We waited until Jamie drove off after the police car and then we bolted over to the hut. While Lou was only looking vaguely for clues, I knew exactly what to search for. I checked his toilet and all around the back of the hut. There were no plants. I walked back into the hut and checked under the sink. The bucket was back where it belonged. Then I thought to look in his ashtray. It had been wiped clean. Lou had gone through everything else she could think of. Under his mattress. In his shoes. Through all his cupboards. All his pockets. ‘He’s gotten rid of the evidence,’ Lou announced. ‘He must’ve guessed that the policeman would come back.’
We were just about to leave, when I thought to look in the rubbish bin and there it was. Not exactly a clue, but certainly something significant. It was the photo of Jamie and Belinda that had been stuck to the mirror. Neither Lou nor I had noticed that it was no longer there. Now it was torn into pieces. Quickly, I fished them out and stuffed them in my pocket. I didn’t want Lou to see and requisition the pieces as evidence. Later, I patched it together so that I had a photo of Jamie. The bits of Belinda I burnt.
5
Chapter 5
My father arranged for a truckload of gravel to be dumped on the driveway where Dante had lain. Several days had passed but the blood was still discernible. It clung to some of the stones. There was an unmistakeable rusty red patch. Visitors, and there were lots of visitors that week, were fascinated by that patch. Some of them even took photographs of it. Desmond Sully, the local councillor, arranged for the county grader to come and spread the gravel, free of charge. ‘For what you’ve all suffered,’ he said as he ushered the grader up the driveway.
Once that gravel was smoothed into place, my parents seemed more relaxed about what had happened. They started talking again. Prior to that things had been tense. My mother had taken to doing yoga on the balcony whenever any callers dropped by. This was to spite my father for his far-fetched accusation the morning after the incident. My father would hastily direct the visitors’ attention to the blood stain, hoping it would be fascinating enough to distract any interest in my mother’s contortions. When the gravel was dumped on top of it, this strategy was lost to him. He had to apologise. Babe and I eavesdropped on the apology. ‘Fine,’ said my mother. ‘Apology accepted. Now you can apologise to your father. He’s boycotting Christmas dinner because of what you did to him.’
My father said nothing to that and he said nothing to Grampy either. Their feud continued. Grampy avoided our place and it was at Aunt Evelyn’s that I saw him for the first time since that morning. He took me aside and told me very seriously that he’d changed his will and was leaving his farm at Crayburn to me. I would have liked to have said ‘please don’t’ but it didn’t seem like a very polite response.
The feud between Grampy and my father became common knowledge round the Serpentine. It fuelled the speculation about the incident, a speculation which ran even more rampant than for any of the Belinda Pepper scandals. To her shame Aunt Evelyn appeared to revel in discussing our family’s misfortune. She was in the perfect position of authority. She was family by marriage, not immediate family. There was just enough distance between her and us for people to feel comfortable about ringing her to comment on the various theories that circulated. Aunt Evelyn made sure my mother heard all of those theories. ‘You more than anyone else have a right to know what they’re saying,’ Aunt Evelyn insisted, sweeping into our kitchen three days after the shooting, a casserole dish stretched out ceremoniously before her.
My mother lifted the lid of the casserole and grimaced. I knew it had to be beef stew. ‘Really Evelyn, you needn’t have taken the trouble . . . ‘
‘A death is a death,’ Aunt Evelyn said. ‘Everyone rallies round at times like these. It’s a tradition to bring food and verbal comfort.’
‘It was only a bull,’ said my mother.
Aunt Evelyn’s voice dropped to a penetrating whisper. ‘Yes, but it was murder.’
According to Aunt Evelyn, the most popular theory behind the shooting was that my mother was responsible. ‘They say you were persuaded by members of that vegetarian sect of yours to assassinate the bull, as a sort of protest against eating meat,’ said Aunt Evelyn, giving a short laugh to emphasise how ridiculous she found it, though her eyes were sharp, watching my mother closely.
‘Really,’ said my mother in a tight voice.
