Bereft (23 page)

More laughter from the hallway, muffled words. Quinn made out the shape of the doorway across the room and then the glint of a mirror in the hall. Perhaps they could run for it and escape—through the door, along the hallway, out the back door and into the garden? The woman's voice, low and suggestive.
This way, Constable
… Footsteps, a grunt and the unmistakable greasy squeak of a mattress. More laughter, now uninhibited and the thud of a boot landing on the floor.

Sadie's tiny chest heaved. She licked her lips and, as if handling a newborn child, she held out the bundle she had taken from the box. He shook his head at her to indicate there was no time for that now, but she pressed it to him. Something in her manner brooked no refusal. He took it and was surprised to discover it was much heavier than he expected. He picked apart the wrapping and released a smell of machine oil. A revolver, a Webley by the look of it, probably the same make as the one he had lost. Sadie handed him a box of ammunition.

From the bedroom came further squeaks, ravenous murmurs, whispers. Quinn blushed. During training in Cairo, he had been dragged to a brothel by fellow soldiers and, although he'd refused the entreaties of the dark-eyed women there, the experience instilled in him a horror of anything suggestive of the sordid intimacies between men and women. The place had been lousy with incense smoke and the stink of alcohol. He was reminded now of that hot night, just as then he had been reminded obscurely of the afternoon of Sarah's murder; the dim particulars of each occasion melded into a kaleidoscope of churning limbs, sinister laughter and the flash of a stranger's crooked teeth.

He cracked the revolver open, fitted three bullets into chambers and snipped it shut. The action was remarkably satisfying. He and Sadie crept through the door and stood in the hallway. The floor creaked underfoot. They froze. Quinn realised he was shaking with terror. He heard his uncle's guffaws. He indicated for Sadie to stand by the back door, and she nodded and did as she was told. Although he was unsure how to proceed, Quinn imagined he might step into the bedroom and shoot his uncle where he lay. That other time, that time with Sarah, how he had wished he'd had a weapon such as this in his grasp. He inspected the revolver. Perhaps vengeance did, in fact, belong with him?

Suddenly a shape in front of him in the hallway. A woman, dressed in a filmy undergarment. It was Mrs. Higgins. Moonlight glanced off her sweating forehead, lending her the appearance of having been dipped in milk. Her fingers fluttered in the air. “Dick,” she was whispering. “Dick, is that you? My God I'm so sorry, I thought …”

Quinn stared at her, mesmerised, unable to speak. The woman was familiar.
Evelyn
. Evelyn Kingston, whom he had known at school. A feisty girl who once, upon being excluded from a cricket game the boys were playing, stole their ball and flung it into the orchard bordering the schoolyard.

He felt a draught of night air and understood at once that Sadie had opened the back door behind him. There was the intimation of movement from the bedroom, followed by a muffled query. Robert.

Evelyn Higgins was still speaking in her plaintive voice. “Dick, you had been gone so long now, for so many years I thought …”

Quinn spun on his heel and ran straight out the door and onto the veranda. He leaped onto the lawn, lost his footing and tumbled forward onto his face with a dull grunt. Blood blossomed in his mouth. There was the smell of bruised grass in his nostrils, grit coated the end of his tongue. Sadie was up ahead urging him on. Her limbs glimmered beneath the apple tree.

From behind him in the house he heard footsteps, raised voices, a curse.
No, please don't … .

Quinn stood. Sadie glided across the lawn from right to left. “This way,” she hissed, and vanished through the wooden fence.

Heart fumbling for rhythm, revolver in hand, Quinn staggered after her but was unable to locate the gap in the fence through which she had gone. He floundered on his knees in the garden bed. The ground was spongy and moist and stank of chicken shit. A branch scratched his cheek. At last he found the break in the fence and fell through to the other side. Sadie hauled him to his knees and sprinted across Fletcher Street and skidded around the corner.

From the other side of the fence, Quinn heard Dalton's querulous voice and Evelyn Higgins' placating one.
There's no need for your gun …
Robert!
Dogs barked all around.

Quinn tried to get to his feet but was hampered by something tugging on the sleeve of his army tunic. He thought of the malevolent creatures that lurked in the puddles of the Flats, but it was only a rusted strand of barbed wire nailed to the fence. He twisted this way and that but was unable to detach himself. A knot of wire cut his knuckle.

Dalton's furious voice again from the other side of the fence. His uncle was getting closer, kicking through the undergrowth, seeking the intruder.
Get here, you little bitch …

Quinn shrugged out of the tunic, staggered to his feet and bolted around the corner, where he almost collided with Sadie coming back the other way.

“What are you
doing
?” she whispered, out of breath.

“I got stuck.”

“Where's the revolver?”

He showed it to her, still wrapped in its strip of oily cloth.

Her eyes glowed. “Now's your chance. Go back and shoot him. Do it now.”

But Quinn just stared at her. He didn't move.

When it was clear he was not going to act, she pulled him by his shirt sleeve. “Come on, then.”

They fled through the lower part of Flint. Dogs yapped and threw themselves against fences. They kept to the grassy verge. Quinn imagined wives waking their sleeping men, creeping to bedroom windows, wondering at the noises they heard so late at night. He and Sadie jogged past orchards and continued until they crossed the soggy pastures at the edge of town and plunged into the bush.

