The Roadhouse Read online

‘He’s not married.’

  ‘Oh, okay. Old Spider had his camp with him too. Most of them sent messages for you – they hadn’t heard you were in here. Ute is a real find. She made a great spread.’ I gave a rundown of the food we’d served, adding, ‘Don played your song and a couple of others, and I said a few words.’ I hesitated. ‘Mum, I brought Annabelle’s letter in. The police want to see it. In fact, Tom came to the Garnet a few days ago to collect it. I told him he could have it when you’d read it. But if you don’t feel ready to look at it yet, that’s fine. They can wait. It isn’t as if they don’t already know what’s happened.’

  She reached a hand. ‘Give it to me, then.’

  ‘Are you sure? It might be upsetting.’

  ‘Charlie,’ she said crossly, ‘Annabelle killing herself upset me – I doubt a letter can make it worse.’

  It was short and to the point:

  Dear Molly

  I’m sorry it has come to this. It’s not your fault. Please don’t grieve for me. It’s better this way. I love you.

  Annabelle

  Mum’s gaze skimmed over the sheet, then she read the words aloud. ‘It tells us nothing,’ she complained. ‘Why bother writing it if —’

  ‘To tell you she loved you?’ And it must be, I thought uncharitably, the first time Annabelle hadn’t tried to blame her actions on another, but there it was in black and white: It’s not your fault. ‘It’s definitely her writing, though a bit shaky in places. Still, given the circumstances …’

  I looked up in time to see a tear trickling down my mother’s cheek. ‘Oh, Mum.’ I took her hand, saying fiercely, ‘It’s true. It’s not your fault and she did love you. How could she not, after all your care?’

  ‘She was such a beautiful child’ – Mum gulped, her eyes overflowing – ‘and so wilful and … and resentful. All her life she was resentful. Of you and me both. God knows I didn’t expect gratitude, but with Annabelle there was always an underlying rancour … And your father spoiled her rotten, taught her to expect things as of her right. Oh, goddamnit!’ She ripped a half-dozen tissues from their box and blotted her face. ‘It was his fault she turned out such a – a viper. When I found out she was his child I did try not to let it make a difference, but in the end she damaged us all.’

  I squeezed her hand, then let go to fold the letter and slip it back into its envelope. ‘Well, I’ll give this to the cops, much good it will do them. Now, tell me what’s been arranged – I take it they’ll be flying you down, ambulance from the hospital, then the plane? They’re not going to discharge you to find your own way home, are they, because —’

  She shook her head. ‘It’ll be a Care Flight, Dr Symes said. It’ll bring me back too.’ We talked about what the cardiologist had told her and the expected recovery time after the op, then Don knocked lightly on the open door and our privacy was over.

  Later, fastening my seatbelt as he started the vehicle, I asked, ‘Could we swing past the cop shop, Don? I just want to drop something in, shouldn’t take a moment. They’ll still be open, won’t they?’

  ‘No problem.’ He waited with the engine running while I hurried in and handed the letter over to the officer manning the front desk.

  ‘It’s Annabelle Carver’s suicide note. Would you please give it to whoever’s handling the inquiry?’

  ‘I’ll see they get it,’ he promised.

  It was the last we would hear of it, I thought then, and the mystery of why Annabelle had killed herself would remain just that.

  Chapter Eight

  The new, white four-wheel drive pulled up before the manse on the dot of eight the next morning. I was waiting on the porch as the driver got out, cataloguing his appearance as he walked towards me. Tall, brown forearms and face, bushman’s hat, the rest of him covered in jeans, boots and cotton shirt. He came up the path to offer a firm grip and a pleasant grin. ‘Mike Webb. All set, Miss Carver? G’day, Rae. How’s Don these days?’ The last was aimed past my shoulder.

  ‘You’re right on time, Mike. Don’s not home at present but he’s fine, thanks. Safe trip, then.’ She had emerged from the house to put a gentle hand with its thin wedding band on my shoulder. ‘And we’ll hold Molly in our prayers, Charlie.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I hugged her, then added, ‘And for putting me up. Please tell Don goodbye for me.’ I lifted my bag and headed for the vehicle, Mike beating me to it to open the door.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’m Charlie, by the way. I know old Spider – your uncle, is he?’

