JOURNAL OF A COFFIN DODGER CHAPTER D

Chapter D

'So,' Anne said, as we sat together on a stone bench several yards away from the building, 'the museum is no more and the lower floor is now derelict.'

'Apart from the section which male nurses use as a brothel,' I replied.

'Apart from the section male nurses use as a brothel,' Anne whispered and shook her head.

Anne continued, her voice gaining strength.

'When I trained and worked as a General Nurse in public hospitals, this never happened.'

'Sure, as female nurses we expected male doctors and medical students to grope us. That was the way it was in those places.'

'It didn't mean we didn't retaliate, though. Hat pins were a way of getting the message across. But to systematise the sexual exploitation of females at a work facility... Phew! This takes the biscuit.'

Deviant purposes, which included removing plywood sheeting from several ground-floor windows and doors.

As well as furnishing the room that once housed the ward office with a garish vinyl Burnt Orange sofa. And the four lime green vinyl lounge chairs in that room.

These items came from the asylum's Furniture Store, as did the varnished round plywood table in the centre of the room, according to the asylum grapevine.

Reeking cigarette butts overflowed the four ashtrays on the table. Each ashtray had a New South Wales Government Public Service logo fixed to the side of these clear glass receptacles.

Also, according to the grapevine, nurses had pilfered the funds for a radio from donations made to the Asylum Patients' Comfort Fund.

Allocations from this fund lay within the gift of the asylum's nursing staff. Hence, a ruby-red transistor radio now sat in the middle of the plywood table amidst a variety of scrunched-up lolly and chocolate wrappers.

The male nurses who ran the brothel also furnished two of the condemned ward's ground floor cells.

In each, they placed a wide metal-framed spring bed. A once-white grotty sheet, greasy grey cotton blanket, and a malodorous dark stained pillow lay on each bed's lumpy kapok mattress.

The faint stench of kerosene drifted from a lamp perched on the vinyl top of a small square grey metal cabinet beside each bed.

A butt-choked round ashtray added to the sordid vibe of these rooms. A pongy dark red bakelite receptacle that lay on the seat of the Sapphire Blue straight-backed vinyl chair that stood a couple of feet away from each grey cabinet.

These cells, or 'Single Rooms' as the nurses called them, were not an unusual feature. Every asylum ward had at least four Single Rooms.

These rooms were similar in style to those found in other institutions where the confinement of people was undertaken.

Except that the bed was a standard issue metal framed asylum bed with a wooden platform under the mattress and, therefore, the bed was movable.

As well, the asylum cells had a thick wooden door, with a small head-height window let into the timber, instead of a barred cell door.

Another exception was that nurses did not need a legal reason to lock an inmate into a Single Room. Such confinement depended on an individual nurse's whims and fancies.

Nor did nurses have a legal requirement to record the details of these confinements.

Like, the reason for the confinement or the date and time of this event or the date and time of release from confinement.

Early one afternoon, about four weeks after being admitted, as wattle blooms gifted their aroma to the condemned building, Anne and I crept into the ground floor brothel.

The pale grime-filtered light from windows without plywood sheeting guided our way through the male nurses' sex parlour.

Anne had told me about the brothel a few weeks after her admission.

A couple of days, therefore, before the fire, with our plans for retaliation now completed, Anne took me for a tour of the bordello.

'Fucking hell! Anne,' I said, as we sat down on the Lime Green lounge chairs in the last room visited on our tour of the brothel.

'What a debauched, disgusting place. It reeks of exploitation and the pits of human depravity. As you said, it's not only the furniture that is stolen. So are the lives of women forced to take part in the degenerate goings on in this place.'

'Yer!' Anne replied. 'It's fucking way past the time to get these bastards and torch their bloody cesspit.'

A pensive silence descended between us as dust motes frolicked in the light that seeped through a dusty cracked window smeared with grey spider webs.

The room's damp air reeked of stale cigarette smoke, kerosene, and cheap pomade.

I glared with disgust at the creatures crawling on the pie crusts scattered across the table.

A trail of black ants snaked across the table, from its edge, past the crusts, to a cracked tea cup and up the side of the receptacle to its lip.

The cup was one of six on the table, spread around an empty clear glass whisky bottle and a brown sherry bottle. Both with their stoppers missing.

I shifted my gaze and looked at the light sparkling on the blue kerosene in the glass bowl of a lamp on the table. One of two alongside a torch.

The torch lay beside the Ruby-Red transistor radio and two open packets of diazepam tablets, both with the Asylum Pharmacy logo on the sides of the boxes.

With the power cut off, the lamps and the dim light gave the room a perverse, sensual vibe.

My stomach churned as, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rat scurry across the scabby, patterned vinyl floor. It ran up the side of the Burnt Orange sofa and disappeared into a hole in the seat of that item of furniture.

'Let's get the fuck out of here before I vomit,' I said.

I got out of my chair as Ann said, 'Yep! Time to split. No questions about the diagram I gave you of a car's engine and the position of the carburetor?’

'No,' I replied. 'And they park their cars in the shed adjoining the wall near the former entrance? The one with the window opening into that shed?'

'That's right,' Anne said as she stood up.

We left the room and navigated our way through the building.

We exited via the once covered rear entrance to the building. An entrance near a ground floor bathroom furnished with green enamel basins and green enamel bathtubs.

We gave each other a hug after we stepped outside.

We then separated and went to our wards. We did not meet again until the night of the fire.

On that night, the insipid light from a crescent moon cast creeping shadows across the cold iron corrugations of the shed's roof.

