Thomas was not quite five years old when his father died. After lying about his age to enlist in the Army at sixteen, Roy Mullet survived World War I, joined up again for World War II and died in the Mediterranean at the end of 1941.
The only child of Roy Mullet, Thomas barely recalled his father. Snatches in his mind of a distant, gently brusque man whose affection was limited to a scruff of the hair in the evening as he came in from the docks smelling of fuel oil and brine. But Thomas knew his father had been a man who had loved his wife – Thomas’s mother – with a palpable fierceness. The first war had taken its toll on Roy Mullet – as it did on the entire world – and as a result he had married late.
Perhaps that was why Thomas had grown up clearly his mother’s favourite. After his father’s death his mother had remarried, and had another son. But Thomas was always her first son, and his mother would pull him onto her lap until he was almost taller than her. You’re the spitting image of your father, his mother would say, running her palm over his hair. Some of the other boys teased him about it when they came over to play, or when they rode their bikes to the local rubbish dump after school. They ribbed him about how his mother fussed over him. They bruised his shins and pushed him into the dirt. But Thomas would always bounce up, laughing. Because deep down, although he couldn’t articulate it at the time, he knew any tyranny he faced from others was based on their own fears and insecurities. And when he was a grown man, Thomas would realise his father’s death hadn’t affected him in the ways it could have – that he had escaped his childhood, somehow, with a dogmatic kind of optimism. A belief that everything works out in the end.
Once, a boy in his first year of high school named Billy Fallon (whose father had also died in the war) had sniffed at him, ‘Everyone dies. So you’ve gotta be the best while you can.’
Billy’s words rung through Thomas’s mind now, as he accepted yet another crushing handshake from his boss and agreed how lovely Sydney was this time of year.
You’ve gotta be the best while you can.
He’d repeat it to Elsie tonight, he thought, as an explanation for another weekend apart.
*
‘But you’ve only just gotten back from the conference in Melbourne.’ He could tell Elsie was trying not to look crestfallen.
‘Two weeks ago.’ Thomas attempted to be consoling.
‘What’s so important in Sydney?’
‘Sales fair. It’s my new position as head of sales, love. I have to keep up with all the latest technologies.’ He put his arms around her and breathed her in, his little wife; she smelled of lemon soap, lavender and spray starch. Every day her scent was different, yet every day she smelled of her.
The first time Thomas met Elsie she had smelled of milkshakes. At the library, in the quiet hush at the card catalogue, he had been bent over the drawer, rifling through the cards, when he felt the subtle shift in air pressure of a person beside him. Before he looked up he caught the scent of vanilla and her skirt had brushed his leg; she had smiled at him briefly, and Thomas had immediately forgotten what he’d been searching for. It had taken him almost two more months of incessant library visitation, and a few strong nips of brandy, before he had summoned the courage to ask Elsie Rushall on a date. Seven months later, they were married.
‘It’s all going to be worth it, you’ll see,’ Thomas said now, kissing the tip of Elsie’s nose. ‘And besides, you’re busy with the house. You’ll barely even notice I’m gone.’
Face pressed into his shirt, Elsie nodded. But her body stiffened and he felt her draw away, an extra breath of space opening up between them. He felt it like a problem that needed an instant solution.
‘How about a walk, Mrs Mullet?’ he said. ‘It’s a beautiful evening.’
And it was. The sky was filled with a golden sunset and the air was warm and still. Eucalypts left fragrant litter on the ground, their bark and leaves crackling underfoot as husband and wife strolled along their quiet street.
Church Street skirted the edge of the new suburb. Unable to grow much further east because of the hills, or west because of the ocean, Adelaide’s sprawl had ballooned north. Nudged at its southern boundaries by Adelaide’s northward progress, Gawler spread outward too. Farm blocks were subdivided into small portions like cutting a sandwich – perfect first homes for young married couples. But what Thomas had loved – and he’d known Elsie would, too, as it would remind her of her childhood home – was that some of the original farmhouses still stood, impervious to the new houses cropping up in their neighbouring paddocks like crocuses after winter. Drops of nostalgia amongst the modern sprawl. The effect was a brand new neighbourhood with a quiet, country ambiance.
