The three girls sat with palms flat upon the table and closed their eyes. They were about fourteen years of age, Quinn guessed. Each of them wore a white dress and had her hair tied back with ribbons. Their faces were pale as small moons atop their fragile necks. Quinn stepped from foot to foot. A carriage passed in the street outside. It would be dark by the time he and Fletcher got away from here. The damp washcloth of evening would already be falling over the London streets, and it was at that moment that Quinn yearned for Australia, where the light was sheer and full, without edges or mercy.
One of the blonde girls jerked upright and mouthed something. Then her entire body convulsed. Her eyelids quivered and she began, with eyes still shut, to scrawl on the paper with a pencil. Her blonde companion emitted a low hum and followed suit. Neither of them took much notice of what they were doing. The first girl allowed her head to bob about this way and that on her shoulders as if manipulated by unseen hands.
Despite Quinn’s scepticism, the entire scene—with its flickering lamps and droning girls, its sharp fug of tobacco smoke—terrified him. He was aware of the prickle of sweat on his skin. The last girl, the redhaired one, just sat there and gradually the room fell away—the curtains, the furniture, the shelves of books—until it was as if she and Quinn alone remained. Her eyes were closed and her face upturned, catlike, as if whatever she hoped to detect would come through her nostrils. Her skin was lit by an inner light. After several minutes she opened her eyes, and her gaze settled on Quinn as if his had been the face she had sought all along.
She stared at Quinn for so long that people began to glance at him, whispering, as if he were the instigator of their mute exchange. Eventually, the girl bent to the desk and started to write, stopping every few seconds as if listening to and deciphering instructions. A limp curl of red hair fell across her face, but she did not brush it away. Her mouth puckered and twitched.
After fifteen minutes, the girls ceased moaning and fell still with their chins upon their chests. The audience watched in rapt silence as Mrs. Cranshaw detached herself from the shadows, roused each of the girls in turn and guided them away, uttering maternal sounds as she did so. Quinn was unsure what he had witnessed, but applause rippled through the assembly before it dissolved into twitters and exclamations of amazement. “Extraordinary,” a nearby woman whispered. “My, my,” said another. “Did you see how they looked?”
There followed a hubbub as Mrs. Cranshaw re-emerged with shards of paper that Quinn recognised as having been torn from the rolls on which the girls had been writing. She then proceeded to call out the names that were scrawled there: “Mr. Wright? A message for Mr. Wright. Thank you, sir, that will be ten shillings. Is there someone known to Emily … Masters, is it? Pasters? Marsden? A child, I believe. The … mother, perhaps? An aunt? No? Aaah, Miss Wilcox. Glad you were able to come this week. I know, it’s rained non-stop, hasn’t it? Still, it could be worse. Mr. Conroy. Mr. Conroy, is your wife feeling better? Good, good …”
Quinn backed from the parlour to wait for Fletcher in the hall. He was desperate to get away and only hoped Mrs. Cranshaw wouldn’t confront him again. People bustled past, some clutching pieces of paper, their faces distorted by sorrow or joy. When Fletcher joined him, he was downcast, as there had been no word from his fiancée. He spoke already of visiting another medium, one that was particularly adept at conversing with young ladies who had crossed over.
Quinn was adamant that he would never let Fletcher persuade him to attend such an event again. They put on their hats, shuffled through the heavy door and were stepping down to the wet and shining street when they heard the thump of footsteps. A voice called out to them. Quinn turned to see the red-haired girl hurrying towards them along the carpeted hall, pinching her dress at the knee to forestall tripping on its hem. Her face was flushed and, before he could query Fletcher for guidance on what might be happening or how to respond, the girl had bounded down the stairs, pressed herself against him and flung her arms about his waist.
“Thank you ever so much for coming,” she whispered before stepping back inside with evident reluctance. The whole episode lasted barely five seconds, but a fresh unease gripped Quinn’s innards.
Mrs. Cranshaw herself then swung into the hallway behind the girl, eyes ablaze, her mouth as tight as wire. She looked from the girl to Quinn to Fletcher. Unsettled and confused about what had actually transpired, Quinn straightened his crumpled tunic and fastened the remainder of its buttons. His breath fogged out in front of him. Drizzle needled through the halo of a streetlamp. How on earth had he allowed Fletcher to drag him to this terrible place?
Mrs. Cranshaw had by now rested a hand upon the red-haired girl’s shoulder—and not entirely maternally, Quinn thought. Indeed the girl stumbled backwards as her mother—if this woman really were her mother—shoved herself off and set sail down the wet stairs. Fletcher addressed the fast-approaching Mrs. Cranshaw with a remark that she should keep an eye on the girl, who seemed a trifle rattled after her experience with the dead. Mrs. Cranshaw ignored the comment as she placed herself before Quinn.
“What did she say to you?” she demanded in a low voice.
Sunk into the collar of his tunic against the damp air, Quinn wanted to be elsewhere, somewhere warm. He grasped a prong of the iron fence. The cold, wet metal reminded him that in two days he would be back in France and he sensed the pointless shrug of his heart.
