If Mr Foster had one friend in town, it was Jean White. A busy woman, she was, like Norman, on every committee, but still found time most mornings to pop her head into the post office to pass the time of day. He waited for her on the Saturday morning, desperate for her advice on what he ought to do concerning his evening visitors. He was standing at his door at ten fifteen when the Fulton girl ran bawling from the grocery store, dodged Mick Boyle’s horse and dray, then ran into the constable’s yard. Seconds later, Denham ran ahead of her back to the grocery store. Something was amiss.
Something was very amiss. Jean White was dead, dead behind the counter where, for the past thirty years, she’d spent most of her days. Dead, and nothing anyone could do about it. And Charlie, sitting on the floor, cradling her in his arms and howling.
The Fulton girl ran home bawling. She told Alfred, Jean’s son-in-law, who came running, his wife behind him, to find Charlie refusing to release his first love, his only love, and old Charlie White howling was a sight to behold.
Denham closed the store that morning and the town went into shock. Jean White had been in her mid-fifties. She’d never had a day’s illness.
Not a soul complained when those twin green doors remained closed on Monday morning; if folk needed sugar, they borrowed from a neighbour. Most in town expected those doors to stay shut until after the funeral.
A big funeral, half the town was there. Half the town saw tough old Charlie looking ten years older than his age and still bawling like a baby, holding on to his hysterical daughter, while Alfred attempted to hold both of them up with his one arm.
A few expected those twin green doors to open on Tuesday. They didn’t, and folk who had lent their neighbours a cup of sugar had now run low on it. Tea canisters were empty, and how were you supposed to feed your kids when you had no flour? During these bad times, fried dough filled a lot of kids’ bellies. Those on susso were feeling the pinch. They lived from hand to mouth.
Norman was out of butter, and he had a crate of it melting at the station, along with other grocery store stock. He and his station lad walked around the growing pile until more came in on Wednesday, when Norman took it upon himself to knock on Charlie’s door, express his concern for the family, and also for the perishables.
Alfred contacted Mick Boyle. He delivered the stock from station to storeroom, and Alfred made the mistake of leaving the front doors open — and was near knocked down in the rush. He knew nothing about groceries. He hadn’t paid for a pound of butter since he’d wed, had no idea of the price of a packet of tea. Susso coupons meant nothing to him. He didn’t know where his in-laws kept their change drawer.
‘If one of you can go and get the Fulton girl, we might be able to serve you,’ Alfred said.
Someone got Emma Fulton, who didn’t know where Charlie hid his change drawer, but knew the price of things, so they started writing dockets, which began an even greater rush in through those doors. Charlie wasn’t known for his charity. Word that he was giving tick got around fast.
Around two that afternoon, Hilda noticed people walking by with full shopping bags. She told Charlie, who told her that the one-armed mug of a man she’d married could burn the bloody place down for all he cared. He could still see Jean lying on the floor behind the counter frothing at the mouth, could still feel the life draining out of her. Stroke, they’d diagnosed, massive stroke, vein burst in the brain, they said. He didn’t care what they said. She was gone and he was never again setting foot inside that bloody shop.
‘You’ve got responsibilities to the community, Dad,’ Hilda said.
‘Bugger the community,’ Charlie said and he turned again to stare at the passage wall, watching for shadows. Ten, fifteen, twenty times an hour he saw Jean’s shadow walk by to the kitchen, hurry into the bedroom. He knew she was gone, but here, in her house, he kept catching glimpses of her. He could hear her too, not that she said much that would have importance to most, but to him, her voice was a melody.
‘Charlie, how much did you put on that baking powder?
What do you feel like for dinner, Charlie?
Charlie is me darlin’, me darlin’, me darlin’ . . .’
She was out there somewhere, clinging on like hell to the life they’d shared, and maybe waiting for him to come. And he wanted to go to her.
On the Friday evening, while Charlie sat watching shadows, twenty-odd kids were swimming down at the bend behind Clarry Dobson’s place. Nelly Abbot was there with her big brothers. The day had been hot and the evening wasn’t cooling down. The older kids skylarked, dunking, diving, swinging out over the water on a rope; the younger kids stayed out of their way when they could, and yelled when they couldn’t.
Nelly was small for her years but could swim like a fish. She was last seen waiting her turn to swing on the rope. No one noticed whether she’d had her turn or not. No one noticed she was missing until the light was almost gone. The crowd at the creek had thinned out. Her brothers thought she’d walked home with someone. One of the girls said she’d seen her running off into the bush. No lavatory down at the creek but plenty of trees. She’d probably come back, the girl said, though she couldn’t say for sure.
