by Gordon Reid
They watched and waited. Then they heard voices, real low. Then a cow being disturbed, snuffling and skittling out of the way in the dark. A rustle of hooves and answering snorts across the paddock.
‘Get that one,’ someone said. They had torches. You could make out the truck against the afterglow. Then, against the glow, even when there wasn’t any moon. Nothing but the stars, stark and sharp and glittering in the immense darkness, which looked the blacker the more you looked. Then, there was a black shape, a truck. Another big B-double came rolling toward them, its lights blazing. Against it, they could see a silhouetted truck at the gate. On the tray was a wooden frame. The back would be down and there had to some sort of ramp. How were they going to get an eighteen-month-old heifer up a ramp without a lot of pushing and prodding?
Becker and Bert and Blue were walking slowly, carefully. Following the sounds, then the lights, dancing around like giant fireflies. Something came down with a crash. Must have been a tail gate. They must have had a ramp, but if they did, how the hell did they get it here?
‘Look out, someone!’ a man said.
‘What?’
‘Listen.’
‘Listen, what?’
A torch swept across, but did not reach Becker and Bert and Blue.
They stood stock still.
‘Must’ve been a cow,’ someone said. ‘Here, push this a bit more.’
They must have been pushing some sort of ramp.
‘Bit more,’ he said.
A man came out of nowhere and said, ‘How’s it goin’?’
‘Gettin’ there.’
They did a lot more pushing and shoving. Then someone said: ‘That’s good enough. How many you got?’
‘Two for a start. Let’s get ’em on board.’
Bert resumed walking in that slow, sloppy way of his, dragging his feet. So that he was skimming across the grass. Blue was a foot or two ahead. They were about a hundred yards away from the gate.
Becker couldn’t resist any longer.
‘Hey you!’
Two torches searched for them, did not quite reach. Becker had the Springfield up and sighted. That’s exactly what he wanted, torches on him. It gave him a target.
‘Get out of there!’
‘Jesus,’ someone said, a young voice, a big kid by the sound of him.
‘Blue,’ Bert said, softly restraining. Blue did nothing.
‘Get!’
Becker fired. Up high, but not too high, right into the afterglow over their heads.
‘Christ!’ someone said.
Then Bert fired. It was his shotgun. The blast was like a lightning strike only a few yards away. Something hit the truck, a few pellets. They stung and whistled off metal.
‘Get out quick,’ a man said. They ran for the truck.
Bert fired again.
Becker tried to stop him. ‘No, no, you’ll stampede the cattle!’
They were jumping for the truck. A door slammed, the engine fired, then roared. They got it going—up a bank, clawing at the highway.
Then Bert let Blue go. He was very fast for a clumsy-looking dog with short legs. Caught one of them, one who’d tried to jump in but too late. Blue got him by a leg. Hung onto him, snarling, biting, chewing. The fellow screamed, fell off the truck. The truck was edging onto the road and turning westward. Becker and Bert ran to the gate. Blue was through the gate, following the truck, biting at something, worrying it. Trying to bring it down, the way a Queensland heeler brings down a calf. By the back leg.
The truck kept going.
‘Blue!’ Bert yelled. ‘Here!’
The bitten man cried and cried. He was howling. The truck stopped, waited for him. Becker was sighting up on it up there on the road. He took one shot, straight at the engine outlined darkly. The bullet zinged and whacked and something broke, maybe glass. Maybe a window, maybe a mirror. Someone said, ‘Jesus! Get out of here!’
The truck went off, gasping at first, then picked up real speed. It went on down the highway, heading west, showing no lights.
They went to the gate. It was wide open, but blocking it was a ramp, a cattle ramp. The kind you can put together section by section. Too steep for a full-grown animal to get up in the dark. But a weaner could do it if prodded.
The chain holding the padlocked gate had been cut, very neatly.
Becker flashed around, but it was impossible in the dark to see whether any had been taken. He guessed not. Not time enough.
He was going to close the gate, but the ramp was obstructing it.
‘Leave it there,’ he said. ‘They won’t get around that thing.’
He meant the cattle.
They went back to the house and had tea and some biscuits he found. Special biscuits, brownies with a thin layer of chocolate. Robyn had made them, always ready to stock up. Becker looked at his watch: just gone half-past three.
‘Thanks, Bert,’ he said.
‘Blue heard ’em.’
Blue was panting like he’d run a mile. He had the smallest eyes for a big dog you ever saw, and he was probably the ugliest dog. But he had his purposes.
‘Police’ll know,’ Bert said.
‘Know?’
‘Who they was, b’the ramp.’
Becker was not so sure. ‘At least they got none. And they won’t be back. Not after what Blue did to one of ’em.’
‘Might be,’ Bert said, chewing.
‘Why?’
‘Y’never know, do y’? The way some blokes think.’
A few days later, when checking his box for mail, Becker found a note. It was hand printed and simply read: We’ll be back, you bastard! With a few misspellings. That did not matter. The meaning was clear enough.
