The Swan Song of Doctor Malloy (9 page)

In almost business-like terms she explains how it had been brought to her attention that my relationship with Caitlin could encourage my involvement in the ‘transhipment project'.

‘As you will not be surprised to know, we have an intelligence section that tracks new business opportunities. In this case, we mapped out likely processes and strategies and when you and your sister both appeared on our database we tracked your respective progress. Sometimes synchronicity works in favour of even the most pragmatic of organisations. The stars aligned and we have taken full advantage of the horoscope. You, if I am right are Aries; Caitlin, Virgo.'

‘Blackmail,' I blurt. ‘This is blackmail.'

Now I see why this setting suits Mary's purposes. Any outburst from me is hardly likely to cause concern amongst the faithful. For a moment, incipient paranoia makes me wonder if the whole conference assembly is staged, with trainee terrorists as extras.

‘As I have already said,' continues Mary in the same calm voice, ignoring my outburst, ‘we help you, you help us. You travel the world with your syringe, saving lives and making your mark on disease and public health. It's all totally above board and completely respectable. The Doreale Corporation is lodged and registered in all the right places: Geneva, London, New York, Bangkok. In return you ensure the safe passage of certain additional baggage to friends and colleagues of the firm.

‘Everyone will benefit from our collaboration. Your work, our ventures and, not least of all, Caitlin.' She pauses, then adds, ‘Put another way, Dr Malloy, if you refuse to cooperate, Caitlin will be surplus to our requirements. We would have to reassess our contract with her. Arrange some kind of redundancy package.'

‘And if I do? If I do as you ask, what happens to Caitlin?'

‘We are likely to reconsider our staffing policy. But rest assured, with Caitlin in our safekeeping you need not worry unduly about her welfare. She could well have ended up with some of our less humanitarian partners,' she replies. ‘Think it over. I'm sure you understand the danger in calling the police or any other authority. Caitlin relies on you. You can have a day or two to come to the right decision.'

She places a small package on the table and then stands up to leave.

‘Here's a number where you can reach me.' She puts a note down next to the package. ‘See you soon, God willing. Enjoy the beach.'

I watch her leave the room. Two men get up from a nearby table and follow her out.

I open the parcel. Inside are three things. One is a photo of Caitlin, handcuffed and exhausted-looking, her face sore and bruised. The second is a small dictaphone machine. I imagine the type of message it contains. The last is a smaller envelope. Inside is about two grams of what appear to be very good quality cocaine. With a strong sense of guilt I realize it is the sight of the cocaine that elicits the strongest response in me. My palms sweat; there is a tingle in the back of my throat. My nose twitches and I involuntarily make sniffing sounds.

‘Whatever happens you needn't take a drink or a drug,' the voices echo through my head.

The tables are beginning to fill. There is a break in the session and an orderly queue forms at the tea and coffee counter. Tupperware lids are clicked open, lovingly prepared sandwiches laid at tables for family consumption. I suddenly need fresh air. I make my way out of the building and into the glaring sunshine of the Brighton promenade, the package clasped tightly in my hand.

Back in the hotel suite, I look at the whiskey in the mini bar and settle for the peanuts and a mineral water. I lie on the bed and look at the photo of Caitlin. There is something resigned in the face staring back at me. It's a tired and weary face, for sure, but not scared.

So this is why she was so elusive over the last couple of months. Her move to Brighton made more sense now, even though she was always changing places, never settling down. I remember how when we were children in Australia she went to stay for good with Uncle Declan and Aunty May, down the coast along from Lorne. In the year before that, when I was nearly eleven and she nearly nine, she had spent weekends and the whole summer holiday with them. She would come back to Melbourne with stories of how wonderful it was there, about cakes and boat trips and walks along the creek down to the beach. And then one day my parents told me she wouldn't be coming back. That's how things were done in our house. I sometimes got to visit her on holidays, though I begged to go more often. I remember when I first visited. I was put on a bus to be collected at the terminal. I was looking down from the window as the bus pulled into the garage and there she was waiting for me. Uncle Declan had his hand on her shoulder and she was in a bright floral frock. I must have been about twelve, but I recall little of the visit, except that the very thought of it fills me with a melancholy. I remember a ride on the back of Uncle Declan's motorbike, a dead cat in the alley beside the house, and pouring my Aunt May's porridge down the toilet. And calmness. I can still feel the calmness of their house.

