One Sunday (23 page)

And . . . and Freddy was with her, and she was saying to him, ‘So, where do I line up to get my wings, Freddy? I want to start my flying lessons so I can see what the eagles see when they glide across the sky.'

All morning Elsa Reichenberg had cleaned and cooked, hiding in work. Now, only her mind worked as she waited to serve her men. That is what women did; they waited to serve the men. She had said this to Rachael. She had said too much to little Rachael. ‘Marriage is for the children it brings, and for respectability. The woman who leaves her husband brings great shame on the family,' she'd said – and she'd given very bad counsel.

Until that marriage with Kennedy, Elsa had been certain that time would give Rachael to this house as a daughter. Wait until they are older, she had thought. Wait until she is of an age to make her own decision. Let the children learn patience, a good lesson in life for all to learn. She had not foreseen that marriage to Kennedy. So much she should have foreseen.

Christian, never a patient boy, was always the difficult one, always growing too fast, out of his trousers before he was in them, out of his boots before they were worn, out of boyhood into manhood, everything had been too fast with that one. For Kurt, life had been kind, as if the clock within him was a calm thing, tick-ticking slow, allowing time to grow slowly, calmly. Such beautiful boys she had made from that old man's seed.

Her big work-worn hands stroking the cat's sleek black fur, she stood on the back porch, scanning the land for her men. She couldn't see them.

This morning she'd stood here, weeping on Katze while Kurt walked to the paddock to tell his brother of Rachael's death – like the movie show she had gone to at the town hall. She couldn't read the words but she'd understood the action. Christian's hands rising, as if to push his brother, or his brother's words, from him. Many words then she could not hear, Christian facing his father, his face angry, Kurt stepping between them, concerned for his brother. And Joseph's closed fist striking.

For two hours now Christian had roamed the property, driving a sharp prod deep into the earth, seeking Joseph's jars of buried money while his father followed behind, abusing him. No more dam digging today. The horses released into the paddock, Kurt had left those two fools to their war.

Elsa returned to the kitchen where she checked on the vegetables, boiled to rags, the meat drying out in the pan.

‘Did I cook this for the waste bucket?' She picked up an old baking pan and her heavy cast-iron serving ladle, the aching mixture of pain, anger and fear finding vent in belting the base of that pan, denting it.

‘Mutti.' Kurt came quickly into the kitchen and took the pan from her, tried to take the ladle but she threw it hard at the frying pan. Fat splashed onto the stove.

‘Find your brother and father. Bring them to my table.'

‘I don't want to eat with them today, Mutti. Nor do you.'

‘Bring them now, before one kills the other. Now!'

Joseph was never missing when his meal was ready. He always sat waiting at the table, sharpening his knife. He didn't smile at many but he had at Rachael. ‘That silver', he had named her, as he had named the wife he lost forty years ago. ‘That silver, she carries laughter in her big handbag,' he'd said. He had unlocked the closed room for Rachael, and given her a hairbrush, taken it from his tin trunk of precious memories. Only one year ago, on Christmas Eve, when Rachael had come to this house with her gifts and laughter.

‘You like, eh? You have. Is good brush, eh?' he'd said in English, his ice eyes warmed by her smile.

Elsa blew a still-blond tendril from her face as Kurt and Christian entered the kitchen, taking their places on either side of the heavy table.

‘Your father?'

‘I hope he's having a stroke,' Christian said.

‘I think he's coming, Mutti.'

She stood a moment, studying Kurt's swollen eye, then she turned away to fill the plates. No talking, only the clatter of utensils until Joseph arrived and stood behind his chair.

‘I do not sit with thieves,' he said.

‘Do you think I want to sit with you, you mean old bastard?'

‘Leave my table, thief.'

‘I would have left it months ago if you'd given me ten lousy quid. She would have been alive today if you'd given me ten lousy quid. I've worked my guts out for you and you give me nothing. Kurt works his guts out for you, and you blacken his bloody eye because he's handy and I'm not.'