‘Nelly! You’d better not still be down here, because we’re going home,’ her brother yelled. They had been told to get home before dark.
The Abbots lived on the north side of the lines, a couple of houses west of the hotel. The boys were home in minutes and Nelly wasn’t there.
‘Who was she with?’ Grace Abbot asked, not too concerned. ‘What were you thinking of, letting her walk off by herself?’ Ten minutes later and still no sign of Nelly, she was becoming concerned. She walked out to the street. ‘Nelly! Nelly!’ Kids coming from many directions. Nobody had seen Nelly — not after she’d run off into the bush.
Panic then. ‘Get the constable. Go and get your father.’
A dozen men were raised quickly from their parlours, a dozen lanterns lit, a dozen more joined them before they got to the creek.
A pretty sight: lights glowing all along the curve of that creek, lights reflecting in the dark water, though there wasn’t much that could be seen by lantern light. Too many clumps of reeds took on the shape of a missing child. And logs too, logs creating ripples as the creek flowed around them.
A hundred searchers, men and women, were down there by ten, shining flashlights into the forest alongside the creek, and that eternal calling, calling.
‘Nelly! Nelly!’
Two dozen or more searched through the night, and were thankful for the dawn — and afraid of it, afraid they’d see that red bathing costume.
‘She wanted red,’ Grace Abbot said. ‘It was brand new this year. She could swim like a fish. She could swim when she was two years old. I tell you she wouldn’t have drowned.’
The boats were put in the creek at dawn. They concentrated their search downstream from the bend, following its twisted way, following it down one side then pulling hard back up on the other side, prodding around every snag, searching every reed bank. No sign of Nelly.
They looked further afield. A middle-aged swagman had passed through town two days ago. He could have been holed up in that patch of the bush, waiting his chance. The Willama police were in town. Gertrude saw their car drive by, no doubt heading out to Wadi’s camp. There were a couple of strangers known to be staying out there with him and his women, living black.
At sundown on that Saturday, Gertrude’s tank dry, she harnessed Nugget up to her water carrier — a forty-four-gallon water drum her father had fixed up with a set of wheels and shafts. Joey went with her. Water-getting was an easier task with two, one to pump, the other to stand out on that log keeping the end of the hose in clear water.
They were backing Nugget up to their log when they saw what was beneath it, saw that hair, blonde, long, curling like Jenny’s curled.
‘Go home, Joey! Run home, darlin’, and stay there.’
Joey was staring at what Gertrude had seen. He thought it was Jenny, but it had no face, only blood and flies. Gertrude blocked his view with her body and took his shoulders, turned him away.
‘Go home, darlin’. It’s that little girl they’re searching for. You be a good boy for me now and run home to Elsie. I have to ride in and tell the constable.’
He ran. Gertrude unhitched her pony from the barrel, mounted him bareback, and rode into town.
There were men down near the bridge.
‘The constable,’ she called, and two or three pointed across the creek. She saw him, helping a group pull a boat out of the water. Over the bridge she rode, down the slope, between the trees. Denham watched her approach.
‘She’s found,’ she said, glancing around for the father, hoping to God that he wasn’t in earshot. ‘Down near my place.’
‘You’re upstream,’ Denham said.
‘She didn’t drown.’
She slid from her horse and walked with that pig-faced man back through the trees, spilling out what she’d seen to a man she hadn’t spoken to in three years. Some things were bigger than personal feuds.
Her horse had taken himself off for a drink. The garage chap’s truck was parked on the far side of the bridge. She drove with him and Denham out along her road, led them down her well-worn track to the creek, pointed to the log behind her water barrel. Didn’t want to go nearer. Gertrude had delivered that little girl. She’d delivered the Abbots’ first daughter and seen her buried when she’d died of appendicitis. Wanted to go home and hide her head for the shame of all mankind. Didn’t want to think of those poor Abbots. Suffering wasn’t fairly apportioned in this cruel old world. Some got none of it. Others got the lot.
She was crossing her stretch of road when the first of the walkers came around the curve before her land. Didn’t want to speak to them. Didn’t want to see Len Abbot amongst them, but he was there. And he didn’t need to see what she’d seen.
She walked down to meet them. ‘She’s been found, Lenny. You go home to your wife now.’
He tried to push by her, but she took his arm and others took his arms. Not a big man, Lenny Abbot, not a young man who could start over. He’d run the town’s saddlery; a clever man with leather.
