Bereft

by Chris Womersley

  She looked at him. “I have a special way to find out exactly when the tracker will be back.”

  “How?”

  She dismissed his query. “In any case there are things we need to do first.”

  “Like what?”

  She sauntered over and squatted before him, bringing her odour of lemons, of soil and of girlish sweat. She inspected him closely with her dark, watery eyes before raising a hand and caressing his beard. Quinn shrank back. Sadie Fox, so febrile with energy he feared she might scorch him with her touch.

  “A few things,” she said.

  She trotted away, rummaged in the next room and returned to rearrange herself on the floor before him. She took his face in her hand and turned his head this way and that. Then with the slightest upward pressure on his chin, she tilted his head back, leaving his throat naked to the air. From the bottom edge of his vision, Quinn caught the fishtail flicker of his razor in her hand.

  He drew back and moved to protect his throat but the steel was already at his neck. A handful of his shirt in Sadie’s grip forestalled any sudden movement.

  “What”s the matter?” she asked.

  Something small meandered down his bare neck, an ant or spider perhaps, a dribble of sweat.

  “Did you think I might kill you? Cut your throat? Would you even care, Quinn Walker?”

  They stayed like that for some seconds, she smirking, he frozen, until she pressed the blade against his skin and trimmed the edges of his beard. This she did in silence, pursing her mouth in sympathy as Quinn stared at the water stains and cobwebs on the ceiling. The razor crackled against his cheeks and neck. When she was done, Sadie loosened her grip and removed the blade. Quinn slumped back on his heels.

  “I needed to tidy your beard,” she said, closing the razor and handing it to him. Then she brushed the tiny trimmed hairs from his shirtfront and collected them in her palm as one might a handful of iron filings. “You’re almost ready now.”

  “Ready for what?”

  But she only smiled at him, as if it were a foolish question to which surely he knew the answer.

  18

  Quinn lay on his back. It was late afternoon, hot. He wondered once again what he was doing in this strange house with Sadie Fox. He heard her singing. Despite the wretched quality of her voice, her earnest quavering made him smile. She had told him the Donovans had a phonograph player and when they wound it up on Sunday evenings she sometimes hid in the rose bush beneath their window. The thought of her huddling against the wall of a stranger’s house broke his heart.

  What’s the use of worrying?

  It never was worthwhile, so

  Pack up your troubles in your old kitbag

  And smile, smile, smile

  Her singing devolved into exuberant humming before she launched into another verse. Clearly, she had not been paying attention to the words.

  Private Perks he went a-marching into Flanders

  With his smile

  His funny smile …

  She paused and there followed the noise, faint at first, of what sounded like a family of well-shod mice skittering a short distance over the boards. Startled, Quinn sat up. Again she hummed, followed by a few half-sung words. He jammed a finger into his ear. His rotten hearing was still no better. He stood and went to the doorway of the next room.

  Although she had her back to him and appeared to be absorbed in what she was doing, he was sure she was aware of him standing there. She always was.

  She scattered something to the floor and, smiling, turned to face him. “You want to play?”

  “Play what?”

  She laughed, revealing a glint of teeth, like a shiv tucked behind her lips. “You know.”

  Quinn felt queasy. His palms were clammy.

  Sadie scooped objects from the floor and held out her hand. In her palm were five or six lumpy bones, sheep’s vertebrae. “Knuckles, of course!”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think I know that game.”

  “You do.”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “You do.”

  “How would you know?” His tone was more aggressive than he intended, and he regretted it at once.

  Unperturbed, she demonstrated it for him. “Everyone knows this game. It’s very common. You throw them down, then pick them up, one after another. Like this. Then over hand ones, over hand twos. Oh. Like that. You probably forgot, that’s all. Then that one, there. Like that … and that. Then … on the back of your hand. Remember now?”

