Robert ducked his chin and said something under his breath.
“Well, Evelyn was sure it was Dick. Said it was just like him, in uniform and everything. Do you believe in these things, Mr. Wakefield? Ghosts and such?”
“I’m not sure, ma’am.”
Robert attempted to reassert his authority. “There was no man there. People sometimes see what they wish to see. It was that orphaned Fox girl I’ve been trying to find. I saw her run across the lawn as clear as anything. Right across the lawn. Even found a divot taken out of the grass. I daresay no ghost could do that. Took Dick’s revolver, too. Girl’s armed now, believe it or not. She must have been wearing an army tunic, though; we found it by the fence, which is why poor Evelyn must have been confused.”
“What on earth would a girl want with a gun?” Mrs. Porteous asked.
“Who knows. She’s a wily one, though. Damned if I can catch her. Almost got her a couple of weeks back. Nearly got bitten by a snake, too.” He held up his bandaged wrist. “I’m not much good at tracking, but Jim Gracie is back tomorrow morning from Bathurst and he can track anyone over anything for a few bob. Especially now we’ve got the jacket she was wearing. He caught that Wynne chap who shot his wife. We’ll grab the girl by tomorrow afternoon, no question. We’ll take care of her.”
Quinn started. By tomorrow afternoon.
“Take care of her?” Mrs. Porteous asked.
Robert coughed. “She has no family here. I’ll take her to an orphanage.”
“Yes, I am quite sure you will take care of her.”
His uncle’s brow furrowed. “And what is that supposed to mean?”
Mrs. Porteous and the constable stared at each other for a second before she turned away and indicated the surrounding countryside. “Lucky you were here, sir, to look after the poor widows and orphans of Flint. Who knows what we might have done these past few years without you. We might have been lost.”
Robert paused before hazarding a response. “Yes, well, I was telling Mr. Wakefield here before you arrived—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she snapped, and picked her way over to Quinn. The widow’s suspicions of him seemed to have been miraculously dispelled.
Robert had picked up his notebook and waited to proceed.
“Maybe you did know him?” Mrs. Porteous asked Quinn. “Sergeant Porteous. Reg, they called him. Reginald Porteous. He was quite tall, as tall as you. Blond, blue eyes. Broad in the shoulder. 13th Battalion, 4th Brigade. He was at Gallipoli. Egypt, then Gallipoli. The Army sent me a letter about it. A Captain something-or-other sent me a letter. Captain Murray, perhaps. We have two daughters that have survived. He was shot, this captain said, and is buried there. At Bullecourt. One day we shall visit, of course. I shall take the girls. Soon. One day we will go. You know, I had never even heard of the place before. Bullecourt,” she added with distaste.
“Already they are building a monument in the town,” she went on, as if now unable to keep up with the torrent of her own emotions. “A column with the names of all the dead. Already it’s a memory. The dead men are already a memory. But there are, of course, many others who didn’t return. The fallen are many. We widows as well, naturally. And orphans. Not that that is any consolation, or not to me.”
Mrs. Porteous looked steadily into Quinn’s eyes. “Reginald Porteous,” she was saying. “Do you remember anyone by that name, Mr. Wakefield? P-O-R-T-E-O-U-S. Porteous.”
Quinn vaguely remembered Mr. Porteous from his boyhood, but had not encountered him in the war. The 13th had fought alongside his 17th at Pozières, but the other men were little more than bobbing shapes in the darkness, voiceless, awaiting their deaths. But Mrs. Porteous stared up at him with the stem of her posy wrung ragged in her gloved hands. For some reason she was sympathetic to him, and for that he felt he owed her. Besides, she had saved his life by her very presence here in the cemetery. He was dismayed to note a penny-sized stain on the brim of her blue hat, a presage, without doubt, of the poverty she would now endure.
Another silence as they all waited for the echo of the widow’s words to fade. At any moment Robert would start up again and demand Quinn’s papers and he would be undone.
“Yes,” Quinn said. “I do remember him now. A blond fellow. I met him in Egypt.”
