DIARY OF A COFFIN DODGER CHAPTER E

CHAPTER E

'So, the bitches have buggered off? And you reckon you gave nothing away, eh? Am I right?'

The man's menacing eyes raked the face of the woman sitting across a table from him. He leaned forward across the table as the dark green vinyl bench seat on which he sat creaked.

The woman drew back.

She pressed herself into the padded backrest of the light grey vinyl bench seat on which she tensed her nervous self. She squirmed, like a worm on a baited fishing line, as she watched his narrowing eyes.

'Yes!' She implored, 'When have I ever let you down! I love you too much, and have done so, as you know, since we was kids.'

The man's clenched fists, pressed onto the Coral Skylark pattern of the Formica table's surface, relaxed as he slid a hand across the table towards the woman.

The vinyl of her seat squeaked as she leaned forward and moved a cautious hand towards his.

Cool beads of condensation dripped down the outside of a tall fluted glass now grasped by her other hand. The condensation collected at the base of the glass, forming a quivering pool of water on the table.

Their hands met, and their fingers intertwined, while her gaze scanned the room’s occupants.

However, their chatter and laughter continued as unabated as the acrid spiralling cigarette smoke above their heads.

Her roving eyes caught the man’s attention.

'Fuck 'em! Kid! It's only us that matters,' he whispered as he unlocked his fingers from hers and moved his hand towards a smouldering cigarette.

The cigarette rested on the blistered edge of a dark red Bakelite ashtray.

The ashtray, heaped with stinking butts, sat below a window ledge at one end of the table. One of several that were the centre-piece of booths, with coloured vinyl bench seats, which lined two off-white walls of the milk bar.

Several hundred miles south of where Bill and Clare touched their hands across that Formica table, tatty canvass blinds lay rumpled in the heat of a scorching summer's day.

The cotton cords, that raised and lowered the blinds, at either end of the eight blinds stretching the length of that veranda were grey and frayed. We, Jane, Samantha, Anne and I, therefore, left the blinds alone.

These blinds rested on a weather-beaten timber rail.

The top rail of the enclosed bottom half of a veranda.

A spacious back verandah running along the length of the western side of a house in Wentworth Avenue, Vaucluse.

A voice thundered along that veranda.

'You must fucking read this!'

Anne stormed through the double doorway of the dining room.

The faint whiff of beeswax wafted from creaking polished brown floorboards as Anne stormed onto the veranda and strode towards me.

I looked up from where I was sitting on a dilapidated cane chair at one end of the veranda several feet away from the dining room doorway.

The newspaper I had been reading rustled as I pushed it to one side of the cracked glass top of a rectangular cane table.

Anne reached the table and slammed a document she held in her hand into the space once occupied by my paper.

She drew up a shabby cane chair, one of five scattered around the table, and sat across the table from me with her back to the blinds.

She extracted the top page of the document from the other pages and shoved it across the table towards me.

I looked down at the page, moved my hands across it and smoothed out the creases.

I noted the date at the top of the page.

Four days after the last of the events, set out in chronological order, narrated in the document. A fact I noted after I had read the entire document.

Below the date, I started reading the light blue ink cursive handwriting of a letter.

'Fucking hell!' I exclaimed after I read the first two paragraphs.

I raised my head as I stopped reading the letter and looked at Anne.

'I'm surprised you didn't screw this up and hurl it into the bin.'

Anne met my gaze as she looked up from reading one of many pages spread across the table in front of her.

'Yer! So am I. But I thought you must read it before we chucked it.'

'God! I feel sick in the guts!' I muttered.

'Join the club,' Anne replied. 'But we were right about that fucked-up pair.'

'I wish to Christ! We bloody weren't!' I responded and shook my head.

The fierce summer heat pulsated through the faded green and white stripes of the blinds as I returned to reading the remaining paragraphs.

Anne muttered and swore as she resumed her reading. As she finished with a page, she shoved it across the table towards me.

In a town a distance north from Vaucluse, days before I read the letter, a baking hot summer's day sent heat waves shimmering from the main street.

The heat spread from the tarmac of the street and along the concrete footpath that ran past the front of the milk bar.

