Yesterday's Dust (5 page)

‘To tell you the truth, I miss your father. He livened this old town up.' She aimed her ash at the ashtray as a camera clicked, trapping the action. ‘Everyone treating me like a two-headed freak show just
because I turned a hundred,' she said. ‘Nowhere else to go after ninety-nine, is there? Except the bleedin' cemetery, and I got no intention of going out there for a while yet. They're all dead out there, eh? No one to talk to.' She cackled again, but swallowed it as a camera flashed. ‘Might as well hang a sign around my bleedin' neck,' she yelled. ‘Get your last chance photographs here.

‘Time
waits for no man, girlie. From the day we're born we get dragged along towards the grave, like it or not,' she said, glowering at the two females standing in front of her clock. Hiding time.

Then a baby wailed and Bronwyn flinched. She loathed that plaintive wail. A woman moved to silence it, just as the hand of the mantle clock jerked forward, deducting another minute from Granny's life.

‘You
haven't started your family yet?'

‘Not married, am I?' Ann had disappeared. Hopefully to the toilet.

‘They don't let that stop them these days. Anyway, what's a pretty little thing like you doing not getting married? I thought you had a good bloke.' Gran's finger prodded and an ember fell onto her dress, bought new for this day.

Bronwyn swiped at it, knocked it to the floor, ground it into
the carpet while the old girl glanced around, gnashing her jaws.

‘Don't you dob on me. They'll nick my smokes.'

The screaming infant was only metres away, and its mother undoing the buttons on her blouse. Bronwyn swallowed hard, watched a pink balloon breast emerge, watched the small cannibalistic mouth bite in, suck. And the old lady watched her watch, her wicked eye roving from her guest's
expression to her waist, then back again.

‘You're not drinking much today, are you, girlie?'

‘I'm on a diet.'

‘Pull the other one. It's made out of rubber.'

Bronwyn glanced at the leg in question – more like a plucked sparrow's ankle than rubber. Hands like gnarled mallee roots. One was flung out, old fingers snaring a box of chocolates. She helped herself to one then offered the box. Bronwyn
shook her head, but watched the old dame's hands work hard at removing the purple foil, watched her tongue urge the fingers on until thin lips closed around the chocolate and her tongue caressed it, pressed it, savouring the sweet.

‘You got that look about you, you know.'

‘What look is that, Gran?'

‘That breeding look.' Granny sniggered, drooled chocolate. ‘It's in the eyes.'

‘Not for long,'
Bronwyn muttered.

‘What's that you say?'

‘Nothing, Gran.'

‘I'm not deaf yet, and I haven't lived for a hundred bleedin' years and not learned nothing either.'

Gran's tongue flicking in and out, reclaiming lost chocolate, she squinted at the young face. Large brown–green eyes, deep set today. A pretty face, but pale against the long nut-brown hair. High breasts beneath a dusty pink sweater,
black slacks.

‘Well you just put this in your modern little pipe and smoke it, girlie. It's an ill wind that sheds no good along its pathway, and new life was never “nothing” and that's a fact.'

Granny Bourke's words were like some virulent virus. They hit hard, hit Bronwyn below the belt. She ran for the toilet, lost her glass of wine, three corn crackers, and the dry biscuits she'd managed
to keep down at breakfast time, but she found Ann.

It's an ill wind that sheds no good along its pathway.

‘Are you okay, Bron?'

‘I will be. I'm going up to Sydney tomorrow.'

‘It's too late for that.'

‘Shiiiiit. What am I going to do, Annie?'

‘Sneak out through the bar. They won't miss us.'

Friday 8 August

Mallawindy had been battered by ill winds for weeks. Mini tornadoes swept through, determined to flatten the town, to wipe it from the face of the land. They failed, but they shifted Bill Dooley's house a foot to the south, exposing his termite-riddled stumps. They lifted the roof from the new garage and dumped it on the
Central. The hotel remained open for business.

The winds ripped a tree from the earth and it fell across the old river road and onto a panel van, just as young Bob West and old Vera Owen were getting down to business. Vera swore that Bob was a hero, that he'd thrown himself on top to protect her, but they were both naked from the waist down when cut from the wreckage. Only big Charlie, Vera's
much cuckolded, truckie husband believed the story. Vera had always preferred the dominant position.

Ill winds were still wailing when Bessy Bishop came to the mud brick house on that Friday in August. She'd been born and raised in this house, knew every brick, every creaking board. Ben had bought it back in the eighties and lived alone there until his father went missing, when Ellie and John
had moved in with him.

‘Ellie!' Bessy bawled at the front door. The wind picked up her words, tossed them away.

She let herself in. ‘Ellie. Where the hell are you?'

The kitchen was a small black hole, the dining room as dark and not a lot larger; twin doors and two deep steps down separated it from the lounge room, which was cluttered with furniture. The bedrooms
might have made good walk-in
wardrobes these days, but this morning Ellie wasn't in any of the rooms.

