Not much of an acceptance.

Once the door was closed and the key returned to Nicholas's pocket, he extended his hand, shook Dave's. ‘We'll do it Friday evening – if that is convenient? We don't want to turn this thing into a town circus. A week's honeymoon in Melbourne, perhaps, then a small reception when you return.'

It wasn't much of a wedding. Dave preferred not to remember it, or the photographer Nicholas brought over from Willama. Following the short ceremony, Rachael returned to her room and Nicholas paced his library until after midnight, laying down the ground rules.

The next morning the family left at seven, driving over the bridge and continuing south on Bridge Road, which was the most direct route to Melbourne. A lot of back roads serviced a lot of properties out that way now, and a few small towns. They boarded the train at a place thirty miles south and while the women said their goodbyes, Nicholas gave his final instructions.

‘Olivia has a recalcitrant sister, a teacher, who unfortunately never wed. She has interfered in family matters before, and I prefer to keep her and her unconventional attitudes away from my daughters. Should Rachael express a desire to visit her aunt, I'd suggest you refuse. Keep her busy. She enjoys the city stores, and both she and her sister are obsessed by the cinema.' He offered the train tickets and three ten pound notes – more cash than Dave had seen in many a day. ‘I've given Rachael no spending money. Until she settles down to marriage, I'd suggest you handle all cash transactions. We have accounts with some of the larger stores. The hotel account has been taken care of.'

Rachael slept for much of the trip. They arrived at Spencer Street in the early afternoon and took a cab to the Windsor Hotel, where they were shown to a room with a double bed.

Dave's hip was killing him – all he wanted was a flat floor to lie on – but Rachael took the key from Dave's hand and returned it to the porter. ‘This will not be at all suitable,' she said, her tone imperious, and for the first time Dave saw something of Nicholas in his daughter. They were moved into a twin room.

Be firm, Nicholas had said, firm but gentle. Breaking a woman to marriage was like breaking a filly to the saddle. Perhaps Rachael had been standing outside that library door, listening to her father's instruction. She'd been firm, but gentle.

After lunch and a pain powder, he took her to the cinema, and to another one that evening, then he slept the night with the key beneath his pillow. They went to the beach and rode the trams on Sunday, and on the Monday morning he took her shopping – or she took him.

She liked spending money, bought two pair of shoes without bothering to try them on. She bought two shirts for him, then a ready-made jacket, and when he protested, she lifted a finger to her lips. He wanted to return to the hotel, but she headed around a corner, so he followed her into a dark and narrow shop where she was greeted like royalty by Nicholas's tailor. He had a stock of partially made-up suits, so she ordered one and charged it to Nicholas's account. ‘We'll pick it up on Wednesday morning,' she said.

No argument from the old fellow. ‘Will the gentleman be requiring shoes, perhaps a shirt and tie to match, Miss Squire?'

‘Why not?' she said.

‘You've got to stop this, Rae.'

‘Why? He thinks his money can buy him anything, Dave. So let it buy you a new suit.'

Maybe he held his head a little higher when he walked with her on his arm to the dining room in that new suit, new shoes, new shirt, tie and socks. This was her world, and at her side it could become his world. He started dreaming big that night, started planning a life spent in decent suits and shoes. He saw her in his new house, saw half a dozen kids playing in his orchard. Knowing Squire's attitude to blood, he wouldn't consider orphanage kids his grandchildren, though the reverse might apply in Dave's own case: he might accept Joe Reichenberg's grandson as his own if he had half a dozen orphanage kids also calling him Dad.

On Thursday, the last day of their honeymoon, she didn't leave the hotel. She became silent, checked at the reception desk for messages all day. ‘I'm expecting a message from my aunt,' she said. The message didn't arrive. On Friday they caught the night train home.

