Chapter 5: Barbie

I had just dressed myself in my only buttoned shirt and my only pair of strides for the cookout, both of which I had to unpack from my travelling backpack, when there was a knock on the driver’s door. It was Shona in a brightly coloured loose-flowing dress that was strapless and held up over her huge expanse of breast, in defiance of gravity, while her face was made up in fresh warpaint ready to party a hot Chrissie Day away. Her long black hair was released from its frighteningly tight bun that, back at the station, had pulled the skin on her face so tight it looked like she was permanently pressed up against a curved glass window. Now, her tresses hung in shimmering ringlets of polished jet about her impressive broad shoulders. She was wearing a light and pleasant perfume that was inviting, without being overbearing. There were three young girls aged, I thought, about 15 or so, fidgeting behind her, ladened with dresses and other clothes over their arms and carrying shopping bags. I wondered where I would find the stowage space in my cab for any of it, and Bonnie would probably have to buy a set of luggage to get all this clobber home.

“Hey, Mr Cornwall, you look a lot smarter than you did early this morning, all dirty and sweaty from your energetic tyre tossing. We’re thinking of introducing it an an additional event in our Charity Police Games in PA in the autumn. We’ve come to help Miss Bonnie get herself dressed up to party in something other than your tatty man-robe, so I think you better go with my man Donald here—”

A tall, in fact very tall and thin white bloke with a narrow but cheerful face poked his head into my doorway and said, “G’day, mate.”

To which I replied with a nod and, “Mate.”

Shona continued, “Don’ll show you where the beer’s at, all right?”

I had little choice but face eviction from what had all too briefly been my sole domain and now was about to become a sheila’s dressing room and boudoir. “All right, just let me get me runners on.” I turned and yelled through the curtains, “Bluey, your wardrobe crew are here to kit you out, I’ll catch you later, all right?”

“OK,” she replied, her voice muffled by the curtains.

I stepped down and Shona and her young entourage climbed up inside, while I held the dresses and bags they’d carried, and passed up to them. They all seemed to be wearing the same fragrance or used the same perfumed soap. I thought the girls were too young for perfume, but then what little I know about girls would fit on a postage stamp in big block capital letters. After I climbed down I closed the driver’s door behind them.

I gladly shook Don’s outstretched hand, I needed a bit of male solidarity, as I introduced myself. “Mark Cornwall, soon to be ex-truckie and amateur taker-in of waifs and strays, especially needy sheilas, who turn up in the nuddy, with nowhere to keep their bus fare. I hail from Melbourne, by birth and by residence, five years lately. Pleased to meet you, Don, but, before you lead me to the beer, I need to top up my clean water tank, it’s as dry as a dead dingo’s donger and the bloody sheila’s only been in residence since sundown last night.” I grabbed the end of the water hose that I noticed from our arrival earlier, “When I get the filler cap open, can you turn the tap on at the wall over there?”

He laughed, “Sure, mate. So, a Mexican from down south, eh? Me, I’m Don Matthews, Detective Inspector South Australia State Police. Originally I’m a banana bender, but been living here as Shona’s comparatively less significant half for the last fifteen years. Pleased to meet you too, mate, I’ve heard nothing but ‘Bonnie this and Bonnie that’, with the odd ‘Mark Cornwall’ thrown in, ever since Shona woke up an hour ago, like one of them energised bunnies you see on those battery ads.”

“So, as a detective, you’ve been heavily involved in this Paddy Powell bust?” I climbed up and opened the water infill cap and checked the level, which was pretty empty as I thought.

“No, mate, my bloody uppity sergeant in the blue, who you have already had the pleasure of being chewed up and spat out by, left me right out of the loop, because I was at home nipper-minding our three girls. Instead, she called the Super, who’s staying in Brizzie with his missus’s relos for Chrissie, and the Super in his judgement left Shona in charge.”

“That’s cruel,” giving him the nod to turn the tap on, “leaving you out of a high profile bust.”

