After the Darkness

by Brown, Honey

  When we lifted the cowling, he’d become a perfectly preserved skeleton of ash. His skull, ribcage, pelvis, all were intact. Bruce and I could see the bones of him without the blood and gore. He was odourless, soft, feather-light, grey and so intricate. And then the wind swept through the workshop and we saw his jaw and fingers disintegrate. Bruce lowered the cowling to stop the ash being blown about. He turned on the extraction fan within the furnace, and Finn’s ash skeleton was sucked up into the flue, jettisoned out into weather, over the cove.

  We scattered Finn to the wind and the water. He was absorbed into rock and grass, he soaked down into the roots of trees. Standing beside the furnace, I even breathed him in. I wet my lips and tasted ash. I wiped my face and realised part of him had settled as a fine dust on my face. Bruce gagged, and spat. He dry retched, scrubbed his face and combed his hands back and forth through his hair. ‘Oh, God …’ he was saying.

  My husband was despairing and I thought I was holding myself together – until I realised that my sense of this had manifested in a physical action; I had wrapped my arms around my body and I was squeezing myself, rocking back and forth, drawing all my muscles in, to stop from falling to pieces.

  We left the workshop the way we had found it. Bruce drove the Jag out through the garage and around to the cliff edge. I ducked out under the lowering roller door and waited while it closed. I put the crowbar and workman’s shirt back in place and ran from the house, as though it might draw me in – sprout tentacles and reach out to grab hold of me, pale legs emerging from beneath the big square box, the house transforming into the deep-sea monster I knew it to be, the glass and steel turning opaque-blue and fleshy, crawling down the cliff face, into the ocean, taking me with it. As though I hadn’t already gone.

  I glanced up at the windows. The day and the weather were reflected back at me. It crossed my mind that Bruce and I should drive off the cliff. With the drop right there in front of us, suicide presented itself as an option. We had our children to consider, though, and they’d prefer us around, in any shape. Bruce shifted some rocks so that the Jag’s undercarriage wouldn’t snag. He threw the rocks away into the grass. Each stone landed with a thud. He parked the Jag’s near to the cliff edge, wound down the two front windows, and with the vehicle in neutral he climbed out. Bruce ran to our four-wheel drive. He had his eyes on the driveway. I went to the cliff edge and peered over the sheer drop. Briny wind whipped my face. On hands and knees I crawled to the very edge. The ocean shook. No sand below, but agitated water, lifting, smashing and spraying up the cliff face. Bruce approached in the four-wheel drive. He drove at a reckless speed over the rocky ground. I got to my feet. Something out the front of the property caught my eye. A vehicle with a flashing light on top was pulling up at the gate. The flashing light was all I could see from where I stood. The vehicle continued on slowly past the gate and up the road, then stopped. The flashing light began to move backwards. The vehicle was a truck, backing in through the gate.

  ‘Bruce!’ I screamed.

  He had stopped the four-wheel drive behind the Jag. He turned and watched the flashing light a moment.

  We had time, if we were quick. I moved away and gave Bruce room to get it done.

  The front of our car was high and the back of the Jag was low. Bruce accelerated and bumped the Jag. The smaller car rolled a short way over the uneven ground. Up at the gate, the truck was being driven forward again, repositioning, to take another shot at the angle. Bruce bumped the Jag again. The Jag lurched forward and its front tyres came to rest on the cliff edge. It was heart-stopping to see the car so close to going over, so near to disappearing, and frightening that Bruce was only a short car length from going over as well. Bruce nudged the Jag again. The Jag’s tyres went over the edge and the car clunked down heavily onto its chassis, the bonnet sticking out over the cliff. It wasn’t going to roll and drop nicely into the sea for us. Bruce was going to have to push the bellied-out Jag the whole way. The beeping of the truck was audible above the sound of the wind and sea. I stood staring, waiting for the truck to come into view. My bones felt as powdery and light as Finn’s had been. I was about to be picked up and scattered across the cove. The sound of the truck reversing halted. The flashing light stayed in the same position. Even the unlawful were allowed some good fortune.

  The Jag’s undercarriage screeched and complained. Bruce had to rev high to get up enough power to move the grounded car. Tipping point turned out to be well back. Bruce couldn’t back up and ram the vehicle forward – he was too near to the cliff edge and the ground was too uneven – he had to push it the whole way. The Jag’s chassis scrapped over rocks and jutted out further over the cliff.

