“And what happened?”
“She stayed for a good few days. She cooked for us. She did. She’d recite from the Bible to us in the evenings. She could do that, you know. Whole parts of it. Nothing else, just the Bible. Bright as a brass button.”
“And what happened?” Pop said, softly.
Reg stopped, mopped at his mouth with his handkerchief, his big old hand trembling, the two outside fingers stiff and near useless.
“I used to look at her while she’d have her bath,” he said, his voice shaking. “There it is. That’s what happened. Three nights in a row. What’s more, son, I think she knew I was watching. I’m nearly damn sure of it. But she never said a word.”
He thumped the rubber tip of his walking stick against the floor, a tear working its way out of his rheumy eye and his bottom lip quivering.
“That’s it? You never did . . . anything else?”
“Nope. Nothing else. Just the looking.”
“What about Robert?”
“No. Like I said, he had other means. I know my brother. He wouldn’t have ever . . . not like I did.”
“How many times was she here? And for how long?”
“After that first time . . . half a dozen times more. Sometimes for a few days, sometimes a week or two.”
“Didn’t you think her parents were looking for her? Were worried about her?”
“Yes, of course, man! But I couldn’t help meself, you see! Now take me down to your bloody station, Mather, and throw the bloody book at me!”
Pop sighed, looked at the old man, tallied a few things up in his mind before continuing.
“What about just before Christmas? Did you see her then?”
Reg didn’t answer.
“Reg?”
“Yes, God love ya! I’m gettin’ to it.
“A few nights after that young Tom turned up in town. I don’t sleep much these days, you see. I take the car out some nights. Thought I’d take another look for the other little bloke. Anyway, she was on the side of the road like the first time. I was going to take her home, Mather, I swear, but she just had a way about her. You’d just do what she wanted, and . . .”
“Where’d you take her?”
“All the way, all the way to Sydney.”
Pop swore softly under his breath and shook his head.
“Well, it’s done now, I suppose. How was she? Did she seem . . . unhappy?”
“No. I didn’t think so. Once or twice I got the feeling things weren’t all right with her, but she never said.”
“She say anything that made you worry?”
“No. We talked about a lot of things. Good things mainly. She did ask me what I thought came after dyin’.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I didn’t know, but that some said heaven, that I was hoping for something like that myself. And we talked about how it might be and I think she had her own ideas. I never thought . . .”
“And where exactly did you leave her?”
“We got lost. I don’t know where we were, but she hopped out, thanked me, and off she went.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Pop sighed. “I wish you’d told me this sooner, Reg.”
“I know.”
“Is that everything?”
Reg nodded.
“Well, I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about from the law.”
“You’re not going to arrest me?”
“What law have you broken?”
“You’re the flamin’ walloper, man! You tell me!”
“I am telling you. She’s gone now. I don’t see that what you told me had much to do with how she ended up.”
“You reckon?”
“Yes, I do.”
Reg’s miserable expression eased just a fraction, but then his bottom lip began to quiver. Pop didn’t know whether he felt pity for him or contempt.
“But I’d keep it under your hat, Reg. Don’t tell anybody else. Don’t want Ezra finding out. That wouldn’t do anyone any good.”
“No.”
Pop drained the last of his tea and stood. “I have to be off. I’ve a girl of my own to be worrying about.”
Reg nodded. “She thought the world of your Gracie, you know. Be sure and tell her some day, if she don’t already know.”
“I will.”
Pop made a show of looking around. “The house is in a bit of a state, Reg,” he declared.
“Yes, it is,” agreed Reg, almost cheerfully, the relief surfacing from deep within him. “It’s falling down around our ears. Don’t want anyone livin’ in it afterwards so it’ll die with us too. Way it should be.”
Pop stopped at the front door to put on his hat and then looked out at the rain.
“Where’s Robert got to anyway?”
“Town. He’ll be back before the light goes. Can’t see in the dark too well now at all.”
Pop gave a slight smile and shook his head.
“All right then. I’ll see you.”
“Yep.”
He was about to turn away when a thought occurred to him. “Reg,” he said.
“Yep?”
“You remember that time you saw a big cat?”
“Oh, now don’t go bringin’ that up, son. I’ve heard more jokes about that than I’ve had hot dinners.”
“Tell me again. I won’t joke.”
Reg looked at him warily, then shrugged.
“It don’t bother me any more what anyone thinks. I know what I saw. I saw a big cat all right. A grey one. A lion, I’d say—big as that anyway. The meanest-looking beast I’ve ever seen. I saw it. I know I did. If you can’t trust your eyes what can you? Where does it end? Does it mean I can’t be sure of the sky? The trees? Damn thing gave me a look that sent me cold all over.” He looked up sharply at Pop’s face for any trace of amusement but found none.
