‘They didn’t even wipe the mud off . . .’
‘Lizzie, it’s been four years . . .’
Her eyes flash. ‘You think you’re so clever. But in the end, it counts for nothing. You find water, but you can’t even find your own children.’
Eliza stands, shoving the chair to one side, toppling it with a crash that echoes through the empty house.
‘Why can’t you find them? You lost them!’
In this forlorn home in the middle of nowhere with the nearest neighbours many miles away, she retreats, sobbing, to the only refuge available to her. The door to their bedroom slams.
An all too familiar wave of helplessness washes over Joshua Connor. It’s been a long time since he’s known how to soothe Eliza’s grief. He picks up the parcel on the table and unfolds the paper wrapping. Enclosed within is a muddy, dog-eared diary. Connor gingerly folds back the leather cover and smoothes the brittle pages within. Interleaved between a haphazard collection of handwritten letters, rough sketches, cartoons and maps is a crumpled photograph. A studio shot. Three handsome young men in A.I.F. uniforms, arms proudly draped over each other’s shoulders, smiling broadly.
Art, Henry and Ed had been the pride of the district. Tall, long-limbed, blue-eyed, and all handy with a football and a cricket bat.
‘We’re the only three brothers in Australia to score centuries in the same day,’ they boasted, without a skerrick of proof. When challenged Art would retort, ‘Well, I’ve never heard of any others, have you?’ as if that should be verification enough.
In Lizzie’s eyes, her boys died perfect. But Connor prefers to remember them warts and all, and enjoy their imperfections. Arthur, the eldest, would be twenty-five years old now. He inherited his father’s stubbornness and sense of honour along with his mop of brown hair. As his son matured Connor wondered if the boy’s bull-headedness would ever evolve into the kind of perseverance and backbone a Mallee farmer needs. Not that it is of any consequence now, but Connor had looked forward to seeing what sort of man Art would become.
Henry was two years younger than Art. Sandwiched between his brothers, he’d always fought fiercely for his fair share of attention and approval. More solid and muscular than Art and Edward, Henry was their enforcer on the football field, rushing to his brothers’ defence if they caught a stray elbow or fist from an opponent. He was fearless. Connor would never forget the day he found Henry, aged about twelve, standing on the shed roof preparing to jump down into a dray full of hay. It had to be a twenty-foot drop; at least four times his height.
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Connor yelled. ‘You’ll break something.’
‘No I won’t,’ Henry cried as he launched himself. ‘I’ve already done it four times!’
He knows it is irrational, but Connor runs his fingers over the photograph, imagining the light stubble on his boys’ cheeks and their coarse hair. He recognises the glint in Edward’s eye, the cheeky little bastard. When he enlisted at seventeen he lied about his age. Lizzie threatened to write to the army and report him but he talked her round.
‘Mum, don’t bother. By the time you write to them and send it, and then they write back, I’ll be eighteen anyhow.’
For Connor age means nothing. Seventeen or seventy, Art, Henry and Ed are still his unruly, wilful, larrikin boys who were going to follow in his footsteps and work this farm. That had been the plan, anyway. Until they were shot dead somewhere called Gallipoli.
He has become accustomed to feeling their loss as a sharp pain that pierces his gut. It’s too much to bear. Connor slips the photo back into the body of the diary and turns to the front page.
He reads the inscription: Arthur Connor: My Grand Tour, 1915. Connor will never forget waving them off, young bulls in spring, like it was a holiday. A restrained hug, a scant few words and Privates Art, Henry and Edward Connor pushed and shouldered each other as they mounted their horses and then raced each other out of sight and over the horizon, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.
The early diary entries are detailed, expressive. A letter slips from between the pages along with a small photo of a pretty girl with long brown hair, happy eyes and a bright smile. It is Art’s sweetheart, Edith. On the next page, a pressed gum leaf.
Connor flicks to the end of the diary. The entries become briefer; cursory. Going through the motions. The page falls open at the final entry.
5 August. Lone Pine. Hot as Hades but maybe worse.
CHAPTER TWO
Purple thunderheads roil shorewards. Sheets of lightning strafe the gloom. Or are they flashes of shell fire?
