Tree Palace (26 page)

‘Stop bouncing, Rory,’ Moira said. ‘You can stop bouncing now. Good boy. Stop bouncing.’

She took the knives out of his hands, slowly. He had a fierce grip on them, too shocked by what had happened to let go. But he let go and Moira threw them on the floor. There was blood on his fingers. She thought it must be Tubbsy’s blood and it disgusted her that that man’s blood should be on her son. It wasn’t his—it was Rory’s. His hands had slid down the blade with the thrusting and cut him. Not badly, but enough to see the cuts opening and closing when she wiggled his fingertips. She told him to cup his hands while she figured out the right treatment.

‘What’s going on?’ Midge said. He was still drunk, he was blinking and rubbing his eyes.

‘Not now. I’ll tell you later,’ Moira replied.

A wash with metho and water for hygiene and a couple of band-aids per cut should work. She made Rory sit down and think how brave he was, saving her from that pig of a man. If he could do that to such a monster then the sting of metho was nothing. He could laugh away metho pain and show his bravery was no one-off, rather in his nature.

37

Rory grimaced without complaining. He certainly did not cry. He kept saying to Moira, ‘I don’t feel nothing.’ She called him her hero. She joked about him having had swigs from Midge’s bottle—that probably had helped him: Dutch courage. He smiled. There were only two band-aids in the house and they went on the shallowest cut. The two deeper cuts required something more bandage-like. She took one of her sanitary pads and cut out squares.

Rory didn’t like that—a women’s thing they put between their legs—but he trusted Moira knew what she was doing. She pressed a square gently into place over each cut and snipped masking tape into strips with scissors. She bound the squares with the strips just tight enough so they wouldn’t slip off if he gripped something.

Midge said sorry over and over, ashamed of being no hero himself. ‘Drunk on duty,’ he called it. ‘Sober, I would have dealt with the situation. Promise you. My oath.’

Moira let him ramble on. She said, ‘If you want to be useful then take those irises and chuck ’em down the dunny. And stop Limpy licking the blood.’ The dog was poking his nose in the door and sniffing and licking the red trail Tubbsy left. ‘Making me sick the dog licking that fat pig’s blood.’

Midge yelled at him and clapped his hands but Limpy wasn’t scared away. There was blood under the porch and Limpy licked that too. No amount of dirt kicked over it worked. Midge scooped up thick mud and threw that on. That didn’t work either and the bending down and the sight of the blood, even blood gone black with nightfall, made him throw up.

Of their worries payback was the first concern. Tubbsy had made a threat, especially to Rory, and he was the type to go through with it. Would police listen to Moira? They’d say trants trying to rape trants don’t count as criminal. Shane’s the man they needed to speak to. Shane would sum this up, cunning as cunning gets.

If Midge was too crook to drive tomorrow they’d have to wait till Monday and gamble on Tubbsy being too crook as well. Too many holes in him to start dishing out payback.

Morning worked like medicine on Midge. A cleansing nip to the air and utter stillness in the trees, no noise of leaves or grass. No bird racket, just the drip of wet silence. Steam rose out of that shallow scoop they called the dam as if the very water was standing up and wading in itself. His head hurt with each throb of his pulse but the peace and chilliness of the dawn eased his nausea and his fretting. You could almost be optimistic when the earth was so at rest and innocent. If it was like this all the time you’d be tempted to think people would follow suit and be quieter and decent, Tubbsy included.

He took a walk to breathe the wholesomeness in. The chill made him cough but he didn’t mind. In his imagination he was coughing up last night and replacing it with fresh morning. He’d be ready to drive in an hour or so if this medicine kept working.

Which was fine by Moira. All that ‘tacked on last’ nonsense about Shane’s letter was behind her. Not behind her completely but behind her for now. There’d be time to bitch about it when Shane was released and life was back to normal. She had Mathew to arrange for the car trip. She fed him off herself—there was milk enough still in her, but she was definitely not producing the same amount as before. She could see in the mirror her breasts had sagged and flattened. Mathew was powerful in his sucking and wore an impatient frown which she thought would bring more milk down. It didn’t. She closed her eyes and begged her body.
You gave the miracle, please don’t take it from me.

