Clementine swung the station wagon left off the highway towards Katinga. Her mobile rang. Gerard Holt.
Groan. What did he want? He must have heard about Clancy. Of course he would ring expecting Clementine to miraculously fix it. She pulled over.
‘Good morning, Clementine,’ he said, in his impeccably charming voice.
‘Morning, Gerard. What can I do you for?’
‘Just checking you’re right for next Wednesday night. Got your speech ready, have you?’
Good, she thought. He doesn’t know.
‘Yes, nothing to worry about, Gerard—I’ve got it covered.’
‘Excellent. Excellent. Now don’t forget to acknowledge the sponsors. You’ve got the list I sent you?’
The list, yes, she had the list, with Clearham Technology & Services at the top, the primary sponsor and biggest employer in town. That’s what this call was really about. Gerard’s wife, Bernadette, was state manager. Gerard reported to her as Victorian operations manager. The fundraiser was another opportunity to beat the drum for CTS.
‘Yes, got the list, thanks, Gerard.’
‘Okay, good. Now, don’t forget, six-thirty sharp. Be early. We need the supercoach to squeeze a few palms, talk to the punters, get their juices flowing ready for the auction.’
She winced. Talking to the supporters, the sponsors, fielding their questions, sidestepping their inquiries—it was getting more difficult every week. The team’s success had become an albatross around her neck. There had been a time when winning was everything. It seemed so long ago now, that old life in Sydney.
‘Oh, and another thing,’ said Gerard. ‘I bumped into Tiny Spencer at the Rotary Club meeting last night. He wants to do a feature on you for the weekend edition. You know Tiny, don’t you? The editor of the Valley News?’
Clementine searched for a response that would nip this disagreeable suggestion in the bud. Nothing came to her. ‘Gerard, I don’t think that’s a good idea.’
‘Don’t be silly. Great publicity for the team, for the sponsors, for you.’
Clementine fumbled for an angle. ‘Sometimes a bit of mystery is good for business, Gerard—keeps people guessing, sparks their interest.’
Gerard laughed. ‘Bullshit. I know you like to keep to yourself, but this is part of the job, I’m afraid. Besides, we haven’t had this sort of success in over thirty years. We need to ride this wave, sunshine.’ God, she hated it when he called her sunshine. ‘I’ll give Spencer your number. Gotta go, meeting with Bernadette and Crowcher. See you Wednesday, six-thirty sharp.’ He hung up.
Clementine heard the self-importance in his voice as he dropped Crowcher’s name. She’d researched CTS, looked up the board and executive team, financial results. Crowcher was the CEO. The company was preparing to list on the stock market, and its executives would clean up on share options. Bernadette probably had a few as Victorian state manager, but she’d need a promotion to senior executive level to really cash in. An executive director position was vacant and Bernadette might have her eye on it.
Clementine pulled back out onto the road and switched the radio on. Country music again. She flicked it off. As she headed towards Katinga Plains, thick grey clouds rolled in across the mountains in the distance. Her uneasiness about the editorial grew as she considered the kind of things Tiny Spencer might ask, the innocuous questions about birthplace and childhood inevitably leading to the prising open of her more recent past.
She ran through the exit plan that she kept at the ready, just in case, this time with a hint of sadness. She would head north to New South Wales, lie low, start learning the guitar maybe, eat takeaways and, most importantly, stay away from football altogether.
The house at 14 O’Reilly Street was a shoebox of grey concrete blocks, identical to the house next door, and the one next to that and the house over the street and all the houses in that street and the next street. Each one swivelled to face a different direction on its lot—the state of Victoria’s take on variety.
The lawn was thick buffalo grass, recently mowed, with a few brown patches of dirt scattered around the straggly gums. She couldn’t see a front door, so she followed the empty driveway—two narrow strips of concrete—around the side of the house to a small porch. The edges of the drive crumbled there, as if something heavy (a fridge?) had been dropped over the railing from above.
Clementine climbed the steps, hesitated, then knocked. The door slipped loose from its latch, opening just a crack. She heard voices from the house next door, where five middle-aged men were smoking around an outdoor table.
She knocked again and waited, feeling out of place and uneasy in her white skin.
A yell from next door: ‘She’s inside. Just go in. She won’t hurt you, coach.’ She heard sniggering. ‘Big bad coach lady got no balls,’ one of the men said. ‘What that make them boys on the team, eh?’ More laughing.
Clementine pushed the door open. ‘Hello?’ she called. There was no answer. She waited, called out again. Nothing. She stepped in. To her left was a tiny laundry, yellow lino curling in one corner, a basket of neatly folded clothes on top of the machine. Shit. She’d come in the back door. Should she go around to the front? Too late, she thought.
She closed the door behind her and took two steps into the kitchen. The afternoon light filled the room, catching the faded gold specks in the laminate benchtops.
‘Hello?’ she called again. The kitchen merged into a small dining room. She glanced at the photographs on the chipboard bookshelf behind the dining table. Clancy in his footy gear, Clancy and an elderly woman, Clancy and his bride and a very large group of smiling relatives.
Down the hallway past a door opening into a bedroom. Music was coming from behind a closed door on the left.
She knocked. ‘Hello? It’s Clementine Jones from the footy club.’
She heard the creak of vinyl, then a voice: ‘Come in. But shut the door after you—it’s bloody cold out there.’
