Bereft (10 page)

The girl leaned backwards. “Do you have the plague?”

He shook his head and sat on a log. He bent double, grasping his stomach and groaning with pain until the episode subsided several minutes later, leaving him sweating and his innards quivering. When he became aware again of his surrounds, she was beside him with a hand resting on his shoulder. He resisted the urge to shrug her away and instead spat into the fire and wiped his watering mouth and eyes.

“Did you get gassed?”

He nodded.

“Where?”

“In France.”

“Tom Smith was gassed, too.” She crouched again and tossed twigs one by one into the fire. “You shouldn't have fired at me last night. They hear shots right through the valley …”

He couldn't hear what she said next. “What?”

“I said: There's sometimes people hide up here.”

“What kind of people?”

The girl shrugged. “People getting away from the nubonic plague—”

“
Bu
bonic.”

“What?”

“It's bubonic plague. Not
nu
bonic. And it's not that, anyway. It's influenza.”

She shrugged. “Swagmen hide up here. Criminals. Sometimes blokes afraid of conscripting. Down in Flint they're afraid of everything now. Shoot people, sometimes,” she added, almost as an afterthought.

“Shoot people? Who does?”

“Mr. Dalton shot a swaggie two years ago, while he was out hunting. Buried him in a gully. Dogs dug him up later on. I saw a bit of him in a dog's mouth. An arm, I think.” She made a face.

Quinn started. “Why on earth did he do that?”

She regarded him as if he were a dim-witted child. “Because he could.”

“Does anyone know about … Mr. Dalton shooting that man?”

“Of course not.”

“How do you know he did it?”

“I just know.” She looked at him. “He does lots of bad things.”

Despite himself, Quinn shivered. He considered the child for a long time, trying to determine what she really might know. “What were you doing up here last night?”

“I told you. I live up here.”

The girl was no doubt a troublemaker; still, he couldn't help but be intrigued. “What else did the lamb tell you?”

She stood and grinned, pleased she had so piqued his interest. Then he recalled she was little more than a child making up stories. He set about packing his things, eager to get away. He turned his back on her to remove the revolver from his pocket and shove it into his kitbag.

“Why should I tell you when you don't believe me?” she demanded, circling until she stood in front of him.

Quinn closed his eyes, hoping that when he re-opened them, the girl might have vanished. In France, Fletcher had told him of an apparition that presented itself in the trenches one evening ahead of battle: a melancholy, ill-dressed officer who asked for directions to the German lines, only to dissolve once the barrage was underway. But when Quinn opened his eyes, she was still there.

“You will need to kill a rabbit today,” she said.

“Oh, will I?”

“Yes. If you want to eat.” She stepped closer. “I can help you. I'm good at those things. Good at traps. My brother taught me.”

“So, you have a brother?”

She hesitated, as if caught out in a lie. “Yes. He's a pilot in the war. But he'll be back soon.”

By now Quinn had gathered his things together. “Good. Then you'll have someone to take care of you. Well, I need to go. There are things I have to do. Cheerio.”

“Are you going to see your relative now?”

He wondered what to tell her. “I'm going to see my mother. She is sick. Good-bye. Good luck.”

The girl began to cackle and then, in a high-pitched voice, unable to contain her giggling, said: “
There there. I won't hurt you
. That's what you said to the lamb.
I'll protect you
.”

Quinn halted. No one could have heard what he'd said to that creature. The child was standing a few feet from him, out of reach. He considered grabbing her and, as if reading his mind, she stepped back and cocked her head to listen.

Quinn watched her. He strained to hear, too. There, faintly, the sound of someone clattering across dry leaves and through the undergrowth further down the hill.

The girl looked stricken. “It's Mr. Dalton.”

Quinn's blood tightened. His uncle. He swore and bent down to pick up his bag, and when he turned back there was no trace of the girl. She had dissolved, like smoke or water. He wanted to call out for her but thought better of it. He hefted his swag and plunged into the undergrowth.

He jumped and bounded and ran, slipping on rocks and stones, managing to maintain balance only by some miracle. Behind him on the ridge, a man's voice yelled out. No doubt his uncle had discovered the fire. Quinn slithered down a dusty slope on his arse. Galahs flung themselves from trees and rose shrieking into the air.

His swag was awkward to carry while running. Branches snagged on his uniform and spider webs gathered in his hair. He came to a dry creek bed overhung with low branches and dotted with leaf-dark puddles. The air was filled with the euphonic throb of cicadas, hidden from view but everywhere, making themselves known to those who could hear. He panted and turned to look back up the ridge where he glimpsed his uncle blundering through the trees a few hundred feet away.

Quinn considered his options. The incline on the opposite side was far too steep and overgrown. Robert would surely catch him and drag him back to Flint, to his father who longed to hang him for what he thought Quinn had done. The only thing was to scramble along the creek bed and hope it led somewhere safer. With one arm raised to shield his face, he ducked beneath a tangle of branches to his left.

The bed was uneven, potted with holes and littered with dead branches. His breath came in coarse, leaden clumps. He bent to crawl beneath the lowest branches, his face only two inches from the ground, and came face-to-face with what looked like a thick and gleaming turd, but revealed itself to be a brown snake curled on a rock.

Quinn froze. Rivulets of sweat poured down his face and neck. He held his breath as best he could. He could feel the dry heat rising from the sun-baked rock, the same warmth that had doubtless attracted the snake. It was a fat King Brown, had probably been living here for years. Quinn and the snake stared at each other for several long seconds. Snakes never blinked, gave nothing of themselves away, might as well have been hollow.