  ‘I think he’s actually a second cousin,’ he said cheerfully as he walked around the vehicle to slide behind the wheel and belt himself in. ‘It’s a bit involved. How’s Molly? I gather she’s ill?’

  ‘Do you know my mother?’ I was surprised. ‘I thought you were new to the district?’

  He grinned. ‘Put it this way – I’ve been working on Abbey Downs since March and the Garnet’s the only place a man can get a beer. Shove those papers onto the floor if they’re bothering you. I’ve read them.’

  Mike had a pleasant face with a straight nose, topped with brown eyes and dark hair. There was a mole on his left cheekbone, I saw, and a button coming loose on his shirt.

  ‘They’re fine.’ I reached for the paper; it was the Centralian Advocate, opened and folded at an inner page. When I picked it up Annabelle’s face stared up at me, grainy in print but unmistakable. I recognised the picture – it was the photo from the lounge room. There had been two, one of each of us, taken when I was twenty. I hadn’t even noticed that hers was missing. The shock of seeing her face so unexpectedly held me silent.

  Mike, realising then, spoke apologetically. ‘Sorry, didn’t think. I should’ve chucked it. She was certainly a looker, your cousin.’

  ‘She was that, and it’s all right.’ I remembered that Mum had said she’d given Tom a photograph. The story was brief, mentioning the manner of her death and that the NSW police were asking any member of the public who may have seen her on her final day to contact them. The item must have been picked up from an interstate publication, and run in the Advocate for topical interest, I thought.

  ‘Rae told me they held a service for her yesterday out at the Garnet. Were you close?’ His tone was sympathetic.

  ‘We grew up together. But close? Not really,’ I said dismissively. ‘I hadn’t seen her in five years.’ I flipped the paper right side out and changed the subject. ‘I haven’t had time for TV this last week, so what’s been happening in the world?’

  He laughed. ‘This is the Alice, Charlie. The big news, and it’s three weeks old or thereabouts, is that somebody knocked off the Centre Jewellers. Got away with a swag of stuff grabbed out of the display cases that they smashed before they were interrupted.’

  ‘They’d be insured, wouldn’t they? So why is it still news?’

  ‘Because the shop’s manager died. He was camped there that night in an inner room. Must’ve heard them busting the glass. He was bashed unconscious, went into a coma and died two days later. A clot on the brain or something. The cops recovered a diamond ring the thieves dropped, but that’s it. An ongoing case, so the media interest remains.’

  ‘Mmm, it would. So why was he camped in the shop? And why wasn’t the stuff in the safe, anyway?’

  Mike shrugged as we hit the highway and the land spread wide before us. ‘Bit of a sad story, really. He’d been in the job twenty years. An old bloke, just widowed. Apparently he couldn’t face going back to an empty house after work so he’d made himself comfortable in the shop instead. Ate out, and kept a clean shirt in the cupboard, that sort of thing. And I suppose he reckoned that his being there made the stock safe. Or maybe he just forgot to lock it away. That’s the story – so what about you, Charlie? Rae mentioned you’d just come home. From where?’

  ‘Oh, Melbourne.’ It passed the time so I talked about my life in the city, of waitressing in a busy cafe and my job in the bookshop with its eccentric owner and mountains of paperbacks. ‘I thought I wante
d to act,’ I said lightly. ‘The pity of it is I was never offered a waitress’s part. I had that down pat. What about you – what brought you to Abbey Downs? You know my father owned Garnet Station, back before I was born? It became part of Abbey Downs when the Goldsborough Company bought it off him.’

  ‘Did they?’ It was obviously news to him, which he confirmed by adding, ‘Garnet’s the outstation now. I thought it had always been that. My old man had a property too, but it was always too small to be viable. When the TB and brucellosis testing came in, it was the last straw. The seventies and early eighties were bad years for the industry – low prices, and all the new infrastructure the graziers had to comply with. Then the government regulations controlling where you could sell …’ He shook his head. ‘Dad wasn’t the only one to go bust. It meant we boys – I’ve got two brothers – had to shift for ourselves. Jeff went into the Department of Primary Industries. He’s a stock inspector these days. Dan’s in real estate in Darwin, but I decided to stick to cattlework.’

  ‘And you like it?’

