Friday 13 December 1974
Charlie
When the doorbell rings I’m thinking about lunch. Mark is at work, Abby is out the back, and Dad is walking with Woof. That dog’s never had it so good. The cricket’s on the radio, and I’m glad I’ve heard enough to have a conversation with Mark about it tonight. I feel good for the first time in a week. I roll off the couch and drop my copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to the floor.
I open the door to Sergeant Doyle. He’s bigger than I remember. Seeing him here makes my stomach clench.
‘Hey, hello. Didn’t know you were coming. Is Abby expecting you?’ As if she wouldn’t have mentioned that or rushed to the door instead of me.
‘I need to ask you and your sister a few more questions. Mind if I come inside?’
‘Sure, yeah.’ I move so he can come into the house. ‘The living room’s upstairs.’ He waits for me to start up the stairs then follows.
‘Take a seat,’ I say, pointing to the couch. ‘I’ll get her.’ I walk through the kitchen out to the backyard, trying to keep a steady gait, but speeding up the closer I get to Abby.
‘Now? Here?’ she asks. She places the wooden peg she’s holding onto Mark’s shirt, straightens it so it hangs right and, seeming reluctant to do so, turns away from the clothesline.
When we come into the living room Doyle is still standing, examining the framed photograph on top of the television.
He greets Abby with a nod. ‘Nice-looking family. Twins?’
‘Yes, they’re quite a handful. Please.’ She sweeps her arm towards the couch like a game-show host showing off a prize.
He sits, and the couch I’d thought of as large and long appears doll-sized.
Abby asks Doyle in an unnecessarily loud voice if he’d like a cold drink. He does not, so she perches on the edge of her armchair seat. I sit on the corner of the coffee table and reach for the packet of Marlboros I’d left there earlier, before the door rang, which already feels like hours ago.
‘You’re a long way off your beat,’ I say.
He smirks at me. But he’s hours away from Chinchilla and I know that’s where he works. Could be that beat is a word they only use on TV shows.
‘I hope you didn’t drive all this way for us,’ Abby says.
‘I have business down here.’ He looks from Abby to me and back again. ‘And we have a problem we’re hoping you can help us with.’
At that moment Dad enters the room.
‘Sergeant,’ he says, stopping on the spot when he sees Doyle. ‘Didn’t expect to see you in Brisbane.’
‘Duty calls, sir.’
‘Carry on then.’ Dad speaks to the cop as if he’s still in the army, sits in the one empty chair. He has no idea he’s regarded as a suspect.
Doyle turns to Abby. ‘We’ve been informed that on the night of the accident you and your brother stayed at the Chinchilla Hotel.’ My heart skips a beat. I’m guessing Abby’s does, too. ‘Now, given you said you left Brisbane at approximately two in the afternoon –’
‘You stayed in the pub?’ Dad interrupts.
I strike a match too hard against the box. The wood snaps. I hold my cigarette between dry lips.
‘It was raining,’ Abby says. ‘There was a storm so we stopped at the pub. I didn’t want to trouble you with the details, Dad. It didn’t seem important. We stayed there and came to yours after breakfast. It’s nothing.’
‘Why didn’t you drive through to the farm? The rain wasn’t that bad,’ Dad says.
‘Yes it was.’ I manage to light my cigarette. Small victories. ‘Totally was. The guy at the pub said we were lucky to even make it over the bridge. We were worried it’d be underwater by morning.’
Doyle furrows his brow. ‘You don’t cross the bridge coming into Chinchilla from Brisbane. You’d only cross it heading north out of town.’
‘That’s right, yeah.’ I don’t look at Abby, hope to God she’s not reacting. ‘We were going to drive over the bridge and they said it was good we didn’t.’
‘Because it might flood later on?’ Dad says. ‘You’re talking rubbish.’
‘Did you drive across the bridge that night, Mrs Campbell?’ Doyle asks.
‘No,’ says Abby. ‘We came into town off the main road and I decided we’d stop for the night. Charlie was asleep. He didn’t properly see where we were. He doesn’t know the roads around there anyway.’
‘And you do?’ Doyle stares at Abby. ‘What time did you arrive at the hotel, ma’am?’
Abby knows this is a trap and I can see she’s stalling. Numbers aren’t her strong point so I quickly work back in my head. I can’t get it to add up in any convincing way: whatever we say, there will be hours unaccounted for.
‘I was sick,’ I blurt out. ‘Chucking up. We stopped, someplace. I’d come into Brisbane that day, on the early morning flight from Denpasar, and I was rooted. Flight takes, like, eight hours and I’d hardly slept in days so –’
‘What time did you arrive at the hotel?’ Doyle doesn’t acknowledge I’ve spoken. He’s locked on Abby.
‘I guess it was nine or ten? Would that be about right, Charlie?’
‘Yep, I reckon.’ I sit back with one hand on the coffee table in an effort to seem relaxed, hoping she’ll register the need to do this herself.
Out of the corner of my eye I watch Dad. He’s figuring it out.
‘So to be clear,’ Doyle says, ‘you left Brisbane Airport around two after collecting the luggage from a flight that arrived on time at one o’clock, having changed planes after an hour’s wait at Darwin Airport, according to TAA staff.’
