Smithy's Cupboard Read online

  The three people who marshalled themselves against me had a uniting bond, both at work and in their social life. They were always known as schemers yet had never demonstrated any malice towards me. It must have been simmering away like lava deep within them, striking when the gases were right. The mountain opened up and the release exploded over the top and poured down on the unsuspecting victim. And I was it.

  Barbara was the ringleader, a person whose aspirations were curtailed when I pipped her at the post and occupied the highest rung on my ladder. I saw a look of hatred in her eyes shortly after I parked in my new office.

  ‘Barbara, I know you wanted this job. It’s not my fault, you know.’

  She stood up and she must have been tearful as her heavily applied mascara was dripping from her blazing eyes onto her cheeks. She shook her bottle-blonde head. Her hand was shaking and spilling the coffee on my carpet.

  I stood up and said, ‘Get a mop.’

  ‘Do you think I’m your fucking servant?’

  She stormed out and I was left with one thought, and it wasn’t, ‘That went well.’

  The leader of the pack had finally hoisted her flag and it was a war which I did not welcome

  Smithy rang that night and must have sensed something strained in my voice. He spoke softly as he usually did. ‘What’s the trouble, love?’

  I burst into tears and told him as much as he could absorb. I heard him breathing deeply, waiting for me to talk it out.

  ‘She’s like Macbeth’s wife, scheming to destroy me. I feel it flooding the air.’

  ‘Shall I come home?’

  I thought then he would probably kill her. My victim tone had come through. Always the martyr, I told him it was not necessary

  Emails became vicious. A contraceptive filled with condensed milk was placed in my drawer and ants scrambled all over it. A black glove with a broken wedding ring was in another drawer. I opened my locker and a blow-up sex doll floated around the office up against the ceiling and was entangled in the overhead fan. The sight of the doll with the fixed expression driven around in circles by the fan and finally being dislodged caused an uproar of laughter and I laughed as well

  I drank too much at the Christmas break-up. And in a thoughtless moment I returned a kiss to Andrew my boss, full on the lips. Cameras went off, bulbs were flashing and everyone in the room had stopped talking. Nudges and winks were seen and heard. Photos were sent everywhere and to Andrew’s wife, a possessive woman. A photo of two lovers naked had my face and Andrew’s transposed on it and copies went everywhere.

  Smithy came home and dropped his bags in the hall. I didn’t know he had been given leave and I was half sloshed. He stood back and looked at my hair in the curlers I had left in from the night before. I was in my stained dressing gown which had been my favourite apparel throughout the previous week. He was sweet and blamed himself for not coming home when I was distressed. I took long service leave and stayed away. We went fishing and camping, and we made love under the stars.

  Andrew rang when we were back.

  ‘Come in.’ His voice had a clipped air. ‘Read this.’

  Which I did. I had been accused of releasing confidential information. There were no guesses as to the name of the author of the report. He concluded it would be investigated and I stayed away. Her report was found to have no substance and I was cleared. Andrew came again with more paperwork He was furious over the naked photos which had been passed around.

  ‘Fill this out, Joan. It’s a harassment claim against Barbara Mitchell.’

  I felt he was a bit cowardly in not submitting a grievous complaint and on reflection he was typical of those bosses who cover their arses. However, I complied and stayed away from work. Everything was on hold. Barbara and the other two kept their jobs and Smithy was not happy that they were not suspended. She was even filling in my spot for a time.

  The claim went on for some time with denials proclaimed loudly to anyone within her space. Something inside my being was lost. I felt like a mountain climber who is about to hammer in the last spike into the granite fissure when the spike breaks and he has to climb down precariously, with the prospect of one final spiralling plunge to destruction.

  Four years ago, my armpit was itching and I scratched it and pressed against a lump, which when I followed it with my fingers went into my left breast. Tests came and went and the dreaded phone call from the surgery: ‘Come in please, Joan.’

