Requiem for a Wren (37 page)

~ October 23rd. I went walking round the garden this afternoon looking at things and enjoying them, and in the greenhouse Cyril had a lot of azaleas in pots. I picked out a big red one just coming into bloom and took it into the house and asked her if I could put it in Alan's room. She said I could, so I put the flower pot in a dark-blue jar and took it up and put it on his table. It's going to look lovely in a few days' time. I hope they keep it watered.

There the diary ends. The azalea was still upon my table, in full bloom.

THE FIRE was practically dead and the dawn was light behind me at the window. I closed the diaries, and arranged them in a little pile under the table. I stood up stiffly and reached out for her attache case to put the volumes back in it, and as I did so her bank books caught my eye. I wondered dully what on earth I ought to do about those, for she had considerable sums of money in Seattle and in England.

When things like this happen there's just nothing to be done about it; even suffering itself is a mere waste of time. I crossed to the window and opened one of the casements, and the cold air came streaming in to the warm room around me like a shower. Before me lay our property, a few ewes in the ewe paddock moving over the wet grass in the first glints of the sun, the river running quietly between. This was the view that she had known and loved, as Bill and I had loved it, all unconsciously. She could have been mistress of Coombargana twice over, but it didn't work out that way.

I turned from the window after a long time, and took my sticks, and went out of my room into the gallery. The house was dead quiet except for the loud ticking of the grandfather clock in the hall; nobody was yet astir. I moved slowly down the stairs, and as I went I wondered a little at the decency of my home, after all that I had read during the night. Even into this quiet place the war had reached like the tentacle of an octopus and had touched this girl and brought about her death. Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it's all over.

I paused in the hall and looked around me, at the flowers that she had arranged, the chairs and tables she must have dusted, the radiogram that she had turned on for my mother when they celebrated the news that I was coming home. I

drew a coat on over my dinner jacket and went out on to the lawn, and walked slowly down towards the river bank. From now onwards loneliness would sit with me at Coombargana, in my bedroom with the polished myrtle floor and the scrubbed wallpaper around the electric-light switch, in the dining-room that she had served, and with the rabbit pack. I had been lonely in my home when I had come back from the war in 1946; I should be doubly so now. I had found Coombargana difficult to bear in those days, but with Janet Prentice ever in my mind it would be intolerable now.

I moved along the river bank and sat down on the low stone wall by the trout hatchery, where I had talked with my father only twelve hours before. I sat there for a long time thinking of what lay before me. From there I could see three of the new station houses that my father had built while I was away, and, as I sat there suffering, little signs of life started to appear. A woman came out of one house with a four-gallon oil drum serving as an ash can, and emptied the ashes on a heap in the back yard. A man came out of another house in soiled blue overalls and walked down a path that led behind some trees to the main station buildings, perhaps to start the diesel. The sun grew stronger, and all over Coombargana life began to appear.

I did not know the names of half the people on the property, but they all knew me. The diary that I had been reading made that very clear. Everybody on the property knew all about me, what my interests were, how far I could walk, how much I drank, how long I had been away, what I had been doing in England. All of them were watching anxiously to see what I would do on this my first day back at Coombargana, trying to read the oracle to form their judgement from my first actions whether I was going to carry on the property or sell it, whether they could settle down with their minds at ease about the future or whether they must condition themselves to the probability of change. They knew all about me, yet perhaps they did not know quite all. They did not know that I had been in love with Janet Prentice.

It would be intolerable now to live at Coombargana. But

we had twenty-one people employed on the place, all with their eyes on me and looking for a sign. If I gave up now and went off back to England it would be intolerable again, for Janet Prentice would have had me stay. Only cowards run away because they are afraid of ghosts.

I sat there by the trout hatchery for an hour or more till I grew very cold. Then I got up and I walked slowly through the trees towards the stockyard, thinking of Janet Prentice and of her integrity. I found two men saddling up in the horse yard. I knew neither of their names, but I said, 'Good morning' to them absently. They stared at me curiously and then wished me good morning in return, and I moved on wondering a little at their attitude until I remembered that I was in my dinner jacket still, with an overcoat thrown loosely over it. I went back to the house to change.