“Nah, I’ll catch up with it on Thursday. Looking forward to it to be honno. Because of the Chrissie festivities, and most of those we’ve incarcerated appear to be Yanks, plus a Canadian, a Thai, and four dumb local Ockers in the mix, I expect their lawyers’ll be on us like gullies on a shrimp boat. By being out of the loop, I can tell ‘em, in all innocence, that I only just got involved after the Chrissie hollies and need some catch up time. As we can only lock up three hoodies at a time in our cells here in PA, I’ll have to phone around to find out where the rest ended up on remand. Most are probably in Addy. That could keep Paddy in the lock-up for another half day or so, if I can stall the blood sucking lawyers long enough.”

“You could act as if you’re a complete drongo.” I suggested.

“Oh, I hadn’t realised you’d dealt with us before, mate” Don grinned with a chuckle. “Anyway, I expect the lawyers’ll be onto me like a flock of flesh eating kookaburras as soon as the office reopens. I’m looking forward to teasing the scrawny bastards in their desperation in proving their worth to their boss.”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “I can imagine, the lowest form of life supporting the second lowest form of life, and they say our Aussie snakes are the most venomous in the world. Compared to the scum like Paddy Powell, our eastern and western blacks are cute and cuddly. You can turn the water off now, Don, thanks. Now, all this running water has made me wonder, where’s this cold amber fluid that Shona promised?”

“Follow me,” Don said with a grin and we walked side by side past the car park, which was still filling up with cars coming in and had maybe thirty cars inside already; then around the front of the centre, which had a nice well maintained grass park marked up for two footy pitches and a well-worn cricket square out front; and finally around the other side, where there was a large barbie area next to a children’s playground, already filled with people, all apparently family and friends of the Matthews. There were a lot of people who were obviously from the islands as well as a few Australian Aboriginals and a smattering of tanned Aussies.

There were lots of nods, hand-shaking and exchanging of ‘G’days’ and ‘Merry Chrissies’ as we went through to where the beer was, shaded from the merciless sun by a gazebo. I was introduced to several of Shona’s sisters, cousins, aunts and even one of her grandmas. Funnily enough, they all seemed to be wearing the same light perfume. They must have it delivered by a regular tanker road train. Never smelt it before. Well, you wouldn’t if you avoided the company of sheilas as I had for five years, but the pleasant scent coming off these mostly large girls, sorta grew on yah.

“I’ve got the best part of a slab of VB cooling in an esky, to bring to the party, but I left it back in the cab. I’ll prob’ly have to wait until Bonnie’s tried on every body skirt and twinkly top yah cook’s brought to the party, so you’ll probably have run out of Four X by then.”

“No worries mate,” Don replied with a grin, “the Castlemaine courier comes south every week in a truck towing four extra large trailers, so we’ve enough for today. We might have to stock up again for Boxing Day, though! Going Darwin way I understand, right?”

“Yeah, carrying 60 tonnes of newsprint for one of the regional daily newspapers up there. So, Shona’s an islander, right? What’s her John Dory?”

“Her old man was born in Tonga and started out as a young copper. Being a good amateur rugby player, he got an offer to play in Wellington, New Zealand and transferred over to the local Kiwi force. A year later married the ex- of a Samoan semi-pro rugger player, who was a player in one too many sports than the one he was being paid for, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, mate, been bitten by that bugger.”

“Shona’s ol’ man just couldn’t break into the first team in Wellington. Then one of his coaches suggested he move here to Adelaide and play Rugby League, which better suited his game. The coach had contacts, so his transfer was a given. So Shona was born a Kiwi, but came over here to Addy while still a babe in arms.”

“And so he joined the blues here, right?”

“Right on. Her ol’ man’s now retired from the Police, and coaches a junior League side in Addy. Yeah, he’s a top bloke, Mark, you’d like him. Shona was always in and out of stations, so she followed her ol’ man’s profession and joined the force straight from college and her first post was here in the PA station sixteen years ago.”