It wasn't until years later, when we were both grown up, that it all came out: the big family secret. I had been back in Melbourne for a conference at Monash University to describe the phase-one trials of an early prototype of the one-use syringe. I arranged a weekend down at Ocean Grove to see Tommo. Caitlin was planning her big Europe trip, so she came with me. During the day we sat amongst the tea trees with Tommo in his garden. We walked on the beach, swam in the surf and ate prawns and chicken cooked on the four-burner barbeque Tommo had inherited from the local footy team. Then on the Sunday morning Aunty May arrived on the bus from Marshall Station. I can see her now, walking along the gravel of the Esplanade, her pink scarf tied around her head, her bag heavy with tomatoes and cucumbers from her garden. Caitlin gives her the biggest hug, embracing the woman who reshaped her childhood. I envy the easy bond between them, maybe even feel a bit jealous that it might take something of Caitlin away from me, but I'm happy for them both. Tommo brings out the tea and biscuits and we settle down in the garden to yarn away the afternoon. There's something in the air, and it soon becomes apparent what it is. After a while the talk moves away from catch-up. Tommo looks over to Aunty May, takes a deep breath and then begins.

‘There's something we need to tell you both. Your Aunty May and I have talked this over and feel the time is right. Both your father and mother and also Uncle Declan have passed away. God bless them all. So we feel we can tell you what needs to be said now.'

Aunty May nods in nervous agreement.

‘It's about you, Caitlin, and how you ended up at Uncle Declan and Aunty May's. Why your mother sent you away to live with them.'

Caitlin looks at me. I hold her hand like we used to do so often at home when we were little.

‘There's no easy way to say this, Caitlin. So I'll keep it as simple as I can. Okay?'

Caitlin nods and squeezes my hand.

‘Your father, Anthony's father, was not your real father.'

Caitlin's grip loosens and I put my arm around her shoulders. It feels like the air has been sucked away from the room.

‘That's why your mother was forced to send you to stay with Aunty May.'

Caitlin stares at the empty space around us. I can almost hear her head whirring. Something huge has shifted between us all. We wait. It is Caitlin who breaks the silence.

‘Who was he?' she says, measuring her words, her voice hollow.

‘He was a sailor. Your mother says she never even knew his name. She only met him one night, down by Port Melbourne. Then his ship sailed.'

‘And Dad? Where was he?'

‘He often took off in those days,' says Aunty May. ‘Your mother never knew when he'd go or if he'd ever come back. It's not good, but you can't blame her. She had a tough life. But somehow they stayed together. Right to the end.'

‘So that's how you came to be with Aunty May and Uncle Declan. Your mum was worried. Your father's drinking was getting worse and she worried for you. It was the best thing to do.'

Caitlin begins to cry. In shock. In sadness. In anger. I hold her tight and we all let her find her way.

Later, she and I walk on the beach all the way to Point Lonsdale lighthouse, just like we'd done a hundred times. Funny how we could piece it all together, even after so much time. Somehow, our father's outbursts and terrible words began to make some peculiar sense. Caitlin said she had some thinking to do, maybe she'd stay away a while, go walkabout and see where it might lead her. Maybe even stow away on a ship, and sail the seas until she found him, her sailor father. But to begin with, she decides to go home with Aunty May. After we see them off on the train, I sit once again with Tommo on the beach. The surf rolls in from the Bass Strait; the south wind whips up the cold air from Antarctica and the clouds rumble around the bay.