Kurt's left eye had closed, the swelling around it darkening into a bruise. He smoothed it with a finger as he looked first at his brother, then his father. For years he had stood between these two. The time comes to all fence sitters when they must choose a side. He shrugged, repeated Christian's words verbatim, but in his father's tongue.

This was not good. Elsa filled her mouth, sealed it. If that old man did not take great care, he would drive both sons away. And did he think she would remain here when they left? Oh, no. She had money in her bankbook. She would take her bankbook and Katze, and follow her sons to the end of the earth.

She knew Christian had asked for money, though not why he'd asked for it. Her mouth filled with meat and potato, her eyes on her plate, she listened to the three-way war while good food on the other plates remained untouched.

‘We work like tame dogs for you, and you take our wages and bury them in the dirt.'

‘You offend the dog. My son is less than a thieving cur.'

‘When you starve a dog, he becomes a thief to live.'

And Kurt, his voice emotionless, translated.

‘Look at the sons you have given me, woman!' Joseph bellowed at her now – because he could not win against those boys when they stood together.

Elsa chewed, swallowed, reloaded her fork. She would not reply, was not expected to reply. It was a woman's place to hold her tongue, keep the bad words inside.

‘Look at the bloody life you've given us – and her. You never gave her a penny to buy us an ice cream! You buried it, you mean, land hungry old fool. You're like a crazy old bull, trampling on the good grass of today while you search for the dead paddocks of last bloody century.'

Perhaps those words repeated in German angered Joseph more than Christian's English. He turned his ire on the translator. ‘Close your mouth, or I will close it for you.'

Kurt's finger again smoothed the swollen flesh beneath his eye. ‘Do you hit the translator as well as the message bringer, Papa?'

‘Eat.' Elsa's feet wanted to stand. She forced them to be still. ‘Eat. All of you. Your food grows cold.'

‘Look at the sons you have raised on my land. Australian shit. You hear how they speak to their father?'

‘If you do not give the pup a pat on the head when he obeys the whistle, he does not continue to obey, my husband.'

‘
Schlampe!
' he roared, near dancing with rage. ‘You talk back to your husband?'

She stood, flicked the back of her hand at him as she might flick it at a fly. ‘Go from my table then. Starve,' she said, and in English. ‘You want to bellow like the old bull, go to your paddock and chew on dry grass.'

He stepped towards her, one hand raised. She didn't flinch. He wouldn't hit her. Her boys too were on their feet. He looked from one to the other, then his clenched fists opened and one hand moved to his brow to rub at the red stain of anger there. He could not win here today. Only if he sat at the head of her table and ate the meal she had cooked could he win – a little win.

Pity the old man, his great strength and control eroded by age. Pity him. He knew his age today, knew his sons now stood together against him.

‘Sit,' Elsa demanded, but in the old language. ‘Sit and eat the good food I have prepared. I am tired of your stupid fighting.'

And they sat, picked up their knives and forks, and ate.

Tom had dropped off to sleep, one palm supporting his head, elbow propped on the table, feet propped on a hard wooden chair. Amazing where, and how, a man can fall into a deep dreamless sleep when he is tired enough – and if not for that knocking on his front door, he might have slept longer.

‘Mr Thompson! Mr Thompson, are you in there?'

Tom's feet hit the floor running; he was halfway up the passage before he realised that apart from his drawers, he was as bare as his feet.

‘Mr Thompson!'

‘Hang on to your shirt,' he muttered, trying to get back into his own, which made him think of Len Larkin trying to dress himself with one hand; Tom's right arm was stone dead from leaning on his elbow. He gave up on his shirt, found his trousers, got them on, left his braces dangling and unlocked the door.

Only Mike Murphy and Billy O'Brien. ‘Keep the noise down. You'll wake Mrs Thompson.'

‘Is Rachael Squire's handbag missing?'

‘What do you know about it?'