Then, luxuriously, like a drowsy bohemian after a mid-morning nap, the snake uncoiled. Its blue-grey tongue flickered about, tasting the air, making its reptilian calculations. Quinn knew a sudden movement would prompt it to strike. His heart thrummed and his skin itched beneath his uniform. The creature began to flatten itself out and prepare for movement. The world around Quinn drained away. The abrupt disembowelment of sensation reminded him of that split second before the shell landed near him at Pozières. That same knowing and unknowing.

He reached into his kitbag for his revolver. He would shoot the creature, even if the sound of firing gave away his position. He had to. Then run. He would shoot it and run. Keeping his eye on the snake, he rummaged gently in his bag. Nothing. The revolver was gone. It must have fallen out when he fled. Bloody hell.
Bloody hell.
Still the snake unravelled. He began to shuffle backwards but his stuttering progress was stymied by a branch that snagged on the shoulder of his uniform. He felt faint. He mumbled a prayer.

Then, in an instant, a hand swooped to grasp the snake about its neck. The girl stood before him with the flailing serpent in a slender, two-fisted grip. The snake spat and writhed and looped its long body around her forearm. Grimacing with effort, she unwound it from her pale arm, stepped past Quinn and—measuring the throw several times before she released it—tossed the snake back down the gully in the direction Quinn had come. Her face was flushed with fear and delight when she turned to him, as if the experience were a lark from the
Boy's
Own Paper.
“That should put him off,” she said and laughed.

Quinn was stunned. He ran a hand across the mangled portion of his lip. His mouth was dry and his skull buzzed with heat and fatigue, as if in concert with the flies and cicadas in the trees around them.

The girl began to clamber up some rocks through a narrow break in the undergrowth he hadn't noticed. She paused to address him. “You should come with me.”

He heard Robert Dalton advancing up the dry gully and scrambled after her.

9

T
he noises of pursuit soon fell away. His uncle had probably stumbled across the furious snake and retreated. Quinn smiled at the thought. He followed the girl with difficulty, crawling up steep slopes through dense bush litter into which he sometimes plunged as far as his knees. At times he lost sight of her altogether, but she would materialise nearby, chewing on a twig or peeling bark from a tree, quietly urging him on.

After Europe's perpetual autumn, which had been made worse by the clammy dust of war, the dry air of New South Wales scorched his lungs. He was forced to stop often to cough and catch his breath. The girl grunted with effort, hitched her dirty dress. They pressed on.

Quinn had once been acquainted with every gully and rise in these ranges, but the tracks along which she led him felt as if they belonged to a different part of the district altogether. He attempted to pinpoint a tree or another landmark by which to orient himself, but there was nothing recognisable, and he was too exhausted and too fearful to think clearly. The landscape afforded little in the way of a view. There were only the ragged regiments of trees with sheets of bark unravelling from their trunks, their oddly angled branches clutching at the air. Cockatoos screeched overhead.

They went on like this for more than an hour and then they stopped. The shack the girl led him to was so thoroughly encrusted with ivy and overhung with vines and trees that they were standing in front of it before Quinn even realised.

He looked up, panting and sweating. “Where the hell are we?”

Through the foliage he could see the place was a ruin. The girl wrested his bag from him, stepped onto the crumbling porch and went inside. Quinn bent over with his palms braced on his knees. After a few minutes, he followed. There was little else to do.

Despite the sunny weather, the interior of the ruin was dark and claustral, pierced here and there with fingers of light. There was a kitchen and one other room. Skeletal branches brushed up hard against the side of the cottage. Dust had collected along the skirting boards and on the few items scattered about. There was a filthy shelf of empty bottles and jars, discarded tins of food, a pile of bricks and rubble in one corner, and the unmistakable stink of animal droppings. A faded print torn from a magazine or annual was pinned to one wall. Apple peel, piles of chicken bones and other food scraps were strewn over the floor. Quinn had seen some curious sights in the years he had been away, but this house reminded him that the world was indeed full of strange and wonderful places. There was little doubt the girl lived here alone.

He shrugged off his coat and leaned against a doorframe. A fly droned about his eyes. He unbuttoned his grubby tunic and was overcome by a burning cramp in his guts. He felt as if he had swallowed broken glass. He doubled over and slumped halfway to the rotten floor, spluttering and groaning. The girl vanished and returned a moment later with a tin mug, which she pressed into his hand.

Quinn took the mug. The water tasted of mildew but eased the pain in his throat. He thanked her, this girl who was at times childish, and at other moments seemed prematurely aged. Sweat pebbled on her upper lip, which she wiped away with the back of one hand.

Now recovered, Quinn wrestled himself to standing and loosened the remaining buttons of his tunic. The girl explained that Quinn could sleep in the kitchen. He could make a bed of his coat, she told him, adding that no one would find them because no one ever came up this way and, even if they did, they never noticed this place. “It's a complete secret,” she said.

Quinn shook his head. “I can't stay here. Maybe only tonight, I don't know.'

“What do you mean? Why can't you?”

“I can't.”

The girl mumbled something.

“What?”

“Where else you going to go?”

He couldn't think straight. “I don't know. I'll camp out, find a room.”

She laughed. “What do you mean? You can't go back to Flint. You can't camp because Mr. Dalton will find you.”

“I'll leave town, then. I can't stay here.”

“You can't
leave
.”

“Why not?”

“Because why did you come? What about your mother?”

Quinn hesitated. “Yes. I need to be somewhere closer to her. She's very sick. How do I get down to Flint from here?”

“I'll show you a hidden way. No one will ever see you. I'll take you tomorrow.”