“Tell me about them.”
“Well, I was only twenty when I joined up—just a boy still in my head. Just before I was due to start my training I went down to Sydney to see a few relatives there. Well, I saw ’em, but then I had a night to myself. I went and got a room near Central, stayed there that last night. That’s when it really hit me, what I was going to do, and where I was going. I looked around at the walls of that room and I thought: if I’m killed I’ll never be able to just do this again, lie in a room and think, go outside and have a feed, talk to people. It really hit me. So I got down on my knees and prayed. I was just a boy, all on my own, and I wanted some kind of . . . reassurance. Someone to tell me it would be all right, whatever happened. Someone to tell me not to be afraid.”
“Did you get it?”
Pop pulled on his cigarette, the glow lighting up his face.
“I got it. I think I got more than I bargained for. Something came into that room to visit me. I couldn’t see anything, but I felt it.”
“What was it like?” breathed Tom.
“It was like . . . it was like . . . well, you know those lions from the other night, it was a bit like if you went and stood there in the cage with them—not knowing a plumb thing about lion-taming—and knowing that whatever they decided to do there wouldn’t be a damn thing you could do to stop it. You follow?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“But it did nothing. It just was. I didn’t sleep a wink afterwards, just lay on that lumpy bed all night with my heart beating so hard it hurt. And somehow it came to me that I’d be all right. I just knew it. I just knew the war wouldn’t kill me.”
“And it didn’t.”
“No,” said Pop, with a smile, “it didn’t. But it tried, and the harder it tried the cockier I got. By the end of it I was the oldest bloke in my outfit. That’s when they started calling me Pop and I started to really worry about them. They were only young—just boys like I’d been— but they thought they were men. I wanted all those boys to live. I wanted them to live, but I knew, like I knew I was going to live, that some would die. Knew it. See, that was the bad part of knowing I’d be all right—I had to watch too many of those boys get shot up, killed. I didn’t ask for that, just like you didn’t ask to go missing, but it still happened.”
“You don’t see those boys any more?”
Pop squinted, then threw his cigarette away into the dark.
“No, not like before. But I see them, and I remember I’m not just living my life for myself.”
“How d’you mean?”
“Well, those blokes never got to come home, or see their sweet-hearts again, or get married, or have kids of their own. I consider that, ’specially when I’m cranky about something.”
“What about your father?” Tom asked.
“What about him?”
“You didn’t say if you saw him.”
Grace changed position and slid her head off Pop’s thigh. Pop rolled up his jumper and put it under her head.
“No, I don’t see him,” he continued, his voice soft, “but I . . . sense him sometimes. ’Specially in a place like this, where I used to come with him.”
Tom nodded, then stroked Ham’s belly as he stretched out to soak up the fire’s warmth.
“Sometimes I wish my father was still with us.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you’ll see him again some day.”
“What about your mother, is she still alive?”
“No. She died when I was not much older than you. I remember her pretty well. My old man came up here into the hills, a bit further out and higher up, just before he died. He always said he would when it was his time but I never really figured he’d do it. I found him curled up by a cold fire, covered in snow. It’d snowed up there for the first time in years. I was . . . heartbroken by that at first, that he’d died alone, but then I remembered what he’d always said. He used to say he didn’t want to be a burden and he used to say that while his wife— my mother—was in his head, fresh and young as the day he’d met her, he’d keep going, but the moment her memory started to fade he’d know it was time to go. He couldn’t bear the thought of that happening. I knew then that he hadn’t died alone up there, but that she’d been with him. It did me good, that. It made it easier. It made me realise that a memory like that, of someone who’s gone, can help you for the rest of your whole life. That’s what I tell Gracie about young Darce, and that’s what I want you to consider as well.”
When Pop looked up at Tom he saw the tracks of two tears down each of his cheeks shining in the firelight.
“Sorry, Tom,” he said, pulling his handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to him. “Didn’t mean to be upsetting you.”
Tom mumbled something and wiped his eyes and then he stared into the fire for a long while. Pop watched him and waited. It was another five minutes before he spoke again and it dawned on Pop that he was summoning up courage.
“Is he really dead, Mr. Mather?”
“I think so, Tom,” said Pop, gently. “I think he must be.”
“They thought Jesus was dead, but he came back.”
“Yeah.”
“And the astronauts, when they were on the other side of the moon, no one knew if they were going to come back. They could have been dead.”
“Yes.”
“But they came back.”
“Yep, they did.”
“He’s too little to be wherever he is without me . . .” Tom spluttered. He turned away from the fire and began to cry steadily. Pop thought it was for the best. It was best for him to accept it, with all his heart. It was the only way he would start to mend.
He lay there for a long time, thinking, watching his daughter sleep, and then Tom moved so that Pop could see his face. Pop reckoned that some of the strain, some of the care, had gone from it, but he knew it might have been wishful thinking. They were both quiet for a while, lying on their backs, looking up at the moon and stars. He began to point out to Tom the constellations along the great track of the Milky Way, from Canis Major through to Sagittarius. The constellations got him thinking about the sea and navigating by the stars and he began to tell Tom about Ulysses and his wanderings. After a while he looked over at the boy, thinking he’d fallen asleep, but his eyes were still open, his ears still listening, his head full of things that hadn’t been there before.