Though shaded by the milk bar's corrugated iron veranda, the footpath radiated heat through the shop's front window. A wide strip of glass, divided into squares by crosspieces of bleached white timber. The glass stretched along the upper half of the crumbling brown stuccoed walls of the shop.

Despite there being cooler places to sit, Bill's seat gave him a view of the railway station and the vehicles on the road.

His shoulder touched the warm window glass as he picked up the cigarette from the red Bakelite ashtray.

As he drew on the cigarette, he scanned the street and the station.

Finding nothing of interest, he turned towards the shop interior and tilted back his head.

He blew smoke towards the pressed metal ceiling, where decades of grime disfigured the once shiny pattern.

The smoke dispersed into the morning's muggy air as it swirled around a large fan. One of four attached to short dull yellow brass rods suspended from the ceiling.

The whirring fans were spaced along the length of the ceiling from the front of the shop to the back. They did little except send a warm breeze wandering around the milk bar.

As Bill finished with the cigarette and stubbed it out in the ashtray, he looked across the Formica table at his sister. Clare met his gaze as she finished drinking a caramel milkshake from the tall, fluted glass.

He smiled and said, 'You like the taste of caramel, don't ya' sis?'

The light in Clare's blue eyes danced with happiness as she replied.

'It was the flavour of the first milkshake you bought me when I was ten. My big brother with his first pay packet at age fifteen, buying his little sister a special treat, a whole milkshake to myself.'

'Yer, when mum bought one it had to be shared with you, me and the other one.' Bill chuckled. 'A while back now, but a good time, eh? Like now, shouting you that one.'

Clare nodded. She focused, however, on the treat and not what else that gift entailed.

'So, let's recap.' Bill continued. 'You get's back from Bluey's Beach four days ago and the farmhouse is empty. The lesos and the other one or two, had buggered off.' Bill smirked. 'I bet the men you bought back with you were pissed off, eh?'

Clare, her voice soft, replied.

'They're four devout Christian men. They know Satan has wily ways and will work against the missions to which Christ calls us.'

'Though disappointed, my Christian friends weren't crushed. They stayed with me for three days and nights. They left the farmhouse yesterday morning. Each evening, after dinner, we gathered together in the lounge room.'

'I played the harmonium, the one I told you about in one of my letters. The keyboard instrument with the foot-pumps. I bought it from the op shop a couple of doors down from this milk bar about seven months back. The harmonium now sits against a wall in the lounge room opposite the grate.'

'The men have good, strong, singing voices. Though my playing is not the best, the men were complimentary.'

'After we sang hymns, one man, Paul, a true disciple of Christs, led us in Bible study and prayer. So, if anything, their time was not wasted. It was a time of blessings and spiritual nourishment.'

Clare gazed at her brother, her eyes burning with a fervent light.

'I pray that you too, my brother, will come to Christ. What a blessing that will be as we go to chapel together.'

It wasn't the blessings of a Christ-filled life but the hellish heat of a mid-Australian summer that stirred the canvass blinds on the back veranda of the house in Wentworth Avenue. The day held little to cool the blinds down as they swayed under the enervated strength of a disinterested, sultry breeze.

Without enthusiasm, the round wooden pole running along the base of each closed blind tapped the top rail of the enclosed section of that verandah.

The rhythmic irritating tapping and the oppressive hot weather did not improve my mood as perspiration ran down my forehead.

Splotches of sweat dropped from my face onto the blue ink writing of the first page that Anne drew my attention to.

The sweat had blurred a word or two as I took a hanky from the pocket of my shorts and wiped my face.

When I finished this first page, I began reading a second that Anne had shoved across the table towards me.

I placed the hanky beside the first page, ready for use.

Half-way through reading this second page, I muttered, 'Bloody hell!'

I looked up from my reading towards the blinds and collected my thoughts. I then turned towards Anne.

'Clare has told an absolute whopper to Bill. Despite her statement to Bill, described on the page I am reading, she did give something away!'

Anne leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms above her head.

'Bloody hell! Yer!' Anne responded as she lowered her arms.

'What she 'gave away' led to my search of her room at the farmhouse. She’s dealing with Bill; he’s violent, unstable, and depraved. I guess she needs to protect herself by telling a lie. But I reckon Heaven help her if he finds out.'

