The Fourth Caution

Three Incidents

The first …

The night was dark, with a light breeze and persistent flurries of slanting rain. A man walked along Roseberry Avenue, looking for a particular house, checking each number on the front gate. He wore a windcheater, with its hood pulled well over his forehead and carried in front of him, a cardboard box, handling it with care, not tilting it or shaking it. At one stage, a faint mew of sound came from the box and the man leaned close to it and whispered, ‘Shh. Soon be home.’

He came to number fifteen, paused briefly to make sure the street was clear of people, then swung the wrought iron gate open. It made the slightest of creaks as he entered. Gently, the man placed the cardboard box on the welcome mat, pushing it close to the front door, making sure it was well out of the rain, then he returned to the pavement and closed the gate behind him.

Further along the street he found a public telephone box where he entered, picked up the handset, inserted coins and started to dial.

•

Inside number fifteen, where the cardboard box had been left on the doorstep, the family gathered around the living room television set, mother, father and their two primary school age daughters. They were absorbed in a tense, G-rated adventure thriller, unaware of what had gone on at their front door. Then, at a most exciting part of their show, the phone rang.

‘Answer that, one of you,’ the girls’ mother said, without taking her eyes from the screen.

‘If you mean me, Mum,’ the elder daughter protested, ‘then I did it last time.’

‘Oh, come on, Jeanette,’ her father coaxed, ‘you have the best telephone voice in the family. Makes us sound posh.’

Jeanette didn’t believe a word of it, made a loud sigh, then rose and trudged noisily to the phone, sharing her vexation. ‘Yes?’ she said into the mouthpiece and listened. ‘Eh? Can you say that again?’

At this her father reacted, concerned, but Jeanette held the phone at arm’s length and shrugged. ‘He’s gone. Rang off.’

‘So what did he say?’ her father asked.

‘Said, there’s — something at our front door.’

‘What something?’

‘Didn’t say, Dad. He just said — something.’

They forgot the television. The family rose as one. ‘What the hell,’ father complained, ‘who leaves stuff on our front step then telephones us about it? Why not ring the bell or do the time-honoured knock-knock routine?’

‘Be careful,’ his wife cautioned.

Together they crowded into the hall, but paused at the door.

‘Mum, are we expecting anything?’ the younger daughter asked.

‘No. And not at this time of night.’

‘Yeah, listen,’ their father warned. ‘You girls stay back. Right back.’

‘What?’ Jeanette questioned, her voice rising. ‘You think — it could be a bomb?’

Her sister added, ‘Who’d bomb us? We’re super ordinary. Win awards for it, we do.’

Father gently eased the front door open and switched on the outside light. Printing on the cardboard box said it had once contained four hundred gram tins of baked beans. A noise came from inside.

‘It’s a baby,’ the younger daughter announced.

‘Hope it’s a girl,’ Jeanette added. ‘We could do with some reinforcements round here.’

‘We’re not keeping it,’ their mother said, suddenly distracted.

Father leaned down and flicked open the lid of the box. ‘Yep,’ he agreed. ‘It’s a baby all right.’

‘Is there a note?’ his wife asked.

‘Don’t think this one’s up to writing yet,’ father responded.

‘Girls,’ his wife announced dryly. ‘Your have a humourist for a father. So better bring the poor mite inside and let’s see if we’ve got a boy or a girl. Hate saying it all the time.’

Then Jeanette pointed out, in an aha sort of way, ‘Mum, you said, "see if we’ve got a boy or a girl." Does that mean we’re keeping her, or him?’

‘A baby’s not ours to keep. He or she,’ her mother answered.

The younger daughter nudged her sister. ‘And I vote You-know-who gets to change the first nappy.’

Their mother ventured, ‘What about looking outside in the street; see if we can spot who left it at the door.’

‘Or the male person, recklessly responsible for it in the first place,’ Jeanette added in a grim sort of voice.

‘Be long gone,’ her father pointed out. ‘If he rang up from somewhere to tell us about it, he could be anywhere by now.’ Father closed the front door and snapped off the outside light. Between them the daughters gently carried the cardboard box and baby into the living room with their parents following.

The TV episode played on, muted and unregarded, but since it was a repeat they’d seen before, none of the family seemed to mind.