Moon light that lit my way as I walked beside my bike with Anne's diagram in the top pocket of my coat. I pushed my bike rather than riding it, to keep a low profile, as I snuck through the crisp night air.

I heard a soft repeated 'mopoke, mopoke,' the call of the Southern Boobook Owl and the hoarse bark of a fox as I drew close to the condemned ward.

I stopped underneath the branches of a Moreton Bay Fig Tree a distance from the building. A position that gave me a view of the shed as I parked the bike beside the tree's massive spreading root system.

Above me, twigs creaked as an eerie breeze rustled leaves lying in the watchful shadows of the tree as I eyed the open shed.

I took a torch out from the pocket of my coat, and with stealthy tread, approached the building.

I turned the torch on when I reached the shed.

The torches' dim light, shining through the piece of cloth I had wrapped around the torch, lit my way into the musty depths of the shed.

The two cars in the shed, a two-toned HR Holden Special Sedan and a dark blue Riley Pathfinder, were like vehicles my cousins owned.

Anne had snuck into the bordello that afternoon while the male nurses who ran the brothel were in their wards. She unlocked the window that opened into the shed and left the building unchallenged.

The window she unlocked was the sole window for a storeroom. A disused room lined with wooden shelves across a hallway from the former ward office.

As I walked between the cars and the shed wall towards that window, Anne was in the former ward office entertaining the two male nurses who had raped her. The two men who ran the brothel, now drinking alcohol Anne had laced with chloral hydrate.

I gave Anne a small brown bottle of that liquid the previous evening. I had removed the bottle from the uncounted medications inside a ward's medicine cabinet.

While the entertainment progressed, I reached the window.

Anne had not opened it as she feared the male nurses noticing it when they climbed out of their cars that night.

I heard laughter and a DJ talking on the radio before the sounds of a pop song drifted into the shed.

With cautious movements, I pushed the bottom half of the double-hung window up.

I then walked beside the cars, parked nose to tail, until I reached the vehicle nearest to the shed's entrance.

The front passenger's side window of this vehicle, the Holden Special, was open. I therefore opened the Holden's bonnet without difficulty.

With the dim light of the torch guiding me, I leaned over the warm, smelly, greasy engine. By using Anne's diagram, I located the carburetor. I turned the petrol inlet screw until petrol started dripping.

Leaving the bonnet open, I walked towards the back of the vehicle.

I paused outside the shed, a short way from the Holden’s tail lights. I turned towards the vehicle and lit a cigarette as petrol dripped onto the concrete floor of the shed.

Petrol fumes drifted around the dark depths of the corrugated iron shed's interior and through the open window into the building as I stared into those dark depths. Depths with several meanings I meditated on as I watched the smoke rings I created drifting in the moonlight.  

I turned my gaze towards the shed floor and saw, in the torch's light, petrol flowing towards the wall.

When the petrol reached the wall and flowed towards the window, I switched off the torch and put it into my coat pocket.

I watched the cigarette make a beautiful glowing arc when I flicked the cig towards the spreading stream of fuel.

I turned towards the bike and ran like hell away from the shed, so I missed seeing the cigarette land.

My knees were knocking together as I stood beside my bike, underneath the shadowy, whispering branches of the Moreton Bay Fig. I watched the fire flare and lick the flapping curtains on either side of the open window.

The Holden went first, followed by the Riley in a booming ball of flames.

With a ferocious roar, amidst the clashing sounds of cascading corrugated iron, the fire finished with the shed and tore into the building as I heard the window breaking. 

While roof tiles exploded in the heat and the stench of burning rubber, vinyl, and wood choked the night air, Anne bolted out from the flaming building.

I raced towards her and threw my arms around her. She held me tight as we burst into tears. The sense of relief was enormous.

As the sobs subsided, I took a hanky from my jeans pocket as Anne took a handkerchief from the sleeve of her nightie. After we dried our eyes and blew our noses, we walked in silence to the bicycle.

In the light of the flickering flames of the fire, I took a set of clothes draped over a brown leather suitcase.

A thick leather strap secured the suitcase to the bike’s rear carrier. I had untied the string attaching the clothes to the suitcase before I walked to the shed.

I handed the clothes to Anne.

While she changed out of her asylum garb, I unstrapped the suitcase from the bicycle carrier.

Anne’s belongings from the asylum nurses' home filled the suitcase. After Anne’s admission to the asylum, a colleague packed the items into the case and gave it to me for safekeeping.

When Anne finished changing, I handed her a bottle of perfume I took from my inside coat pocket. She gave her hair a soaking with the spray from the bottle to mask the stench of smoke and returned the bottle.

Though her bank book was in the bag, the banks were closed until 10 the next morning. Therefore, after I put the perfume bottle in my coat pocket, I took out from a pocket of my jeans, a purse containing cash.

As I handed the purse and bag to Anne, I muttered, 'Fucking hell!' as I shook my head and smiled.

'It was a bloody near thing!' Anne grinned and chuckled as she took the items.

Holding them in one hand, she squeezed my hand with the other, kissed me on the cheek, whispered 'thank you,' turned and strode towards the asylum's main entrance. She left an aroma of sweet smelling perfume trailing in her wake as I secured the leather strap to the bicycle carrier.

Once out of the asylum, Anne caught a bus on Victoria Road to Wynyard Park. From there, she made her way to the underground station and caught a train to Central Railway Station. On reaching the station, she transferred to a train travelling to the North Coast of New South Wales.