A voice calling from the front of the house interrupted any further discussion.

'We bring sacrificial gifts of appeasement for the gods and trust our offerings will stay their wrath and grant us forgiveness.'

I laughed as Anne grinned.

For Bill and Clare, however, their morning meeting at the milk bar was not an occasion for jollity.

The atmosphere between them crackled with tension as they sat on their coloured vinyl seats as Clare's hands clenched the edge of the Formica table.

Clare's gaze darted anywhere but at her brother as the dregs of a milk shake coagulated at the bottom of a tall fluted glass

The limpid pool of water on the table around the base of the glass quivered as Bill glared at her and snarled.

'You sure you gave nothing away?'

'I am definite I did not!' Clare, with a nervous quaver in her voice, replied.

Bill, not convinced, leaned back into the padded backrest of the dark green vinyl bench seat.

His grim face turned towards the window.

His eyes narrowed as he watched a train pull into the station.

He scrutinised the crowd of people leaving the station as they moved towards the car park or the milk bar.

'Where the hell is that bastard?' He muttered as the crowd thinned out.

Clare watched with trepidation as Bill took a cigarette from a packet lying on the Formica table.

He lit the ciggy with the lighter lying beside the packet. After he took a long drag on the durry, he tilted back his head and blew smoke into the dusty, stale air of the milk bar.

He lowered his head and glared at Clare. 'So, you don't know if the nurse from the asylum showed up?'

'Sorry, Bill, I don't,' she responded, her voice shaky. 'If she did, she arrived after I went to the revivalist gathering at Bluey's Beach,' Clare replied.

'Hmmm,' Bill responded and puffed on the cigarette. 'So you didn't follow through and find out what she or that bitch Anne knew about the fire?'

Clare moved her hands and clenched them together under the table to stop them trembling as she shook her head.

'Fuck!' Bill exclaimed.

Several customers turned in their direction as Anne, in a state of panic, looked around the milk bar.

The owner of the milk bar, standing between the counter and the mirrored back wall of the shop, stared at Anne and Bill.

He caught her eye as Bill hissed, 'Don't look at him! Look at me!'

Clare's face went white as Bill, with a menacing edge in his voice, looked at the owner and called out,

'We'll have a pot of tea with milk and a couple of cream buns over here, thanks.'

South of the town where Bill got the milk bar owner's unwanted attention and several days after that incident, cordiality and mirth prevailed. For a while.

Neither cream buns nor a pot of tea came through a double doorway. Rather, the aroma of frying food wafted on the still hot air of the house in Wentworth Avenue.

'We bring our sacrifical offerings to the gods and pray for their blessings,' Samantha intoned as she and Jane walked out from the dining room and onto the veranda.

With solemn steps, they walked towards the table where Anne and I were sitting.

In a haughty voice, Anne responded, 'It smells acceptable,' as she gathered up the pages of the letter but left them on the table.

'It smells bloody divine!' I said and chuckled.

As my three friends laughed, I folded up the pages I had been reading and tucked them into the waistband of my shorts.

'These are the sacrificial gifts we bring the gods,' Samantha said.

She placed a newspaper wrapped parcel she held in one hand onto the table. She placed the red and white airways bag she carried in the other hand onto the floor.

'On our way back from the harbour baths at Neilsen Park,' Samantha continued, 'we stopped at the fish and chip shop. There's potato scallops, chips, and fish for the gods, and us, their humble supplicants.'

Anne chuckled.

I grinned and said, 'the gods thank you and bless you both,' as Samantha unwrapped the parcel.

'And,' Jane said with a smile in her eyes, 'we stopped at that milk bar, down the road, and bought more gifts. Two bricks of Neapolitan Ice Cream and icy cold fizzy drinks: lemonade, ginger beer, and creamy soda. '

She brought the drinks out of the large white cotton bag she was carrying and placed the tall glass bottles on the table.

'The heat out there is exhausting, stinkin’ bloody hot,' she continued.

'But we had a lovely refreshing time at the Park.'

'The water was cool, the waves were small, and the netting around the sides of the baths keeps the sharks away. So I relaxed and enjoyed the swim.'

