In the Winter Dark

by Tim Winton

  Ida shook. She looked at Maurice. She didn’t know him. Not the way a wife should know a husband. There was a terrible cold rushing into her, a winter wind blowing right through. She was a stranger here, and they were imposters. There was just a hollowing wind and she was going.

  Jaccob didn’t move. He watched Ronnie who wore a ludicrous expression of rapture, as though she was the bleeding Virgin Mary herself. Ida Stubbs looked like she had heartburn, standing there with the tea tray, and for once the old man seemed to be out of his depth without pretending he wasn’t. This should be a funny scene, he thought, but I’m as scared as shit. If we locked the doors, maybe if . . . now there’s the cellar . . .

  Ronnie felt the baby flexing his muscles. It was alive in there. It hurt, but she was keeping it alive on her own, with her blood and her water, with everything she had, and it worked. She was a mother. Nothing could stop her being a mother. She had the house, the land, she could grow things. There wasn’t anything else.

  I was seeing my shadow running down the hill with the flames behind, my guilty silhouette swallowed up in the night, my real form gone forever while that firelight was behind me. I was always that shadow. With that burning house, that fact, I’d always be a silhouette.

  The girl regarded her belly and I tried to get Jaccob’s eye. I had to let him know I wasn’t mad.

  ‘You can’t have that baby right now, you know,’ I said. ‘You’ll have to wait for the authorities.’

  Ronnie looked at me in great surprise.

  Jaccob thundered with laughter. He would come around, I knew.

  And when Ida dropped the tray and the tea and the pie and the whole business, and went barrelling through the house towards the door, no one moved.

  THE FIRE was out. The room was suddenly cold. I looked at the wash of broken crockery and food and liquid on Jaccob’s jarrah boards, and I wondered what had brought me to this place, this still moment.

  ‘Stubbs?’

  I looked up at Jaccob. I liked him.

  ‘Is she alright? God knows it’s not safe out there.’

  ‘Probably just needs some air,’ I murmured. ‘I’ll get her. It’s a bit unnerving for everyone, this whole business.’

  Jaccob watched the old man leave the room. He poured himself another scotch, a good one this time. He wanted to be calm.

  ‘What a mess,’ he said.

  Ronnie looked up from contemplating herself.

  The old man was out there shouting. ‘Ida! IIIdaaaa!’

  ‘Oh, Christ.’

  In a single jerk, as though she’d abruptly returned to reality, Ronnie got to her feet and began to hiss.

  ‘Get her in here, dammit, she’ll die out there!’

  Jaccob got up. Stubbs met him at the door.

  ‘She’s probably gone home,’ Stubbs said. He had a gloss of sweat on his cheeks. ‘I’ll drive down and see that she’s alright. Stay indoors.’

  Jaccob watched him jog out to the ute. God, what a fiasco, he thought.

  He went in and sat with Ronnie. He got up again and found the .22 and left it by the door. When he came back in Ronnie stood up and sat down again. She looked as though she was about to cry. He put his hands in his lap and looked at them. Maybe the old girl had the right idea – just climb back into bed with a hot toddy and goodbye. But something was out there and he began to believe it would kill them if they didn’t kill it first. It’s gonna come into our beds, there’s no use going to bed over it.

  He heard Stubbs’s ute skidding back into the yard.

  The old man came running in.

  ‘She’s buggered off.’ He caught sight of Jaccob’s rifle. ‘Bring this.’ Glancing at Ronnie, he waved a hand and said: ‘Lock the house and stay here.’

  ‘You’re kidding! I’m not staying here on my own.’

  The old man looked at Jaccob. ‘Get her in the ute then.’

  Ronnie sat wedged between the two men, buffeted by their shoulders as the ute thrashed up the paddock. She felt it sway and judder in the waterlogged pasture. They slid to miss stumps and hummocks. Wet grass glittered in the lights. Every time Stubbs changed gears on the column-shift he clipped her breast with his elbow and she barked at him. What she saw ahead was a crazy rushing dream.

  ‘Slow down, dammit!’ Jaccob yelled.

  ‘Can’t see her anywhere. Where the hell is she?’

  ‘Look out, Stubbs! For pity’s sake!’

  Ronnie saw the grass sliding away to the side as they skidded in a great curve and fishtailed back on line.

  ‘She can’t have gone far.’

  ‘This is bloody madness.’

  Ronnie felt something capsize, like a juggernaut rolling in her. She had a baby in there. This shouldn’t be happening.

  Jaccob braced himself against the dash as the old man drove crazy and hard and the ute crunched and rattled with the cab filling with the stink of their sweat. Roos stood still out there. The eyes of birds, rabbits, spiders showed in the mad light. He knocked shoulders with Ronnie and felt her knee against his. It was all over. He might as well forget the place now. The new life was over.

  They topped the crest and the north gate loomed much too quick. Posts, wire leaping into largeness. He should have warned . . . Stubbs was standing on the brakes, he could feel it, and he pressed his own feet to the floor as they drifted sideways in a skid. Clods of dirt hammered under them. Should have bought a set of bloody golf clubs and a flat in Cottesloe by the sea, like any other harmless retired bastard.

