Peter Carey - Amnesia

In the twenty minutes it took to arrive at Gaby’s side, her head swam with images of evil things. She relived the night Dominick Swayne was murdered, stabbed to death in the backseat of a parked car. She had not known him, but she knew the poor pregnant girl who did it, and when the girl was arrested Celine was taken to Russell Street police headquarters, and that hospital in Commercial Road where they injected 10 ml of Valium in her bottom. That had happened just up the road, two kilometres from this police station, slick and modern as a bank, with blue and white checks like the band on a police hat.

Her commercials had cursed her, made her famous. Now she fretted someone at the station would identify her. MP’s wife. MP’s daughter. She was both relieved and disappointed to be a nobody and be made to wait on those long rows of vinyl chairs backed against the untidy noticeboard with its twenty missing persons, three of whom were Aboriginal, she had counted, and remembered, a chaos of bright-coloured violence, alcohol, police recruiting, all in contradiction of the bleak corporate order of the waiting room. There was a front desk and five tall dark wooden doors, all locked. In another situation they might have suggested farce. From these portals there now surged bright-eyed graffiti rats, accompanied by their pissed-off parents. Celine’s name was called as “Baily.” She was escorted through a locked door by a female officer or constable with a flustered red appearance. The actress observed that she had a particular way of doing “cop face,” speaking very slowly, very deep. Here, in the ashy air of the inner corridors, the policewoman was not prepared to answer her questions. The sergeant would inform her of the facts directly. Celine passed the statuesque Samoan girl standing behind a glass pane, looking out as at a distant ocean view. Her handsome face betrayed not even a flicker of recognition.

The interview room, so called, smelled of tomato sauce like the Caulfield races. Mrs. Baily was to wait for the sergeant there. She had noted that there was no desk and that the chairs were chaotically arranged. She managed to observe the Big Mac box lying on the floor before she saw, like a discarded blanket thrown into a chair, the child she had brought into the world. Gaby’s face was burnished, closed. There was a scratch below her eye.

What happened, darling?

Where is Frederic?

Has someone hurt you, darling?

What have they told you?

Gabrielle, has anybody harmed you?

Harmed me ? she said indignantly. You haven’t got a clue. They’ve taken Frederic.

Very well, darling, I’ll get someone.

Gaby wound herself in her blanket and let her mother discover the door was locked.

We had an accident. OK? We rolled the van.

What van?

Solosolo’s brother ran away.

Who has a van?

I think he might be dead, she said.

Pause. Rewind. Play. I think he might be dead.

No-one told Celine that the dead boy loved her daughter.

She must not try to hold her child. She offered a small pack of tissues and was pleased it was accepted. She told her that she loved her, which was like throwing wet potato into boiling oil.

It’s not about you. Leave me alone.

The sergeant would later be tabloid-famous, but on the night of Peli’s death he did not look like a candidate for jail. He was a handsome sort of man, whose greying close-barbered looks would have suited the pilot of an Ansett flight, or one of those ship’s captains they had once used to promote Ardath cigarettes. He did not like Celine Baillieux.

It’s dangerous out here, Mum.

I know.

You know do you? Is that a fact?

He did not require an answer. He lectured Celine about all the kids he knew who never had much of a chance, Mum. Their parents were poor and ignorant and alcoholic. But what about this little girl of hers? She has been an accessory to Break and Enter. Or hasn’t she had a chance to tell you that part? He bet Celine would know a terrific lawyer. Frank Galbally was probably a mate of hers? Was Frank her mate?

Celine had not been thinking of a lawyer. She had imagined she was there to witness him interview her daughter. This was apparently not the right thing to say.

Anything else I should do for you, Mum? Interview? Park your car perhaps?

She said she hadn’t meant it like that.

What would “that” be?

So she grovelled.

That’s all right, Mum, he said, it’s been a pretty rough night for everyone.

That “rough night,” said Celine, had presumably included recovering Peli’s body from below the Hoddle Bridge, and a session with Matty Matovic who, having been called in as Frederic’s father, had signed an autograph for an aging fan, and then got himself tangled in the investigation to the extent that his son had accidentally “assisted the police” with more inquiries than they could have made without his help. None of this information was provided by the sergeant at the time. Nor, for that matter, did he do what he was obliged to do, that is, interview Gaby with a parent as a witness.

Perhaps he wanted a drink or his wife had just left him or he simply would not have an actress order him around. Perhaps he already had what he needed to put Dad in Pentridge for two years. So why would he waste his time typing up a needless interview?

Did he think, I’ll “caution” her then fuck the rest of it?

In any case, he cautioned Gaby until she cried and then he gave her a Kleenex and opened the door. He did not quite tell them to piss off.

Mum, he said, you are free to take her home.

But you haven’t interviewed her.

The sergeant seemed too tired to laugh. Do you want to leave, or do you want to stay? It’s not a comfy way to spend the night.

Gaby said she could not leave till she saw her friend.

She’s with her family, love.

I mean Frederic Matovic.

Everyone was with their families now, the policeman told her. Fred was with his dad. Her mum would look after her. Nice cup of cocoa, something like that. And by then he was shepherding (shoving) them up the hall, through the waiting room which was crowded with German backpackers.

Why did this sergeant hate Celine? Did he know she had thrown marbles beneath police horses? Was it just because of this that he walked them all the way to the car and folded up Gaby’s police blanket so neatly?

Take care of her, Mum.

Gaby refused the front seat and climbed in the back.

The sergeant tapped sharply on the glass and waited until Gaby buckled her seatbelt.

As she pulled out into the road Celine still had no idea what had happened. She looked in her mirror and saw her daughter slip sideways out of her belt and lie on a hard bed of books and paper. Celine had no religion, no faith in anything much more than the fact that the lichen on a gravestone lived forever. She thought, God give me another chance to love my child.

IT WAS JUST on dawn when they got home, Celine said. Gaby went to her room and locked the door. Sandy emerged from his office, dressed for work. His eyes were always pale in love or fury but this morning they were glass.

So he was at me from the get-go, she told the stretchy tape, demanding I tell him who was driving the van. How old were they? Who was charged? With what offence? How could she possibly leave the police station without learning the circumstances of her daughter’s detention?

The sergeant had told her to go home.

So she did what the police told her to do? Since when?

On and on.

Years later, she said, this same sergeant was called before the court where the judge asked him why he took prisoners out of jail to eat at restaurants and visit “known criminals.”