A young man lies wounded amongst hundreds – perhaps thousands – of bloodied combatants. Around him mud and gore spatter in gruesome clumps. The battle rages; a deafening clamour. Shattered nerves, shuddering. Thunderclaps, or mortar rounds? Impossible to know.
Wasted limbs seized by uncontrollable tremors. His face bloodied, he winces in agony.
Rifles repeat and flash. Bayonets clash and then disappear inside khaki and skin. Dying screams cut through the bedlam. Bullets whistle, thwacking into flesh like stones hitting water. Incendiary devices flare. The muddy ground shakes from the thud of artillery shells as they hail from the sky.
He squeezes his eyes shut, presses clenched fists against his ears to block out the noise.
Inaudibly, he murmurs, ‘Tangu. Tangu.’ Louder now, ‘TANGU!’
A squelching sound, like a boot extricating itself from the mud.
Unsurprised, the soldier feels the ground shift. Invisible to those around him, he begins to rise up, levitating above the chaos. Lifted skywards atop a small, mud-soaked Turkish carpet, he weaves through ghastly battlefield tableaux, skimming just above the heads of the soldiers below.
He looks down dispassionately, observing the now silent scene of devastation. He passes an Ottoman soldier in the basket of an observation balloon who pays him no mind.
Clean air.
Silence.
He gazes up at the stars as the carpet rides the gentle currents of the breeze, out over a calm, moonlit sea.
CHAPTER THREE
The dog yelps desperately at the screen door, scratching and scrabbling at the fly mesh with his paws. Connor starts awake, stiff from a night spent asleep in the armchair. Art’s diary falls from his leg onto the rug as he stumbles to the door. Something is terribly wrong.
Connor rushes through the house to the kitchen. The customary morning smells and sounds – the clatter of pots and pans; the thud of plates and cutlery landing on the timber table; wood fire crackling in the stove; bacon grilling on the griddle – are absent.
The small room is empty and cold, the embers in the fireplace dead and black.
‘Eliza! Lizzie!’
He has a shadow of a memory, of Lizzie’s light footsteps on the floorboards and her frail lips kissing his forehead as he slept in the chair. Was it real or imagined?
He flings open the screen door and is momentarily blinded by the early morning sun. The dog barks, charging to and fro along the concrete path, leaving muddy paw prints. Seeing Connor step outside, he bolts towards the windmill and dam, looking back to make sure his master is following. A sick feeling of foreboding grips Connor.
‘Lizzie? Lizzie!’ he bellows. ‘Lizzie!’
He sprints desperately across the yard and vaults the low fence of the rose garden. He is oblivious to the thorns ripping at his shirt and skin. As Connor scrambles up the dirt levee surrounding the dam, he registers the neatly folded pile of clothes stacked in the dirt. His heart sinks. No. Not now. Not more. Disbelieving, he feels the dust shift beneath his boots, the morning sky’s blue dome spinning above his head. Connor’s mind scrabbles hopelessly for possible explanations. Swimming? Washing? But in his heart he knows the truth.
‘No! Lizzie?’
Connor reaches the rim of the dam and straight away sees Lizzie floating just below the surface, the rust-stained water casting her body in a translucent sepia light. She lies face down, arms outstret
ched. Her long hair is loose and fans about her head like a halo; her petticoats billow and encircle her splayed legs. The water in the dam is stirred by a warm breeze, barely perceptible waves breaking the surface and gently rippling along Eliza’s drifting body. The movement is strangely peaceful, causing her fingers to sway and wave.
Connor bellows and charges down the embankment into the water. He wades out to Eliza with mud tugging and sucking at his boots. The water is shallow at first but with every step the dam floor drops away until the water reaches his chest. He reaches out and takes Lizzie’s cold hand, turning her and drawing her to him. He pushes the hair from her face, presses his lips to her forehead and sobs.
‘Oh, God! Lizzie, no! Please, no! What have you done?’
Connor stands in mute grief then, cradling his wife as water laps against his torso. It’s his fault. He let his guard down momentarily. A tear splashes into the weak tea-coloured water of the dam. The war has claimed another victim.
