‘Cover up our feathered friend,’ Mrs Hardegan commanded. Fowler placed the blanket over the cage. The parrot gave a squawk of protest and fell silent.
‘But it’s still our fault,’ Mrs Hardegan continued. ‘We couldn’t help it, couldn’t love him—no wonder the boy turned out like he did.’ She paused, her mouth was turned down but Stevie could see no evidence of tears in the age-washed eyes. ‘We’ll tell you soon what happened, we’ll tell our story, but only when we’re ready. You must have hours and minutes.’
Hours and minutes: patience. This was something Stevie found to be in very short supply. ‘But Mrs Hardegan, please, tell us. Do you know who killed your son?’
‘The Japs did—didn’t we just tell you that?’
Stevie looked toward the parrot cage, waiting for the nerve-grating echo, but it remained silent, thank God, cage gently swinging from the roof beam. She’d better steer the conversation to smoother waters. ‘The baby, Joshua, what can you tell us about him?’
Mrs Hardegan began another laborious stitch. Fowler sighed, put his hands in his pockets and started to pace to and fro. Stevie bit her lower lip. ‘Fowler...’
‘They stole him,’ Mrs Hardegan said at last.
Fowler stopped pacing and met Stevie’s eye.
‘And when the boy found out about it,’ Mrs Hardegan continued, ‘he went quite mad. He was always stupid, only a poor uneducated peasant, but nice, we liked him despite all that. But then stupid turned to mad.’
‘What boy, Mrs Hardegan? Jon Pavel? Skye? Ralph?’ Stevie asked. ‘No, that boy.’ The old lady pointed to the Pavel house with the tip of her needle.
‘Delia Pavel, you mean Delia Pavel went mad?’
Mrs Hardegan stabbed the needle into the tapestry and left it there, as if she’d had enough of her sewing. ‘He came to us and told us what the boys were doing and then that boy of mine said yes they were when we asked him. And then we went mad too.’
With a rush of excitement, Stevie sprang up from the footstool and began to speak rapidly to Fowler. ‘Maybe Delia didn’t know the baby was illegally adopted—although with the upstairs bedroom as it was, she had to have an idea of her husband’s other activities. Somehow she found out that the baby was stolen and the knowledge tipped her over the edge. The madness must be the depression Skye suspected Delia of having and the reason for the house being kept in such a mess. Delia must have confided her fears to Mrs Hardegan, telling her about Ralph’s involvement in her husband’s illegal activities, which Ralph later admitted to his mother when she questioned him.’ No wonder the old lady had had a stroke, Stevie added silently.
Mrs Hardegan nodded her head; all her words had escaped her now. The news of her son’s death had taken its toll, despite her efforts at hiding it. She put her tapestry back on the table and sank back into her chair.
‘Mind waiting for me in the car?’ Stevie said to Fowler. ‘I won’t be long.’
Fowler hesitated before nodding a sombre goodbye to the old lady. He was about to move when she held up a finger. ‘No, wait where you are,’ she commanded. ‘You are to come back another time. We have some books belonging to the boy and we want you to take them to his parents.’
‘I can get them now if you like, it’s no trouble, I’ll be seeing them at the funeral.’ Fowler made as if to move toward the book-crowded hallway.
‘We said not now. Later. You will have to take them to that place, where they live, that place with all the dust and woolly animals. It’s a long drive but you will do it.’
Fowler said he would. They watched him as he opened the back door and stepped into the garden, shoulders sagging under his creased suit jacket. Mrs Hardegan looked at Stevie and let out a breath. ‘Stupid is as stupid does. But not a bad boy.’
Stevie agreed, tried again to clasp the old woman’s hand. This time she didn’t pull away. ‘Are you going to be all right?’ she asked. ‘Can I get you anything, anyone I can ring? A priest maybe?’
‘We’ll miss the boy.’
Skye, Delia or Ralph?
Stevie didn’t ask.
Stevie called in at the deli and paid the girl Leila for the DVD. Fowler curled his lip when she climbed back into the car and tossed Gone with the Wind into his lap. ‘What you watching this crap for?’ he asked as he held the cover up to the interior light.
‘It helps me relax. Don’t you have a favourite movie you watch over and over again, something you can just veg out to?’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve watched Saw 3 a few times, I guess.’
Right.
After dropping Fowler back at the hospital for his car, she returned to her mother’s house, read to Izzy for a while and then settled on the couch in front of the TV. She’d had little sleep over the last few nights, her mind spinning like a hamster on a wheel even when she did get the opportunity. Tonight she was asleep before Scarlet and Rhett could fall into their first clinch.
Lilly Hardegan continued to sit in her chair well after her visitors had gone. She didn’t feel like writing any more of the letter tonight and anyway, the Thai girl knew the rest of it. She wondered if Mai would see the irony of it all.
As she gazed at the picture of Percy on her sewing table, grief wrenched her to the core. She’d refused the policewoman’s offer of a priest, didn’t need one. What good was a priest, she thought, if you don’t have the religion to go with it? Lilly Hardegan had lost her faith in the jungles of New Guinea some sixty-odd years ago. (Image 22.2)
Image 22.2
THURSDAY
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
After a good night’s rest, Stevie felt energised for the first time in days. She dropped Izzy off at school and did some grocery shopping, stocking up the pantry and freezer with Monty’s favourites in preparation for his return from hospital. She bought soy sauce and egg noodles, Asian greens and coriander. It seemed a shame to condemn the fresh tiger prawns to the freezer, but she wasn’t exactly sure when he would be discharged and couldn’t risk food poisoning on his first day home. Wait a minute, prawns were full of cholesterol, weren’t they? Vegetable curry with lots of healthy chickpeas, she decided, that’s what they’d have, and enough chilli to blow the tongue off a giraffe.
She pulled up outside their house and looked seaward. A row of conifers guarded the coarse lawn of the beachfront near the café. Before their curry, if Monty were up to it, they’d sit there on the bench near the swings and watch the sun set, talk about anything but work, talk about Izzy, talk about their new house.
She found the revised extension/renovation plans waiting in a cardboard tube in her letterbox. The architect must have dropped them off while she was out—God only knew she hadn’t been home much over the last few days. There was a note saying that he’d implemented the changes they’d discussed at their last meeting, and as a result these plans would have to be re-submitted to the council. Christ, when was all this red tape and dilly-dallying going to end? Just as well she didn’t have a sledgehammer close at hand or she would’ve been tempted to start the demolition herself.
She spent the afternoon at the hospital with Monty, but omitted to tell him the latest developments with Mrs Hardegan and what she’d found out about the baby’s illegal adoption. Under normal circumstances she would have valued his input, but now she wanted him to think she had withdrawn or lost interest. She didn’t think she could cope with any more staged heart attacks.
They discussed the revised plans, which lay stretched over his bed like an extra sheet. She’d also brought in some interior decorating magazines and they pored over them together, selecting fittings and furniture, trying to balance the old-world feel to which they aspired with the comforts of modern life.