She forced herself to eat a big breakfast—bread and biscuits. She drank cordial and held her bladder to bursting in case that forced more fluids into her milk system. All it did was hurt and made no difference. Whatever was going on in her she needed a back-up plan. If she dried up on the road how could she mix formula in any healthy way? She worried that panicking might bring on drying-up.

She wanted to look attractive for Shane. She put on her new dress and applied make-up in the Zara fashion—thick and shiny, blue around the eyes, silvery lipstick. It would half melt off by the time they reached the prison. She put her face kit in a bag for touch-ups. Make-up was as close as she could get to having that bloom back. One day she’d buy classy shoes to match the dress. For now she went into the tent and tried on Zara’s meagre collection. She chose a pair more string than shoe. High heels that gave her trouble balancing.

Rory was so excited he kept forgetting about his hands. He was visiting Shane and having a couple of days off school and he couldn’t help but clench his fingers and punch the air, which made his wounds sting. He had no fear of reprisals from Tubbsy. Any mention of Tubbsy made him jut out his jaw and bounce. ‘I’ll stick him again,’ he said.

Moira told him he’d do no such thing. ‘Remember Shane’s rule about violence. It gets you extra jail time.’

That made Rory sit down, confused. One minute he was a hero for saving Moira. Next he was told not to use violence. What else would work on Tubbsy? Playing the recorder?

They left a note for Zara. Midge wrote it out in his neatest printing. It said they’d be gone a day or so and she should eat what food was in the house and look after herself and not do anything silly.

‘Put my name up the top,’ Moira said, tapping the page with her finger. ‘Say I said to eat well and to look after herself.’

That was a start. She had to force the feeling but she was building a bridge. Like a wrong she had to right: be a mother to her daughter. ‘That make sense to you?’ she whispered to Mathew. ‘Making things right. You want that, don’t you?’

They drove east into the white sun and the mist. Moira covered herself with a blanket and massaged her breasts to give the milk a help along.

38

The journey took four hours but it was trouble-free. Only one stop for petrol and to fill the radiator. Moira fed Mathew without going dry. Rory stole a bar of chocolate from a roadhouse. Moira told him not to steal on this trip but he did and got away with it. He said sorry and shared half.

The prison was not what they expected—no vast stone walls like a castle. More a fancy motel with gardens clipped and colourful. A pastel tinge to the paintwork and sliding-door entrance of glimmering glass. There was razor wire on the mesh fences and that made it a prison, but the sign had a painterly flourish—Marnaroo written in red with gold outlining on the lettering. It didn’t even say prison: it said ‘correction centre’. Moira muttered, ‘Holiday, all right. Shane wasn’t joking.’

They knew they were in a jail once they tried to get in. They needed one hundred points of identification. Not Rory, he was fine, clearly a minor just to look at him. Midge had his driver’s licence and other bits and pieces from his wallet and that gave him passage. Moira had no proof of herself expect her Medicare card. The officer stood behind a glass window and said, ‘Didn’t you get a letter from the department? It tells you: one hundred points.’

‘We got a letter,’ Midge said. ‘But we forgot about the points.’

‘I can’t get in?’ Moira asked.

No, said the officer, a short man in a blue uniform with a nicotine stain in the centre of his grey moustache.

Moira asked him for some understanding. She put her cunning hat on and talked about the long distance they’d travelled, with a baby in tow and a car that was old and uncomfortable.

The officer said he’d allow twenty-five points for the Medicare card. But that still left seventy-five points. He said he was sorry and asked her to step out of the line because other people were waiting. She did and then stepped back in, crying and confessing she had no hope of getting seventy-five points. ‘I don’t have a licence, sir. Never have. I can’t read, can’t write, sir. Sir, I just want to see my Shane and you’re saying I can’t.’

Mathew cried. She jiggled him in her arms and accused the officer of upsetting him. ‘We had family die in wars for this country and you’re saying I don’t have enough points.’

‘How about a birth certificate?’ said the officer.

‘I don’t have one of those on me. Lost it years ago.’

People were staring at her. Midge and Rory had moved away, embarrassed, but Moira wouldn’t be quiet. ‘I don’t amount to nothing more than points? I don’t think I want to live no longer. Might just go jump under a truck if that’s all I am to you. Please, sir, please let me see my Shane.’