“What you want to know for?”
“I don’t know . . . I thought maybe . . .”
“One took the boy? No,” said Reg, shaking his head. “They won’t touch our kind. They stick to taking cattle and roos and that’s that.”
Pop nodded, then clapped the old man on the shoulder and turned to go. When he was halfway to the car he looked back. Reg was still standing there in the doorway with one hand on his hip, the other stretched up against the side of the doorframe, his chest heaving like he’d just run a hundred. Pop didn’t think he was long for the world. He lifted his hand and the old man returned his wave before shuffling back inside the house and closing the door.
As he drove back down to Angel Rock the cloud cover began to break up. Shafts of sunlight struck down through the gaps and lit up sections of the valley floor as neatly as spotlights. He didn’t quite know what to make of Reg’s story, or even how he’d responded to it. Both troubled him, but the story had also filled him with a strange elation, as though he’d been given some glimpse of the essence of the girl, something to at least offset the memory of her grim, spiritless funeral; the priest droning, Fay and Ezra torpid, Sonny glum and scowling. Standing there with one arm round Grace, the other holding an umbrella over the two of them, he’d thought both girls had deserved much better. He remembered the funeral of Annie Flood, years ago, just after the war, when he’d been both veteran and wet-behind-the-ears copper. That had been more of a celebration than anything else, and one of the most moving things he’d ever seen.
He was driving along a straight stretch, Reg’s story intertwined in his head with thoughts of funerals and spectral cats, when he rounded a bend and saw a young girl standing by the side of the road. Running around at her feet were three tan puppies, their bellies darker where they were wet from the grass. He braked to a halt and turned off the ignition and climbed from the car, the fresh smell of the rain still in the air all around. The girl stood before a closed gate and a letterbox on a post. He could see a house further up the slope. Hanging from the letterbox was a sign. Puppies. Free, it read.
/>
He walked towards the girl and saw that she had gathered the puppies together by grabbing the string that trailed from each one’s neck. He guessed her age at only six or seven. Her feet were bare and her arms were thin and very brown. She held the strings with both hands and the puppies writhed against each other and choked themselves as they strained towards him.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello.”
“Are you in charge of these puppies?”
“Yes,” she said shyly, nodding.
“What sort of dogs are they?”
“They are called mongrels.”
Pop laughed. “Is that what your father calls them?”
She nodded. “And Mum.”
She looked up at him through her fringe and he smiled at her and she put her head to the side and looked back down at the ground.
“This one’s a boy, these two are girls.” She pointed, and then her finger went into her mouth as if she had lost something in there. The puppies licked his fingers but then the little one she’d indicated as male wandered off and started pressing through the wet grass at the side of the road.
“He’s a little quieter than his sisters, isn’t he.”
“Yes.”
“I like him.”
He picked up the little puppy and inspected him. His tan coat had smudges of a darker colour at the ears, shoulder and tail. He licked Pop’s face with a warm, pink tongue. He put the dog down with his sisters and dug out his wallet and took from it a crisp new five-dollar note and handed it to the little girl.
She shook her head. “They’re free.”
“I know. This is for you, anyway.”
She smiled at him, wide-eyed. He saw the gap where her two front teeth had once sat and he remembered Grace at the same age. She took the money and held it at its corner as though it were a flag or pennant.
“Thank-you-very-much,” she said, remembering her etiquette.
“You’re welcome.”
They watched the dogs play for a few moments, saying nothing, the money still in the girl’s hand but, for the moment, forgotten. It was quite still now, getting on to evening, and stalled up behind the girl’s home were phantom heights of lavender and gold-edged rain clouds. A figure moved behind the screened front door of the house and paused there to watch.
“You’d like to keep all of them, wouldn’t you?”
The little girl nodded.
“I know someone who’ll look after him real well. I promise.”
She nodded again.
“He’ll be loved.”
She didn’t want to give any away but she knew she must, knew that a farm could not have so many dogs. She looked at him and even though he felt they’d come to an understanding he could see that when he left his words would have little effect on her heartache. She pushed gravel forward with her toe, her arms behind her. A wallflower and her dull suitor.
“Goodbye, then.”
“Bye,” she answered, softly.
Before he could change his mind he picked up the puppy and put him on the floor of the car. Almost at once he began to cry. When he waved goodbye to the little girl she had pulled in the remaining two pups and they were rearing up against her legs like tiny horses. She lifted her hand to wave but then didn’t and Pop watched her in the rear-view mirror until the road turned and she slid off the glass.
