The Fancies, page 18
‘I just think, if it is true, why the hell would she come back? So maybe that bone—’
Adrian climbed down from the chair and his brother went silent. Adrian took his time dusting himself off. When he finally looked up, Little Jase was at the other end of the porch, eyeing him warily.
‘Come here,’ Adrian said. ‘I’m gonna—’
Little Jase held up his phone. ‘It’s Twitch,’ he said. ‘He wants us at Young Dick’s. Now.’
OLD DICK
My dad always said that if you want something done right you have to do it yourself. Then Ma would say that was a load of horse droppings.
As a kid I found this contradiction confusing, but it turned out they were both right. It’s just a matter of balance.
For instance, one year my dad bought his own Christmas present. He wanted a pair of those fringed leather chaps (nobody knew why; it was the same year his brother died so we all reckon the grief just temporarily messed with Dad’s head) and he knew Ma wouldn’t be seen dead buying a pair, so he bought the chaps himself. Drove all the way to the big town, to one of those fancy saddlery outfitters. Wrapped them up, fringe and all, and set them under the tree. After Ma put them in the fireplace with a squirt of kerosene she didn’t speak to him for a couple of days and then Dad snapped out of it and all was right again. My point: sometimes doing things for yourself isn’t recommended; it’s best to let others do it.
But then, when Billy Loft’s cup-winning thoroughbred stallion was found poisoned stiff in his stall, Dad knew the only way to deal with the man responsible was to put him in craypots and dump him out on the reef. Neat and tidy, not troubling anyone who doesn’t need to be troubled.
So, you see? It’s all about balance. You have to think: Whose shoulders am I putting this burden on and do they need it, or should I just do it myself and do it right? And for that matter, who’s putting a weight on my shoulders and do I need it, or should I tell them to get stuffed?
I can see the young fella thinking, mulling that over. He’s chewing his lip and giving me a long hard look. A thinking look. The kind of look that heralds the arrival of an epiphany.
That’s right, boy, I say. Listen to your dad.
That’s the problem, he says, I’ve been listening to you too much.
Codswallop. If that were true you wouldn’t be in this mess.
ABIGAIL
For a long time Abigail might have called her childhood lousy, but prison set her straight.
Sitting in Nate’s four-wheel drive in the dark, she told him that. She explained that being surrounded by women whose lives were underscored by abuse, addiction, neglect, hounding by men, cops, DOCS or Centrelink, she realised that a childhood of feeling gently neglected, deeply frustrated or her identity railroaded by her name did not constitute lousy. Getting in trouble for stacking her roller skates down the hill? Not lousy. Chewed out for breaking Dylan’s rib, for wagging school, for smoking? Nope. Getting into a fight with Jessica Bram at the playground while the other kids stood around throwing bark chips at them? Still not lousy.
‘Sure,’ she said, ‘being run out of town at sixteen wasn’t easy, but eventually, I learned not to complain.’
‘Sixteen?’
‘Yeah. Spent my seventeenth birthday on the couch of a bong-smoking fridge repairman.’
‘I’d think that’s something to complain about.’
Abigail looked straight ahead. ‘There was a woman inside with me who couldn’t laugh. Prison sucks—it’s designed to break people and it does that very well, so don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly not a party, but often enough, there’s laughter. Sometimes it’s sarcastic, or cruel or whatever, but it happens. But one woman didn’t laugh at all. Ever. No one knew what had happened to her, to take that ability away, but it wasn’t hard to guess. She was there when I arrived and still there when I left.’
Nate was silent.
‘I’d had a bit of petty theft in the past.’ She picked at a thumbnail. ‘My brothers and I just being dicks. Shoplifting, nicking bikes and leaving them somewhere else, breaking into sheds. Gateway stuff, I suppose you could call it.’
Nate glanced over at her. ‘Your brothers are the twins, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Where are they now?’
She tore off a shred of thumbnail with her teeth. ‘North,’ she said, spitting out the nail. ‘Queensland, sometimes the Territory—pretty much as far away from here as they can get.’
