The Ocean Road Megan Clark Volume 1 Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Creative Writing School of English University of Adelaide November 2014 Chapters As they are ordered in this book. Chapter One Port Noarlunga, Tuesday, November 9th, 1999 Page 1 Chapter Two Melbourne, Friday, December 1st, 1972 Page 39 Chapter Two Port Noarlunga, Wednesday, November 10th, 1999 Page 82 Chapter Three Port Noarlunga, Monday, August 4th, 1986 Page 118 Chapter Three Port Noarlunga, Thursday, November 11th, 1999 Page 156 Chapter One Adelaide, Monday, November 7th 1938 Page 194 The Last Chapter Port Noarlunga, Friday, November 12th, 1999 Page 236 1 1 Chapter One Port Noarlunga, Tuesday, November 9th, 1999 This is not her. I'll tell you what I told the cops - this is not her. I don't care what my Aunties told them, what Nana said; she'll just agree with the last person who spoke. I'm not being mean, she'd say this herself. I can imagine them talking about Mum. Unreliable. What’s she done now? Calling the cops though? Whose idea was that? I can't imagine where she is, I mean, that's true, but it is only one day and I am practically an adult now. I'm not in high school. I can look after myself. Maybe she.....I don't know, all right, but the cops? I'd already decided that I wasn't going into TAFE this morning - so I was in bed. I was in Mum's bed actually, I slept there last night. I wasn’t quite awake. I was rolling over to where the sheets were cool. I was listening for Dizzy's taps down the hallway. I’ve been tired, not sleeping, even before Mum up and offed. It’s been, I don’t know, a week since Dizzy died. Dizzy Dog. Then the nightmares that night and then for the next few nights. We’d buried her but too shallow and I could see her leg, her paw, sticking out of the dirt and pine needles and then the dirt was moving and I realized she wasn't dead after all. I had buried her alive. I was calling to Mum but she kept saying it would be fine, be fine. The memory of the nightmare keeps coming back, every time I stop, even though the dream itself hasn’t. It comes into my head when I think of her: when I’m reminded that she’s gone; that she’s really dead. I listen but I can’t hear her tapping on the floorboards in the hallway. If I looked for her in her usual space, I’d only see a shiny stain on the wooden floor. 2 I leave the telly on for background noise. When someone lifted the doorknocker and fairly fucking banged it right through the front door, I jumped out of my skin. It was the cops. I opened the door and one of them asked me, Elizabeth Smart? They came in before I could answer, they just looked over my head up the hall and then followed their eyes and then they were in the room. That must have been how they did it. I suppose Dizzy would have stopped them, before. Then, once they were in, they asked if they could come in and then they sat at the dining room table, their backs to the wall, and asked if they could sit down. I sat down and thought of the open kitchen and the shelves behind me and wondered if there were any implements left out. A sawn-off two-litre coke-bottle; surely the cops would've known what that was. It was probably a stupid thing to be thinking but I was shitting myself. Cops! It’s too late now; they’re in. They speak like Americans; they think they’re pretty important even though one looks about the same age as me, or only a bit older. We just have a few questions about your mother. When was the last time you saw her? A party for what? Did you stay? What time? So it was Saturday night then? And when did you return home? And where were you? At a friend’s, I told them. They told me not to worry, I’d be ok. 3 They told me not to be scared. I wasn’t really listening at the end. Some number, a percent returning within a day or was it a week? Do you have any questions yourself ma’am? Ma’am? Did he really say that? Can we take a look around? Hang on a minute, I think, but they’ve got me. I didn’t get home until Monday night, late, I hadn’t called home, Mum would’ve worried about me and then when I did get home, I rang Nana, hysterical and now this. I deserve it all. They are both standing up and making to move into the hallway, one already has his eyes in Mum’s room; he is following them down there. The telly's still on. I can hear the rhythm of somebody on a morning show selling something. I don't have a question except where is my mum and why am I me and why right now and what is my life and what is life and why do I have to think about it now in front of you? Cops! Faceless to me since my Mum would normally be the one describing them; that one, with freckles, she'd call him the twelve year old and the other would be the one who ate all the pies and she would say that it was human nature, the job, jobs; the world was made up of others. In the cop’s case, goodies and baddies and we'd always be the baddies since we’re not cops. I listened to my Mum. Are you ok? I just forgot what I was gonna say, I told ‘em. I’d heard Mum say it as an excuse often enough. Fucking stoners. I felt a bit like one now though. P’noid. To the max. 4 They moved down the hallway. Their eyes and then their heavy feet. Even the twelve year old stomped. What were they looking for? A question mark! A question at last. Not sure. Signs. Signs of a struggle, for instance. This window for example, could be a sign, is that recent? Nup, that happened a while ago. I didn’t give them the details. It was about two years ago. Ben Crow had put a cut-to-size pizza box lid in it two months ago. How about that torn curtain? Yeah, nah that one happened ages ago too. I didn’t say, probably when I was still a baby. This hole, it's been patched up? Yep, ages ago. Look fellas, I actually said that, I think I was channeling Aunty Ange, I've been here I said, there isn't anything new to see. I would've seen it. I’m sure you aren’t gonna find anything…..like that. Who called you? I asked him. We are not at liberty to discuss that Ma’am. He did say it! They passed my bedroom; the twelve year old paused and looked in but hefty bent his head down and kept walking, into Mum's room. He stepped into the middle of the shiny space in front of the heater; Dizzy’s spot. He looked around the room, he fairly surveyed it before heading straight to Mum's desks; she has two, at the back of the room. First he went to the one facing the wall, he looked around her computer, her notes and journals and lists, her teapots and cups 5 and Graham Greene novels with sand in them from reading them under the jetty. I could see his eyes on everything. Then he moved to the desk in the bay window – the one covered in stacks of paper. He lent forward to open the blinds. His belly rested on the table and it moved one of the stacks into a fan shape under the stripes of sunlight through the blinds. He straightened up, tapped the edges of the papers to straighten them up and then lent back; satisfied it seemed but then, What have we here? He asked. Well, it's not her is it? I said it. They both looked at me then. The fact that they were being nicer to me than I was being to them stopped me. Fuck them, sticky fat fingers all over my Mum's white paper; dust floating everywhere; bed unmade; old milk in the bottom of the teacups. My mother is a writer. This is the novel she's been working on. Why is it in a circle like this? I don't know. The fat fingers were picking up the pages now, tapping them straight against the desk; I knew it was him that had knocked on the front door. Him making to read. His tongue trying to come out of his mouth. Eventually it would make it. It would be fat and pointy at the same time. I can't watch. 6 Please don't touch them, my Mum wouldn't like it if she came back and found her stuff moved around (by you). Mondays were the worst and this was the worst yet. He's reading it! I can relate to that, how about you, Stewie? Talking to Stewie but smiling at me.