It was a long, slow trip, with passengers getting on and off at every station. The train got in to Molliston late, but Nicholas was waiting to take them to the big house, where he'd assembled forty-odd guests, his and Olivia's friends from out of town, in the main, but a few of the better class locals and a couple of Rachael's friends. Dave's friends were all dead, other than Len Larkin, who, had he been invited, wouldn't have come.

When Dave's grandmother was alive, that big house had been his second home, so the wheel had turned and his life was back on track. After a painkilling powder and a couple of drinks, Dave began to feel he belonged there, and when they called for a speech, he took Rachael's hand and made his speech: ‘My wife and I,' he said, ‘my wife and I…'

A good night, a good party and a good sleep, though the next day wasn't so good. His truck hadn't arrived but his house was already rising, and why the hell it had been started while he was away, he did not know. He'd wanted it set on the old site. He'd wanted something with character. Squire had hired a mob from Willama and they were throwing up a modern three bedroom box of a thing, fifty feet from where the old house had stood and only ten feet from the hut, with the shed blocking off any view of his fruit trees. Nothing he could do about it. The frame was up, the roof going on. Maybe that was the moment he began to realise he'd given control over his life into Squire's hands.

He spent two nights at the big house, he and Rachael supposedly sharing a twin room. She didn't sleep in the second bed; she crept up to her old bedroom – or he hoped she'd gone to her old room.

With the house still overrun by guests, on Sunday morning he made his stand, said that he and his wife would be moving home to his property. That afternoon they drove across the river to the hut he called home. It had undergone a radical cleaning by the Johnsons and now boasted floor mats, two single beds and two sitting-room chairs. Rachael took a quick glance through the door, then backed out.

‘This will not be suitable,' she said, but with a smile.

He smiled too. ‘It's not much, Rae, but it's comfortable. It's got a good stove, an ice chest. You can have the bedroom. I'll move the second bed into the kitchen. Just look on it as a camping-out holiday until the house is ready.'

‘He'd love to see me camping in your hut, Dave, but I promise you now, he's not going to win that one.'

‘You're my wife, and a wife lives in whatever her husband can provide, doesn't she? At the moment, this is all I can provide so this is where we live,' he said, putting his foot down, pulling gently on those reins. He picked up her case and carried it inside, set about lighting the stove. When he came outside to fill the kettle, she'd gone.

Around eight that night, Nicholas brought her back. He said she'd walked down to the swimming bend and swum across, but a worm of doubt started crawling in Dave's head. There were a lot of hours between four and eight.

‘We're going to set down a few ground rules here, Rae, and my first one is that you don't go near Reichenberg's place. You don't talk to that boy, even if you run head on into him in the street. You don't notice him working in the paddock as we drive by.'

‘I walked straight down to the bend and swam home. I did not go to Chris's house, or meet with him outside the house,' she said. ‘And my first rule is, I don't sleep in that hut, and my second, I don't intend explaining my every action.'

Then she took off again, in the dark, towards the river, with Dave limping behind her. He didn't see her dive in but he heard her, and found two pairs of her shoes lying where she'd left them on the bank. He'd thought that river would keep her on his side.

What the hell had he got himself into?

Doors were open to the heat now, no gain in trying to lock it out. Let her in through the front door and out through the rear, maybe she'd take a bit of the heat from the old stove with her. Had to keep those stoves burning today – always a roast for Sunday dinner.

A few folk lolled on verandas or leaned in doorways, a few hands rose lethargically as Tom freewheeled down Railway Road, his head burning beneath his helmet, his back roasting beneath his vest. At least the beer he'd put away at Hunter's was now coming out of him in sweat, preventing his blood from boiling over.

He was totalling up how many miles he'd ridden since dawn when he had to dismount at Kennedy's gate. And the truck was there, parked in the shade of a stand of blue gums. He closed the gate behind him, pushed those pedals another fifty yards and sighted his new prime suspect working in his orchard.

He wasn't expecting to see him. Some rethinking of options might have to be done here, and fast. Leaning the bike against the truck's tray, Tom stood a moment, readjusting his mind to Chris Reichenberg's position as prime suspect.

