Wainwrights' Mountain Had Begun

Chester Eagle Chester Wainwrights’ Wainwrights’ Mountain Mountain

In 1957 Chester Eagle began to explore the mountains of eastern Victoria, and discovered a fascinating place, and the Wainwrights’ Mountain events that had happened there: the long development of Wainwrights' Mountain had begun. In 1991, after decades of brooding, the book unveiled its two stories - one simple in outline, pioneering, somehow fundamental, yet needing explication. The other, the fugal response, takes up the challenge of the Wainwright tale; it begins modestly enough, but picks up the wildness of war and some of the madness of the apparently peaceful world that ensues. This second tale, of the Bowdens and Morrises of Melbourne, winds through generations and the interplay of families and strangers, until, in a splendidly ridiculous climax - the book's self- created peak - the two apparently unrelated stories, which have been edging closer for some time, make their merger on the mountain Wainwright claimed, is snow-grassed peak becomes a metaphor inclusive of everything human beings get up to, and a mood of joyful, if submissive, acceptance is the last gift the book offers its readers.

ISBN 0 9592077 2 4 TROJAN a novel by Wainwrights’ Mountain Other books by

Hail & Farewell! An evocation of Gippsland (1971) Who could love the nightingale? (1974) Four faces, wobbly mirror (1976) At the window (1984) The garden gate (1984) Mapping the paddocks (1985) Play together, dark blue twenty (1986) House of trees (reissue of Hail & Farewell! 1987) Victoria Challis (1991) House of music (1996) Wainwrights’ mountain (1997) Waking into dream (1998) didgeridoo (1999) Janus (2001) The Centre & other essays (2002) Love in the Age of Wings & other operas (2003) Melba: an Australian city (2004) The Wainwright Operas (2005) Oztralia (2005) Cloud of Knowing (2006) Benedictus (2006)

Mini mags Escape (2004) Hallucination before departure (2006) Wainwrights’ Mountain

Chester Eagle Wainwrights’ Mountain (1997) was printed by Print Synergy, Notting Hill 3149, and published by Trojan Press. Cover photo, Rock, cloud, valley, was taken by Chester Eagle on Howitt Plain, Victoria, in 1977. Cover design by Vane Lindesay. Electronic preparation of the text for publication by Chris Giacomi. This electronic edition published 2006 by Chester Eagle, 23 Langs Road Ivanhoe 3079 Australia, operating as Trojan Press. Phone is (03) 9497 1018 (within Australia) and email address is cae@ netspace.net.au

ISBN 0 9592077 2 4

Copyright is held by Chester Eagle. The Wainwrights Charity Sam Mercy Dorothy (Doll) Faith Prudence e Gordon terman Wa Giles — Anni Lucy — Bill Ned Nicholas Robert George Hope

The Bowden & Morris families (Family members not mentioned in the book have been omitted.)

Ron & Penny George Bowden Bill Bowden Cyril Bowden Max Morris Norman Rowe Varney Bowden Orbiston (1894–1975) (1878–1945) (1888–1959) (1897–1960) (1900–1966) (1900–1966) & & & & & Yvonne (Yatty) Morris Dawn Williams Muriel Atkinson Edna Morris Jean Carter (1895–1971) (1892–1959) (1898–1960) (1902–1964) (1905–1980)

Michael Bowden Virginia Rowe Honoria Bowden (1917–1975) Rose Morris Diana Morris (1927– ) (1927– ) (1930– ) (1930– ) Helen Orbiston (1916–1982) Moshe Gleitzman

Gus Jespersen John & Gillian Stanley Rowe Howard Bowden Tom & Margaret Urquhart (1929– ) (1929– ) Courtney

Tom Bowden Tricia Courtney Steve Morris Mark Morris Jessica Rowe (1919–1981) (legacy) (1932– ) (1932–1958) (1932–1956) (1931– )

Adrian Bowden (1920–1943) Luke Bowden Lily Morris Jane Urquhart American Steve (1914–1960) (1935–1960) (1932– ) (1932– )

Karen Bowden US Colonel (1921– )

Nell Bowden (1928–1983) Jesse Bowden Juliet John Grey Elizabeth Grey (1943–1978) Courtney-Morris (1933– ) (1935– ) (1958– )

Eddie Grey (1959– ) Don Bowden (1977–1982)

Jeanette Grey (1961– )

Michael Bowden Virginia Rowe Honoria Bowden (1917–1975) Rose Morris Diana Morris (1927– ) (1927– ) (1930– ) (1930– ) Helen Orbiston (1916–1982) Moshe Gleitzman

Gus Jespersen John & Gillian Stanley Rowe Howard Bowden Tom & Margaret Urquhart (1929– ) (1929– ) Courtney

Tom Bowden Tricia Courtney Steve Morris Mark Morris Jessica Rowe (1919–1981) (legacy) (1932– ) (1932–1958) (1932–1956) (1931– )

Adrian Bowden (1920–1943) Luke Bowden Lily Morris Jane Urquhart American Steve (1914–1960) (1935–1960) (1932– ) (1932– )

Karen Bowden US Colonel (1921– )

Nell Bowden (1928–1983) Jesse Bowden Juliet John Grey Elizabeth Grey (1943–1978) Courtney-Morris (1933– ) (1935– ) (1958– )

Eddie Grey (1959– ) Don Bowden (1977–1982)

Jeanette Grey (1961– )

In the beginning was the need to say there had been a beginning. Beginnings take place in the present. The beginning is always now.

1 In which we meet a family and a couple

They met in a lane, hiding from policemen on the beat. Before going their separate ways, pasting up anti-conscription posters, they gave each other their names. A week later, in a poorly furnished loft that had once held feed for a wealthy household’s horses, they spent the first night of their fifty-five years together, lying in each other’s arms, and somewhere in those early nights of happiness, unaware that their condoms - French letters - were faulty, they conceived a child whom they called Michael, because, pacifists both, they liked the story of the archangel persuading Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac, his son.

