Getting Away

There is a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach as I pick up the keys to the hire car, and start the long drive up the highway. The drought ravaged landscape does nothing to improve my mood. Crows pick at the eyes of the kangaroo carcasses littering the side of the road. In many places, dead grey trees reach skeletal arms towards the implacable sky, as if they had been begging the pitiless sun for mercy in their final hours. Even the grass has been bleached to brittle white bones by the frost.

As the sun begins to set and shadows prowl over the desolation, my anxiety escalates into full-blown panic. Sheer terror consumes me, and I have to pull over. I grope wildly in my bag for a Valium, and fumble for my water bottle. I hear the psychologist’s voice saying “Take long, deep breaths. Breathe through the pain. There’s no bear coming to get you. It’s OK.” It’s not a bear I’m frightened of, I think. It’s a man.

***

It’s dark by the time the car jolts down the dirt track to the ramshackle hobby farm where I grew up. The garden always was a bit overgrown; now it looks virtually impenetrable. The headlights illuminate the brown mistletoe beards on the ghost gums that line the drive like an army of sinister soldiers. I park under the old peppertree that I’d climbed as a kid, and chew my lip, trying to pluck up the courage to confront the past I’d run away from so many years ago. I’m tempted to reverse the car and go again, but I’d phoned to tell him I was coming. I can’t really back out now.

As I drag my feet up the path to the house, the light comes on in the porch, and a second later he is silhouetted in the door frame. He is visibly thinner, his posture stooped like an old man. I try to calculate what age he’d be now, but find I can’t think straight. “Abigail?” he calls tentatively. “Is that you?”

“Yeah,” I reply. “It’s me.” Who the hell else would it be at this time of night, I think? Besides, it’s not as if you’re the type to be inundated with visitors. Instead I try the flippant approach to break the tension. “The prodigal daughter has returned.”

Two more steps, and I look into his grey eyes. We are close enough to touch each other, but we’ve never had that sort of relationship. “The cops have named me as a person of interest in Clara’s murder,” he says. My legs buckle, and I grab the door frame for support.

***

Despite the exhausting journey, I don’t sleep well that night. The wind howls, and a tree branch scratches against the windowpane in my bedroom. It’s like a scene from a Gothic novel. At last, I take some more tranquilizers, and drift into a fitful doze, only to dream of Clara. She’s wearing the white halter neck satin dress she’d bought for our high school formal. She looks so sweet and innocent, so young and naïve. She’s walking towards me, saying my name: “Abi, Abi! You’ll never forget me, will you? Promise me you’ll never forget me. We’re best friends forever, right? Abi, promise me.” Her voice is hypnotic, melodic, like a siren luring a sailor to his death. Then suddenly a hand grabs her from behind. The knife enters her back, and a red stain spreads across her dress. I scream and scream until I wake myself up.

The light is on, and my father is standing over me, looking dazed. “I was dreaming about Clara,” I tell him. “About how she died.”

He nods. “I often dream about her too.” He clears his throat, as if to say something else. Then he gives an awkward little cough, and leaves the room.

                                                  ***

In a novel, my nocturnal encounter with my father would mark some sort of turning point in our relationship, a development in our characters. I would have gone downstairs next morning, and he would have made me toast and tea. We would have talked and cried and hugged. He would have blurted out, “I didn’t do it, Abi. It wasn’t me.”

“I know Dad, I know,” I’d have said. Then we’d have lived happily ever after, or something like that. Real life is different. There are no happy endings after someone is murdered. Besides, I always knew who killed Clara; I always knew what my father was capable of. I feel a frisson of fear again, wondering if he might suddenly attack me. Well, I’m here now, I think. I’ll just have to keep my wits about me. I distract myself by hunting for coffee and a mug. At last I find a cup behind a pot plant, and the coffee in the fridge. I’m still looking for sugar when I hear a noise in the doorway. I jump involuntarily. “Where’s the sugar these days?” I ask. There is no reply. I turn to face him. He looks at me as if he has seen a ghost. “Well?” I demand. Still he says nothing. I take a step towards him. “Have you gone deaf? Where’s the god-damm sugar?”

To my amazement, my father looks afraid of me. Suddenly I realise that the tables have turned. The man I’d always feared now seems to be terrified of me! He clears his throat, and whispers “Abigail? Is that you? What are you doing here?”

“Of course, it’s me,” I yell. “I came home last night, because they’d found Clara’s body. You told me that the police have named you as a person of interest.”

“Clara,” he says, looking at his feet. “Clara was such a beautiful girl. Now she’s dead, and it’s because of me.”

My rage intensifies. “How could you?” I scream. “How could you do that? She was my best friend.” He cowers from me, and suddenly I understand. This isn’t the father of my youth; he’s a different person now. He’s a frail, ill, old man.

Does this change anything? My head is spinning, and I can’t think. My anger has died down as quickly as it had risen. I try to apologise, but the words stick in my throat. Instead I ask “Are you OK?” He shakes his head. “Sit down then,” I tell him. “Do you want me to call the doctor?” He nods.

                                                    ***

“Your father has dementia,” the doctor tells me. “He was diagnosed a few months ago. Sometimes he’s quite lucid and seems normal, but his short-term memory is bad. He was making arrangements to move to a nursing home. Surely he told you.”

“We, um, haven’t really kept in touch over the years,” I mumble. “Um, you know how it is.”

The doctor frowns, and seems on the verge of saying something judgemental, but checks himself.

“What about his long-term memory?” I ask. “I mean, he was talking about a friend of mine who died  years ago.”