‘Hello there,' he called. Dave placed a handful of peaches down as he turned to his visitor. ‘I suppose you've been in touch with the Squires, Mr Kennedy?'

‘Not this morning.' Dave plucked another peach.

There wasn't going to be an easy way out of this one. Tom scratched at his jaw, continuing the scratch up to his brow, lifting his helmet. ‘I've knocked on your door a few times today. I left you a note at six, asking you to get in touch.'

‘I haven't been back to the house,' Dave replied. ‘Thought I'd try to get a few crates in before lunch.'

Tom nodded, moved deeper into the shade of the young trees. ‘I'm the bearer of bad news, I'm afraid.' Dave stopped picking peaches and stood waiting for him to get it out, so he got it out. ‘Your wife was found early this morning on Merton Road. She was dead on arrival at the Willama hospital, Mr Kennedy.' Tom offered his hand but Dave was busy placing peaches in a wooden crate at his feet, placing them down slowly, keeping his head low. Tom withdrew his hand and made another fast readjustment of his thinking processes. ‘At this stage it looks as if it could have been murder.' He waited for the guilty flinch, for the shifting eyes, but Kennedy looked up at him, looked him square in the eye.

‘How?' he asked.

‘Her skull was fractured by what appears to have been a massive blow to the base of the skull.'

A shake of his head, and Dave's hands reached again into the tree, that topic of conversation seemingly exhausted.

Tom stood on, not knowing what to do next. That coot's little wife was dead, and he didn't appear concerned enough to stop picking his peaches. What the hell did he think he was doing? Was he waiting to be read his rights and cuffed? Look, no handcuffs. Tom took his notebook from his pocket, needing to look busy while Dave finished filling one crate and began on another.

‘When something like this happens in a quiet little town, it's logical to start looking around at any strangers. I suppose you've had a few pickers here this last week, Mr Kennedy?'

‘I had five here yesterday. We worked through until the light was gone.' His words didn't slow his hands. ‘They were supposed to be here today – or three of them were.'

‘Can you give me their names?'

‘The Henderson brothers. They're Reg Curtin's men – he loaned them to me yesterday. He had a mob of friends over from Willama, and all I had was Logan, Riley and Vern Lowe – unreliable, useless swine, all three. I got home from the cannery this morning, expecting these trees to be stripped, and I find no one here.'

Tom knew the Henderson brothers. They'd been coming up here at picking time for four or five years now. Logan and Riley he didn't know, but the other name caused his heartbeat to step up its pace.
Vernon,
he wrote instead of
Vern. Vernon bloody lower-than-a-crippled-snake's-belly!

He'd known a Vernon Lowe in Melbourne, had taken pleasure in running him in, which he'd done regularly. How many Vernon Lowes might there be in the world? Not too many.

‘Lowe – would he be a woolly-headed, shifty eyed, scrawny little runt of forty-odd?'

‘That's him. Skinny as a snake with a head of hair like an unshorn merino.' No break in the picking. Dave was fast and careful – and starting to look like a carbon copy of his father.

Tom hadn't been around Molliston before the war, though Rob had mentioned once how Dave Kennedy had been one of the town's bright young lads, well educated and a brilliant footballer who had perfected the art of kicking goals over his shoulder while running in the opposite direction. Hard to believe this bloke had ever kicked a football. He looked dried out, worn out, deep wrinkles cutting their way down from eyes to chin. Thin faced, wrists of sinew and bone – he could have passed for fifty. Tom, who was damn near fifty, turned away, feeling a wave of pity for that bright young lad who had once kicked goals over his shoulder.

‘I could do with a drink, and you look as if one mightn't go astray yourself, Mr Kennedy.'

Dave glanced at the sun. ‘It must be close to midday,' he said, and he led the way to the house, Tom walking behind him, watching that gimpy leg still trying to march.