As Anne disappeared into the night, I picked up from the ground the clothes she had discarded: an inmate’s standard issue floral cotton nightie and a tatty green cardigan.

I strode towards the fiery, crackling building and tossed the clothes into the flames, as sirens screamed across the sinister asylum grounds.

As blues and twos drew closer to the fire, I returned to my bike, hopped on, and rode to a call box.

I phoned my house mates who I shared a farmhouse with on an abandoned North Coast dairy farm.

When the phone was answered, I said a friend, Anne, who I had known since high school, was on leave from the private clinic where she worked as a nurse. She was coming to spend a week or two with us and was travelling on the overnight mail train from Sydney.

My housemates agreed to meet her, in the sleepy early morning hours of the next day, at the station close to the farm.  

With that task completed, I returned to the place in Putney where I boarded in a house owned by a married couple. And, after I worked three more shifts at the asylum, I went on leave.

When I returned to work after that fortnight's leave, asylum gossip filled me in with details of the fire.

Dental records identified the body dragged out from underneath the up-turned green enamel bath tub. The body was that of one of the male nurses who ran the brothel.

The other male nurse failed to report to work after the fire, leaving his whereabouts a mystery.

Asylum gossip mentioned Anne as an escaped inmate. When the day shift for her ward came on duty the morning after the fire, they had noted her absence.

That day shift conducted a head count because no one had conducted one for several days. Five inmates were missing, including Anne.

Following her escape from the ward, and as sequelae to the suicide attempt that led to Anne's admission, she must have drowned herself in the Parramatta River. Or so the asylum grapevine claimed.

It was only a matter of time, therefore, before a phone call from the police will request a senior asylum staff member attend Sydney Morgue.

A woman's body, dragged out from the Parramatta River, needed to be identified. This body, according to the asylum grapevine, will be Anne's.

I nodded my head as I listened to this gossip flowing between staff members as I sat in the Staff Dining Room, enjoying my meals, while suppressing the occasional smile.

But, a couple of of weeks after returning from leave, I no longer listened to this gossip because I, too, left the asylum.

I left during my breakfast break, as I had no reason to return to the ward.

The day before I left, I collected, from the Pay Office, my salary envelope containing a fortnight’s pay. I had used up my recreational leave entitlements with the fortnight's leave I took after the fire.

My manner of leaving I had heard mentioned on the asylum grapevine as, 'gone to Victoria.'

It alluded to Victoria Road, the busy main road that ran past the main entrance to the asylum and into the city.

A reference also, according to that grapevine, to the dozens of nurses over the century of the asylum's existence who had walked out of the place. Walked out during a meal break and did not return to their wards to finish a shift.

After I signed out for my breakfast break on the day I left the asylum, I rode my bicycle to the house I boarded at in Putney.

I entered the house, and, after taking off my blue nurse's uniform and the white leather lace-up shoes, I had a shower, and put on a shirt, slacks, and sandshoes.

I wrapped my blue nurse's uniform around the garbage from the bin in the kitchen and pushed the greasy, rancid bundle into the incinerator in the backyard. After I shoved the shoes in beside the bundle, I set the bundle alight. I grinned with happiness as flames gobbled up the shoes and the uniform.

Returning to the house, I entered the kitchen.

I wrote a note with a biro I took from my shirt pocket to the married couple on a sheet of paper I tore from my notebook. They worked long hours at the fish and chip shop they owned in Drummoyne.

I informed them I was leaving; the bicycle became theirs.

After I returned the pen to my pocket, I placed the note on the kitchen table. I put the money I owed for board and the house keys on top of the note.

With the battered leather suitcase from my bedroom, which I had packed the previous night, I left the house.

I caught a bus to the city, and from there, made my way to Central Railway Station.

I bought a single first-class ticket from the Booking Office.

As well, I bought a caramel malted milk-shake and two pies with sauce from a milk bar at the station.

When I finished the milk-shake, I took the two meat pies with me and ate them on a train to the North Coast of New South Wales.

I had phoned Anne a couple of nights before leaving the asylum.

I left a 'catch up' conversation until we met and had the time and leisure for such a chat. Therefore, I told Anne only of my travel plans, and when she saw me get off the train, rushed to greet me.

We held each other tight and, after separating, amidst laughter and war-whoops, hand in hand, we strolled out to the Buggy.

A bright red Volkswagen Country Buggy I and my three house mates, Samantha, Jane, and Clare, had found in a shed on the dairy farm. A discovery about a year before Anne joined us.

Anne climbed onto the driver's seat and switched on the engine. We sat in the Buggy with the engine idling. I looked at Anne, puzzled.

'Why aren't we moving?'

Anne gripped the steering wheel and stared through the windscreen.

'I must inform you of something. I keep the engine running to mask what I am about to say.'

Alarmed, I asked, 'Anne...'

'No! It's not that. I am not about to respond to voices I hear in my head. Not that I have any. But normal conversations between people carry in this still, quiet country air.'

She paused, and, with a rush, blurted out, 'Clare knows one of the guys!'

'What...?' I stared at Anne's pale, drawn face.

With my heart pounding, I exclaimed, 'Fuckin' Hell! Holy Mary! Mother of God! What are we to do?'

Anne and I sat in the Buggy with the engine ticking over, absorbing the enormity of what she had disclosed.

After a few minutes, I broke the silence between us by saying, 'to state the bleeding obvious, sometimes murder is never as simple as it is planned.'

Anne nodded.

'Now, we thought it likely that the Asylum Administration will go for a cover-up. They don't want the shenanigans that went on in that building revealed to the world. Therefore, we expected to be on tenterhooks until we knew if the police accepted the cover-up or...'

