The Party Line (26 page)

The dust cloud marked Eugene’s progress down the road. Joy watched until it disappeared.

What had she expected? A silent room with growing shadows as the sun dropped below the big windows. Two girls sitting in silence, tea cooling in the cups. Tears, maybe, a delayed reaction to their grotesque discovery.

But Gabrielle was lying on the sofa with her feet propped up on the armrest. Nickie hovered over them, a bottle of bright red polish in one hand, the tiny brush in the other. She’d completed one foot and was gently painting Gabrielle’s left big toe.

‘What did Dad say? Has he gone to the river?’ Nickie continued painting as she spoke. ‘Who’s going to tell Mrs Gilbert?’

Joy blinked at the scene, trying to make sense of it. Gabrielle’s attention was fixed on her right foot, she was straining to hold her toes apart to stop the wet polish from smudging.

‘Tell me again, please. Exactly how you came across him …’

They chattered on as they primped and painted. They’d gone down to see the underground fire, and after touching the ground to feel the heat, walked along the river’s edge. And, they said, changing positions on the couch so Nickie’s toenails could be painted, that’s when they’d found him.

‘The police’ll probably be called. They’ll want to talk to you both about this,’ Joy said.

Gabrielle sat up, bumping Nickie’s hand holding the little bottle. ‘That’s so
neat
! I’ve never been taken in for questioning before. That’s what they call it, on TV—’

‘That’s what they call it if they think you’ve done something bad. It’s not what’ll happen to you two.’ Joy, biting her bottom lip, took the nail polish out of Nickie’s hand before it tipped on the floor. ‘You’ll just need to tell them what you’ve told me — how you found him. That’s all, nothing else.’

At seven o’clock Eugene returned. Ian Baxter was with him. Ian greeted Joy with a nod and a murmur, without meeting her gaze.

‘So,’ Joy said. ‘What’s the story?’

Eugene pressed past her, reaching for two bottles of beer from the fridge. He stank — beer and river mud and rot. ‘It’s him alright. Jesus.
Jesus Christ … We rang the police. They’re on their way now. They’ll come here first, I said it was best, seeing as Audrey doesn’t know …’

Chairs scraped against the lino and the two men sat down. Big rough hands around the brown bottles — both men clung to them, as though they were the only things keeping them steady in their chairs.

Joy’s heart thumped. She turned away. ‘The police … they’ll want to talk to the girls, won’t they?’

‘All the girls have to do, Joy, is say what happened today. Nothing else.’ Eugene’s eyes fixed on Joy, then Ian. ‘None of that bloody carryon from before Christmas. That goes for your daughter, too, mate.’

Ian picked at the label on the bottle with his thumbnail. He didn’t speak.

‘How long since you’d seen Jack?’ Eugene asked Ian.

‘He went away a week or so ago. I needed his help with the water, but he’d gone to Hamilton. Before then, I guess. Sometime before then, I would have seen him.’

‘Audrey thinks he’s in Hamilton, too,’ Joy said. ‘I saw her the other day … She said she didn’t know when he was coming back. I didn’t think anything of it … you know what Audrey’s like.’

Three moths flew into the kitchen. Their meaty bodies slapped at the plastic lightshade hanging low over the table.

‘The girls said he was … swollen, bloated. Did he drown? Do you think?’

‘I’d say so,’ said Ian. He took a long drink. ‘I reckon that’s what’s happened.’

‘How, though? I mean … he’d have to have gone in there, in that muddy river … What, for a swim? When he was meant to be in Hamilton?’

Joy looked at Eugene and Ian, backwards and forwards, waiting for one of them to speak. The clock above their heads ticked on, each second louder than the last.

‘There’s something else, Joy. We rolled him over. Jesus …’ Eugene was rubbing his red eyes with the back of his filthy hands. ‘We rolled him over. His pockets were full of rocks. Heavy ones, big buggers. Every single bloody pocket, weighed down with them. It looks as
though he drowned himself on purpose.’

Joy nodded slowly, taking in Eugene’s words, his assessment of the situation. She had never seen him cry. Cry might be too big a word for what was happening anyway. Just a little tear spilling over, running down the side of his face. He brushed it away.