Clementine entered a small lounge room. A young woman, maybe still a teenager, was pushing herself up out of an armchair. An oversized pink jumper hung loosely over her heavily pregnant tummy. A large bar heater glowed in the corner next to an empty fireplace, and the room smelled of toast.
‘You the new coach, then?’ said the young woman, looking Clementine up and down.
‘That’s right. Yes.’
‘Yep. I seen you at the footy ground before. I’m Melissa.’ She stood with her back arched to balance the weight of her belly. She looked like she was about to smile, like she usually would smile, but then a cloud swept across her face.
‘Nice to meet you,’ Clementine said. ‘I just came around to check in and see how you and Clancy are getting on.’
Melissa looked sideways out the window and onto the street. A car with a hole in its exhaust roared past. ‘He’s not here. Left an hour ago. Probably won’t be back till tonight.’ She flicked a strand of hair from her face and looked at Clementine defiantly.
‘Oh, okay. I’m sorry to have bothered you. Clancy tells me you’re due soon.’
Melissa nodded. ‘Yep. Feels like I’m about to pop a big football outta here, a big football filled with lead.’ Clementine could tell this would ordinarily have been delivered as a joke, but Melissa seemed guarded.
The speech Clementine had prepared tumbled out in a rush: ‘Melissa, I think it’s great Clancy is committed to being there for you, but I was really sorry when he quit the team. I was just hoping we could talk about some way he could still play? There’s only two more games and then the finals. I thought if we had someone there as a driver at every game, ready to go, Clancy could be off the field and to the hospital in thirty minutes.’
The words hung in the air, misshapen, off the mark somehow. Melissa was looking at her, confused.‘Whaddya talking about? I don’t need him,’ she scoffed. ‘I got me aunties and me cousin Tash across the road. Mum’s in the next block over. It’s not like I’m on me own.’
‘But he told me you needed him with you. Your first baby and all. Anyone would be nervous.’
Melissa frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. Her belly bulged accusingly at Clementine. ‘You whitefellas got a nerve, haven’t ya?’ She spoke slowly, as if Clementine were a child. ‘You think I’m weak or somethin’? Think I can’t have a baby without someone holding my hand? Let me tell you, my people been havin’ babies on this country for thousands of years, you know. Yeah, out here in the cold and in the dark, no lights, no cars, no hospitals, no white sheets, no painkillers, nothin’. Reckon I’m scared of what my mum already did five times?’ Melissa shook her head, her eyes scornful.
Clementine squirmed, desperately wanting to crawl into the empty fireplace and escape via the chimney, but she was stapled to the floor, mystified. Something strange was going on here, something Clancy felt he needed to lie about.
Before she could respond, Melissa said, ‘Clancy was so upset when he got home Tuesday night. Told me you kicked him off the team for being late to training.’
What the hell is going on? thought Clementine. ‘Why would I do that? Clancy’s our best player, and he hasn’t been late to training all season.’
‘Well, I dunno what you’re thinking, but it was nothin’ to do with me, and now he’s lost his job he’s just gunna get in my way. Geez, I wish he would go to footy,’ she snorted.
‘Clancy’s lost his job?’
‘Thought you would’ve known. The whole bloody town probably knows by now.’ That defiance in her eyes again. ‘Stealing. From the warehouse. So some liar said.’ She looked away. ‘But they don’t know my Clancy. Most he ever did was pinch a Mars bar from the corner store. He loved that job. That was our money, for us…’ Her voice faltered. ‘For the three of us.’
Clementine suddenly felt the stifling heat of the room and a flush rose in her cheeks. She wanted to get out of there, now. ‘I’m so sorry, Melissa. I had no idea,’ she said. ‘What about Clancy’s course? He was studying, wasn’t he?’
‘Yeah. Diploma of fitness. Got a year to go. Dunno if he’ll finish it now.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’ Clementine asked, silently hoping the answer would be no.
‘Nope. We can get by. Don’t need no one’s help.’ Melissa reached up and tugged at her thick ponytail.
‘All right, then. But it’s a hell of a blow. I’m so sorry. Let me know if there’s anything I can do—anything at all.’ Why did she say that? She wanted to run, get out of there, disappear for good and leave these people to deal with their own shit.
Clementine opened the door and started down the hall. Melissa followed her, one steadying hand on the wall and the other cradling her belly.
Outside, the men next door were talking quietly. Melissa stood on the porch, leaning on the railing. ‘What’s really going on here, eh?’ she called as Clementine walked to her car.
Clementine looked back at her, confused. ‘What do you mean?’
Melissa peered down, chin jutting forward. ‘You come round, sticking your nose in, making up stories about Clancy. You got somethin’ riding on this? Maybe you got somebody else you want on the team? Maybe a white boy?’ Her eyes were burning.
Clementine’s jaw dropped. ‘No. Of course not.’
Suspicion clouded Melissa’s eyes. ‘You got it in for us or somethin’? Who are you, anyway? Where you from? Turn up here like some hero, take over the footy team. Got some sort of magic spell over those boys, they say. What business you got here in Katinga?’
The voices on the porch next door had stopped. Clementine felt five pairs of eyes burning into her back.
She got in the car, fumbled frantically with the key in the ignition and reversed too fast up the narrow driveway to the street. Stepping on the accelerator, she saw the men next door, all standing now, glaring at her as she sped off.