“Even though I knew he would not harm me, a damaged person like he was, I knew he would damage others; it was self hatred that drove him.
“I tried to give him hope but he could not let himself believe it. I was not strong enough to hold him and bring him through the pain. So I made myself leave him even though I felt torn in two as I did.
“Until tonight I have never understood why. Now I do and for that I thank you. Susan got closer than me in bringing him through the pain, she offered acceptance with no conditions. But he could not do himself the kindness to accept her offer. Instead he fled from her to his devil the only way he knew.
“In that last day Susan gave him the same kindness he gave to Belle, a quick and kind ending. She since has lived with that devil of recrimination. Now she too must learn self forgiveness.”
Vic spoke again, “It is not only for Susan, now Jane. I was his friend, yet chose to be blind to the things he did. I put my hands over my eyes, and looked the other way. When it was tearing my wife’s mind apart, I chose to hate him for what he had done. Only now, when I see the price that he paid, can I begin to look at him in understanding. So I now must reconcile myself to the ghost of his passing and the harm he has done.”
David said, “While I never knew him, today I walked a mile in his shoes. Far too long he has haunted my life and Anne’s life, as with you, Alan and Sandy, and you Cathy and Jacob too.”
Cathy nodded, “Perhaps tomorrow it is Belle who can bring us to the place where we truly forgive Mark for all the evil he has done, while still remembering the goodness of the man who was once my friend.”
Chapter 50 – Laying His Ghost to Rest
Next morning they flew to Kunnunurra, fuelled up to maximum fuel and took on two more passengers, a local aboriginal policewoman, Jessie, who was a traditional owner of the place to which they were going, and Isabelle’s father. He had flown from France to be here with them when they searched for his daughter’s things. As there was no suggestion they would find a body there was no need for a pathologist’s attendance, today was about recovering the personal effects of a person the NT coroner had already found was deceased, a finding with which the Western Australian coroner had agreed.
So they had a full load with extra fuel and ten people aboard and, as they got airborne, Vic could feel the load in his big machine. The weight would burn off as he burnt fuel on the trip north.
For an hour the helicopter flew north, north-west over a rough and broken land. It was a place of red and brown mountains which raised their fractured heads to the sky. Between scarps narrow gorges plunged, giving glimpses of green trees fringing pools of water and places of yellow sand.
As they flew Cathy thought about her Uncle and all that had passed with him. The note told of how Mark had tracked him down in Oman, already in hiding, as the police were looking for him over other child sex charges.
Mark said he had taken him out to Rub al Khali, otherwise known as the Empty Quarter. Mark gave an approximate place but that was all.
Mark’s note said he had talked to her Uncle there and told him what he knew, how he had raped and abused his two nieces and how one had killed herself because of him. He said he had since found out this man had done similar to other girls as well. So he deemed his life forfeit as payment.
Mark wrote, “I told him I should use my knife on him for what he done; cut away the parts that had hurt little girls. But I did not. I gave him a choice, to go to the English police while I watched on, and tell of all he had done, or to stay here and take his chances. I told him there was no water here, none for two hundred miles and no one ever came here. He said he preferred to stay here, perhaps he thought he could cheat death. I knew he could not.
“I left him with a bottle of whiskey and a tablet that would end it. I drove away and came back to Australia. His bones are out in the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Desert. I do not know where.”
It was not as Cathy would have done it but she could feel it was justice, better justice than a court could ever have given. At first she and Jacob had thought of going there, but there was no point. Whatever was done was finished three years past. There was nothing to gain in driving through an empty desert. If, by a miracle, he had survived she knew that none would ever see him again. And she knew, the way Mark had done, it survival was not an option, his only choice a kinder death. That was how Mark saw justice. After all the people her uncle had harmed she could not disagree. Now, when she balanced it all up, her main feeling was relief.
So she left his memory behind and looked up. Half an hour had passed, now she glimpsed and then saw a blue line on a smoky horizon, then the line became the place where the sea met the sky. She hoped there was more joy in this place than where her mind had been.
They came to the coast at a place where sheer red cliffs met an azure sparkling sea. Vic matched this place to his GPS and map and turned further west, following the turns of the coast as it twisted and plunged. Fifteen minutes later he saw a headland overlooking a little bay, shaped into a half circle. It looked right. He came in closer to see it better.
Mid-point of the cliff circle he saw a small waterfall that fell to ocean, its spray all a glisten. Behind the waterfall lay a clear pool of water, and rising up behind it were other broken rocky hills. Wheel tracks wended their way near the side of the cliff and then vanished into the green grey scrub behind.
He knew this was it, the place of his map, the place which the custodians of this land called Wallaby Dove Pool, a place from where these first spirits had come out from this water and joined the land. Now, each evening, their descendants came to drink. It was the place that Mark called Crystal Creek.
