23

LAVERNA | Goddess of Thievery

Laverna was originally from the Underworld. Thieves prayed to her in silence to keep their good reputation intact. She was sometimes portrayed as a body without a head.

SUNDAY

Jack slept in my bed. I watched his chest rising, falling. His body was so attractive to me. Not a young man’s body. He wasn’t Stephen, who would always be young to me. Grey hairs curled around Jack’s nipples. His skin was loose, although his muscles were taut and fit. I wasn’t young either. Mature, Jack was more difficult to reach, more desirable, he knew the risks of loving someone, of offering yourself so another human being could value or reject you. He knew the joy of tenderness and the pain of separation and could bear to reach for me, as if I were someone worth reaching for. He was a man, the counterpoint to me.

But though being with him relaxed my body, it did not calm my thoughts. Jack could sleep. But I could never relax. I was about to betray him. Shirley taking the laptop was a gift. I padded into the sitting room and opened it again. Jack hadn’t changed his password. On his desktop, he had a photo of her, taken forty years ago, with a man who must be Jack’s father. And so that was Jack, that small figure drained of colour the way photos from the seventies have been bleached by time. Jack was Shirley’s child. His relationship with Shirley was the same as mine with Caleb. Would Caleb ever care enough about me to use a photo like this?

I’d been through Jack’s computer before, but this felt different. This was different. Previously I’d searched for material I thought I had a right to know, because it was about Caleb. Now I sought information about Jack’s relationship with his own mother. He had a lot of new files. Some were videos. Careful not to wake him, I used my portable hard drive to copy files I’d check later and went back to bed. Jack was still asleep.

I closed my eyes, thinking of Shirley. Her beautiful poetry. Her frequent depictions of white, for instance, in her Sugarcane Poems. I’d studied ‘Tropical weddings’, and recalled random lines:

My white vows in the church, witnessed by summer.

A chill ran through me.

We should be dusted in white petals or in rice, not ash.

What was it Amanda once said, about Shirley and a kitchen fire? My room could have vanished, I so clearly saw Shirley, in Queensland before she met Jack’s father or even knew of Brunton. Her youth spent lighting fires to harvest sugar. Her youth, which she sometimes relived when dementia led her there?

Jack had been out on the day of the fire, looking for her. Had she been at the fossicker’s hut site? Who was it that Caleb saw at my house? Shirley? In a white cardigan and pale nightie, looking like a smudge… Someone people barely noticed… I had to be careful – if Shirley had been out, Jack would know. Did he? Why conceal it? He wouldn’t reveal a secret just because I made him angry. And I didn’t want to anger him. Was Shirley Laskin the white woman in Caleb’s drawings?

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I was always constructing and reconstructing Caleb’s day. Trying to make sense of the different testimonies. Again, I wondered if, when Jack insisted he saw Caleb close to the ignition time, he could have been lying about the place. What if Jack hadn’t seen Caleb near Brunton, but near the ignition site? What if Jack wasn’t only giving Caleb an alibi, but also his mother – and himself?

That night, Jack had visited Caleb at the hospital, to check on him, and also because he had something to discuss. And Caleb had asked to talk to Jack, too. How much of this ridiculous arson story might be traced back to a story the two of them had concocted? To my mental list of suspects, I added a new name. Shirley Laskin.

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Stephen strolled into my house, my kitchen, without knocking, early enough to be furious that Jack was there. This seemed rich.

I stood between the two men. ‘This is my life and none of your business.’

Stephen scowled. ‘The important life here is Caleb’s.’

Jack took my hand. ‘Phoebe hardly thinks about anything else.’

A vein pulsed in Stephen’s neck. ‘You know her thoughts now?’

Stephen intercepted my glance towards the bedroom and smacked the bench, frustrated. He continued scowling at Jack. ‘You’ve been inside her head and her bedroom?’

I turned away. ‘Jack, you should probably go.’

‘Are you sure you’ll be okay?’