With her arm looped through his, Thomas and Elsie crested the top of a small hill. They squinted into the glare of the setting sun as they stepped through the narrow, squeaking gate.
The small cemetery was the original burial ground for the area. Set on the side of a hill, the graves were arranged outwards from a central path. Inscriptions detailed births and deaths dating back to the late 1800s: the English Williams and Johns, German Augusts and Johanns, and wives of the above.
The gravel crunched beneath their feet. ‘Have you seen the lady from next door again?’ Thomas asked.
‘No.’ Elsie shook her head. ‘But she returned my biscuit container. She left it on the back step. I didn’t know it was there until I was taking the laundry out and almost tripped over it.’
Thomas gave her a long, sideways look. He knew his wife was curious about – almost preoccupied with – the young lady who lived next door. Maybe she was in need of more female contact, like she used to have when she worked with the other secretaries, and he should encourage her to befriend some other ladies from this side of town. Housewives with children, with whom she might have more in common.
‘You enjoyed meeting Watson’s wife a couple of weeks ago, didn’t you?’
‘It was fine,’ she murmured.
‘And you’ve joined her knitting group? That will be fun. Or that Scott family living across the street,’ he went on brightly. ‘Maybe you should pop over one afternoon with scones?’
‘I’ve already met Mrs Scott,’ Elsie said. ‘That lady always seems so busy. It sounds like she has a dozen kids.’
‘Perfect, I’m sure she’s a wealth of knowledge.’
A pink hue rose in his wife’s cheeks.
At the bottom of the hill, they stepped off the path and made their way under the trees. The ground was spongy with a thick layer of cypress needles and ridged with a tangle of exposed roots. Alongside the largest tree, they stopped.
Unlike the marble and granite of the other old headstones, the grave marker here was a thin slice of a chipped grey material, like cement. It tilted so far to the right it almost butted against the tree trunk. Lichen clung in starburst patches. The grave seemed out of alignment, randomly assigned to a patch of dirt at the edge of the cemetery.
‘Hello again,’ Elsie said to the headstone.
The inscription read:
Here he lies.
Fear not, dry your tears.
And nothing more. No name, no dates. Ever since they moved in and began walking through the graveyard, it had perplexed them
‘I have a new theory on this fellow,’ Thomas said.
‘What is it this time?’
‘He was a pirate. A British sailor turned mutineer against a cantankerous captain. During a skirmish at sea he leapt overboard and joined a pirate ship. So when he was killed by British sailors, they couldn’t bring themselves not to bury him on consecrated ground, given his heritage. But,’ he paused and shook his head grimly, ‘they didn’t want to honour him too much because . . . well, he was a pirate.’
Elsie’s laughter floated up into the branches, and he loved her for it. ‘That’s the most creative theory so far.’ Her face turned introspective again. ‘I asked the postmistress,’ she said. ‘No one knows for certain, but there’s a common rumour.’
‘Ah, of course there is gossip.’ As a rule, Thomas tried not to involve himself with matters of gossip and hearsay, much preferring instead the upright avenues of fact and personal privacy.
‘Apparently no one knows who “he” was, or when he lived and died. But . . .’
‘But?’ Darn it, he was curious.
‘Rumour has it, he was an illegitimate son of a servant woman, fathered by a prominent local councilman. He was born deformed and kept hidden away from the world until he died.’
Thomas whistled. ‘What a stretch of imagination.’
Elsie turned to him with a grin. ‘It might only be a tale, but it’s believable, don’t you think?’
‘Nonsense,’ he said with a laugh. ‘Nobody would do something like that.’
‘Servant women often had children to their masters.’
‘Well, maybe –’
‘And infants can be born with all kinds of malformations.’
‘Good lord, Else –’
‘Well?’ She gave him a mysterious smile and tugged him close to her. He stumbled over a tree root and their bodies bumped together. ‘Why is it so hard to believe?’ she said softly, her breath on his cheek. She kissed him, and Thomas quickly forgot about gossip.