Under the Midnight Sky

by Anna Romer

  When she was sixteen, her guardian, Mrs O’Grady, had taken her to a specialist. The kindly old doctor had examined her throat at length, and in the end proclaimed her vocal cords healthy – there was no physical reason Lilly could not find her beautiful singing voice. He suggested Lilly visit a psychiatrist, but Mrs O’Grady did not push her. She knew that the last thing Lilly needed or wanted was to be prodded and poked, and forced to remember.

  Only now . . .

  How she hated getting old. Memories came so vividly. Why was that? They should fade with age, grow ever more distant. Instead, there were times – like now – when they assaulted her with a jumble of sights and sounds and smells. Crushed eucalypt leaves. The eerie whispers and crackles of the forest at night. The sigh of water racing in the gorge. And her sister’s weight in her arms. The sticky heat of blood on her hands.

  She buckled forward.

  How could events from a lifetime ago still cripple her like this? She hadn’t always been so weak. With her sister by her side, she’d been strong and hearty. Invincible. Despite their differences, she and Frankie had been a formidable team. If Lilly ever sank into despair over some slight or insult, Frankie would elbow her and wink. Devil take the lot of them, it’s just you and me, Lilly-bird. You and me against the whole rotten damn world.

  But after Frankie went, it was just Lilly. Alone. And somehow, without her sister beside her, Lilly had never felt quite so brave.

  Friday, 7th March 1952

  I sat beside Lilly on the bed and we watched the shadows deepen around us as the sun drifted behind distant hills. For the millionth time, I tried to paint her a picture of our future happiness – ‘Singing lessons, Lilly, won’t that be wonderful? And a tiny cottage by the sea, can you imagine?’ – but she sat sullenly, staring at the floor. Her shoulders hunched, her eyes bright with anger, nibbling the tips of her long hair.

  ‘Lilly,’ I said at length. ‘It’s what we’ve always dreamed.’

  ‘What you’ve dreamed.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to live by the sea?’

  ‘Not with him.’

  ‘But it’s been four years. Everyone else has forgotten us. He’s all we have.’

  ‘I hate him,’ she spat. ‘Why would I want to live in a cottage with you and him mooning over each other all the time? I’d rather go back to Stanley Street.’

  ‘Then you’re a fool. Don’t you see? He’s given us a better life than what we had. Being ignored by Mum while her latest boyfriend gave us the eye behind her back? You might not remember how bad it was, but I do.’

  ‘You’re the fool,’ she said scornfully. ‘We might have done it hard sometimes, but we had our freedom. Mum was all right. She was sozzled half the time, but at least she never locked us up like animals.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be locked up if you were kinder to him. If you’d cross your heart not to run away, he’d let you play outside in the garden. All he wants is for us to be a family.’

  Lilly sprang away from me, perching on the far end of the bed, screwing up her face. ‘Are you mad, Frankie? He’ll never let us out of this room. All his talk about living a normal life, being a carpenter, buying us dresses. It’s a trick.’

  ‘No, Lilly. He means every word.’

  She crossed her arms, glaring at me from under her mop of wild hair. ‘Suit yourself, Frankie. You go off with him.’

  ‘What about you?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll go home to Mum.’

  We sat in silence for a long time, me on the edge of the saggy mattress, Lilly perched up near the bedstead. The sun withdrew its rays and shadows began to crawl around us. Soon it was night. One by one the stars came out, then the moon crept into view.

  Gazing up at the window, I whispered, ‘Take one last look at the moon, Lilly-bird.’

  I waited for Lilly to say her part. Waited and waited for the longest time. Finally, I looked at her. She had wilted against the bedstead, her head buried in her arms, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists over her ears. She didn’t make a sound, but her shoulders shook and I knew she was crying.

  Tuesday, 20th January 1953

  It’s stinking hot today, which is probably why our tempers flared. Or maybe it’s my time of month that made me cranky. I hate the rags. I hate feeling bloated and pimply, and it’s always worse in the heat. Whatever it was, there’s now a shiny red handprint blotching Lilly’s teary face. And a sting in my fingertips that hurts almost as much as the weight of my guilt.