I led him back into my room. I kissed his cheek. ‘I’m sure. I’ll see you later.’

Jack didn’t speak to Stephen as, red-faced, he strode through the front door.

‘That man…’ Stephen said ‘… Jack… is ruining Caleb’s life.’

‘Jack is the only person who’s given Caleb an alibi,’ I insisted.

Stephen didn’t stay long. Just long enough to give me some money, to explain why it wasn’t more, and to grab some of Caleb’s toys he didn’t want left behind if the house was finally seized. For the baby, of course. Then he said goodbye.

I said, ‘The only man who’s ruining Caleb’s life is you.’

Then I was finally free to look through my newly copied files. My mind was buzzing, switching on like my computer. Jack had been there, at the fossicker’s hut on the day of the fire. With Shirley.

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I was an art historian. I’d kept out of the history wars – I was a primary teacher before the first volleys were fired – but I knew how impossible facts were to prove, what a flimsy thing truth was, no more substantial than a fable told to infants. I should be able to take this evidence and turn it into a story of my own making. One just as believable as the prosecution’s story about Caleb as a youth gone wrong, if just as fictional.

My first step was a search on the name Shirley. I don’t know what I expected to find. Perhaps an email from the Retirement Home apologising for her escape before the fire, or evidence that she had previously tried to light a fire. I found nothing. I searched next for files saved recently. Some were autopsy reports, with harrowing details. A child who died in her parents’ laundry, unable to unlock the door. (Why weren’t lock makers being blamed?) Others were Jack’s memories and personal thoughts. He’d once told me that from fear he’d forget things, like his mother, he kept a journal. I found an entry about his earliest involvement with Taskforce Phosphorus and imagined him, footsteps angry and heavy on the floor. Thump. Thump. Ears still buzzing from the inferno, tuning in and out of conversations. ‘We’re Taskforce what?’

‘Phosphorus. I heard.’

‘Oh yeah? And what does that mean when it’s at home?’

The police commissioner appeared, Jack’s boss with him, arguing about who should have known what, and when. The commissioner began, Jack recorded, by spouting off about taskforce figures and other bullshit.

‘We can’t brief the press fully. Not yet. Some fires are still burning.’

‘Then let us get back to bloody work,’ Jack growled.

‘About this alleged arsonist,’ one of his colleagues said. ‘It’s time for a name.’

‘I don’t need to emphasise that this information stays here. With us.’ The commissioner paused, looking around the room for assent. There were grunts and nods.

‘The possible offender is one Caleb Wharton.’ Backdraught, Jack thought. A dying fire suddenly exploded when more oxygen was added.

I learned more about Jack’s emotions in those files than about facts that could help free Caleb. I discovered reasons to feel guilty, for not trusting him, for being, myself, so untrustworthy. But I still didn’t trust him. If Shirley had been in Anzac Avenue, in the creek bed that separated my house from her Retirement Home, Jack knew. I wouldn’t allow him to sacrifice my son to save his mother. But how could lying about where she was really matter? Could Jack’s motives be more mercenary than that? Jack had a file labelled FINANCIAL. Documents within confirmed a detail I’d forgotten – just as Caleb owned our home, Shirley owned Jack’s. If Shirley was found guilty, Jack risked losing all that property that still existed. I googled dementia and arson. I made plans to visit Shirley. I’d bring her to the stand, get Jack to admit she was in Brunton that day. If necessary, I’d talk to her carers and demand that they testify. It might hurt Jack but that wasn’t my fault. I had to free Caleb.

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I drove to Hawthorn at lunch time and sat with Caleb in the Hawthorn sitting room that had once been mine, while Ivy loitered in the hall, apparently suspicious. Stephen was at work. Caleb’s eyes shadowed with fatigue, he obviously found the same in me. ‘Mum, you need sleep.’

I made a game of lifting his hair and staring at the scalp beneath. He shook me away. ‘Mum! What the hell?’

‘I’m trying to work out who you are. Caleb was never this wise.’

‘I’m worried about you. Jack said you hardly sleep.’

