An Iron Rose (5 page)

I’d put the boxes with Ned’s papers and personal things in a corner. The one holding the work diary was on top. I took the old ledger over to the table and leafed through the pages recording about twenty years of Ned’s working life. In his neat, slanting hand, he had noted every job he did: date, client, type, number of hours worked, amount charged, expenses. The last entry read:
July 10. Butler’s Bridge Nursery. Rip subsoil approx acre. Four hours. $120.00. Fuel 36 km.

I turned back to 1985
.
The first half of the year had been lean, sometimes no more than three or four small jobs a week, entries like:
Mrs Readshaw. Fixed garage door. Half hour. $5.00. 14 km.

In July, things began to pick up. He had three weeks fencing a property at Trentham, then he did a big paving job, demolished a house, spent five weeks putting in a driveway, gates and fences on a horse property. In October, he built a wall at Kinross Hall, the first of a series of jobs there that took up most of his time until late November. That was where he had found the old anvil. December and January were quiet, but from mid-February, for most of 1986
,
Ned worked on an old school being turned into a conference centre.

I read on, through 1987 and 1988, 1989, 1990. I went back and read 1982 to 1984. Then I sat back and thought. About fifteen employers’ names occurred regularly across the years, people who gave Ned jobs big and small. I looked at 1982 again. Two employers appeared for the first time: J. Harris of Alder Lodge, the horse property, and Kinross Hall. I read forward. Alder Lodge became a regular source of work, most recently in May when Ned repaired a kicked-about stable. Kinross Hall employed him three times in 1982, for two long periods in 1983, for almost three months in 1984, and in 1985 he did five separate jobs there, the last a three-week engagement ending on 22 November. That was the end of Kinross Hall. Ned never worked there again.

I told Lew where I was going and the dog and I walked over to the pub. Half a dozen or so regulars were in place, including, down at the end of the bar talking to Vinnie, Mick Doolan. He was a small man, chubby, florid, head of tight grey curls and eyes as bright and innocent as a baby’s. Everything about Mick was Australian except his Irish accent. I sat down next to him.

‘Well, Moc,’ he said, ‘just sayin to Vinnie, can’t get over Ned goin out like that. No sense in it. Not Neddy.’

‘No,’ I said.

He drank some stout. ‘Had these police fellas around today. Murderers roamin the countryside and they’re out makin life difficult for small businessmen such as misself.’

Mick was a dealer in what he called Old Wares, mostly junk, and the police took a keen interest in the provenance of his stock.

I said, ‘Small businessman? The police think you’re a small receiver of stolen property.’

He sighed. ‘Well and that’s exactly what I’m sayin, Moc. They form theories based on nothin but ignorance and then they devote the taxpayers’ time to provin them. And naturally they can’t. Vinnie, give us a coupla jars and a bag of the salt and vinegar. Two bags.’

‘One, Vinnie,’ I said. ‘Mick, what’s Kinross Hall?’

‘Kinross Hall? It’s what they used to call a place of safety. For naughty girls. They won’t let you in, Moc.’

‘Did Ned ever talk about working there? Late ’85?’

He scratched his curls. ‘Well, you know Ned. Not one to gossip.’

Vinnie arrived with the drinks and the chips. I paid.

I persisted. ‘Did he ever say anything about the place?’

Mick munched on chips, washed them down with a big swallow, wiped his mouth. ‘From what I could gather,’ he said, ‘he thought the place should be closed down. He said he wouldn’t work there again.’

‘Why?’

‘He heard some story. Went to see the police about it and they told him basically piss off, mind yer own business. That’s how I remember it.’

‘What kind of story?’

‘I couldn’t tell you. He never said. You know Ned. Y’had to read his mind.’ He offered me the chip packet. ‘Now you’re a cert for Satdee? And you’d be settin an example to the young fellas by attendin Wednesday trainin. I’ve bin workin on a new strategy, could be revolutionary, turnin point in the history of the game.’

I said, ‘New strategy? What, we kick a goal? That’ll shock ’em rigid.’