“And that’s when... ?”

“Yeah. Me, I was an impressionable young copper at the time she turned up as a rookie. I couldn’t resist such an Amazon vision. We’ve got three bonzer girls, ages twelve, eight and three, two of them and a cousin are in your truck at the moment, deep in yabber country.”

“Bloody hell, Don, I thought they were all about 15!”

“Nah, my two are 8 and 12 and Alisha, their cuzzie’s 11. They grow up so quick, kids, you wouldn’t believe it. We always have a lot of Shona’s rellies over from Tonga and Samoa here for the holidays and the city council usually let us book this public barbecue for the day, no charge.”

“So even the Mayor is scared of your Amazon too, eh?”

“It seems so,” he grinned, “mind you, she’s not at all like that at home with me and the kids, she puts on that scary attitude because she knows it gets results. Mind you, I only beat her at arm wrestling because of the leverage, any normal bloke don’t stand a Buckley’s. So, what is it with you and Bonnie? I understand she turned up in nothing but her white pointers and a G?”

“Yeah, that was a right shock to a bloke’s system, I can tell you! An eleven-out-of-ten sheila turning up close to, all in the nuddy. Even an Abbot’s head would go white as a full moon with the sudden blood loss! As for anything between her and me, well, nothing really. I only met her yesterday and I’ve agreed to take her onto Darwin. No strings offered, none taken, and if they were offered, it would be like misplaced gratitude and, well, my ego’s been stomped enough by my ex.”

“Yeah, I can follow that. I’ve not had a chance to see any of the reports yet, so how did this incident come about?”

“These seppo dickheads were trying to bounce me off me parking spot at a truck stop about twenty minutes south of PA. It was one of those tiny family run ones that I knew had nothing to recommend it and had stopped there before. I was looking for a quiet, peaceful night, being not one for Chrissie parties. Then these five Winnoes came in and tried to bully me into nicking off me spot. I noticed the girl we now know as Bonnie was coming in for some unwanted attention from two guys. I presumed they were taking her to a third party for the kind of party she didn’t seem to want. To me it was a dead set that she was going to be forced against her will to go through with whatever I imagined they intended. So I determined that whatever deal I’d nut out with the mongrels over my prime pozzy would have to include her somehow. Actually, my plotting came to nothing, Bonnie got away from them on her own. She just gave it a burl, pushed over one bloke, buried one of her nasty thongs halfway up a bloke’s brown freckle and threw herself on my mercy inside the door of me cab.”

“And for a long time before, Shona tells me that you’ve been drinking with the flies? How come? You don’t look much like a dipstick.”

“The age old story, Don, nothin new. I found out the hard way that my missus had been several someone else’s old fella for a long while, probably ever since we married. It turned out she only married me as a mug to cover her nocturnal activities and, as soon as I got around to notice it, then the lies stood out like a dog’s balls for all the twelve years I devoted to her.”

“Bloody hell, after twelve years? What was the clue that tipped you off?”

“Simple really, she made an error of judgement which released a time bomb, it just took nine months ticking away before it went off, boom, right in my face.”

“Sounds interesting and explosive.”

“Shattering, it was. After eight hours of labour, the curly haired head of her bub, who came a month earlier than anyone expected, me included, was conceived while spending time away from me on another continent, and turned out to be as black as Shona’s grandma.”

“Strewth!”

“Yeah, she’d been on an African Safari without me for a month before my little swimmers got their opportunity and they ended up with nothing but Buckley’s after some bastard had got there first. I dunno how she thought she’d get away with it. So that was the end of everything, me marriage, the home we were preparing for the baby, me job, my career too, as her old man owned the newspaper we both worked for. So I got myself out of state and headed for the only family I had left, down in Melbourne.”

“Blimey, that must’ve been a shocker. What did you do before you became a truckie?”