‘You’ve spoken to Jack?’

He looked evasive. ‘He’s still my mate.’

I got down to the business of my visit and showed him my photos of his sketches. ‘These are the pictures I told you about. This white smudge is the same in every one. It’s not caused by a blunt pencil, Caleb. You’ve drawn a person. You need to tell me. Who is this?’

Caleb stared at his burned hand. ‘I dunno.’

‘It looks… It looks a bit like a woman. An old woman, maybe.’

He stabbed at the butter. ‘I don’t know.’

‘She’s really white. This woman you’ve drawn. It’s a woman, isn’t it?’

Long pause. Then, finally, ‘Maybe she wasn’t really there.’

‘Everything else you drew is really there.’

Caleb’s eyes were wide and honest, belonging to the boy I used to know. ‘Remember when I tipped paint through John Zynda’s locker?’

At least he was talking. ‘His mother was furious,’ I said. ‘We bought him new books.’

‘Some new ones. I gave him my books, for subjects we both did. I used the damaged ones myself. I had to cut the edge off every single page because the paint was like glue.’

‘What are you saying?’

He took my hand. ‘What I’ve been saying for ages. When people do wrong, they’re meant to pay. You taught me that.’

I wanted to scream into my tea towel. ‘You’ve done nothing wrong!’

He touched his scarred lips. ‘Someone was going to be blamed for the fire. It might as well be me.’

I recalled so many times when he’d wanted to talk but I’d been too busy cooking or following some fascinating – now forgotten – story on the news. Now I couldn’t make him say anything meaningful at all.

Stephen rang. Apparently Ivy had complained about my visit. I let him rant but only briefly. Despite Ivy, he was less interested in telling me to go away, and more in trying to control how I’d testify. ‘I know what I need to do. I won’t argue with you, Stephen.’

He sucked in his breath. ‘Jesus, Phoebe. Didn’t you listen to anything I said? Please stay sensible.’

‘I’ll do what I think is sensible. And I’ll see you in court.’

Caleb stared at me as I disconnected. Then he stared at the closed door. Ivy’s footsteps, once more, had stopped outside.

‘Mum, can I come home?’

I imagined his life here. Ivy, angry and disappointed. Her contempt. How would she speak to Caleb? When I’d wondered what traits my baby would inherit from Stephen, I’d imagined his beautiful eyes or brilliant mind, Imaginary Ivy said. Now I wonder what gene made you this… this… Does my baby have this gene, too? How can I know?

I saw her, clutching the newborn child as though this could prevent her from hearing the sort of words Stephen used when angry. Ivy had freed me. I didn’t have to listen to those words anymore. Of course Caleb could come home.

‘What’s happened with Dad now?’ I asked him, in the car.

‘That baby can’t be normal. It doesn’t stop crying.’

Stephen was living through that newborn night screaming again. Sucked to be him. ‘You used to cry a lot.’

Stephen hadn’t been a patient father. Caleb didn’t like my laugh but I’m pretty sure he liked the silent car. He didn’t even turn the radio on to his usual objectionable station as we drove towards home and the next disaster.

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I hadn’t planned for him to be coming back, I’d been forgetful. My collection was open, out. I was exposed, on display.

This was it. The moment I knew must happen, happened. Caleb stepped into the living room. I could have rushed past him, swept the things into my cabinet, slammed shut the lid. But what was the point?

Caleb saw everything. Right away. ‘Mum? What the hell is this?’ His fingers lingered over the wedding ring. Did he recognise it as Stephen’s? Next, he saw Jack’s lighter. More distinctive than any ring. He picked it up, his eyes accusative. ‘You took all these things?’

I blinked, lost for words.

‘I don’t understand. Mum… you steal things? Why?’

I peered around the room, desperate, foolish, trapped. As if the answer to how I could get out of this might be written on the wall somewhere. ‘Can I make you a coffee? A hot chocolate?’

‘Jack will want this back. These other things. People must miss them.’

