‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
And so Challis walked around Mawson’s Bluff for a couple of hours. The town was laid out in a simple grid, with side streets branching off the main street, which was part of the highway. It felt good to get his legs and heart pumping. He was curious to see that no one was about. There were clues to the presence of humans-cars parked in driveways and out in the street-but everyone was inside, spending a dutiful Sunday with relatives. Curtains were drawn over every window. Here and there a lawn sprinkler hissed, a cat arched its back, a dog wandered out from a driveway. Challis heard TV sport at a couple of the houses. The town was low, flattened, almost asleep, and all along the drooping telephone and power lines were the small-town birds, waiting.
He wandered into the grounds of the primary school, crossing dry grass and red dirt, stopping long enough to try the hip-hugging playground slide with an antic joy before continuing among the gum and pepper trees, drawing in their scent. And then, pushing through a cypress hedge behind the school, taking a short cut he remembered from his childhood, he came to the town’s sportsground: football oval, tennis courts, lawn bowls rinks and a tiny enclosed swimming pool.
And there was his niece. Eve wasn’t doing anything, just watching four other teenagers as they hit a tennis ball on one of the courts, a raucous game of doubles without a net. Like Eve, they wore cargo pants, T-shirts and trainers. They called to him, ‘Hi, Hal!’ He had no idea who they were.
Eve spun around, startled. He’d last seen her at his mother’s funeral last year. Back then she’d been wearing a sombre dress, tall, slim and striking but utterly grief-stricken, her face raw with it. He saw that an underlying sadness still lingered, even as she ran at him like a delighted kid and hugged him fiercely.
‘Hi, gorgeous,’ he said.
She rested her jaw on his shoulder. ‘It’s so good to see you, Uncle Hal.’
‘Same here.’
She let him go. ‘I’ve been meaning to drop in. How’s Gramps?’
‘Cranky.’
She cocked her head, amused, but also half serious. ‘He’s never cranky with me.’
‘That’s because you’re perfect.’
‘True.’
They sat on a bench and watched her friends play. The sun washed over them and Chains felt easy, some of his cares evaporating.
‘Are you staying long?’
‘As long as it takes,’ he said.
Eve sighed and edged closer to him. He couldn’t be a father to her, or even much of an uncle, but did she want something like that from him? He scarcely knew her, and wondered if the things he might say to her, or the very act of saying them, would perplex her. He put his arm around her and they chatted inconsequentially. ‘Mum really needed a break,’ she said at one point. ‘Thanks, Uncle Hal.’
‘Well, he is my old man.’
‘But not easy.’
‘No.’ Challis reconsidered his reply. ‘Look, your grandfather was never mean to us, he never hit us, he was a good father. It’s just that he was…stern, inflexible.’
‘Uh huh.’
They were silent. Eve said, ‘He didn’t like Dad much.’
‘I know.’
Challis guessed that so long as Eve didn’t know where her father was, or what he’d done, or even if he was alive or dead, she couldn’t say a proper goodbye to him. The parents of Ellen Destry’s missing kid would be feeling that too, only more acutely. How could he broach it with Eve, that he’d been thinking of Gavin, been doing some digging? Maybe Eve, like her mother, didn’t want him to do that.
Eve sighed. ‘I wish it was the end of the year.’
It seemed to Challis that her words were loaded with meaning. On an immediate level she was saying that she should be at home studying for her final exams, not mucking around with her friends, even if it was a Sunday. She was also saying that her grandfather’s decline was bad timing;-not that she was blaming him. And finally she was saying that the future was huge and beckoning. What were her dreams? Why didn’t he know? He thought back to the culture of the high school and the town when he was eighteen. It had been assumed by teachers, parents and the kids themselves that you would marry each other and remain in the district. You didn’t leave-or certainly not to attend a university.
He found himself saying, ‘What will your friends do next year?’
She was sitting so close to him that she had to scoot away to gauge his face. She shrugged. ‘Nursing. Teachers’ college. Home on the farm.’
‘You?’
‘Not sure yet. I’d love to travel, just fly overseas and move around, stay in youth hostels and get waitressing jobs for a while, you know?’
She was wistful and it was heartbreaking. ‘Do it,’ Challis said fervently.
‘I don’t know. I can’t. What about Mum, here all alone?’
‘Do it!’
He’d startled her. ‘Yes, sir,’ she said, snapping him a salute.
‘You’ll come back refreshed,’ he said, moderating his tone, trying to be a wise uncle or father. ‘University will be a breeze.’
A white Toyota Land Cruiser with police markings pulled up. A policeman got out, tall, heavyset and scowling in a crisp tan uniform. A sergeant. ‘Oh shit,’ said Eve, and one of the boys grew wary and still.
‘What?’
‘It’s Sergeant Wurfel. He’s super anal.’
They watched Wurfel advance on the boy. ‘Who’s your friend?’
‘Mark Finucane.’
A Finucane. Challis wanted to say, ‘That figures.’ Then the sergeant clasped the boy, who went rigid and shouted, ‘Fucking leave off.’
Eve clutched Challis. ‘Uncle Hal, stop him.’
Challis had to be careful. He approached, gave his name but not his occupation or rank. ‘May I ask what’s going on?’
The sergeant gazed at him tiredly. ‘No offence, sir, but am I obliged to tell you?’
Eve reached past Challis to put her arm around the Finucane boy. ‘Leave him alone. He hasn’t done anything.’
Wurfel blocked her. ‘Settle down, Eve, okay? We just need to speak to Mark about a couple of things.’
‘Speak to him? I know what that means.’
Sergeant Wurfel grew very still. ‘Eve, if you get in my face, I’ll take you down to the station, too.’
Challis said quietly, ‘There’s no need for that.’
Wurfel looked fed up, and stared at all of them one by one. ‘You want to know why I want to question him? Your little pal took the hearse for a joyride last night, okay?’
He paused, staring at Challis. ‘You think this is funny?’
Challis straightened his face. One night when he was sixteen he and a couple of others had stolen a ride in a shire tip truck. ‘Not at all. Eve, sweetheart, let the man do his job.’
‘Yeah, well, it’s not fair.’
Her temper was up, her colour high, her eyes flashing, but then it evaporated. They all watched while Wurfel opened the passenger door for Mark Finucane, who gave them a quick grin and a cocky thumbs up.
‘Evo,’ said one of Eve’s friends, ‘want a game? Hal, a game?’
‘Sure,’ they both said.
That evening Ellen Destry called him. He felt a strange relief, realising that he’d been waiting. There was no reason why they should call each other regularly, or turns about, but he had opened that possibility when he’d called her on Friday.
Her mood was flat. ‘Is Katie Blasko getting to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I can’t help feeling that I’ve fumbled the ball. I let myself be blinded by her dysfunctional family, when I should have been concentrating on harm from outside it.’
‘In most cases it is internal,’ Challis said. He found himself telling her about Gavin Hurst, and the effects on Eve.
Ellen grunted. ‘Like the poet said, your parents fuck you up. Larrayne is so prickly with me these days.’ She paused. ‘And when I’m old and infirm, the poor thing will feel obliged to look after me- or maybe not. Sorry, Hal, insensitive of me, given your current situation.’
He laughed. He wasn’t offended. A comfortable silence settled around them. ‘What’s your next step?’