Skylarking (17 page)

THIRTY-FIVE

A
S
I
RACED ALONG THE TRACK THE AIR GREW COLD
, and my heart seemed to slow and harden inside of me. Those grasping branches scored red scratches up my arms, made foreign a path I knew so well.

When I paused to get my bearings, I thought of Harriet lying there by the hut and the dark pool that was spreading around her. An unearthly sound erupted from my chest and poured out of me, and I wanted to turn back, turn back everything and be in the moment before I lifted the gun, feeling it heavy and strange where it rested.

I ran and I tried to think only of running, of getting help. I ran against the panic that threatened to push me down into the leaves and stones and hold me there so that I was useless, so that I would stay there forever. I do not know how I made it back. Only that I did. That as the sun splashed the final light of the day across the cape, I came over the last crest of the track, and saw my father walking the boundary fence.

I called out to him, and he turned and raised his hand and left it there, just above his shoulder height, as though he suddenly saw something in me that foretold what was to come.

He began to move towards me, and I to him, so that when we met he caught me as I fell and held me upright on my feet, gripping me around my upper arms.

‘Kate, for heaven's sake, what is the matter?'

How to tell, what to say? That black snake again coiling through my mind, and words hovering above me, out of reach, so that I stared at my father, pleading for him to understand from my eyes what it was that I had done.
Please, don't make me say it.

‘Kate!' He was firm now, and he shook me once, hard, so that my teeth clanked together and the words fell into place.

‘I think I have shot Harriet.'

His face paled, and his lower jaw fell slack before he clamped it shut, the muscles below his ears visible as they twitched.

‘Where, Kate? Where is she?'

‘At McPhail's hut.'

A fleeting shadow passed across his eyes as though this place were both unexpected and inevitable.

‘Quickly now,' he said, pulling me by the arm towards the cottages and shouting ahead as he did so.

‘Walker! Walker!' I could see Harriet's father up on the hill, outside their cottage, bent over the verandah, his head down as he focused on a task. I resisted my father's pull, suddenly aware of what I had told, the news that was being borne ahead of me in my father's urgent tone.

Walker raised his head, and Father gestured wildly with his arm for him to come.

‘Here, quickly,' he called. ‘Get McPhail!'

And from behind the building a second figure appeared. My breath snagged, for it was him there at Harriet's cottage, his fishing sack in his hand. The two men looked at us, dropped what they held, and began to run. What a scene: they must have known as soon as they saw us. As soon as they noticed her absence. Something has happened.

Before they reached us, I saw the door open, saw the pale-blue swish of Mrs Walker's skirts as she stepped onto the verandah, curious at the noise. I saw her crane her neck, to work out where on earth we were all rushing to like this, this late in the day, with the darkness near upon us, the light to be lit.

I couldn't bear it. Fingers around my breath, my throat. I turned away.

My father's voice. ‘Prepare for the worst, Walker.'

Harriet. Shot. McPhail's hut. We must hurry. The horses, get the horses. Calling now, back over his shoulder to anyone. Tell Albert he must light the lamp.

Walker, running towards the horses, leaping on Shadow and setting off. McPhail holding Blaze steady as he mounted and chasing after him, towards the hut, towards Harriet.

I had run four miles and I would have run it back again. But Father was by my side now, pulling me onto Sadie in front of him and holding me up as we sped down the track.

We heard Walker's calls as the hill evened out to the flat bush round the hut. My father yanked Sadie up hard and leaped down, leaving me behind as he ran towards the sound.

Harriet was no longer as I had left her but clutched in the arms of her father. McPhail standing to the side, gaunt and white, the rifle in his hand. As I approached I noticed the red-black blood across Walker's hand, on his shirt cuff, a smear across his forehead.

‘She's dead,' he said to her, to us, to me.

THIRTY-SIX

I
T IS HARD TO REMEMBER
. I
HAVE TRIED NOT TO FOR
so very long. I buried it down deep and yet it comes. It rises to the surface in thin grey strands of memory. There are gaps. Great silences. Some moments so clouded by time and pain that I cannot see them at all, or what I can see is so confused, so disparate, that I believe it could not have happened that way.