Aunt Evelyn quickly hurried on to outline the other prime suspects. Grampy of course, who everyone knew had hated the Charolais ever since he was maimed by one. But my father was ascribed a motive as well. ‘They say the bull was a dud. Defective in the privates,’ said Aunt Evelyn. ‘And that Jack shot him for the insurance money. Was he insured?’
My mother replied that she had no idea.
After Aunt Evelyn left, I was instructed to take her stew and feed it to the dogs. ‘I’m sure they’d appreciate some variety,’ said my mother. ‘They’ll be eating nothing but Dante for the next few months.’
A few days later, when Constable Hubble let it be known that he had some important questions to ask Belinda Pepper in regard to the incident, Aunt Evelyn came straight over. I think she hoped to corner Jamie and interrogate him, but he made himself scarce when he saw her coming. She discussed this latest development with my mother instead. ‘But what could her motive have been? I’d believe anything of Belinda Pepper but she still had to have a motive.’
Aunt Evelyn pursed her lips, something she always did when she was perplexed. ‘Do you suppose it could have been for love?’ she mused. ‘Love can arouse violent passions.’
She clapped her hands, clasped them together and gave a triumphant sweeping stare about the room. She had decided upon the motive. Yet she floundered to provide the circumstances to back up her theory. In the end she gave up but let it be known around the Serpentine nevertheless that Belinda had been driven by forces of passion. People gasped and clamoured for further detail, but Aunt Evelyn would say no more. She would sigh as if it was too tragic for any further elaboration. She left it to their imagination, perhaps thinking someone might come up with a plausible scenario where she had failed to, which she could then verify as true.
All the locals were relieved that the blame had been allocated. No one wanted to contemplate the possibility that there was someone in the district with a grudge and a good aim. Everyone agreed that Belinda’s sudden departure implicated her. It was the act of a guilty woman and though there were lingering doubts, Belinda’s reputation was already so tarnished, it hardly seemed to matter if yet another crime was added to her list of sins.
Jamie refused to discuss Belinda with anyone. He hid from Aunt Evelyn whenever she turned up. I never learnt whether he believed Belinda was responsible. I did bring it up with him once and assured him that I knew she hadn’t done it. I thought I’d win his confidence by saying what I presumed he wanted to hear. But he ignored my remark and I didn’t persist. I knew he still thought about Belinda. He gave himself away on mail days, when he’d come in all anxious and fever-eyed, hoping for a letter bearing an Australian stamp to be sitting, waiting, on his bread and butter plate. Babe and I watched the mail just as closely. A letter from Belinda would have been a major clue. We had been instructed by Lou to steal it if it was ever delivered. No letter ever came.
I had hopes that with Belinda gone, things could return to the way they’d been before Jamie met her, when it had just been him and me. All the signs were promising. He showed no inclination to go anywhere. He didn’t speak to his mates from the pub on the phone. But he was distant with me and my family too. He didn’t initiate conversation the way he used to. He never lingered once the meal was over with. He’d go straight over to his hut. He was withdrawn, his usual enthusiasm entirely absent. I felt like a wallflower at the school dance. Every evening I waited for Jamie to ask me over to his hut but all he ever said to me was goodnight.
Finally, I became so exasperated and so curious as to what he was actually doing over there on his own, th
at I crept over to his hut one evening when my parents were engrossed in a program on television. I didn’t dare to look through his window. I kept at a cautious distance and waited, hoping he might pass the window, notice me and invite me in. But there was no sign of him. The only indication that he was even inside was the music softly playing and the occasional wisps of smoke that wafted out the window, caught and illuminated for a moment in the light of his bedside lamp. I guessed he was lying on his bed smoking, probably having a beer. It seemed depressing behaviour for someone who had previously been so cheerful and companionable. It was then I noticed that his stack of empty beer bottles underneath the hut had more than doubled. I felt like just barging in then and there and insisting on cheering him up. Once, I would almost have felt sure enough of Jamie to do exactly that, but at that point, after all that had happened, I no longer knew if I would be welcome. I had a feeling I would be sent away.