'Afterwards, we sat on a bench in the shade of the trees in the Park and watched yachts sailing across Sydney Harbour. After all that's happened, it was just wonderfully tickety-boo.'

'And then her tummy grumbled,' Samantha chuckled, 'and broke the mood. So we bought lunch on the way home.'

Jane laughed and said, 'That's right. I'm famished. I'll put the ice cream in the freezer and get glasses, vinegar, and a bottle opener from the kitchen.'

She turned and left the veranda as Samantha moved two cane chairs close to the table. She sat down, let out an enormous sigh, and said, 'I'm just so bloody relieved,' as she reached over and picked up a scallop.

The atmosphere at the milk bar in the town north of Vaucluse, though, was not relaxed when the shop owner and a waitress walked towards Bill and Clare with a pot of tea, cups, saucers, a jug of milk, teaspoons, and a plate with cream buns.

They placed the items on the Formica table at the booth where the siblings were sitting as customers in the shop resumed their business.

The waitress returned to the counter with Clare's empty milk shake glass as the owner stood back from the table. He looked at Bill and said,

'That kind of language is not acceptable here, sir.

If it happens again, I will ask you to leave.'

Bill gave a wide smile and said, 'sorry, it just slipped out. My sister here,' Bill tilted his head in Clare's direction, 'just gave me some bad news. Won't happen again.'

The owner stared hard at Bill, turned and walked towards the counter.

Bill glared at the owner's retreating back and muttered, 'I'll fix that bastard one day.'

Bill ashed his cigarette onto the table and dropped the butt below the table.

He watched the owner stop and speak to a customer at one of the booths.

While glaring at the owner, Bill ground his cigarette butt into the lino floor covering of the milk bar by using the heel of his shoe.

Bill turned towards Clare.

He grinned as he stared at her pale face.

'Sorry, pet, didn't mean to upset you. I get pissed off when people don't do as I say. I didn't expect you, sis, to let me down.'

'Not only have the bitches at the farmhouse buggered off. But you didn't find out what they knew about the fire before they left and you don't know why they left.' Bill shook his head.

But Clare did know why they left.

And we, Samantha, Anne and I, knew why, in no uncertain terms, Jane stormed out from the veranda and back into the house at Wentworth Avenue, Vaucluse.

That occurred less than ten minutes after we started chomping our way through salted fish, chips, and potato scallops, every item sprinkled with vinegar. Interspersed with swilling down the cold fizzy drinks.

Accompanied by those bloody blinds wilful rhythmic tapping, Jane's chair scraped along the floorboards as she pushed herself back from the table.

That was after she shouted at Anne and I.

'Let me get this straight,' Jane yelled as the aroma of vinegar and salted fried food drifted around the rectangular cane table.

'Sam asked whether, while she and I were having a swim at Neilsen Park, you pair had done anymore sleuthing business this morning? And you,' Jane glared in my direction, 'replied: a letter arrived for Clare with the morning mail a couple of hours before you and Sam arrived home. Anne opened it.'

I nodded.

Anne had a wary look in her eyes as she watched Jane.

Jane jabbed a finger towards the pages Anne had left on the table.

'You opened a letter addressed to another person without asking them, without their permission,' Jane shouted.

Three of us, sitting around the cracked glass-topped table on the back veranda, stopped our eating and drinking.

Samantha whispered, 'Oh! Shit!'

'That's damn disgusting!' Jane shouted. 'What gives you the right to do that? No! Don't!' She snapped as Samantha moved her hand towards Jane.

With that, Jane dropped the piece of fish she held in her hand onto the table.

She stood up in fury and flounced off the veranda and back through the double doorway and into the dining room.

Days before Jane stormed off the veranda, in a town on the North Coast of New South Wales, the demons of resentment and grievance were writhing through Bill's mind.

He sat on the front bench seat of a Holden Special Sedan, parked in the shade out the back of the milk bar.

The knuckles of his hands were white as he clenched the steering wheel of the vehicle while he plotted an outlet for his righteous fury.

Inside the milk bar, tears streamed down Clare's cheeks. The buns and the tea were untouched.

Sobs shook Clare's body as the waitress slipped onto the seat, still warm from where Bill sat, across the Formica table from Clare.

