The Life You Choose and That Chose You Read online

  ‘No, we haven't,’ Sarge said. ‘Not before. But we have now.’

  He turned to the other two. ‘Let's go over the facts. We have a prisoner.’

  They nodded.

  ‘He admits he is not wearing a uniform.’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘Then,’ Sarge licked his lips, ‘what is the sentence?’

  ‘Death by firing squad,’ Woodsy said.

  Sarge stared at Pete. Pete just looked at the ground.

  ‘Yes?’ Sarge said.

  Pete looked terrified.

  ‘Well?’ Sarge said.

  ‘By firing squad,’ Pete said.

  ‘What?’ Sarge said.

  ‘Death,’ Pete said.

  ‘Again!’

  ‘Death!’

  Then they were all shouting the same thing, over and over again. ‘Death! Death! Death!’

  They threw my rifle to one side. They grabbed my arms and held them behind my back. All the time Sarge was still shouting. I could have tried to resist, but it all happened so fast. And I couldn't believe it. Besides, somehow, it seemed right.

  They took me outside. Pushed me against the wall. My head banged when Woodsy shoved me in the chest. I looked at him, expecting him to say sorry or something. But he didn't say sorry. He just stared at me, like I was someone else.

  Then they moved away from me, leaving me there. It was darker then, maybe that's why they looked different.

  ‘Well, men,’ Sarge said. ‘This is a sad day. But it is a day when soldiers must do their duty.’

  My mouth had spit in it but I couldn't move my lips and I just swallowed. I didn't want to make them angry.

  ‘We must do,’ Sarge said, ‘what we must do. Orders are orders. Discipline is discipline.’

  They stepped back again and stood in a line, the three of them facing me. Now Sarge had my Bren gun. Woodsy, his armalite. And Pete had his rifle. We never even decided what kind of rifle his was. It was just a rifle. One that fired bullets.

  ‘Ready,’ Sarge said, and the three of them looked at each other and made sure they were in a straight line and everything.

  ‘Load,’ Sarge said, and they each made the clack-clack-clack noise of a rifle being loaded.

  ‘Aim,’ Sarge said, and they raised their rifles so they were pointing at me.

  Each of the soldiers was looking along the barrels of their rifles at me. One eye open, the other closed, lips tight. Woodsy not smiling any more. Sarge silent. Pete, the tip of his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, like it always does when he's concentrating. No-one speaking. Just waiting for the command.

  And I was waiting too. There seemed no way out of it. It was all very logical. We'd done this many times before. Loads of Germans, several Japanese, one beautiful Russian woman spy and two French double agents.

  This was the best moment. When there was no going back. No-one could change their minds because everything had been said and everyone was ready. Even the prisoner was ready. Everything around had stopped. Maybe not the sounds of traffic in the distance or a crow in the trees, but round here, completely silent. It all made sense. Nothing else could happen.

  ‘Fire!’ shouted Sarge, and there was a blaze of gunshots. Woodsy was pretty good at armalite machine gun sounds and he was roaring away, pouring lead into me. Sarge wasn't really used to the Bren gun, and it's quite hard to hold because it's a heavy machine gun, but he still managed to control it as he fired burst after burst. And Pete was punching away with his rifle, pausing to reload clips of ammo every six shots.

  Then it was over. They stopped. Pete went and sat on a pile of bricks. Woodsy turned away and pretended to be cleaning his gun. He was always looking after his equipment. But Sarge, he didn't turn away. He walked up to me where I was still standing against the wall and looked at me.

  ‘Just want to make sure you are dead,’ he said, and took his pistol from his belt. He held it to my temple.

  ‘Bang,’ he said, his face right next to mine.

  I jump the low brick fence at number seven and bang on the screen door. The flat, blue sky is unnerving; it's painted on, brash and claustrophobic. My phone beeps. It's the third text from Craig in as many minutes. ‘Jesus, give me a chance,’ I mutter. I turn the handle and enter gloom.

  The house is closed against the heat, blinds and curtains drawn. I squint as I make my way down the hallway and past the tiny kitchen, following my mother's voice.

  ‘I'm back here,’ she calls.