The widow’s relief was palpable. She stifled a cry. “Really? In Egypt?”
“In training there. He was an excellent shot, a good rifleman, as I recall.”
“Oh, he was a marvellous man.”
“He was,” Quinn agreed. “Quite the joker. I remember he tried to ride a camel in Cairo but the damn thing refused to stand up with him on board. He tried and tried, but the creature refused. Gippos had a good laugh at his expense, the devils.”
“Yes, that sounds like him. He made me laugh so much. I would give anything to have him back again. I have all his letters, you know. He was always so cheerful because he didn’t want me to worry, but it sounded awful, so awful.”
Robert Dalton had by this time regained some of his composure and moved to interpose himself between Quinn and the widow. “A terrible thing, but it might be better not to talk of it. Now, Mr. Wakefield, your papers …”
But Mrs. Porteous angled past the constable and drew so close to Quinn that he got a whiff of the rosewater she had dabbed on her neck. It was the scent of widowhood. “Did Reg speak of me? I know it is vain, but I can’t help but think of it. At night I wonder about it. All night, sometimes. When you knew him in Egypt? Did he talk of me or the girls?”
Quinn hesitated. He had lied himself into a trap. At war, men spoke of all sorts of matters, trivial or otherwise: of girls and their homes; of food they yearned to eat; of pets and their football teams; of the time their old man gave them a hiding for nicking apples. As he lay bleeding to death from a shrapnel wound to his stomach, a fellow called Greedy Thompson had rambled almost incoherently of a sandy flathead he had caught once near Bermagui, saying over and over how all the town’s fishermen said it was the biggest flathead they had ever seen. Quinn thought of Fletcher Wakefield and of what he regretted not telling his fiancée before she died. Fletcher was killed before the war ended, and now Quinn supposed he could tell Doris himself without the intercession of mediums and their ilk. He thought, too, of the vicious query Mrs. Cranshaw had hissed at him that night at the séance. What would you say to a woman like that?
“Yes, ma’am,” Quinn told Mrs. Porteous. “Now that I think about it, he did talk about you. He said you were without doubt the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Without doubt. He always said you were too good for him. That’s exactly what he said. Far too good for him.”
Mrs. Porteous sagged with relief. “Can you stay with me a minute, please, Constable?” she murmured.
“Of course, but I need to check this fellow’s papers, it’s my job—”
“Don’t worry about this gentleman. Can’t you see he was wounded, for goodness sake? Look at him. Leave him be. Goodbye, Mr. Wakefield. Good luck to you. And thank you so much. Come on, Constable. Take me over to Ginny’s grave. It’s over there by that bush. See there?”
Robert Dalton huffed but took Mrs. Porteous’ arm and they tottered away between the graves. Quinn pocketed the shell that he had been clenching in his palm and hurried away. The tracker Gracie would be back tomorrow morning. They had to leave at once.
Part Four
THE ANGEL OF
DEATH
24
Sadie was sitting on a tree stump outside the shack eating an apple when Quinn arrived back from the cemetery. He told her what Dalton had said about the tracker’s return.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She became thoughtful. “Sometimes things speak in a voice not their own.”
“What?”
“Something my mother told me. What about Thomas? He’ll be here any day now. I know he will.”
Quinn sighed. He would have to tell her Thomas was almost certainly dead. He
kneeled in front of her. “Sadie,” he began, but couldn’t summon the courage to say anything more. After all, the girl actually had faith in something, which was more than most people had in these dark times. It was wrong to destroy it.
“You promised to wait with me until he came back, remember?” she said, as if reading his thoughts.
“I know, but—”
“But what?”
“The tracker will find you. Dalton, too. You know what he wants with you. He’ll kill you. We have to leave. I have thirty pounds from my mother. It’s enough to go anywhere. We have to leave now. Tonight.”
She stared at the roll of money he had wrenched from his pocket, but shook her head. “There’s not enough time. Not if he’s back in the morning. He has dogs.”
The girl was right. Already the light was thickening. There was no way they could make their way through the bush at night and they would be seen if they travelled by road.