'You right love?' The waitress said.

'Here! Let me pour you a cup of tea. You'll feel better after you drink it.'

Clare, from the left sleeve of her dress, took out a handkerchief as the waitress poured tea into a white china cup.

Clare dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. She returned the hanky to the sleeve of her dress, the one that Bill complimented her on.

Clare whispered, 'thank you,' as the waitress pushed the cup of tea on its saucer towards Clare.

She stirred white sugar from the glass bowl on the table into the tea. And, after pouring milk from the jug into the sweet mixture, she lifted the cup off the saucer.

She sipped the tea while looking down at the cup.

She stopped drinking and said, 'that feels better.'

The waitress looked at Clare for a moment and said, 'If you don't mind me asking, that bloke you were with, he is your brother?'

Clare drained the cup and nodded.

'And last week, I noticed those men with you here, at the milk bar, drinking tea and eating sandwiches, wore small gold crosses on their lapels. They are priests?'

Clare put the cup back onto the saucer and shook her head. In a quiet voice, she replied, 'Brothers in Christ.'

'Ahhh!' The waitress said. 'Then you are a....'

'Sister in Christ,' Clare responded as she put the cup onto the saucer.

Her eyes opened in astonishment as the waitresses face beamed as she reached a hand across the table towards Clare.

She squeezed Clare's hand and said, 'My name's Rebekah. You must come to our Sunday chapel service and meet this town's other brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, our Lord.'

It wasn't a beaming face but a downcast, tear-streaked face that Jane brought back to the cane table on the verandah of the house in Wentworth Avenue.

She had been gone about twenty minutes, but there was still stacks of food to eat.

'Sorry,' she said as she sat down.

Now she accepted Samantha’s offered hand. She took it and held it in hers.

Anne, in a quiet voice,asked, 'Care to discuss it?'

'Later, maybe,' Jane replied. 'I'll get my blood sugar levels up first by eating this delicious food.'

Releasing Samantha’s hand, she picked up a piece of fish.

'Well, while one supplicant feasts on these delectable items,' I said in a haughty voice, 'the other one can bring us gods coffee and bowls of ice-cream.'

Samantha chuckled and went to stand up.

'No! I'd like to do that', Jane smiled. 'I’ll feed my hunger god and everything will be tickety-boo.'

Things weren't tickety-boo for Bill, though, as Clare and Rebekah sat in the milk bar drinking tea, eating cream buns and chatting about witnessing.

Bill sat in the Holden parked out the back of the milk bar, his eyes sparks of fury, as he muttered,

'I saw Clare driving the Buggy. She parked it across the road from the milk bar. So how in Christ's name did Charles stuff up?'

However, Anne and I knew.

Though we didn't have a name in the morning after the storm at the farmhouse.

That came about two weeks later, while we read the letter addressed to Clare, which Anne opened, and spread out across the cane table.The letter with the blue ink cursive handwriting which became the focus of Jane's ire.

I went out to the woodshed on the day after the storm to secure the door.

The early morning light danced and shimmered on the pools of water scattered along the driveway, creating glistening diamonds of colour.

When I reached the entrance to the garage, in shock, I turned and raced back to the house.

I strode into the kitchen, where Anne was preparing breakfast.

'Anne!' I said, 'Come quickly!'

Anne gave me a quizzical look and turned towards the Everhot stove. She moved cookware to the side of the stove and followed me out of the house.   

‘I want to show you this,' I said as we drew near to the garage entrance.

'What the hell!' Anne replied as she looked down at the squelchy, damp ground.

She took a deep breath and continued.

'We better check out the woodshed first. That door is moving for a reason.'

With cautious steps, we walked beside the garage's western wall.

Above our heads, crested pigeons cooed and splashed their way through last night's rain water pooled in the garage gutters as we sloshed our way towards the shed.

We stopped when we reached the end of the garage.

I looked towards the open woodshed door, now creaking under the playful caresses of a morning breeze.

I looked at Anne.

She nodded, so I called out.

'Is anyone there?' I paused. 'Step out and let's look at you.'

After a moment's silence, I looked at Anne and whispered, 'I'll check it out.'