  Mum is down on her hands and knees cleaning the bath. She squirts Jif on a cloth, leans into the tub and rubs. I lean on the doorframe.

  ‘Hey, you,’ I say. ‘Got a sec?’

  The bathroom is like a sauna. A drizzle of sweat is visible on her neck and back.

  ‘It won't clean itself,’ she says.

  Mum has lived on the Gold Coast for seven years. Having emerged from the sand three decades earlier, the city carries none of the burdens of history. People come to catch their breath, worn down by failed marriages, boredom, the cold weather, death. And when it is their turn to die, far from their hometowns and small familiarities, they are enshrined in sparkling, smooth-lined crematoriums.

  She stifles a groan as she puts a foot out in front of her and uses the bath to haul herself up. I grew to her height—five foot two—but she has been shrinking this past year. She hustles me out of the doorway into the hall. My hair is pulled back in a rough ponytail and I redo it now, pulling the strands quickly through the band and back again, twice. I try to catch her eye. She walks past me with purpose, past the kitchen and living room to the largest of the three bedrooms at the front of the house.

  I follow her, hovering.

  Her pale green eyes narrow with concentration as she kneels before her dressing table and begins the ritual of unpacking and repacking it. Craig says she is performing this task with alarming frequency. It has grown worse over the years.

  ‘Got everything you need for the barbie?’ I ask.

  ‘Yep. I'm all ready to go.’

  She is wearing a light cotton dress and her grey-blonde hair is tucked behind her ears. Watching her, I am a child again. She leans into one of the drawers and then twists her head towards me. The lines on her face draw me back.

  ‘Hairspray,’ she suddenly announces.

  ‘Hairspray?’

  ‘If you've got any biro marks on your clothes, hairspray will do the trick. Just spray it on the stain and it will lift right off.’

  ‘Cool!’ I say, bemused.

  She has tidied her drawer but lingers over the white box tucked under one of her slips. She lifts it gently, sits it on top of the Queen Anne dresser and wipes it with a soft, dry cloth. She draws it to her lap. Inside are my sister's ashes.

  ‘We could sprinkle them over the ocean,’ I say.

  ‘She was scared of sharks.’

  ‘Maybe in a park overlooking the sea?’

  ‘She didn't like to be alone, especially at night.’

  ‘A rose bush, right outside in the garden.’ I say it forcefully as if it has all been settled.

  ‘She didn't want to be buried. She needs to be with her mother.’

  Screw my brother and his superior skills in rock, paper, scissors.

  Reen bustles up the hallway shouting her arrival. She fills the room as she gives Mum a kiss and flops on the bed. She is flush with life, in a large, fifty-something, ripened kind of way. It's the mouth you notice first, wide and pouty, always bleeding with bright lipstick. It's a little too generous for her face but her dark brown eyes rescue her.

  Reen lives next door in a one-bedroom unit with Roy. He has emphysema. Their son Cliffy sleeps on the couch in their living room. He has schizophrenia. She says he's okay when he takes his medication. Sometimes she gets a phone call from the cops saying they've locked him up. She says he's bloody strong when he's having one of his turns.

  ‘Can you tell her, Reen?’ I say, emboldened by the prospect of an accomplice. ‘Tell her the whole �
��ashes in the sock drawer” thing is getting a bit creepy.’

  ‘I'll do no such thing,’ she says. ‘Your Mum'll scatter em when she's good and ready.’

  Mum takes the white box and nods at Reen who follows her. They walk down the hallway to the kitchen door and Mum places the box on the side table opposite. I follow behind feeling like an afterthought.

  ‘I want Rachael out here with me today,’ Mum explains to no-one in particular.

  In the kitchen she takes vegetables from the fridge and places them on the table of the small breakfast nook. Reen miraculously slides into one of the seats, tucking her ample proportions into a seemingly impossible space. I go to the sink and start rinsing the lettuce. Mum is chopping onions for the salad and tears appear. I have never seen her cry, not even when Rachael died. Even at the trial of the drunk who killed her daughter, her face remained smooth and expressionless, as if she was waiting for a bus.

  Mum's other half, Bob, is at the back door taking off his boots. He has been mowing the lawn before the barbecue. Mum says it drives her mad that he leaves it til the last minute. He pokes his head around the doorway and chuckles.

