A Cry from the Dark

by Robert Barnard

  “I never want to see Bundaroo again,” said Betty loudly. “Never want people there to see me.”

  “Now, Betty—think!” said Dr. Merton, taking her hand. “Be sensible. You’ve done nothing wrong. Everybody knows that. You’re talking as if it was you who’s guilty. It’s not. It’s the man who’s done this to you. Right?”

  “Right,” said Betty eventually. But something inside her said, “I bet they’re all saying in Grafton’s and Phil’s that I brought it on myself with my dancing.”

  As the doctor said, Betty’s mother had kettles and saucepans on the Crown, and before long she was lying in a warm bath, feeling cleaner and better, and trying to think through the terrible event of last night, trying to remember anything that the policemen from Walgett would need to know. The thought of the approaching interview nauseated her, but she didn’t need Dr. Merton to tell her how important it was.

  Betty lay luxuriating in her bath for as long as she could. It helped, as the doctor had said. How did he know? she wondered. At last her mother shouted, “You’ll get cold if you don’t come out of that bath!”—which seemed unlikely in temperatures over one hundred. Her mother had put out a clean nightdress, and when Betty tried to insist that she would talk to the policemen properly dressed, not in bed like a sick child, her mother, unusually forceful, insisted that she had to go back to bed and talk to the policemen from there. She used words, or supposed words, of the doctor to back up her command.

  “He says you mustn’t think of getting up for the next couple of days. And what would the policemen think if you were up and dressed as usual? They’d think what happened was nothing very much.”

  So when the two men arrived in a police car two chairs had been placed for them in Betty’s tiny bedroom, with its musty picture of the water babies on the wall and the wire grill up against the open window, through which could be heard the sounds of the farm—the cattle lowing from a distance, the occasional bleat from the few sheep, and noises from the chicken run at the back of the house.

  “Hello, Betty. How are you feeling now?” asked the policeman from Walgett, sitting down immediately beside the bed, and letting the local man have the seat by the door.

  “Better. The bath helped,” said Betty, looking curiously but she hoped not rudely at the police contingent. Inspector Blackstone was pushing fifty, with a neat little mustache and kindly but penetrating blue eyes. Less impressive and interesting was the constable Betty knew: he was laboriously getting out his notebook and pencil, then settling down to take notes, holding his pencil as if it were a screwdriver. Sargeant Malley was tall, broad, and heavy, a familiar figure in Bundaroo but not a greatly respected one. He was rumored to extract confessions from suspected “crims” by threatening to sit on them.

  “I’m sure it did,” said Blackstone. “Now, Betty, I know this is going to be distressing, but there’s not much we can do about that: I’m going to have to take you through the events of yesterday evening.” Betty nodded. “Let’s start then, shall we? It was to be a big night for you, wasn’t it? You went into Bundaroo with your parents, I suppose. How did you go?”

  “We walked. We always do if we’re going to something. There are always people doing the same, so we meet up.”

  “I see. And who did you meet up with last night?”

  Betty considered.

  “Oh, the Broughtons, the O’Haras. And Alice Carey—but she lives practically in Bundaroo.”

  “She’s your best friend, isn’t she?”

  Information from Sargeant Malley, thought Betty. She decided to be truthful.

  “She used to be. Not any longer. She’s got a bit jealous since Hughie Naismyth came to the district. She felt out of it, because Hughie and I have been together so much.”

  “I see. So you all arrived in Bundaroo, and I suppose you went to the school hall. Where did your parents go to?”

  “They went to Bob’s to have a bite to eat.”

  “Did they stay there all evening?”

  “I don’t know. Some of the parents walked around a bit—looked in at the school hall, or just gossiped in the street. Mum could have gone to have a chat with the vicar. She’s a member of the mothers’ group, and they’re organizing the Christmas party this year.”

  “Most of the fathers went to Grafton’s, I suppose. We know about the little arrangement the landlord has when there’s anything on in Bundaroo.”