The hours, the days, have all become as one. There is my mother's face, fearful and questioning, as though she is beseeching us to tell her it is not true. The hush that fell on the cape that night, as though the wind, the waves, the birds themselves had stopped for the shock of it. The sounds of Mrs Walker's grief. Emmaline and James, whom I glimpsed peering in through the kitchen door, where I sat wrapped in one of Mother's shawls, a nip of brandy in a glass in front of me; the expressions on their faces as if they were no longer sure who I was. As though they had finally seen what I had always suspected was lodged deep in me: something awful, something unspeakable.

An officer, a coroner, a jury from Edenstown came by boat. I watched them from the top of the tower where Father had let me hide, saw them arrive in their suits and hats and thought that Harriet would be so thrilled at the fuss we had caused. Dark thoughts slithered through my mind. The horizon seemed to tilt.

I remember Mrs Walker on the verandah with a red woollen blanket. She held it clutched against her chest and then, when she got to the step, she stretched out both arms and flicked her wrists so that the blanket billowed out. I could not look away. She brought her arms back in and lifted it to her face. I wondered if she could smell Harriet. She put an arm out against the verandah post as if to steady herself. I saw her mouth open wide in a grimace, and her whole face was scrunched tight. Had she screamed like that I would have heard her. She was not screaming.

I could not know her pain. Only mine. But it was not yet pain – no, something else. I knew I had lost my best friend, my Harriet. Not lost her though. Killed. I had killed my best friend. Let the jury find that. Let them lock me up and call me a murderess. There is no harm greater than that I have already done. She is lost. And so am I.

They held the inquest on the third day. I remember the coroner was a man with a long silver moustache. He kept raising his left hand to smooth it down, from the centre to the edges, parting his thumb and forefinger. I thought of a seabird preening itself. I wanted to tell him, tell the jury about Harriet; that she did not like gingerbread but was happy with ginger cake. I wanted to tell them what it was to have her smile at you. I wanted them to know the smell, the rose-soap scent of her skin. I wanted to say we were going to Melbourne.

But they did not ask, and I could not say.

I remember Father and Walker being questioned.

Walker was called first. He said Harriet and I were the best of friends. He said he had arrived with my father and McPhail and found the body where I described. There were no signs of struggle. It was an accident, he said; he was sure of it.

When Father was summoned he said there were no bad words between us, that there was a bloody wound to the back of her head. I thought about cradling her head while the earth around me grew dark. I thought about her hand splayed up and the surprise in her face. Then I could not think anymore for it was my turn.

They asked me so many questions. I told them I took the gun and held it up. I did not fire. I did not mean to fire. I did not remember the gun going off. I did not remember checking the catch. I did not remember hearing the gun. I told them we were the best of friends; we were playing, is all. There was nobody else there. I ran all the way home.

Then McPhail was up, and he said he was a fisherman, that he'd got some mullet that day and brought the catch up to the settlement. He identified his gun, said that he kept it at home, loaded with small shot. That he always kept it capped. He said he knew us, and that we were very close.

When they called on the doctor, he said that the wound showed the gun had been only inches from the back of her head to make such a mess.

I thought about inches. I thought that couldn't be right. I thought about the doorway, and Harriet, in the light. Her smile, the way her head turned. My fingers on the trigger. My Harriet.

I no longer knew what was true.

I remember them sending us out as they deliberated, and I sought out a spot to hide where no one would speak to me.

I overheard Mrs Jackson talking to Mrs Walker.

‘More tea?' Mrs Jackson said.

‘Thank you.'

‘It's a terrible thing you have to sit through this.'

I wished that I could close my ears.

‘It must be done,' said Mrs Walker.

‘She cannot be allowed to go unpunished,' said Mrs Jackson. ‘I'm sorry, but I must say it. Perhaps it was an accident. But that girl must pay.'