'Continued making enquiries,' I concluded Anne's statement.

'Yep!' Anne said.'That's about the sum of it. But this other business ... It's a real wild card.'

'So, who's the housemate?' I asked.

Anne took a deep breath.

'It's Clare,' Anne replied.

'Crikey!' I exclaimed. 'So, do we have any idea where her loyalties lie? Because if her loyalties are to the guy she knows; that's nasty. After all, Samantha and I rescued Clare from the asylum. Not that I was expecting any quid pro quo. But at the very least, I hope she doesn't sell us out. It will be a real kick in the guts, though, if she does.'

'Understood. But let's have a cuppa while I'll tell you how I found out. Which will help us plan a response to what I discovered while we work out where Clare's loyalties lie. And I will tell you who the bloke is,' Anne replied as she switched off the Buggy's ignition.

'Okay,' I said.

'It's past three, so the milk bar is closed, but the Railway Refreshment Room is open. It won't close for another two hours until passengers on the Brisbane train have been and gone,' Anne continued.

'I've moved the Buggy's spare tyre to the luggage tray. So now there's now room for your suitcase in the boot to keep it safe from any passer-by who may want to take it from the exposed luggage tray,' Anne concluded as she stepped out of the Buggy.

'Smart thinking,' I said as I also stepped out of the Buggy.

I picked up my suitcase from the luggage tray, and, with the case locked in the boot, Anne and I returned to the station platform.

We strolled across the cool, grey late afternoon shadows stretching along the platform until we reached the Refreshment Rooms. A high-ceilinged smoky, commodious, space, furnished with a dozen or so wooden tables with four brown straight-backed wooden chairs placed around each round table.

Positioned on the white starched tablecloth spread across each table were two round, dark red Bakelite ashtrays. On the sides of each ashtray were the letters 'NSWGR RR' printed in black capital letters.

Close to the ashtrays, in the centre of each table, was a plain white ceramic vase adorned with flowers of various bright colours. Near each vase was a fluted round, clear glass sugar bowl with a glass lid in a similar style. Tower-style clear glass salt and pepper shakers, with silvered metal tops, and a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, completed the furnishings of each table.

A few yards away from the tables furthest from the entrance, behind a long, wide brown wooden counter at the back of the room stood a row of white uniformed waitresses. One of these women walked from behind the counter as Anne and I entered the room.

After Anne and I sat at a table in a far corner of the room, away from the counter and the other four occupied tables, the waitress approached our table and took our order.

An order of tea for two, with milk, and slices of fruitcake, both light and dark.

After the waitress left and returned to the counter, Anne said,

'Well, here's the story.'

'A few nights back, it was my turn and Clare's to do the dishes and clean the kitchen after dinner. The other house-mates, Jane, and Samantha, were in the lounge room, watching TV. The phone rang.'

'Clare stopped wiping the dishes and answered the phone.'

'When Clare returned, what she said shocked me.'

Anne paused and looked down at the table.

She took several deep breaths before looking up and continuing.

'Clare looked distracted when she resumed wiping the dishes. So, I asked her if anything was the matter?'

'She replied the phone call was from her brother Bill.'

'There had been a fire in an asylum ward where Bill worked.'

''A crazy lady,' Clare's words, set fire to the ward when the other ward inmates were away watching a movie in the asylum's Recreation Hall.'

'The 'crazy lady' hated Bill because he rejected her 'advances,' Clare's immediate summary, i.e. didn't have sex with her. Or, as Clare expressed it when she expanded on that initial encapsulation, 'he (Bill) spurned the crazy woman's desire to lie with my darling brother.''

'What the hell... What a load... That doesn't make...' I spluttered.

'Yer,' Anne replied. 'My reaction to until I thought of Joseph and Potiphar's wife. A Biblical story I remembered from Sunday School.'

'Oh! My God!' I replied, 'Of course! Yep! Now I remember it. As well, my father used the story in some of his sermons. Bill's a real clever piece of shit. Because his lie embeds itself into...'

'Clare's rock solid approach to life based on a hate-seasoned decoding of the Bible.' Anne responded.

'Come in, spinner,' I said sotto voce and shook my head as the waitress approached with our order on a round, silvered metal tray.

The waitress placed the tray on the table as Anne and I stopped our conversation.

The silence between us was broken by the clinking sound of crockery as the waitress took a plate with slices of fruitcake on it and the tea things off the tray and arranged them around the vase of flowers. She then picked up the tray and returned to the counter.

As she walked away, I resumed the conversation by saying, 'I wonder where Bill... Anyway, he must have hooked her right in?'

Anne nodded.

'Like a fish swallowing a bait. Because Bill's story is littered with holes.'

'Like, how did the 'crazy lady' get to know Bill, let alone know he was in the ward? Or how did she start the fire?'

'As far as I know, none of these issues, and several others that come to mind, Clare raised with Bill. She left his yarn unchallenged.'

'I take your point. But why did Bill...?'

'I'm coming to that.'

'Sorry,' I said as I reached across the table to the white ceramic teapot with a small red crest and the red letters, 'NSWGR RR' on its side.

I turned the teapot round three times and then did the honours. I poured milk from a silvered metal jug, followed by the tea, into the two teacups.

On one side of each white cup was a red crest and red letters like the markings on the teapot. Similar decorations adorned the upside edge of each saucer the cups rested on.

As I picked up my cup and sipped my tea, Anne continued her story.

