He’d told me that, as it was his rostered Friday off, he’d spent the day doing a bit of carpentry work out on one of the grazing properties. He said he’d left home before daylight and hadn’t returned until after dark. His sixteen-year-old daughter, Mary — he and Marleen had been married for almost seventeen years, and they had four children — told him that their mother had left home that morning to go to work and that she hadn’t returned.
According to him, his daughter had told him that her mother had to clean the caravan park cabin that had been occupied the previous night. She also had to prepare the three vacant cabins for occupancy that night. Apparently, there was some sort of tennis club function scheduled for the weekend, and all three were booked for Friday and Saturday nights.
She had also told their daughter that once she’d finished at the caravan park, she’d be heading off to do a bit of shopping and housework for a couple of the older ladies she’d been helping out for the last couple of months. She’d told her that she could be a bit late getting home so it would be up to Mary to look after her younger brothers and sister. As was happening more frequently, there was no mention of making sure that her father was cared for, so he’d had to see to himself when he’d got in from work.
“When she hadn’t come home by nine o’clock,” he told me, “I decided that I’d better start looking for her. After searching everywhere else, I thought I’d call in here to see if she’d come in for a drink and got caught up with her girlfriends and lost track of time.
“I’ve tried calling her, but she must have left her phone at home. My daughter heard it ringing and answered it. I guess all I can do now is head home and wait for her. I just hope she’s all right. Although she’s on foot, so I suppose I’d have heard if anything had happened to her.”
We talked for a bit longer before I was called away to fill in for an absent darts player.
I was standing on the opposite side of the room when McFadden made his announcement. At first, I thought he’d just broken a difficult horse and was skiting about his achievement. He was a well-known horseman, and many of the local graziers used him to break and educate their horses for them.
It was only when he responded to the enquiry with, “I’ve been fucking Jimmy Brown’s wife since ten o’clock this morning, and I’ve cum in her and on her seven times since we started”, that the penny dropped. It was then that I glanced over to where Jimmy had been sitting. He was no longer there. All I saw was a shadow of someone disappearing into the men’s dressing room. Of course, Jimmy could have left earlier, and it could have been someone else’s shadow — the men’s dressing room was also where the men’s toilet was located — but I somehow didn’t think so.
I said earlier the Jimmy must have been the only member of the bowls club who didn’t know about Marleen’s sluttish behaviour. I have to admit that I’d be another. I had no idea. But, I probably shouldn’t have been surprised at being kept out of the loop. After all, I was a blow-in. My wife, Liz, and I had only been in the town for about eighteen months at the time.