‘I know where it is, and I know who threw it where it is too,' Mike said.

‘Threw it where?'

‘In the river, near the swimming bend. It was one of the pickers.'

‘Are you fair dinkum, lad?'

‘It's as true as I'm standing here, Mr Thompson. I saw a bloke chuck that bag in the river early this morning.'

Tom rubbed his arm, hoping it was only a lack of circulating blood and not a stroke. He had too much to do today. ‘Righto. If one of you can grab Jeanne from the post office for me, I'll get my boots on and you can show me what you're talking about.'

It was close to two-thirty before the trio parked their bikes at the swimming bend and walked through the bush to the fruit pickers' squalid camp, deserted by all bar the blowflies and a few birds squabbling over rubbish. Tom had a poke around the huts, stuck his head inside a tent, tripped over a few bottles, shook his head at the filth and walked on down to the river, expecting to find a few loafing coots taking it easy on Sunday. Not a soul – all out picking by the looks of things, which was what they'd come up here to do.

‘When I saw him, he was standing right about here, Mr Thompson,' Mike said. He stood on a clay bank overlooking a sand bar and good clear water – which had always been the local swimming hole. Kennedy owned this land, but he'd never cut off public access to the river.

Tom looked downstream to where a massive tree had tried to bridge the river. A lot of years had gone by since much of that tree was visible above the waterline, but bits were visible today – the river was lower than most locals had ever seen it. Squire owned the land on the other side, owned the lot, all the way downstream to the bridge, which gave him a mile and a bit of river frontage. His land went well back in. Someone had mentioned the figure once – maybe three thousand acres. His house was visible from this bank, or at least parts of the roof and most of the steeple-cum-widow's walk were visible.

‘So, what exactly did you see, lad?'

Mike shrugged. ‘Well, as you probably already know, I've been setting my traps in Squire's wood paddock – doing him a favour, like, Mr Thompson, his place is riddled with rabbits. Any rate, I'd gone out early to get the rabbits before the Johnsons found them and pinched my traps.' He pointed downstream. ‘I'd set one just over there, and I was taking a rabbit out of it when I saw this bloke standing right about where we're standing. He swung something around his head and pitched it into the river. I didn't think much about it, except to sort of wonder what he was pitching. I finished what I was doing and went home to get a bit of breakfast.

‘Then, just before lunch, we ran into Mrs Dolan and she asked us if any of the kids had been mucking around down at her place last night because she got robbed. Someone broke a little window in her pantry – which sort of got me thinking about what that bloke threw in the river – like, suddenly I knew it was a handbag. I asked her if they'd got her handbag, and she said no but the picture of that handbag was still clear.'

‘She didn't tell me she'd been robbed,' Tom said.

‘They didn't get much. She reckoned it was either a kid or a skinny bloke because the window they broke is only a foot square. Anyway, to get on with the story, I go home for dinner, and Mum was talking about Rachael, and just a while back she said about her handbag being missing –'

‘How did she know it was missing?'

‘Miss Jessie told her. She accidentally heard you on the telephone talking to that policeman who's broken down. Well, anyway, I just knew it must have been Rachael's bag I saw that picker chuck in the river, because when I saw her last night at the station, she had a big brown bag with her –'

‘Slow down there, lad. You saw who at the station last night?'

‘Rachael Squire.'

‘What time?'

‘One o'clock-ish. She told me not to tell anyone I'd seen her, because she was leaving Gimpy, so I didn't tell anyone. She took her wedding ring off and put it on the railway line so it would get squashed. It must have got stuck to a train wheel. It wasn't anywhere around this morning.' The boys had stripped down to their shorts, Billy already climbing down the bank heading for cool water.

‘Would you be able to identify the bloke you reckon pitched the bag in?'

‘Easy. He's that big Pommy picker with the gingery handlebar moustache. I could see him as clear as day. He swung that bag around by its strap, let it rip, and it landed out near the middle.'