‘I took them out. The rocks.’ Eugene breathed in; Joy heard a shudder deep within the intake of air. ‘People don’t need to know. He … he just drowned, that’s all. That’s all people need to know.’

Ian lifted his head. ‘It wasn’t right, Eugene. You should let the police do their job. Taking your own life … that’s the biggest sin of all.’

‘In the eyes of the Church. I know.’

‘Not just the Church. I understand why you did it, Eugene. But I don’t agree with it.’ Ian’s gaze was clear and strong. ‘No matter what it means later on. For anyone.’

Unspoken words hovered between the men. Or maybe, Joy thought, they’d been said earlier. In the fading light, next to the bloated body of Jack Gilbert, or in the truck, on the way home?

Joy saw movement out the corner of her eye, in the hallway. Just a flicker of white, there for a second then gone. She got up and went back to the fridge. As she moved behind the two men, out of their line of sight, she glanced into the hallway.

Nickie and Gabrielle were sitting on the floor, just on the other side of the doorway. Their arms were hugging their knees, which were pulled up tight against their chests. They were listening.

Joy caught their eyes and silently shooed them away. She made sure they were out of earshot before returning to her seat, without saying a word to the men.

‘I’d better go to Audrey,’ Joy said. ‘Someone should be with her, when the police come.’

There was no easy way to break the news. That was okay. With Audrey, it was always best just to say what had to be said.

‘They’ve found Jack, Audrey. On the river bank.’

The two women looked at each other for a minute. Maybe two. Joy watched Audrey’s pale neck, saw how the bruises were fading.
They were so much a part of Audrey, and now Joy was looking at the last of them, ever.

‘You said he had gone to Hamilton. You remember, don’t you? When he left?’

Audrey nodded. Her eyes were clear.

‘The police will want to know things. Details. They’ll want to check.’

Audrey nodded again.

They stood under the clothes line. The pile of white linen spilled over the top of the basket at Audrey’s feet. The night was black and still and a near-full moon was rising from behind Mount Te Aroha.

Audrey bent down and pulled the top sheet from the basket. Joy caught one end of it and, together, they stretched it taut along the outside wire of the line. All the pegs were white, too, and when the two women snipped them on to the tight sheet, they disappeared.

The second sheet was dry in the basket; Joy could feel the warmth of the day’s sunshine caught in the crisp folds. But Audrey lifted the sheet and handed one edge to Joy. They pegged it to another of the four outside lines.

A white tent was forming.

They worked on, the darkness easing as the moon rose. Lifting, stretching, pegging, not talking. When the four outside lines were full, they used the inner ones. Finally the basket was empty.

‘Wait here,’ said Audrey, and she went inside the house.

She returned with another armload of washing. Except it wasn’t washing, it was a pile of clean, ironed and folded tea towels. She put them in the basket at Joy’s feet.

Joy blinked, craning to see Audrey’s face. There was nothing except industrious intent. Audrey carefully shook out tea towel after tea towel, before pegging them in the remaining spaces on the wires.

‘Audrey,’ Joy said quietly, reaching for her upstretched arm. ‘Shall we stop now? These can wait until the morning. Let’s go in and have a cup of tea.’

Audrey shrugged Joy’s hand away roughly. ‘It can’t wait. There’s more to do. Much more, after this.’

‘Come on, Audrey. Come inside.’

It was as though Audrey hadn’t heard her. Lift, peg, lift, peg, on she went. When every space was full, she stopped.

Joy watched, then, as Audrey put her face into the folds of the very first sheet she had hung out.
It’s happening. She’s crying
. Joy stepped forward, ready to put her arm around Audrey, hold her as she sobbed. Audrey’s face lifted, a grimace of distaste passed over it.

‘Not clean,’ she said. ‘Not properly clean.’

The dogs kicked off again. A police car was coming along the driveway. There were two men in it — a police officer and Eugene.

‘I’ll stay with you, Audrey. I’ll send Eugene away … he can come back and get me later …’

‘No. It’s okay. I’ll be okay. I’ll be fine,’ Audrey said, her face still pinched in a frown, her arms still full of not-clean-enough laundry. ‘You go, Joy. Go now.’

As Joy turned towards the men, she heard the
click
of pegs snapping as sheet after sheet was torn from the line.