  Doctor Bob looked up as I entered and sat down. He made a big fuss of scratching around between phone calls and quick advice delivered in his charming bedside manner. His horn-rimmed glasses were sitting on the top of a handsome head with blond curls. In a place of prominence, there was a photo of his family with three children beaming and smiling. He pushed his eyebrow hair which always hung over his eyelid. (Why doesn’t he get them trimmed, I thought.) He struggled to open up a dialogue.

  I took up the cudgel. ‘Hit me with it, Bob.’

  He looked at me for a while and said nothing until he read out the report, which said breast cancer and spreading. I walked out in silence with Bob holding the door and the receptionist giving me a strained half-smile.

  It just grew and grew along with my depression and I wondered whether the cancer was the real body and the rest of me was just the lump. I was disabled and miserable and was in victim mode for a long time. I missed my son’s graduation from the Victoria Police Academy and Suzie’s night of fame with her country and western music. However, Smithy was able to attend both ceremonies along with my parents. Then I had a little good news. It appeared the cancer had stopped for a while.

  I was able to visit Maud in 1993 during my remission time. She was in an induced coma after a series of strokes. Her CWA friends were always at her bedside and I could not remember a time when she didn’t win a prize for her fruitcakes.

  They chatted about their friend and the war years, her with her two sons always scrubbed and well dressed, Ted away in the war and the grandparents helping with the farm despite old Paul being gassed in World War I. They spoke about the dances and Maude trying in vain to remove the hair from her lip. We all laughed at that, adding, ‘There was not a bad bone in her body.’ She did not wake and just slipped away at age seventy-three. Ted joined her twelve months later and to my sorrow I could not attend his service.

  I remembered the time when the men sat around talking about the war, though Smithy did not speak about it in depth. The two fathers and Adam were home as well in the lounge. Maude hated war talk and I could see she was getting anxious. Noises came from the kitchen. Ice cubes were banged to dislodge them, furniture was being shifted around needlessly, cushions being chucked about. Cupboards were opened and doors slammed shut. Probably to lessen her growing hostility, the men suddenly went quiet and looked at her.

  She threw her best tea towel on the floor, hands on her hips and glared at the men with her penetrating dark eyes, blacker than I had ever seen. ‘You were all kids then. Babies, you were.’ Her voice was on the verge of cracking. ‘You pretended you were all blasé. Acting out as if you were in a John Wayne movie. Full of bullshit from a would-be soldier who never saw any action.’

  No one ever spoke of war again in her presence. She was right. The fashion of her old Celtic genes of women visualising the return of their menfolk flooded her brain. And her contempt for glorifying war, and for the killing of innocents, had come to the fore.

  Her funeral came and went and it was a sad affair as could be expected. It pushed my thoughts back to my old Auntie Vi, who lived with us when I grew up.

  She was Dad’s oldest sister and died just before my brother went into the navy. She was lying in her coffin inside the church. She rarely smiled and her eyes did not smile; rather they appeared fixed like a python peering over a rock. Dad was the lucky one from the old photos I remember because he got the looks in the family.

  Her mottled face stared back at me as I bent down to kiss her forehead. It was not expected of me but I co
mplied anyway, as I usually do. It was a new experience because I had never kissed a corpse or a marble slab, which in temperature (I presumed) is the same. I stood up, looked down and watched as her mouth flew open, exposing a cavity full of white teeth which I had never seen. The cavity was a bit of a shock yet I recovered and regained my teenage composure. I once again attempted a kiss and I smelt the odour of brandy, which was unusual as she had died three days before. Maybe she had a few good gulps before she passed on, I surmised.

  I recalled as kids we saw her make quick dashes without her wheel frame to her bedroom and then she would guzzle great swallows from her secret stash. (We peeped through the hole in the door.) Her lips made a smacking sound along with the sounds of clothes being pushed aside as she stowed it away. We darted away as she came out of the door with the wheel frame in place along with the grunts and groans of a woman supposedly in pain.