  ‘What's going on here? Secret women's business?’

  ‘You betcha,’ Mum says, winking at Reen.

  Bob is wearing khaki shorts and a black singlet stretched to breaking point over his huge stomach, which looms larger due to his lack of height. He has a grey moustache and is wearing his favourite hat, which rarely leaves his head.

  ‘I'll clean myself up and then I'll fire up the barbie,’ he says as he heads towards the bathroom.

  My phone beeps. Craig again. The text reads, All sorted. Shit.

  ‘Mum, you know I mentioned a rose bush?’ I try again.

  The screen door at the front of the house bangs and we can hear voices in the hallway.

  I finger the silver cross hanging around my neck. It was Rachael's and I'm hoping Mum notices I am wearing it.

  Roy and Cliffy appear in the doorway. Roy is huffing and puffing. He leans his small body against the wall, overcome with the exertion of walking from next door. Cliffy is his polar opposite, tall and twitching with nervous energy.

  ‘Okay,’ Mum announces. ‘Officially too many people in the kitchen.’

  She squeezes past everyone carrying two bowls of salad and we follow, emerging on the small porch. It is a concrete slab with a green shadecloth awning that offers some respite from the Queensland sun. A sea breeze teases us with bursts of cool air. Mum puts the bowls on the table, its lace covering flirting with the wind. The esky holds the Fourex on ice, minus the one Bob's nursing in a Gold Coast Titans stubby-holder. He is murdering the sausages on a large, homemade, brick barbecue over by the paling fence.

  I try calling Craig to warn him. It goes straight to voicemail and I swear under my breath.

  ‘Craig, it's me. Call me when you get this.’

  ‘Where is Craig?’ Mum asks with her back to me.

  ‘Not sure. He's not picking up.’

  Cliffy is sitting on an old, wrought-iron chair he has placed on the lawn. His foot taps the ground in quick, insistent beats as if he is primed and ready to run when given the signal. He pulls off his T-shirt and tosses it over the back of the chair. He has strong shoulders and a surprisingly taut stomach. A tat on his left pec announces, I am God. I wonder if he has stopped taking his medication.

  ‘Want a beer, Cliffy? One won't hurt,’ Mum says handing over the small brown bottle.

  ‘Cheers, Mrs D.’

  Roy and Reen sit side by side in the shade. He rattles with the effort of breathing and she is vigilant, ready to take over if needed. Mum disappears inside and re-emerges carrying the white box. She sets it carefully on a small bench below the laundry window, retrieves her beer from the table and makes a toast.

  ‘To Rachael.’

  ‘Hear, hear. To Rachael.’

  Everyone sips their beer, including me. Then I take a couple of gulps but it doesn't help. I text Craig, Abort! Abort!

  The gate creaks open at the side of the house and my brother's face pokes around the corner. He is wide-eyed, his curly brown hair matted with salt and sea. He shuffles forward dragging a skinny bush, its disappointing foliage wilting in the heat.

  ‘Ta da!’

  Everyone is silent. The barbecue crackles as another sausage pops its skin.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  Mum edges forward on her seat, ready for a fight.

  I walk over and try to put an arm around her shoulder. She shrugs me off.

  Craig glares at me. ‘I thought you had cleared it with her.’

  ‘I said I would talk to her.’

  ‘For God's sake, Mum, it's been ten years.’

  ‘Your point?’ Mum folds her arms and leans back in her chair.

  ‘Look, I'll dig a hole right here, we'll scatter the ashes and you'll have beautiful roses all year round.’

  ‘I'm not ready.’

  Mum jumps up and grabs the white box.

  Craig walks towards her and begs, ‘Please, Mum, give me the ashes.’

  ‘Back off.’ Mum is sidling towards the door.

  Reen is on her feet covering some of the ground between Mum and Craig.

  ‘Now, now, she's your Mum. What she says goes!’

  For a minute, I think my brother is considering a reluctant retreat.

  Instead he says, ‘Reen, stay out of it,’ and walks over to Mum.

  He tries to take the box from Mum carefully, gently loosening her grip, but she jerks it back and it falls from her hands. The lid bounces away, the ashes spill out. A sudden gust takes the silver tailings and throws them in the air, lifts them in a shimmering dance and showers them over everything.