‘They don’t like Port Kingerton either?’
‘No, they were happy here. They probably would have stayed, if not for Dad. When Grandpa got worse after Grandma died, Dad told them to get as far away as they could.’
Nate went quiet.
‘It chafes, you know? This town. They’ve all decided what you are. They believe their own bullshit into reality, and then you can’t argue with it.’ She watched the darkness pass by for a few more moments. ‘We had a new regular at the restaurant,’ she said quietly. ‘Smooth fucker. Convinced the sun shone out of himself. Most people have a bit of, I don’t know, niceness in them, even when they’re having a bad day, but this guy never did. He was convinced he was better than everyone and wanted everyone to know it.’
‘Ah,’ said Nate. ‘One of those.’
‘Never took his sunglasses off. Even inside. Eight hundred dollar shirts. Never said anything other than what he wanted to order—“macchiato” or “eggs Florentine”—no pleasantries, no “have a nice damn day”. The only other time he’d speak was when he had a problem with something, which was often. His macchiato wasn’t hot enough, his eggs too runny, table water too room temperature. Or he didn’t like the music, or the way the table was set, or he thought the wait staff were too rushed or sloppy or—this one’s fresh—not friendly enough.’
‘Sounds nice.’
‘We had a new waitress,’ Abigail said, then paused. Heat rushed to the back of her throat. ‘Melinda. Really nice chick. Single mum with two little kids. She’d been up all night with a sick toddler and she made a mistake. Forgot to put gluten free on his order and his eggs came out on rye sourdough.’
‘Was he allergic?’
‘No. Just a fuckwit.’
‘I see.’
‘He’d always ordered rye sourdough. Every day. Until that one day he changed his mind. He lost it. Got right in her face, called her “inept”, told her he wouldn’t even feed this food to his dog. Then,’ she shifted on the seat, trying to ease any one of her aches, ‘he called her fat.’ She looked over at Nate. ‘She was five months pregnant.’
He said nothing, catching her eyes in the dark.
Abigail felt her heart starting to pound, her eyes beginning to prickle. ‘When I came to talk to him, to try and smooth things over, he asked to “see my papers”.’
‘Your what?’
‘My vaccine pass. He asked to see mine, and then all the staff. Started demanding to see all our certificates. It just …’ She flexed her hands, trying to stay present, to stay in her body. ‘It wasn’t okay with me. The way he demanded … to see …’ She trailed off, frustrated, unable to find the words. She recalled his face, the pretentious manscaped triangle of beard, the butt-hurt, overweening expression. ‘His entitlement was a trigger,’ she managed at length. ‘Why should I show him my private medical shit? What right does he have to know about my body?’ Now his image was replaced by a memory of Melinda, her cute tired smile, tiny diamante stud in the side of her nose; Melinda leaning over the counter, holding her phone for Abigail to see a photo of two small kids asleep on the carpet, crashed out after playing, arms flung above their heads.
‘Mel didn’t come into work the next day.’ Abigail cleared her throat. ‘Took a bunch of pills. She lived, but, yeah.’
‘Shit,’ Nate said. ‘Sorry.’
‘Yeah.’
‘So. You killed him—rye sourdough?’
‘No. I took his Maserati.’
‘Oh.’
‘It’s possible he, uh, “dropped” the fob in the bathroom. It’s possible I picked it up. It’s possible I took it up the M1 to see if it really did have a top speed of three hundred and two. It’s possible, when I was done, I left it in the carpark of a gay strip club with a message keyed into the bonnet.’ She picked an invisible piece of lint from her pants. ‘It’s also possible my licence was still disqualified. And that wasn’t the first time.’
‘You stole his Maserati before?’
‘It wasn’t the first time I’d been caught driving disqualified.’
‘Second?’
She sighed. ‘Fifth.’
She remembered the feeling of the Levante beneath her, supple leather and slick gleaming instruments, the effortless power of the car’s muscles eating up the bitumen like cream. She’d buzzed the window down and the wind that tore in was all warm spring grass, rolling country. She’d put her hand out the window to feel the blast of air. Like skydiving, the wind pressed into her open mouth and she could not breathe, her laugh ripped from her so she could not hear it.
