A Cry from the Dark

by Robert Barnard

  They began with “Bill,” and they emphasized the yearning, painful qualities of the tune, and that clutching at the heartstrings got to Betty, made her feel she had to play it out somehow, give it some physical embodiment. She went toward the floor, where only two or three couples were left, and her hands went above her head and her body began to gyrate in a routine that was expressive of longing, that was partly sexual, partly a lust for anything new, surprising, unknown—anything that was not Bundaroo. She had hardly begun when Hughie left his station by the wall and began his own dance—slow, unshowy, introspective, as before out at Wilgandra, near to Betty but not with her, exploring the unknowable, or maybe the inexplicable strangeness of love. Perhaps on a signal from their leader (Betty was conscious only of her own body) the trio kept with the yearning, frustration, unhappiness; they slipped into “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” and Betty’s own eyes glinted with recognition and Hughie gave her a brief grin of mutual understanding, and their bodies speeded up as they tried to give expression to a cynical resignation that they knew about, could identify with, but had never really felt themselves—and even as they danced they felt a performer’s sort of elation.

  Two of the couples on the floor walked off, and as they went by they said “Show-offs” and “What do they think they look like?” Now there was only one other couple, Ed Malone and Kitty Horne, unwilling to give up any opportunity of licensed bodily contact (in the succeeding twenty years they were to increase significantly Bundaroo’s population, and Kitty continued the good work even when Ed was with the Australian army in New Guinea), but they preferred the darkness and anonymity of the edges of the dance floor, and left the center to Betty and Hughie. As the trio edged their way into “Summertime,” the languorous heat of the day entered Betty’s limbs and the enervating nothingness of a place where the sun sucked out all desire for activity except the purely sensual, and Hughie made gestures toward his classmates that were slow and minimal (and kept from the eyes of the parents clustered around the door), but verged on the obscene.

  Then the trio launched into “Anything Goes” and Betty and Hughie, as with the Beethoven Seventh but in reverse, could not cope with the effervescent after the steamy and languid, and, talking and laughing, they left the floor.

  From the doorway there came a smattering of applause.

  “Didn’t they make an exhibition of themselves?” said Alice to Steve Drayton.

  “If only they could see themselves,” said Steve. “Flaming galahs!”

  But Miss Dampier, sensing trouble like an educational weather vane, came over from the door where she was swapping words with some of the parents and said, “That was really wonderful, both of you. So unusual!”

  “Out of this bloody world!” came a mock-upper-class accent from somewhere around the food table. Miss Dampier seemed to feel she ought to say something, respond in some way to the obvious hostility from the rest of the Leavers, but, unable for once to think of anything to say, she wandered off, looking back nervously.

  “There’s your parents just come in,” said Betty to Hughie.

  “Thank God they weren’t here ten minutes ago. These hicks have nothing on them when it comes to ignorance and nastiness if their beloved only son steps out of line.”

  “They’ll probably hear about it from the other parents.”

  “Not them! We don’t talk much with the natives…” The thought seemed to make him nervous, though. “Still, maybe I’ll preempt it.”

  They were now at the doorway, where the little knot of parents and others were talking freely among themselves. Hughie went over with a self-induced air of confidence.

  “Hi, Mum. Hi, Dad. You should have been here ten minutes ago. Betty and I did a solo spot. It was a real laugh.”

  “Oh, it wasn’t—it was lovely,” said one of the mothers. “It was so artistic, and very tasteful.”

  “Excuse me,” said Betty, smiling but determined, pushing her way through the little throng and out into the fresh air. Sometimes the attitudes of Bundaroo made her feel as if she were suffocating.

  Outside was better. Outside had a tiny touch of cool in the air. Betty looked around her. She gazed over toward the lights of Bob’s Café, where some parents were standing in the entrance, under the veranda, chatting and laughing. Probably coming over to take a look at the performing seals, she thought. She wanted to be on her own—not watched, not questioned, not jeered at by her onetime friends. If she was different from them—which was the substance of their jeers, at Hughie as well as herself—then she didn’t want to be like them. She walked away from the school gate and the little main street beyond, round the back of the high school building with the assembly hall built on to it, then toward the primary section, which was a small wooden building little better than a shack.

  One thing about inland Australia: land was cheap. The Bundaroo School did not have lavish facilities, but it had plenty of playground space. She stood between the school she was now leaving and the school she had started at when she was five. Back in the hall the music had started up again, and she could hear the thump of heavy shoes on wood. She felt, suddenly, very tired. Her solo dances with Hughie had not been physically exhausting, but they had been a gesture, a defiant slap in the face at attitudes and prejudices that she loathed, but which seemed endemic in her friends. The gesture had left her feeling alone and drained. She wondered if she had been right in thinking she would come back often to Bundaroo. It could only be to see her parents, whom she loved. If they moved, she now felt, she would never set foot in the little town again.

