Bereft (19 page)

As always, Quinn relented, and ten minutes later they found themselves by the Flint River crouching beneath the drooping fronds of a willow tree. The bank was muddy and the seat of his trousers was soon wet. He grew uneasy as Sarah indicated Oliver Sharp's bark-and-blanket humpy fifty yards away. She told him that Mr. Sharp had fifty pounds in a sack buried beneath a tree.

“He sets out for his claim near Sparrowhawk at the crack of dawn,” Sarah was saying. “Actually it's probably
more
than fifty pounds. Imagine.”

“How do you know?”

“I just know.”

Quinn didn't like the sound of this. His sister often spoke most authoritatively when her information was at its least reliable.

“Now,” she went on, “it's Mother's birthday soon and I thought we could take a bit of Mr. Sharp's money and buy her something. Only
two
pounds
,” she hissed over his protests. “Enough for a shawl at the store.”

“We can't do that. Stealing is wrong.”

But Sarah had shuffled over to a nearby bush and produced from behind it a spade that she handed to him. “Here. Use this. Let's go. No one will even know.”

He recognised the implement as one of his father's tools. “How did this get here?”

“I put it there last night. You have to plan these things, Quinn. Now —”

At that moment, her eyes and mouth opened wide, synchronised, like those of a marionette. Quinn had rarely seen Sarah show fear. Still on his haunches, he swivelled to see Mr. Sharp looming above them with a mattock over one shoulder, his rheumy eyes pinched into a bitter squint. Sarah squealed, lost her footing on the greasy bank and—arms windmilling, grasping at a willow frond that snapped off in her hand—she tumbled backwards into the river.

Their father was furious with Quinn when the pair of them showed up shamefaced at the house later that morning escorted by Constable Mackey. The incident was a minor scandal in Flint, but Sarah was resourceful and within days she adapted the adventure into a tale of derring-do worthy of a penny dreadful. Perched on her fruit crate, she spellbound the children at school with the account of her narrow escape from old Mr. Sharp who by this time had developed a hunched back and claws and—rather than kindly helping her from the river, as had really happened—had attempted to split her skull with his mattock.

Quinn opened his eyes. He was disoriented. It felt as though his sister was with them again; he and his parents had conjured her with the combined force of their imagining. From the quality of their awkward silence, he knew his parents had sensed it, too. But it was only a few seconds. Then she was gone.

“That day, it was raining fit to flood.” His father was continuing his account. “Thunder and all. Jenny always hated thunder. And I asked around town. No one had seen her, but I ran into Jim Gracie and he said he had seen them by Wilson's Point. Gracie looked terrified of the storm himself.”

“See, that is strange,” Mary interrupted. “The children never played down there, not after the Gunn girl drowned there in '07. And that other girl—do you remember?—not long after we moved here. Sarah hated Wilson's Point.”

“Well, the boy dragged her there, I suppose. Why do you doubt me? Do you not trust what I saw with my eyes? I wish as much as you that none of this happened. My God, to have a son like that.”

“Do you really think he did it?”

“It is what I saw.”

“But you didn't see him … you didn't see him
do
it?”

“You are blinded by your love for the boy.”

“Did you see him do it, Nathaniel? It's important.”

Quinn's father exhaled loudly. “No.”

Mary closed her eyes, exhausted, whittled down by her twin vices of prayer and hopelessness.

“But you saw them together, Mary. You saw how they were …”

“They were brother and sister.”

“…always hiding, playing games. Disappearing under the house. You know what they called them down The Mail, because they were together so much? Do you even know? Romeo and Juliet. Romeo and
Juliet
.”

“Don't be foolish. Only you called them that.”

“No! Your brother did, too. He said as much to me later. Said it was clear all along what was going to happen.”

Mary coughed long and hard. “You're being ridiculous. Robert would never say such a thing. He loved that girl as much as we did.”

A hot silence thickened in the room.
He loved that girl as much as
we did.
A faint wobble insinuated itself into Quinn's knees. He wanted to slide down the side of the wardrobe to the floor but feared his father would notice him. The urge to do so was almost irresistible, but he remained standing, shoulders slumped like those of a man at the gallows. He wondered if God could see into the broken bones of his heart.

“Anyway,” his father continued, “William was home with you, in fever. I left Jenny tethered by the reeds and went over the low embankment. The lake was high. I was drenched to the skin. And I went to that old shed and the boy was there and he was … He had the knife in his hands and Sarah was on the floor and he looked up at me with an awful expression.” He re-lit his pipe. “Mary? Let's leave this. Please? It is better that way. It has taken us all this time to forget it. Let's leave the past alone.”

Mary gasped for air. Her fingers scrabbled at her bedding. “But it will not leave us alone, Nathaniel. Will not leave
me
alone.”

Quinn's father got out of his chair and approached the window. “Are you alright? For God's sake.”

Quinn shrank deeper into the shadows.

“Stay away from the window,” Mary said. “Please. You'll catch it. Stay away.”

Nathaniel reeled back. He dropped his pipe, swore and bent to retrieve it.

“But what next, Nathaniel?”

Quinn's father sighed with exasperation. His step was heavy on the boards as he paced. “The boy said not a word, but he had a look as if he had learned something terrible. He was pale and he was covered in blood. And that's when your brother showed up and said something and the boy shook his head and threw down the knife and ran off. He didn't say anything, but he ran, Mary. By God, he ran like a bloody rabbit.”