“Keep going,” he said. “Please?”
“All right.”
He told him of Theseus and the Minotaur, how Ariadne had helped him find his way out of the labyrinth. He told him of Daedalus and Icarus and he told him of Oedipus and how his father had left him, feet pierced and bound, to die, and then he stopped, realising the story was probably not the best in the circumstances.
“That’s pretty bad,” said Tom, filling the pause.
“Those old storytellers didn’t pull their punches.”
“Keep going. What happened to Oedipus?”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“Well, Oedipus went to this town that was having troubles with a sphinx.”
“What’s a sphinx?”
“Body of a lion. Head and, er, chest of a woman. With wings.”
“Not a real thing.”
“No. Not real.
“Anyway, this sphinx was hanging around outside this town and anyone it came across it would ask a riddle, and if they couldn’t answer it it’d eat them.”
“What was the riddle?”
“Let me see. Let me get it right. What goes on four feet, on two feet, and three, but the more feet it goes on the weaker it be?”
“That’s it?”
“Yep.”
Tom lay thinking about it for a while and then he said: “I can’t get it.”
“You don’t want to sleep on it?”
“No. I’d never get it.”
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“A human being. That’s the answer. When we’re little we crawl around on
all fours, when we’re adults we walk upright, and when we’re old we use a cane—three legs.”
Tom nodded slowly. “And Oedipus got it?”
“Yep.”
“And what did the sphinx do?”
“She, ah . . . jumped off a cliff. Which was not much good for her, but good for Oedipus, because he got to carry on.”
“Maybe that’s what happened to Flynn. He wouldn’t have known the answer either.”
“Maybe.”
Pop looked over at Tom after a while and saw that his eyes had finally closed for the night. Unable to sleep himself, he sat up and watched the river’s black surface and the moon’s reflection upon it. When the fire died down around midnight he threw on more wood, the bright yellow flames pushing back the darkness and the things it contained for a little longer. Grace gave a whimpering little moan as her dream resumed. He didn’t have the heart to wake her from it, but just sat there, watching her sleep, watching the firelight flicker across her beautiful, troubled face.
20
Gibson left Sapphire just as the sun was showing itself in the east. He was glad to see the back of the place. Horace’s land was on the western side of the Great Dividing Range and further south and he thought it would take until lunch time to drive there. It took much longer than that and by the time he reached the little town of Deep-water it was the middle of the afternoon. He bought a more detailed map from the service station and studied it closely. The land was a few miles from the nearest sealed road and there didn’t seem to be any vehicle access to it from anywhere. He headed out of town along the road that swung closest to the property and when he reckoned he was as near as he could get he parked the Holden under a tree and set off on foot.
The land was dry and rock-strewn and covered in ironbarks and grey-leaved peppermints. He was soon wet with perspiration. After toiling for an hour he came upon a dirt track winding up into the hills. He followed it for another half-hour and then he turned a corner and found Flood’s settlement spread out below him. New Eden. He eased down onto his haunches and took a drink from his bottle of water. Below him, tucked between two small hills, was a motley but orderly collection of tents and makeshift dwellings. One of the tents was an old circus big top complete with painted decorations and he couldn’t help but smile. A creek ran down out of the hills and on either side of it the land had been cleared and planted with vegetables. He could also see a few scrawny cattle in fenced pens and some sheep that looked as though they needed shearing.
He sat up on the rise for a few minutes, just watching the settlement and sipping at his water until he’d drained the bottle. He made his way down to the creek, but by the time he reached it and had wet his face and drunk, the sun had set and the moon was already sitting plump and pretty in the southeast, the early evening air so calm and clear he could see the rocky details of its unlit regions. To the south the Milky Way was a diamond-strewn isle in a dark and beautiful sea, and far away on the eastern horizon lightning flashed faint and silent.
He followed the creek down towards the settlement and when he was only a few dozen yards away he began to smell meat cooking and hear children laughing. Lanterns hung from trees. Fires were burning and he could see children running around in the firelight chasing each other. He could see women in long dresses, some with babies on their hips. He’d rarely seen such a peaceful scene, and nothing that had ever brought, welling up inside him, such fierce yearnings to join in, to belong.
He waded across a shallow part of the creek, his shoes filling with water and his trousers quickly sodden. He moved forward, then paused by a tree and watched as the women began to carve meat off a spitted beast, sawing with long knives, closing their eyes against the smoke rising off the beds of glowing coals. They piled plates high with the steaming slices and then carried the plates across to trestle tables set up under sheets of canvas. The men appeared from the main marquee, all dressed in white shirts and black ties with dark trousers and polished shoes. He couldn’t see Smith and there was no way of knowing which one was Horace Flood. It was only then that Gibson realised he’d lost track of the days. It was Sunday.
