Chapter Fifteen
CHAPTER
15
Keith Urban runs ahead but sits when he reaches the narrow footpath on the bridge. ‘You were supposed to be guarding the house,’ I scold him.
Kit glances at me then away. ‘When the mine closed, you were harassed, bullied.’
‘I handled it.’ I swap my bag from one arm to the other. I swap it back again. ‘Everything is fine now.’
He pauses on the bridge and holds out his hand. ‘Let me carry it.’
I plonk the bag at my feet. ‘Why come tonight?’
Turning towards the river, Kit rests his forearms on the wall. ‘The film.’
Grandpa stored away the containers because it hurt him to think about them, but if I’d asked for them he would have given them to me. As it was, I relied on the photos Grandpa kept in his bedroom, now in his room in the nursing home. Dad as a child at the saddlery with Grandpa and Grandma either side of him. A photo of me, Dad and Grandpa. Three photos of me, taken by Dad. A newborn. Six years old with no front teeth. On my first day of high school with a gap between my teeth.
The water, streaked silver by the streetlight on the corner, flows slowly. A gust of wind rustles the trees and grasses that grow along the riverbank.
‘What about the film?’
‘Digitising the video footage will take time, but we’ve copied most of the stills. Many were taken while your father was in Antarctica. Some were taken in Summerfield.’
‘I wondered …’ I swallow. ‘What are they like?’
‘The Antarctica footage will be useful. Thank you for letting us see it.’ He holds out his hand, palm up. The memory stick is black. Slender. Unmarked. ‘I’ll give you the other photos when the video is copied.’
Dad and I camped in the national park a few times a year. As I sat next to him with sketchpad and pencils, he taught me about plants, animals and landscapes. Composition. Contrast. Light and dark and in between. Balance. I’d sketch and he’d take photos and shoot videos. I must’ve been only nine or ten when I asked him why he didn’t develop any of his photos. A shadow crossed his face. He forced a smile. ‘When the time is right, Mary Mackenzie,’ he said. ‘When the time is right.’
Dad worked in a job he hated to give me a stable home life. Somewhere to escape to when I wasn’t living with Mum. When I was with Mum, he’d drive for hours to see me at a school assembly, or to pick me up and drop me off from a party. I always came first.
‘Mackenzie?’ Kit speaks quietly.
It would be easy to touch his outstretched hand. One hand under his. One hand on top. Blinking away the thought, I take the memory stick between my index finger and thumb, secure it in my fist then store it in my pocket.
‘Thank you.’ My voice is high.
‘Withdraw the submission for Summerfield.’
When I take a step back, I teeter on the kerb. He holds out a hand, but I step aside. I get my balance. ‘Why would I do that?’
‘Your father, your grandfather, this town.’ He frowns. ‘Me.’
‘It would make your life easier, wouldn’t it?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘I want to do it!’
‘I can’t protect you.’
‘You don’t have to.’
He rubs his creased brow. ‘Astrid will want your father’s story. His life and his death.’
Turning away from the river, I look back towards the saddlery. Beyond the glow of the porch light, his bike glistens sharply. Even in a car, the roads are dangerous after dark.
‘So long as they keep my mother out of it, that’s okay. Dad’s career is part of my family’s story.’
‘Your father died at thirty-eight. Most people think—’
‘It was an accident!’
‘Erik sent me the coroner’s report.’
I’m gripping the wall so tightly that the sandstone digs into my skin. I force my fingers open. Run my index finger down a crack in the stone.
‘The coroner didn’t know my father.’ My voice wavers. ‘He didn’t know what kind of man he was.’
‘The coroner looked at facts.’
Keith Urban sits at my heels. ‘Dad was talented, he had an accident and he died young. That’s all that Astrid needs.’
‘You’re defensive about your parents. Until tonight, you hadn’t engaged with the town. You were reluctant to be filmed. You’re not equipped to do this.’
‘I don’t have letters after my name. I’m not an actress. Maybe I’m not pretty enough. Are they problems too?’
His eyes narrow. ‘No.’
‘I’ve worked with my hands, supported myself, since I was sixteen. Dad took me to the bush on the weekends and in the holidays. We’d hike and camp. I know things. I can do things.’
‘Like stunt riding?’