Part Three

THE CAVE OF
HANDS

17

T
he following day, Quinn watched his sleeping mother for some time. Already she resembled a creature not of this world, as if the greater part of her had been drawn away, like a tide, during the night. Her face appeared to have shrunk and there were flecks of dried blood on her upper lip. After some minutes, she opened her eyes and muttered, “Quinn. Tell me what you saw. On that day.”

“I saw nothing, Mother.”

“You heard what your father told me. Yesterday, or whenever that was. Were you here?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you run off that day?”

He wiped her brow with a wet washcloth. “I don't know. I was afraid.”

“But where did you go?”

Quinn toyed with the cloth in his hands. “I woke at some stage, Mother. I don't know how long it had been since I left here, perhaps two weeks? Long enough for the initial terror to dissolve but not long enough for me to make a plan of what to do. I had cuts all over my body from sleeping on the ground and from falling over. My back was bruised and sore. I thought I would probably die out there and, you know, the idea of it didn't really worry me too much. Death was not so frightening. I wondered how I would survive without Sarah, how I would survive after what had happened to her. I didn't even know then that anyone thought it was me who did it. That was too monstrous. It was only later I heard about that.

“I don't know what I did. I stared at the heavens, waited for the stars to fall from their orbit. Time passes, regardless of clocks. I slept on rocks. I watched clouds break and re-form into new shapes overhead. A scowling cat, a roll of fog, one day a herd of pale horses billowed over the sky. The world had never seemed so huge to me before. I was used to this place. To Flint. I had never wanted to leave. I never had to.

“I was followed by dogs for a few days. They barked as though encouraging me to join them and I thought about
The Jungle Book
you had read to us. Do you remember that? I imagined running with them like Mowgli as they scoured the countryside, and of huddling with them in their cave. I thought at least they would keep me warm at night. But I slept in a tree and they vanished.”

He remembered that much of the time was spent trying to find food. He'd stumbled across rabbits in traps and stolen fruit from orchards. A man could get used to hunger. He learned this in the war, too. One could always survive, if survival was all that was required.

“The days became as mad as a dream,” he continued. He'd seen incredible things: an ocean liner carving through fields of wheat. In the morning he sometimes heard breathing close by his ear. The harsh cry of birds all night long. He'd imagined he was taken up by two Arabian merchants who led him to their cave of treasure, and that he sailed on a boat that was destroyed by a sea monster in the Persian Gulf. He'd been mad with hunger and grief. With anxiety. He'd believed he had entered another, stranger world where anything was possible, which perhaps was true.

He looked down at his mother, who had hardly stirred these past few minutes. “When I first left Flint all those years ago it was not through choice. You must believe me on this. I hadn't
done
anything. I wandered aimlessly and my only thought was of escape even though I had done nothing wrong. An elderly couple found me insensible on their property and cared for me until I could walk. My voice was lost so I wrote them notes to explain where I had come from, or what I could recall. They were kind to me and I helped Mr. Tucker around his property—cutting wood and tending his sheep. Then I heard that I was the suspect in Sarah's murder. God, how awful. I moved on and worked on other properties as a roustabout or looking after horses. I was good with animals, and they liked me and trusted me. In truth I preferred their silent company to that of the stockmen or farmhands who drank and staggered in late at night, swearing and carrying on, tripping over their swags in the dark.

“People gave me odd jobs in exchange for board. I learned how to build a house, how to sink a well. I worked in Tamworth for a blacksmith lugging material. I met many kind people. No one asked how I came to be travelling alone.”

Quinn stopped speaking. His mother didn't move, made no sign she had even noticed. Although relieved to feel her exhalation against his cheek when he leaned down, he was dismayed at the sour smell of rubbish on her breath. Melancholy swelled his heart. “I went to Newcastle after a while,” he continued when he was able. “And I joined a boat that took goods to Brisbane. A steamer. It was hard work, but it was satisfying. I learned many things. There were a few of us on board, but the solitude was immense. At night I stared out over the universe and I thought I might hear the breath of God who scattered the stars of the Milky Way. Orion, Dog Star. It was comforting and terrifying. I joined other boats and travelled the world. I saw the markets of Cairo and the deserts of Spain. Thick smoke in the shadows, the smell of charcoal. Women in rattan cages, lizards tethered by their tails hanging from the ceilings of crowded stalls. I saw camels in the markets of Tangier. Mother, did you know they have a herb in Shanghai that smells exactly like lightning? And there are men who press secret powders into vials, who can make a man disappear without a word? That there are dragons in the Far East? I worked for a few months building rail lines near Grafton. Then the war, of course. The Great War, which erased everything that came before.”

Quinn collected himself. “It took a long time to come back here, Mother, but you were never far from my thoughts. Even during the war,
especially
during the war when I feared I would die at any moment. In those freezing trenches I thought of you and Father and William, and of Sarah and what had happened. The idea that you considered me a killer was unbearable. I tried to imagine myself back here. I wished I had a magic carpet, a genie from a bottle who might grant me a single wish. Anything. I'm sorry at the way everything turned out, Mother. My leaving was unforgivable. I'm sorry.”

Mary Walker made no sign she had heard him but, at last, she opened her swollen eyes and faced him. “Thank you,” she said. She picked at her sheet. “Give me some water, please.”

Quinn did as she asked, then she beckoned him close.

“Listen to me,” she whispered. “I have been thinking, you know. Quinn, I thought I would learn everything from books. Not only of the present, but of the past as well. They enabled me to talk with interesting people and know things of other places. And I have learned many wonderful things about the world away from here. About ancient wars and lost cities, of strange kings and queens. I know all about the Seven Wonders of the World.” Here she coughed for some time. “But, as much as they can be a way to learn about the world, I think perhaps stories are also a way of hiding from it. Do you understand me?”