  Quinn watched as she showed him again. She tossed the half-a-dozen bones into the air and caught two on the back of her hand. Those two she threw into the air and caught in her palm. The idea was to throw those already caught into the air and attempt to pick up as many of the others as possible before catching them again. He knew there were more complicated versions according to one’s expertise. Horse in the stable, over the jump, threading the needle.

  Quinn found himself drawn into the room, as if the room—indeed the whole house—had shifted on its meagre foundations to re-situate him within it. A flickering trickery of light and he was on his knees beside her, breathing hard. She took his hand, which he gave up without protest. Her palm was soft and moist as bread dough, and her nails were bitten to the quick.

  She prattled on for several minutes, saying how good it would be if they could play together. “It passes the time and it helps with your coordination. People have played it for thousands of years, you know.”

  He watched her as she spoke. Her lips were cracked and she had a mole on her left cheek he had not noticed before. “Who are you?” he asked in a quivering voice.

  Sadie laughed and picked over the bones. “I told you.”

  Quinn sensed the hard heat of her thigh alongside his own. He coughed into his hand. He felt puzzled, excited. “No. Who are you, really?”

  She looked at him as if caught in an act of mischief, before her mouth—her entire face—exploded into a grin.

  “I’m a little reprobate!”

  “What?”

  Now serious, Sadie levered herself to standing and looped a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m Sadie Fox. That’s all.”

  “Where is your family, Miss Sadie Fox?”

  She smoothed the front of her dress, which was stained with dirt and food and dried chicken blood. “Dead from the plague. I told you that, too. The bubonic plague, or whatever it’s called. My mother died from it, and my father left before I was even born. My brother looked after us, then I did when he went to war. But he’ll be back soon and he’ll know what to do, even if you don’t. He’ll help me.”

  He ignored her implied taunt. “Does Thomas know about your mother?”

  She fixed him with her dark-eyed gaze and said something under her breath.

  “What?”

  She tilted her chin, only a fraction, but enough to make plain her sudden disdain for him. “If you can’t help me, why don’t you leave?”

  “No, I—”

  “You know what he did to her.”

  “What? Who?” Quinn began rolling a cigarette with uncooperative fingers. The atmosphere in the room had altered, as if yanked tight. The gas lamp growled.

  “Don’t you even care what happened to Sarah?” she persisted when he didn’t answer.

  He threw down his cigarette. “Of course I do. She was my sister.”

  “You can’t hide up here forever. They’ll get you, they’ll get us.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “And you’re scared.”

  He ignored her and retrieved his ill-rolled cigarette from the floor. He lit it. The smoke irritated his throat but calmed him nonetheless.

  Sadie didn’t move from the doorway but lifted up her left foot and picked at its filthy sole, removing splinters long embedded in her flesh from going about barefoot. She brushed hair from her eyes. “He took her,” she began in a droning voice, “to Wilson’s Point, you know where that old shed is?”

  “Of
course I know. I told you, I found her.” He sucked again on his cigarette and felt his heart list in the swell of his chest. He wished the girl would shut up; she talked all the bloody time.

  “She was by herself because you were supposed to be taking care of her. She was young. Was she afraid of thunder? Of the storm? Perhaps your uncle said he would take her somewhere safe, and she went with him?”

  Quinn stood and shook the pins and needles from his left leg. He crossed the dim room, almost leaving the penumbra of lantern light. On the wall was a crumpled print not much larger than a postcard. It was a watercolour painting of a green and benign English countryside, complete with cows and sheep, a ruddy farmer ploughing a field. Puffy clouds dotted the blue sky and in the judder of gaslight, if he squinted, Quinn could animate the scene—observe the farmer’s awkward progress, hear the whistle of birds, inhale the loamy scent of the earth. It looked peaceful, a million miles from here.

  “And perhaps they played some games?” Sadie went on. “You know how she loved to play games. But then he made her take her clothes off and she tried to get away.”

  Quinn charged across the room until he towered over her. He longed to strike her, strike her hard, but instead threw down his cigarette and jammed his hands deep in his pockets. “Shut the hell up!”