They made it back to the shack an hour later. Exhausted, nerves jangling, they collapsed to the floor. Quinn lay and stared at the ceiling. Neither of them spoke. Sadie sat against the wall.

Quinn fell into an uneasy sleep punctuated by dreams of tangled tree limbs and muddy fields. Then the hollowed-out room, Sadie, a guttering candle flame, the taste of mud and blood in his mouth.

She gripped his upper arm. “Wake up,” she was saying. “Wake up. Where's your tunic? Quinn? Where's your tunic?”

He sat up and rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “What?”

“Your tunic. Didn't you bring it back with you?”

After a stunned silence, he said, “I left it by the fence. I told you. I was caught on barbed wire.”

Sadie sat back on her heels and put her face in her hands.

“What?” Quinn asked.

“That's how they'll find us.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That's how the tracker finds people for Dalton. And his dogs. They track people by their smell. On clothes and things. If there's no tracks. They can find anyone like that. You should have killed him when you had the chance.”

Quinn swore to himself. The girl was probably right. How could he have been so stupid, so cowardly? At least he had ripped his name tag from the tunic. At least he had done that. The taste of blood prompted him to run a finger along his front teeth. Sure enough, his left eye tooth felt loose. He waggled it, and it broke off between his fingers. He wiped it free of blood and held it out in front of him, where it gleamed.

The next morning, wearing only trousers, Quinn filled a bucket with water from the tank and stood outside to bathe. Dragonflies darted about, trapping the sunlight in their blurring wings. The morning was cool but held the promise of another scorcher. Cupfuls of icy water shattered across his head and coursed down his face and chest. He inhaled short, stabbing breaths and washed his shoulders and shrugging neck, folding his arms about his head as a bird might do its wings.

He heard the door slapping shut and turned to see Sadie standing several feet away watching him. Her blinkless eyes flickered across his wet torso. Who knew what went through her mind? They observed each other for several seconds before she picked her way over to him through the long grass, raised a hand and, in a movement at once tender and savage, tore loose the vertical scab of the cross he had carved into his chest some days ago. So shocked was he, and so sudden was the act, that he hardly registered what had occurred until he noticed a dollop of woolly blood unravel from the wound and make its way down across his ribs. The pain was brittle, exquisite, and he shuddered with it. Something loomed at the edges of his memory, vanished, then returned. Blood. Sarah's blood, on her, on him. The weight of her, the dull coins of her eyes. By the time he thought to look up again, Sadie had returned inside.

21

W
hen Quinn woke the following morning, he was alone. He lay on the floor with his trench coat for a pillow. He felt weak; he suspected the water they were drawing from the rusty tank was poisoned; that perhaps a possum or a koala had died in there. Their diet of scrawny rabbits, old bread and stolen tins of beans didn't help. He heard the dull chatter of artillery in his head, but the war now seemed a million miles away, in the way that winter was unimaginable in the height of summer. A mouse skittered across the floor and vanished into a hole. Gone, just like that.

He lapsed in and out of sleep for most of the day and was woken by a coughing fit that racked his body. When he was again sensible to the world, Sadie was crouching over him holding a cup of bicarb and water to his mouth. She always showed up when he needed her. He gulped the mixture and, when he could sit up, she took his hand and led him outside. There, tethered to a tree by a length of ragged rope, was the lamb he had seen when he first arrived. The creature bleated and shook its bony head. Sadie kneeled to kiss the lamb's face, untied it and led them—Quinn by one hand, the lamb by its length of rope—into the bush.

Although he didn't protest, the girl must have sensed his hesitation. She tugged his hand until he was bent almost double. She fitted her lips to his ear and the words she uttered circumvented his sense of hearing and instead plumbed his heart.

“Pim,” she whispered. “You need to trust me.”

Quinn stared at her face, her cherry-black eyes and the slice of her mouth. She licked away pearls of sweat that had already formed on her upper lip. She let go of his hand, muttered encouraging words to the lamb and led the creature into the undergrowth. Quinn waited a minute before hurrying after them.

They tramped for two hours, rising higher and higher into the hills, panting with the effort of it. The way was rocky and steep. The lamb was reluctant and had to be cajoled to make the ascent; it suspected, perhaps, that something unpleasant would be required of it. They arrived at a cave set high into the rock. A wind hummed through the surrounding trees, and when they stood on the granite lip of the cave they could see the pattern of the earth normally denied them, right over the western plains of New South Wales. Fields and roads; dozens of brown dams; clumps of trees; the wink of sunlight on tin roofs; the shiver of streams.

The cave entrance was massive, had perhaps served as a handhold for God as he clambered about the earth inspecting his handiwork all those years ago. Quinn wondered what it might be like to have the vision afforded God: to see the whole planet and all its people, their futures and pasts in one single moment. It was a terrible and magical thought. The cave's prehistoric air cooled the sweat on his back as he and Sadie stared out over the horizon.

“This is the Cave of Hands,” she said when she had caught her breath. She tethered the lamb to a tree. “I used to hide from Mr. Dalton up here.”

Mesmerised, Quinn watched the girl. She was so capable, so certain of her place in the world. She kicked away some bracken. The lamb gazed around with its wayward eyes and expelled the occasional quavering bleat.

“No one knows about this place except me and the blackfellas. It's the unknown terror.”