‘Take him home, lads,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow will be time enough to see his little girl. Get him away from here.’
Stood guarding her road and water track until young Mick Boyle and Horrie Bull came to take her place. She went home then, went home where she had no water to waste in washing this terrible day from her. She wasted what was in her bucket, took her washbasin to her room and flung her clothes off, soaped her face, soaped the sweat of what she’d seen from her, got herself clean and into fresh clothes before she spoke to those scared-eyed kids.
‘I need you to hold me for a minute, darlin’s. Just hold me.’
Elsie served a meal at seven. Gertrude couldn’t eat. She put her plate in the oven and took her chair outside, needing to sit in the dark with her thoughts. Strange thoughts darting around her mind tonight: Denham, her horse, Lenny Abbot, Charlie. And Vern too. And where was he when she needed him? Hoped her horse would find his own way home. He knew the way, if someone hadn’t taken charge of him. John McPherson might. He’d been down at the bridge. He could have put him in his paddock. She’d get him in the morning.
A swarm of men over the road now, cars parked alongside her section. Moe Kelly’s van was there, and the Willama police car. This was murder, the brutal, terrible murder of a child. This was too big for Woody Creek.
Water. All she had was in her kettle, and what was left in her stone bottle. Her barrel was down at the creek, with her hand pump. Didn’t want to go back there, get the water-carrier to fill her tank. Tomorrow’s worry.
She sat until the last car drove away, sat slapping mosquitoes. Too dark to see them, too sick at heart to feel their bite — sick at the sickness of mankind. Couldn’t get the image of the curly head out of her mind. Couldn’t get that first fear that it was Jenny out of her mind — or that dreadful, that terrible, appalling relief that it wasn’t.
God help that poor Abbot family. God give them strength.
Elsie and Joey came out to the dark to kiss her goodnight, her beautiful, gentle kids. She held them, kissed their faces.
‘You should eat something, Mum.’
‘I will, darlin’.’
Maybe she would.
It must have been after nine o’clock when she heard the rattle of someone coming down her track. That got her to her feet. Whoever it was showing a weak light. Couldn’t remember if she’d closed her gate or not. Didn’t want anyone on her land tonight.
She walked to her chicken-wire gate, then went inside for her rifle. Too many strangers wandering around town these days, and no trust left in her. Couldn’t see much, only the swinging light. Relying more on her ears than her sight, she recognised her water barrel, recognised that sloshing sound of a full barrel.
‘Who’s there?’ she called into the dark.
‘It’s Harry Hall, Mrs Foote.’
She knew his name, had seen him around town this last year or two, had seen him driving George Macdonald around in that truck; but he wasn’t of this town, and a terrible murder had been done here, and no man of this town could have done such a thing to that little girl. She knew too that Harry Hall had been living in a hut down behind McPherson’s land, fifty or sixty yards from the swimming bend, and whether he’d brought water or not, she didn’t want him on her land.
‘I appreciate your thought,’ she said, dismissing him.
‘Can I pump it up to your tank for you, Mrs Foote?’
‘I’ll manage from here, lad. Thank you.’
Maybe he saw her gun. She could see the shape of him now, but not his face, not his eyes. You needed to see folk’s eyes. She stood at a distance, the rifle under her arm. She knew how to use it.
‘You’d better be getting off home.’
She felt her full age tonight, her bones hadn’t appreciated that mad barebacked ride. One day she’d grow old, and tonight she wanted him off her land before he saw how damn old she was.
‘I know where you’re coming from, Mrs Foote,’ he said. ‘I don’t blame you. There’s a few more in town feeling the same way tonight.’ He was carrying a lantern and he lifted it, lit a bit more of himself. ‘It will be all right tomorrow. George knows where I was last night.’
‘I’ll know too then, lad, but I don’t know tonight.’
‘Of course you don’t. I did the wrong thing coming down in the dark. I’ll leave you to it then . . . or you can stand there and hold the gun on me while I pump this lot up to your tank.’
‘It’s loaded,’ she said.
‘Righto,’ he said, and he went about backing the horse up to the tank.
There was a lot of length in him. She stood watching him pump, relieved to know she had water, that she wouldn’t need to go down there in the morning. He got the barrel emptied and started leading her horse and barrel back up the track.
‘Where are you going?’
‘One of these will last you five minutes this weather,’ he said.
‘One is more than I had. I appreciate your thought —’
‘It’s as much for me as for you, Mrs Foote. I’m not going home tonight — or not until a few of the hotheads pass out. I may as well be doing something useful.’