Mrs Walker's voice was weary when she finally spoke. ‘Kate has lost her, too. Please,' she said, ‘let us not talk of it anymore.'

‘What will they do to me?' I whispered to Father when we had all been assembled once more in the parlour.

Mother rubbed my arm. ‘Hush now,' she said as though I were her baby again.

I remember the way the foreman stood and announced that they had made their decision. I slid the nail of my right thumb under the nail of my left and I pushed until I felt the skin tear.

‘And what is your finding?' the coroner asked.

‘That Harriet Walker, aged seventeen years, died of a gunshot wound to the head, accidentally received –' My mother gasped. ‘Accidentally received,' he said again, ‘and that her companion, Kate Gilbert, was not to blame, as they were skylarking.'

In my head clouds of cockatoos lifted into the sky, wheeling and crying.

THIRTY-SEVEN

I
WENT TO MY BED AND
I
STAYED THERE
. A
LL THE
rest of that day and the next. The world of the cape went on past my window. I thought I heard Harriet's voice drifting in but, of course, I did not.

Then, on the fifth morning after it happened, my mother pulled back the covers, gently but firmly, and forced me to sit.

‘You must pay your respects, Kate,' she said.

I was still in the same clothes from the inquest, but she didn't comment, just smoothed back my hair and led me down the hallway and out the door and across the grass to the Walkers' cottage.

I faltered at the step, tugging back against Mother's grip.

‘I can't,' I whispered, my voice cracking.

‘You must, Kate. She will be buried today.' She let me lean against her as we went up the verandah stairs. She knocked softly on the door.

Walker came and dropped his head when he saw us but moved aside. I heard a swish of skirts as we entered and looked up to see Mrs Walker crossing the end of the hallway.

Mother said ‘Annie', but there was no reply. It was cold, so cold in there. The fires must not have been lit. My whole body shook.

Mother pushed me down the hall towards Harriet's room, and I tried to resist, for I could not go in there. But she pressed her hands against my back until we reached the door. Mother opened it, and there, laid out in her best blue dress, was Harriet.

There was a sharp smell in the room – peppermint – masking something else, something foul. It did not smell as it had in all the days that Harriet and I had lounged together on that bed.

Mother crossed herself. She stepped forwards and kissed Harriet's cheek. Then she turned to me. ‘Sit, if you'd like.'

I shook my head, but my mother fetched a chair from the corner and placed it level to Harriet's waist.

‘I'll just be outside,' Mother whispered, and I gripped her arm as she made to leave but I could not take my eyes from Harriet. Mother unwrapped my fingers, patted my hand and left.

It was Harriet, and yet it was not her. Without animation, without life, her face was unfamiliar. She wore a bonnet. White and trimmed with lace. The lace wound down beneath her chin and was tied there. I could not see my Harriet, with her golden curls flying, tumbling, framing her face. Her eyes were closed. Her skin so pale. Around her wrist was a white satin ribbon. I reached out to place my fingers on it and, at my touch, the bow came apart and slid into my hand. Startled, I took it and held it to my face.

I breathed deeply. Scrunched the ribbon and breathed in again. It did not smell of her. When had Harriet ceased to live, when had that smell of hers been washed away? Had her mother washed her clean? How had she managed it? How had she held Harriet as she moved first one limb and then another? It was too much to think about. I stuffed the ribbon in my pocket and leaned forwards to kiss her cold forehead. Not because I wanted to, but because I felt I must.

This was not Harriet. I had killed her.

I left the Walkers' cottage and returned to my room without a word.

They buried her without me. Mother and Father said it was best. It would be too upsetting for me. And by that, I knew they meant for Mr and Mrs Walker. They could not look at me. I understood.

I lay on my bed. Even though I knew they were too far away for me to hear – down in a little clearing in the bush, near our cove – I sensed the wind carry the hymn to me. Up through the trees, along the track, over the point and the yards, all of which had been ours. All ours.

I turned to the wall. I closed my eyes.