the wrong place to be doing it, so he backed off and found his way to old Cecelia Morrison née Duckworth’s stone, feeling no guilt about blasting there. He could just about remember that super superior old bugger.
Poor old Norman was in with his mother now, poor harmless old Norman dead in his bed for three days before they found him – and found crazy Amber, his wife, standing on a chair, cleaning out her bathroom cupboard.
The moon lit the three angels guarding Cecelia’s tombstone, as it had on other nights when Bernie and Macka had added a few missing appendages. No chalk in his pockets tonight but a lot of bad memories rolling in his gut.
They’d told Jenny they were going to sacrifice her on that cement slab for a bit of good weather.
You stink like a pair of pole cats. Let me up.
A swarm of goose bumps rising thick on Bernie’s soul, he stepped back, remembering the night they’d deflowered little Jenny Morrison on that slab, he and Macka – which most of the time he remembered like something he’d been told that they’d done, or maybe like one of the roles he’d played in the school concerts.
Still real to Jenny. She hated his guts.
They hadn’t meant to do it. They hadn’t. She’d been like one of their sisters, her and Sissy both. They’d been mucking around, that’s all. They’d found her sitting on the oval fence, listening to the band music, and decided to have a bit of fun with her, that’s all. Dragged her through the hole in the fence and held her down on that stone.
I forgot to bring me sacrificial dagger.
Have you got something that would do the job, because by the Jesus, I have.
I dare you.
Don’t you dare me, you ugly bastard.
If Macka hadn’t done it first, Bernie wouldn’t have – or maybe he would have. Didn’t know now if he would have or he wouldn’t have. Didn’t know if he was coming or going, what he thought or didn’t think, or if what he thought he thought was what he thought or what he thought he ought to think, if what he felt was what he thought he ought to feel or if he felt it.
Still erupting from time to time he walked the moonlit paths to the fence and the peppercorn tree, and he found the hole, or found where it had been. Someone had repaired it with twists of wire.
Nothing stayed the same. This place wasn’t the playground it had once been – not since they’d carried his father out here. Bernie had found him dead in the mill office, halfway through filling the pay envelopes. No one had been paid that Friday and not one bugger had complained about not being paid. There wasn’t a man in town who hadn’t respected George Macdonald.
Or Dawny.
She haunted his dreams. Still nagged the hell out of him at times. Eight sisters he had, all older. Seven now. One by one they’d die and be brought out to this bloody place. Maisy would go next – if she was lucky. Then Maureen. She was pushing seventy.
‘A man would be better off having a fast heart attack and going first,’ he muttered, and he went home to drape a blanket over his curtain rod.
It kept the moon outside where it belonged.
O DD C OUPLES
S omeone may have once told Amber Morrison that cleanliness was next to godliness. She may have taken those words to heart. Experts who studied the workings of the human mind might have diagnosed her obsessive desire to eradicate every speck of dust, every smear of grime from her world as a desire for inner cleanliness, which, to those who knew her history, could suggest she possessed a conscience.
They’d be wrong. Had Amber bothered to self-diagnose she’d have blamed the twenty-two years spent on her mother’s fifteen acres, shovelling chook dung from the floors of fowl pens, raking up goat and horse dung, sweeping up the muck her mother tracked into their two-roomed hut on her working boots. Gertrude Foote’s idea of cleanliness had differed from that of her daughter.
The hut of Amber’s childhood had burnt to the ground five days before
Poor old Norman was in with his mother now, poor harmless old Norman dead in his bed for three days before they found him – and found crazy Amber, his wife, standing on a chair, cleaning out her bathroom cupboard.
The moon lit the three angels guarding Cecelia’s tombstone, as it had on other nights when Bernie and Macka had added a few missing appendages. No chalk in his pockets tonight but a lot of bad memories rolling in his gut.
They’d told Jenny they were going to sacrifice her on that cement slab for a bit of good weather.
You stink like a pair of pole cats. Let me up.
A swarm of goose bumps rising thick on Bernie’s soul, he stepped back, remembering the night they’d deflowered little Jenny Morrison on that slab, he and Macka – which most of the time he remembered like something he’d been told that they’d done, or maybe like one of the roles he’d played in the school concerts.
Still real to Jenny. She hated his guts.
They hadn’t meant to do it. They hadn’t. She’d been like one of their sisters, her and Sissy both. They’d been mucking around, that’s all. They’d found her sitting on the oval fence, listening to the band music, and decided to have a bit of fun with her, that’s all. Dragged her through the hole in the fence and held her down on that stone.
I forgot to bring me sacrificial dagger.
Have you got something that would do the job, because by the Jesus, I have.
I dare you.
Don’t you dare me, you ugly bastard.
If Macka hadn’t done it first, Bernie wouldn’t have – or maybe he would have. Didn’t know now if he would have or he wouldn’t have. Didn’t know if he was coming or going, what he thought or didn’t think, or if what he thought he thought was what he thought or what he thought he ought to think, if what he felt was what he thought he ought to feel or if he felt it.
Still erupting from time to time he walked the moonlit paths to the fence and the peppercorn tree, and he found the hole, or found where it had been. Someone had repaired it with twists of wire.
Nothing stayed the same. This place wasn’t the playground it had once been – not since they’d carried his father out here. Bernie had found him dead in the mill office, halfway through filling the pay envelopes. No one had been paid that Friday and not one bugger had complained about not being paid. There wasn’t a man in town who hadn’t respected George Macdonald.
Or Dawny.
She haunted his dreams. Still nagged the hell out of him at times. Eight sisters he had, all older. Seven now. One by one they’d die and be brought out to this bloody place. Maisy would go next – if she was lucky. Then Maureen. She was pushing seventy.
‘A man would be better off having a fast heart attack and going first,’ he muttered, and he went home to drape a blanket over his curtain rod.
It kept the moon outside where it belonged.
O DD C OUPLES
S omeone may have once told Amber Morrison that cleanliness was next to godliness. She may have taken those words to heart. Experts who studied the workings of the human mind might have diagnosed her obsessive desire to eradicate every speck of dust, every smear of grime from her world as a desire for inner cleanliness, which, to those who knew her history, could suggest she possessed a conscience.
They’d be wrong. Had Amber bothered to self-diagnose she’d have blamed the twenty-two years spent on her mother’s fifteen acres, shovelling chook dung from the floors of fowl pens, raking up goat and horse dung, sweeping up the muck her mother tracked into their two-roomed hut on her working boots. Gertrude Foote’s idea of cleanliness had differed from that of her daughter.
The hut of Amber’s childhood had burnt to the ground five days before
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