Crickets vortexed into her vision as she sat silently next to Eugene on the way home. As they picked up speed, the insects flowed thicker, faster. Every now and then, one hit the windscreen, ending its flight with a faint thud against the glass. Did they die? She wondered about those shiny hard black bodies, how thick were they?

How many did it take to make a plague? There had been a plague in the Bible, she remembered. Her impression was of millions of insects swarming around the heads of people, getting in their hair and eyes and eating all the plants. The nature stories had been the best, the easiest to accept and remember, because the events in them could all be proven. With a plague, for example, insects gathered and flew off together somewhere. There’d been plagues in real life, everyone knew that.

Plagues were supposed to be punishment for something — God (was it God, or one of those cruel kings who ruled back then?) had kept sending new plagues until someone stopped picking on someone else. Joy turned her head away from Eugene and looked out the side window. In the darkness, she allowed herself the smallest smile.

The police talked to Audrey, then returned to Fenward the next day and talked to Nickie and Gabrielle. Joy sat with the girls as the young male officer, who’d driven all the way from Hamilton, asked them to explain exactly what had happened on the afternoon they’d found the body. She held her breath as the policeman folded away his notebook and made ready to leave.

‘If you think of anything else, you can telephone me,’ he said, pulling the notebook out of his pocket again and scribbling a number on a page torn from his little book.

‘We won’t,’ said Gabrielle, blowing her fringe back. ‘That’s it. Start to finish.’

Over the next days, Fenward telephone lines hummed as officers in Thames and Hamilton called farmers and farmers’ wives and asked about Jack Gilbert. They heard the same story from everyone: Jack Gilbert wasn’t the best farmer but he was a good bloke. Had he been known to ever take a dip in the river before? Well, some said, yes, they believed he had, once or twice, when the heat had got too much to bear.

In the absence of any other explanation — no injuries other than those associated with drowning, nor a suicide note back home — they decided that’s exactly what had happened.

Four days later, Fenward buried Jack Gilbert.

Joy woke just before dawn, drawn out of her sleep by rain lashing at the window and pounding the roof. She lay still, listening. After a time, she became aware that Eugene was awake, too.

‘A shame,’ she murmured. ‘For Audrey. Today of all days.’

Would Audrey notice the rain? Notions regarding wet and dry evaded her. Joy imagined a slow parade of cars, led by a hearse, rumbling along the country roads towards Paeroa. The cars driving right past the gateway of the Gilbert property. Audrey Gilbert barely glancing up at the cortège as she frantically pegged, unpegged, pegged again.

Beside her, Eugene took a deep breath. Joy wondered whether he’d dozed off again, but when he spoke, his voice faltered.

‘A shame for Audrey, a bloody tragedy for Jack,’ he said.

‘He’ll stay dry, where he is. The rest of us will get soaked.’

‘It’s what did it, and now it’s over.’

Joy turned her head, puzzled. Eugene was staring at the ceiling, blinking hard.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘The drought, Joy. That’s what tipped Jack over the edge. It might be over, but it’s too late for him.’

Joy propped herself up on her elbow and looked hard at Eugene. Eugene’s eyes were closed, he was shaking his head.

‘Is that
really
what you think?’

‘Makes sense. No irrigation, the farm run down. And Jack being … the way he was, tight with money. He’d let things go for too long. Couldn’t claw his way out of the stress.’

Joy let her head fall back on the pillow. She was careful in choosing her next words, in how she said them.

‘You don’t think … it could have been anything else?’

They lay there together for a few moments more, both staring at the ceiling. The rain seemed to be getting heavier, gaining the rhythm of a beating drum, but that might have been Joy’s imagination.

‘What else could it have been, Joy?’

She couldn’t call it menace, the tone in her husband’s voice, but she sensed the warning, clear and final. Officially, Jack had died by accident in the river. Unofficially, decades of poor farming had beaten his spirit. It could have been nothing else.

Joy rolled away from Eugene. A man was dead and a woman beaten beyond dignity and the weather was to blame. That was how it was and how it would be told in the coming days and months and years, and after that, too, should anyone want to know the story of Jack Gilbert.

Joy closed her eyes, hoping for calm. A tic flickered under her right eyelid. Behind her, Eugene sighed at the tragedy of his newly constructed truth and got out of bed. She listened to his footsteps as he padded towards the bathroom.