The second …

About sixteen or so years after the incident of the cardboard box in the night, a different event played out, but in another part of the same town. This was the suburb, every municipality has one, or a few, where houses are expensive and their owners better off, but only financially, as some would say. The incident concerned a teenage girl, a senior in a private secondary school. Her name was Louisa Michaels who, on this day, late in the morning, let herself in by the front door of her house and stepped into the hallway. Louisa could hear her mother in the morning room, talking on the telephone, rallying the reluctant, chivvying the charitable, organising some sort of function to help the poor people of somewhere or other in the world.

Louisa was used to her mother arranging dinners, concerts or functions for one aid organization or another. It was as if the unfortunate underprivileged existed only for the benefit of Mrs Michaels and her well-off friends. Louisa’s father sometimes said, in one of his rare flickers of humour, if the world had no hard up people, his wife would have to find something else to do with her time. And his money.

Once inside the hallway, Louisa dropped her bag on the floor and stood looking at herself in mirror. She smiled at her reflected image, amused to recall the pointlessness of bringing possessions away from school, or why she had even bothered to come back to this place. Intense conditioning, she reasoned, sixteen years of it. Louisa remembered a few words someone had once dinned into her: ‘You take nothing into these times and take nothing out.’

She knew then, in the classroom, that she was different from other girls at school. And only that morning, in the middle of a French test, it had become startlingly clear to her why she stood out from the crowd. Right there and then, with her French test paper only half completed, Louisa Michaels gathered some unimportant things into her bag, then without a word, made for the door.

She disregarded the questioning looks from the other girls and Ms Harvey, the French teacher’s mildly raised protest. ‘Louisa, où vas-tu?’

‘I’m going away,’ Louisa answered shortly then closed the classroom door behind her. She left the main building and made for the school gates, muttering to herself, ‘Vous, not tu. What am I? A child?’

It was that kind of school. Parents paid huge fees, the girls understood they were born to rule and took advantage of it, throwing their weight around. Even with teachers. Especially with teachers.

Still on the telephone, Louisa’s mother realised someone had entered by the front door. ‘I’ll ring you back, Irma,’ she said to whoever was on the line and replaced the receiver. She saw her daughter in the hallway. ‘Louisa, darling, what a start you gave me. Whatever are you doing home from school at this hour?’

‘I just came away, that’s all.’ Louisa kept her eyes on the mirror.

‘But why, dear? It’s only eleven o’clock.’

‘I’ll not go any more. It’s over.’

‘Over? Your father won’t like that sort of talk, darling. He has such high hopes for you. University, medical school —’

‘Then he’ll be disappointed. I have to go now.’

‘Go? Go where?’

‘There’s somewhere I must be.’

‘Louisa, dear, what on earth’s the matter with you? Are you in trouble at school? Are you unwell? Should I ring the doctor? Miss Harvey?’

‘You must do as you think best.’ Louisa turned to the front door and went outside. It was all the farewell her mother would have.

‘But Louisa,’ Mrs Michaels appealed in a helpless sort of way. ‘Darling. What will your father say?’ And mother kept calling until her daughter was out of sight.

Louisa allowed a wry smile at the memory. Yes, what would her father say? She put on a gruff, authoritative voice to imitate his forthright way of speaking. ‘Look here, officer, my daughter has gone AWOL and I expect you police chappies to find her.’ Then she became herself again and murmured, ‘He’ll do that, my father. To him, I will be lost property.’

She walked on.

And the third …

In the town where a family had once been surprised by the arrival of a baby in a cardboard box, and Louisa Michaels had just walked out of her prestigious school and comfortable home, another event took place. Two adolescent residents of The Clive Battley Memorial Home for Children started their first day in the workforce.

Clive Battley was the place where orphans, strays, waifs, runaways and problem kids ended up. Sometimes they entered the refuge as unwanted babies where they’d stay and grow until they came out the other end, more or less fit to face the world. Typically, when teenagers were old enough, staff at Clive Battley found employment for them. In this way young people earned their first wage and had a taste of the workforce. If they made a go of it, adolescent hopefuls could leave their orphanage home forever and find their own place in the world.

The two youthful residents, who were to experience the workforce in this way, were Donna, as a junior shop assistant, and Peter, to be a helper in a shoe repair business. No one asked Donna and Peter if they wanted to be shop girl or cobbler; it was a case of take it or leave it. A job’s a job and beggars can’t be choosers. After all, the illustrious Clive Battley himself had been an orphan and look how he ended up.

Peter and Donna left the home very early on their first day in the working world. They were dressed in nearly new clothes, had their return bus fares and each carried a cut lunch of white bread sandwiches and an apple. But neither arrived at department store or shoe repair shop. By early evening other teenagers in Clive Battley guessed the pair had absconded.

