A golf cart came trundling down the road, driven by the manager. He pulled up beside me.
'Thought I should tell you, mate, that there's only two spots left. And I just remembered that I saw the two blokes you was asking about driving off in the big 4WD a bit before you showed up. Slipped my mind, being so busy, like.'
It sometimes happens. I had absolutely no idea what to do next. Had Casey gone willingly? For that matter, had Cummings gone willingly? In either case, where? And why? With a vehicle like that, there were very few places in the whole bloody country they couldn't go. I rang Casey's mobile and was told that the phone had either been switched off or was not contactable.
I left a message: Jack, Cliff. Where are you and what're you doing? Call me.
Couldn't put it any plainer than that.
I drove back to the township and the motel. I knocked, said her name, and Sheila let me in. The room was warm and she'd stripped down to a spencer and her trousers. She grabbed me, pulled me inside, and we kissed. She had a classical music concert playing at low volume on the TV, a bottle of white wine open and a newspaper folded to show the cryptic crossword. She broke away, went to the mini-bar for a glass and waved at the bottle. I nodded and she poured.
'How're you feeling?' I said.
'I'm fine. It was just an emotional glitch. I go up and down a bit as you've probably noticed. I wasn't expecting you back so soon but I'm glad. Is there anything lonelier than a motel room on your own?'
'No. Absolutely not.'
She picked up her glass. 'So, what's happening? What're you doing?'
I told her in detail, partly to straighten things out in my own mind. When I finished I said, 'In answer to your second question, I haven't the faintest bloody idea.'
'Maybe something'll come to you. Meanwhile, let's not waste this nice warm room and comfy bed.'
We made love. She dozed while I stared at the ceiling trying to work out what might have happened. As Sheila had said, Cummings looked unnaturally thin in the Irish photograph and the woman at the farm said he looked ill. Casey was solid and strong. I'd back him in a physical contest against a man who appeared to be in poor heath. But there was the matter of a shotgun and experience. You'd have to back a veteran of the Irish troubles and the Angolan civil war over a cotton-wooled Gulf War I participant.
Sheila stirred and came awake. She saw me staring into space and elbowed me lightly in the ribs. 'I've remembered something.'
'Mmm?'
'I don't think Paddy ever mentioned anything about this Irish Traveller stuff…'
'I think he only found out about it after you split.'
'… but Seamus did. He knew about it. He told me about moving around in Ireland from one place to another. Something about dogs and horses. He said he missed it. I think I made fun of it, said something about gypsies, and he got angry. He did that a lot-got angry. I gave him reason, but he was angry by nature. Which made him exciting, back then, as screwed up as I was.'
'Well, I gather they had a hard time, the Travellers, until fairly recently. A sort of minority. The kids' education would've been buggered up, and Ireland was in a mess until the IT and the tax people got together.'
'Yes, but the point is, he's come here for this gathering and paid good money for it. And you say he looks unwell but he came anyway. If he's got any say in it, I reckon he'd be at this dinner. Don't you?'
25
It seemed a reasonable assumption, and it was the only one we had to work with. We had our tickets to the dinner and surely there was safety in numbers. If Cummings showed up at the dinner he was hardly likely to cause trouble with so many people around. Also, to judge by the men I'd seen out at the farm and the few arriving at the caravan park as I left, there were some pretty formidable faces and bodies among them.
I moved into Sheila's room with my baggage and we set about making ourselves presentable for the evening. We showered; Sheila dealt with her hair and face while I shaved. The event was bound to be far from formal, but Molly Maguire had been pretty dolled up with rings and with little mirrors on her skirt and her velvet jacket, so I guessed people would go in a certain amount of style. Best I could do was a clean white linen shirt, black slacks and shoes and a newish olive jacket. Sheila teamed her boots with black velvet pants, her red sweater and a jacket with silver threads running through it. She wrapped her scarf round her neck and paraded for me.
'What d'you reckon?'
'Can you flamenco?'
'If I have to. How about you?'
'Love, I can barely waltz. Jive a bit if I'm pissed enough. Come to think of it, I know your married and stage names but not your maiden name. Don't tell me it's Kelly or Higgins.'
'Fitzsimmons; Cornish. My great-great-something grandfather was transported for smuggling.'
'Good for him,' I said.
'Jesus, it's like night football,' Sheila said.
The lights were visible from a kilometre away. The road to the gate and the area around the farmhouse were lit up and the building itself glowed like a beacon. An attendant directed the car to a parking area and we joined a troop of people heading for the house. The women, of all shapes and sizes, wore colourful dresses, skirts and blouses, nothing drab. I was more or less in tune sartorially with the older men except for one thing-no hat. Hats and caps were in-green, white, black, red-and feathers were popular as well.
We presented our tickets at the door and were ushered by a young woman, in a floor-length dress and jangling bangles, around the verandah to the back of the house. The wide verandah had been built in to form a long room with trestle tables and chairs down the centre. There looked to be seating for a couple of hundred, with place cards propped up beside the cutlery and a very encouraging array of bottles. About half the places were already occupied with more people flooding in, and the noise level was going up. The background music, fiddles and pipes and drums, was battling against the chatter and the clink of glasses and bottles. The air was smoky. Potbelly stoves at either end of the room were dealing with the chill.
'Like the old days,' Sheila said, 'when you could have a smoke with your tucker.'
'Problem for you?'
'We'll see. Anyway, this could be fun.'
The band was grouped at the end of the room on a raised platform. Three men and two women with a variety of instruments in use and others propped up waiting to be played. The girl who'd brought us in had a list and she directed us to seats near the middle of the room. We sat down with a pair of Hennessys next to me and an ancient Clancy next to Sheila. The protocol was printed on the place card: Say 'Burl talosk' to your neighbour, shake hands or kiss, fill your glass and toast each other. We did, me with Guinness, Sheila with red wine. I squinted through the haze. If it got much worse, I'd have trouble seeing people at either end of the table, but, so far, there was no sign of Seamus Cummings.
We went through the ritual, chatted to each other, the people on either side, and the ones opposite. The menu featured leek and potato soup, casseroled rabbit and apple pie. The wines were all cleanskins from the Hunter Valley. The Guinness ran out quickly before the soup arrived. I tried not to be looking too obviously as the places filled up. There were bound to be no-shows for one reason or another, but there were only about five or six chairs unoccupied when the music stopped and a man identified by the old fellow next to me as Corey O'Loughlin, our host, got up and announced the order of business. There was to be a welcoming address at the end of the first course by himself and a short speech about the history of the Irish Travellers in Australia by Dr Brian O'Keefe…
'And then youse can dig into the apple pie and the sweet wine and dance the calories off as we clear the room.'
There were cheers, hoots and hollers as the band struck up again. O'Loughlin was a two-metre giant, built in proportion. I couldn't help watching him as he drained a glass, took up a fiddle and joined the band. When I looked back at the table I saw Seamus Cummings, deeply tanned, skeletally thin, sitting on the opposite side a few seats