Mrs. Cranshaw stepped closer. Rain gathered on her eyelashes. “I must ask you again: did she say anything to you, sir?” Her breath hung in the air between them as thick as candle smoke, an impression augmented by its waxen scent. She looked him up and down, as if expecting to notice something that might alert her to what had occurred between him and the girl. “We charge for messages from the other side, you know.”
Over Mrs. Cranshaw’s shoulder, Quinn spied the girl still standing in the hallway, her body hunched as a question mark.
“Mr. Walker, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, sir, what did Margaret say to you?”
“Nothing. She didn’t say a word.”
“Are you sure, boy?”
“Yes. Quite sure.”
Mrs. Cranshaw dug out something from her lower lip with her tongue. Again she inspected him but, eventually, muttering under her breath, waddled back up the steps. “No need for you to come here again, Mr. Wakefield,” she announced to an astonished Fletcher from the top step, before slamming the heavy door behind her.
It was only later at their barracks at Abbey Wood that Quinn had discovered the note the girl Margaret must have stuffed into his pocket when she embraced him. But even now, on a hot night in an abandoned house thousands of miles from that London parlour, he could conjure her quivering gaze that, were it the sound of an instrument, would be akin to a violin’s deepest low.
10
Sadie was as good as her word. The following morning she led Quinn to his parents’ house, down gullies and through stiff tangles of wattle and grevillea.
It took more than an hour and, when they arrived at the ragged edge of the property, Quinn wondered how he would find his way to the shack again.
Sadie tied a length of blue wool several times around the lower branch of a large bloodwood tree. “Meet me under this tree,” she said, as if reading his thoughts. “I’ll be here in an hour or so, and we’ll go back to the shack together. It’s safer that way. I’ll go now and try to find some food for us.”
“Wait.” He still had no idea why he had chosen to trust this strange girl. “What about Robert Dalton?”
She waved a fly from her face. “I’ll be careful. He’ll never catch me. He’s hopeless. Remember, one hour.” Then she scampered away like a sprite and ducked into the undergrowth before he could think of another thing to say.
His mother was asleep when, again clutching a fistful of lavender, Quinn entered her room. Her features were slick with sweat. When she opened her eyes, she mouthed something unintelligib
le, then, gasping, said, “My poor, prodigal boy. So smart in your uniform.”
Quinn smoothed a hand schoolboyishly down his front. The uniform felt stiff and unwieldy here, without purpose. He needed to find some civilian clothes and rid himself of the stink of war.
She looked at him for a long time. “I have sometimes wondered, if I longed for you enough, whether I might be able to produce you, the way a magician does his scarves and rabbits. Remember that Houdini chap we used to read about? A foolish thought, of course, although you are here now and—don’t tell anyone this because they will think me mad—I swear I have seen a little girl pass by in the hall. A fever has its benefits, perhaps. There are reasons to be fond of grief, as someone wiser than I once said. What do you think, Quinn?”
“About what?”
“Would you think it possible to imagine someone into being? With nothing but love?”
It was a good question. Quinn couldn’t answer. His mother held out a hand to him, and he understood she wanted to touch him as she had on their first meeting, to prove to herself that he was physically present and not an angel or phantom concocted by her sorrow.
She licked her lips. “I hoped we would see each other again, but I never imagined it would be in this life.”
Quinn had also pondered this meeting on countless occasions and had fretted over his mother’s possible reaction to the news that it was actually her own brother who had killed Sarah. With bitterness, he remembered what she had told him on that first visit: Robert has been my saviour in all this. And he realised there was no way he could ever tell her the truth of what he saw on that afternoon, for it would surely kill her. It would have to be enough for her to know it wasn’t Quinn.
“Even my firstborn isn’t near me,” his mother said. “William became a farmer. Married. He couldn’t stay here, not after what happened. He took it very hard. He writes to me sometimes, but not often. He has a new life now.”
It was difficult to imagine William married. He had always been more comfortable dealing with objects than people, one of those boys rarely without a hammer or screwdriver in his grip. He had built bird houses that hung from the boughs of trees and fashioned figurines from wood, each with jagged eyes and mouths scratched out with his knife. When she was a few years old, the two brothers had vied for Sarah’s affection as they might for that of a pet, but William soon retreated to the predictability of machinery and wire. He would watch Quinn and Sarah from beneath a lick of blond hair, leaning against a fence post while their father expounded on something he’d heard from a bloke down at The Mail.
“Were you married, Quinn? Did you have children?”
He shook his head. Indeed, after losing Sarah, he had found it impossible to countenance the notion of loving anyone with such abandon again, for fear they would be taken from him. Once, there was a girl, Emily, the daughter of a farmer he’d worked for before the war. She was dark-haired, pretty, and had even run a finger down his cheek one long-ago dusk. Sometimes he tried to imagine what she was doing now but was satisfied, almost, with this dream of her.