‘Yes, that’s about when we left,’ Abby says.
‘You drove till you got to . . .? You’d know where you stopped for your brother.’
‘Outside Dalby, maybe? I didn’t pay a lot of attention. I mostly didn’t want him to vomit in my car.’
‘You stopped there for an unspecified time before driving on to Chinchilla, where you arrived at approximately ten at night according to the publican.’ He pauses. ‘Is there anything you’d like to tell me, ma’am? Because those numbers don’t work for me. That would mean a four-and-a-half-hour drive to Chinchilla, five at worst, took you eight.’
She bites her lip as if thinking. ‘Well, I’m afraid the publican is wrong. We arrived in town at about seven o’clock, had a walk around, Charlie was sick again and then we decided he was too ill to keep going. So we went to the pub for the rest of the night. It was definitely before ten.’
‘It was after ten o’clock when you called me,’ Dad says.
‘Yes, Dad, but calling you wasn’t the first thing I did when we got there.’ Weirdly, her sharp annoyance feels useful and right this time. It makes her seem more solid, and her voice has lost any trace of a shake.
‘I see,’ Doyle says, obviously unconvinced by what he’s heard. He turns to me. ‘When did you first learn your father was engaged?’
The out-of-nowhere question seems to be his preferred tactic for throwing us off-guard. ‘Same time Abby did, the morning we showed up at the farm.’
‘And had you met his fiancée? Socially? She’s about your age.’
‘No. There’s a lot of people my age. And I’ve never lived in the country.’
‘She didn’t always live there,’ Doyle says, then he turns to Dad. ‘How was it you met her, Mr Scott?’
‘I don’t see how that’s important,’ Dad says.
‘It’s important if I say it is. As important as searching your house.’
They stare at one another in silence. Dad wants to be top dog, but everyone knows better than to mess with a Queensland cop. Even if you’re drunk or stoned or in a rage, that awareness is something we have in our state DNA. You don’t swim against a rip or drive in a hailstorm or play chicken with a pig.
‘At the chemist,’ Dad says finally. ‘She was working there.’
‘I see. Ever make any day trips with her? Sunday drives up Eumundi way?’
‘Eumundi?’ Abby exclaims. I catch her eye and see she’s as confused as I am. Doyle notices this, too.
‘Not familiar with that area, no,’ Dad says.
None of these questions seems to surprise Dad, or if they do he’s doing a good job of hiding that.
Doyle slaps his thighs and stands up. ‘I’ll show myself out.’
When Dad hears the front door closing, he rises from his chair and glowers at Abby and me as he did when we were children.
‘What are you two playing at? Charlie’s never been carsick in his life.’
‘The jet lag –’ I begin.
‘Bullshit. What’s going on? You didn’t stop near Dalby and you –’ he points at Abby – ‘you told me you drove through floodwaters in January to stock up on food, so don’t tell me rain put you off. What happened that night?’
Abby leaps in to answer, having regained her confidence now Doyle is gone. ‘Charlie and I had a fight and I left him in some tinpot town. For hours. I didn’t want to tell the police. It’s embarrassing.’
Dad regards Abby, deciding whether to buy her explanation.
‘You’re bloody right it’s embarrassing,’ he says at last. ‘When are you going to learn to get on?’ Then he walks out of the room.
When we’re alone, I swivel around on the coffee table to face Abby. ‘What now?’
‘We stick to our story,’ she says.
‘Our story? You mean the one we made up on the spot? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘It will if I add in what I told Dad about us having an argument. That fills the gap. I don’t want to talk about this anymore, Charlie. My head is about to explode.’
‘Abby, we should’ve told the cops before now that we stayed at the pub. We don’t want them to think we’re keeping secrets.’
‘Is that a joke?’
I look away to think, out through the open sliding doors towards Mt Coot-Tha. When I turn back to ask her why Doyle would’ve mentioned Eumundi, she’s gone.
Early afternoon, before she collects the kids, while Mark takes their car to the mechanic, and Dad is catching up with a mate who runs a fishing tackle shop, Abby and I commemorate our mother’s death. We have about an hour, and that’s plenty.
We do this each year on December thirteenth. Mum died on December twentieth, but Abby decided early on that we shouldn’t mark her death too close to that festive time of year. The thirteenth is a Friday this year, but Abby reckons it makes no difference. Given the amount of bad stuff that’s happened to her she’s strangely unsuperstitious, unlike me; I’m all in with that shit – tarot, palms, witchcraft, you name it. Ignoring my reservations, Abby begins setting up the table with our mother’s things.
When we were kids, Dad would take us to Toowong Cemetery on the morning of the real date, even if it was a school day, and we would put flowers on Mum’s grave. At some point, when Abby and I were both in our late teens, after one too many ferocious family arguments, we stopped going to the cemetery with Dad. He went alone. Abby and I would go together.
And then Abby created the memorial day ritual. As adults, when we were in the same city, we’d go to Mum’s grave and then back to wherever Abby lived at the time – the share house in Paddington, the flat in Highgate Hill, the house in Kenmore. We kept up our ritual when we were both at uni, and when she dropped out to have Sarah. Neither Mark nor the kids have ever joined us.
