BARRETT MAKES A BREAK FOR IT

Mike Crowl

Robert Barrett, District Court Judge, drove his BMW a fraction faster than the speed limit, and began to relax - a fraction. This was supposed to be a day off, a retreat from all things legal - especially the encumberments of his high position. But so far the cool air coming from the conditioner had done nothing to alleviate the heat in the car, and the open countryside around him was doing nothing to alleviate the chronic knot in his stomach.
He had hoped a walk in the fresh air and sunshine would calm his nerves enough to allow him to continue, tomorrow, his normal routines, so when he spied a track that led first to a lagoon, and then further, to the beach, he braked and shot into the parking area. It was muddy, and he hoped the BMW wouldn't get stuck, but the ground seemed dry enough. He made sure everything was locked, headed off down the track, slipped a little on the grass, and stomped off across the sand.
The water in the lagoon sent long sweepings towards him, shushing against the shore like a nurse calming her patient. His mouth tightened at it but at least there was no other noise, and no other people. He could think or not think as he wished, or try and Be At One with Nature. That sounded pompous, even to his ears.
He reached the place where the lagoon and the beach waters met, and was forced to turn to his left, around a high bank of sandhills. Damn! Through the haze he could see other human beings in the distance. There seemed to be a couple with a dog, and worse, someone on horseback riding by the water's edge. Well, as long as they kept far away from him, he'd cope.
But while staring at the distant strangers he failed to see the girl sitting in the sun by the sandhills, and nearly tripped over her. "Watch out!" she yelled.
He knew his day was ruined.
She was skinny, wore unappealing purple shorts and a blazing pink top, had some indiscriminate pale hair colour - and was wearing sunglasses so large he could barely see her face. He apologised, mumbled that he'd been looking at the people further down the beach, and began to move on.
"I know you, don't I?" she called after him. "You're that judge - Barrett."
He turned round, and said Yes, he was. He could see his Retreat was now going to be a waste of time. She leaned back on the sandhill and said, after a moment, "I've been in your court. Bet you don't remember me, do you?" Barrett prided himself on remembering the faces of those he'd judged. In fact he often boasted to recidivists that he could remember what they'd come up for previously, and what sort of sentence he'd given. But the sunglasses obscured so much of this girl's face that he couldn't bring her name to mind, nor anything about her case.
She prompted his memory. She told him she'd been driving an unwarranted Mini, had got into a skid, bashed the back of a parked Holden and injured at least two of her passengers. One of them had been thrown 20 metres along the road, she added. None of it meant anything to him, and he felt his perfect record had been sullied. He found himself apologising again, and wondering why. Maybe it was the fresh air.
And then the girl added something more. "I'm a good friend of your daughter, Meg. We're in touch by email, quite a bit." Barrett felt the knot in his stomach turning queasy. Meg, his favourite, the only one of all his four children who could both cajole him and drive him wild - usually within the same few moments. The one who'd led The Rebellion, as he'd named it, and who'd undermined his authority in the family so completely that within two months of her leaving, the three boys had all gone their own ways too, causing chaos to his finances and breaking his wife's heart. He'd only known about the broken heart because his wife had actually put it into words for once. Her silence was so common he'd come to think of it as essential to their relationship.
Meg had gone out of the house saying she would never be in touch with him again, and had obviously meant it, since he hadn't heard a word from her in two and a half years, and had no idea where she was.
The girl interrupted his thoughts, saying, "I've been to your house, you know. I can remember your lounge with all those pictures and I thought it was pretty posh, and that you must have heaps of money - and then Meg told me you were a high court judge and I thought, well, I'd better behave myself. Except I didn't - smashing the car up. It wasn't really my fault - the others wanted me to take them to town. I told them the car didn't have a warrant."
He didn't want to hear all this. He wanted to carry on with his retreat and put the rest of the world out of his mind. Even Meg, the one who'd betrayed him, and destroyed his family. He turned away, but something flitted across his brain: perhaps he might just get Meg's email address. It was probably a waste of time - would she even answer if he did write?
He asked the girl how he could contact Meg.
"Don't you have her address?" she asked, as though she was surprised. "Oh, yes, you two aren't speaking, are you? She says it was all your fault, but I bet she had something to do with it too."
His anger boiled up. Cheeky wench, accusing him of being to blame. He suggested that perhaps she needed not to judge what she didn't know.
She wasn't impressed, and laughed, a familiar laugh. Who was she? Had she laughed at him in court, too? "Meg always said you thought you ruled the world," she told him. "Now I see what she means." And she laughed again, while he wondered if there was some legal way he could bring her to boot for her insolence.
He tried to breath more evenly, and asked what Meg was doing now.
"Oh, she's had all sorts of jobs - amazes me how she can pick up a decent job when no one else can. Even tells her bosses if she doesn't like the way they act."