‘It was an accident!’
‘It was staged and it went wrong.’
‘Horses aren’t always predictable.’
He stabs a finger towards the saddlery. ‘That one almost killed you.’
‘He deserved another chance.’
‘You should have fought for compensation.’
‘I didn’t want Leo to lose his business. I don’t like lawyers.’
‘You had Astrid’s support.’
‘I can’t—’ When my voice breaks, I turn away. ‘I didn’t need Astrid’s help.’
‘You call a meeting with no back-up.’
‘What about Shelley, Gloria and Claudine? And Marie.’
‘You didn’t expect her. The others defer to you.’
A possum scampers over the ground, scratches up a tree trunk and disappears into the foliage. I can’t disappear. It’s not an option. I face the Viking again.
‘If the documentary goes ahead, we’ll have more interest. It’ll improve our chances of getting additional funding. My grandfather supports what I’m doing.’
‘Your grandfather is dying.’
My throat constricts. ‘Where did you hear that?’
‘Lucas Merewether confirmed it.’
An owl hoots and hoots again. ‘You had a good chat, did you? Are you mates now?’
‘I’d prefer to get information from you.’
‘Why? When you’ve already made up your mind about everything.’
‘Mackenzie!’ He mutters something under his breath. ‘Give me your own words. Explain these things.’
‘If Grandpa doesn’t want to discuss his illness, I’m not going to. I know what I’m doing. I’m capable.’
‘For fuck’s—’
‘That’s all you need to know.’
When Kit picks up my bag and strides away, back ramrod stiff, I have no choice but to follow. I take a wide berth around his bike as, Keith Urban bouncing at his heels, he takes the steps to the verandah and puts the bag on the doorstep. The light is behind him as he retraces his steps. How would he react if he knew about the break-in? Was that harassment and bullying as well? If I tell him what happened, it’ll be another black mark against my name.
Shoulders back, expression grim, he stands in front of me again. ‘Pull out, Mackenzie.’
Why not question me over the phone? Why ride here from goodness knows where with something he could have sent in the post? I finger the memory stick in my pocket. My eyes sting. A lump the size of an orange clogs my throat. I don’t cry. I won’t.
***
That’s all you need to know . Harassment from the town. My parents. Grandpa. Kit wants me to pull out.
For his sake, or mine?
I’m too hyped up to sleep, so I make a pot of tea and go back to the piles of documents that—even before the break-in turned them upside down—were chaotically filed into the containers that’d been stored under the house. Most of the papers have been put into the recycling bin, but I’ve yet to sort the court documents. I create a line of empty red folders, like stepping stones, on the surface of the table.
Even before I was born, Mum and Dad were fighting over me. Initially, my mother insisted she’d had sex with other men before and after she’d broken up with Dad, and denied he was my father. Dad, who’d been with Mum for the past four months, went to court and got an order to determine paternity. Not that the results confirming that would have made a difference, Dad told me later, because by then he’d set his heart on me, but there was no way he’d be given access unless he was my father.
In the end, Mum got advice from her manager and lawyers that, if she didn’t want negative media attention about her ‘motherhood experience’, she should acknowledge Dad as my father. For his part, Dad agreed to play happy families for at least three months.
He was pacing in a hospital waiting room as Mum was giving birth but was allowed to visit afterwards. Mary was my maternal grandmother’s name and also my paternal grandmother’s name (a fact Dad kept to himself). But, just like a royal baby, I was to be known by my second name, Mackenzie. And luckily for me and Dad, Mum had never got around to making her stage name, Clementine Green, her legal name, so my birth certificate recorded the surname Henry.
My parents—a talented, famous, beautiful actor and a promising and handsome young filmmaker—were on the front cover of every celebrity and women’s magazine in the country. Cradled in Mum’s arms, I was ‘the daughter she’d always dreamed of’.
Until I wasn’t.
Court papers from the first four years of my life fit into one of the bright red folders. Papers for the next three years fit into another. The third folder holds two years of papers, but by the time I’d turned ten, it was one stuffed folder per year. I don’t have a string of letters after my name like Kit does. I didn’t finish school or go to university. But that doesn’t mean I don’t know things.
Children aren’t assets. Coroners get things wrong. Grandpa deserves a legacy.