  By nightfall, after having puffed through a packet of Camel fags from many given to her by a Yank soldier, she was in good form. The screeching about all the wogs immigrating after the war and stealing our jobs, living on the smell of an oily rag and not speaking English. Her favourite hate was the Prime Minister Bob Menzies, nicknamed Pig Iron Bob, who had sold iron to the Japanese before the war which ended up being fired back at us. After two hours of her hate-filled remarks, Dad would quietly wheel her into her bedroom under protest, with her arms waving and still shouting.

  She muttered and snored all night. Then it was down to church at daylight, where she poured out her twenty-four-hour sins to a listener, who could probably repeat them all chapter and verse. Back she went later to the secret stash.

  Her younger brother Jack would come in some nights and sing in her face, ‘The old grey mare’ and she would chuck at him anything within her reach.

  And there we were at the completion of her service all with some good thoughts about her: her beautiful embroidery, the knitted jumpers for all of us, and the books which she would read to us. A smell of lavender emanated from the coffin and afterwards at the wake, Dad solved the puzzle regarding the brandy. Dad, the so-called atheist, had snuck a half bottle of good brandy wrapped in a lavender bag just under her left side while she was lying in her last resting place. She had received some sustenance to help her on her new journey (she claimed to have been Cleopatra in a previous life).

  They closed the lid after taping her mouth and we all said a few prayers for her. The grog had spilled on the lavender. Mum chastised Dad with the kind of withering look which used to cause Vi to fold up and shut up.

  Andrew came to see us a few days ago. It was without his wife’s permission. She rules the roost and I think she believes we had an affair. It was a harmless kiss and that is all. I signed a resignation form which I had requested.

  ‘Are you up to giving evidence, Joan?’

  I nodded. ‘The ambulance will take me there,’ I replied.

  ‘You’ll win this.’

  ‘I hope so,’ I added.

  The case was completed and I had no compunction in putting my side of the story.

  A month later, the judge gave Mitchell a scathing look and said it was the worst case of harassment he had witnessed. He recommended her immediate dismissal, which occurred, yet at that point I felt hollow and wondered what it was all about. The other two were sidelined to considerably lower paid jobs. I was out and no one came to see me. The Queen is dead; long live the Queen, I suppose, and I knew my time on the planet was limited.

  Counsellors came and went and I made a decision to return to my religion, which is a comfort.

  My regrets? Plenty of them. I should be at my prime soon to enjoy grandkids and of course my own two. I won’t be here to give them advice like mothers do with daughters. Smithy is a strong man yet I fear he will slip into a spiral. I dread the idea of him hunting down Barbara, which could end badly. Our kids need him more than ever and not sitting in a gaol cell. Do I regret his career which kept him away, and his being embroiled with the agent job? No. I’ve read too many books and seen too many movies about those matters and it’s hard to separate truth from fiction. I’ve urged him to go to confession. It’s not hard to guess what tasks he has been mixed up in. The IRA stuff was a fair guess. However, I can’t control from beyond – he must make choices. Better ones, I hope.

  5

  Smithy 1996

  My beloved Joan slipped away from this world fluttering her eyes and brushing at them with withered fingers which had held my hand all of those years. No words were uttered and I doubt I would have heard them as my thoughts were fixed on vengeance against Barbara Mitchell. I had a plan yet I was not able to focus on the specifics. Shane, Adam and Suzie watched and cried when she slipped away. Too many deaths.

  At the funeral I stood silent, wearing my SAS uniform, watching the soldier pall-bearers carry her out while the priest muttered scriptures. The family were all shocked and in tears. She was lowered into the earth and I went through jumbled thoughts of our lives, our almost perfect marriage, healthy kids, a cop and a singer flying back to the States soon.