They all sat down at the tables and everyone went quiet as grace was sung, the song drifting over to Gibson and making him think of his childhood and Sunday lunches with his mother’s parents after church. His stomach rumbled as he watched them eat and he wondered why he just didn’t walk up and invite himself to dinner.
When they had finished their meal the men filed back inside the tent and the women set about cleaning plates and seeing to children. Gibson sat down to rest his aching legs and think about what he should do. He lit a cigarette in his cupped hands, then took his revolver out of his bag, unloaded it and dropped the bullets into his pocket. He’d nearly finished smoking the cigarette when two girls came round the tree he had his back against and saw him sitting there, the gun still resting against his thigh. Between the girls was a small child and for a brief, heart-stopping moment he was certain it was Flynn Gunn, but when he looked again he saw that the child was also female. She wore dungarees and her blonde hair was cropped short. The girls stopped in their tracks. The oldest of the three was about thirteen or fourteen, slender and dark-eyed, and the middle one was about eight or so, fairer, with a round, cherubic face and ruby lips. Both wore dresses like the older women but their feet were bare and dusty.
“Hello,” he said, after a long pause, sliding the gun down to the ground and out of sight. “Ah . . . what are you doing?”
“We’re hiding,” said the cherub, her eyes sparkling. The older one, without taking her eyes off him, immediately let go of the little one’s hand and covered the cherub’s mouth with her hand.
“I see.”
The girl pulled her sister’s hand away. “What are you doing there?”
“I’m, ah, waiting to see Reverend Flood.”
“Oh.”
They blinked at him a little while longer and then watched, wide-eyed, as he rose to his feet and threw the butt of his cigarette to the ground. It hissed in the dew, winked out.
“We have to go now,” said the older girl, pulling the other two with her and hurrying them back towards the camp.
“Bye, then.”
“Bye,” said the little one, over her shoulder.
Gibson swore under his breath. There was nothing for it now but to go over. The older girl would almost certainly tell someone about him. He stuck the gun into his bag and hurried across to the old circus tent, glad to be doing something at last. He slipped straight inside through two loose flaps of canvas. The interior was warm and lit dimly by one gas lantern out the front. There was an empty bench before him and he sat down on it as though he were just a latecomer at a wedding or funeral. He held his breath for a few moments but no one in the congregation seemed to have even noticed his arrival and after a while he relaxed a little. He lifted his head and peered up at what was happening at the front of the tent. A man was standing, speaking, his arms describing some great event or other. His sleeves were rolled up, revealing the blue smears of tattoos. Gibson wondered whether it was Horace Flood. He would have taken him for a hard drinker by the shot veins in his nose and cheeks. He wasn’t very tall and he had a hangdog expression on his face that never changed once while Gibson watched. He moved around the lectern like someone who’d been doing it for far too long and Gibson had almost made up his mind about him when the man looked his way and found his eyes. The man’s eyes were dark in the dim light, but also slightly disconcerting, as if he knew things—knew his sins—and wouldn’t hesitate to expose them, there and then. Gibson, despite wanting not to, looked away first.
The women began to drift inside in ones and twos. It didn’t take long for him to be noticed as the benches near him filled. He saw women whisper to their menfolk. Some turned round and observed him, nodded back when he nodded at them. Hymns were sung. “Bread of Heaven.” “Abide with Me.” Gibson almost wished he could sing. Then one of the men came and sat down beside him.
“Can I help you? Do you want food?” he whispered.
Something about the man’s manner instantly set his teeth on edge.
“No,” he said, his tone far too belligerent.
“Well, I think you should go, then.”
“What if I don’t want to go?”
“We think it would be best if you did.”
“What if I’m after salvation? What if—”
“You frightened some young girls.”
“Frightened them? They didn’t look frightened to me.”
“Please,” said the man, after a pause.
“I’m here to speak to Reverend Flood. I’m a policeman.”
The man changed then, and seemed to take him at his word, as if it were his habit to believe what people told him without question. Gibson felt a little silly. After another moment the man slid away along the bench. The atmosphere changed inside the tent almost straight away. The women began to leave and it wasn’t much longer before the service petered out altogether. The man who’d spoken to him went and whispered something to the preacher and he looked Gibson’s way before exiting the tent through a flap in the canvas behind the lectern. Gibson stood and left the same way he’d come in and then skirted round to where he thought Horace Flood would be. He saw him walking towards a smaller tent, his shoulders hunched, and set out after him. He moved quickly for his age and Gibson didn’t gain on him at all for a time and his wet shoes, squelching comically, didn’t help matters. When he did catch up he noticed the patched elbows of the old man’s suit, the mending stitches around the sleeves.
“Flood? Horace Flood?”
The man turned and answered. “Yes?”
“My name’s Gibson. Wondered whether I could have a word with you.”
“Of course,” Flood answered, calmly, entering the tent and motioning him to sit. Gibson sat down.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Gibson?”
“I’m looking for this man.” He pulled out the photograph from his pocket and pointed. “I believe he’s a friend of yours.”
Angel Rock Page 22