  The remains of Rachael are in our eyes and up our nostrils and coating our hair. Roy struggles with the new hazard, wheezing and rocking. Reen flaps her hands dangerously close to his face as she tries to clear the air. Cliffy jumps onto the seat of his rickety chair, all elbows and knees, like a giant praying mantis. Bob eases back to the barbecue, tongs in hand, retreating from the menacing grey mist.

  Craig and I scream and jump around, flailing our arms as if spiders have fallen from the sky and are running through our hair and across our skin. He leaps from foot to foot, rushing his fingers across his scalp and shaking his head. I frantically wipe my face and arms.

  ‘Fuck. This is freaking me out!’ Craig calls from beneath his upside down hair.

  ‘Jesus, I don't want her on me!’ Cliffy sprints to the back fence.

  Reen shows superhuman strength by lifting Roy off his chair with one hand and turning it 180 degrees before dropping him back onto it. Convinced his fragile airways are safe, she turns her attention to everyone else and, sliding her sleeves up her arms, she lurches towards the swirling debris.

  A noise emerges from beneath the cries and the curses. It's Mum. Laughter trickles out of her as she kneels before the little white box trying to scoop up what's left of the pile. She is scraping and laughing and looking at me and I hold my breath, partly because I don't want to suck my sister into my lungs and partly because I want to remember the sound.

  I built my garden path with words but what a

  waste. It grew like language, became full of holes

  and simply enormous in places. Rotten with

  sudden corners. I tell people that I stay inside

  to avoid the confusion, but really it's the terrible

  disappointment. Getting from one place to another

  should never have been such a difficult affair.

  What I'm about to confess won't reflect well on me. Ever since I agreed to write this memoir, I have struggled to decide whether or not I should include details of the murder and my involvement in it. Certainly to avoid mentioning the crime here would double my shame, to say nothing of the advantage its absence could give some future biographer of mine, someone who may have an axe to grind or, worse still, a reputation to make. No, I have been given this opportunity to set
the record straight about many things and while I deeply regret the events of that particular summer, I cannot shrink from the facts or from my folly.

  For some years after that December, forty years ago now, I tried to make sense of my stupidity by occasionally talking about the murder, though only ever at parties. On those nights I would dramatise the story to anyone who'd listen until it floated away drunkenly to a smoky corner of the room to be discarded the next day with the roach-filled ashtrays, broken glasses and empty bottles. But that was then. Now it's time to anchor my recollections in ink, no matter how fragmented, and I hope that you will not judge me too harshly.

  It was the kind of perfect Hawkesbury morning you never forget: the sleepy, summer scent of lantana mingled with the salty air, and a lazy heat haze hovered above the waters. Oyster farmers, having long since finished their pre-dawn business, tended their oyster racks and beds in preparation for the Christmas rush, only days away. It was a scene for a water colourist.

  According to reports at the time, two young boys, mucking around up on the hill, found the water-swollen body of the girl in an old, disused water tank. The boys’ screams were so loud they were heard echoing across the inlet. I remember a neighbour saying later that the image of death would stalk those two kids til they were frail old men.

  The boys had been looking for tadpoles, but discovered the dead schoolgirl, Pauline Sykes, instead. She'd been missing for days. The police had organised searches from Hornsby to Wyong, but found no trace of her. Pauline's tentative smile stared out from the front page of every newspaper in the state; the same photograph every day. ‘Find me,’ it seemed to say. But nobody did, until those two boys came along.

  When the autopsy report confirmed that the girl's death had been caused by several stab wounds to the chest, probably made by a sharp, concave-shaped blade, similar to that of an oyster knife, all the locals knew that each of us would be a murder suspect. You see, back then, every house, shack and lean-to huddled along the river possessed at least one knife of that type, and the place I was living in was no different.

  I was renting an old converted boatshed, not far from Kangaroo Point, opposite Long Island and its nature reserve. I had recently moved from Sydney and the complexities of my tawdry love life. This shack was a place where I could live simply and fish and think. It was a place where I could write between visits to the city, when I responded to her siren song and the promise of stimulation and indulgence.