‘A touch of young love there,’ the supervisor commented in a staff meeting. ‘They’ve obviously run off together.’

‘Well, what if they have,’ a woman employee interjected. ‘Aren’t they entitled to a bit of independence? A bit of affection even?’

‘M-mm, that may be so,’ the supervisor went on. ‘Technically, Donna and Peter are still in our care, so we’ll have to advise the police. Treat them as runaways.’

Book One

‘Today’

Chapter One

For some time, Adam Kingston had started experiencing a dream, which quite soon became a recurring one, spread over a number of nights. Nothing in particular seemed to trigger it; the dream just came as he slept, making him witness to what was going on. In this dreamscape he saw two women walking single file along a narrow bush track, a young one in front, an older woman trailing behind. They were so near to him Adam could almost reach out and touch them. Both women were humped over, carrying bundles of wooden branches across their shoulders, stepping carefully. They wore clothes, maybe from colonial times, Adam assumed, convict gear, he guessed. The older woman had blemishes on her face, as though she’d once had some kind of pock-marking disease. The one in front was about Adam’s age, a bit over sixteen, no more than a girl. She was young and fresh-looking, wearing a grey cap that showed stray wisps of blonde hair at the edges. She was really beautiful, Adam thought, seeing her and being so close was the best part of his dream.

At that point he usually woke up, unable to get the girl’s face out of his mind. He wanted to meet her again, maybe in another dream, better still in real life. They could work around the colonial clothes bit; buy her some gear from K-mart.

You don’t choose your dreams; they pick you. Two nights later Adam’s dream women turned up again, on their bush track. ‘Hello,’ he greeted the pair as they passed by. They ignored him as if he were not there, but continued talking to each other, which is how he discovered the girl’s name was Alison.

The older woman, the one trailing behind, moaned on about how much firewood they had to carry, then she called, ‘Don’t hurry so, Alison. My bundle’s right heavy.’ That’s how she spoke. English sounding and old-fashioned.

‘So is my burden,’ Alison responded, then laughed in a playful way. ‘You don’t hear me fretting over it, Meg, so come on, keep up. Don’t tarry.’

‘Oh, lass, if I had the firm young limbs and yon sweet face of yours, I’d do more than keep up. I’d not be here either, leastways not dressed like this.’

Adam was entranced. This was like a serial; adding a bit more each time the dream came. On the third excursion, the women went on along the track as before, with Alison making jokes while old Meg straggled her way behind. Then suddenly, Alison stopped and let the bundle of firewood drop off her shoulders, the branches clattering to the ground. She went stiff, as if she’d been hit, or perhaps spotted a snake or lizard on the track. But no, something else caused the shock. Alison stood as if in a trance, the untidy piles of wood scattered about her feet.

Meg caught up with her. ‘Here, Alison, what is it, lass? What’s ado?’

Alison snapped out of it and looked at Meg for a second or two, then started to cry with real tears. ‘Oh, it’s come again, Meg; yon voice inside my head, asking where I am. Wanting me to come somewhere. Begging me to make haste.’

Meg looked around as if she were afraid someone might be lurking in the bush to hear this. ‘You’d best hush up, my girl.’ She gave Alison her smaller bundle of firewood to carry, then stooped to gather the sticks that had fallen to the ground.

‘Meg, why won’t it leave me alone?’

‘Don’t let them other women hear you say things like that, Alison. They’re simple folk, mostly, with country ways. Some of them fearful and god-bothered so there’s no telling what they’d think of a girl with a voice in her head.’

‘But whatever can it be?’ The light had gone out of Alison.

‘Blessed if I know.’ Meg settled the bundle of firewood on her shoulder, then gave Alison a nudge forward. ‘So you keep it to yourself, eh? For your own sake.’

The women moved on, and Adam’s dream faded. He woke up.

The cat had curled himself at the end of his bed, so he shifted the animal aside to allow himself to stretch out full length. The digital clock read half past five; daylight soon. Adam lay wide awake for a long time, thinking about Alison, the convict girl who’d heard someone speak inside her head.

Later that same day, it would be his turn.

•

In the middle of the morning, Adam was at work, leaning over the bonnet of an old Falcon utility, screwing in new spark plugs. It’s a job he didn’t mind doing, the kind of work they give to first year apprentice motor mechanics. The place was Syme’s Garage, specialising in older cars, not the modern ones full of computers and hi-tech gizmos. So if you wanted sump oil drained, a puncture mended or the engine steam cleaned, then Adam Kingston was your man. And Gerald Syme was the major blot on the horizon. Gerald was the boss’s son, in his third year and acting as if he already owned the business.