Tom stared at a stump on the other side of the river, thinking that maybe he might recognise a bloke from that distance – and the lad's eyes were younger. He could know what he was talking about. He looked west, downstream at the fallen tree, and at the reed beds growing tall behind it. They were full of water rats and snakes looking for water rats – and leeches.

‘So, you've seen the bloke around town?'

‘Yeah. He's tall, maybe even taller than you. Me and Billy joked about him being a good picker because he wouldn't need a ladder. You must have seen him, Mr Thompson. You couldn't miss his mo. It covers half his face. We were in the café on Friday night and he was in there with some of the other pickers. He's some sort of Pommy – you can hardly understand him when he talks.' Mike was making his way down to the water.

Tom's tongue crept out to moisten his lower lip as he studied the curve of the river. That coot would have weighted the bag with something. It was probably on the bottom, and there were holes in that riverbed that went deep. He turned again to the fallen tree. If the bag hadn't been weighted, it wouldn't have gone straight down. The current could have carried it to that snag, and if it got by it, then there was a good possibility it might end up in the reed beds.

He left the lads to their swimming and walked a few yards downstream to where the bank had broken away. He took off his boots and socks, tossed his trousers over a stump, his shirt and vest with them, then, scanning the land and river for snakes, he scrambled down to the water's edge.

Not much sand down this end; plenty of ankle-deep silt and slimy ankle-clinging water weeds – and leeches – so he plunged straight through and swam down to the fallen tree, his style more reminiscent of a water buffalo than an eel. He was no diver, and never had been, but he filled his lungs and, using a submerged branch, pulled himself down and out a few feet. While his air lasted, he had a feel around. Slime, and nothing but slime; it was like feeling for a slug in a slime pit.

‘What made you think it was a woman's bag?' he yelled.

‘You don't know how you know these things, you just know,' Mike yelled back, then the two lads swam down to join him at the snag.

‘Could it have been a brown paper bag of rubbish?'

‘It wouldn't have flown like it did, and you had a look at the camp, Mr Thompson. Do you reckon any of those lazy cows would go to the trouble of throwing one little bag of rubbish in the river? Anyway, he swung it around by a long strap.'

‘You wouldn't like to take over my job, would you?'

‘My old man reckons a crooked copper can make more money than an honest crook,' Billy O'Brien commented.

Tom dived, wanting to end that particular conversation. Seconds later he emerged, water in his ears, up his nose, stinging his eyes. He had too much to do to be wasting time playing diver. Leave it to Morgan.

‘Those city blokes will get some professional divers up to have a look around – if you're dead sure of what you saw, lad. I wouldn't want to go bringing divers up here on a wild-goose chase.'

‘I can only tell you what I saw, and I am dead certain of what I saw. I'll prove it to you too – if you reckon it could have got stuck on something. Anything a city diver can do in the water, we can do better, can't we, Billy?'

Slipping, sliding, sinking knee deep in ooze and weeds, Tom made his way back to where he'd left his clothes. He checked his legs for leeches, took a look down his drawers – he'd heard some gruesome tales about leeches getting down a bloke's trousers – and he gave his trousers a good shaking; he didn't need a bull ant bite on the backside either.

‘I'll tell you what,' he said to an emerging head. ‘You find me that handbag before Morgan gets here and I'll give you a quid each.'

‘A pound each? Fair dinkum?'

‘You bring that bag to me and your two quid will be waiting for you.' He used his shirt to wipe the last of the mud from his feet and dressed slowly, watching for those heads, watching them work their way out deeper as they followed that fallen tree, until another bunch of lads came yahooing down the track.

Tom, preparing to mount and push off, heard Mike call from the water. ‘Wait up a tick, Mr Thompson.' He waited, one foot on the ground. ‘You're not going to tell those other kids about the bag and the two quid for finding it, are you?'

‘You've got sole rights until sundown.'

‘Righto. So what's the time now?'

‘Near three.'

‘Three? Already? We've got to get going, Billy.'