“Press photographer, at the Sentinel, a daily newspaper up in Darwin.”

“Not the same place where you’re delivering the paper?”

“Yeah, the very same. It’ll be my first time back since, and for me that’s the longest bloody boomerang throw ever. I had no choice but to make the run really. I’ve already sold the haulage company in a takeover, the drivers are all family men with their families who I allowed to be at home over Chrissie, in thanks for their loyalty over the last five years. My uncle, who always did the regular run to Darwin every fortnight, has just retired and is presently sizzling on a Queensland beach. I’m hoping to drop the delivery of paper off before the office opens but, with all these delays I might end up risking running into my ex. And Maggie’s old man is editor and owns the paper and he never liked me much as a son-in-law from the outset, so I want to avoid him like the plague, too.”

“Sorry, mate. Sounds like you got the rough end of the pineapple.”

“No worries, it’s all water under the bridge. Time for that cool schooner, though, methinks.”

“Too bloody right!”

Well, standing on the edge of that park, with a cold beer rapidly evaporating due to the action of lip and suction, Don and I were soon surrounded by a fragrant cloud of his wife’s rellies. They were mostly brick shithouse young sheilas, asking me about Bonnie and why she was travelling with me and where we were going. I was well out of my comfort zone since my self imposed exile in the ‘Never-Never Land of the No Bloody Sheilas Territory’. No wonder my amber ambrosia was sinking faster than a leaking tinny in the middle of croc creek without a ladle. Don brought me a second schooner, when it really should have been my shout, but Don reassured me it was a free bar, bought and paid for in advance. He told his rellies not to ask about the police oppo and especially to leave me alone asking about Bonnie, explaining that we’d only known each other less than 24 hours. He did tell them that as I had rescued her from at least twenty bad blokes, now all looking forward to at least a collar and tie, and maybe even two bricks in the boneyard for the boss Paddy, so I was treated as some kind of hero.

If Don was trying to put them off, it didn’t work, because the bloody sheilas fired even more questions, like what she was like as a person, did she have bad hair in the morning, what did we exchange as Chrissie prezzies? It was mad being mobbed by these islanders who ranged from teens to grandmas and they ranged from the few that were skinny fit all the way up to the majority who bordered on obese. It was Don, three inches taller than all of us, who broke up the mob surrounding us.

“Hey, here she comes now,” he announced.

And everyone turned. Bonnie, surrounded by Shona and her girls, was walking down the cinder path towards us. I peered through the crowd of girls, to catch glimpses of her and, when I did, my jaw dropped, wow! She wore a yellow buttoned up collared blouse with a pair of dragons embroidered either side of the buttons in sparkling beads, predominantly green and silver, over a swirling purple skirt printed with both lighter purple and shiny silver polka dots of varying sizes, which swished and sparkled as she moved. Her stride was confident and determined, as she headed straight for Don and me, and the crowd of islander sheilas in front of us parted like the Red Sea.

Then I could see her fully, top to toe. She wore what I could only describe as silver strappy open sandals on her red toe-nailed feet, with three inch heels and silver straps criss crossing her shins up to just below her knees, about where the bottom of her wide skirt swished around those lovely knees. Looking back at her face, framed by her longer than shoulder length hair, brushed until it shone like burnished copper in the sun. Her lips were ruby red, her eyes made up with blackened lashes and pale green eye shadow, so her blue eyes popped out of the white of her eyes, her cheeks subtly rouged, disguising the small red mark that Powell had left on her right cheek (was that really only the day before yesterday?) and a purple lily flower tucked into her hair above her left ear. She looked an absolute beaut.

As she held her arms out ready to fall into my arms, she declared to all and sundry, “There’s my Knight! Mark, what do you think of what my wardrobe girls have made of me using the clothes donated by all these lovely people?”

“You look the ant’s pants, Blue,” I stuttered before she was on me and wrapped her arms around my neck and planted a moist hot pashie on my cheek.

