Long Bay by Eleanor Limprecht

Author:Eleanor Limprecht
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Limited
Published: 2021-11-09T19:23:22+00:00

CHAPTER 20

Monday she wakes with a sense of dread, but not a bit of nausea. For the first time in a month she goes downstairs for breakfast. Don is at the table already, drinking his black tea. He must be anxious about the meeting.

‘What if he doesn’t show?’ she says, when Bess goes back into the kitchen.

Don looks up from his paper, running his hand over his chin. He needs a shave. He grimaces. ‘He’s bound to show. Do you think I didn’t scare him enough?’

‘What if he brings the police?’

‘If he’s got anyone with him it’s no deal. I said come alone and that’s what he’d better do if he wants the letters. I’ve done this before, quit nagging me. It’ll go fine. You’re making me nervous.’

Don stands and goes out the kitchen to the dunny. He is on edge. She wishes to take it all back now. While he is out there she shoves her hand in the pocket of his jacket. Inside the lining pocket are his pipe and a paper twist of tobacco. The hip pockets she checks last. There is a bulge there, a metallic sound as it bumps against the chair. She finds a pistol and a set of solid steel knuckledusters. She has never seen either weapon before and he has not mentioned them. The back screen door slams and—heart in her mouth—she hurries back to her seat.

‘I’m off,’ he says, coming through the kitchen door into the dining room. ‘Wish me luck.’ He gingerly puts his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and she averts her eyes when the metal clanks. She wishes she had never looked.

‘Have you got the letters?’

He nods, pats his pants pocket. She stands to give him a kiss.

‘Be careful,’ she calls after him, but the only response is the click of the door.

She finishes her breakfast and prepares to go to Ellen’s: a clean apron and her hair brushed and piled on the top of her head. The pistol distresses her, but it is the knuckledusters that she thinks of for the rest of the day. What sound, she wonders, do they make when they crush a jaw, or a nose, or the socket of an eye? How does Don have such an intimate knowledge of destruction? A pistol allows you to stay at a distance from violence, but knuckledusters are different altogether. With those, you cannot avoid the feel of bruising flesh, of smashing bone.

She is carrying the basin up the stairs when there is a knock at the door of the private hospital. It is late afternoon, and Ellen prepares a girl upstairs—a nervous, mousy-haired thing who does not look a day older than sixteen. Rebecca stands at the top of the stairs as the maid answers, and hears Bess’s deep voice at the door.

‘Could you fetch Mrs Sinclair? Something’s happened.’

The basin crashes from Rebecca’s hands and warm water sloshes across her feet, spreading across the floorboards, soaking into the runner and spilling in rivulets down the stairs.

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