I tried to explain. I didn’t do a very good job. ‘It started small. Like… like an art gallery. A museum… People who mean something to me…’

‘People who mean something…? So you steal from them?’

I shrug. What can I say?

‘Like souvenirs? Why not take photos?’

‘Don’t look at me like that.’

He continued touching, contaminating my collection with his anger. ‘These things belong to other people. To Jeannie. To Dad. Even to Ivy… Jeez, Mum.’

I tried to explain.

He didn’t avert his eyes as he attempted to paraphrase. ‘You think this is a way to be closer to people? Closer? Like a vampire?’

‘Don’t be silly. I…’ I mean, a vampire. Really?

‘People must miss these things. You’ve hurt them.’

‘Caleb!’

‘You’re just as disturbed as Dad says.’ Caleb held one sock, looking for its mate. ‘I’m going for a walk.’

I could hardly hear him, shame so overwhelmed me.

At the door, he smacked the side of his head. Theatrically. Still something of an adolescent. ‘I’m running out of places to leave. Maybe I should be in custody.’

I wanted to cry, to scream. I’d planned to ask again about the white figure. To confront him with my suspicion that Shirley was there, that he’d seen her, and demand to know why he hadn’t told. But he left. I turned on the television. The only person who’d talk to me was Arthur Simmons.

Back on air, beneath a cap-like toupee and a mask-like facelift, Arthur reminded viewers of Caleb’s only interview, on his show. He had a new photo of Caleb, standing near a burned-out car in his yellow CFA uniform, arms crossed over his chest, a plume of smoke stretching towards a dirty sky behind him.

I put my collection away. Just maybe, I felt some relief. I’d feared this day. But Caleb could never learn my secret over again. Everything was out in the open now. I just had to survive his reaction.

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Genevieve called, early on Sunday. She didn’t have a normal need for sleep. Like Margaret Thatcher or a vampire, or, apparently, like me.

‘Maybe I do understand him. Could he want atonement?’ I asked. I’d googled it. Atonement. My favourite definitions linked the word to integrity. At-one-ment. Caleb wanted his own life back, to be his whole self once more.

Genevieve didn’t need to ask atonement for what. ‘Is he really that ridiculous?’

I bristled on Caleb’s behalf. ‘He doesn’t see it as ridiculous.’

She was stern. ‘What he wants isn’t how things work. I hope you told him that.’

I’d tried telling him that, in so many ways. ‘But what should I do?’

‘We had him cleared once, Phoebe. We’ll do it again.’

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I could clear him, with proof that someone else was there. So I’d get proof.

Shirley had been out. I just needed to prove it. I rang the Brunton Retirement Home. Rebecca answered. She was unlikely to recognise my voice, and it didn’t matter much.

‘How can I help you?’ she asked.

‘I’m looking for a place for my mother. She’s a bit vague these days. Wanders a bit, you know.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘I need to know about your security.’

‘We take residents’ security very seriously. We have a sign-out book at reception. Some residents can sign themselves out but for others, on medical advice, we require signatures of family members. We can offer a tour, if you and your mother want to make an appointment?’

Taking Genevieve there. Just the suggestion was hilarious. ‘I’ll call you back.’

I weighed my options. I needed to see that sign-out book and check the date of the fire. Had Shirley escaped then, too?

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It was nearly dinner hour in the Retirement Home, and a lot of movement was going on with staff pushing residents through the foyer in wheelchairs. The smell of boiled cabbage hung in the air like a disease. Rebecca, behind a vase of dusty artificial flowers, tried to wipe fatigue and hassle off her face and replace them with a smile. ‘It’s good for Shirley to have visitors. She gets so excited about seeing Jack.’

Rose-scented oil evaporated nearby, mimicking life. The sign-out book was too far away to casually flip through. Was Jack Shirley’s only regular visitor? Could she have left on the day of the fire because he didn’t have time to visit? Disappointment made people unpredictable. I imagined Caleb, wanting to go to AFL practice, deciding to try getting there in the old four-wheel drive…

No, I didn’t.