‘Where were you last night, lad?’
‘Having dinner with George and family. We were eating when Denham came knocking. He knows where I was, Mrs Foote. It’s just a few with a bit too much in their tanks, that’s all. They turned my hut inside out. Might have turned me inside out if I’d been in it.’ He stood a while, the horse blowing raspberries. ‘I wouldn’t lie to you, Mrs Foote. My word is gold. It always has been.’
Her dad used to say that. A man’s word is his gold. Maybe she’d said it a time or two herself. He was walking away; her horse seemed to trust him — and he didn’t trust everyone. She let him go and took her rifle inside.
She held the hose while he pumped up the second barrel of water and didn’t argue when he went back for a third. She was waiting for him in the yard when he returned, waiting with her own lantern to unharness her horse, give him a rub down and a bucket of oats for his labour, and surely that boy deserved no less.
‘I’ve got a meal in there. It could be a bit dried out, but you’re welcome to it, lad.’
‘I’ve never yet said no to a free meal, Mrs Foote.’
He washed up at her tank and, like Vern, ducked his head as he came through the door. Like Vern he didn’t need to, though had his hair not been flattened by sweat, he might have. In the better light of her kitchen, he looked like a half-starved kid stretched out to breaking point, and one who didn’t waste his pennys on haircuts.
She made tea, working quietly. She lifted the plate from her cooling oven, lifted the lid covering it, offered him a knife and fork, then stood watching him eat.
Just a snub-nosed boy, and not a good-looking boy, not by anyone’s standards. His hair was a rusty red and he had a plague of freckles. His hands were near as fine as Elsie’s, though twice as long. He looked fifteen, but had the world-wise, world-weary way about him of a man three times his age — and the table manners of a duke. Someone had trained that boy.
Joey slept on a single bed down the bottom end of the kitchen. He woke and lay watching Gertrude’s late-night visitor but didn’t move from his bed. If Elsie was awake, she stayed behind her curtain.
The clock on her mantelpiece told her the time was eleven thirty. It would be near enough to right. She poured him a second cup of tea, then found a brown paper bag and placed a dozen eggs in it.
‘I dare say you can use them.’
‘They’ll feed me for a week, Mrs Foote. Thanks.’
Near twelve when he left, the kerosene in his lantern’s bowl topped up, that light shining brighter as he walked up the track.
Monday was a busy day. They were clearing the lunch dishes when three city detectives and Denham arrived at Gertrude’s door. Denham introduced her as the town nurse. She was no nurse, but while the truth was being stretched she introduced Elsie as her daughter. The city men, accustomed to foreigners, didn’t look twice at Elsie’s darker than normal complexion. They wanted to know what she’d seen. Elsie had seen no one, whether she had or not.
Bullockies travelled that road; each day a truck or two drove by; wood cutters walked and rode out from town; swagmen wandered by, and more than a few came to Gertrude’s door wanting a bit of boiling water for a cup of tea — a common swagman ploy, offering a billy containing a bare pinch of tea leaves, hoping the woman of the house would add a pinch more and maybe a pinch of sugar. A few had walked away with a treacle sandwich, a few eggs, the tail end of a loaf of bread.
It was common conjecture that Nelly had been killed by one of those wandering men who camped alongside that creek, who Joey sometimes spoke to when he set his few rabbit traps.
He was setting his traps when the city men came. They wanted to speak to him. Gertrude walked them across her goat paddock to the road, where she stood listening for the sound of metal hammering metal. Those traps had long pegs that required securing in the earth. She couldn’t hear him hammering and her heartbeat started its own thumpity-thump. She’d seen that little girl’s mutilated face. She hadn’t wanted Joey going off alone today. But he was a big strong boy for his years, and nobody’s fool, and he’d wanted to get a rabbit, and no boy needs to have an old woman’s fear planted in his heart.
The older policeman told her while they walked the track alongside the creek that the killer had used a slim-bladed knife, that they’d counted thirty stab wounds to the upper body and throat and eight or ten slash wounds to the face.
‘Joey!’
A nine year old wouldn’t stand a hope against a madman with a knife, no matter how big and brave he was —
He came from between two trees. It took willpower to stop her hands reaching for him. Instead, she introduced him as her big grandson, and her beautiful grandson dropped his last trap and offered his hand. They shook it, all three of those city men shook it. The hand wasn’t offered to Denham. Joey showed the men a wheat bag he’d pulled from the reeds, and maybe the mark of that bag being dragged along the track that followed the creek. There was blood on the bag. The men took it with them when they left.