“Often the long-term memory is more reliable than the short,” the doctor explains. “Was he speaking about the girl who was murdered, Clara someone or other?"

“Clara Ridgeway,” I confirm. “Apparently the police went to see him after the body was found recently.” I stop short of telling him that they have named my father as a person of interest.

“No wonder he’s agitated then,” the doctor comments. “Stress makes dementia worse.”

Doesn’t it make everything worse, I think?

“Where do we stand legally?” I ask. “I mean, can I tell the police that he’s not of sound mind, and can’t give evidence?”

The doctor looks thoughtful. “I’m not sure. I think you’d better consult a lawyer.”

                                               ***

Bethany Fienberg, the lawyer Legal Aid allocated to us, is a formidable looking dark haired, thick set young woman.    I hope she’s as tough as she looks, I think. For years, I have dreaded the prospect of a trial. I don’t know if I could cope with it. I always have visions of myself breaking down in floods of tears and not being able to stop. I have never loved anyone like I loved Clara. In the last year of her life, she became so much more than a best friend to me. Even now, after all these years, I can still remember what it felt like to kiss her. I remember the way the moonlight shone on her damp hair after we’d been skinny dipping on warm spring evenings, and how wonderful it was to be entwined in her arms.

“Ms Ireland, do you understand what I mean?” Fienberg’s question brings me back to the present abruptly. “I’ll put it more plainly. Legally speaking, this is a rather grey area, but a person with advanced dementia should not be charged with a crime. How advanced is your father’s condition?”

I shake my head slowly. “I don’t know,” I admit.

***  

“I think it’s time to confess,” my father murmurs as we are driving back. The shock nearly makes me run the car off the road.

“You can’t be serious,” I splutter.

“I’m going to tell the cops the truth,” he insists.

“Didn’t you understand the lawyer?” I shout. “The dementia is a Get Out Jail Free Card.”

“No,” he mutters. “The truth will come out.”

“You’re no longer of sound mind. Nobody will listen to you,” I say through gritted teeth.

“I still remember what happened to Clara,” he mutters stubbornly.  

“Just be quiet!” I scream. “You’ve done enough damage.”

“I loved Clara,” he says, almost under his breath.

“No, you didn’t!” I’m almost hysterical now. “You never loved anyone. You almost bashed Mum to death, and then when she left you started on me. How dare you say you loved Clara! I loved her! You only wanted to take her away from me because she was mine!”

“it wasn’t like that!” Now he is yelling too. “I really did love her. She was so young and beautiful. I wanted her so much. I had no idea she was….” He pauses, searching for the right words. “I had no idea she was experimenting with girls.”

“She wasn’t experimenting!” I’m in a frenzy now. “She loved me. She told me so. She told me she’d always love me.”

“That wasn’t what she told me,” he sneers.

I feel the white-hot anger sear through me in waves, and gradually consume me, the same as it had done on the night I had found Clara with my father. I had been filled that heady joy that only the young feel. I was a little bit tipsy, totally in love with the world and life itself. I had come home from the high school formal to get changed. Clara and I had planned to rendezvous down at the creek just before dawn. I snuck into the house through the kitchen, so as not to wake my father. I was just about to enter the loungeroom when I heard her voice. “Oh, my darling,” she murmured. “You’re just the most wonderful thing.”

She’s come here to surprise me, I thought, and was just about to rush to her, when I heard my father’s voice answer her. I watched in horror as they made love on the settee. I can’t remember picking up the carving knife from the sideboard. I do recall my father leaving to go to his job as a nightwatchman, and Clara dressing slowly and languidly. She had her back to me when I plunged the knife into her. She let out a cry of agony, but I felt no pity. The hatred I felt for her and my father didn’t abate as I watched her die.   

I don’t really know how I managed to dispose of Clara’s body. I guess the anger gave me the strength to drag it to the car and put it in the boot. I remember it was raining as I pulled the body out the house. The drops seemed to stab at my bare arms, as if seeking retaliation for the stabbing I’d just inflicted on my lover. I drove to the creek with the windscreen wipers on full. In my dazed state of mind, I wondered why they didn’t stop the rain running down my cheeks, and then realised I was crying. I have vague memories of heaving and shoving the body down the creek bank until it fell into the swirling water with a splash. Oddly the thing I remember most is how my saturated dress clung to my cold body as I ran back to the car and drove like a maniac.

 I never thought I’d get away with my crime of passion. After all, nobody really gets away with murder, do they? But somehow, I seemed to have done just that. It had poured with rain for three days straight, and the body hadn’t been found. In that time, I’d somehow managed to get out of the country, to join my mother in New Zealand. Over the years, I’d made a new life for myself. I’d tried to break all ties with the past, and never think of my father and Clara again. Only the past had resurfaced, bubbling up through my sub-conscious with increasing frequency in recent years. When I heard Clara’s remains had finally been discovered, I knew I had to come back to the scene of the crime.

My father is speaking again now, sounding so lucid that I wonder if he really has dementia, or if it has been some kind of hoax to trap me. “You always were a cold little bitch, but you were my daughter, so I covered up for you.  I let you get away with murder! As soon as I came home and saw the blood, I knew what you’d done. I should have told the cops, but instead I just cleaned up the mess, and told everyone that you and Clara had gone away on a road trip together.”

The sweat is pouring down my forehead in waves. I wonder if I’m having a heart attack. I feel the car skidding on the icy road, and see a gigantic tree looming up, as if from nowhere. I think Nobody ever really gets away with murder, do they?