  Bruce was gung-ho about things to do with vehicles and machinery. He liked to think his mechanical knowledge superseded all logic and commonsense. As the Jag began to tip forward over the cliff, its rear bumper hooked onto the four-wheel drive’s bullbar. Bruce hadn’t factored in the likelihood of this. Or, if he had, his calculated gamble hadn’t paid off. The Jag leaned forward over the cliff and began dragging the four-wheel drive with it. Bruce slammed his foot on the brake, but the big vehicle still slid forward. Bruce frantically crunched the four-wheel drive into reverse. I ran as near as I dared to the two cars. The four-wheel drive’s back wheels began spinning in the rocks and slippery ground as Bruce madly reversed. The front wheels were less than a foot from the cliff edge, and inching closer. The entire body of the Jag was over the cliff now, hanging, suspended.

  ‘Get out!’ I screamed.

  Bruce opened the door, while keeping his foot on the accelerator. He needed a clean jump, because the moment he stopped reversing, the vehicle would be pulled over the edge. He readied himself to make the leap.

  I’d been mistaken. Here was the fall, the jump, the drop, the leap. This was the final destination. Bruce thought so too. His face was grey, his eyes were locked on mine as though to say goodbye. And I saw that as much as he didn’t want to leave me, he was relieved. We’d gone too far, done too much. I reached out to take his hand, but he wouldn’t take it.

  ‘No!’ I said.

  At that moment the bumper came loose from the bullbar. The Jag plummeted down towards the water. Out of the corner of my eye I watched it go. It was an amazing sight, the vintage car freefalling against a backdrop of an angry ocean. Released, the four-wheel drive shot backwards, away from the cliff, with Bruce safely inside. The open door flashed by close enough to clip my nose and chin. It missed knocking me to the ground by the barest margin.

  Bruce climbed out of the four-wheel drive and walked a little way into the paddock. He sunk down onto the grass, his legs gone to jelly. I crept to the edge of the cliff and watched the Jag, upside down in the waves, a beetle on its back, sinking slowly, rocking back and forth as it was cradled in the rough swell. Blood began to drip from my nose. It ran over my fingers that were pressed to my face. Then it came fast and thick. Its metallic taste covered my lips.

  The beeping of the truck started again. The vehicle reversed into view. It was transporting a crane. Wide Load signs were attached front and back. Bruce sat on the grass, watching the truck over his shoulder. I lifted my dress to my face to stem the flow of blood.

  Bruce got to get his feet, and I stepped away from the cliff edge. The Jag had sunk below the surface and was gone.

  We left without acknowledging the truck driver. The house was a worksite, with different tradies always coming and going: our four-wheel drive wasn’t out of place. The truck driver didn’t give us a second glance.

  Blood began to clot and coagulate in my nose. It dried on my fingers and was a thin, cracking mask on my chin and around my lips. I pulled down the sun visor and looked in the mirror. I didn’t recognise myself. My face was the colour of porcelain beneath the blood, my eyes wild and red, the lines in my face deep, etched in, carved in stone. I began to pick at the flaky blood on my cheek.

  There was a text message from Damien on Bruce’s phone. Bruce turned it
to me and held it up so that I could read it myself.

  Friend of Grant reported missing. In today’s paper. Fits description of your attacker. Take a look. Ring me.

  It was too late even to cry.

  24

  Bruce stopped by the old stone walls. He parked in the culvert, got out and walked up to the low fence. No mortar had been used in the construction. The stones were sitting on top of one another, nothing holding them in place or binding them together. There was an art to their careful placement. Modern-day farmers had added some height to the wall, attaching poles and stringing up chicken wire, and these add-ons detracted from the original construction. The simplicity had been ruined. Bruce put his hands on the rocks, and shifted some of the top stones. A person could tear down the wall if they wanted. All it would take was the removal of one stone at a time – a time-consuming process, but no brute force needed, only patience. The wall couldn’t be pushed over, or even rammed, it was too solid for that; it could be dismantled though, stone by stone.

  When Bruce returned to the car his expression was bare, he was without thoughts any more. He climbed behind the wheel and we travelled on in silence.