She never saw the traffic cop with the radar hiding behind a bush at the bottom of a long, revenue-raising hill. The cop knew Abigail, they all did, and with her face and hand out the window he saw her coming. So did the camera; her grin was unmistakable. The cop hadn’t bothered to go after her, simply called it in. Someone said there was a photo online, another photo the cop had taken of the radar gun with her speed registered on the screen—228—but she hadn’t looked for the photo herself. She’d seen the speedometer on the Levante, that was enough. She’d felt the wind in her hair like a lover’s fingers raking her scalp. She had felt, for a little while, the freedom. Rinsed clean. The freedom that she craved with every cell of her being.
‘What was the message?’
Abigail glanced up.
‘The message keyed into the bonnet,’ Nate said. ‘What was it?’
She paused for a long time before answering. ‘“I heart dick”.’
‘Does he?’
‘Who cares? I shouldn’t have done it.’
‘Steal his car?’
‘No, he deserved that.’
‘The speeding?’
‘Are you kidding?’ She laughed. ‘Come on—a rich arsehole, a luxury SUV out of the realms of most people’s dreams let alone touch. You can’t tell me there’s not a lawyer, an upstanding copper, even a judge who wouldn’t, deep down, if they were really honest, want to give it a go.’
‘Then which part shouldn’t you have done?’
‘That message.’ She shrugged. ‘I’ve got no beef with gay dudes.’ There had also existed a photo of the SUV with I ♥ DICK carved into its glossy azure multicoat, but that one was only on Abigail’s old phone.
At least, she had pointed out to her weary lawyer, since her first stint inside for driving while under the influence, she hadn’t touched the drugs again.
Nate was slowing for a corner, the kind of remote country intersection where only three cars passed a day yet inevitably, because no one bothered to give way, someone died. They had come to a complete standstill, Nate looking left and right into the dark, and she wondered if he was taking such care because she’d just described driving at two hundred and twenty-eight kilometres an hour.
‘And for that you got prison time?’ he said, accelerating again.
‘Once you have a few things on your record, it’s …’ She spread her hands. ‘A snowball. Especially if it’s all similar offending.’ Then she checked herself, hearing the voice of her lawyer in her head. ‘I’ve made mistakes. I’ve driven home from parties knowing I shouldn’t have. I’ve been loud and a nuisance on the road. I have an aversion to authority so I hate renewing my licence, even if my disqualifications are up. But once you’re in the system, it’s hard to get out. It’s designed that way. And, as much as I know it’s important to “take responsibility”—’ she quirked her fingers in air quotes ‘—there isn’t a single person alive who hasn’t made mistakes. Done stupid shit. The only difference is I got caught. If I’ve been imprisoned for not sticking to the rules, for being reckless with other people’s safety, I reckon plenty of politicians should be in prison, because they keep cutting welfare and healthcare and stealing Aboriginal kids. And millionaires who can afford to contribute to that welfare and healthcare, but pay eighty whole bucks in tax. But they’re the ones making and enforcing the rules. You can’t stay at the top unless there’s people below you.’
Nate was quiet.
‘None of those women I was locked up with deserve to be there. They’re not a danger to society. Most of them have just been dealt a shitty hand in life. But me? I don’t have an excuse. I’ve just been an arsehole.’
‘Have you, though?’ Nate said, and Abigail thought she could hear frustration in his voice. ‘And who hasn’t been, at one point or another?’
‘Jesus.’
‘I’m serious.’
‘I know you are. I’m saying Jesus was never an arsehole.’
‘How would we know? Maybe he was. Maybe he got annoyed if his bread wasn’t right, too.’
Something in the consideration of that struck Abigail as funny. She pictured the frustrated Christ, experiencing a moment as fallibly human as any other—the failed expectations of desire—and she wanted to laugh. But she stifled it, because Nate didn’t have any more spare pants.
Twenty-five minutes later they turned into the Fancys’ driveway.
