Peter Temple: An Iron Rose

She laughed. Vinnie arrived with the toasted sandwiches.

‘That was quick,’ I said.

‘Cook’s day off,’ said Vinnie. ‘Everything’s quicker on his day off. Including the time. Passes too fast.’

We talked business while we ate. On our way back, I said, ‘About Alan Snelling.’

‘Yes?’

‘You want to think.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Alan’s lucky,’ I said. ‘His old mum popped off. Nobody thought she had much, just the house, falling-over weatherboard. Not so. She had lots of things. Jewellery, coin collections, stamp collections, and a box with about $100,000 in cash in it. All up, worth about $400,000.’

‘Well, I suppose there’s an explanation,’ said Allie.

I said, ‘Also, Alan had a business partner, ran their little video hire business in Melbourne. Top little business, big as a phone booth, cash flow like Target. Then the partner was working out in his home gym and the machine collapsed on him. Fatal.’

‘That’s not lucky,’ Allie said.

‘They had key executive insurance,’ I said. ‘Half a million.’

We were going down the lane, when Allie said, ‘What’s that about his mother mean? I don’t get it.’

‘People could think Alan was parking invisible earnings with his mother.’

‘Invisible? You mean illegal? Like drugs?’

I shrugged. ‘Among the possibilities.’

‘Jesus,’ Allie said. ‘How do you know this stuff?’

‘I forget where I heard it,’ I said.

Allie went off to a job. I should have worked on the knives but instead I rang the library at Burnley Horticultural College and asked them if they had any information on Harkness Park. The woman took my number. She rang back inside half an hour.

‘I’ve tracked down a dozen or so references to it,’ she said. ‘There’ll probably be more.’

‘Any pictures or drawings?’

‘No. It was designed by a man called Robert Barton Graham, an Englishman. It’s not clear but he seems to have been brought out by a Colonel Stephen Peverell in 1896 to design the garden. He designed other gardens in Victoria while he was here, but they’re all gone as far as we know.’

‘Anywhere else I could try?’

She sighed. ‘Our collection’s pretty good. The State Library doesn’t have anything we don’t have. Not that you can get to, anyway. I’ll keep looking.’ As an afterthought, she said, ‘Sometimes the local history associations can help. They might know who has information.’

I drove over to Brixton, the town nearest Harkness Park. I knew where the local history museum was, a brick and weatherboard building near the railway station. It had once been a factory with its own rail siding. Two elderly women sitting behind a glass display counter in the front room of the museum looked surprised to see a visitor.

‘G’day,’ said the smaller of the pair. She was wearing a knitted hat that resembled a chimney pot. Wisps of bright orange hair escaped at the temples. ‘You’re just in time. We’re just having a cup of tea before we close.’

A hand-lettered sign said: Adults $2, Children $1, Pensioners Free. I put down a coin.

The second woman took the money. ‘On your own, are you?’ she said. She looked like someone who’d worked hard outdoors: ruddy skin, hands too big for her wrists.

‘I’m interested in gardens,’ I said. ‘Old gardens.’

The women looked at each other. ‘This is a local history museum,’ the smaller one said apologetically.

‘I thought you might be the ones to ask about old gardens around here,’ I said.

They exchanged glances again. ‘Well, there’s a good few that open to the public,’ the taller one said. ‘The best’d be Mrs Sheridan’s, wouldn’t it, Elsie? Some very nice beds.’

‘You don’t know of a place called Harkness Park?’ I said.

‘Oh, Harkness Park,’ she said. ‘Mrs Rosier’s house. I don’t think that’s ever been open. She had nothing to do with the town. Didn’t even come to church. People say it was a grand garden once, but you can’t see anything from the road except the trees. It’s like a forest.’

‘Old Col Harris used to work there,’ the other woman said. ‘Him and that Meekin and another man-I can’t remember his name, lived out on Cribbin Road. Dead now. They’re all dead.’

‘There wouldn’t be photographs, would there?’ I said.

The taller woman sighed exaggeratedly. ‘Don’t talk about photos. There’s a whole room of unsorted photos. Mr Collits was in charge of photographs. Wouldn’t give anyone else a look-in, would he, Elsie?’

‘He’s not around anymore?’

She shook her head. ‘Blessing, really. Had a terrible time.’

‘I told the committee we needed to appoint someone to sort the photos,’ Elsie said. ‘But will they do anything practical?’

‘These men who worked at Harkness Park,’ I said, ‘do they have family still here?’

‘Why don’t you just go out there and knock on the door?’ Elsie said. ‘It’s still in the family. Some cousin or something got it.’

‘They sold it. I’m interested in knowing what it was like twenty or thirty years ago.’

‘Col Harris’s boy’s here,’ the taller one said. ‘Dennis. Saw him a few weeks ago. Wife went off with the kids. Shouldn’t say that. He works for Deering’s. They’re building the big retirement village, y’know.’

I said thanks and had a look around the museum. It was like a meticulously arranged garage sale: nothing was of much value or of any great age, but assembling the collection had clearly given the organisers a lot of pleasure.

Finding the new retirement village wasn’t a problem. It was at an early stage, a paddock of wet, ravaged earth, concrete slabs and a few matchstick timber frames going up.

A man at the site hut pointed out Dennis Harris on one of the slabs, a big man in his forties with long hair, cutting studs to length with a dropsaw. At my approach, he switched it off and slid back his ear protectors. Dennis’s eyes said he didn’t think I was the man from Tattslotto.

‘Sorry to bother you,’ I said. ‘Ladies at the museum thought you could help me.’

‘Museum?’ Deep suspicion, stiff shoulders.

‘They said your father worked at Harkness Park. I’m trying to find old photos of the place.’

Dennis’s shoulders relaxed. He nodded. ‘There’s pictures in his old album. Lots. He used to work in the vegie garden when he was a young fella. Before the war. Huge. Wall around it. There was five gardeners there.’

We arranged to meet at the pub after knock-off. Dennis brought the album. ‘Take it and copy what you want,’ he said.

‘I could give you some kind of security for it,’ I said.

‘Nah. What kind of bloke pinches old photos? Just bring it back.’

I bought him a beer and we talked about building. Then I drove home and rang Stan.

‘Research,’ I said. ‘Paid for by the hour. I’ve got photographs from the 1930s.’

‘No you haven’t, lad,’ he said. ‘Not yet. Not enough hours.’

Ten minutes into the last quarter, it began to rain, freezing rain, driven into our faces by a wind that had passed over pack ice in its time. We only needed a kick to win but nobody could hold the ball, let alone get a boot to it. We were sliding around, falling over, trying to recognise our own side under the mudpacks. Mick Doolan was shouting instructions from the sideline but no-one paid any attention. We were completely knackered. Finally, close to time, we had some luck: a big bloke came out of the mist and broke Scotty Ewan’s nose with a vicious swing of the elbow. Even in the rain, you could hear the cartilage crunch. Scotty was helped off, streaming blood, and we got a penalty.

‘Take the kick, Mac,’ said Billy Garrett, the captain. He would normally take the kick in situations like this, but since the chance of putting it through was nil, he thought it best that I lose the game for Brockley.