A girl with a broken neck, a naked girl, thrown down a mine shaft and the entrance covered. I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

I thought about these things all through the morning as Allie Morris and I worked at the forge on an order for four dozen garden-hose hooks. It was pleasant enough work once we had forty-eight lengths: heat the flat steel to glowing red, use jaws in the anvil hardie hole to put a bend in one end, bend sixty centimetres down to make a flap, squeeze the top half in the vice to make a doubled length. Then curve the rest into a three-quarter circle over the anvil horn. The job was finished by putting a stake point on the end that went into the ground. Two people working with red-hot metal can be awkward, but we found a rhythm quickly, taking turns at heating, bending and hammering, Allie’s deftness compensating for my occasional clumsiness.

We finished just before one pm: four dozen hose hooks, neatly stacked on Allie’s truck to be dropped off for priming and painting.

‘That’s a day’s work,’ Allie said. ‘Does the pub do a sandwich?’

We took turns to clean up in the bathroom I’d built on to the office so that I didn’t have to traipse into the house in a filthy condition, and walked down the road in silence. The dog appeared ahead of us: taken a short cut through the neighbour’s paddock. The sky was clearing, the cloud cover broken, harried fragments streaming east in full retreat. Suddenly the world was high and light and full of promise. I hadn’t talked much to Allie since she started. She had a reserved way about her, not rude but not forthcoming. And I didn’t have any experience of working relationships like this. Man and a woman working with hot metal.

At the pub, it was just us and Vinnie and two hard-looking women in tracksuits playing pool. The fat one had a lipstick smear at the edge of her mouth. It looked like a bruise when she bent her head. Allie put the beers down and said, ‘Know someone called Alan Snelling?’

‘Know who he is.’

‘What’s he do?’

‘Runs a few horses. Nice house. Nice cars. Gets married every now and again.’

‘He asked me out.’

‘Available to be asked out?’ I instantly regretted the question.

She smiled, drank some beer, wiped away a thin tidemark of foam on her upper lip with a fingertip. ‘I’m between engagements. He was at Glentroon Lodge yesterday, looking at a horse. Asked my opinion.’

‘Who wouldn’t,’ I said. ‘An older man. They can be attracted to capable young women.’

She put her head on one side. ‘Older man? He’s about your age.’

‘That’s what I mean.’

She laughed. Vinnie arrived with the toasted sandwiches.

‘That was quick,’ I said.

‘Cook’s day off,’ said Vinnie. ‘Everything’s quicker on his day off. Including the time. Passes too fast.’

We talked business while we ate. On our way back, I said, ‘About Alan Snelling.’

‘Yes?’

‘You want to think.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Alan’s lucky,’ I said. ‘His old mum popped off. Nobody thought she had much, just the house, falling-over weatherboard. Not so. She had lots of things. Jewellery, coin collections, stamp collections, and a box with about $100,000 in cash in it. All up, worth about $400,000.’

‘Well, I suppose there’s an explanation,’ said Allie.

I said, ‘Also, Alan had a business partner, ran their little video hire business in Melbourne. Top little business, big as a phone booth, cash flow like Target. Then the partner was working out in his home gym and the machine collapsed on him. Fatal.’

‘That’s not lucky,’ Allie said.

‘They had key executive insurance,’ I said. ‘Half a million.’

We were going down the lane, when Allie said, ‘What’s that about his mother mean? I don’t get it.’

‘People could think Alan was parking invisible earnings with his mother.’

‘Invisible? You mean illegal? Like drugs?’

I shrugged. ‘Among the possibilities.’

‘Jesus,’ Allie said. ‘How do you know this stuff?’

‘I forget where I heard it,’ I said.

Allie went off to a job. I should have worked on the knives but instead I rang the library at Burnley Horticultural College and asked them if they had any information on Harkness Park. The woman took my number. She rang back inside half an hour.

‘I’ve tracked down a dozen or so references to it,’ she said. ‘There’ll probably be more.’

‘Any pictures or drawings?’