  There was hardly a sound to be heard, beyond the beautiful ripple of water and the distant rhythm of dance music. There was a rustle in the long grass, as one of the creatures of the bush reacted to her presence. She began to feel cleansed of the spite and jealousy in the school hall. She turned toward the slow dribble of water that they called “the river,” which had only once in her lifetime swelled to the raging torrent that everyone said it was capable of. A little wattle fence separated the littlies’ playing area from the rough-grassed bank leading down to the river. Here it was very dark, and well away from all the futile bustle of a tiny town on one of its gala nights. She ought to have felt frightened here, but she did not—only a sense that the best thing that Bundaroo offered was the space to be alone.

  The attack came from behind—an arm around her neck, then tightened so savagely that she choked. For the rest of her life even a tap on the shoulder from behind would terrify her. She tried to scream, but the arm was still against her windpipe, holding her, rendering her helpless, but saying nothing.

  “Stop it!” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s not funny! Who is it? Steve?”

  But now she was being turned around, and now the darkness was no longer a friend. Her dress was being torn, brutal fingers searching underneath it, ripping away her pants. She heard gulped breathing, smelt a smell she recognized, smelt it with nausea and fear, then felt her legs being forced apart. She tried kicking, but her feet went wide of the mark and she felt something hard and terrifying entering her, and a hand across her mouth preventing her screaming. Some long ago advice in a woman’s magazine her mother read regularly told her she should fight no more, should relax and hope to take the edge off “the vile beast’s ferocity.”

  Minutes later she lay in the undergrowth at the foot of the fence, bleeding and sobbing, conscious of footsteps running away. Part of her wanted to lie there, hide, put a temporary stop to her life. But something else told her to get away. Who knew who else might be there in the darkness around the primary school? Who knew whether some of the male members of her class might not be lurking in the darkness, just to watch, or to take their turn? She must run or it could happen again.

  She dragged herself to a sitting position. It felt as though her legs would refuse to support her, but she managed to kneel, then to push herself upright, then to take a step. Then she began to run, clutching her torn and bloody dress around her—first toward the hig
h school, still alive with music and lights, then suddenly swerving away from it, nauseated by the thought of appearing before her fellow pupils as she now was, beaten, degraded, humiliated. She ran around the school, around the hall, then toward the school gates and out into the street. Down the far end of the main street she saw the lights of Grafton’s and shuddered. Nearer, marginally more of a refuge, was Bob’s Café. Maybe her parents were still there. She ran, still sobbing with rage and shame, till she made the veranda and could throw open the door. She had no sooner entered than she heard a woman scream, heard footsteps coming toward her, felt protective hands even as she felt herself floating out of consciousness.

  When, reluctance gripping her like a vise, she drifted back into awareness of what was going on around her, she heard her father’s voice, but with a blazing fury she had never heard before, say, “I’m taking her home. Where’s that Naismyth? We can use Bill’s car.”

  “What about PS Malley?” came Bob’s voice.

  “Sergeant Malley can come out to our place. Where was he when he was needed? Grafton’s, I bet. And tell him to get hold of Dr. Merton. Come on, Dot. We’re taking her home and putting her in her own bed.”

  Someone at the door said, “That’s the Naismyths coming back now.”

  A way was made for her father, and she heard him from farther off saying, “Paul. I need the car. We’ve got to take Betty home.”

  “The car? Well, I don’t know. I suppose Bill—”

  “Look, you fool!”

  Betty, on the floor, turned away, almost wanting to hide her bloodstained dress from him, but she heard Naismyth say, “Oh, my God,” and run to the door. As they helped her up and then through the door and out to the street she heard the voice of Miss Dampier saying the same words, and was dimly conscious of her turning in the street and running back to the school to put an end to the Leavers’ Dance.

  So they drove her home and put her to bed, and in the first part of a long, sleepless night, with the only noise the odd car, she heard the drone of her parents’ voices, then her father talking to Sergeant Malley, then her parents again, and at last silence, intense silence, and only the sound of her own thoughts.

  In the morning her mother brought her tea and toast in bed and said that Sergeant Malley was going to get an inspector over from Walgett. The case was too important for him alone, he thought. Betty agreed. Sergeant Malley was a fine rugby player and that was about it. His brain was either in his shoulders or his boots. The thought of being questioned by him made Betty want to vomit.

  On Monday morning, Bettina met her brother and daughter on the forecourt of King’s Cross, having said good-bye to a distinctly complacent Katie at the door of her flat and taken a taxi to the station. Her body was alive with pleasure anticipated. The ten past ten train to Edinburgh was not too crowded, and Bettina, Oliver, and Sylvia were able to settle themselves around a table for four without much danger of their being joined by an intruder. Bettina had not booked them into first class because she thought the others should be observing British people, and in first class you never overheard anything of interest and could only look at a selection of the decaying and the dubious, mostly male. She had an old-fashioned view of pinstripe-suited businessmen traveling on expense accounts: she thought they should get a real job, earn an honest living. On her trips to literary festivals and promotional events, Bettina always traveled standard class, and she didn’t see any reason to change her habits.

  “What’s this about a buffet?” asked Ollie as they sped through the desolation of Stevenage. “Or shall we wait for the trolley?”