'Anyway. Bill told Clare he had stayed behind in the ward to finish his paperwork.'

'Paperwork!' I exclaimed. 'Paperwork! The only paperwork asylum nurses do is when they shift their bums to a seat in the...'

'You and I know that,' Anne interjected, 'but, I guess, Clare swallowed Bill's bullshit because she doesn't.'

'Anyway, 'brave Bill,' Clare's words, chased the woman out of the building and helped extinguish the fire.'

Anne paused and took several deep breaths before saying, 'the holes in Bill's story keep widening.'

I nodded and said, as Anne picked up her cup and sipped her tea.

'Like where is the 'crazy lady' now? As Bill allegedly knows her, why isn't she locked up before starting another fire?'

I took a deep breath before saying, 'his concoction really is a stinking pile of horse manure which just keeps on spreading.'

Anne grinned as I drained my cup and placed it on its white ceramic saucer.

I picked up a slice of fruit cake as Anne continued,

'Agreed. There's a reason for Clare's gullibility, though, which I will come to.'

'So, Clare told me that, as she was thankful for her brother's deliverance, she needed a time of prayer.'

'As well, she needed to write the event in her journal to help settle her mind as her 'dear brother' had faced a 'perilous, life-threatening situation' and she was therefore finding it hard to focus on wiping the dishes and cleaning the kitchen.'

'So, I told Clare that I'll finish the kitchen duties, and she was free to attend to her prayers and writing.'

Anne put down her cup and picked up a slice of fruitcake. She ate the cake and brushed crumbs from the corner of her mouth, before saying,

'Anyway, Clare's mention of a journal piqued my interest. Because, while we were in the kitchen, Clare straight-up asked me if I knew anything about the fire that threatened the life of her 'dear brother.''

'Well, ten points for being subtle!' I exclaimed and finished eating my slice of cake.

'I reckon!' Anne replied. 'I had only told the housemates Samantha, Jane, and Clare, the story that you and I agreed upon.'

'That is, you and I had known each other since high school, had kept in contact since leaving school and I was working at a private clinic.'

'So, coming on top of what she had said about Bill and a fire at the asylum, that question rocked me. Because Clare was the first person in the household to reveal any knowledge of a fire at the asylum, let alone ask questions about it.'

'Geez! How did you keep it together?'

'I stared hard at the dishes I was washing so Clare couldn't see my face and replied over my shoulder, 'only what I read in the papers.''

'Clare then said goodnight and left the kitchen.'

'I barely gasped out a reply before I slumped onto a chair beside the kitchen table.'

'Fuck me bloody dead!' I muttered and paused before saying.

'Time for another pot of tea, eh?'

Anne nodded and brushed cake crumbs from her blouse.

I signalled to a waitress who came over.

I gave the order for tea for two, and, after she had cleared the table, I continued.

'So, now we know how Clare knows one bastard involved in that fire. The one who escaped. As for the other, Mick, or Mike, he answered to either name, what Clare knows of him, we don't know yet. Which means we don't know how she reacted to news of his death in the fire. That's if Bill told her.'

Our conversation stopped, drowned out by the sounds of a goods train rattling and banging its way past the platform.

Anne resumed the conversation as the sounds of the goods train faded away by saying, 'which seems unlikely, given the story Bill concocted about the crazy lady. However, what we do know is why Bill phoned. Because, I guess Clare will keep pumping to get gen about the fire to relay to Bill.'

'So, expect to be questioned because Clare has let the cat out of the bag. She can't catch you unawares about the fire, as she did with me.'

'And, as she has inadvertently disclosed Bill's murky investigation, we know the police won't be involved because...'

'Bill's focused on personal revenge,' I said, concluding Anne's statement.

'You've got it!' Anne said. 'Because, given what we know of Bill's nature, he will use his hold over the male Charge Nurses who used the brothel to ensure there will be a cover up. Leaving Bill free to pursue his agenda without interference from the police.'

'Also, we have a clue as to what we need to do. We have to concoct a story that takes the edge off Clare's nosiness.'

A contemplative silence settled between us until a waitress had bought over a tray with a pot of tea, cups, and saucers, and a silvered metal jug of milk.

After she had set out the items on the table and returned to the counter, Anne said as we let the tea brew.

'Anyway, a couple of days ago, I had the house to myself.'

'Jane and Samantha had left for a music festival at Byron Bay, and Clare had left for a revivalist retreat at Bluey's Beach.'

'Therefore, I took the opportunity to search Clare's room for the journals. I wanted to see if she had elaborated on her phone call from Bill rather than the potted version she gave me. If so, had there been any mention of the involvement in the fire by you and me?'

This time, Anne did the honours after she had turned the white ceramic teapot round three times.

She then poured milk from the jug into the cups, followed by the tea. I picked up my cup and began sipping the tea as Anne said,

'Anyway, I found several journals. There is one on the table in the lounge room for you to read. The others are in the drawers of Clare's dressing table.'

Anne picked up her cup and took a couple of sips before saying in a quiet, controlled voice, 'what Clare has written in the journal that I left on the table is awful, really bloody awful.'

'I had to step away from the journal and go outside to purge my mind of the bilge that I had read.'

'I sat on the sofa on the front veranda and thought about the beautiful things in life as I gazed at the starry sky. And fought the urge to consign the journal to the fire in the kitchen stove.'

I looked at Anne with concern.

'It sounds like you have had a shocking time,' I said.

'Yer, gut punches, twice,' Anne replied as her voice regained its strength.