  I never meant to hit her. But the hateful things she says! I can’t bear it. He’ll hang, she tells me. Just like Jean Lee. He’s a criminal and they’ll string him up by the neck the way they did with Jean.

  Lately Ennis has been talking rapid-fire about leaving Ravensong. He carries round a pile of papers with all his lists and timetables and diagrams. He’s planning to leave once the weather gets cooler. He even showed me a map of Australia where he’d scribbled a red dot over this tiny town in Queensland. No one will know us up there, he reassures me. We’ll get our cottage and start over, exactly as we planned.

  When he left the room this morning after breakfast and thumped downstairs out of earshot, I broke the news to Lilly.

  ‘Just think, Lilly-pill. By autumn, we’ll be out of here and on our way to a new life.’

  She went quiet. I knew a storm was brewing by the tight set of her lips and her flitting eyes. She scares me sometimes with her brooding, her grim silences.

  ‘Queensland’s a long way from Sydney,’ she finally said.

  ‘That’s the idea, silly.’

  ‘But what about Mum?’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘Don’t you want to see her?’

  ‘Of course. Once we’re settled in the cottage, we’ll be able to get on a train and visit. You’ll see. Everything will change when Ennis and I are married.’

  She turned on me like a viper. ‘Married?’

  I nodded, gripping the rim of my empty plate, steering it from side to side to avoid looking at her. ‘I’m turning seventeen this year, Lilly-bird. Ennis has asked and I said I would.’

  Lilly made a strangled sound. ‘The minute we get out of here, I’ll tell everyone what he’s done.’

  ‘No, you bloody won’t.’

  ‘You can’t stop me.’

  I sank my head over my plate and counted toast crumbs, trying to clear my mind. But the smears of jam and butter on the plate swam before me, with its in them I saw my dreams – the sweet little cottage with its cool ocean breeze, and goats and bobbing yellow sunflowers – crack apart.

  ‘He’ll hang,’ she whispered. ‘Just like Jean Lee. Your beloved Ennis is a criminal and they’ll string him up from the gallows. He’ll swing, my word he will. Just like poor old Jean.’

  I lurched to my feet. My plate upended and smashed on the floor. Before I could stop myself, I shot out my hand and struck my sister, my palm hitting her chubby cheek with a loud smack. She recoiled and tears sprang to her eyes, but she didn’t cry. She just continued to glare at me with her big watery eyes, and then a little smile touched her lips.

  ‘You’ll swing too.’

  It was barely a whisper. I almost didn’t hear.

  I wish to heaven that I hadn’t. Because, despite the morning heat, and the shame that now burned like a rash across my face, the blood drained from my head and my skin went cold as ice. And I knew, in my heart of hearts, that she was right.

  30

  Roy Horton opened his door and sighed when he saw me, but stepped aside for me to enter. I followed him along the hall, weaving between the boxes and broken bike, past the empty bedrooms. In the kitchen, he crossed to the sink and filled the kettle. On the table at the centre of the room was a dismantled Winchester, a can of gun oil and a ratty, grease-stained tea towel.

  ‘Don’t mind the mess,’ Roy said, when he saw me eyeing the table. Lifting the kettle, he raised his brows. ‘Tea? I’m having some.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘So
how can I help you, Miss Radley? You want to know some more about my boy?’

  I leaned my hip against a chair back. ‘It’s about your father. His name was Harry, wasn’t it?’

  Roy’s head jerked up. ‘Pop? He’s been dead for a while now. Did you know him?’

  ‘Not me, but Dad remembered him. He used to deliver our firewood.’

  ‘Fancy that.’

  ‘I’ve recently read his name in an old police report. Back in 1953, you and your dad found a girl wandering out at the reserve road. Do you remember her?’

  The kettle began to shriek. Roy went over, poured a mug of tea for himself and brought it to the table, where he stood gazing down at the dismantled rifle. Putting aside his mug, he picked up the barrel and peered along its length.

  ‘That was a long time ago. I’m seventy-three come July. My memory’s a fickle mistress nowadays. Not as sharp as she once was.’

  ‘Seemed sharp enough when you talked about Jasper the other week.’