Gerald came to Adam, bustling and bristling. ‘Hey, Kingston, how long you going to be there?’

‘Another two minutes, Gerry.’

‘Don’t call me that. I already told you.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Adam screwed in the last spark plug and clipped on the lead. When he lifted his head, Gerald had gone, but Tania Weatherall gave him a smile. She worked nearby on a vintage Morris Minor. Tania was also a first year apprentice which made Gerald go out of his way to impress her, mini-boss style, tossing his weight about, mainly in Adam’s direction.

Adam sort of half-fancied Tania; in truth, he fancied her a lot, but was wary with girls. Not frightened, just cautious. They can be friendly, he decided, until you say the magic words, like, ‘How about you and me —?’ Then they spell it out: N - O. Sometimes it’s two words, as in, ‘Drop off’ or, ‘Get lost.’ Adam, not yet seventeen, had once experienced a public and excruciating knock-back at school.

Then Gerald returned, bristling and prickly. ‘Listen Kingston, I told you to shift that heap.’

‘No you didn’t,’ Adam responded. ‘You asked how long I’d be here.’

‘Same thing. So, get out of it. I want to use the hoist.’ He stormed over to a work bench, making sure Tania witnessed his performance so she’d be awe-struck.

‘I want to use the hoist.’ Adam imitated Gerald’s prissy way of speaking. Then all at once there came a blast of noise inside his head. It blocked out every other sound in the workshop, the hammering, banging, guys whistling. Adam’s eyesight clouded over with a grey fog and there came a noise ringing through his head. It was a hundred people, all at the same time, babbling in what sounded like different languages.

Gradually it became one voice, speaking English. Adam made sense of it: Where are you? We need you. It was a girl’s voice. Pleading with him, You must reach for me. Try, please try. We need you. The three of us. You must reach for me.

Then she was gone. The fog lifted and there was Gerald again, in Adam’s face, snapping his fingers. ‘Hey, Kingston. Adam Kingston. Wake up.’

Adam shook his head to clear things from his mind. Still confused, he said, ‘Oh, it’s you, Gerry.’

‘Yeah, who’d you expect? The Easter Bunny? I told you to get that car off the hoist. Dad doesn’t pay you to day-dream on the job.’

‘I wasn’t dreaming,’ Adam fired back. ‘And rack off. You’re not my boss.’

‘You reckon? I got a direct line to him, so get that heap shifted. And do your dreaming in bed, right?’ For a third time, Gerald went away, burbling with his own importance.

But what was it, Adam wondered? That voice thing? You must reach for us. And the grey fog; where had that come from?

Tania came to his work area, wiping her hands on a rag. ‘You look spaced out, Adam. You on something? You know — substances.’ With one grubby forefinger she closed one nostril and sniffed through the other.

‘Me, no way.’ Adam attempted to make himself busy, checking the tools to make sure nothing was left behind before dropping the car bonnet. ‘I just got a sort of ringing in my ear. It’s gone now.’

‘I blame headphones,’ Tania went on. ‘And ear buds. Messing with our young brains.’

‘Yeah, I expect so.’ It hadn’t been that. But what?

Tania went away to open the workshop double doors so Adam could drive the Falcon out into the yard. He regretted the lost opportunity of talking more with her. She’d already made things better in the workshop, given it a different atmosphere. Just before the first female apprentice arrived in the garage, the boss got the guys to take down their pin-up pictures and calendars and warned them to mind their language and behaviour. He also made space to install a female change room. Tania didn’t know he’d arranged those things. Mr Syme was that kind of boss. Shame about his son.

A few minutes later Adam checked the hoist was fully down, then drove the Falcon out into the yard and parked it. One of the good things about the job, he decided, was being allowed to drive different cars and vans, if only for a short distance.

As he locked the ute, Horrie Trimble turned up. He was about thirty something, employed as the fuel pump attendant. Most garages and service stations had long since embraced the world of do-it-yourself. Pump jockeys were a thing of the past, but Mr Syme liked the old-fashioned way and advertised full driveway service. Horrie Trimble was good at the job, out in the forecourt in all weathers, amiably cleaning windscreens and checking engine oil levels. He asked Adam, ‘What was all that about? That set-to with Gerald?’