The sun begins beating hard on Connor’s head before he wades towards the edge of the dam and sits on the muddy bank. He nurses Eliza’s limp body in his arms, pressing his cheek to hers as he rocks back and forth. He stares at her once pretty face for a moment, her translucent green eyes now dim, her soft, carmine lips turned grey. He gently picks sticks and gum leaves from her hair.
The dog sits by his side. A flock of scarlet-winged black cockatoos swoops past, cawing and startling the chooks that peck at grass seeds in the dust.
Connor looks up at the unforgiving heavens and wails.
‘Dear Lord, give me strength . . .’ Father McIntyre murmurs angrily to himself, shifting uncomfortably in his vestments.
Any other day, the searing heat alone would have been enough to plunge the priest into a foul mood. But today he has caught sight of something through the arched window on the side of his humble church that displeases him no end. Since his exile to this godforsaken parish, there is no shortage of things that cause him displeasure. There are veritable plagues of them.
‘Why today, of all days? In this blessed heat?’
He fans at his face with a bible, but the leaves of the Good Book prove to be quite ineffectual against the infernal heat of the Mallee summer. Sweat beads on his head, trickles down the strands of hair pasted to his scalp and pools in the tissue paper–like folds of his neck. He tugs at his sodden clerical collar and scratches, a vicious heat rash doing its best to worsen his mood even further.
Although he possesses the meagre frame of a penitent, beneath the oppressive weight of his cassock even his gaunt thighs find a way of chafing against one another. The coarse fabric and the slick of sweat irritate his legs to the point of utter distraction. Tonight he’ll pass the time popping the white eruptions of pus but for now he has little choice but to stay put and play the part of the country pastor. That means dealing with the man standing waist deep in a pit outside.
Beside the whitewashed timber church is a small cemetery shaded by a gnarled and ancient peppercorn tree, its branches laden with plump, pink fruit. Between the weatherworn timber crucifixes and carved headstones, Joshua Connor swings his pick with a regular rhythm, putting the tools of his trade to a much grimmer task. His horse and cart stand beside the grave; in the back, poking out from under a tarpaulin, is a long handcrafted coffin. McIntyre can see that Connor has planed the raw timber planks, bevelled the edges, polished it all with linseed oil and fashioned a simple cross to affix to the lid.
Connor’s muscles strain under a pale blue shirt as he puts down the pick and hefts his shovel. Dark circles of perspiration form under his arms as he shifts the dark red soil into a neatly formed mound teetering on the edge of the grave.
Father McIntyre watches through the church window with growing agitation.
‘Who in blazes does he think he is?’
To his relief Connor climbs out of the freshly dug grave and heads towards the church, sparing the priest from having to go out into the furnace to confront him.
McIntyre hears stomping and the scraping of boots. The door of the weatherboard church creaks open, allowing a blast of searingly hot air to blow into the open hall. McIntyre points to the door and winces.
‘Mr Connor . . . if you wouldn’t mind . . .?’
Connor turns awkwardly and closes the door before entering. The priest draws his thin lips into a semblance of a smile as he grits his teeth, the sound of his molars grinding together setting his nerves on edge. He assumes the outward appearance of a holy man: hands clenched tightly before his sternum, head tilted slightly to one side, and what he considers to be an expression of benevolence and understanding pasted to his face. Connor shuffles towards him, looking out of place. He stands before the priest, shifting on the spot, like a boy caught skulking out of Sunday School.
‘Mr Connor . . . Joshua. You have been through a difficult time. These things are sent to try us.’ He shakes his head. ‘However, you can’t just come here and start digging in the churchyard without so much as a by-your-leave.’
McIntyre swirls his hand in the water of the baptismal font. He wrings out his handkerchief and mops his neck.
‘You understand, my son, in all conscience, I cannot bury your wife if she took her own life. Our Lord is the giver of life and He alone can take it away. Consecrated ground is His promise to the faithful.’
Connor scoffs, hands fixed defensively on his hips. ‘She fell in the dam and drowned. So your conscience is clear.’