‘Never think he was all bad,' says Tommo. ‘Your dad, I mean. Early on, after all the screaming and banging of heads, he said he would treat Caitlin like his own. But after drinking bouts he always returned to the same well of anger. Go through the same routine. We all worried for your mum, and Caitlin, as she grew older, that maybe he'd do something drastic, something he'd regret, something we'd all regret. Around the time when you were finishing primary school, it became clear Declan and May couldn't have children of their own. You could say it was my idea in a way. I was the oldest brother. So I got Declan and your dad together one day. And I put an idea into their heads. I really did fear for Caitlin and I feared for your mum. I didn't think there was any other way. He agonised over it, but I think he came to the right conclusion. He couldn't control himself. It was best all around. Don't be too hard on him or think too harshly of him. Remember, Anthony, he did what he could with what he got. And along with everything else he got the curse of the drink. It runs through our family like a poison.'

And Tommo looks at me, and I look at him, and he knows I know that he knows all about me.

‘Come on,' he says. ‘This is cold. Let's get some hot chocolate.'

I stare up at the ceiling, no thought of myself, of medical science, of Mary Foster. Just Caitlin. I weep for my darling sister, with no one to protect her.

This is where she is held: Caitlin Malloy, the young woman who wants to quit the war for love.

The room is square and windowless. To the right a toilet, no seat, and chain-pull flush. To the left, a pallet for a bed with blankets and pillow. Against the opposite wall, a table and chair. For eating, sitting, waiting, guessing. The noise she hears in the corner, flicking on and off, is the boiler to heat the house. It's on a timer: early morning, early evening. Every day. Her only clock. The shuffles in the corridor are her guards changing shifts. Close the door to exit. A turn of the key, a twist of the bolt. Then only shuffling feet and the click of a boiler.

She: chained to a pipe running hot and cold. Her mouth sore and weeping from the gag and adhesive tape which is only taken off to eat, twice a day, after the boiler clicks, the guard's hands firmly on her shoulders. The only words she ever hears are: ‘Eat, but don't speak.' Once she spoke. In the early days. There was a dulling thud to the back of her head, and then darkness. She woke, chained again, blood dried on her temple. She learns from this. The rules. The waiting game. The hostage to ill-fortune. Just jumbled thoughts and long, long sleeps. Her hibernation. No nightmares. This itself is nightmare enough.

Caitlin never had any problem being left alone, which, in the circumstances, is just as well. She remembers being a toddler and Anthony, a little boy but a big brother. He would hold her close. She cuddled up to him as he sang, ‘His hair was made of spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti, his hair was made of spaghetti and his name was Aiken Drum.'

They grew up inseparable. Running away to the creek at the end of the street after school. Creating a home of their own in the bush, far removed from the house they returned to as dusk set in. Then, just before her eleventh birthday, she was taken away. Away from her mother, her father, and all that went between them. Away from her big brother: her very best friend. She had spent many weekends at her aunt and uncle's house, but one afternoon, as the rain lashed against the kitchen window, her mother came and told her she was to stay for good. She remembered watching the sheets of water on the glass.

‘So I won't be taking you home, today,' said her mother. ‘You'll be happy here, Aunty May and Uncle Declan love you so. Please, Caitlin. What I am doing is for the best.'

Caitlin turned away from the window and the rain to look at her mother. The streams of tears coursing down her mother's face joined at the corners of her mouth like tiny oxbow lakes, to well and spill onto the sleeve of her blouse.

‘Your father, he thinks it's for the best,' she spluttered.

And then Uncle Declan and Aunty May came into the room, like extras from the wings. They smiled wide smiles of love. Her mother heaved and sobbed to the background sound of a branch whipping the windowpane.

Caitlin entered the life of a house where the occasional scream from downstairs was laughter. If furniture scraped against the floor it was for a purpose and not the soundtrack to her parent's fighting. Caitlin grew strong and tall and independent. Like her brother and his science, she strived for a purpose and meaning to her life. In her teenage years it was battered pets and neglected ponies, then political injustice and the rights of the downtrodden. A couple of months after the Big Secret came out of the family closet, and with a healthy chunk of inheritance in her bank account from Uncle Declan's will, she made the pilgrimage to Europe. First to London and college, where she met Padrig, the international trade unionist and political history student who took her to bed and told her all about Ireland and the centuries-old injustices. She was besotted with him: his passion, his commitment. He told her Ireland was her home, the Irish were her family, her people, her cause, with a lineage tying her to both the past and the present. It made her feel she finally belonged.