  At the same petrol station we’d stopped at the day of the attack, Bruce bought two sausage rolls, two cups of coffee and a copy of that day’s paper. Billionaire Dead, Millionaire Missing was the headline. All the searching Bruce had done, looking for a picture of Guy Grant and Reuben together, and there they were, larger than life, the two of them on the front page of the paper. Reuben’s real name was James Ackerley. The photo was an old one. He had a full head of brown hair and an earring. Guy Grant was rounder and wearing oversized, unattractive glasses. They were standing beside one another outside an art gallery. Ackerley was looking away, smiling. As well as describing Guy’s suicide, the story mentioned Ackerley’s family listing him as missing – last seen leaving the Qantas arrival lounge in Melbourne on the morning of 13 April. The article detailed Guy and Ackerley’s friendship as going back as far as their early twenties, when they had met at an exclusive gathering for top university graduates, hosted by Guy Grant’s late father and held on the family’s Utah estate …

  On page three the story continued, focusing more on Guy, with pictures of him and his father – a tall, lean and grey-headed man, strikingly like Ackerley. One photo showed a large group of young men on the steps of a homestead, Ackerley among them, his head circled for the reader’s benefit, with Guy and his father standing off to the side. Guy was a similar age to the other men, but noticeably not one of the group; he was unsmiling, with rounded shoulders, dressed in jeans and a baggy jumper, beside his father. Written on a banner above the group of young men was Meeting of the Young Minds. The story mentioned Guy’s ongoing struggle with mental illness, hinting at a childhood and youth spent weighed down by the burden of his father’s expectations. At school, Guy apparently hadn’t excelled in the way his father had. This disparity between father and son was further underlined by the fact that after his father’s death Guy had cut all ties with the American academic world. He’d moved to Australia, used his inheritance to start WithArt, and settled near his close friend and gifted artist, the now missing James Ackerley. A friend and board member of WithArt was quoted as saying that the wealth and privilege Guy had been born into had been a blessing for the homeless and underprivileged of Australia, while being less a blessing for the man himself.

  Bruce had remembered to get tomato sauce for my sausage roll. I went to the toilet, washed my face and cleaned my hands. I dried them by waving them in the blustery conditions. When I returned to the car Bruce was brushing the pastry flakes from his lap. He folded the paper and put it on the back seat, handed me my sausage roll.

  The call he made to Damien was short. He didn’t set it to loudspeaker. ‘It’s Bruce Harrison,’ he said. ‘… Yes, I’ve just finished reading it. You mean the man with him on the front page? No, it’s not him. He’s not our attacker. I’m absolutely sure.’

  We still functioned. We weren’t broken. We were dismantled.

  Before going to get the children from Bruce’s parents, we returned to Finn’s place. Bruce went through the rooms checking that everything was in order and that there were no signs of a struggle. I found, on the middle shelf of the walk-in robe, a velvet-lined timber box, about the size of a young girl’s jewellery box. It looked as though it had been hurriedly pulled to the front of the shelf – clothes were messed-up around it. The lid was open. My nose to the box, I sniffed the oily metallic scent of the gun. Tucked into a pocket of velvet beneath the lid was what looked to me to be love notes. I guessed they were from the married woman he had told me about. It felt wrong to read them, though. It seemed fitting to me that Finn had kept the dark element of himself side by side with evidence of his sweet freckled charm. In me, I believe, Finn had spotted – like the police at the station had – a person moving outside the usual social constraints. Being a victim had put me on his radar. Whether he had loved me, or loved the injured element to me, was something only he could answer, but it did seem to me to be the latter. Using Finn’s character flaws to make less of what we’d done, though, was as corruptible as Rex Harrison’s using his son’s confession as good reason for brandishing a gun. There’d be no forgiving it, ever.

  I packed some of Finn’s things into an overnight bag. The coat I chose could be rolled up tight. It didn’t take up too much room. The shoes I chose were flat canvas sneakers. There was a chequered scarf I packed, and I didn’t leave behind his favourite T-shirt. I took the money from the bedside table drawer and put it in with the clothes.

  On the way out of the bedroom, I saw a small navy button on the floor. It could have been from any shirt, male or female – it was plain and nondescript. It was from Bruce’s shirt, though. He walked up as I retrieved it, and looked down the row of buttons on his shirt to the space where one was missing. If it hadn’t hit us before, it did then. What we’d done was criminal. And we’d be caught.