Quinn paced again. He had an idea. “Do you know where the tracker lives?”
“Of course I do.”
“Does he have a wife, children?”
“Just dogs.”
“Then I’ll go to his place tonight and wait for him to arrive in the morning. I’ll tell him that I’m Thomas, that I’m your brother and there is no need to search for you. Have they ever met?”
“Yes, but years ago.”
“I’ll give him money not to look for you, if needs be. But we have to leave as soon as we can afterwards. No more waiting.”
“What about Thomas?”
“I’ll come back for him later, in a few weeks. When they’ve stopped looking.”
“Do you promise?”
He ignored her question. He felt desperate. “Is it a bargain, girl?”
With her front teeth, Sadie nibbled at her apple. She spat out a seed. She nodded. “But what if Jim Gracie won’t do what you ask him?”
Quinn paused. “Then I’ll kill him.”
She wiped her mouth and gazed around at the trees for a moment, as if consulting them on his idea. “Then you need to take the gun this time.”
Quinn stood—shirtless, arms akimbo—while Sadie wrapped lengths of blue wool around his waist with the concentration of a tailor measuring him for a suit. To one of the strands she had fastened a leather pouch the size of a child’s fist. The pouch contained items she deemed crucial to the success of his mission: snail shells, a stone wrapped in red twine, whiskers she had trimmed from his beard, his broken tooth, an earring.
“The dogs won’t smell you if you wear these,” she assured him as she issued him with directions. “So he won’t know you are there when he gets back. Follow the cart track past Willow Creek. Mr. Gracie’s place is a stone cottage on the rise above the old Chinese Village. You can’t miss it. I’ll wait for you here.”
“Will you be alright?”
She severed a piece of wool with her teeth. “Of course.”
“Hide under the floorboards.”
“I still have my knife.”
“Hide under the floor. In case Robert comes up here.”
“He’ll never find me by himself.”
He grabbed her arm. “Please.”
She shrugged him off. “Alright. I will.”
“Cross your heart?”
“Cross my heart.”
Quinn had come to love her seriousness, which seemed pilfered from someone much older. “I remember when you were born,” he said. “You were so small that you were like … an insect wrapped in blankets. Eyes closed. There was blood on the floor and on the bed, of course. The sour smell of birth. Mother had a hard time in labour. You know we had a brother who died before? Before even I was born. But on the night you came, William and I were outside on the veranda listening to her scream like an animal. We weren’t allowed inside. Father pacing up and down. Afterwards, the doctor left in his sulky and you cried louder than you would think a baby could. All night you screamed. Mother tried everything, but in the morning I took you up off the bed and you stopped straight away. In my arms. And you opened your eyes and looked at me as if I had saved you from something. Most people can’t remember things that happened when they were four, but I can. I’ll always remember that.”
Sadie had finished wrapping the wool around his tattered body. She stared up at him, as if about to respond, then changed her mind. She tucked an apostrophe of hair back from her eyes. She scrabbled in her box of treasures and, still kneeling, took Quinn’s hand in her own. Onto one of his fingers she slid a large ring. “This will help, too. Gold is the best thing. The gold for this was probably mined right here in these hills. Now go. Soon it will be dark.”
With both hands, she swept up the remnants of her secret things—her charms and baubles, her trinkets and wool—and crammed them back into her tobacco tin.
Quinn held up his hand to admire the ring. Gold were the Gods, he thought, their radiant garments gold, and gold their armour. “Where did you get this?”
But she had slipped away. From next door he heard the hollow clunkety-clunk as she angled the broken floorboards into place over her crawlspace. He checked his revolver and set off.
By the time he was in sight of Jim Gracie’s cottage, a hot wind had sprung up. He stood at the bottom of a shallow rise that led to the house, in wheat grass that was golden in the dusk light. It was as high as his hips and swayed like a silken congregation in the breeze. He raised his hat to wipe his brow. He felt sick and was possessed by the feeling that, with a slight effort of will, he could allow himself to be borne away, featherlike, on the late northerly. Would that it were so.