'Once with Clare's questioning about the fire and then when reading her journal. I'd suggest preparing yourself before reading that item.'

'However, that journal provides a reason for Clare's gullibility by giving an insight into the strength of the relationship between those siblings. Therefore, we need to be wary in our dealings with her, because, I guess, her loyalties lie with her brother.'

'But, apart from that, I have not found what I was looking for in the journals. From what I read, Bill had disclosed no further information about the fire beyond what he told Clare during their phone conversation.'

Anne sighed and drained her cup of tea.

'Anyway, let's finish our cuppa and head home, yep?'

I nodded and drained my cup and returned it to its saucer.

'Yer! Sounds good. However, before we do, there's one other thing. Wayne... '

'Wayne?' Anne interjected, 'sorry! The bloke you've talked about who you saved from a thrashing in Ward 29. What, over a year ago now?'

'The same guy who lent you his Kombi for a rescue mission, yer?'

'Yep! 'That's the guy,' I replied as Anne placed her cup on its saucer.

'Anyway, he now works as a reporter for a community newspaper.'

'I had a phone call from him a couple of nights back.'

'He wanted to meet me at our place in Sydney, the one at Vaucluse, not the one I boarded at close to the asylum. But when I said I was moving to the North Coast, we changed the venue.'

'He's driving up and asked to stay at the farmhouse for a couple of nights. I agreed.'

'Now, things get a bit mysterious.'

'As I didn't know that you and I were the only ones now at the farmhouse, I suggested we meet at that park on the other side of town.'

'It's on the highway, just before you enter the main street, so it's easily spotted when driving from Sydney.'

I took a deep breath.

'I suggested that place for our rendezvous because Wayne wanted to meet away from the public eye.'

Anne looked surprised as she said, 'Wow! This does sound mysterious!'

I paused before saying, 'Yep! Because he too has something to say about the fire.'

'Fucking hell!' Anne muttered. 'But I guess he doesn't carry an agenda like the one plaguing Bill and Clare.'

'Nah!' I said. 'He's not the type.'

'I've got to know him over the months since the incident at Ward 29. He and I have shared interests in political and social issues. We frequently met at meetings and rallies to chat about and advocate for those concerns.'

'So, he plans to arrive at that park sometime tomorrow morning.'

'Nothing further was mentioned over the phone?' Anne asked.

'No. For whatever reason. And I didn't press him on the matter either,' I replied.

'OK! Then,' Anne said. 'I guess we look forward to tomorrow's meeting with eager expectation.'

'Anyway, let's go. I'll settle the bill, if you like?'

'Sounds good,' I replied, 'And it's my shout next time.'

Anne nodded as she stood up and made her way to the counter.

With the bill paid, we left the Refreshment Rooms and ambled back along the platform. We left the station precincts and walked across an unpaved car park to the bright red Buggy.

We left the black vinyl roof folded down and the windscreen in an upright position as I climbed onto the black vinyl front passenger seat.

Anne climbed onto the black vinyl driver's seat, started the engine, put the vehicle into gear, released the handbrake and we headed home.

Several miles from the station, the Buggy's shadow flitted from fence post to fence post as Anne drove along the track that ran beside the farm's eastern boundary fence. A fence line that led to the driveway of the house.

I watched black pendulous clouds deploy across the sky as we reached that driveway.

Clouds that stifled the warmth of the evening as they smothered the last rays of the setting sun while Anne turned into the rutted dirt driveway.

She drove along that track, passed the house and up to a shed.

A dilapidated shed which served as a garage several yards away from the backdoor of the house. A wooden structure whose eastern wall disappeared behind the bulk of a blackberry bush that spread its domain into the gutters along the roofline.

A roof whose loose corrugated iron sheets rattled with the sound of the Vee-Dub engine reverberating through the building as Anne drove the Buggy into the open shed. 

As Anne switched off the ignition and applied the handbrake, an icy wind blasted leaves and bark into ragged heaps along the western wall of the building.  

With the Buggy parked, we both stepped out of the vehicle.

Anne made her way out of the garage as I fetched my battered leather suitcase from the boot of the Buggy.

I carried the case in my hand as I joined Anne outside the garage.

We hurried our footsteps to the house as cold splodges of rain heralded an approaching deluge.

When we were half-way between the garage and the house, the deluge trumpeted its arrival.

The rain pounded on the roof of the garage, overflowing the gutters. A torrent that cascaded onto the flat corrugated iron roof of a shed that extended out from the back wall of the garage. A decrepit wooden walled woodshed a foot or two lower than the gutters.

The deluge pummelled not only this shed but also its corrugated iron door. A door whose rusty hinges creaked as the loop of wire latching the door to a nail in the shed wall flexed with the strength of the howling gale.

The deluge hit the house as Anne reached the back veranda door and pushed it open. I was a couple of steps behind her and shut the door of the enclosed veranda as the rain drummed on the roof.

As rain lashed the veranda windows, the veranda floorboards creaked as we hurried across them and entered the house through an open doorway. As I closed the doorway door behind me, Anne entered the kitchen and tended the fire in the Everhot fuel stove.

I walked through the house to my bedroom and placed the suitcase on the bed. I went from my room to the lounge room and lit a fire in the grate before joining Anne in the kitchen.

A couple of hours had now passed since Anne and I attended to those various tasks and had then tucked into dinner.

A delicious home-cooked dinner while sitting around the red cedar table in the kitchen. A repast that had more flavour than the two meat pies with sauce I bought from a milk bar at Central Station.

Throughout that journey from Central to the North Coast, I experienced the joy of having a first-class compartment to myself.