That was Meg all right, he thought. Never afraid of anyone in authority. She'd once told the headmaster at school how wrong he was to accuse one of the other kids - in front of the entire class - and had then suffered the injustice of being penalised herself. Detention every night for a week. But she hadn't given in.
The girl interrupted again. "She's had it pretty tough too. Had some real down times. Paul and me, he's my boyfriend - that's him down the beach on the horse - we got her to the hospital the night she took an overdose - and looked after her for weeks, just in case she did it again."
Barrett was appalled. What a relief she hadn't succeeded in killing herself - it would have been such a shameful thing to bring on the family. Of course, of course, he was glad too, for Meg's sake, since she still had her life ahead of her, and it would have been such a waste. He asked how long ago this was.
"I suppose it was last year in the winter, sometime. She was living in a dank flat in Canongate - said she couldn't keep warm - and it didn't help that the two blokes who'd been living there had gone and left her with all the bills. Just as well Paul was around - I mean, Paul and me. Otherwise she might have died. And no one would have known."
Barrett thought he could hardly be blamed for that. She had a family; why hadn't she swallowed her pride and called them? Even if she'd contacted one of her brothers, surely that would have been more sensible. He told the girl so. She didn't seem impressed, just carried on adding insult to injury. "She lost quite a bit of weight too around about then. Paul reckons it was all the stress - you know, that made her want to commit suicide. But she reckoned she was heading for being a bulimic. Until she managed to get on top of things."
The barrage of news seemed to eat up all Barrett's energy. He moved towards the girl, and sat down. Close but not too close, and looking away from her, out towards the waves mumbling on the sand. The girl asked him if he was all right, and he nodded several times - to convince them both, perhaps. "You've gone all pale," she said. He said he was getting his breath back. He'd walked some distance. She didn't say anything for some time, and he knew the excuse hadn't convinced her. Finally he asked if Meg ever mentioned her family, or her father.
"Oh, yes," said the girl. "She talks about her brothers all the time. She's in touch with them all - they had a party three weeks ago, and all the boys brought their girlfriends, and Paul was there, and a whole lot of Meg's friends. It was her birthday, of course - her 21st."
Barrett couldn't believe it: he'd forgotten completely. The boys at least came home to see their mother when it was their birthdays - expecting a present of course. But Meg had let it slip past without a fuss. Hadn't even contacted her mother. And she'd never said a word, of course. It was a damn shame, he thought, letting the last important birthday of a young person's life slide out of view.
He told the girl he'd forgotten. Wished he had some way to make it up to Meg. She probably wouldn't want to see him. And probably wouldn't forgive him, anyway.
"She might," said the girl. "She's changed a lot since she left home. Been scarred a bit, and isn't quite so stroppy as she used to be."
Barrett smiled. The smile used a minimum of muscles, but it was a smile. The girl touched his arm, and said, "Maybe she'll come and see you one day. She might have changed that much."
Barrett became aware of a thudding on the sand, and realised that the boy was riding his horse up to them, calling out to the girl, using some pet name by the sound of it. The girl stood up and said, "I'm off now. Hope Meg gets in touch with you."
Barrett said, "Wait. Can't you give me her address? Her email address even?"
The girl walked towards the boy and his horse, reaching up to his hand as he prepared to hoist her onto its back. "I don't know if I should, really. That's something Meg should decide for herself."
Barrett tried to stand, slipped, and was kneeling when he asked if she'd at least tell Meg her father might like to hear from her. The girl was lifted into the air, effortlessly, and slid her leg over the horse's back. "I'll see what I can do," she called, as the boy circled the horse round, so that she was still facing Barrett.
She lifted her sunglasses, and Barrett had a moment of recognition. No wonder he didn't remember that girl in court. Meg had never come up before him.
He slumped down on the sand, as the horse and its couple galloped away along the beach, splashing in and out of the surf, the girl - Meg - laughing, and the boy laughing too. The sun enveloped them in a sparkling light, romantic even to Barrett's misanthropic eyes.
He covered his face with his hands - and covered it with sand. He beat at his face, beat at the sand sticking to his nose and cheeks, clogging up his eyes and mouth. Now I must look like a clown, he thought. Now if anyone sees me, they'll think I'm some madman out here on the beach. He struggled to pull his handkerchief out his pocket, to wipe off the sand, and discovered a more pressing need to wipe away the tears falling down his cheeks. He mouthed his daughter's name, but no word came out, only sobbing. He remained on his knees, weeping, while the waves shushed onto the beach, time after time. Exhausted, he lay down on the sand like a child, and went to sleep.
He'd been dreaming that the horse, riderless, was galloping towards him, about to crush him with its hooves, when he woke.
The beach was empty, though somewhere in the distance there was a thudding. Was it the sound of hooves or the sudden plunging of waves? Only half awake, he couldn't tell.
His face and arms were burnt. He stood up, avalanching sand off his clothes, and almost missed noticing what he thought at first must be his handkerchief fluttering to the ground.
It was a piece of paper. With an email address scribbled on it.

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