Vic brought the helicopter to rest and sat in it for a minute while the turbines wound down. He handed the map to Alan, saying, “Perhaps you should go first with Jessie to look. Then the rest of us will come.”
Alan and Jessie nodded and walked away.
Five minutes later Alan waved them over. Jessie held a small brass object in her fingers, a twenty two rifle shell, found lying near the cliff side in a place where the rock had broken away.
“It must be this place, just round from the waterfall, from which she fell,” he said, pointing to the ground.
They looked for other signs; there was an old blackened fireplace, unused in years. It was a long time since any had camped here, perhaps the last was them. They checked the hillside behind, looking for caves and rock crevices.
At last they found it, an entrance overgrown by shrubs. It was a crevice in the rock, two meters long and half a meter high. It had been filled with stones so nothing could enter it except, perhaps; a small mouse. As they cleared away stones they saw the neck of a guitar with a backpack beside it.
Alan lifted the guitar out and passed it to Belle’s father. He took it, hands shaking, he knew it was hers, a present of her family when fifteen years old.
He handled it lovingly and strummed a few chords then he passed it to others with a wistful sigh. He opened the pack; its contents neatly folded inside and still dry.
He shook out a shirt, “It is from the local market in our home village,” he said with a tear in his eye. Inside the shirt was a diary, only small notebook size. He took it and opened it and read it aloud.
“J'ai passé un moment merveilleux. Je suis enchanté avec cette homme. Cette nuit nous somme devenir amants. Aujourd'hui je suis extatique. Il est un bon homme. Même si on ne se revoit jamais, je ne t'oublierai jamais”
“This morning I sang him one of my favourite songs – Piaf is perfect for a day when I am in love. I sang it first in English then in French, then the last verse again in English. The French is far more beautiful as befits my beautiful man.”
Then her father picked up the guitar and played it by ear, singing the words as she might have sung them.
No, nothing at all,
No, I don't regret anything!
Neither the good that's been done to me,
Nor the bad;
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal !
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
C'est payé, balayé, oublié
Je me fous du passé !
Avec mes souvenirs
J'ai allumé le feu
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs
Je n'ai plus besoin d'eux !
Balayées les amours
Et tous leurs tremolos
Balayés pour toujours
Je repars à zéro
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait
Ni le mal; tout ça m'est bien égal !
Non, rien de rien
Non, je ne regrette rien
Car ma vie, car mes joies
Aujourd'hui, ça commence avec toi
No, nothing at all,
No, I don't regret anything!
Because my life,
because my joy,
today
begins with you!
When he had finished he was too emotional to speak and they all had tears in their eyes. He walked to the edge of the cliff and flung the guitar into the sky, watching as it slowly fell to the water below, saying,
“It belongs here with her, may she always hear its sweet music.”
Jane walked over to the helicopter and took out a small bottle. It was the last container of Mark’s ashes. At first she thought to fling it to the place where the guitar had gone, but then she remembered her charge, as Susan, from him.
So she unscrewed the lid, took out a pinch and, with all the love she could bring to her mind, tossed this dust of the man into the air, her mind hoping that some part of it would mingle together with whatever life essence remained here of Belle. She passed it around and the others did the same.
Then they loaded Belle’s pack in the helicopter and flew home.
That night they stopped at Timber Creek. It was a story telling night about Mark and Belle. It was the wake Mark had never had and a memorial for Belle. It might have been sad but it was not. Those who knew Mark told a story of him, those who did not know him told a story of other lives he had touched. Belle’s father told of his daughter and Anne read from the diaries.
It was not quite celebratory, but in all the minds and voices there was joy and forgiveness as well as pain. They remembered a man of two parts, the good and the bad and the woman he had lost who regretted nothing.
Chapter 51 – Sunlit Shadow Dance
She stood on the cliff took, looking out over the valley below. The sun was just touching the horizon and, as it did, suddenly the whole world lit up, lighting not just the ordinary world, but her world too. It was fully alive again for her first remembered time with blinding and full color. The color was more beautiful than she could ever have imagined.
As the color came back so too did the memories, the good and happy but along with them the pain and horror as well, all she had been and all she had done. She cringed with pain in her soul as it all came rushing back, the awfulness of it; her awful part. Slowly it too faded as she looked far out, her mind moving past it.
In that last sunlight of the fading day she could see the shadows dance. She remembered how, all the years ago, Mark had brought her here and had told her how, in that last fading light, the shadows came out and danced, those of the people who had lived here over fifty thousand years.
He had asked her to bring his remains back to this place and they had. They had scattered his ashes across the hills and sand plains below. Now he was one of them, walking amongst them, a shadow dancing amongst other shadows in that last sunlight.