* * *
On Sunday, Becker drove to Wagga and picked up Muriel. He was getting used to the pain. In fact, he liked it. It was a good sort of pain in his lower leg. It was stiff when he woke in the morning, but once he got moving, he enjoyed it. Like a war wound, one you could show your mates and talk and laugh about. Even drink to it. Together they went to the hospital, collected the baby, now registered as Roberta Becker without a second given name. As far as the medics could determine, she had suffered no injury in the fall. She and Wendy would stay with Muriel more or less indefinitely. Terry too. He went to town and joined Wendy and the baby. He had not finished at the small primary school at The Creek, but he soon got used to one in Wagga, not far from Railway Street. He would be in high school with big sister next year, so he might as well stay there. Becker did not know how he was going to look after a baby, even if he did rebuild a home for her. Finally, he told Muriel to engage a daily help. He would pay for everything.
‘Thank you, Harry,’ she said.
She was a modest woman, never demanded praise.
He tried to say something else. It was needed, he knew. Muriel had lost her husband and only child in the same shocking moment. Then had stepped up and taken on Wendy and Terry. And now a beautiful girl, blowing bubbles.
Not that she had any alternative. It was expected of her, a good Anglican widow. She did it because it was expected of her—not as a duty or a burden or a penance, but as an honour. She was English to the bones. It was her place to help. Without complaint. She could have feelings and disappointments and her regrets, but she must never complain. No Englishwoman of any breeding would ever complain. Not about God, King or Country. As her dear father would have said in his sincerity and faint hope and fragmentary sense of mission: We must carry on as best we can, now that dear Mother has gone. As he had said as he had crossed Her hands upon Her pale and tubercular chest, nineteen days before they had sailed.
He could not find the words. But she knew.
After lunch, Becker went back to the wrecked house.
Sat on the verandah, thinking and not thinking. What woul
d he do? Raze the house to the ground and rebuild another on the same site? Or leave it without a house and live elsewhere? Give up? Sell the property, sell the stock? Quit altogether? Get out of farming. Admit another failure? If so, where would he go? Wherever he went and no matter what he did, he had a new responsibility—his newborn daughter. He was getting nowhere. He felt gutted. His life had gone wrong again, collapsed. He felt as bad as he’d done before he’d met Evelyn Crowley. As mysterious and as dangerous as she may have been, to be with her or to think about her had kept him going then. All because he’d found a handbag in a litter bin in Garema Place…
‘Hullo,’ a young voice said.
He looked up. It was Dell or, more accurately, Deloraine Duffy. She was smiling tentatively, perhaps afraid to shake him free of these thoughts.
‘Hullo,’ he said, surprised.
‘I thought I should come and, you know, thank you—’
She came closer, step by careful step.
‘You fell on me,’ she said nervously. ‘Stacey said you covered me, as the roof came down. You took the full force.’
‘I don’t remember much about that.’
‘You were unconscious when they picked you up, picked me up.’
He rose slowly. His body aching, not so much with injury but with the whole problem of trying to live without one damned thing leading to another. He was thinking of Ray. Found in an irrigation ditch, face down, head bashed in. When would it ever end? Probably never.
‘It was only instinct,’ he said.
He meant falling or flopping on top of her. He’d not thought about it. There’d been no time. It was one of those things you do, if you are a decent type of man. Not because she was pretty and delightful to dance with or young and happy and friendly and worth saving. It was instinct. Either you have the instinct or you do not. If you are a cop, you have the instinct. If you haven’t, you shouldn’t be a cop. The people who had killed Ray Henschke had no such instinct. With them it was kill or be killed.
‘So, er,’ she said awkwardly, looking back and beckoning. ‘This is—this is my friend,
‘Hedley.’
‘Hedley?’
‘Hedley Devenish.’
‘Devenish?’
A young man appeared. He was tall and slim and looked about sixteen, his face was so fresh. His voice was young too, when it came. He was probably about her age. ‘Hullo,’ he said. Nervously, his eyes flicking from Dell to Becker and back again.
‘So,’ she said, ‘we thought we’d call in and see how you are going.’ She glanced around. ‘It’s so terrible, isn’t it? Such a lovely house, a joyful house. Are you going to rebuild?’
‘I don’t know, Dell.’
‘Oh, you must, Harry. It was such a distinctive house. A historic house, John Kettle’s own house. It’s famous. Hedley has passed it many times, haven’t you? He’d wondered who had such a smart place. He’s doing engineering, aren’t you? At the uni,’ she added. ‘He’s in his third year. His father’s an architect, isn’t he, Hedley? And I’m sure that if he saw this house—’
‘I’m sure he’d say, Get rid of it.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘I’m thinking of demolishing it.’
‘Oh, no, Harry, please don’t do that!’
‘I’m going to get someone to flatten it.’
‘Oh, no!’
‘If I may make a suggestion, sir—’
‘It has to be demolished. If a strong wind came up—’
The young man tried again. ‘If I got my father to look at it—’
‘He’d say pull it down, as soon as possible.’
‘Let me speak to him.’
‘Oh—’
‘Please, Harry!’ Dell said.
