Sunlit Shadow Dance

by Graham Wilson

  Sure enough Buck had a car waiting for him in Cairns by the time he landed, with the details texted to him on his new mobile number. It was an older model Ford Falcon with a big six cylinder engine which ran sweetly. The car had a couple minor dints in the body work, but they were trivial, and the upholstery had seen better days. But it was sound and as good as could be expected for nineteen hundred dollars. Cash was king and Buck had negotiated down from the asking price of $3000.

  It was registered in Buck’s name at his own family farm address in Queensland, down near Rockhampton. The story given was that Vic was just driving it down there as a favour to him, and then it would serve as a second farm car. Buck had made it clear that if it was a lemon he would be paying the car agent a visit on his next trip to Cairns and looking for a refund, and he had a persuasive manner about him when needed.

  It was a slow drive over unfamiliar roads to reach the isolated aboriginal community where Jane lived, and it was long after dark before distant lights came into view. He felt anxious about how she would react to him turning up announced, late at night. But he was driven to keep going, regardless of how he was received. Most of all he just wanted to see her again.

  He would have to play the encounter by ear. It seemed a huge ask to say to a girl, who barely knew him, to come away with him. He felt somehow foolish for proposing it, though his mind and emotions joined together in telling him this was what he needed to do.

  He was certain her safety was a terribly precarious thing, particularly if she suddenly became the centre of attention over something she had no prior knowledge of. It would be a disaster if they returned her to jail and took her children away.

  His emotions for her were a complex mix of a hundred things but first and foremost he felt hugely protective of both her and her children, very conscious his contact with her and telling others could bring her undoing.

  He was glad when he pulled up outside that a light was still on in her cottage, hoping that meant she was still awake. He sat in the car for a few seconds composing himself. Then, realizing that planning was pointless at this stage, he opened the car door and walked towards the house. He was glad there were no other houses nearby, just the bulk of the back of the shop 50 meters away. He was also glad there were no dogs barking.

  He knocked on the door and another light came on, lighting the outside. She stood there with the light behind her, illuminated in silhouette. She was wearing a light slip, not quite a nightie but something similar. It illuminated the outline of her body. He felt a huge rush of affection for her, this new Jane who seemed to have occupied his Susan’s body. He wanted to take her to him, hold her close and give her reassurance, as she stood there looking uncertainly into the outside night, seeking to make an identification.

  His voice came out a bit croaky, “Jane, I needed to see you again.”

  Now recognition came to her, half puzzled, half welcoming, another bit apprehensive. “Vic?”

  He continued, “I am sorry I did not get here until it was so late. I hope I have not frightened you.”

  As he spoke she seemed to relax. She opened the door to invite him in. They stood facing each other, a meter apart. He knew he needed to connect with her in a way that went beyond words.

  He put out his hands to greet her and she responded in kind, a mirror. He walked forward a step and took her small hands in his. They felt so delicate, even though hardened with manual work. She gave him a tentative smile, such an open and trusting face.

  All his rehearsed words fell away, he looked at her and she looked back at him with a curious intensity, as if seeing him for the first time. He released one of her hands and put his hand to her cheek and stroked it. She brought her hand to his hand and squeezed it, softly. Almost unconsciously she stepped forward, moving towards him, their bodies were almost touching.

  He put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into the small gap until all the space was gone. As he felt her body come against him he knew it was still her, made anew but still her. He cradled her in his arms and stroked her head. She was the most precious thing he had ever touched. He lifted her face to his, as if to kiss her.

  She looked at him, serious trusting eyes locked on his, not knowing, but open to his soul.

  He said, “You are all I have thought of since I left you yesterday. I just needed to see you again. More than anything I needed to see you again, to touch you and feel you and know you were not just a dream, but a living breathing person.”

  She nodded, “I am glad you came, I have wanted to see you again too. It has a feeling of rightness though I do not know why. Part of it is because David trusted you. I trust you too”

  Then he said, “Will you come away with me, leave here and come with me, just you and your children?”

  She said, “If that is what you want I will come with you. How soon shall we go?”

  He asked, “Can we leave tonight? I would like to leave before the night is over. Perhaps we could rest for a while and go an hour before the daylight comes, when others in this place are still sleeping.”

  She said, “Yes, we will come with you then.”

  She went to the fridge and found some bread which she toasted and served to him with a mug of tea. As she sat beside him at the table she picked up a pen and paper, saying. “I must write a note to tell Matilda at the shop along with Pastor Doug and Ruth that I have gone away and will get in touch with them again as soon as I can, or they will be worried about me.”

  When it was done she put the folded note on the table.

  Then she said. “We should rest now.”

  He looked around and saw some cushions on the sofa which he could lay on the floor to make a bed. He said, “I will fix some cushions to lie on for the night.”

  She said, “There is space to lie beside me on my bed.”