Christmas drew closer and closer. My parents talked about it constantly to Babe and me. They wanted to distract us, help us to forget what had happened and hoped that by never mentioning that night we would. Nagged by my mother, my father finally rang up Grampy and invited him to Christmas dinner. He didn’t apologise but Grampy didn’t refuse to come for dinner either. It was a truce of sorts.
It was easy for everyone else to forget about Dante. It wasn’t their chore to feed the dogs. It was me that had to take the bags of meat out of the freezer, thaw them out, chop them up into smaller pieces and then carry them, weeping blood, to the dog kennels, a flurry of persistent flies in my wake. Dante was several months supply of dog tucker. Every evening the smell of him, dead, was all over my hands. I always scrubbed them furiously afterwards with heavily perfumed soap but the smell of dead meat seemed to linger somehow. I was convinced I could still smell it when I lay in bed at night, trying to sleep. The smell led me to think of Roy.
I struggled, just as Aunt Evelyn had struggled, to deduce his motive. At first I was bewildered, even a little indignant. Why had Roy done it to me? I had been kind to him. Or at least, I had been kinder to him than anyone else had been. I was probably the closest thing he had to a friend at school. I believed that quite fervently at first. Then, I began to remember things, flashes of memory which rather eroded my virtuous image of myself. I found myself thinking about Roy more and more. I began to regret my failure to say or do something reassuring at those significant moments. I even began to dream about Roy, betraying him over and over again in more horrible ways.
Finally I had to admit to myself that I had begrudged him the basics of a friendship. I’d not only forbidden him to talk to me at school but even out of school, when we were alone together, I hadn’t encouraged conversation. Such a secretive, silent friendship couldn’t possibly satisfy someone who had no other friends. He’d never said anything as such, but there had been occasions when he seemed to indicate he had yearned for more. I had steadfastly ignored all of those hints.
I was haunted by the image of Roy, a forlorn figure, lost in clouds of choking dust, churned up by the wheels of the school bus on the gravel road. That was my last sight of him. Shame stabbed me every time I recalled that day. The school prizegiving. The day before the fire.
Quite a fuss was made of me that day. Everyone was particularly nice to me. No one called me names. Everyone wanted me to be on their team when we played soccer at lunchtime. They all realised these were my last weeks at Mawera school. They were Roy’s last weeks too but no one liked to ask what he would be doing. Arch had put it about that the Schluters couldn’t afford to send Roy to a boarding school.
Roy sat on a bench by himself that lunchtime as he usually did. No one had ever bothered much about including him and that day was no different. I glanced over at him a couple of times and was surprised to notice that he was actually watching the game of soccer. Usually he was staring off into space, in some strange world of his own. But he was watching, even frowning with concentration. Each time I glanced over, he was looking right back at me. I should have signalled him to come and join in. It did occur to me but I dismissed the idea. It was prizegiving day. Everyone was being so nice to me. I didn’t want to spoil it. Lou set me up for a goal and I actually managed to kick it in between the posts. Everyone came up to me cheering and telling me what a great goal it was. I avoided looking over in Roy’s direction for the rest of the game.
At three o’clock, the teacher made Roy and me stand up and gave a little speech about the two of us. I was flushed with pride and pleasure only to have those feelings slowly wane the more the teacher spoke. For he lumped Roy and me together as if we were equals. He spoke of us as if we were both equally brilliant, had both been the most exceptional pupils to ever pass through the school, were both assured of being placed in the top-streamed class at secondary school the next year. The brutal truth was that these praises belonged to me and me alone. That dull, blundering Roy should be classed alongside myself filled me with a cold fury at the injustice of it. Roy at least had the decency to recognise that for himself, for after a few moments, he relinquished the teacher’s eye and stared down at his desk instead, growing redder and redder with every compliment.