After several minutes he became aware of a shuddering, as if the earth were atremble, but soon realised the sensation was, in fact, in his own body, all along his intestines and deep in his knees. His hand began to shake, then his entire arm. Fear, then. Just human fear. It was a sensation he recognised from his years at war, as familiar as the boom of the sixty-pounders and the stench of mud.
He was aware of the lengths of wool beneath his grubby shirt, and of the leather phylactery that bumped against his ribs. He did feel somewhat protected by these girlish charms; after all, there was no doubt Sadie knew strange things of the world.
Emboldened, he walked up the hill, slipped between the wooden fence rungs and crossed Gracie’s dirt yard with its chickens pecking at blackened corn roots. The man wouldn’t even be home yet. The cottage was stone, with a bark roof. Empty tins and jars were scattered in the yard beneath a large gum tree that offered a piecemeal shade. He mounted the few steps to the veranda, opened the door and stood in the doorway, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
Even with the door open the interior of the cottage was dark. The only window was covered by a tattered lace curtain. The air was muggy with dog sweat and dried meat. Something shifted. A thin figure materialised blinking from the darkness. It was a man.
“Who the hell are you?” the man said.
25
There was the frenzied scratch of canine toenails on floorboards. The floor whirlpooled around Quinn’s feet as dogs nuzzled and sniffed at his calves.
“Are you Mr. Gracie?” he asked in a weak voice.
“I am,” came the suspicious reply.
Jim Gracie was sitting on a low bunk by the wall. He was a raggedy man, with forearms like twists of rope. Quinn was rooted to the spot with fear and indecision. For a moment, he thought he recognised Gracie; he was sure the fellow would know he was not Thomas Fox. The idea was idiotic. His revolver was jammed in the waistband of his trousers, but he was unable to move and feared that his breath would fail. The sensation passed. No. The man was as strange to Quinn as, hopefully, he was to Gracie.
The tracker leaned in and inspected him with murky eyes before turning his attention to his dogs. He aimed a vicious kick at one that sent it slinking into a corner. He turned back to Quinn. “Who are you?”
Quinn wiped his dry mouth.
“You’re a bloody quiet fella.” Jim Gracie’s hand b
utterflied in the air, displaying a palm dark with grime. “The dogs always tell me when someone is coming, not that that happens much. Must have flown here like a bird … or an angel. Are you lost?”
He shook his head.
“Then where you going, mate? Nearest town is a mile that way. The town of Flint. Don’t want you here that’s for sure.”
The fellow was agitated, perhaps even afraid. Quinn found it difficult to understand his somewhat clotted manner of speech. One of the hounds reappeared and sniffed about their feet. Quinn was seized by a coughing attack. His chest felt thick with burning coals.
“Do you have any water, sir?” he asked when he could speak again. “Please.”
Gracie hesitated but, complaining to himself, got off his bunk and poured some water into a battered tin cup. Quinn straightened to drink.
The tracker stepped back and shielded his nose and mouth with one hand. “You don’t got that disease, do you, mate?”
“No. I don’t have influenza, if that’s what you mean.”
“Bloody Bolsheviks.”
Quinn gulped again. “What?”
“People that started this whole thing. Put frogs and spiders in the water up in Sydney, dead people, you name it. Bastards.”
“I was gassed in the war.”
“Oh, yeah. Heard about that. They reckon the world’s ending. The fella at church—Mr. Smail—said so. Locusts as big as horses, with girls’ long hair. Dragons, a lamb. He told me God was waiting for us in the clouds. Our Father. Blood from the sky and all that. War.” He said something further and crossed himself. “What you reckon?”
Quinn shrugged. He was still standing in the doorway and had again begun to doubt the wisdom of this visit. Gracie was mad. Although it was almost dark, he saw the cottage was neat aside from the clutter of poverty. There was a roughly hewn bench opposite the low bed. The walls were plastered here and there with sheets of yellowing newspaper. On the table in the middle of the room was the enamel jug from which Gracie had poured his water. The two stinking dogs blinked in the gloom, their forms almost invisible against the earthen floor.
Bereft Page 18