The priest has seen enough of human failing over the years to doubt Connor’s story. Besides which, one of the few indulgences he allows himself in this hellhole is to participate fully in the very fertile local gossip circle. And it didn’t take long for word of the true cause of Eliza Connor’s demise to become the focus of many a hushed conversation over morning and afternoon tea. He’s determined to make sure that Joshua Connor knows he can’t pull the wool over his eyes.
‘Three sons killed. That’s quite an ordeal for her – for both of you. But as the book of Job teaches us, God sets us these trials for a reason. Many families in the parish have made similar sacrifices for King and Country.’
Momentarily distracted by a locust picking its way across the lectern, McIntyre turns back to see the flush of anger in Connor’s face.
‘Father, we’ve had our fair share of trials. You owe her this much.’
Incensed, Father McIntyre straightens his back and rises to his full height. He places his bible on top of the locust and presses, listening for the crunch of its armour and the soft pop of its belly.
‘You know, you have some nerve coming in here and making demands. You haven’t stepped inside this place for four years. No confession. No communion. You are all but lost to God.’
‘Yes, and when my time comes you and God can feed me to the pigs for all I care. But this woman, Eliza, you knew her. She was here every Sunday, listening to your preaching. Don’t damn her for my failings.’
There’s no hiding the fury in his voice.
‘I’ve dug the grave, I made the coffin. All you need to do is say some words and throw some dirt.’
In spite of his anger, Father McIntyre knows this is not a man to cross. He decides to change tack. He looks out to the graveyard where Connor’s horse stands, hitched to the cart.
‘That cart out there – paint it and it would make a useful benefaction for our community. As an offering to God, you understand.’
McIntyre can tell the message isn’t lost on Connor. The pound of flesh. Connor smiles wryly.
‘He’s taken everything else. He might as well have that too.’
An unspoken deal done, the two men meet at Lizzie’s graveside later in the day. A group of locals turns out to watch as Father McIntyre races through the burial rite: Lizzie’s older sister, Ivy, and friends who understand her grief firsthand. His duty done, the compromised priest hurries away with almost indecent haste, clutching his censer. The musty tang of incense lingers in the air as the mourners drift from the graveside.<
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Not ready yet to leave Eliza’s graveside, Connor watches a swarm of young children dressed in their Sunday best, blissfully unaware of the solemnity of the occasion. They play hide-and-seek amongst the gravestones as their mothers stand together and converse quietly in the shade of the gnarled peppercorn tree. For ones so young they have donned mourning black far too often. Their fathers now exist only as stern-faced, uniformed men in black and white photographs, their loss ever-present as a faint yet unrelenting sense of anxiety.
Rainbow is now a town of widows and old men and wraiths in greatcoats with dead eyes and hair grey too soon. Absent is the banter and idiotic laughter of young men, the reckless canter of their horses or the shrill tweet of an umpire’s whistle on Saturday afternoons. When the faces began appearing in the local paper surrounded by wreaths, the town fell silent, the joy bled away.
An old man struggles to his feet from one of the chairs arranged by the side of the grave to salute a young soldier who limps past, leaning heavily on his wife’s arm. The veteran nods his head, acknowledging the tribute, but averts his face, ashamed of the disfigurement that is only partially disguised by an unconvincing tin prosthetic device.
Connor watches him pass, and remembers the young man as he was before the war. He feels a gentle touch on his arm. Edith, the girl who would have been his daughter-in-law, follows his gaze as the veteran continues his agonising struggle across the cemetery.
‘Anytime I feel my heart breaking, I think of what could have been – what Art might have been like if he’d come back to us like that. Sometimes, I think it is better that he died at his beautiful best.’
She shuts her eyes and murmurs a prayer, then kneels and places a sprig of something green and fragrant into Eliza’s grave.
‘Rosemary. To remember.’ She looks up at Connor, her bright blue eyes shining with tears. ‘We’ve made scones and tea for everyone. Will you . . .?’
‘You’re very kind, Edith. But I think I need to sit with Lizzie a while.’
The Water Diviner Page 3