But I blamed Roy. He had ingratiated himself with the teacher somehow. I didn’t look at him when the teacher finished his speech though I could feel his humble eyes upon me. I barely glanced at the book the teacher gave me as my prize. I muttered a thank you and turned, hurrying away to be caught up in the camaraderie of my classmates, jostling and teasing me over what had been said of me. Everyone knew Roy was undeserving of sharing what should have been my glory. Everyone said as much to me. Roy was ignored, left to plod along behind our joyful little mob as we swept outside to the waiting school bus.
When the bus stopped at the drive to the Schluters’ cottage, everyone fell silent. Roy always sat at the front of the bus by himself. No one wanted to sit beside him. He stood and turned to face us all. Perhaps he meant to say goodbye but then lost courage at the sight of our hostile faces. He said nothing. A violent blush stole up his pale cheeks and I felt a surge of bitter pleasure. He was ashamed and so he should be. I wondered if he would apologise and he did seem on the verge of saying something (sorry? goodbye?) but the redder his face became, the more difficulty he seemed to have in getting the words out. Finally, he gave up, snatched the hood of his parka and pulled it forward over his face as if to hide it. He plunged out the door of the bus.
No one called goodbye. Peter Hore yelled ‘good riddance’ once the bus had started off again down the road. Someone else commented that it was just as well he didn’t blush very often because it made his pimples look even worse. I stared resolutely ahead. I wasn’t going to wave but as the bus neared the comer that would carry us out of view, I turned to look back. He stood there in the middle of the road, that morose skinny figure barely distinguishable through the dust, plaintively waving. I lifted my own hand in response, though I knew it was hopeless. We were too far away, and the back window of the bus was too dust-encrusted for my farewell to possibly be glimpsed.
I never had the opportunity to say goodbye to Roy. The Schluters left the district suddenly. They packed up and were gone, just a few days after the fire. Various stories circulated as to why. Some said there had been a fight between Old Man Sampson and Mr Schluter about time off over Christmas, such a busy time of the year with hay-making. Someone else said it was over money. Old Man Sampson was so notoriously stingy. But Lou heard Aunt Evelyn telling someone on the phone that it had been the boys who had fought, that Roy had pummelled Arch almost to death. But Roy had always been so quiet and introverted that no one believed that story.
Roy became an enigma. He vanished and the opportunity to understand him vanished with him. Once he was gone, I found myself thinking about him more than I ever had before. Tormenting myself over how badly I had treated him but also remembering fondly the things we’d done to one another. I even began to remember him as being quite handsome and rather than strange, he seemed sh
rouded by alluring mysteries, mysteries that I wanted answers to. I had to know why the Schluters had left.
But I never got to see Arch, the one person who could tell me if he deigned to. With the Schluters gone, Old Man Sampson kept Arch out of school to work. It was unthinkable for me to phone him and bring the matter up in a roundabout way. It would have been too out of character. It had to happen casually. I’d despaired of ever learning the truth when one day in Glenora, just a few days before Christmas, I bumped into Arch. He was in the newsagents, reading the comics. My heart gave a lurch. I sidled up to him, hoping to rekindle that mood that had prevailed on prizegiving day.
‘Doing your Christmas shopping?’ I asked.
Arch turned and I knew at once it was hopeless. He merely looked bored to see me. ‘Nah,’ he said, returning his attention to his comic.
There was a silence and I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Then Arch closed the comic and put it back on the rack. ‘My mother took me to the doctor,’ he said quietly.
I studied him. He looked okay. Why had he been to the doctor? Was it possible that Roy really had beaten him up? I couldn’t see any bruises, but then, Arch was wearing jeans for once, instead of his usual shorts. I hesitated to ask him about Roy. I was scared of somehow implicating myself by seeming interested. ‘You alright?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, I’m okay.’
‘Having to work hard, now the Schluters have gone?’
I was pleased with that question.
‘Schluter was bloody useless,’ said Arch hotly. ‘Better off without him. I had to do all his work all over again after he’d made a mess of it. As for the Freak … ‘
Arch snorted as if that summed him up. I waited for him to continue but he didn’t seem inclined to. ‘What about him?’ I finally asked.