‘No. It was designed by a man called Robert Barton Graham, an Englishman. It’s not clear but he seems to have been brought out by a Colonel Stephen Peverell in 1896 to design the garden. He designed other gardens in Victoria while he was here, but they’re all gone as far as we know.’

‘Anywhere else I could try?’

She sighed. ‘Our collection’s pretty good. The State Library doesn’t have anything we don’t have. Not that you can get to, anyway. I’ll keep looking.’ As an afterthought, she said, ‘Sometimes the local history associations can help. They might know who has information.’

I drove over to Brixton, the town nearest Harkness Park. I knew where the local history museum was, a brick and weatherboard building near the railway station. It had once been a factory with its own rail siding. Two elderly women sitting behind a glass display counter in the front room of the museum looked surprised to see a visitor.

‘G’day,’ said the smaller of the pair. She was wearing a knitted hat that resembled a chimney pot. Wisps of bright orange hair escaped at the temples. ‘You’re just in time. We’re just having a cup of tea before we close.’

A hand-lettered sign said: Adults $2, Children $1, Pensioners Free. I put down a coin.

The second woman took the money. ‘On your own, are you?’ she said. She looked like someone who’d worked hard outdoors: ruddy skin, hands too big for her wrists.

‘I’m interested in gardens,’ I said. ‘Old gardens.’

The women looked at each other. ‘This is a local history museum,’ the smaller one said apologetically.

‘I thought you might be the ones to ask about old gardens around here,’ I said.

They exchanged glances again. ‘Well, there’s a good few that open to the public,’ the taller one said. ‘The best’d be Mrs Sheridan’s, wouldn’t it, Elsie? Some very nice beds.’

‘You don’t know of a place called Harkness Park?’ I said.

‘Oh, Harkness Park,’ she said. ‘Mrs Rosier’s house. I don’t think that’s ever been open. She had nothing to do with the town. Didn’t even come to church. People say it was a grand garden once, but you can’t see anything from the road except the trees. It’s like a forest.’

‘Old Col Harris used to work there,’ the other woman said. ‘Him and that Meekin and another man—I can’t remember his name, lived out on Cribbin Road. Dead now. They’re all dead.’

‘There wouldn’t be photographs, would there?’ I said.

The taller woman sighed exaggeratedly. ‘Don’t talk about photos. There’s a whole room of unsorted photos. Mr Collits was in charge of photographs. Wouldn’t give anyone else a look-in, would he, Elsie?’

‘He’s not around anymore?’

She shook her head. ‘Blessing, really. Had a terrible time.’

‘I told the committee we needed to appoint someone to sort the photos,’ Elsie said. ‘But will they do anything practical?’

‘These men who worked at Harkness Park,’ I said, ‘do they have family still here?’

‘Why don’t you just go out there and knock on the door?’ Elsie said. ‘It’s still in the family. Some cousin or something got it.’

‘They sold it. I’m interested in knowing what it was like twenty or thirty years ago.’

‘Col Harris’s boy’s here,’ the taller one said. ‘Dennis. Saw him a few weeks ago. Wife went off with the kids. Shouldn’t say that. He works for Deering’s. They’re building the big retirement village, y’know.’

I said thanks and had a look around the museum. It was like a meticulously arranged garage sale: nothing was of much value or of any great age, but assembling the collection had clearly given the organisers a lot of pleasure.

Finding the new retirement village wasn’t a problem. It was at an early stage, a paddock of wet, ravaged earth, concrete slabs and a few matchstick timber frames going up.

A man at the site hut pointed out Dennis Harris on one of the slabs, a big man in his forties with long hair, cutting studs to length with a dropsaw. At my approach, he switched it off and slid back his ear protectors. Dennis’s eyes said he didn’t think I was the man from Tattslotto.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘Ladies at the museum thought you could help me.’

‘Museum?’ Deep suspicion, stiff shoulders.

‘They said your father worked at Harkness Park. I’m trying to find old photos of the place.’

Dennis’s shoulders relaxed. He nodded. ‘There’s pictures in his old album. Lots. He used to work in the vegie garden when he was a young fella. Before the war. Huge. Wall around it. There was five gardeners there.’