  Sadie said nothing, but looked smug. She fiddled with a twig, twisted it this way and that in her hands.

  “How would you know?” he hissed. “You weren’t even born.”

  “I was.”

  “Barely.”

  She slumped against the doorframe. “I told you. There are things I know. I hear stories. I know about the Mimi spirits that live in rocks, that there is a wind they call the Mistral that makes men mad. About the spider that whistles. About how your father found you with her. I know odd things. There is a plant that screams when you pull it out of the ground, the meek will inherit the earth, the first man to fly ten miles in an aeroplane was Delagrange on June 22nd, 1908, in Milan.”

  “That’s no answer.”

  Sadie shrugged, breathless after her outburst.

  Quinn put his face even closer to hers this time. He could detect her bitter smell. There was dirt on her neck. “Who the hell are you?”

  “She fought better than the other girls he killed. Alice Gunn and one before her. Ages ago. That’s why he had to use the knife on your sister.”

  “Shut up.”

  Sadie was unmoved. “Why did you come back here? Why don’t you leave?” She paused. “Well?”

  Quinn rubbed at his beard. The gas lantern crackled as if preparing to go out, but rallied. Why did you come back here? It was a simple question. He stared at her slouched in the pearlish light. This girl. This curious girl, who waited defiantly, gnawing on a thumbnail.

  “I didn’t want to come back,” he began. “I knew they thought it was me. But I was called here. She called me back.” He wiped his sweating face. He was embarrassed. He dug about in his pocket and withdrew the match-safe containing the note scrawled by the Cranshaw girl at the séance. Sadie pushed herself off the jamb and licked her lips, as if she expected him to produce a tiny delicacy.

  With trembling hands, Quinn uncapped the match-safe and withdrew the note. After such fervent folding and refolding, the paper was thin and crumbling. The safe slipped from his fingers to the floor. He held the note unopened in his hand, unsure what to do with it.

  Sadie came closer. She stared up at him, then uttered the words that Quinn had read so often in the past months that they were engraved on his memory. “Don’t forget me. Come back and save me. Please.”

  Quinn’s heart fell away. He stood there foolishly with the scrap of paper still folded between his fingers. He bent to retrieve the match-safe from the floor and, watched closely by Sadie, slid the note back into the tin. There followed a lengthy silence.

  “Don’t you see?” she said. “You’re here to help me.”

  Quinn experienced a headlong plunge of sensation—a crack of thunder, a man’s laugh, the glint of a belt buckle. There it all was, in a single sickening punch of memory. His sister’s grubby knee, the rotten smell of rain-soaked wood, a red button popping from her dress. He reeled, steadied himself. Shapes bobbing in the half-light.

  “You have to make him pay for what he did,” she murmured conspiratorially. “Especially when everyone thinks you did it.”

  She lifted a broken floorboard and from the darkness produced a tobacco tin, which she prised open with some urgency. She scrabbled around inside it, then held out her hand. “Here,” she said.

  He squinted down at her palm. A red square button and a soiled length of lace. Dumbfounded, he shook his head to indicate that he didn’t understand.

  She held up the button between thumb and forefinger. “You don’t recognise this?”

  He reached out to take the proffered button but drew back, afraid. Would there be no end to this?

  Sadie shoved it at him. “Here. Take it. It’s your sister’s button. You remember how your mother sewed this onto her dress? For luck. Your uncle keeps these things. Like treasure.”

  “You went to his house? Are you mad? You must stay away from him. He’s an animal.”

  She held up the length of lace. “And this is Alice Gunn’s. Part of her dress. It got torn. He killed her, too. Years ago. She didn’t drown, the way everyone thinks. He killed her, then threw her in the reservoir.”

  By now the button was in his own hand. He studied it. Sure enough, it resembled one of Sarah’s favourites. One corner was chipped. It was some time before Quinn was able to say anything, as if the memory of that horrific day were once again lodged in his throat.