“You’ve shaved,” she commented, maintaining her hold with one arm, stroking my cheek and chin by fingertip, and looking me in the eye, standing an inch or two taller than me in her high heels, “that feels so much better.” Then she pecked me lightly on the lips.

Behind her someone called, “Bonnie!” She turned and all the girls were holding out their mobile phones and taking photos. Of course, Bonnie laughed and played up to them, using me as a photo op prop, posing for her new fans with our faces side by side and cheek touching cheek, then pouting with her lips close to my other cheek, before lifting her knee across my torso about waist high, showing plenty of her delicious thigh. All the while we were coated with flashes of light from a dozen mobiles popping off. And my face was soon as red as a yara-ma-yha-who.

“That’s all now, girls, my shining knight and I want some quiet time before we get some food inside us. We’ll have a girls’ chat, er chinwag?, later, right?” she told the girls. They all turned away smiling, most of them heads down while replaying their stills or movies of us on their mobiles.

“What yer drinkn’, Bonnie Lass?” our host Don asked, “sorry, but I’ve been wanting to say that all morning.”

“Oh, just a small white wine, Don,” she laughed as she still held onto me, one arm now around my waist. She looked around and saw my esky left by the cinder path, “Oh, there’s Mark’s picnic cooler, your Leona and Alisha carried it over between them, with all the beer we could fit in and what was left in the wine bottle, I’ll have a small glass of the wine. I don’t drink much, but I must say the food smells great and now I’m really hungry.”

“Righto, I’ll put the esky over by the bar; you ready for another schooner, cobber?” Don asked.

“Yeah, why not? I’m ready for another draught. We could do with a relaxing sesh today, get a good start in the morning and see if we can get close to Alice by the end of the day.” I drained the dregs of my glass and handed it to Don, while he’d also readied his own schooner for a refill. He strode off to the bar counter carrying the esky in one hand and held the glasses by a finger and thumb in the other.

“Sorry I dropped off so soon this morning, Mark,” Bonnie apologised, “we didn’t really get any chance to talk before I dozed off.”

“No worries, you were zonked out in seconds.” I grinned. “I had a little trouble sleeping, myself, and I didn’t even know you’d taken your pants off!”

“Well, you were a perfect gentleman this morning, and a real hero before, the way you stood up on your own against all those tough guys. I was amazed at the way you put yourself on the line for a person you didn’t even know but had guessed was in serious trouble. Well, that makes you one special person, Mark, my white knight.”

“Anyone—” I tried to say as I looked at the ground, but she stopped me and pulled on my chin so our eyes met again.

“No, not anyone would, and most wouldn’t, but the important thing here is that you did. You are my hero, my own personal Knight. Now we need to talk about where we’re going to go from here.”

“I think we’ll relax and enjoy the party this arvo, Bonnie and get a good night’s kip. If we leave here straight after brekkie in the morning, maybe stop for an hour or two at Coober—”

“I meant,” she interrupted softly still smiling so sweetly, “after Darwin? After I get myself a temporary passport, with access to my accounts, and after I pay you back for all you’ve done and shelled out?”

“That’s not—”

“I think I know what’s necessary, Knighty,” she giggled, “I think we are both at a crossroads here. You, having a break from running a medium sized business and starting to build a new career in photography, while I am giving up the glamorous but lonely lifestyle of a celebrity model. I want to grunge down a little and do something leading to a purpose at the end of it. And I prefer doing that in agreeable company. I really would like to get to know you better, Mark, so we can see if this little spark we have can turn into a long, slow burn.”

“I’m er really not sure,” I stuttered, then babbled on like a galah, “I’m not good company at all, I’m certainly not used to having a beautiful woman on my arm like this. I’m practically a lone wolf, a really lonely loner even, not fit for civilised company. In my case I’m ‘misery that doesn’t want company’. I have as my main goal any means of getting away from people.”