  Roy picked up a cleaning rod and pushed the brush into the muzzle, ran it down to the breech. ‘I was just a bean sprout when Pop found the girl. It’s all pretty hazy from where I stand now.’

  ‘Then let me freshen your memory. You and your dad were cutting firewood at the reserve. You had a full load, and were heading back to town when you saw the girl on the roadside. She was in a bad way, disoriented. Covered in cuts and scratches, and black bruises on her throat.’

  The cleaning rod slipped from Roy’s fingers and clattered onto the floor. Roy stooped to pick it up. ‘A bad business, all that. But what’s it got to do with my boy?’

  ‘I’m not sure if it has anything at all to do with Jasper. But something doesn’t add up. In the report, the duty officer mentioned that your father was nervous. The way he looked at the girl, as if . . . I dunno, maybe he wasn’t telling the full story?’

  ‘Pop didn’t want any trouble, that’s all.’

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘We didn’t find the girl on the road. We found her inside the reserve, up on the ridge overlooking the gorge. Pop and me had camped overnight in an old logger’s hut. Pop sent me off to collect fallen branches for kindling. We sold bundles for a ha’penny, which Pop let me keep. Anyhow, that was when I saw her.’

  ‘The girl?’

  He nodded. ‘Maybe a half-mile from the hut. She was sitting on a rock, crying. She must’ve heard me because she turned around. She was in a right old state. Covered in dirt and leaves, hands filthy. But the biggest shock was her face.’

  He picked up the gun barrel again and started polishing it with his tea towel.

  ‘Her face?’

  He inhaled noisily. ‘A wild thing she was, Miss Radley. A big tall girl with eyes like black holes punched in bread dough. She scared me. I started backing away, and that’s when I saw . . .’ He scrubbed the side of his head with the tea towel, which skewed his glasses and left a black smudge on his temple. ‘Not sure what it was, in all honesty. A pile of dirt and rubble. But I got it in my head to think it might be a grave, and in the shock of the moment I imagined something pale, a foot, poking from it.’

  ‘You thought you saw a body?’

  He glanced towards the door, nodding. ‘It knocked the stuffing out of me, so it did. Sent me tearing back to Pop, yammering in fright. Pop grabbed my shoulders and tried to shake some sense into me. Then he started swearing and went off at a trot. He was gone for an age. Finally he returned with the girl. She still had that blank-eyed look, even after Pop gave her a drink of grog from his flask. He kept telling her, “We don’t want no trouble now, hear?” She didn’t reply. Didn’t seem to even know he was there.’

  ‘What did your dad mean, “trouble”?’

  ‘Pop had an illegal still at the farm. Whiskey. Times were tough. We made a living from firewood in the winter, but come summer we’d have starved if it hadn’t been for Pop’s whiskey. He’d been busted a few times during the Depression. Last thing he wanted was the boys in blue sniffing around our place. Cops always gave him the willies.’

  ‘Did you tell your dad what you saw?’

  Roy placed the barrel on the table and began to wipe the oil off his hands with the tea towel. ‘Later, I told him about the foot, or whatever it was, but he said I was mistaken. He reckoned it was nothing. She’d just buried a bundle of dirty old clothes. After that, he made me promise not to tell anyone about the girl, he said she was trouble. I’d forgotten about her until now.’

  ‘Do you know what became of her?’

  Roy’s shoulders twitched. ‘Went back to wherever it was she’d run away from, is my guess. And good riddance to her. Whatever it was she’d done in the forest that day scared the bejesus out of me, and Pop too. We never went back to our old logging spot near the hut. Pop always found places at the other end of the reserve he said were better.’

  ‘Did Jasper know about the hut?’

  Roy shook his head.

  I took the map from my pocket and unfolded it, smoothing it onto a clear section of the table. My hands trembled a little and I wondered why Roy hadn’t mentioned the cabin before now. ‘Where was it, Roy? Do you think you could locate it on this map?’

  ‘Must be sixty odd years since I last went there.’

  ‘I’m guessing it was a fair drive from town if you and your father stayed there overnight. Do you recall which road you took? Was it the coast highway going east or did you travel north?’