I crept towards the swinging door of the shed.

When I reached the door, I grasped it and held it open as I peered into the shadowy interior.

When my eyes adjusted to the murkiness of the sheds inner depths, I took a deep breath and stayed still.

A large black snake, about three yards away from where I stood at the entrance to the shed, lay coiled on top of the woodpile.

It lifted its head and looked in my direction.

After a couple of flicks of its tongue, it uncoiled itself. Its red belly writhed across the top of the woodpile as the snake slithered its way towards the back of the shed.

I started breathing again as the snake disappeared through a rusty hole in the shed's corrugated iron back wall.

I called over my shoulder, 'there's no one here,' as I closed the door.

'Bloody hell!' Anne replied. 'I almost poohed my pants last night when Jane and Samantha showed up late last night, unannounced.'

'When their car headlights shone through the lounge room curtains, I didn't know what was going on. And now this... I don't know whether my bowels can take any more.'

'We heard you,' a gentle voice behind Anne said.

'And we are sorry,' another gentle voice said.

I whipped around as Anne, clutching at her chest, slumped against the garage wall.

Focused on securing the woodshed door, and puzzling over what led to it being unlatched, I hadn't seen Jane and Samantha walk out of the house towards Anne and I.

I leant against the woodshed wall and took several deep breaths as Jane took Anne's hand.

'Are you OK?' Jane asked with a concerned look on her face.

'I will be once I catch my breath,' Anne replied.

'I'm sorry. We didn't mean to freak you out. But what's been going?' she let go of Anne's hand and looked down at the soggy ground.

Samantha followed Anne's gaze.

Her voice sounded puzzled as she said while looking towards me, 'there's more than yours and Anne's footprints on the ground. What do you reckon's been happening out here?'

'Something messed up,' I replied.

'Really messed up,' Anne commented as she took her hand away from her chest and stood away from the garage wall.

Five days after that incident, Rebekah, and Clare stood up from the Formica table.

'I'll clear these things away,' Rebekah said as she stacked up the crockery and the teapot, 'and I'll settle the bill.'

‘You are kind,’ Clare replied.

'Stephan, the owner, said I can finish my shift early. He was worried about you. But I will tell him you are staying at my place. And that will reassure him.'

'So, give me a minute to take this lot out to the sink and we will walk out together.'

When she returned, Rebekah moved her head toward the main street. 

'I saw your weird looking vehicle across the road,' Clare smiled as Rebeka continued, ‘therefore, as I walk to work, would you mind giving me a lift to my place?'

'That's fine,' Clare replied. 'The Lord has blessed me with your kindness.'

'I think the blessings are shared,' Rebekah smiled as she and Clare walked out of the milk bar, crossed the main street and headed to the Buggy.

Some time after Clare and Rebekah climbed into the Buggy and drove to Rebekah's house, Bill turned on the Holden's ignition.

The engine roared into life as Bill stomped on the accelerator.

He sped out of the carpark and into the lane which led to the main street.

He raced down the lane and turned into the main drag.

When he reached the end of the main street, where paddocks, cows, and horses took over from houses and commercial premises, he muttered, 'What the fuck!'

The car's tyre's screamed as he chucked a u-ey and drove back down the main street.

Clouds of dust swirled around the car as he slammed on the brakes as the car hit the gravel edge of the street at the other end of town.

A cow in a paddock on the other side of a barbed wire fence to the street looked up as Bill pulled over.

The cow's large brown eyes looked towards the car as Bill shouted, 'Where the fuck is my slutty sister!'

Because he had not seen the Buggy anywhere in the main street.

Bits of grass poked out the side of the cow's mouth as it moved its jaw at a regular pace. Unlike Bill's hands.

They had a manic, furious beat to them as he hit them on the steering wheel.

The cow put its head down and resumed eating the lush green grass of the paddock as the dust settled around the vehicle.

Bill, his face contorted with rage, glared through the windscreen and yelled, 'screwing her is not worth the bullshit she fuck's up my life with. When I find her, I'll flog her to an inch of her scrawny, shitty life.'

He slammed the car into gear and spun the vehicle around.

He headed back into town and the comforting offerings of a pub as the cow settled down to chew its cud.

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