Two guards came up behind her to shepherd her out of the place but the officer behind the glass said hold it a minute. He said he’d call a supervisor. The guards backed off and Moira sniffled and said, ‘Thank you, sir,’ meekly.

There were rows of plastic chairs along the walls. She sat rocking Mathew and signalled with her eyebrows for Rory to sit beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. She signalled for Midge to sit on the other side of her and act worried for her health. ‘You got that asthma thing. Give it to me, quick,’ she whispered.

He took his puffer from his pocket and she snatched it from him and sucked on it as if struggling for breath. ‘I said, act worried.’

‘I am,’ Midge whispered.

‘Do more.’

He got into the swing. ‘She’s going to have a turn. Oh, Jesus, this is bad. Don’t pass out, Moira. Oh, Jesus.’

A supervisor arrived behind the glass booth. Tall and dark-bearded, in a black suit instead of a uniform. He and the officer leant close together and spoke, keeping their eyes on Moira.

The supervisor came out of the booth and crouched in front of her. He said he had sympathy for her situation but they had rules about identity and rules were rules.

That sent Moira into a howling performance. She threw her head back and slid off the seat onto the floor, heaving as if choking.

Midge slid down with her. ‘Don’t have a turn, Moira.’

The supervisor said he was going to call an ambulance. Moira screamed—no, she wanted to be left to die.

This went on for ten minutes, the supervisor helping lift Moira onto the seat and telling a guard to fetch a glass of water. Moira decided it was time to go silent and quiver. She’d done her best but her antics hadn’t worked. She sobbed genuinely at the failure.

Then the supervisor walked off for a moment, spoke on his mobile phone and came back and crouched again. He said he had powers of discretion in such matters. He was prepared to allow her half an hour with Shane on the condition they not touch except on greeting and departure. Just this once.

Moira almost kissed him. She gripped his arm in genuine gratitude. He said they could proceed to the search area.

39

When they finally got into the visiting room it wasn’t what they expected. The place was full of people—prisoners in green tracksuits, women sitting with them at plastic tables. Kids running around as if in a playground, dirty-faced from chocolate. There were two TVs with cartoons showing. No privacy, no nook where you could have an intimate talk.

They didn’t recognise Shane at first. When a guard let him in the door he was so spruced-up in crisp-clean greens, hair short and combed tidy, his goatee gone and his face and physique fuller in shape, they had to look twice. Moira made Midge hold the baby and she ran up and held Shane tight. They kissed on the lips. Shane didn’t want to stop and kissed her again and kept hugging her until a guard said enough. Midge and Rory got hugs. ‘Been in the wars,’ he said to Rory, pointing to the boy’s bandages.

‘Nah. Sort of,’ Rory said.

‘Bad?’

‘Few cuts. Nothing much.’

Mathew got a rub on the forehead from Shane. They found a free table and they sat there and stared at each other.

‘Everything all right?’ Shane asked.

Yeah, fine, they nodded.

‘All good with you?’ Moira asked.

‘All good. Look at me, I put on some weight. I’ve made mates in here. We got all sorts. Business people. Professional people. See the lawn out there?’ He pointed through the window-wall beside them. ‘I mowed that. And the bloke who helped me, he’s a millionaire. We got all sorts in here.’

‘Good for you,’ Moira said. She couldn’t tone down her sarcasm.

‘What’s that mean?’ said Shane.

‘Glad you’re enjoying yourself.’

‘Did I say that?’

‘Good as.’

‘I’m trying to make the most of it. I’m not free. I can’t walk out the bloody door. I go mental thinking about it.’

‘Sorry.’

‘What took you so long coming to visit? I been here two months. You didn’t get my letter?’

‘We got it,’ said Midge.

‘I kept saying to myself, Why don’t they visit?’

‘No reason,’ said Moira. ‘Except, well, you didn’t sound like you was missing me.’

Shane leant back, his bottom lip flopped down. ‘What?’

‘I mean, you tacked me on at the bottom and didn’t say you missed me or sign off with
Love, Shane
.’

‘Christ, Moira.’

‘I’m just saying.’

‘Of course I missed you. Christ.’

‘You did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Really?’

She reached across the table and took his hands in her hands and kissed them. A guard looked and turned a blind eye.