  Bruce and I got down on our hands and knees and crawled into the bedroom. I looked under the bed, Bruce went across to where he had pushed Finn’s face into the carpet and he separated the woollen pile, looking right down at the coarse weave of the base mat for blood.

  I ended up finding a blonde strand of my hair on the shag-pile rug, a smear of blood on the wooden chest.

  For two hours we searched the other rooms, CSI-style, crawling around with our face inches from the floor.

  ‘I’ll get the kids,’ Bruce said when we were done. ‘I’ll drop you at the office first. You go straight home and hide his bag of things.’

  ‘What will you tell the children?’

  ‘That we’ve patched things up.’

  After hiding the bag, and before Bruce arrived home with the kids, I made the children’s beds and straightened things in their rooms, doing what I could to make it seem as though they hadn’t been dragged from home in the middle of the night. I turned on the heater in the lounge room and put on a pot of coffee.

  When I came out from the shower, I heard that they were back. As I dressed there was a soft rap on the door. Renee peeked in. ‘Are you all right, Mum?’

  ‘How did it go at Nan and Pop’s?’ I said by way of an answer.

  Renee came in and sat down on the bed. ‘Pop remembered I was the one with the horses this time.’

  ‘Ah, progress.’

  ‘Are you and Dad gunna be all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I’d pulled on tracksuit pants, a soft cotton T-shirt and a light pink jumper. Renee fiddled with the end of the scarf she was wearing. Her hair was unwashed and tied back.

  Summer came through the door and sat down beside Renee. My daughters were silent, unsure what to do or say.

  I sat with them, completing the row of girls.

  ‘Your father and I are sorry,’ I said.

  Beside me, Renee twisted her mouth and twitched her shoulder. She blinked away her tears. ‘Pop wasn’t too bad actually. He brought out
a jigsaw puzzle.’

  ‘Right,’ I said.

  ‘No, it was okay. Although it was of a tank.’

  ‘Dad said you went for a long drive and worked it out?’ Summer said, and she leaned out past Renee to look at my face, watching me, needing to see for herself if we were being honest. ‘He said you drove to the ocean.’

  ‘Yes, we did.’

  25

  We waited. A week passed without us being caught, and, like cancer patients sent home to die, we were aware of each day, each passing hour. We spent time with the children. Bruce went horse riding with Renee. I became Summer’s offsider in the kitchen. Steven was harder to approach. The girls weren’t put at ease or entirely comfortable with our efforts to make up for our behaviour and show our love, but Steven was stubborn in his unwillingness to go along with it for the sake of a happy family façade. He went to his room at every available opportunity and shut the door. His comment to me when I tried to talk to him was ‘Don’t leave Dad.’ Said with bitterness, believing I had cheated. My daughters were not as confident that they knew enough to choose which parent was more at fault. When the children were at school, Bruce and I spent our time reminiscing. I came across him alone in the bathroom, running his hand along the bath’s chipped edge. At the age of five Steven had smashed a Tonka Truck repeatedly against the enamel – a bath-time temper tantrum, an expensive claw-foot bath, a brat of a child, a sturdy toy not meant for bath play. Bruce had shouted until he’d turned red in the face and I had smacked Steven’s hand. Steven had wailed and sobbed and thrown the Tonka Truck at us. His wilfulness had Bruce and I ducking out into the hallway, covering our mouths to stifle our sudden laughter. So many times, when the children were young, we had felt like kids ourselves, playing at being parents.

  Bruce caught me in a similar moment of reflection – standing outside in the weak winter sunlight, looking up at the bent netball ring and pole. I was remembering how Renee and Summer had played a game of netball from the horses’ backs. Renee rode underneath the hoop and reached up for an easy shot. The horse had suddenly walked away and she had grabbed the ring and hung from it. Bruce and I had been watching them from the lounge room window, smiling at the girls’ antics, until the netball ring and pole had bent, and then Bruce had sworn and I’d mumbled about the dollar cost of stupidity. Renee had been old enough to regret her actions and curse her own behaviour. Bruce had refused to replace the pole with a new one. It remained there as a reminder not to play netball on horseback.