  So they lay on the bed, side by side. She turned her body to face him, and took his arm and placed it over her shoulders, then came in close alongside him. So they slept, bodies touching. It felt so good to him and it felt right to her.

  She awoke in a small hour of the morning, number around 3 or 4. Her mind was sharply awake in an instant. She did not know where her body was, except it was in a bed and the bed was unfamiliar.

  A sound came of another human drawing breath, in and out, regular but not loud. She moved her arms around to explore the bed space. There was another body lying not far away, source of breath sounds, it was hard and angular shaped, a body of elbows and bony protuberances. It must be a man. Now she knew who this man was. The man had a name and a face. He had no history but his name was Vic, he was with her and she was glad.

  She could remember no other past and her future was an unknown place, but he was here and he was known. That was enough so she would trust her life to him. She slept again until he woke her in the early dawn and she knew him still.

  As the first light tinged the eastern sky they each carried a sleeping child to the car and drove together to another unknown place.

  Chapter 10 - Making a Family

  Almost two months had passed since that day when Jane and Vic had driven away. Vic could not think of a time when his life had been better or more fulfilling. Not that there were not lots of little speed-bumps or frustrations along the way, including the inability to satisfy his sexuality with this beautiful women whose body pressed to his every night.

  But these were at most minor frustrations that did not detract from the goodness of his life. In his earlier life when he had visited his sister in Alice Springs one of the things which gave him greatest pleasure was her three children coming and going, talking to Uncle Vic, sitting on his knee, showing him their books and drawings, sometimes telling him their stories of the days and at times playing little games which frequently involved him but at other times he just sat and watched.

  Now he had a family and it felt like it was his own; his Janie, his Annie and his Davie; he had given them all pet names of affection. Janie was his wife in all but name. A
part from that full sexual union, they did everything together, talked, shared, worked side by side, held each other in the night. He felt so comfortable with her and knew it went both ways. And he loved their children. Even though they were really hers not his, he felt the same level of ownership and protectiveness he would have if he was the biological father. At first they mostly called him Bic, now he was just Daddy; he had filled up their memories in this space. He rarely disciplined them, though a couple times he had given Annie a small slap when she was mean to other kids at the playground, and a couple times something similar to Davie when he did something dangerous that could injure him. He had told Janie and she had said, “Of course, you are their father now, like I am their mother.”

  As he walked off to work this morning he rolled through the events of the months in his mind; that long drive across the Cape to find her again, her uncertainty in the doorway and then, as they touched each other, their bodies and minds had connected in a safe place.

  So he had committed himself to care for Jane and her children; she had trusted him to do so in whatever form it took. It was this sense of total trust that was so compelling; it drove him to be better than he could otherwise have been. In a way he felt he was minding three children not one, except that one had the body of an adult. He sensed he was entrusted to carefully and gently rediscover this adult beneath the child in Jane. This trust was the best thing his life had required of him at any time.

  He believed that, in giving her this space and safety, she would slowly rediscover herself; an adult made anew from the child he now held. He felt and thought she could never be the Susan of before again; too much had been broken inside her, parts which could not be remade. But instead she had the chance to create a new self, one who could become his Janie, the one he knew and loved and who loved him in return.

  So he must hasten slowly, let her rebuild her life piece by piece. He knew he could take and love her body at any time he chose; she would trust him with this too. But to do so now would be to take a part of her innocence, to make the choice for her before she could make the conscious choice for herself. He most wanted her to regain her sense of womanhood and choose him, not for him to seduce the trusting child who would then be his bonded woman in an unchosen way.

  He did not know why this seemed so important but it was. So he must just push away his sexual desire for her, at least for now. He must pretend, when she cuddled her body into him and pressed her thighs against his maleness, that he was doing no more than cuddling a sleeping child.

  His mind stepped through the weeks that had passed. Week One - they had crossed the peninsula to the east coast and followed it south to a small town south of Townsville, where they had found a caravan park with an empty van and stayed there for five nights. Days were spent watching their children play on the beach and going for walks through the sand dunes. Nights were simple meals and storytelling; she seemed to have no interest in watching television and he preferred it this way, lest stories of the missing Susan appear, or stories of Mark, Anne or the other Lost Girls.

  While he was not sure what was the best way for her to regain her past knowledge, his sense was that any memories or desire for knowledge of the old had to come from inside her not be pushed onto her through the telling of others.

  So instead they both told stories, first for the children, then stories of her life in the mission since her babies came and also stories of his helicopter mustering and the people and places he had been. As they talked they linked their eyes together to share their imaginations. In that place he felt totally joined to her.

  In Week Two they had drifted further south still following the coast, more little villages with holiday accommodation, budget places, each for a night or two. One day they had treated themselves to the ferry to Great Keppel Island and had stayed there for three days, swimming and snorkelling in the clear water and watching their children play in the shallows. In Week Three they came more inland towards Brisbane, stopping in towns like Bundaberg and Gympie, but finding the city, as they approached it, to be too confronting for an unfamiliar family with two small children. By Week Four they had come back to the coast, this time to the Sunshine Coast.