‘When I was down here earlier I took the liberty of looking in through your curtains. I noticed that one of your back rooms looked like it could have been turned upside down. Vern Lowe has done a bit of time for robbery –'

Dave didn't appear to be listening. He removed Tom's calling-card twig from his lock, glanced at it, then inserted his key, Tom feeling relieved when it went in and turned.

Heat. Stuffy, airless heat in that house, along with the smell of new furniture, glue, paint, stale smoke and something else, something rank, all roasting together in a modern kitchen, which must have caught every ray of the morning sun on its long unprotected windows.

‘Tea?'

‘Whatever is convenient, Mr Kennedy.' He sniffed, wondering at that rank smell, unable to identify it.

‘I'll have to light the stove.'

‘A cool drink then. Anything.'

‘There's water on tap. It won't be cool, but help yourself. I'll have to light the stove sooner or later. I've got a bit of beef going off.' He opened a firebox full of ash, sighed, closed it, and removed the circular hotplate. He crumpled a few sheets of newspaper and tossed them down the hole with a handful of chips and bark. He manoeuvred in a few larger sticks, added a good slosh of kerosene from a bottle, struck a match and threw it down the hole. There was a small explosion as blue flames leapt high, crawled across the face of the stove where the fluid had spilled, crawled over to the hob towards the open bottle. Tom stepped back, looking for cover.

‘It shouldn't take too long. Squire paid a fortune for this stove. It heats water in a tank on the side – which reminds me, it probably needs filling up.'

‘Handy, I suppose – if you're wanting to…' He'd set out to mention washing the dishes, until sighting a pile of dishes in the sink. ‘…wanting to have a bit of a clean-up.'

No reply, Dave busy filling the stove's water tank.

‘That bedroom, Mr Kennedy, as I was saying before. Would you know if anything is missing?' Tom asked, still wanting to hang Vern Lowe for something. He'd started wanting to hang that snake-eyed little mongrel twenty-odd years ago.

‘My savings, Constable. Seventy-eight pounds. You may as well sit down,' he said, his thumb pointing at a chair. ‘There is no question as to who took my money. My wife took it last night. She was leaving me. And no question as to who turned that room upside down either. I did, looking for my money.'

This man was stark raving mad. His wife was dead – with Tom pitying him, and looking for a reason to hang Vern Lowe – and he comes out with something like that! Tom stared at Kennedy's back, watching him poke more wood down the hole, add another spurt of kerosene, create another explosion, then, thankfully, cork the bottle of kero and place it on the mantelpiece, away from the naked flame.

Dave set his kettle over the central hotplate and turned to his visitor. ‘Don't get me wrong here, Thompson. I'm as sorry as the next chap that the girl is dead. I thought she must have caught that train to Willama last night, and had probably ridden back with it, gone to Melbourne – but my being sorry doesn't make one iota of difference to anything, does it?'

‘I can't say that it does, Mr Kennedy. So, do you know what time she left the house, if she left it alone?'

‘I didn't see her leave, but if you didn't know she'd been playing around with the youngest Reichenberg kid for years, then you're one of the few in town who didn't. That's who she would have gone to.' He sounded tired, looked beaten, looked as if he wanted Tom to get on his bike and ride away. Then he sighed, stretched his back, grasped the mantelpiece, taking the weight off his bad leg. ‘I found out she'd taken my money when I came in from picking. That was sometime after dark. We argued, I went out to load the truck – it could have been about nine. That's when she would have gone. She'd told me straight out that she was going to Melbourne with Reichenberg, and that nothing I could do would stop her. I threatened to burn all of her clothes, and she said she'd run naked to him. That's the girl I married, Thompson. If my mother had spoken like that to my old man, he would have cut her throat.'