After giving me a visitor’s pass with a bright lanyard, Rebecca let me find my own way to Shirley’s room. Shirley sat on the edge of her bed, laughing toothlessly at her television set. I tapped her doorframe. A box set of I Love Lucy rested on the vinyl armchair beside her. Shirley glanced at me. ‘Hello, Nurse. This Lucy will go far. She’s so funny!’

‘I’m not a nurse. I’m Phoebe. Can I come in?’

Shirley fiddled with her top button. ‘Hear my chest. I’m coughing again.’

I turned the DVD case over in my hands. A gift tag was stuck to the back. Merry Christmas, Mum. Love from Jack. ‘I’m really not a nurse.’

Shirley flattened her palm against her frail breastbone and frowned.

‘I’m Phoebe. I came here with Jack.’

‘Jack!’ Excitement wiped years off her face. She peered behind me.

I rested my hand on her shoulder. ‘He couldn’t come today.’

‘What’s your name again?’

‘I’m Phoebe—’

She grinned. ‘Jack’s girlfriend?’

‘I suppose I am.’ I smiled. ‘I’m interested in Brunton’s history.’

‘I could tell you more about the history of Rockhampton. I grew up there.’ Shirley nodded conspiratorially.

History, I thought, was written not in the streets and paddocks during the fire but in the courtroom, determined by who had the most convincing story. ‘Rockhampton sounds very interesting—’

‘I’m watching Lucy.’

Soon, the episode ended. Shirley laughed through the end credits then turned to me, puzzled. I smiled. ‘I’m Phoebe. Jack’s friend.’

‘You’re pretty old to be a friend of Jack’s.’

‘We were talking about when you first arrived in Brunton.’

‘Oh yes. Jack loves it here. We’ll be very happy.’ Apparently, in her mind, the Brunton fire was forty years off. ‘I’ve had a book of poems published, you know. It got very good reviews.’

‘We were talking about the fossicker’s hut. On Damper Creek. Did you ever have a bonfire there?’

‘Did you see us? Oh, Queensland was beautiful before the war.’

She’d gone to another place, but she’d linked them. ‘Dried leaves,’ Shirley said. ‘Trash, we called it. I’d see smoke for days. It bleached the sky. Like putting too much blue in the whites and rinsing it out. Everything smells of burned caramel and toast.’

A caregiver came in with tea. Shirley clapped her hands. ‘I knew I smelled toast!’

She offered me some. I shook my head. ‘Someone usually has toast.’

‘Maybe Jack?’

Shirley frowned. ‘Who’s Jack?’

Against my will, I saw myself in a decades-off future. Could I ever forget being a mother? Caleb? Shirley clenched her fists and closed her eyes. ‘I love the roar of a cane field on fire. Flames taller than a building.’

I stayed a few more minutes. Shirley was obsessed with flames. Her story filled the silence in the story of the bushfire, like a missing page in Caleb’s sketchbook, or a too-long pause in a piece of music. Could I use this? Make the court see that she was also at the abandoned fossicker’s hut? Brought to the witness stand, who knew what she’d say? Any lawyer could make her look confused, unreliable. So, what could I do?

On the way back to the desk I decided simply to assert myself. I reached for the sign-out book and flipped back through the months to the day of the fire. ‘That’s confidential—’ Rebecca began.

Many residents were signed out by family members. Shirley was not among them. I remembered Jack’s testimony. He had called his mother before the fire but hadn’t spoken to her, although records said she’d been here. But the records might not be accurate.

Had Jack been lying? Was it possible that he had given Caleb an alibi, so that Shirley would have one?

I turned to yesterday’s sign-out page. My eye skimmed to the evening, when Shirley went missing. Her name was not there. According to the book, she had never left. Not yesterday, same as the day of the fire. It was the proof I needed that when Shirley was out, without permission, it wasn’t mentioned in the book. As far as investigators knew, she’d remained here right through the firestorm.