‘Ellie! Are you up there? I'm not climbing those bloody stairs,' Bessy yelled up to the bedroom in the roof. Low beamed, larger than the downstairs rooms, it was Ellie's room. Always had been.

‘Ellie!'

Born a gosling, old age had not turned Bessy into a swan. Some argument between her Granville/Vevers genes had set her
pugnacious features at conception. Sun-dried, windblown, she wasn't a pretty sight today.

‘Ellie!' On the back verandah, her face near lost beneath a thatch of steel-grey hair, she turned from east to west, her darting eyes scanning the back yard. ‘For Christ's sake, will you answer me! I got something to tell you.'

‘I'm in here. For goodness sake, stop your yelling, Bessy.' The reply came from
the outdoor lavatory, a long path away.

‘They've found him.'

‘What?'

‘They've found Jack.'

The chug-chug-a-lug, the rumble of water, the hiss of old pipes refilling the outdated overhead cistern, then Ellie emerged, her skirt blowing in the wind, her smile triumphant, her belief in prayer justified.

‘Oh, shit.' Bessy turned her back to the wind and to Ellie; she took the makings from her
pocket and rolled a cigarette.

‘I was just going over to do the chooks, Bessy. Where has he been?'

Not bloody far from home, Bessy thought, but said: ‘Don't you go over that bridge today. You'll get blown off the bloody thing.'

Ellie rinsed her hands at the garden tap and Bessy watched her, watched the water stream bend in the wind. She'd just heard some good news, but how to tell it was the
problem. Trying hard to compose her features into a mask of concern, she lit the cigarette, pursing her lips around it, which hindered her satisfied smile but did
not totally conceal it.

‘Is he all right?'

‘Come in out of the wind. We'll have a cup of tea and a talk about it.'

Her hands wiped on her khaki apron, Ellie walked up to the house, her smile becoming a quizzical frown. ‘What's the
matter?'

‘Jeff Rowan just rung me up. He said it might be better coming from me than from him.' Ellie was staring at her now, so Bessy let it rip. ‘They found his body out the Daree road a couple of days ago but held off saying anything until the experts had looked him over. But it's him.' She sucked smoke hard, controlling her lips, but not her eyes.

‘No. Not Jack. No. It can't be Jack?'

‘It's him, all right.' Bessy watched her sister sit down hard on the edge of the verandah and she sat beside her, placing an arm around her. ‘I done it all wrong, love. I know that. I opened my mouth and put my big foot right in it, didn't I? But I've been looking for you for ten minutes. I've been right though your house. I could have pinched your handbag off the table.'

‘There's not much in
it.' Ellie was staring at her wedding ring, twisting it. ‘It can't be Jack, Bessy. It's not Jack.'

‘He's the right age, he's big, he's been dead around the right time, and he must have thought a bit of himself because they dug out the skull intact and it's still got a full set of teeth. I mean, who else of sixty-odd, with his own teeth, is missing from around here?'

A full set of natural teeth
was as rare a find in Mallawindy as hen's molars. Dentists cost money, and meant a trip to Warran or Daree. Bessy sucked tobacco from her own set of dentures while with one hand she patted her sister's shoulder. ‘Isn't it better to find his bo . . . I mean, you knew this could happen. You knew this was bound to happen sooner or later.'

Her hand in her apron pocket, Ellie's fingers played the
rosary beads. Prayer beads, worry beads, they were always with her. ‘It's not him, Bessy. It's not.'

‘As they say, love, it's an ill wind that blows no good. You'll feel better about it if you can give him a proper funeral. You'll be able to forget about the bas – ' She sucked the word back with smoke, swallowed it. ‘And you'll get his insurance money and no more bloody messing around. You can
build yourself some new milking sheds.'

Eyes wide, her mouth open, Ellie lifted her head and stared at her sister. ‘I don't want their money. I don't need a new milking shed either. I wouldn't take their money in exchange for . . . for Jack's life.'

‘I know, love, but it's yours. You've paid the premiums for years.'

‘I'll . . . I'll give it to the church.'

‘My backside, you will! You gave
your son to the church and look what it's done to him.'

Johnny rarely left the property. When he wasn't digging post holes and setting in new posts, he was stretching wires between them, or cutting hay, painting the old Burton house, milking cows. At it from daylight to dark, from Sunday to Sunday, he worked on, slowly, methodically, like a battery-driven robot. He'd keep on moving until his
batteries finally ran down, then he'd start charging them up at the Central, start hitting the bottle and end up worse than his father, Bessy thought, though she never said it – not to Ellie.

Bessy worried about her silent nephew, but could not get close to him. No one could. The whole family hadn't been the same since Christmas 1990. Held together by some collective rubber band when Jack Burton
had been around, his leaving had snapped it, sent them shooting off like scattered pebbles fired from a slingshot.

Look at Annie, playing mother earth, for Christ's sake. Never would have thought it of her. And look at Bronwyn; she was a loose cannon with a bloody short fuse, that one – and after the way she'd treated young Nick, it was a bloody wonder he was going to do the right thing by her
too, and God help him. And Ellie – Ellie might have been her sister but she had the memory of a blind worm with
its head cut off.