13
Grace sat behind the western wall of the old boatshed, the last of the afternoon sunshine finding its way through holes in the rusting metal and falling across her in beams as if she were the centre of a magician’s box-and-sword trick. Through her tears she watched the river roll by, knees drawn up before her and her chin resting in the vee they made. She was staring, not really seeing anything, when she became aware of a young man walking directly towards her. For a moment, until her eyes focused on him, he seemed closer than he actually was and she started, annoyed at his intrusion, but then she realised that he was still on the other side of the river. She recognised him then. Charlie Perry. He wore a jackaroo’s hat, jeans, a blue Jacky Howe, and his tanned arms were dark with tattooist’s inscriptions. As she watched he took off his hat, then his jeans and boots, then his shirt, but it was not until he was on the jetty, about to jump into the river, that he saw her sitting there in the shade of the boatshed. He stopped and looked across at her and grinned. She didn’t make any sign that she had seen him, just turned her head a little to the side, as though she’d been watching something in another direction and not him, and then, just as she realised it was probably her knickers he could see and was grinning about, he leapt out into the river. While he was still underwater she jumped up and ran back across the park and up the street without looking back. When she arrived at the station house Pop was on all fours in front of the open pantry door in the kitchen, a piece of meat between his fingers.
“What on earth are you doing?”
Pop looked up, trying not to laugh.
“I’ve got a wilful pup on my hands . . . and I don’t need another.”
“A puppy? Whose is it?” She dropped to her knees and peered over Pop’s shoulder.
“Mine. I bought him this afternoon. Then I remembered your mother doesn’t care for dogs, then there’s you and—”
“I don’t mind them when they’re little,” said Grace, cutting him off. “Let me have a go.”
“Be my guest, but he’s already turned his nose up at my bit of fillet.”
They swapped places and Grace shuffled forward on her knees. The pantry was dark and cool and smelt of potatoes and onions.
“He’s in the cupboard there,” said Pop. “I think he’s behind that big saucepan.”
Grace had to put her head right down and nearly against the floor before she could see the pup. His dark little eyes gleamed out at her from the back of the cupboard.
“You must have frightened him.”
“Might have been the car.”
“Yeah.”
She began coaxing him out. Pop listened to the gentle little sounds she made and marvelled. He eased himself up, sat down at the kitchen table and left her to it. After ten minutes or so she emerged with the still trembling puppy in her arms.
“He’s all right now. He’s probably hungry, or missing his mother.”
She continued stroking his little body for a few more minutes. Pop watched, his jaw resting in his palm. Grace went to the refrigerator and poured milk into a saucer and set it before the little dog—who promptly set to.
“The circus is on tonight,” Pop said, softly. “I thought you and me could go.”
Grace didn’t look up. “I don’t really feel like it,” she said.
“Oh well,” said Pop. He waited a little longer. “Darce liked the circus, didn’t she?” he said, as nonchalantly as he could.
“Yeah. She loved it. She wanted to join them. Be an acrobat or something.”
“She’d probably be going then, if she were here.”
“Yeah, she would.”
“Why don’t you think about it? Do us good, I think.”
Grace nodded but he could tell she wasn’t quite convinced.
“Pop?”
“Yes.”
“I heard a story the other day.”
“What kind of story?”
She took a deep breath and repeated almost word for word a story Hughie had told him just last week over a beer. It was one of a batch circulating the town. A girl answering Darcy’s description had arrived in a town far out to the west one Saturday night, not that long ago, and had taken on each and every patron of the town’s pub on a mattress laid out in the weeds behind it. Black, white, young, old, fat, thin, ugly and uglier; for what they could spare, just the change in their pockets, she had taken them all on, and only then, when there were no more takers, had she wandered off into the night, a slippery glass jar full of guilt money in her hand as if she had sat begging in the street all night.
“What do you think?” asked Grace. “Why would people tell sto
ries like that about her?”
Pop looked at his daughter. He didn’t know what to say. She looked at him steadily. It struck him then—hard—that she had indeed grown up and he had the uneasy feeling that he’d let her down, not told her all he knew of the world, all she needed to know.
“You knew her best, kid. She was your friend.”
“She was my only friend.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“May as well have been.”
“Anyway, you knew her good points, knew her bad, isn’t that right?”
Grace nodded. “She could be a bit of a dill sometimes.”
“There you go. Only someone who knows a person’s failings and still likes them—loves ’em—can call themselves a good friend. You were a good friend to her. Nothing can change that. Nobody can take that away from you. People want to tell stories? Let ’em. Doesn’t change a thing.”
Grace considered his words, then nodded.
“Gracie . . .”
“What?”
“Did you ever go with Darcy up to the Popes’ place?”
“No.”
“Darcy ever say anything about going up there?”
“No,” said Grace, a look of puzzlement on her face. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing. Old Reg thought he’d . . . he thought he’d seen her, that’s all.”
“Oh.”
They watched the pup chase the empty saucer around the floor and lick the last traces of milk from it.
“You don’t want to keep him?”
Angel Rock Page 14