  They were going to go right through the fence. Jaccob covered his face, hunched to protect himself, felt Ronnie sag against him, but there was no shock. It just became quiet. He looked out. They’d stopped broadside to the fence, a foot away. The engine was stalled. Jaccob heard three people breathing.

  ‘Shit a brick, Stubbs! Take it easy.’

  Jaccob got out. Wind hustled in the trees up in the distance. The forest. There were great trenches in the mud from their four-wheeled skid.

  From higher ground he heard the throaty sound of a nightbird.

  The old man slocked over in the mud. ‘You hear that?’

  ‘A cough. Or a growl. From up there.’

  Stubbs pointed northwest along the other side of the fence.

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘My wife’s out here somewhere, boy, what’m I s’posed to think? Open the gate. I’ll rock us out.’

  Somewhere. She was somewhere. Cold. Mud. Bog. Break. Bend. Fence. She kept running. Get in there. See and not be frightened, right into the thickets up there and see for herself. She wouldn’t be tricked and frightened. She didn’t care what they all were or who they worshipped – she was gonna see for herself. Ida felt the thrill of sense in her as she rode over the ground, blowing fog out before her. It was high time she faced it. It was only bush, only soil, only sky. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  Jaccob took the spray of mud in the chest as the ute’s wheels spun in the firebreak. He pushed until lights burst behind his eyes. It rocked and whirred and the tyres bit firmer earth and the whole shaking mess floated up onto hard ground. The mud was cold and he gasped and tasted monoxide. The brakelights glowed. The old man stuck his head out the window.

  ‘We’re right now. Come on.’

  Jaccob ran to catch up.

  I gunned the ute through the gate and across the other firebreak into the stumpy ground of Jaccob’s back paddock. Up there, at the far limit of the headlights were the forest and the thickets and the places a man couldn’t go. Don’t be up there, Ida, I thought. Just don’t be there.

  I drove hard. No one spoke. I just kept it up towards where we thought we’d heard something. In a moment, the ground turned to slush. I was feeling strong as a boy, not even touching the earth. Dreamy with weightlessness. She knows, I thought. She’s cunning, old Ida. She’s leading us to it. We belong here. We are strong.

  Then I heard Jaccob shout. The wheel was gone from between my fingers and the world turned and my head went flat an
d it put burn behind my eyes.

  I was cold.

  I saw the stars return. The whole sky.

  Jaccob crawled out onto the muddy ground. The front tyre was above him against the cloudy sky. There was wind and he found he could get up. The ute was upside down. He saw, across the exposed driveshaft and tangled exhaust, old Stubbs on his back, muttering in the dirt. Out in front the headlights made ragged white furrows in the earth.

  And somewhere something else moved.

  When it all stopped turning, Ronnie felt the pressure in her neck. Somehow she could see her left nipple in the dark; it was close enough to push into her eye. Her feet were above. No, up and behind. No seatbelt. This was her clearest moment before the world began to end, before the crushing heat and dark came upon her, squeezing juice out through every orifice and wrapping its rough tongue around her belly in a welter of spasms that forced her ribs into her lungs into her pelvis into her baby. There was no air for screaming. That dark thing in the dream, that angry crucified thing was coming at her for every bad thing. You could call it pain, something told her.

  Jaccob stood in the crooked dark and saw the old man move, reaching into the upturned cab. For the girl? All he could see was a foot against the windscreen. Why couldn’t he just make himself bend in and pull her out? Why couldn’t he move? It was the sound from out in the dark, that’s why.

  The old man had his rifle.

  ‘Urgh.’

  Here it came.

  ‘Bloody thing.’ Stubbs’s voice was quaking. ‘Bastard stinking mongrel sick of a thing.’

  ‘Curgh.’

  Jaccob heard him cock the rifle. It was moving steadily out there, coming at them.

  The old man had the weapon up. Jaccob could see the shadow of him aiming. This was the moment. Jaccob’s body was suddenly sore and shaking. He knew he should get the girl out but there was Stubbs pointing the gun into the dark where the low, throaty grunt was coming from. Yes, it was coming. Yes. Yes.

  But a sniff? A weepy sniff? No. This had happened before to Jaccob. He knew this. No! Wrong!

  Jaccob turned. He saw the silhouette rearing up and he realized that the car was between him and Stubbs.

  I heard it breathe and I knew I had a moment to kill the past, to fight it and wipe it away. The gun was all buck and flash and I was still strong.

  Crack! Ronnie heard a tendon snap. Crackack! Brain, soul, something. She was on her way.

  Jaccob made it round and drove the old man down in a tackle as the third shot went off. The barrel ploughed mud and muzzle flash. Stubbs’s head rang against the upturned fender. Jaccob hit him and thought nothing and heard the hollow gurgling from out there and he knew the sound belonged to death.

  Up in the mud and the furrows of light, my Ida drowned. She felt the heat and the wind in her throat. Blood was her only voice. For perhaps a second she had hold of a thought, a memory.