She felt his joy, his joy for himself and his joy in seeing her again. She heard the spirits singing in that last light, more beautiful than any sound she had heard before, all life’s emotions mixed and blended into ten thousand, thousand voices. And his voice sang loudest.
He stood there beckoning, waving, signalling and calling “Come to me. We can go together into this other place; leave the pain of this world behind. It is a good place. I want you there. Come with me, come now.”
Now she was only Susan again and loved only Mark. She remembered still, as if from a great distance, Vic; how she had shared her life with him and loved him too. They had taken Mark’s children, her children and they had even created their own children together and they had given them all a good life. But Mark was her first and truest love, she was his Susan and her spirit must go to him, it must answer his call.”
As she stood at the cliff top gazing out across the rocks far below, she knew she would now soar from here like an eagle and fly to Mark. She would rejoin his crocodile spirit to that of hers and be complete again. She would leave behind all the pain that she could not bear to remember.
She stepped forward to where there was only air.
Far below a small cry came, penetrating somehow through the other world music and last sunlight where still the shadows danced. It was the voice of her child, David. “Mummy, come back!”
It pulled her back. Again her feet stood on solid ground.
She knew that this boy, the new Mark, needed her more than the other Mark, as did Vic and Anne and little Vic and the others, even one unborn. So she must learn to live with the pain, accept what she could not change and take joy in life’s little things.
She looked back out, Mark was calling again, but now she knew it was not for her he called. As she watched another girl came out of the shadows, she had dark hair; this girl looked like her but was not. She answered him, singing in a beautiful French voice.
“Non, je ne regrette rien.”
As Susan watched she was joined by another and then another girl, and finally there were four. She knew all their names, the one with dark hair, the two brown and the one of glorious shimmering blond. They all joined hands and danced towards the other spirit shadows in that last sunlight.
Susan watched as the light faded and then they were gone. Now she was Jane again, the remnants of Susan had passed from this place.
She walked across the flat ground to where they all stood and they all enfolded her in their big and little arms. She was glad she was still here. She stood with them all in the now fading twilight as the sun travelled across another sky. She knew that all these other ancestral spirits had gone there too, Mark’s spirit, the crocodile spirit that had tried to take her there, along with the spirits of other women he had loved and who had gone before.
But it was not her time to go there, she would live and love in the world of men, watch her children grow and their children too, share their joys and pains and live again in life’s colors. It was enough.
Epilogue
In the months after they returned from the desert Jane gradually got the rest of her life in order and did what more she could to make reparations for the harm Mark had caused.
For Amanda the police had sent her things to her family. They asked the family what to do with the money and the notebook of her travels. The family asked they be sent to the man who had loved her, the money had come from him and the notebook was of value to him. He and they were now agreed for him to read it and write her story. The family also sent him one the rubies. He kept it and was glad in her memory. It was something of beauty to remember her by after all he had suffered.
But that was not reparation from Mark, just a return of what Amanda had owned along with Mark’s gift to her. Jane wanted to do something from Mark’s estate for Amanda. So she wrote to the family and asked if there was more she could do.
A month later came a reply. “We would like to erect a memorial for our daughter at the place she died, something in her likeness that others will know her by.”
So on the hill of the mine Jane arranged for the erection a stone cairn. On its side a likeness of Amanda’s face was made out small ceramic tiles and piece
s of colored glass, things that would not fade in the bright sunlight.
For Elin’s family, the police sent them her things from the grave. Alan told Jane that the fabulous opal now sat in a local museum in Sweden, donated in Elin’s name. The family had brought Elin’s mortal remains home and buried them in the boat grave alongside her mother, the warrior queen and her warrior daughter. On her graveside they put a small plaque to the man who had loved her in his desert kingdom.
Jane knew it was a thing that would have pleased Mark and wrote to tell them so. They sent her a photo they had taken of this place.
One day as Jane was going through the many things of Mark’s that had gradually been located and come to her. In a box she found a series of mining leases for this part of Queensland, over thirty in all. Two of these leases were for the mines where Elin and Amanda had died. So the final thing Jane did was she transferred the one to Elin’s family and the other to Amanda’s family. If there were yet things of value in this ground it was their right to discover them, if not at least these places held the memories of the last resting places of their children. A year later the two families met on these rocky hills in the desert to agree on a small joint mining venture named after their daughters, with the profits going into the Lost Girls Trust.
The final piece of the jigsaw was Josie. Jane traced the bank transaction where Mark had transferred the money into her name, as told in his diary. It gave her a real name, Josephine Kelty. Then they traced her mother but her mother was dead, and there was no other next of kin. So Jane arranged for Josie’s bones to be placed in a coffin and taken back to the place in the desert where they found her.
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