  “I could have saved her,” he said, aware of how pathetic it sounded after all this time, “if I had been braver.”

  Sadie shuffled forward, eager. “What happened?”

  “We were playing her latest favourite game—pirates marooned on an island with giant monsters. It was a sunny day, and we were out in the area north of Sparrowhawk, you know where there’s that clump of pine trees, about a mile from our place? We’d been out all morning, and I went back to my father’s place for some food. I stole some raisin cake that Mrs. Smail had brought around. Father was at work. William was sick in bed with fever, and Mother was reading Huckleberry Finn to him. I didn’t let her see me because I knew she would call me in, but I waited by the door listening. William was asleep and Mother was reading the bit where Huck finds the canoe in the river. I always loved hearing my mother read, so I stayed there. I got distracted.” Quinn recalled the warm lilt of his mother’s voice.

  “And by the time I started back, the day had changed. A storm was rolling in. I remember hearing thunder from the west. You’re right—Sarah was afraid of thunder. About the only thing she was afraid of. And when I got back to where we had been playing, she was gone.” There had been the blunt howl of the wind through the pines and the prickle of needles thrown into his face. On the ground, almost buried under leaf litter, he saw one of Sarah’s shoes, the red one with the rusted buckle. There were scuffs in the dirt.

  He rolled another cigarette. “And I was terrified right away, I don’t know why. Just a feeling. I found her shoe. There were ants all over it, you know how they move about when it is going to rain?”

  “They might have known where she went.”

  “And I sat down. I had no idea what to do. I called out but it was no use. It was as if she had been taken by the wind. It was impossible to hear anything, the way it was sometimes during the war. The terrible noise, thunder so close.” He tapped the side of his head. “That sound right between your ears.”

  He lit his cigarette. From behind the tears pooling in his eyes, Sadie looked immaterial, as if she might dissolve at any moment. He drew on his cigarette and coughed. “After a while I began searching for her, going in wider and wider circles. I went to the top of the ridge from where I could see the valley, but it had begun to rain so hard that it was impossible to see very much. I was dre
nched. Then lightning exploded over the church and in its flash I saw them, three people hurrying through the paddock alongside Sully’s place.”

  He closed his eyes to better recall the scene. “There were two men dragging Sarah along. But by the time I got down to Sully’s paddock, they were long gone. I jumped the fence in the direction they had been heading. I thought I heard someone screaming, but it might have been the storm. It could have been anything, animals, the wind—”

  “Maybe it was Mrs. Crink—lightning burned out her eyes that day?”

  He nodded and fell silent. Despite her persistent questions, he was unable to tell her how, after about fifteen minutes, he did locate the source of the screams in the old shed at Wilson’s Point. How he had crept up through the driving rain until he could see through a gap in the timber wall, had spied his uncle grinding into his kicking sister while the other man held Sarah’s arms and tried to clamp her mouth. His sister’s thighs were as white as milk. On the floor nearby was a pair of wet rifles. When he was done, Robert drew back and hitched his trousers, laughing, and at that instant Sarah screeched and lashed out, whereupon his uncle thrust a hunting knife hard into Sarah’s chest. Quinn had stifled a cry and fallen away from the knothole. Thunder had crackled and rolled. He had listened to the futile thump and scrape of Sarah’s shoe on the rotted floor, the breathing of the two men inside as they bickered over what had happened like a pair of goblins. She would have recognised me anyway, Robert was saying over the objections of the other man. I had to …

  Quinn’s inability to speak now reminded him of how it was afterwards as he wandered the countryside sleeping in hollows and trees. He drew on his cigarette.

  Sadie scratched her cheek. “Why didn’t you save her then? If you were right there?”

  Quinn stared at her, through tears. Surely it was clear enough. “I told you. Because I was terrified. I am afraid of my uncle. You will laugh and think me even more of a coward on this, but the only thing that protected me from him was Sarah. She stood up to him. She knew his real nature when no one else did. And he knew she knew. And now I am terrified of everything.