Today, Abby and I sit in front of the shrine she’s creating on her dining table: photographs (Mum, Abby and me with Nan and Pop and their mangy dog at the farm, Mum and Dad’s wedding photo, a hand-coloured photo of Mum a few years into her marriage, painted so her cheeks are rosy circles and her teeth freakishly white), a vase of flowers, three candles, Mum’s copy of Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Book of Etiquette and a silk scarf with line drawings of roses, leering Italians and skinny vamps. Abby has, as usual, arranged the objects around Mum’s sewing machine, which seems weird to me since I don’t remember her using the thing.
At the front of the shrine is the Memory Box, to which, every year, we each add a handwritten memory about our mother. After we’ve put our memory inside, Abby pulls out a selection of memories from previous years and reads them aloud. Sometimes we have a drink. Not always. Not today.
‘Where’s her ring?’ I ask. ‘Should we put that out, too? Since nobody else is around.’
She shakes her head. ‘I’ve hidden it in my jewellery box. Mark never opens that. But I think it should stay put.’
I think about this. ‘Abby, it’s evidence. I reckon we should bury it or throw it in the river.’
‘No. It should’ve been with me years ago. Don’t worry – I’ll keep it hidden. The only other person who’d recognise it is Dad.’
‘Who’s living in your house,’ I say.
‘Not for long.’
I change tack. ‘So what did you write?’
She turns over the piece of paper in front of her. ‘I wrote: I remember the bruise spreading on Mum’s arm where the drip went in. It got so large the bandage couldn’t cover it. I waited for Dad to tell a nurse but he didn’t. So when my mother died from cancer she also had a sore arm.’
I glare at her. ‘Jesus, Abby. I don’t want that in the Memory Box.’
‘It’s my memory. I’m putting it in.’
‘It’s always been good things before.’
‘You can’t vet my memories. What did you write?’
I read my memory. ‘When I was sick, Mum sat on my bed and ran her fingers through my hair. Feeling her hand on my sweaty scalp and the cool air on my skin made me relax and feel better.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Well, I didn’t know we were going gothic this year.’
There are noises I find comforting because they were part of the backdrop to my childhood. One of those noises is the opener to the ABC Radio news bulletins. I’ve been hearing that a lot lately; Abby and Mark keep the radio on all day in the kitchen. I don’t know if it’s supposed to be a deterrent to thieves or if they think it’s disrespectful to shut the machine off when someone’s mid-sentence.
A cloud mass is gathering over the Arafura Sea, and the weather bureau says it’s becoming a cyclone. They say it’s nothing to worry about because it’s miles off the coast, and will hit land way up north where nobody lives. It’s an enjoyable act of displacement to listen to someone else’s drama though.
The whirring sound that comes before every warning bulletin is playing as we sit down to dinner. I’m glad for the noise, since Dad is stubbornly silent over our meal of sausages, green salad and baked potatoes. The kids have eaten early so there are only adults at the table. We take it in turns to cheer Dad by introducing topics he’d usually find interesting. Mark mentions that it’s Friday the thirteenth and says we seem to have gotten off scot-free. Abby and I avoid one another’s gaze. I’m sure lying to a cop on Friday the thirteenth is asking for trouble.
‘Charlie,’ Mark says. ‘Here’s something you probably didn’t hear in Bali: colour television’s only a few months away. It’ll revolutionise the medium.’
Dad doesn’t bat an eyelid. It’s unlike him to ignore a moment that’s begging for historical context or a meaningful quote about change. We discuss colour TV without him.
‘The Two Ronnies is on in an hour, if anybody’s interested,’ Abby says.
‘It’s goodnight from me, and it’s goodnight from him,’ Mark adds, looking to Dad for a reaction.
When Dad doesn’t take whatever that strange bait was, I change the topic. ‘Sarah’s stoked about Christmas. You know she wants a unicorn?’
Mark and Abby smile. I’m not sure it’ll be funny on Christmas morning.
‘All right, listen,’ Dad says.
Abby’s mouth is open, the fork hovering by her chin. Mark ignores the glass he was about to lift. I let my hand drop slowly from my itchy scalp to my lap, as if a sudden movement might spook Dad back into silence.
‘You lot are doing my head in. The woman I love has died. I don’t give a fig about television or Christmas or anything else. As for bad luck, well I don’t know what you think qualifies if not this.’ He slides his plate away angrily. ‘You don’t seem to care.’
‘Dad –’ Abby starts, as Dad raises his voice and ploughs ahead.
‘Skye was pregnant. Pregnant with my child. Do you understand?’
‘Dad, you’ve told us that,’ she says. ‘And we do care.’
‘She has a son.’
‘No,’ Abby whispers.
‘That’s the “him” you were talking about? The guy?’ I say.
‘She has a child?’ Mark says. ‘You do mean a living boy, not that she was pregnant with –’
Dad nods brusquely. ‘Yes, a living boy. Beau, five years old.’
Mark folds his arms on the table. ‘Where is he, John?’