Becker hesitated. She was such a lovely young woman. Probably madly in love. Her eyes were those of a woman who is no longer a virgin, and wants to tell the whole word her big secret, but dares not. Certainly not her parents. She being only nineteen. There was no doubt about beautiful women. The more you looked at them, the more beautiful they became.
The boy pulled out his phone. ‘I’m sure Father would give you a professional opinion.’
‘Is it awfully wrecked?’ Dell asked.
‘Have a look for yourself.’
He was going to let her do it alone, but remembered. Some of the roofing iron was not secure, possibly some of the timbers too. So he went with her. She was holding onto his hand and dancing across the bearers and the loose boards, making a makeshift path through the remains of a party that would never come again. Food scraps and overturned plates and cups and glasses and cutlery, they lay in corners or splashed on boards or down in the deep recesses below the bearers. And on the table, the dining table on which the food had been placed and about which the guests had served themselves, but had gone out into the sun and were tasting it and talking and smiling and laughing. When suddenly—.
‘This is where I fell,’ she said. ‘And where you fell on top of me. And saved me.’
Maybe she was right. He was lying face down when they were hit. But she was face up. One piece of timber had hit his left leg, low down, on the ankle or near it. The fibula was broken, but it was a clean snap, no fragmentation. Other timber had hit him full on the back, cutting deep, jarring his spine, cracking ribs. Fracturing two. If it had hit her, it might have smashed her face. Other bits and pieces had come down, hitting his head. Bits of plaster. Hitting Dell too, but nothing serious.
‘How’s your chest?’ he asked, not really interested in her injury. She had survived and Robyn had not. But he had to say something.
‘Oh, I’m fine. A few sprained ribs, but nothing is broken. Thanks to you.’
He showed her over the place, including the main bedroom. She stepped delicately, hands in case she stumbled. Fingertips touching almost nothing. Just the presence of things, rather than the things themselves.
‘Oh, how amazing? Nothing damaged. And what a lovely room. She was a good decorator, wasn’t she? Robyn, I mean. She told me she loved the house. Nearly as much as she loved you.’
She prattled on—desperately, it seemed. As if she did not want Nil Desperandum to disappear. But it was the name of the property, not merely the house. The land would remain, long after the human race had gone.
‘Are you sleeping here?’
‘Yeah, I am.’
‘In the bed? Oh, how lovely! So, you are still with her, aren’t you? Even when you are asleep.’
Her young man came in. Light footsteps, youthful, quick but respectful.
‘He can come out this afternoon, late. After work,’ he said.
Becker was not pleased. Didn’t want some architect poking around, touting for a job.
He wanted to be quit of the place, although he did not know where he’d go, with a baby. He’d need a woman to live with, to look after the little girl, hopefully to be a companion. But could think of none. He was bad news. No woman worth having would want him now.
‘All right,’ he said.
Dell rushed at him. Threw her arms about his neck and kissed him.
‘Oh, wonderful,’ she said. ‘Oh, good, good, good!’ And kissed him again, followed by a big squeeze. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you!’
The young man laughed. He loved her, you could see.
Late that afternoon, Darryl Devenish came with his son. Dell was not able to do so. She had a lecture. They walked all over the house and agreed with Becker. The house was not worth saving. It should never have been renovated. It was too old, the timbers not strong enough. Also, termites were still a problem. You could smell them when you got down on your hands and knees and sniffed in corners. They were in the joists and bearers, the frame. And another thing, a storm was brewing. If he were to keep it, the house would have to be covered with tarpaulins to stop bits and pieces blowing away, po
ssibly across the road. Dangerously.
That decided him.
Late on Monday, a bulldozer moved in and flattened the house in a few minutes. An emergency job. The contractor had to cancel another job to do it. A storm was predicted for late that day. The debris was removed by truck and dumped somewhere official and out of sight. Anika and Hank had helped, moving in early. Bert and Chook helped. Young Dell came out with her young man to give a hand. Removing all remaining clothing, the utensils, the vases and pictures to their house for the time being. Packing everything precious. Even Robyn’s clothing. Becker was not sure what he was going to do with it, but he could not get rid of it. He couldn’t throw her away, not a woman like that. The furniture went to a storage depot. The Nissan was locked away in the barn. They’d finished by lunchtime.
Chook went down to the little store at The Creek and came back with a whole lot of chicken and salad and cold slaw and beer in tins, coffee in cups and they all sat around and toasted Nil Desperandum, which was looking pretty sick by now. Nothing but stumps and pipes sticking out of the ground. And bits of timber and joists and bolts and nuts and trivia you never thought was trivia, when it was holding a house together. The storm was building up fast. Angry black clouds rose and writhed to the south-west.
Heavy rain, they could see it coming, great columns of it.
The wind lifting, the lightning flashing.
They all cleared out. Chook had gone back after lunch. She had things to do.
Becker took one last look. Sitting in the BMW, watching as the storm hit, lightly at first. Then the force behind it lifted quickly, lifted everything in its path. Leaves flew, twigs snapped, branches thrashed. Big drops came down, hitting the land, the cattle, the house which was not there, and the BMW. Thudding on the roof like soft hailstones. He started up, drove away in the rain.