  “I bet you do,” said Betty, who had often seen Sargeant Malley emerging from the back room late in the evening.

  “What about your dad?”

  “No. He said he wasn’t going there.”

  She sensed at once a reaction from the two men.

  “Why did he say that?”

  “Just that he’d be in Bob’s if I needed him…He and Mum were both there when I…when I did need them.”

  “Right. Now what about yourself?” Here it comes, thought Betty. “You went along to the school hall, and you met up with all your mates, I suppose.”

  This was beginning to feel like coming-clean time.

  “I don’t have many mates at the moment.”

  “Oh? Why is that?”

  “All the school turned against Hughie Naismyth, and I wasn’t going to go along with the herd.”

  Inspector Blackstone pondered this information.

  “Well now, you’d better tell me who this Hughie Naismyth is, and why all your mates turned against him.”

  “His parents are migrants—his father used to have a farm in Northumberland. I think that’s in the north of England, isn’t it? Hughie is very artistic, and that didn’t help.”

  “From what I hear you’re pretty artistic yourself.”

  “I read a lot. That’s not quite so bad. I mean, quite a lot of people read. Anyway, I don’t make too much of it. Hughie really knows about painting.”

  Seargeant Malley now put in his spoke from the door, where he had been taking laborious notes, which Betty would dearly have liked to be able to read.

  “From what I’ve seen he just sits talking to Mr. Blackfeller any chance he gets.”

  “That’s right,” said Betty, edgily.

  “Why would he do that if he’s interested in painting? That’s just bullshit stuff old Blackfeller peddles. I wouldn’t have it on my walls.”

  “Hughie’s interested in aboriginal art, especially the genuine stuff, not the stuff done for the tourists.”

  Inspector Blackstone felt he should step in.

  “Well then, Hughie is English, he’s interested in art, and doesn’t make any secret of it—is there anything else?”

  “I suppose there’s his father,” said Betty slowly.

  “His father’s out at Wilgandra,” put in Sergeant Malley.

  “He’s manager there,” said Betty, “since September. He’s not very popular.” She saw Blackstone look at Malley, who nodded. “I don’t know much about it, but I think he’s too used to English ways and doesn’t want to learn Australian ones. It puts people’s backs up.”

  “And that’s rubbed off onto his son, has it?”

  “Yes. And his mother’s considered a bit snooty. She insists on doing things the English way, and she buys things at Phil’s that he only stocks because Mrs. Cheveley uses them…Silly little things, but in a small place they influence people.”

  “People often set a lot of store by silly little things,” agreed Blackstone.

  “Anyway, what I’m saying is that at the moment I don’t have a lot of friends in my year at school.”

  “Which meant that you and Hughie were thrown together a lot last night.”

  “Yes, though we would have been together a lot of the time anyway. We like each other’s company.”

  “So you danced together?”

  He obviously knew about that, from the tone of his voice. Malley again.

  “Yes, we did. Quite well, actually. So everyone said we were showing off. Then we came back to the refreshments table and there were one or two silly comments, so
we just stood a bit apart talking to each other.” Rather brightly, thought Blackstone, too loud and with no natural pauses, to pretend that they didn’t mind being ostracized, when they really minded very much. “And then the trio began their medley of songs from the shows, and the first ones were slow numbers…sort of yearning…”

  “And they struck a chord?”

  “Yes. Yes. Wanting something else. Wanting to be somewhere else. Like being chained and aching to escape…And first me then Hughie went onto the floor and began doing little dances on our own.”

  “Dances you made up, do you mean, not regular waltzes or fox-trots or dances like that?”

  “Yes. Just expressing what we felt through our bodies, and through movement. Oh, I’m sure it wasn’t Isadora Duncan or anything like that, but it satisfied us, felt right for us.”

  “So you’ve heard of Isadora Duncan?”

  “Heard of her. Nothing more. Anyway it was just a way of expressing ourselves, like I said. It wasn’t”—she tried out a word she had never used before—“erotic or anything like that. Probably pathetic more than anything else.”