He straightened his back, walked to his meat safe and took out a lump of beef, slid it into a pan, threw in a cup of water, then placed the meat in the cold oven, which wasn't the right thing to do to a nice bit of beef. Tom didn't know a lot about cooking, but he'd learned how to cook meat. He turned away; he wasn't out here to give cooking lessons.

‘Do you mind if I take a look around, just to get an idea of things before the city chaps arrive and start asking me questions?'

‘Go for your life.'

He was in that ransacked bedroom when Dave came in and caught him looking at an army uniform hung over the foot of the bed. Dave claimed it. ‘I kept my money in a cigarette tin, in that breast pocket,' he said, patting the pocket, making the medals clink. Then he hung it in the wardrobe and returned to the kitchen.

Tom stood on, looking in that wardrobe, staring at the long blue gown Rachael was wearing when she'd played the piano at the last concert. Not much else in there – a woman's coat, a man's suit, and a nice one, a few empty hangers. It looked as if the girl had packed a case before she left. He closed the door, ran a hand over the wood. Not bad looking furniture, the bed, wardrobe and dressing table a matching set. Only one item on top of the wardrobe, or only one that he could see; it looked like a rifle in a canvas bag. The top of a wardrobe was a common enough place to keep a rifle, out of reach of the kids. Tom felt the length of the bag. Definitely some sort of gun in there, but Rachael hadn't been shot.

Back in the kitchen, Dave had stepped out of his trousers and was rubbing a rancid liniment into a thigh resembling the twisted branch of a rotten tree, a termite's road map drawn on it. And no wonder young Rachael had left home, Tom thought, identifying that rank stink. How the hell anyone could rub that on their skin he didn't know. He stepped fast to the open door, stood sucking in raw heat, and blessing it.

‘They put too much glass in this place, too many windows and no shade for them. It will be pleasant in winter. I, personally, would have set the house on the old site to take advantage of the trees. I've planted a few trees on the west side. They'll grow in time.' His hands continued spreading that stink. ‘It all comes down to time, doesn't it?' he said. ‘Another few months of time and I could have . . . could have, but didn't, and that's life.'

‘We never know what's around the next corner, Mr Kennedy. I don't suppose you'd have any idea what your wife might have been wearing when she left?'

‘As I said, I didn't see her leave.' Dave's hands continued to work that leg, kneading, slapping at wasted flesh, reaching beneath his drawers and rubbing the liniment into his upper thigh and hip. Tom turned his back, not wanting to see.

‘Any idea what sort of handbag she would have been carrying?'

‘Brown, big, she never moved without it. Schmidt made it. He does some nice leatherwork.' His trousers back on, he stirred up his stove, tested the weight of the kettle, opened the oven and poured a little more water into his baking pan. ‘You'd wonder how she could do what she did, you know. One of her brothers died over there, the other one comes home shot to hell. That girl had no sense of family, or of what her family lost to those bloody Germans.'

Tom nodded in agreement, continuing to nod while reconsidering what might have taken place here last night. She'd met her boyfriend late at the pub. He knew that much. She must have found his money early, told him she was leaving, must have come back, to pack or pick up her case, and he killed her, then returned her to her boyfriend's gate. Simple. Maybe too simple.

Tom took a good deep breath of air then walked across to lean against the ice chest, checking it for signs of blood. No smears, no splatters. He walked to the sink, filled a tumbler with water, which allowed him to have a good look at the sink, at the taps and tap handles. No blood smears.

Is a man with a new truck going to kill his wife then leave her to be found a few hundred yards from her home? Wouldn't he dump her down a mine shaft, or somewhere miles from home where she wasn't likely to be found, then tell everyone she'd taken off? That would have been the logical thing to do, but how logical was this chap? How logical does a chap feel when his wife of three months tells him she's running off with an old boyfriend? It didn't take much to set some of the returned boys off. A decent clap of thunder could still send Bluey Wilson ducking for cover, though he might laugh about it later. Maybe Dave had lost more than his testicles over there. How could a sane man live with the stink of that liniment?