Therefore, I did not have to contend with men running their eyes over my physicality or starting intrusive, unsought conversations. It baffles me why men can’t keep quiet around a woman who is by herself.

Content with my own thoughts, I watched the countryside slip by as the train rattled and swayed on its journey from Sydney.

Only the windows now rattled, however, as the storm raged on and Anne and I, after dinner, sat in the lounge room of the farmhouse.

We sat in large, comfortable armchairs facing the fire as the wind wailed, and the rain hammered on the roof.

Armchairs that reminded me of scenes from movies. Black and white 'whodunnit' movies, that I enjoy watching, with plots set in the English countryside a decade or two ago.

Like the ones played out in an English country house.

Films with storylines involving a body lying on a blood stained carpet amidst the plush furnishings of a living room. Furnishings that included the style of armchair Anne and I were sitting in.

As I sat in my armchair enjoying the warmth of the fire, I held Clare's foolscap sized cahier in my hand.

I took a deep breath as I finished reading a chapter of that journal.

I looked up and turned towards Anne, her armchair a couple of feet away from mine.

'Oh! My God!' I exclaimed.

'Sorry for interrupting,' I continued. 'Yes, I agree. What Clare has written is vile, really revolting stuff.'

Anne looked up from the newspaper she was reading and turned towards me.

'I take it you've read the passages where Clare talks about the relationship with her brother, Bill?'

Anne's newspaper paper rustled as she folded it and placed it on the glass topped occasional table beside her chair.

I nodded as a moth fluttered around the glowing stained glass lamp shade at the centre of the room's pressed metal ceiling.

'The accounts are disturbing,' I said.

'There's something debased about their relationship. Though it's sickening to read about, it does provide insights why Clare swallowed, without choking, Bill's spin on the fire that took out his and Mick's brothel.'

'For sure,' Anne replied. 'I'd say we're on the same wavelength in our thinking about their relationship, yer?'

I nodded.

Anne turned and looked towards the fireplace. I did the same as we both fell silent.

Shadows created by the fire's yellow and red flames lolled on the cream coloured walls of the room. A soothing contrast to what I had read, and the rain slashed, wind-swept night outside the house where an animal bellowed into that desolate darkness.

As the clock on the stone mantlepiece above the grate chimed the hour, Anne stood up and said,

'Anyway, that's me done for the day. I'm buggered.'

'I'm heading off for a night's rest.'

'In the morning, let me know your thoughts on Clare's intention, written in the journal, of bringing to the farmhouse, from her retreat at Bluey's Beach, a gang of disciples.'

'Individuals from that weird church she belongs to.'

'Guys with Clare's mindset, written in the journal, of misogyny and homophobia. Attitudes towards difference bolstered by the selective use of Biblical references.'

'The purpose being to convert us, in particular, Jane, and Samantha, to that grotesquerie of Christianity she practices.'

'Cripes!' I responded. 'That's outrageous!'

'Oh! Yer! Because she writes of her discussions with those disciples and the way those proposed conversions are to be undertaken.'

'Hell's bells!' I exclaimed and shook my head.

'But I can't say, I wasn't forewarned. Because, after all, I heard her preaching at The Domain of a Sunday afternoon before she joined our household.'

Anyway,' Anne said, 'let's talk further over breakfast tomorrow after you have read those passages.'

'And let's talk with Jane and Samantha as soon as they get back from the music festival at Byron Bay.'

'After all, Clare doesn't get back from the revivalist retreat at Bluey's Beach until a couple of days after Jane and Samantha return. So there's time to work out our response.'

'Sounds good,' I replied.

Anne yawned and shivered.

She turned towards the windows and said, 'on a night as wild as this, it’s comforting to be snug in bed. Good... Oh! Shit! The spotlight's back!'

'What!'

I stood up from my chair and placed Clare’s journal on the round wooden table in the middle of the room.

Anne and I then strode across the soft green and white patterned carpet to the windows and peered out.

'Now that's weird. Hunters go shooting on clear nights. I've never seen hunters out on a night like this, waving a spotlight about,' I said.

Anne and I watched a powerful beam of light shine across the paddocks a couple of hundred yards away from the front of the house.

'I hate it when the beam shines on the house. It freaks me out,' Anne replied.

We watched a vehicle’s tail lights move away from the house towards the dam in the back paddock of the farm. The vehicle's progress marked by the restless beam of a spotlight as it roamed a wide arc of ground to the sides and the front of the vehicle.

'Fucking arseholes. Anyway, goodnight. Fingers crossed, they won't be back.'

I called 'goodnight,' as I drew the curtains across the windows and Anne strolled out of the room.

Leaving the journal on the table, I walked through the house, drawing curtains over the windows.

After locking the front door, I proceeded to the back veranda door. While checking it, I jumped back, startled.

A large brown huntsman spider scurried across the door, just inches from where my hand had been.

I relaxed as the spider slipped into the crevice between the door and the wall. However, a loud, recurring noise from the backyard disrupted any sense of tranquility.

A banging sound. A sound as loud as hail belting the unlined corrugated iron roof of the front verandah.

The sound I focused on, though, sounded like the unlatched woodshed door slamming against its frame.

I hesitated, considering stepping out into the wild night to check if I was correct. If so, to secure the door.

I thought, 'Strange! I didn't hear the door banging when Anne and I walked to the house. Maybe the wind is wilder than I imagined and has forced the door open.' I shrugged my shoulders. 'But nah! Bugger it! It's too deranged and wet to be outside. I'll leave the door; with any luck, the storm will end by morning. I'll sort out the door then.'