Annie must have seen me from the kitchen window coming to the house, for she met me in the hall. 'I have a pot of tea just made, Mr Alan' she said. 'Will I bring you a cup?' And then she said, 'Mercy, have you not been to bed?'

'No,' I said. 'I didn't go to bed. I found that case.'

'You did, sir?'

I nodded, and then looked her in the eyes. 'Did you know she was Bill's girl?'

She was silent for a moment, and then she said, 'I did not know that for certain, Mr Alan. But I thought perhaps it might be something of that sort.'

I said heavily, 'Well, that's who she was.' And then I said, 'I'd like that cup of tea, Annie.'

'Go on up to your room, Mr Alan, and get changed,' she said. 'I'll bring it to you there.'

I went upstairs and turned on the bath water, and started to undress. She came in a few minutes with a tray of tea and biscuits and put it down upon the table by the red azalea in the blue pot. She glanced at the case on the other table before the dead fire, where I had sat all night, and then she said, 'Did you know her, Mr Alan?'

'I met her once, during the war, just before Bill got killed,' I said. I glanced at her, and then I said, This is all something pretty private to the family. I don't want it talked about upon the station.'

'I'll watch that, Mr Alan.'

She went away and I went through to the bathroom, took off my feet, and got into the bath. The benison of the hot water was refreshing, for I was very cold, and as I sat in the warm comfort gradually I came to my senses and the power of reasoning put out emotion from my mind.

As always, Bill was very real to me in that bathroom. Never again would he come striding through the door that led into his room, eighteen years old and impatient to get under the shower. He had become one of the ghosts that haunted Coombargana for me, and now he had been joined by another ghost, standing in her proper place close by his side. They were friendly ghosts, utterly benevolent, but they were ghosts just the same; with all their integrity they could not do the job of work they would have done at Coombargana if they had been alive. In their mute presence they appealed to me to do the job for them.

That ghosts have power nobody can deny, for as I sat there in the warm water they put into my mind the little restaurant known as Bruno's in the Earls Court Road, twelve thousand miles from Coombargana in the Western District. If you want help you will find it there, they told me as I sat in the warm water in a stupor of fatigue, and as they stood beside the bath and told me that, arm linked in arm as they had been nine years before at Lymington, I knew that what they said was true. There was one person and one person only who could take my hand as I walked with the gentle ghosts of Coombargana, who would understand and comfort me, who would not be afraid.

I got out of the bath and went into my room and dressed for my new life. I put on a grey flannel shirt, the brown-green trousers of a grazier, a woollen pullover and a tweed coat. Then I took the case in my hand and went down to the hall.

My father came out of his dressing-room that once had been the gunroom to meet me. 'Morning, Alan' he said. 'You were up very early.'

'I know. Dad,' I said. T didn't go to bed at all. I found a case that this girl left behind, with all her papers in it. I've got a lot I want to tell you before Mother comes to life.'

'We'll go into the study,' he suggested.

We went into his study and closed the door. 'Before we start on this I want to put in a call,' I told him. I picked up the telephone and waited while Forfar got Ballarat and Ballarat got an overseas radio telephone operator in Melbourne. 'I want to book a call to England' I said. 'It's a London number, Western 56841, Miss Viola Dawson. I shall want about a quarter of an hour.'

They repeated it and booked the call, and I put down the handset and turned to my father. 'Hold your hat on, Dad,' I said. 'I'm going back to England, flying back at once. I don't expect to be there longer than a week or so, and I'll be coming back here then to live for good.'

For some reason that I haven't fathomed, Alan,' he said dryly, 'with Miss Viola Dawson, I presume.'

I opened the case upon his desk. 'I hope so,' I replied. 'And now I'll tell you why.'

eBook Info
Identifier:
NJUBLWQNEM
Date:
24-01-2003