Abigail said, ‘What the—’
‘Looks like a party,’ Nate observed.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But it doesn’t look like fun.’
THEM
It may have been true that Jessica Bram and her husband had an understanding, but it was also true that Jessica Bram’s husband had no such understanding for Col Morton.
This was unfortunate for Jessica. It meant her liaison with Col did not evaporate from discourse with her husband quite as swiftly as she would have preferred. In fact, her husband was going on and on about it, rather than executing his usual hand chop through the air, wink and feigned I don’t want to know, which he tended to renege on later, in bed, when he did want to know, very much, and in florid detail.
‘Col sodding Morton?’ Jessica’s husband hissed when the kids were finally asleep. ‘Are you kidding me?’
‘Since when,’ Jessica hissed back, ‘have you cared?’
‘When it’s one of the sodding Fancys’ henchmen, that’s when.’
‘Col’s not a henchman. Calm down.’
‘Don’t tell me to calm down. Col took an actual literal sodding bullet for Young Dick. Have you forgotten?’
‘Stop saying “sodding”. You sound like a twat.’
This had gone on a while, wife and husband circling the island bench in the kitchen while the kids slept, Jessica texting her mother in the intervals her husband took between being outraged to gather his thoughts. Huz doing his nut, she wrote. Pissed about Col.
I don’t blame him, Jessica’s mother replied. You didn’t think about that one, did you?
Nope, Jessica responded, annoyed. Why should I?
Did you forget who Col is?
Jessica pocketed her phone in disgust. Her husband was still pacing. Thirteen years separated Jessica and her husband, and although she seldom registered the gap in their age, right now she felt it keenly: his hair turning silver; the weathered skin on his face and hands; the look of jittery exhaustion in his eyes.
‘Col’s no one important,’ Jessica said. ‘And neither are they, despite what everyone thinks.’
Her husband rested his hands on the bench and considered her at length. ‘Don’t you remember what that was like?’ Then it was as if all the outrage left him. He came forward and took Jessica in his arms, resting his chin on her head. ‘I don’t want any trouble.’
‘There isn’t going to be any,’ Jessica mumbled into his shirt.
‘They’re mates, Col and Dick. Col made sure of it.’
‘Just because Col’s a brown-noser doesn’t mean Dick Fancy bothers who he sleeps with.’
‘He might when it’s a Bram.’
Gently, she thumped a fist against his pecs. ‘I’m not an “it”.’
His arms squeezed. ‘Babe, maybe you’re too young to remember.’
‘I wasn’t born yesterday. I know what it was like.’
‘You didn’t live it. It wasn’t pleasant, Jess, living in a war zone.’
Jessica drew back. She pushed the hair away from her forehead, revealing the jagged cord of scar tissue in her hairline. ‘I lived it,’ she said, waiting until his eyes found the scar and he nodded. She let her hair drop.
Having Abigail Fancy throw a rock at her head was not the same as living in a daily state of malcontent and division, Jessica knew. A bit of bitchy mouthing off, handfuls of bark chips flung and kids chanting, Wham bam, thank you, Bram, was a mere scratch on Port Kingerton’s greater record of unrest. There was a time when locals scurried about avoiding eye contact, when shopfronts were boarded up, a new car was liable to go missing, a new boat likely to sink. Old grudges—hard feelings so long-held and unquestioned the horizons of them had disappeared altogether—seemed to hold together the concrete and iron of the place as much as the damp and salt rust. Once, tourists had never visited. Even the seagulls barely touched down for long. The relative peace that existed in Port Kingerton now had not been gained quickly or without effort. These things, Jessica knew. But even so, she had to admit to feeling a thrill of excitement. Stirring in her was a sense of being the instigator, a scintillating knowledge of being the driving wheel. A shift was happening and Jessica, at the forefront of it, felt the lure of power.
Her arms tightened around her husband. ‘Speaking of trouble,’ she began, but was interrupted by her phone buzzing. Her mum again.
Something happening at Fancys’.
What? Jessica wrote.
Mum—what?
What’s going on?