Having locked both back doors, I made my way through the house and returned to the lounge room.

While the tenacious banging of the woodshed door added its drama to this moonless night's wailing wind and driving rain, a vehicle crawling towards the woodshed added another.

On the far side of the woodshed from the house, only the vehicle’s tail and parking lights showed as it moved along a muddy track.

The lights went off when the vehicle stopped as a cigarette glowed in the dark interior of the Holden, on the driver’s side of the front bench seat.

I don't know whether it was after I checked the doors or before I completed those tasks that the car parked behind the woodshed. Or whether it was before or after I entered the lounge-room that a figure slunk out of the garage. Or what I would have done if I had known. But I knew how to put wood on the fire.

Which I did after I entered the lounge room and took a couple of pieces of split she-oak timber from the wood box. The lidless dark blue metal, wood box stood a few feet away from the grate, below one end of the mantlepiece.

After I put the wood on the fire, I stood in front of it, warming my hands, and cursed pervy blokes.

Who either shone a spotlight through the windows, unsettling the house's night time tranquility. A blazing beam that sent scary, grasping shadows jumping out of corners and up along the walls.

Or a couple of their utes paid us a visit on Saturday mornings.

Mornings when dawn's warm rays shooed the last of the night-time shadows from the house and a clear sky presaged a rain free weekend.

As the vehicles approached the house, they drove fast along a dirt road. The unpaved road that ran past the house on the other side of the front fence.

Crammed into the back of the utes, amongst dogs, and camping gear were blokes.

Boofy blokes who stood up and yelled, 'we've come to check out the chicks!' while the vehicles slowed down as they drove past the house.

Raucous laughter accompanied the chucking of scrunched up beer cans at the house as engines revved up. Clouds of choking dust drifted towards the house as the blokes sat down and the utes sped away.

It never made for a comfortable morning as I and my housemates, before Anne's arrival, Jane, Samantha, and Clare, sat on the edge of the front verandah.

I stopped drinking a cup of tea as my hands trembled at the thought of the ute stopping at the front gate and the blokes piling out. A thought that scared me shitless.

On those Saturday mornings, reflections on the beauty that lay around and above the farmhouse suffered a blow, replaced by anxieties, clanging rhythms.

Beauty like rose-pink fluffy clouds strolling across the heart-aching-blue dome of the sky and Pied Currawongs caroling from the trees beside the house. Or the piping call of a Pied Butcher Bird and the aromas that ambled out from the flowers of the grevillea and banksia plants growing in the front yard.

Yellow and red blossoms swaying in a cool, soothing breeze as brown and yellow thornbills and bright blue wrens chirped and hopped their way around the flowers.

Thoughts of the beautiful things in life, however, that were difficult to conjure up while I gazed into the lounge room fire after Anne had gone to bed. Because my mind was buzzing with other matters while I held my hands towards the blaze.

I dropped my hands to my side and took a deep breath as I turned away from the fire and returned to my seat.

After I sat down and looked towards the journal on the table, the buzziness in my mind focused on the relationship between Bill and Clare and other similar fucked-up relationships.

Like the ones I heard about during my off-duty hours while working at the asylum in Sydney. Time often spent in women's groups where we shared life stories.

Life stories that sometimes recounted abusive, predatory incestuous relationships with the male members of a family.

Stories that resonated with me because of my father's sexual abuse of me and my two younger sisters.

An abuse that only ended when I and my sisters, as teenagers, left the family home about a decade before I started working at the asylum.

Abuse that went to another level when my father prostituted us out as children to churchmen who made sizeable donations to the church where my father preached.

Having brought this nastiness to mind, I wondered whether Clare knew Mick, the bloke who, with Bill, raped Anne in that Single Room in Ward 24. The bloke who partnered with Bill to run the brothel in the derelict asylum ward.

I therefore went to Clare's room to peruse her journals, searching for any mention of Mick.

Turning on the light, I rummaged through the dressing table drawers where Anne found the journal I had been reading.

There were several similar sized journals to the one I had read in different drawers of the dresser.

I thought it was odd Clare had numbered each journal in large Roman Numerals on the inside front cover.

I shrugged as I finished flicking through the journals and put them back in sequence according to that numbering.

As I discovered later, that was an error.

At the bottom of one drawer was a framed photograph of three people.

I recognised the person at the centre of the photo as Clare.

And, while writing this journal in the 21st Century, I re-tell the encounter with the bloke standing to Clare's right in that photo. A guy with his arm around her waist whom I saw decades after I searched through Clare's dressing table at the farmhouse.

A bloke who walked past my table at Macca's as I ate a meal after getting new tyres put on my car. Tyres from a workshop with a pasty faced slimeball behind a counter when I visited friends in England.

A bloke who drove out of Macca's carpark in a car reminiscent of vehicles I saw in movies depicting England in the 1950s and '60s.

A bloke I recognised in the photo as a male nurse from the asylum. Clare's brother 'Bill.'

The bloke to Clare's left in the photo was Mick.

Now, returning to that time in the farmhouse: I almost dropped that photo, however, as, startled, I looked up as the sound of a motor vehicle reverberated through the house.

I shoved the photo into the drawer, closed it, and turned off the light.

Leaving Clare's room, I raced to the lounge.

I picked up a torch from the round wooden table and put out the lights.

I flicked on the torch and strode towards Anne's room.

However, I met her coming out of her room as the beam from a car's headlights blazed through the lounge room curtains.