  Yet vengeance circled. I recalled Ted’s words before he passed on, which for a moment blocked my evil plans. ‘A good wife is like great wine. You become adapted to the aromas. The taste, the lingering odours, become part of your expectations. Then you’re required to drink bad wine at a friend’s house two weeks after your beloved has passed on. You know she was like good wine in that moment. Maybe she’s happy. She no longer has to wash your underwear and the socks which you carelessly tossed in the wash basket, still inside out. That’s when in one shattering moment you know what you’ve lost. The echoes of the life you built, the small arguments. The big ones are precious. What-ifs return in spades, such as what if I had made my compliments sound more convincing? That’s the overall thought which circles in your head, just like an irritating TV commercial. If she was here now, I’d kiss her twice a day on her hairy lip. Your regrets pile up like a basket full of dirty washing.’

  The service concluded and I glanced up towards the small hill and saw a man and woman standing there. I walked towards them and recognised Barbara Mitchell from the court case. I ran towards her. The hairs on my neck were bristling, the scar on cheek throbbed. I heard my kids yelling from behind, ‘Stop, Dad, stop,’ but I kept on I drew closer and shouted, ‘How dare you come. You killed her, you killed her.’

  She turned away, as did her partner. And I kept on, rushing now, tripping slightly on a stone. Regaining my posture I stared right in her face. ‘I’ll follow you. You won’t have a peaceful moment until you die, which won’t be long.’

  They ran off. I still persisted and in one last raging speech I yelled out so loud above the wind that other mourners nearby heard my words and shook their heads. ‘What was it all about? Lost your job, didn’t you, Barbara?’

  And they ran off. Shane and Suzie restrained me and I knew I was in trouble.

  6

  1997

  The complaint by Barbara Mitchell was addressed by the police and regardless of the high emotion which was understandable after the funeral of Joan Smith they were forced to proceed. The prosecution thought a simple restraining order might resolve the situation. However, they were required to move the case which was set down after the usual formal hearings, arrest, bail and the waiting game.

  Mitchell gave no thought to the reasons for Smithy’s outburst and insisted that the charge of threatening life should proceed. ‘He’s a dangerous man,’ she said to anyone who would listen.

  Not that her crowd of former workmates were about any more, now that she was stacking shelves on night shift in a local supermarket. She secretly hoped if he was gaoled she might be able to sue him through the civil courts and top up what superannuation she had left, now that her husband John had left.

  John had been unhappy with his wife. He knew of her bullying tactics and bursting aspirations. However, he was a trifle scared because his brother-in-law belonged to a well-known bikie gang. He thought about D
ave Smith and how the entire episode had been orchestrated by Barbara. Did Joan’s cancer happen as a result of the bullying? He wished she would just accept a restraining order. She kept repeating how dangerous Dave was as if she was trying to tell herself how fearful she felt.

  ‘Why did you go to the funeral, Barb?’

  ‘I didn’t want my friends to think I was spiteful.’

  To which John replied, ‘What friends? They’ve all disappeared off the radar.’

  ‘So you think he’s not dangerous, do you?’ Her tone was sharp.

  He did not reply and she added an afterthought. ‘You’ve always been piss weak anyway.’

  John puffed his thin chest out and his face flushed red. He avoided confrontations with her as she always took the high ground, shouting him down. The anticipation of another court case which she might lose did not appeal to him.

  He skimmed through life like a swimmer who concentrates on ploughing through the surface, never diving to investigate the world beneath. John’s mind was overflowing with too many memories of put-downs by his wife. It was as if he had at last dived deep and seen another world.

  ‘I’m leaving you tomorrow.’ His speech was delivered gently, clear and unashamed and without fear.

  Her eyes grew as wide as tea cup saucers for a brief moment until the old merciless tone of rudeness bobbed up and flowed out like a torpedo being released from a submarine. ‘Fuck off, then. Go on, fuck off now.’ And just to add as much humiliation as she could to her words she said, ‘I’ll find someone with a bigger dick than yours.’

  However, her spite fell on deaf ears, as John was hurrying away in the blustering wind and noisy traffic, his bags already packed and his airline tickets to Thailand in his pocket. Sue, his new friend in that country, where he had been promised a job teaching children English, would be waiting for him in the house which he had bought for her