Copyright © Carmel
Bird Jan 1999. All rights reserved.
Every Christmas Shadbolt Gray sent his sister Charmaine a letter. 'Dear Char', he would write, 'Nothing much to report'. And then he would go on about his work on the oil rig, the prawn trawler, the opal mine. Ever since his beloved Doreen shot through with a fireman, taking the kids and the four-wheel drive, Shad had been a real rover, never short of work, never short of mates, never short of women. Yet always in the Christmas letter there would be a wistful reference to Doreen and the kids. He never seemed to understand or accept that they were gone forever, and year after year made some allusion to the time when they would get back together, when he would have his own garage in some country town. 'I can just about afford to buy the garage now, Char,' he wrote. And he would allude to the fireman, not by name, or even by profession, but as 'that shit-faced paramedic'.
Shad was well-built, suntanned and handsome, with bright green eyes and a real Kennedy-style grin. Charmaine wished he would get over Doreen's defection, and get on with his life. In fact she never understood what Shad saw in Doreen in the first place. Doreen was small and pale with wispy faded ginger hair and no eyelashes. She spoke with a whine. Shad could have had any girl he wanted; but he fell for Doreen.
Came the day when Charmaine knew she would have to contact Shad and let him know that Doreen and the fireman had skipped off to California with the kids, and that Doreen had, furthermore, produced the fireman's baby.
It was early December, and Charmaine sat down at the kitchen table with a writing pad and a biro, and, fortified by a substantial glass of Southern Comfort, tried to begin her letter. She stared for a long time out the window at the brilliant cyclamen of the bougainvillea. She poked the end of the biro into the spaces between her teeth. Nostalgic songs were playing on the radio, sad love songs of regret and tears and hearts broken and beyond repair. 'I see your face in every flower; I hear your voice in every breeze that blows.' Charmaine was sorry she had to be the one to tell Shad that Doreen was gone forever. Better come to the point.
'Dear Shad,' Charmaine wrote, 'Here it is nearly Xmas once again. I hope you're OK. I'm sorry to have to be the one to tell you this, but somebody has to. I have decided to just give you the facts. Which are that Doreen and Andrew Martin have cleared out overseas. They have gone somewhere in California. They took Bronte and Teisha. And the other thing is that they have had a baby boy. You know I never like to give you advice, but I really wish you could bring yourself to forget her. It's really truly over, Shad. I feel that now you can get on with your own life, meet some better woman and have the garage and settle down. You know we all feel she was never good enough for you anyhow. I am sorry to say that. It is sad about the kids, but there you have it, they are gone. Maybe when they are older they will come to know you as their father. I look forward to hearing some good news from you. And I send my love and wish you Merry Xmas, and hope it is.'
She read it through and wondered if she should have told him about the baby. Then she decided that was perhaps the very fact that would finally bring him to his senses. She sent it to where he had last been working on a sheep station in outback New South Wales.
Shad's Christmas letter came late. It was early February before it arrived, and Charmaine was terribly afraid that what she had told him in her letter must have tipped the balance and maybe finally sent him crazy. What if he went racing off to California? What if he shot himself?
At the sight of Shad's handwriting Charmaine felt first relief, and then a kind of panic. What if it was a suicide note after all? In the still heat of the afternoon, she sat on a bench under the grapevine in the back yard and tore open the envelope. She spread out the thin blue paper, just one sheet, and read.
'Sorry I didn't write
at Xmas. I know I always do. But your news was pretty hard to take and
I was a write-off. Went on a bit of a bender and ended up at the funny
farm. Am better now. Off the grog. The shrink says I'll be OK soon enough
and maybe I'll come down and see you. I think I can say I've put Doreen
behind me. There was a time as you know when I imagined I could see her
everywhere I looked. I'd look in the mirror behind the bar and she'd be
there beside me, if you see what I mean. I used to see her face in the
clouds and if there was a crowd on TV I'd see her in there, waving a banner
or getting trampled to death. Sorry to rave on. I enclose a photo taken
shearing last year. Hope you are well. Don't worry.
Your loving brother, Shad.
PS: I've got her out of my system and her face has disappeared.'
Charmaine looked in the envelope, and there was the photo.
It was a picture of Shad, beaming from the upstairs window of the shearing shed. Below him was a flock of shorn sheep staring at the camera. Charmaine looked first at Shad in his blue singlet, and then she traced the long shadow that fell from the image of her brother, down the wall of the shed, pointing like a finger at one of the sheep.
There was no mistaking it. The sheep's face staring into the camera was horribly familiar. It was Doreen.