Angel Rock

by Darren Williams

Pop stopped in his tracks and turned round.

  “I know quite a few.”

  “This one was—is—an associate of Horace Flood.”

  “Oh, yes. I know him. He left when Horace did. Why?”

  “I was, ah, talking to Henry about him. Seems he blamed Henry and Billy for Annie Flood’s drowning. When I mentioned his name to Billy you should have seen him.”

  “What are you saying, Gibson?”

  Gibson took a deep breath.

  “I think he’s come back. I think he’s got the little boy.”

  “You think he’s what?”

  “I think he found them and avoided the searchers and then he let the older one go because he wasn’t Henry’s.”

  Pop looked about, as if he thought he might be dreaming.

  “The boy’s dead, Gibson,” he said, his voice low and forceful. “You haven’t been spouting this nonsense to his father, have you?”

  “Tell me this: if he is dead, then why haven’t you found him?”

  “Why? Because those valleys out there are riddled with old mine-shafts. If he isn’t at the bottom of one there are foxes, and dogs which could have carried him off. If he drowned in the river he could have been swept all the way down to the sea. That’s why we haven’t found him.”

  “But what—”

  “You saying he came here, found the boys when hundreds of us couldn’t, just to get back at Henry? That’s the biggest load of old cobblers I’ve heard for a good long while. Why wouldn’t he just front Henry, sort it out like a man?”

  “Because he wants to inflict the worst kind of pain—the loss of a loved one.”

  “But what did Henry ever do to him?”

  “I told you. He blames Henry for Annie’s death. Did you know Smith used to tell her they were going to be married?”

  Pop didn’t answer but Gibson could tell he didn’t.

  “Gibson, listen,” said Pop, leaning in close to him, “don’t you think I’d know if someone like that was around? Don’t you think someone would have seen him and told me they had?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Not necessarily? Christ on a bike! Gibson, all I can say to you is you’re wasting your damn time.”

  “I’m not. What if I’m right and that’s what’s happened? It means there’s a reason for—there’s a chance the kid’s alive.”

  Pop nodded wearily. “How about some proof then, Gibson. That’d help.”

  “Darcy kept a diary. She says in there that someone watches her from the trees. It’s Smith. I can feel it.”

  “A diary? Why haven’t you told me this before? Where is it?”

  Gibson pulled it from his pocket and handed it to Pop. He showed him the passages.

  “She say anything else?” Pop snapped, after he’d read them.

  “Not too much.”

  “Proves nothing, Gibson. You know it doesn’t. The only monsters running around in this valley are the ones in your head.”

  “Fine.”

  Gibson turned on his heel to go when he remembered the other photographs he’d taken from Adam Carney’s drawer. There was at least one of Adam Carney as a younger man, surrounded by his followers. He found a good, clear one and waved it around under Pop’s nose.

  “Here. Just point Smith out for me, Sarge. That’s all I ask. If he’s here. Just point him out.”

  Pop reached into his pocket for his glasses and put them on. He seemed to take an age to inspect the faces in the photograph, but he finally pointed to one.

  “This is Smith,” he said. “Here.”

  Gibson looked, and then he nodded.

  “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks very much.”

  Pop gave him the sternest of looks, warned him again to keep his theories to himself, and then walked down the path and got into his car. Gibson watched him drive off then he headed up to the café for something to eat. As he passed the shops he noticed that at least three of them had had their front windows smashed. Curious, he stopped at the butcher’s and poked his head round the door, inhaling the shop’s strange smell of blood and sawdust.

  “Someone smash your window, mate?”

  “Yeah. Henry Gunn. Drunk. Can’t get too upset about it. The man needed to blow off steam. The sarge sorted him out.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Get you something?”

  “Ah, yeah, all right. Those steaks look pretty good. One of them.”

  The butcher picked up one of the steaks, weighed it, then wrapped it up. Gibson paid and left.

  He continued on up the street and got a sandwich from the café and then headed down to the convent Pop had told him about. It didn’t take him long to reach the neat little complex of buildings between the church and the river. He tried the door of the main building and found that it wasn’t locked. He walked inside and began looking around. He found a chapel and a library and various offices. The two wings of the building held the kitchen and the dining room and the little cells where the nuns must have slept. The laundry and bathrooms were in a separate building just behind the main building and joined to it by a footpath of worn paving stones set into the earth. In the courtyard formed by the two wings was a water trough fashioned from a block of granite with a ball cock and float mechanism to keep it full, but the neat green lawn that had once framed it was overgrown now with thistles and billygoat weed. Behind the laundry was a triangle of land that must have once been a garden. It was bordered by peach and citrus trees but the space within was waist-high with more weeds and the smothering vines of pumpkin and choko. He went down to the little jetty at the end of the garden and sat down and ate his sandwich and then lit up a smoke. The river was a broad reach before him and stretched away like a lake. A rusted iron ladder was bolted to one of the piles. He couldn’t quite imagine the nuns climbing down it and swimming, no matter how hard he tried.

