Bereft (25 page)

T
he day ripened hot and hard. When they arrived at the shack, Sadie collapsed to the floor and fell asleep. By now her dress was tattered all about the hem. Her hands were still stained with the lamb's blood and there were spatters of it on her upper arm. Quinn washed the lamb's blood from his clothes and dried his shirt over the limb of a tree.

Restless, Quinn went to the cemetery and drifted among the graves throughout the afternoon. He recalled that he had doubted Sadie when she claimed to have seen rain fall only four times in her life but, judging by the state of the land hereabouts, she might have been telling the truth. The ground was hard as rock, and the leaves of the eucalypt trees so dry he wouldn't be surprised if they ignited. Of course they had learned nothing all day about the tracker's return.
The information sometimes comes
in unexpected ways.
Madness.

He was stupid to have imagined her magic could help at all, but he was desperate. His first impression of her was correct; she was barmy, probably didn't even have a brother. His uncle would find them sooner or later; they couldn't hide up here forever. He should go to Sydney, where no one knew him. He should leave, and at that moment regretted promising to wait here for Sadie's brother. He thought of what his mother had said:
It's a terrible kind of love. Terrible
.

He found the grave of Sadie's mother, Edna. There was a plain, white cross on the mound with the date of her death—February 1st, 1919, a couple of weeks before he had returned to Australia. Poor Sadie. It was dreadful to be so alone.

He made his way to Sarah's grave and removed a branch that had fallen across her headstone. He touched the place on his chest where his cross had scabbed. Beneath his shirt he could feel its faint texture, along with those of the other, more recent wounds. Something in the grass beside the headstone caught his eye, and he stooped to peer more closely. A white seashell the size of a grape. It was bound a dozen times with a length of cotton that might once have been red but was now faded to a pink so pale it was barely a colour. Sadie must have left it here. It was beautiful and pathetic, a tiny thing made sacred by a girl. They were so useless, these charms she constructed to assist passage through the worlds. With faith, with imagination and love, he thought, one could transform anything into something. He picked up the shell.

He remembered during the war seeing a young private named Shaw inhaling from a shell held to his face. Upon enquiry, he was told the boy had carried it from his birthplace in Western Australia, and claimed to be able to detect in the shell the aroma of the beach where he had swum the night before he enlisted. No one mocked the boy; the conditions of war permitted men to behave in unusual ways, not all of them barbaric. At the time Quinn thought it fanciful but now, squatting on a hill in the middle of nowhere, he lifted the shell to his nose and breathed in. At first nothing, just the sweat and eucalypt embedded in his palms, but soon he was able to discern other scents secreted in its tiny curl—the sea, sulphurous winds, even seaweed's tasty reek. The mere presence of the shell—so far from the beach where it must have been gathered—moved him unbearably. Hot tears tumbled down his cheek. What on earth would he do now? Where could he go?

He crouched there for some time, weeping, hunched as if bearing a weight. What was he doing here? Why had he returned at all? Around him the world revolved, went on its way. He caught a glimpse of himself as others might see him—a pathetic man, little better than a mendicant, in a cemetery, afraid to leave, afraid to stay.

Another sudden memory of war: of hearing a shot one otherwise peaceful night and learning the next day of a fellow who had somehow jammed a rifle barrel into his mouth and pressed the trigger with his toe. How he and some others had shrugged, not only with ambivalence at yet another wartime death, but with understanding as well.
Why not?
was the unspoken thought.
Why the bloody hell not?

He wiped his eyes. Then he heard the crackle, unmistakable even beyond his impoverished hearing, of someone moving through the grass behind him. He straightened and was horrified to see his uncle grimacing with effort as he manoeuvred between the gravestones. Quinn drew breath. His body flushed with terror.
The Murderer.
With dismay he thought of the stolen Webley six-shooter stuffed into a pocket of his trench coat lying on the floor of the shack.

23

R
obert Dalton was blond and barrel-chested, with a square forehead that shone pink in the late-afternoon sun. He stopped about ten feet from Quinn with one hand resting on the broken stone shoulder of an infant-sized angel. His uncle was sweating profusely, his eyes screwed tight against the glare. He undid several gold buttons of his blue police jacket and wrestled the collar loose, revealing at his throat the frayed edge of an undershirt. His police bicycle rested against a gravestone behind him. He had grown fuller about the waist in the time since Quinn had last seen him and would now be about fifty-five years old. Despite the uniform and the intervening years, he was still the same man who used to pinch Quinn hard on the arm for no reason when no one was looking and then mock him if he complained.
You could tell your mother but she'd
never believe you
.

Quinn longed to flee but knew that to run was tantamount to an admission of guilt. His uncle approached.

“Well,” Robert said after a minute, when he had caught his breath, “what have we here?” With a faint, unctuous smile he inspected Quinn.

Quinn realised the question was not rhetorical. He dropped his gaze. A skink flickered over his boot and vanished beneath a rock, as he would have liked to have done at that moment. His chest filled with blood and he thought of Sarah lying in the cool, subterranean dark a few feet away listening to their exchange. “I'm resting in the shade here. Passing through.”

Robert drew a sleeve across his sweaty brow, then leaned over and squeezed from between his pursed lips a coin of spit that sizzled on a rock. It was clear he was drunk. “Unusual spot to take a rest, I would have thought. Fond of graveyards, are you?”

His uncle had not recognised him, at least. Quinn took a step back. “Well, it's peaceful here.”

“It is that. Not a whisper out of them. Dead men tell no tales, eh?”

Quinn noticed his uncle's gaze drop for a second to Sarah's headstone. He saw also that Robert's left wrist was bandaged and remembered what his father had said about him falling when he had pursued Quinn and Sadie that morning two weeks ago. “I'm on my way to Bathurst,” he stammered.