His mother sighed. “It is a strange bargain one makes with the gods—that in return for the purest love imaginable one must endure the constant fear that something dreadful will happen to your child, and that it will be your fault for bringing them into the world. The number of times I thought of you. Mothers never believe their children are dead. I have seen it in others, the ones with sons killed in the war. God, it’s awful. Months after they have received those telegrams they still stand at their kitchen windows and watch the gate for a sign of them. I wake in the night. One’s child,” she went on in a trembling voice, “is always one’s child, no matter what age they might be. You worry when your child makes a noise, when he doesn’t. It’s a terrible kind of love. Terrible.”
An awkward silence followed. Her tearful gaze fell to Quinn’s hand. “Have you brought me something?”
He handed her the flowers, by now soggy from his grasp.
His mother mouthed a mute expression of pleasure. She fingered the rosary of camphor balls at her neck. “I’m sorry about the smell. It’s for my illness. This … influenza, or whatever it is. It is supposed to cleanse the air.” And with a gesture that reminded Quinn of afternoons fifteen years earlier when she would secretly spoil him and Sarah with freshly baked biscuits while their father and William worked outside, she flicked one hand contemptuously. “I don’t think it’s doing a thing, but your father insisted. Half the country is dying from it. The half not already dead from the war, that is. He made it himself, you know. He’s very proud of his handiwork.”
Quinn imagined his father tying the camphor necklace by candlelight with his stubby, soot-stained fingers, applying himself with the same concentration he brought to any task he thought would benefit his family. His throat swelled with emotion.
She held the lavender flowers to her face and closed her eyes to breathe in their scent. “Lavandula. An ancient flower, you know. It’s mentioned in The Song of Solomon by another name, I can’t recall what. Do you remember the name, Quinn? I’m sure I told you. Begins with S, perhaps. I’ll think of it later, no doubt.”
Mary dozed, then jerked awake. As though fearful he was preparing to depart, she said, “Tell me where you have been. For all these years.”
“I have been many places, Mother. Where would I start?”
“From the beginning. I want to know everything.”
He paused. “That’s a long time ago.”
“I know. Of all people, I know. Ten years of days. You have no idea.” She spluttered for a minute, then regained her composure. “You know, I used to creep into your room when you were all sleeping—when you were small—to watch you, to listen for your breath. You and Sarah used to breathe in time.”
Quinn’s face contorted with grief. He bowed his head so his mother couldn’t see the hot tears that squeezed from his eyes and rolled down his cheeks. It was too much to bear. He should never have come. He clamped a hand to his mouth as if to prevent the escape of his stale sorrow. His fingers smelled of nicotine.
“The day,” he began, but his words were soon drowned in grief. He continued to weep, a kind of unravelling he was unable to halt now that it had begun. “I only ran away because I was scared,” he said between sobs. “I didn’t know what else to do. I was too late to save her. I was too afraid. I ran and ran. Mother, I couldn’t even speak.”
It was true. In the months afterwards, words had caught like bones in his throat. He had roamed the country alone, staying well clear of people, watching only his shadow as it rose before him in the morning and slid about his forever-moving figure until, at night, it gathered itself again to him. Mumbil, Coolah, Curlewis—place names that might have been the words for crimes in unknown languages. He spoke with no one. He bathed in rivers and dams, and ate grass or fruit stolen at night from orchards or gardens. For three days a pair of wild dogs loped after him as they might a lame kangaroo, during which time he slept in a tree. A barren time.
His mother coughed and held out a hand flecked with her own blood. “Hush now. It’s alright. You can’t bring her back, Quinn. It’s a long time ago. Let’s talk of happier things,” she said with enforced cheer. “The war is ended, at least. We are here together. That is good enough for now. Why don’t you tell me how you came to be here.”
Quinn collected himself and wiped his eyes. “I was in Sydney.”
She attempted to sit up. “Oh, how lovely. It is many years since I was there. The harbour? Is it still beautiful?”
“Of course. It was crowded. There were many boats on the water. People are glad the war is over. They can get back to their lives.”
“And were you there long? What did you do there?”
Quinn blew his nose and allowed himself a shy smile. “I tried to find an orange.” His mother laughed. “But without any luck.”
“An orange. You always adored them. For a time you lived on them. But I haven’t seen one in a good while.
Yes, an orange would be lovely. The war, you know. It’s meant there’s been little to eat. Farmers off at war. Killed, I suppose.”
She closed her eyes again. It was now obvious to him she was dying. She was right: half the country was stricken with this influenza. In Sydney, the newspapers had been full of predictions of further outbreaks, of mountains of dead. As if a war were not enough for the world to endure. Quinn stooped to take her muggy hand in his own. She dozed, and in the ticking silence he wondered what he could tell her of the war, of his life. He became aware of a distant rumble through his boots on the wooden floor. Horse hooves. Horses approaching. He straightened.
His mother muttered something.
“What?” Quinn asked.
“What day is it?”
“Monday, I think.”
“That might be Doctor Fraser with your father.”
Panic squirmed through Quinn’s chest. Even with his limited hearing he could tell the horses were close, perhaps at the front gate. He wondered if he could leap through the curtained window and escape unseen, but his mother reached out to him.
“Quinn. Hide next door. In your old room. Quick. Your father won’t come into the house.”
“You won’t tell him I’m here?”
“Of course not. Quickly now.”
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