  ‘Yeah. Thirty years ago I reckon I’d have been a drover. Too late for that now but I’m putting my own plant together.’ He patted the steering wheel. ‘This is the start of it. Next season I’ll be contracting on my own account. A wages job these days …’ He shook his head. ‘Nothing in it. I’m looking to the future. I want a bit more out of life than what a swag and a camp job can bring you.’

  ‘Will you stay in the Centre, then?’

  ‘There’s work enough at present, and it helps to be known, so probably. What about you – back to the city when Molly’s better?’

  I filled my eyes with the view beyond the windscreen, the wide sky and raggy olive-coloured scrub springing from the red sand, with the lavender smudge of the MacDonnells beyond, and the buffel grass running like a white sea to their base. Light poured over it, sparkling off the turning leaves where the wind stirred, and the sense of space was endless. ‘No,’ I said. ‘This is my country. I’ll be staying.’

  We reached the Garnet a little after eleven. The road was vastly improved since I had last travelled it five years before, the new vehicle speeding effortlessly over the gravel surface with its numerous grids. Once, there had been a rutted track and a handful of gates that drivers pulled up beside to rest, over a billy of tea, before tackling the next stretch. Cattlemen had travelled it then, and the mica miners from deep in the ranges, and wandering doggers – and before them, when it could have been little more than a pad between waters, Afghan cameleers and Aboriginal people. Now four-wheel drives from all over the continent flashed past towing trailers and camper vans, scarcely aware of the grids they crossed, while the more battered-looking station vehicles went about their daily tasks. But phones and a better road surface were, I knew, little more than cosmetics; underneath, the country remained its rugged, dangerous self.

  Mike, pulling up before the roadhouse beside an old blue Land Rover, hoisted my bag out of the back and whacked it free of dust.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Will you stop and have a cuppa before you go?’

  He accepted with alacrity. ‘You want to keep the papers? They’re today’s.’

  ‘Okay, Bob might like them, thanks. Come in and I’ll put the kettle on.’

  Bob was behind the counter stacking the fridge shelves and he creaked to his feet as the doorbell pinged. A pair of travellers were eating a meal at a table, and a butcher bird’s liquid call sounded from the verandah, drowning the scrape of cutlery on china.

  ‘Charlie. So yer back. How’s Molly?’

  ‘As you’d expect – organised.’ I dropped the papers on the counter. ‘For you. She says she’s fine. Bob, do you know Mike Webb?’

  ‘Course. G’day, Mike.’

  ‘Bob,’ he acknowledged. ‘I’m just having a cuppa with Charlie, then I’m off.’

  ‘’Fore you go, then, have a word with the old bloke over there, will yer? Reckons he knows yer boss. He’s lookin’ for permission to camp down Mica Valley for a week or so.’

  ‘Yeah? Why?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘Gem hunting, him and his missus.’

  ‘I don’t like his chances.’ Mike was shaking his head. ‘Not when we’re mustering. He’ll be getting himself lost and we’ll be having to run a search —’

  ‘Not according to him. He was camp cook for Kevin out on Brunette Downs. Talk to him, will yer? Get him off my back – he’s worse ’n a bloody blowfly.’

  I went to the kitchen to say hello to Ute, who was mixing brownies, and prepared a pot of tea. When I returned with it Mike was talking to the couple, a dried-up old fellow in shorts and t-shirt and his solid, grey-haired wife, who was similarly dressed. The man’s skin was leathered and wrinkled, his calves and forearms ropey with muscle.

  The woman flashed a smile at me. ‘G’day, love. I’m Cora. Cora Wilder. This is my husband, Len.’

  We exchanged pleasantries, then Mike left them to join me at the far table.

  ‘Is he who he claims?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d say so. He certainly knows Kevin, so he’ll probably get permission. At least he asked. You get the smart alecs who don’t and head off, then wind up getting themselves into trouble. It’s always the station that has to save their bacon – as if we’ve nothing better to do.’

  ‘What are they after, exactly?’

  He shrugged, eyes crinkling as he smiled. ‘Quartz, rubies, sapphires, garnets – anything that turns up, I guess. They go all over, apparently. He was telling me of this place in Queensland where you can find perfect little Maltese crosses. He said you just sieve them out of the dirt. Some sort of geological anomaly, I guess. He didn’t know how or why they formed.’