But she really had no alibi, after all. She could have been anywhere. I was pretty sure she was the white figure in Caleb’s sketches.

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My call went straight through to Douglas’s message bank. Still in my car, I tried Stephen’s number too. ‘I need to talk to you.’

He took a while to understand. ‘What have you found?’

Frustrated, I repeated what I’d learned about the sign-out book. Why couldn’t he see the significance? ‘You were right. Jack gave Caleb an alibi so he could prove that he wasn’t there. Or Shirley.’

‘Phoebe, what you have is a theory. With no proof.’

‘She was there!’

‘Phoebe. It’s an allegation you can’t prove, unless someone saw her.’

‘Caleb saw her.’

There was a long pause while the implications sank in and failed to mean what they should. ‘That’s no good if he won’t say anything. There’s something else we need to discuss.’

‘Yes?’

‘You need to ask Caleb about his plans for next year. We need to consider my child support payments.’

I caught my breath. What was wrong with him? What happened to the Stephen I married? ‘What?’

‘Caleb is eighteen. Ivy and I have talked. I’ve decided to pay some support anyway.’

Some?

‘It’ll do him good to be more responsible for himself. Also, Genevieve will help Caleb. She won’t help me. She’s not related to me anymore.’

‘You think my mother should pay?’

‘She’ll want to. She has no other dependants. I’ve got Ivy and the baby.’

I started my car engine. It was obvious what I’d have to do. I wasn’t happy about it. Maybe I was like Jack’s old house, not truly fireproof.

I began to plan what I’d say on the stand. Caleb, whatever his secrets, had the right to escape being vilified, a scapegoat. When people do something wrong they’re meant to pay. Caleb wasn’t quite right, saying that. When people did something wrong, they needed to fix it. I had to fix this for him.

Jack’s ute was parked outside my house. I paused, surprised and unsure how to proceed. I’d been imagining going straight inside and telling Caleb what I had discovered, demanding he fill in the details or at least agree. But Jack didn’t yet need to know. Slowly, I approached my own house.

I opened the front door and walked quietly to the living room. Jack and Caleb stood before my open cabinet, and Jack held Shirley’s book. His forehead was creased in puzzlement – he hadn’t yet completely worked this out. ‘Hi, Phoebe. You found my mother’s book!’

It had only been a matter of time. As soon as Jack felt welcome in my house, the risk of discovery was there. I confronted him first. ‘You lied in your testimony. Caleb, what’s happening? Did you really need to do this? Involve Jack?’

He looked bewildered. His pasty face was teary. ‘I need someone to tell me what to do!’

Jack spoke into the silence. ‘I don’t understand.’ He meant court, the book, me.

I didn’t need him to understand. ‘Jack, please go.’

He looked further into my cabinet. The expression on his face flickered between comprehension and anger. His fingers found the bulldog lighter. ‘You have this?’

I nodded. Caleb remained frozen to the spot, eyes downcast. He had exposed me. Betrayal seared me like a flame.

Jack left without another word. We’d see him later, in court.

Maybe this moment didn’t have to mean much. Jack would hate me after my testimony anyway. This was the last time I’d hear the purr of his ute, pulling away from my home, from me.

I thought Caleb might at least apologise, but he stared, eyes flashing. ‘What do you mean, Jack lied?’

I tried taking his hand but he shook me away violently as if his burn scars still stung. ‘I know he’s been a hero to you, Caleb. When he said he saw you in Brunton, it was to protect his mother. Shirley was at the fossicker’s hut. I know you saw her. She’s the white figure in your sketches.’

His own face white, Caleb left for his bedroom. I tried the handle. When it didn’t budge, I rested a hand on the white timber expanse. ‘You should have told me!’

‘So I could ruin Jack’s family?’ Caleb shrieked. ‘Like I’ve ruined ours?’

‘You haven’t done anything wrong.’

A long pause. Audible, deep, heart-breaking sobs. ‘I’ll believe that when I see Sean walking again.’