  “The water for the tea is nowhere near boiling on the trolley,” said Bettina. “I thought we might go for a proper lunch later. It can be quite pleasant if they manage to get everything on the menu loaded onto the train. I’ll settle for a proper cup of tea for now.”

  “I’ll make for the buffet, then,” said Ollie. “Coffee for me, tea for Betty—”

  “And tea for me too,” said Sylvia. “I’ve decided I don’t like English coffee.”

  “Is Ollie horribly henpecked at home?” asked Bettina, as he scuttled off in the direction of the buffet. “He seems to think he should be at the beck and call of females.”

  “If you listened to family friends they’d probably say mildly so. But if you looked at the decisions made in the marriage, I’d guess that rather more than fifty percent would be Ollie’s—engineered by him.”

  “Engineered—yes, I recognize that,” said Bettina. “I think I do it myself. The trick is, you organize things around you so you get what you want.”

  “In your relationships with men?”

  “Oh, those! I’m not sure I got what I wanted in those. I was thinking more of the rape. After the rape.” She could talk of that, the determining factor in her life, quite matter-of-factly with Sylvia now. She didn’t even lower her voice. Other people had as much right to hear interesting things on a train as she herself did. “I think after it happened I used it. I don’t feel terribly guilty about that. I’m sure any woman who had had that done to her in a little, inward-looking town would feel as I did: they would want to get away. So one of the things that influenced me over the days that followed—not the only thing by a long chalk, but one important one—was the desire to leave Bundaroo.”

  “And you succeeded in that.”

  “Yes. I can’t feel altogether good about it, because it meant a degree of cutting myself off from my family. We loved each other, but we could never be close again, because we couldn’t be together. And that hurt me, and it hurt my father, him particularly because I was the apple of his eye. And it wasn’t usual, back then, for a girl of sixteen to fly the family home. But of course we all realized that the circumstances were exceptional; they accepted the need for me to take off, but still…I’m sure it devastated Dad. And now I feel at least a twinge of guilt that I was so happy to be out in the wide world.”

  “It seems a very mild sort of manipulation,” said Sylvia. “And really necessary. Probably something similar is true with Ollie and Judy. She needs to feel that she’s in charge, so he engineers things so that she can believe that. Hey, presto—the marriage is saved.”

  “Yes. I suppose most successful marriages are based on successful dishonesties of that kind.”

  “Maybe. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never really let a man into my life.”

  That was something Bettina quite understood.

  Chapter 11

  Aftermath

  The doctor came quite soon after breakfast. He said it was so Betty could get cleaned up—“a bath works wonders,” he said, and the way Betty’s body felt convinced her that he must be right.

  Dr. Merton lived in Mundehai, the third of the townships in the area, all of which he served, as well as some properties on the edge of Walgett. He was an old friend of Betty’s, having seen her through measles, scarlet fever, and the usual selection of childhood illnesses. He was in his fifties, unambitious, content to work out his time in northern New South Wales, and with no thoughts of retiring to the beach areas of southern Queensland even after that. Beaches were good for nothing except sitting on, he said. And he could do that where he was. Above all in this situation, he was sympathetic, a calming influence.

  “Try to pretend this is happening to someone else,” he said, as soon as Dot had left him alone with Betty. “Or that my hand is attached to some kind of robot—you know, activated by an electronic brain.”

  “There’s some play about that,” said Betty, anxious to think about anything but that. “All the characters are robots.”

  “You’d know all about things like that. So imagine I’m something on wheels, with steel hands that send messages to some kind of radio or recording apparatus. Shut your eyes if it makes it easier.”

  So she did close her eyes, and tried to float away to some distant planet, only giving a small yelp when his electronic hands probed the throbbing bruises on her neck and throat, then began to raise her frock. “Burn i
t!” screamed something at the back of her brain. “So I can never, ever see it again.” Finally, after inspecting, gently feeling and tut-tutting, he pulled the sheet over her and sat down beside the bed, making notes in a cheap notepad such as Betty could have bought in Phil Pollard’s general store. It seemed to lack the dignity of a serious crime, of a possible court case in Walgett. Then Betty thought this was probably right: this was a crime without dignity.

  “Now,” said Dr. Merton, “as I said, a bath can work wonders, and your mother has kettles on the stove now.”

  “What about the policemen?”

  “Don’t you worry about them. I take the medical evidence, and no one else.”

  “Thank goodness.”

  “They’re not qualified to do that, you see. But they are qualified to investigate a crime, and I’m satisfied that’s what this is. I know Inspector Blackstone from Walgett. There’s no better policeman in this area. So just think—try to remember every little thing—”

  “Ugh!”

  “I know, I know,” he said, genuinely soothing. “But you’d regret it later if you remembered something that could have been vital in a court case, wouldn’t you?”

  Betty thought. She couldn’t admit to the doctor that the idea of a court case was intolerable.

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  “Of course it would. He’s got to be caught. So get it all over now. Then the police can get on with their investigations, and you can get on with your life.”