  He went back into the kitchen and plugged in the refrigerator and put the steak in it. Finding a jar of tea bags in a drawer and a dusty kettle, he boiled water and made himself a cup of tea. He walked up the wide central staircase of the convent and sat at the mother superior’s desk to drink it. The room was warm, bright, and still. The steam off the hot tea spiralled up and joined, for a few moments, the gentle waltz of dust mote and sunbeam. Out the window he could see the roofs of the town stretching away, the Rock rising out of the bush, Jack’s Mountain away behind that, then the long escarpment that formed the valley’s western border. There was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase on the opposite wall but all the books had been removed, all the knowledge gouged out, all the mysteries gone, all the past, all the explanations. He could still see the impressions of the books where they had nestled in the dust.

  He pulled out the photograph he’d shown Pop and looked again at the man he’d pointed out. He was tall and dark and wore a black suit, but other than that he was quite unremarkable. Maybe it was the fact that his dream of the night before was still so fresh in his mind that made him think of his father. There was something about the man that recalled his father’s disregard for anyone’s feelings but his own. It was in the eyes, it was in the way he stared forward, almost oblivious to the camera. It was in the way the others left an almost unnoticeable gap between him and themselves. In that way at least he was unlike his father, who’d always been the toast of any he’d been with, the centre of attention, the life of the party.

  He put down the photo and rubbed his eyes and then ran his hands over the desk before him. There was no graffiti inscribed in the wood or the inserts of leather. He pulled open the first of the desk’s drawers but it was empty. Others had scraps of paper, broken pencils, inkstains. From the deeper bottom drawer he pulled out a heavy black telephone. He looked behind him and found a socket just above the skirting board and plugged the telephone’s lead into it. He sat the phone on the desk before him and looked at it for a moment as if, given half a chance, it might ring. When it did not he picked up the receiver and held it to his ear, as though someone might be there all th
e same; some ranking nun, God Himself. All he heard, however, was the blood rushing through his ear, the same trapped ocean his mother had introduced him to with a shell on a beach somewhere, such a long time ago now. He hung up the receiver and pulled the lead from the socket.

  In the afternoon he moved his things down from the station house and set himself up in one of the convent cells. Then, in the early evening, he went and sat out on the jetty again. A night-bloomer’s perfume lingered in the air and down on the river all was quiet. An ever-so-gentle breeze moved through the trees, their leaves rustling and whispering like a costumed cast in the wings of a great theatre. He smoked another cigarette and then he went inside to the kitchen and heated up a skillet over the blue flames of the gas range. Then, from the refrigerator, he retrieved the good, thick steak he’d bought from the butcher and when the skillet was hot enough he dropped the meat onto the hot metal. As the smell filled the kitchen and his mouth began to water, he sat down at the table and looked up Mount Wright on his map of New South Wales.

  17

  The dream woke Tom again during the night but he wasn’t as frightened by it as he had been at first. He looked around. It was very early and the room was still quite dark. The window glowed dimly with silvery morning light and he could just see the outlines of the room’s furniture: the end of the bed, the wardrobe, the dresser. He tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. He opened his eyes, closed them again, and then, from the bedroom down the hall, he heard a short, strangled scream. He jumped out of bed and ran to Grace’s bedroom and opened the door. She was sitting up in bed, her face awash with tears.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Someone . . . was . . . out there,” she said, her words barely intelligible.

  “Where?”

  “Out there! Under the fig tree!”

  Tom went to the window and looked out.

  “There’s nothing there,” he said, turning to her, no derision in his voice. “You might have been dreaming.”

  “No, I wasn’t! He was standing there! He was standing there, without any clothes on and he had dead eyes.”

  Tom didn’t know what to say. The memory of her at the circus, waiting bravely, chin up, hands behind her back, for the whipcracker to strike, came to him. He didn’t like seeing her frightened.

  “Do you . . . do you want me to get your parents?”

  “No,” she whispered, leaning back against the bedhead, wiping her eyes. “No. Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was a dream.”

  Their eyes met for a moment, then Tom wheeled round and headed for the door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Outside.”

  “No! Don’t be—” she began, but he was already out the door. He heard her follow him down the hall, into the kitchen, then out the back door. Soon they were both standing on the wet lawn at the side of the house in their bare feet. The grass was an unspoiled plain of dewed silver right up to the trunk of the fig tree.

  “Nothing there,” said Tom, shaking his head.

  “There was someone there,” Grace whispered. “Can’t you feel . . . something?”

  They both stood still and silent and, whether it was because he wanted to believe her or there really was something there, just for a moment he felt the sensation of eyes on him, of being watched, of being seen. Over in the hills behind the town, where the fig tree’s wild cousins huddled together, the darkness seemed impenetrable. Anything could be in there. The hairs went up on the back of his neck and a cold shiver fluttered its way down his spine. Maybe there had been someone out there, but they had not stood under the fig tree.

  “I’m going inside,” Grace whispered at his side, her teeth chattering. Tom took one more look at the fig and then followed. Back inside the house he hovered outside the door to his room for a few seconds before heading back to Grace’s room. The door was not closed and he poked his head round. Grace was back in her bed, the covers pulled up to her chin, chewing her lip, but looking up at the doorway as though waiting for him to appear. He stood there for a moment and then went quickly to the window and pulled down the blind. He stood by the foot of her bed and put his hand on the bedpost.