Ben had done okay. He'd never changed. Even as a kid he'd just continued on doing what had to be done, and doing it well. He'd shed ten years and grown an inch the day he'd built his bridge, or maybe he'd just stood taller.

He and Johnny were working wonders over
the river, and the old house, given a long overdue coat of paint, had come up well – on the outside. They could have been renting it out, should have been, as Bessy frequently told them. Someone living at the house might stop people helping themselves to the chooks and pigs. But Johnny didn't want strangers wandering around the property, and what Johnny didn't want, Ellie didn't do. He slept at the
old place when his moods were dark, or wandered there and kept Bessy's dogs barking all night long.

She turned again to her sister, who was now staring unseeing at a geranium barely surviving in an old milk urn. Like Ellie, it had made the transition over the bridge six years ago and it wasn't doing so well either. All stalks and no sap. Bessy stood, filled a watering can and poured water into
the pot. ‘Buck up, love. You knew they were looking for his body. Christ, they dragged that river for weeks.'

‘Where did they find – ?'

‘This side of Daree. In that bit of bush that comes down to the road, about three miles east of Charlie and Vera Owen's place. Only metres from the road, Jeff said.'

‘Just laying there, out in all the weather?' Ellie was weeping now.

‘No. No, love. He'd been
buried. A couple of – '

‘Buried? Buried!'

‘Wouldn't have been much left of him if he hadn't of been buried! A couple of campers found him – or their dog did, when they were out walking. Around midday the day before yesterday. So Jeff was saying.'

‘Then it's not him, Bessy. Who'd bury him?'

‘Charlie bloody Owen, for one. He knew about Jack and Vera. He swore to everyone in town that he'd bury
him one day. And he done it, didn't he?'

Ellie stared at the geranium, picked at a broken fingernail while Bessy leaned on a verandah post and blew smoke.

‘They've got to do the official ID, which Jeff says is only a formality. They've took photos or X-rays of his teeth, so they need to know the name of his dentist. Then it's done and you get the money.'

‘His dentist?'

‘Dentists keep stuff
for years. X-rays and the like, details of fillings and stuff. The cops always use dental records. You know that.'

Ellie nodded, nodded, her green eyes dripping.

‘Nothing much found on the body. A few bits of clothes.' Bessy tossed her smoke into the garden but the wind blew it back to the verandah. Ellie flicked it away, watched sparks fly in the wind. ‘They think you might recognise his clothes,
love.'

‘Are Benjie and Mickey back yet?' It was Ben's day off from the shop. He and Bessy's son had taken a load of pigs up to the Warran sale.

‘The pig sale goes late. That's why Jeff rung me, I suppose. Though I don't know why he didn't drive over and tell Johnny. It might have been better coming from him than me.' Might not have either, she thought. He'd probably do a victory dance. ‘I came
straight down here as soon as I heard.'

Almost straight down. She didn't tell her sister about the book they'd been running at the pub since they'd found the gun. The odds on Jack being dead had fluctuated since. When the frogmen hadn't found his body in the river, they went up, when the insurance investigator packed up and left town they went down. Then Mrs Carter swore she'd seen Jack at the
Sydney racetrack, and the odds had gone up again.

The population of Mallawindy, like AMP, was now not wholly convinced that Jack hadn't faked his disappearance, that he wasn't hiding out in Sydney, biding his time until Ellie got the money.
Bessy had given the Central a quick call before coming to find her sister, using her inside information to place a bet – and getting a lousy two to one on
Jack being dead.

‘I told Jeff that I'd drive you down to Daree to talk to the Sydney blokes this afternoon, so we'd better get a move on.'

‘I can't go to Daree. I've got
that
wedding tomorrow.'

‘They need the name of his dentist.'

‘Well I don't know it, Bessy.'

‘Jeff said they're homicide bigwigs, love,' she said, watching her sister for reaction. There was none. ‘You don't want them up here,
do you, sniffing around, asking everybody bloody questions about him again? We only just got rid of the nosy bastards.'

‘I'm not going down to Daree today. I've got to wash my hair and you know it takes hours to dry. Ring them up, Bessy. Tell them Jack used to go to a dentist somewhere in Melbourne. I never knew where. If he had a toothache, he'd just take off and go. You know that.'

‘You paid
his bills. You'll find the dentist's name on something. What about your old cheque butts?'

‘I never paid for his dentist. He must have paid, or May and Sam might have. He kept his private things in his briefcase, and I told you a dozen times that Annie took it with her that night. I haven't got anything. Ben and Johnny burned most of the papers when they moved me over from the old place.' Ellie
looked towards the house across the river, looked at the trees, their branches tossed by the wind. ‘Ring Jeff and tell him that Annie might have something with the dentist's name on it. There might have been some old bills in the briefcase – that's if she's still got it.'

‘She's told you she hasn't got it. I heard her tell you.'