  Here they finally found this place which felt right; a holiday and caravan park just a short distance from the town of Caloundra. The ocean beaches were beautiful, there were sheltered inlets on the bay side which were safe for small children, the people were friendly but incurious, and they had been given a free demountable to live in along with a modest wage for Vic, paid in cash in return for him doing a few hours of caretaker and handyman duties each day. He also did a bit of casual labouring nearby, the jobs coming by word of mouth.

  There was plenty of work and it was easy work for someone with his mechanical skills; ground maintenance, welding and fabrication, fixing lawnmowers and other small machines, maintaining the pool complex and gardens. It was not a job for life but the pay was enough to cover the daily living expenses and it gave then both a sense of stability and security.

  He used the name Vic Bennet, giving an impression of being married to keep life simple. At the same time he avoided pieces of paper that could be traced; the cash funded a day to day existence, meeting basic living costs without the need for a verified identity

  For Janie, in particular, this was a place to put down new roots. Her best friend had become Thea, a single parent who lived in the demountable two doors down. She had two children aged two and four, and supported herself by making the beds and cleaning the units in the park.

  Now Janie also had a part time job doing this too, covering days when Thea was extra busy or not available. When neither was working they would meet up for a slice of cake and a cup of tea, mostly at Thea’s unit. During work, when required they could share the child minding though Thea mostly brought her children from Unit to Unit as the tidied them and Jane had started to do the same with her children when Vic was not at home.

  Vic liked Thea, but he was wary of her becoming too curious about their life. He tried to skirt around the occasional questions she asked; about where they were from or had lived and worked before. He just said he came from Alice Springs and had both been living and working up in the Cape before they got together. But Thea was a keen magazine reader and TV watcher. This gave Vic bouts of anxiety, lest she make the connection to such a well-covered media story.

  Vic found his mind returning to their trip down the coast. Along the way, as they had travelled, he had tried to make a weekly phone call to get news of developments with the legal case in Darwin. At the same time he would pass on news of Jane for parents and friends. Wherever possible he used payphones to avoid his mobile lest it be traced.

  His concern was about a mole in the NT police or court system. His first suspicions had been well founded; within a week of them leaving a vague rumor had been aired about sightings of Susan, still alive, in a town in north Queensland, fortunately with no location specified. This story seemed to have more of a ring of truth than the previous Susan sightings.

  At least there were no new names and no current photos, his Janie now had her hair cut in a short bob and her face had plumped out, so the ability to link her to the Susan released from jail in Darwin nearly two years before was fading, the pasty faced, heavily pregnant girl of the old media photos was very much changed to his Janie.

  His first telephone conversation had been with Buck. Vic identified himself and told Buck they were together and all was fine, avoiding more specific news.

  Buck himself had two pieces of news, one that Susan’s parents had tested the DNA from the handkerchief and had confirmed that David was indeed their grandson, though Vic’s doubts of this were well gone without the official confirmation. The second was about the rat in the ranks of NT government who was feeding some information to the press, fuelling the speculation which was now hotting up, as evidenced by the Queensland sighting. So, as Buck said, this meant they had to be really careful about any communications and particularl
y about any locations and names.

  On the inside of NT government Alan and Sandy were informally aware of DNA result. Alan had been talking to people unofficially in legal circles about how to proceed, whether to seek to reopen the court case and seek a change to the conviction or alternatively to try and have the sentencing concluded to a level where Susan was free to lead her life, or perhaps to some find some other way of removing the legal requirement for her to return to custody for having broken her bail.

  There had been some speculation about Vic having a role in her disappearance and some calls for an arrest warrant to be issued for him, based on the suspicion that he had in some way aided a convicted prisoner. But the story Buck let slip of his going to Canada had been accepted; after all he no longer flew his helicopter. And Alan had done a good job of calming the horses from the inside and thus far no-one had formally attempted to locate him for questioning or pursue more serious matters.

  The second conversation Vic had was with Anne. This happened when they were staying in Yeppoon one night where they had checked into a motel. They had just spent three glorious days on Great Keppel Island, staying in a small and basic bunkhouse a short walk back from a pristine white sandy beach, dotted with corral atolls spread through the deeper water. Another couple with small children were staying nearby and they all became instant friends, and sharing meals and drinks while their children played together. They had also taken turns to babysit their combined children while the other couple went for a swim together, out amongst the corral.

  It was not something Vic had done before but Janie knew all about it, even knowing the names of many of the fish and pointing them out to Vic, glowing with enthusiasm as they explored. She was delighted this part of her knowledge carried over from a former life, later having intensive discussions with the husband of the other couple, Eric, who was a marine biologist. Vic loved seeing this part of Jane’s adult personality and memory return.