  ‘It’s an odd hobby.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Beats trainspotting or collecting matchboxes in my book. Maybe,’ he suggested, ‘we could have a look down the valley ourselves one day? You never know, might be fun to find a ruby.’ He drained his cup. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better get going. Thanks for that, Charlie. I’ve enjoyed meeting you. I just wish it could’ve been for a happier reason.’ He stood and offered his hand.

  ‘Thanks.’ I shook it. ‘And for the ride out.’

  ‘My pleasure.’ He fitted his hat. ‘And think about that ruby, eh? You must get a day off sometime. We could take a picnic lunch, enjoy ourselves.’

  I smiled, heartened by his obvious interest. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘See you, Charlie.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I repeated. And it was suddenly warming to think that I probably would.

  Pending word from the Abbey Downs manager, Len Wilder asked permission to camp at the soak on the creek behind the homestead. Bob, to whom the question was put, raised a brow at me and I shrugged.

  ‘Well, okay,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Don’t be leaving a mess though, and watch your fire. Country’s dry enough to burn.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Len replied. ‘Drop by anytime for a cuppa and a yarn – you’ll be welcome. If it’s okay with you, we might take a look round the ridges tomorrow. I saw a nice outcrop of quartz there coming in.’

  ‘But it’s not a gem, is it – quartz?’ I asked.

  Cora’s weather-beaten face lightened with a smile. ‘Yeah, it is. Citrine and amethyst are quartz. Then there’s rose quartz, like this.’ She held out her hand to show me a heavy silver ring inset with a pink stone. ‘Found that one in Queensland, up round Cloncurry, a few years back. Pretty, eh?’

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said sincerely. ‘I had no idea. Did a jeweller cut it for you?’

  ‘Nope. Len does the cutting and the silverwork. It’s our summer business. He’s got a workshop back in Ravenshoe and we travel round the markets selling what he makes. That’s in summer. The rest of the year we’re out bush, fossicking for the stones.’ She looked critically at me. ‘Now you – you should wear amber, or topaz. A nice piece of darkish topaz. You find some lovely bits of that in eastern Queensland.’

  I looked again at the ring, admiring the workmanship. L
en Wilder might have spent time cooking in a stock camp but he was a true artist. I said, ‘Well, if you do find anything, I’d love to see it before you move on.’ I picked up my bag and looked at Bob. ‘I’ll just dump my gear home, then I’ll be back to relieve you. Perhaps I’ll see you later, Cora.’

  Kevin Gates rang that evening to give permission to the Wilders to visit and camp in Mica Valley. I couldn’t remember ever having been there myself, but I knew there were scores of old tracks winding their way into anonymous gullies in the ranges, for mica mining had been a big thing out here in the nineteen-fifties. The valley in question had earned its name because of the many mines within it, though abandoned shafts and old camps also dotted the more accessible parts of the Harts Range. Bob took the message down to the Wilders while Ute and I cleared the dinner things away. We watched TV then, but Bob didn’t return and after Ute had taken herself off to her donga I went to my room. The house creaked in the darkness, and the window frames rattled as the wind got up. It felt empty without Mum, almost alien, as if I had been gone too long to be ever welcomed back.

  Restless and worried, I entered the bedroom that had once been the spare one kept for guests, until Annabelle had moved into it at fourteen. It was across the hall from mine, still with the same cream walls, and the floral curtains and lace drapes that I remembered. The bed had a cotton blanket pulled over the bare mattress and there was nothing on the walls, or, when I opened it, within the wardrobe. In the top drawer of the bedside cupboard there was an empty diary for the year of 1985 and a lavender sachet that had lost its scent. A pair of flimsy gold sandals with a broken strap rested in the bottom one, and nothing else. Gazing at the shoes, I wondered why Mum hadn’t thrown them out. They were pretty, frivolous things, with narrow soles and heels, footwear that neither she nor I could ever have worn. Annabelle, I thought unkindly, had been vain about her dainty feet; she’d owned literally dozens of shoes. A colour for every outfit. I closed the drawer with a sigh. Whatever I was seeking – and I wasn’t even sure myself – there was nothing of it here. The dead woman’s smooth, seamless shell remained as perfect, and hid her secrets as well in death, as it had done in life.