  AH, BUT you, Darkness, you know all this. I tell you night after night. Nothing will shock you. Maybe I go on at you in the hope that there’s something beyond you. Some nights I sit here and talk and sob and stare out into the blackness thinking that if I look hard enough I’ll see the light behind. But I stay out until the break of day, waiting, hoping, and there’s only the sunrise again. I suppose there’s some comfort in the fact of the sunrise. People used to take it as a sign that everything was under control.

  Nobody comes out here. There’s been no blue lights, no detectives, no curious social workers. It’s almost a year.

  Some afternoons I go down to the river and drag out the old bondwood dinghy I keep on the bank, and I row myself around the bend a little where the sun comes through the paperbarks to light up the water so bright you can barely see. I’ll just drift along from there, maybe put a line over for bream, or maybe even a marron, or perhaps I’ll read a querulous and dutiful letter from one of the daughters asking why her mother doesn’t write back anymore. I say she’s having her change of life when I write back, sitting there with the light and water all around, balancing the pad on my knee. It’s only a matter of time before they find out. That’s how I live now, knowing I’ll only have this time for a little while. I should have known earlier to always live like that. There are small times of pleasure and I’m in no hurry to lose them before they’re taken away by force.

  I think about fear and panic a lot. I have quite a bit to do with them. You see I’ve known panic and I’ve been dead rational and I don’t like either of them. Oh, maybe panic has a moral sense about it. When you’re hysterical, you at least believe in what you’re doing, however bloody stupid it is. But being rational is all about overriding what you believe in.

  The moment I saw what I’d done that night, I became calm. I was suddenly sober. I measured things up. I planned. Surely this is possession! Jaccob was the same.

  That night we stood by and watched the girl push out a dead baby. She didn’t bleed much, though we worried. She didn’t know who she was. We fed her pills and she slept. It happened very quickly. We buried Ida and the child in the forest. It was hard work but we dragged and dug without fuss. We discussed the options. We were at one purpose. We required certain things to be done. I do not have dreams about this. I barely recognize myself in my recollection.

  It was two hours’ drive in to the port town. Ronnie slept or was unconscious or in a coma. I know she was alive. Jaccob drove carefully. We rehearsed what we would do in our minds. We saw no other cars.

  There was mist and we were grateful for it.

  Just before five we coasted into the emergency admissions entry at the regional hospital with our lights out, motor idling. We took the trouble to wear some of Ida’s pantyhose on our heads. Lights were on but no one was around. We hit the bell and left her at the door. Her head was on the thick rubber mat, her feet together in the blanket.

  Jaccob drove smoothly and leisurely out of town through the mist and neither of us looked back. I was full of respect and terror. He wanted his time alone, he said. When everything caught up he’d go quietly, but he wasn’t going to help anybody speed up the process. I knew what he meant.

  At dawn we ran Jaccob’s car into the river. Then we got drunk on Japanese whisky and told our stories. We made our vows of silence.

  Now he drinks and I dream. It’s killing the both of us.

  My dreams are not symbols, they are history. Even the ones I don’t understand, the ones I don’t even know the characters in, they are all full of the most terrible truths. They settle on me, the guilty running silhouette. Yes, call me Legion for we are many.

  I pay my bills. I buy my groceries and Jaccob’s. I burn the letters that she sends him, those warped, crazy love notes. I go into the forest and look up to see if maybe some bough might fall my way. I learn things from books. Now and then I find a suspicious carcass or a pawprint, or I see a shadow between trees, but I go about my business.

  The Americans have found bauxite in the forest. They’ll be digging before long. That estate agent was across the valley the other day. I suppose that musician boyfriend could come around. It’s a matter of time.

  I can’t redeem myself. That’s why I confess to you, Darkness. You don’t listen, you don’t care, though sometimes I suspect you are more than you seem.

  I live my life.

  I am an old man.

  Listen to me!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The author thanks the Literature Board of the Australia Council for senior fellowships in 1984 and 1987 when this book was written. Final revisions were made in Paris at the Australia Council Studio while the author was a recipient of a Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship.

  A portion of an earlier version of In the Winter Dark has appeared in Antipodes. Characters and events in this story are fictitious.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Tim Winton has published twenty-one books for adults and children, and his work has been translated into twenty-five languages. Since his first novel, An Open Swimmer, won the Australian/Vogel Award in
1981, he has won the Miles Franklin Award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breath) and twice been shortlisted for the Booker Prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music). He lives in Western Australia.

  ALSO BY TIM WINTON

  Novels

  An Open Swimmer

  Shallows

  That Eye, the Sky

  The Riders

  Dirt Music

  Breath

  Cloudstreet

  Stories

  Scission

  Minimum of Two

  The Turning

  For younger readers

  Jesse

  Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo

  The Bugalugs Bum Thief

  Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster

  Lockie Leonard, Legend

  Blueback

  The Deep

  Non-fiction

  Land’s Edge

  Down to Earth (with Richard Woldendorp)

  Smalltown (with Martin Mischkulnig)

  Plays

  Rising Water

  Signs of Life

  PENGUIN BOOKS

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