  From under her eyelids she saw a glance go from Blackstone to Malley. This time it was not an inquiry, more a command—to keep quiet, perhaps. Had Malley been among the group at the door? And had he told the inspector that it was erotic? Or perhaps that she and Hughie were just showing off, drawing attention to themselves—as if this somehow justified what happened later? Betty would dearly like to have known.

  “I’m sure it wasn’t either erotic or pathetic,” said Blackstone kindly. “So what happened next?”

  “Hughie saw his parents arrive, and he went over to the door where all the parents and the others were standing, so he could make light of the dancing, as if it was just a joke, a big game.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “He thought they might hear about it from the other parents. His father’s rather hot on manliness—manly sports, manly occupations. Doing solo dances that you’ve made up yourself isn’t manly at all in his book, I wouldn’t think.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I pushed my way out.”

  “Out into the open air?”

  “That’s right. To get away. To get a breath of fresh air. It was very hot in the hall, but it wasn’t just that; it was all the hostility—most of it really childish, and we’re supposed to be on the verge of adulthood. It depressed me.”

  “So you tried to put a distance between you and them, did you?” asked Blackstone.

  “That’s right. I looked toward the main street, but there were people around there, and I didn’t want to talk to anyone. So I went in the opposite direction.”

  “Down toward the river?”

  “Yes.”

  “You weren’t frightened?”

  “No,” said Betty, trying to remember back to her days of innocence. “This is Bundaroo. Nothing ever happens here except occasionally men get drunk and have a fight.”

  “So you didn’t have a sense of anyone following you?”

  “No, of course not! If I had I’d have turned straight round. But I wasn’t listening, because I didn’t feel scared. It was very peaceful. I didn’t have any notion of anyone else being there until—”

  Her voice faded.

  “We’ll come to that in a moment,” Blackstone said hurriedly. “Can you tell us exactly where you went?”

  “Yes, I went to the primary building, then behind it to the fence that cuts the playground off from the river. It’s rather overgrown there.”

  “We know. We’ve been looking at the place. That’s where it happened, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I was watching there and thinking for some time—five minutes, maybe longer. I thought I heard an animal in the long grass, but…Either he was there already—but why? What would he have been there for?—or he followed me, skulked there for a bit, and then—then pounced.”

  “Did it feel like that? Coming from nothing?”

  “Yes. That’s why it was so terrifying. He put his arm around my neck and seemed to be choking me. I tried to tell myself it was a joke, a prank, but I knew it wasn’t. It hurt so much. I thought he was going to kill me.”

  “Dr. Merton mentioned the bruises,” Blackstone said quietly. “They’ll hurt for a while yet. So you say he came from behind, and you couldn’t see him then.”

  “I couldn’t see him at all, ever. There’s no light down there. All I could do was feel his arm choking me, and smell his smell.”

  “His smell? What do you mean? Body smells?”

  “No, beer. Not just from his mouth—I don’t think his mouth was ever near enough. But all over…all over.”

  She saw this time a look of real significance travel from Blackstone to Malley. Her words had definite meaning for them, and that meaning was something they had already talked over.

  “Was there anything else about the attack you could tell us?” asked Blackstone. Betty thought hard.

  “He was taller than me. Strong…Please don’t ask me about the actual…you know…because I was so terrified and nauseated that it’s like a big black hole. I don’t remember anything, except the pain and the horror.”

  “Yes, yes. We do understand,” said the inspector.

  Suddenly Malley put in his twopenny worth.

  “Didn’t your dad give work to a sundowner a few days ago?”

  “Al?” said Betty, glad to know the name. “Al Cousens? Yes, but what?—Oh no. No! He moved on on Thursday—took the road to Walgett.”

  “Nothing to stop him doing a U-ie and coming back.”

  “You just want it to be someone who’s not from Bundaroo.”