“Oh, are you? That's a long way.”

“Yes.”

Dalton indicated Flint, then scratched at his whiskery chin with his good hand. “Well, can't be worse than this place, I suppose. What a bloody dump. What a country. You know, most countries they start because they want to make something better, but not here. Australia was started to make something worse for those poor convicts. It's hard to picture it but, you know, the day I came to Flint it bloody snowed. It was actually quite pretty, believe it or not. The only time in history, they reckon. Hell froze over, you might say.” He laughed at his own little joke, then sighed, as if getting down to business. “Where'd you say you came from?”

“Sydney. The war.”

Dalton sniggered. “You don't look like a soldier.”

“I am, I was—I mean, not anymore. The war is over.”

Dalton's eyes widened in pantomime surprise. “The war is
over
? Why, thank you. You think I'm simple? You see this uniform? I'm the constable here, in case you didn't realise. Of course I know the war is over. I probably knew before anyone around here did, not that that's saying much. I probably knew before you did, mate. I'm the constable here. I get told all sorts of things that the general public isn't privy to.” He paused. “Where did you fight, then?”

“In France. At Gallipoli. 17th Battalion.”

Quinn hoped this information might mollify Dalton, but it had the opposite effect. His uncle became enraged.

“
Gallypolly
, eh? I suppose you reckon you're pretty brave, do you? Well, some of us had to stay here and keep order. Home fires and all that. Take care of the women. The children. We've had all sorts of blokes come through here, hiding out up in the hills. Lot of coves about these days. It's not all glory, mate. Not all bloody glory.”

With exaggerated ceremony, Dalton unbuckled his revolver from its holster and waved it in Quinn's general direction. He stepped closer and pressed the revolver barrel into Quinn's stomach. “I could shoot you, you know. So very easily.”

Quinn flinched and looked away. If his uncle recognised him now, he would doubtless kill him.
Imagine surviving what we survived
and then ending up going like that? Bloody crazy
. He recalled suddenly his uncle's attempt to join him and Sarah as they played a game on the back veranda. Years and years ago, maybe a year before the murder. William and Nathaniel were out, and their mother was running errands in Flint. His sister, never inclined to waste energy on niceties, shrugged off Uncle Robert and sauntered away.
Let's go do something
else where we won't be disturbed
, she'd said. And as soon as Sarah's back was turned, Robert, livid, had rapped Quinn so hard with a knuckle that there formed above his eye a lump the size of a walnut, which he had to explain away to his mother as the result of a tumble from a tree.

“I've done it before,” Dalton went on in his rum-soaked whisper. “No one cares about people like you. One more dead. One among millions. Leave you here for the crows. Get my little mate to get rid of you. It doesn't matter. What's your name, anyway?”

Quinn was paralysed. Sadie had warned him not to venture out too much during the day and to stay away from anywhere he might encounter people. The residents of Flint, she had said, were suspicious and had been made more so by the twin disasters of war and disease. It was a rule he had followed as much as possible. Until today. Until now. He clenched the shell in his palm. “My name is Fletcher Wakefield.”

“Wakefield, eh? Funny name. You got your papers there? We got to keep track of people coming through here and make sure no one's infected. You got one of those certificates? Are you allowed on the train? You know the borders are closed? They'll shoot if you try to cross, you know,” he added with relish.

Quinn didn't move. He gripped the cotton-bound charm so hard in his sweating hand that, if he survived this encounter, he knew there would be in his palm a wound shaped like a crescent moon. He untethered his heart and prayed.

To his amazement, there appeared over Robert's shoulder, at first as a moth-like flutter at the periphery of his vision, then becoming clearer, a woman in black gliding between the graves.

Dalton, too, grew aware of a presence. Perhaps panicked, he re-holstered his gun and swung around to face her. The back of his thick neck was sunburned. “Mrs. Porteous. What a surprise. You must be here to visit your … your …”

“Aunt, Constable Dalton. My Aunt Ginny.”

“Ah. Yes. Poor lady.
Lovely
lady. Terrible thing.”

By now this Mrs. Porteous was only ten feet away. Her hand was raised in a stiff salute to shade her eyes. She was perhaps ten years older than Quinn. He had only the slightest recollection of her. She was dressed in black and clutched a posy of flowers.

“Indeed she was,” she said. “And, yes, it is a terrible thing. One wonders when it will all be over.”

“Yes,” Dalton agreed. “Indeed. One wonders.”

“If at all.”

“Yes, if at all.”

Mrs. Porteous looked at Quinn. He was by now a frightful sight and was ashamed to have allowed himself to deteriorate so far and in such a manner. He stared down at his broken, dusty boots. At least he had washed the lamb's blood from his clothes. The air hummed and burned.

“This gentleman here was telling me of his time in Gallipoli,” Robert said, grabbing Quinn's arm with sudden bonhomie. “Heading to Bathurst, aren't you, mate?”

Mrs. Porteous looked unimpressed, even hostile. “I see.”

There followed an uncomfortable silence, into which swelled the buzz of insects. Then the woman asked him something.

“Pardon, ma'am?” Quinn said.

“Where were you, sir? In the war, I mean.”

Quinn cleared his throat. “In France. Gallipoli, too, for a time.”

“Those bloody Turks,” Robert exclaimed. “Excuse my French, Mrs. Porteous, but it really riles me.”

Mrs. Porteous nodded. “My husband was there. In the Infantry. 13th Battalion.”

Quinn had little enthusiasm for this sort of conversation but managed a thin smile. He recalled what Mrs. Cranshaw had told him of the hatred sometimes harboured by those who had lost loved ones in the war for those who had survived. “What was his name? I might know him.” This was, after all, the convention; one had to engage in such enquiries these days. It was as if the war had generated a kinship among men that attendance at a famous social occasion or school might.