‘Nothing really,’ Adam said. ‘He just likes to shoot his mouth off.’

‘Saw you through the workshop door. You went sort of vacant there, Adam boy, like you were in a trance.’

‘I dunno, Horrie.’ Adam knew Horrie would be sympathetic, wouldn’t laugh at him. ‘I thought I heard a voice.’

‘A voice? What, in the Falcon? Haunted is it?’

‘No. It’s weird, it was — inside my head.’

‘Sure you didn’t have the car radio on?’

‘No way, Horrie. This was real, a voice. Sounded sad, like it was urgent. Needed me.’

‘What was she saying?’

‘Going on about me — reaching for her. For them.’

‘That’s the word? Reaching?’

‘Yeah.’

At that moment the alert bell rang to say a vehicle had pulled up at one of the pumps and Horrie had to go outside and serve fifty litres or whatever. ‘See you, Adam,’ he waved and went away, leaving Adam still troubled about the voice in his head.

Then he remembered, from his nights of dreaming. Alison, too, had heard a similar message.

Chapter Two

Adam got home from work that day, still pondering the experience of the voice in his head. His mother sat at the kitchen table shelling peas, a saucepan in front of her, to one side a pile of empty pods.

‘Mum,’ Adam began, ‘a weird thing happened to me at work.’

Without a word, his mother pushed a pile of full pea-pods towards him. Adam got the message, sat at the table and started shelling with a plink, plink, plink.

‘Toss them in the pot, Adam, not at it.’ Mum collected his wandering peas and asked. ‘What was weird?’

‘I heard a voice.’

‘Who was it?’

‘That’s the thing. It wasn’t a who as much as a where.’ He carefully emptied a whole pod of peas into the centre of the pan. ‘It was inside my head.’

‘Is this another of your fanciful stories, Adam?’

‘No, it just came out of the blue. The voice.’

His mother sniffed, put the empty pea-pods into a metal canister and slid it in his direction. ‘To the compost with that.’

Adam sighed and rose from the table. ‘With you, Mum, it’s like flying a lead glider. Thud! That’s it hitting the carpet.’

But his mother had already gone to the stove with the pan of peas.

Adam added the empty pea pods to the compost bin and gave the handle a turn. Then he wandered on down the garden to check on the calettuces. Some weeks ago, Adam’s father had found in the bottom of the kitchen drawer, some anonymous seeds in a silver foil package. There was no outer envelope to say what the seeds were. Adam’s father plumped for lettuces; Adam went for cabbages while his mother bet they were flowers. Father and son planted them to see what would come up.

Mum went further and said if she was right she’d serve the petals to them in a salad. Adam and his father laughed at the time, ha, ha.

Adam inspected the calettuces, as they’d agreed to call them. They were no more than tiny green sprouts that would take an expert horticulturalist to identify.

A girl’s voice said, ‘Hello.’

Startled, Adam looked up from the green shoots and for a second thought it was the voice he’d heard inside his head. But no, it was a girl, a real one. She was in the garden of the house next door, standing by the fence, looking at him.

‘Yeah, hi,’ he responded and walked towards her. She was tall, Adam’s height, with long golden hair and smiling in a friendly way. The girl wore a private school blazer, St Willmot’s, Adam guessed. He don’t see many of her kind down this way.

‘Sorry if I startled you,’ the girl went on and put a hand up to brush a length of hair behind her ear. A couple of heavy silver chains slipped down her wrist into her sleeve.

‘Are you moving in there?’ Adam asked.

The girl paused for a second or two, then seemed to think this was a good idea. ‘Yes, moving in, I suppose we are.’

‘Place has been empty for six months,’ Adam said. ‘So it’ll be good to have neighbours again.’

‘We’ll not be staying long. It’s temporary. A staging post.’

‘So, when are you actually moving your stuff in?’ It was now late evening, just on dusk. Adam glanced at the house next door. It was in darkness. No lights showed.

‘We are in,’ she said. ‘Came today.’

Funny that, Adam thought. He hadn’t seen any signs of life when he arrived home. Nor had his mother mentioned new people buying the place. ‘Right,’ is all he could think to say, but he made a generous, neighbourly offer. ‘Do your folks need anything? I mean Mum can lend you some things and Dad and me can help shift furniture.’

The girl smiled and shook her head as if Adam was amusing her. ‘Oh, thank you, but no.’ Educated voice, she had; self assured. She went on, ‘Once we’re all together, we