  Roy came over and looked down at the map. His finger hovered over the roads I’d mentioned. ‘It were north, though hard to say how far. Back then it seemed to me like hours from town, but it can’t have been. I remember this tiny track that went on forever. I always wanted to stop and pee, but Pop refused to pull over. It was a bumpy track, torture for a kid who’s desperate to go. The damn track seemed endless. The sun was always in my eyes, but by the time we arrived and set up, it’d be night.’

  ‘So once you got off the main road, the track travelled west?’

  Roy studied the map, lank strands of hair wafting as he shook his head. The hand that hovered over the map shook a little, and it drew my attention to something peeping from under the frayed cuff of his shirt. Two deep grazes, dark with dry blood.

  Like scratch marks.

  Roy caught me looking and withdrew his hand. ‘Damn dog plays a bit rough sometimes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Roy must have sensed the shift in me. The sudden tension in my shoulders, the careful way I breathed. My gaze now wide and unflinching. He stood to full height and regarded me with eyes that were, though faded, still as blue as a kingfisher’s wing feathers. ‘Sixty years is a long time to be remembering places on a map. I’m sorry, Miss Radley. I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

  • • •

  ‘Lil? Are you there?’

  I hammered the back door, but no one came to answer it. There was washing on the line but the place felt deserted. Running over to the garage, I looked through the window. Lil’s Forester was gone. Wasn’t Saturday her drama day? Which meant Joe was probably off fishing.

  I walked along the path, past Lil’s veggie patch, and dodged behind Joe’s big barn-like shed.

  Those scratches on Roy’s arm. Of course, they might be what he had claimed they were: marks made by his dog. And he might have been cleaning the rifle as part of his usual routine. But his story about finding young Lilly in the forest was bothering the hell out of me.

  Pushing through the wrought-iron gate into the paddock, I hurried down the hill, along the dirt track between the grevilleas towards the billabong, following the shriek of cicada song.

  As a boy, out cutting wood with his father, Roy Horton thought he saw a body. Or at least part of one emerging from a rubbly grave. Later, his father would convince him that all he’d seen was a pile of old clothes. But the memory of it clearly still haunted him. What had he really seen that day?

  Had Ennis murdered Frankie after all, and dumped Lilly with her sister’s body in the reserve? Poor Lilly, I
could see her slumped in the bush, her face slack and empty from shock. With eyes like black holes punched in bread dough. I had seen that same look on Lil’s face, the night I found her wandering on the edge of the forest. Her eyes small and hard, her face oddly distorted – as though someone else was inhabiting her body, trying to push their way out through Lil’s skin. Had Lil been looking for Frankie’s grave that night? Was that where she went when she had one of her turns – in search of the place her sister was buried?

  The billabong was empty, its muddy edges receded, the swans gone, so I walked back up to the garden. Checked the driveway for Lil’s car but she still hadn’t returned. Changing direction, I headed around the perimeter fence that separated the flat paddocks from bushland. The midday sun was high, the sky clear blue. A breeze ruffled the leaves as I wandered between Joe’s fruit trees.

  I needed to find Harry Horton’s old cabin. If only to ease my mind that Shayla was not trapped inside it. And if Lil had been searching for Frankie’s grave during her turns, in the vicinity of the cabin, then there was a slim chance she might be able to lead me to it.

  When I reached the rear boundary fence, I slipped through the wire. I planned to walk as far as the tree line and then head back, but as I veered away from the fence I noticed footprints in the dried mud. The tracks led along a wallaby trail and away into the bush. Curious, I followed a little way, but as the ground got harder, the tracks disappeared. I kept going, wandering this way and that until I picked up the trail again. It led me to a tall gum tree with a white trunk. At the base of the tree was a newly dug, cat-sized grave. I’d never seen a cat nearby and neither Lil nor Joe had mentioned one, so what else could be buried here?

  The grave was piled with leaves, and under the leaves I found a stone. I kicked the stone away. I found a sturdy stick and, kneeling on the leaf-strewn earth beside the mound, I began to dig. The soil was crumbly, and my stick soon struck a hard object. I dug around it with the stick, and prised up a parcel wrapped in a canvas carryall. Inside was a book.