  “Pop says dreams can seem very real,” he said softly, after a few moments. “But they . . . they can’t hurt you.”

  “It wasn’t a dream,” Grace hissed. “I’ve seen him before!”

  “When?”

  “When we were out looking for you and Flynn.”

  Tom frowned. When Grace said no more he started back to his room.

  “Tom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Pop’s going to ask you if you want to come out fishing with us. You don’t have to say yes if you don’t want to come. I tried to tell him you mightn’t want to.”

  “Where? Out . . . in the bush?”

  “Yeah. Out west.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t have to come.”

  Tom nodded and then he left the room.

  “Tom?” he heard her call.

  “What?”

  “Close the door.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  A few hours later when the sun was up he saw her in the hall, her hair wild from sleep. The bright morning light streaming in through the window fell across her as she turned his way and he saw the dark roundels of her nipples through the thin material of her nightdress. It was only when she crossed her arms over her chest and hurried away towards the bathroom that he realised he’d been staring and that she’d seen him doing so. Appalled, his cheeks burning hot, he went and sat down at the kitchen table and tried to smile at Mrs. Mather.

  “I want to take you kids out for a bit of a walk,” Pop said, a little later, standing by the toaster. “A bit of a fish. Blow a few cobwebs out. What do you think?”

  Grace crunched down on her toast and didn’t even look like replying. She hadn’t acknowledged Tom’s presence since coming into the room and Tom almost turned Pop down because of it. He was about to tell him so when Grace looked directly at him. He paused for a moment, torn, unable to decipher her expression, her slightly wrinkled brow.

  “I—I’d like that,” he stammered, finally.

  “Good lad. Grace?”

  “I’m not a kid. I’ve had a bloody debut.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Would the young lady care to join us?”

  Grace glanced over at Tom again. Tom looked down at the fat yellow knob of butter sitting on a plate before him.

  “All right, then. Suppose so.”

  “Good girl. We’ll head off this afternoon, then.” He took his plate over to the sink. “Oh,” he said, giving Grace a stern look, “and that’ll be enough of your language, young lady.”

  “Sorry,” said Grace, softly.

  Pop smiled, winked at Tom, then left.

  Tom glanced across at Grace. She didn’t look so angry any more. It was hard to tell what she was thinking, or feeling. Maybe her cheeks were a little red but her face was deadpan as she glanced at the newspaper Pop had left open on the table.

  “Sorry about . . . before,” he said.

  Grace half shrugged her shoulders, took a semi-circle out of her toast and began to munch on it nonchalantly. Tom let out his breath. He thought he saw her cheeks turn a few shades redder than they had been before but he couldn’t be sure. They sat in silence, awkward, until Mrs. Mather came in from feeding his mother. Grace finished her toast, wiped the crumbs from her fingers, and made a move to stand. Before she did, and just after Mrs. Mather left the room again, Tom spoke again.

  “I saw a man down by the convent yesterday.”

  Grace looked up, surprised.

  “I know,” she said.

  “Oh. Do you know who he is?”

  “Yes. Mr. Gibson. He’s a policeman.”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “He . . . he came up about Darcy.”

  “Really.”

  She licked a fleck of jam off her knuckle then stood.

  “Yep.�
��

  “Do you think he might help me look for Flynn?”

  Grace froze, staring at him. “You don’t think he’s still . . . alive, do you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I might go down and ask that man what he thinks.”

  “You’d better not.”

  “Why?”

  Their eyes met across the table where the question still lingered. Grace didn’t look away for a long time.

  “I’ll ask him,” she said, finally, her voice low. “I’ll go and ask him for you.”

  Tom spent the morning helping Mrs. Mather and sitting by his mother’s bed, talking to her when she was awake, watching over her when she slept. Mrs. Mather came and went from the room and sometimes she would laugh at something and his mother would give a sad little smile. The sun fell in through the open window and Tom would close his eyes and let his eyelids turn the light red. Every so often his mother would comment on something she could see outside as if she were seeing things for the first time, and he realised that they were making something new, propping it up with simple words so it might grow stronger.

  Grace went down to see Mr. Gibson as she said she would but came back saying she couldn’t find him and his car wasn’t there. In the afternoon he helped her and Pop load the station wagon with gear and food and then they set off. They drove up into the hills for an hour or so before leaving the car by the side of the road and continuing on foot. They walked for another hour until they emerged from a stand of gums out into a green valley with a river, narrow and dark, winding along at the bottom of it. Pop stopped and turned back to the edge of the trees and threw down his swag.

  “And you thought I’d forgotten how to get here!” he called to Grace, who’d gone ahead. Grace smiled and retrieved a billy from her own bag and set off down to the river to fill it, Ham loping along behind. Tom looked about. The sky was clear and the land was silent except for the odd crow and stray gusts of wind rattling the leaves of the trees overhead.

  “I’ve been here before,” he said.

  “You have?”

  “Yes. Henry brought us one time. Flynn was only little.”

  Pop nodded and patted Tom on the shoulder.