  “Well, is there anything wrong with that? This is your home, a nice little place, full of people who know you—”

  “Full of your mates, you mean,” said Betty, feeling greatly daring but fired by a sense of justice. “You don’t want to find out who did it, you want to rule out most of the suspects from the start, and then find someone from outside the district you can pin it on.”

  “Now, now, Betty. You’re upset,” said Blackstone. “Nothing like that is going to happen, I can assure you. Nobody is going to be ruled out and nobody is going to have anything pinned on them.”

  “Well, you can rule out Al. He was probably a hundred miles away, if he got a lift. Anyway they wouldn’t serve a sundowner beer in Grafton’s, any more than they would an aboriginal.”

  “If they’ve got the money they can drink it outside,” said Sergeant Malley. It was rarely that he got an idea, but when he did no power on earth could knock it out of him. Blackstone shot him a look, and the two men took their leave, the inspector assuring Betty that she had been very brave.

  They had had two very tiring days. The first had been given up to the most obvious tourist destinations, and Bettina had decided you could never have enough of the Royal Mile. It was all of fifteen years since she was last in Edinburgh, so she enjoyed the great promenade at leisure, with frequent stops. Ollie was one of those tourists who, knowing he is having a once-in-a-lifetime experience, is determined to see everything there is to be seen, and see it through the lens of a camera. This left Bettina and Sylvia with plenty of time to sit and chat together.

  “I’m all in favor of Mary, Queen of Scots,” said Bettina, gazing down over the lower parts of the city, “and I’d be even more in favor if she’d had John Knox quietly poisoned with a potion recommended by her mother-in-law, Catherine de’ Medici. But I must say David Rizzio was an unwise piece of self-indulgence. Anyway, what was a charming, sophisticated Italian doing in this rainy, windy country going mad with fundamentalist religion?”

  “Nowadays the Italians seem to sell ice cream,” commented Sylvia.

  “Then, it was traveling guitar. To be fair, Scotland seems to have had more need of love songs than of ice cream, but I still think Rizzio was a mistake. Not to mention Bothwell. OK, she may have felt the need of a ruffian to keep the awful Scottish nobles in order, but
to sleep with him! Marry him!”

  “I suppose after the French court she appreciated something a bit more earthy.”

  “Earthy is one thing. A total thug is another. You do see it today: a woman gets shot of one hopeless husband—and Darnley really was the pits, and you see his type everywhere in England today—and then crashes straight into another marital disaster. At least after Cecil Cockburn I learned the obvious lesson: no more marriages.”

  “Is he still alive?”

  “I have no idea. I wouldn’t know him if I sat opposite him in a train.” A quick look at the woman sitting beside her told Bettina that her brusque dismissal of the man she had married had been a mistake. “I’m sorry. I should have thought. He was your father, after all.”

  “Don’t worry. I know it was a very short marriage. What was he like?”

  “He was twenty-five. He thought the world owed him a living, a good lifestyle, a cushy job once the war was over, admiration, deference, the best of everything. And this was in half-starving, war-ravaged Italyin 1945. Whether he’d got that way because his parents spoiled him or at his minor public school I never found out.”

  “You were both in the services?”

  “Yes, the army. He was a transport officer, and he was brilliant at it. It was the rest of life he couldn’t manage, but he hadn’t realized this at the time. I was twenty-three. I’d been in Italy fifteen months; I should have been worldly wise, but I wasn’t. I’d hitched a lift to Europe in a way—come as assistant to a well-known Australian war correspondent. After three months in Italy I knew the language well enough to be useful to the British Army, which was advancing up from the south, so they let me join up.”

  “But why did you want to? Journalism was much more your thing then, wasn’t it?”

  “I didn’t want to report on other people’s experiences, I wanted to have them myself. Even at twenty-three I knew what sort of experiences would be useful, and direct ones of war were among them.”

  “You knew that, but you didn’t know what type would make a good husband.”

  “Definitely not that. But unlike Scottish Mary I only made the mistake once. That’s enough about Cecil. You’ve put the idea in my mind that I might meet him again, and I couldn’t bear that.”