I will make you a world, in the wilderness. You are mine now. Do not look at other men.

In the wild swirl of the 1930s, with Europe the world’s cockpit, fascism frightened Michael’s parents. Was everything they had fought against going to re-present itself, filthier and more destructive? They reasoned that their first-born should enter a profession which would keep him away from bayonets and guns. Michael joined his father’s business as apprentice lens grinder, and learned the violin.

Look back. There are not many points where you can look back. This is one. There are the lakes, and there the sea. Your town is behind you. Your life with me is ahead. I am the terms. You will never regret. You will be cold, hot, unhappy and hungry, but you will never regret.

Michael’s parents bought the big house; Michael took over the stable where he’d been conceived. Twenty years had brought it electricity and hot water, but, such were the times, police at the nearby station still collected bribes from abortionists with medical degrees, while hospitals took in the bleeding victims of knitting needles and twisted coathangers - cunt-hooks, as they were called. Michael fell in love.

In winter, there will be a huge fire to cook on, to keep us warm. That fire will never die, from one year’s end to another, but sometimes greater fires will surround us. I will exult in them. You will cower at the end of my house, I know this, waiting for the danger to pass. The danger will never pass. I am the danger. I will exult in the way I frighten you. You will outlast me - I sense this - but you will never break out of my circle of terror.

This is how Michael saw Helen, and fell in love.

There are gentle springs where I am taking you, spilling the purest water.

The main railway station in the city of Melbourne is famous for its clocks. ‘See you under the clocks,’ people say, arranging meetings. Michael was waiting for a tram in front of the station when he saw, in the flood of commuters, a young woman whose step declared she had a greater purpose than going home. When he saw her the next night, she had a viola case in her hand. He wanted to know her, and if fortune so prescribed, they might enter the unknown together. But how to make it happen? He went to a concert. Sitting in the organ gallery, because he liked to watch the conductor face-on, he became aware, early in the over- ture, that she was at the back desk of the violas. A pang of jealousy ran through him. She was at the heart of this fiery music. It was the Fantastic Symphony, and he hated Berlioz for tearing him in two. Did love have to be like this? Even the adagio was full of tension, with distant thunder rumbling. The March to the Scaffold was horrific, with

her red hair tossing to the rhythm as she played. The brass blazed, the orchestra swaggered to its final crunch! The artist’s head lay in the basket. The following week he went again. The Sinfonia Concertante, Köchel 364. Viola and violin. As he left home, his father, George, noticed him helping himself to the opera glasses. Slipping a smile to Yatty (Yvonne), his wife, he said to their young man, ‘Something you want to get close to?’ Michael’s seat was above the orchestra, on the bass side, and he listened enviously to the impassioned dialogue. She was at her desk, contributing. When the soloists took their bow, he saw himself on the platform, in fantasy, with her; when the orchestra left the stage, he rushed downstairs, past the artists’ room where she’d be pulling on her coat, smiling and talking, and entered the lane at the back of the hall. ‘This is my fate’, he said to himself, in a dull street in a dull city, with, his parents seemed to think, and everything in the papers confirmed it, a war about to sweep like a cyclone across the world, picking up lives like particles of dust, or droplets of water, and flinging them down wherever it pleased the enormous forces to release them.

When we round this bend - which looks like every other bend to you - you will have your first glimpse of my vision - a flat-topped mountain, lifting above the range to the north, a mountain too indifferent to notice our caravan of cart and horses. But I will rule there. Be ready: your moment is waiting.

Michael went home in misery. Giles Wainwright was exultant.

We are in the mountain’s field of influence, and your eyes tell me you know it. Everything that will happen to us is in this pregnant moment. Botanists will give names to these trees, these flowers, but they will never know them as we know them, because their minds stand apart when they classify, while we, my love ... ‘Giles! What are you planning to do with me? Why don’t you talk? Can’t you share? Must you take supremacy by silence?’

... are nothing but what we see - trunks straight as gun barrels, and the upper branches full of nerve endings, like a brain. I laugh at phrenology, but I know why people believe in such rubbish. They lack confidence that the world is as they see it, and digest it. I shot a rabbit last night. It’s in our bellies now. Soon it will be unburied droppings, marking our path. Do you realise that later generations will follow us with envy, wishing they could possess this moment as we possess it? You are angry and puzzled, and you know nothing.

Michael auditioned when the orchestra advertised for a violinist. When he heard he hadn’t been chosen, he put the violin case in the corner of a large armoire which George and Yatty had banished to the stable. Doubly boxed, he thought; behind me. As for the red-headed woman, he gave up going to concerts, and avoided the tram stop at the hour when she was likely to enter the darkness behind the array of clocks - Epping line, Sandringham line, Frankston line, and the rest, none of them places he wanted to go to, but all possessing a touch of mystery, because somewhere along one of them was a house where she lived, a room where she practised the music which he wished he could get out of his system because it was where his inferiority had been proved.

George and Yatty watched their son closely. ‘What a pity it’s not simple for him,’ Yatty said. ‘The way it was for us.’ They smiled at each other, twenty years into their marriage. ‘We are the most down to earth people,’ George and Yatty would say to their offspring over a roast and three vegetables, ‘and we’ve produced you! Abstract thinkers and perfection-chasers, the lot of you!’ Three boys and two girls would groan. The serenity, and mutual satisfaction, of their parents hadn’t been genetically transmitted; they would have to find it for themselves. Quite a challenge when Spaniards were shooting each other and the Japanese were murdering in China.

George and Yatty - the Bowdens, it’s time to give them a name - took their children - and all contactable Bowdens and Morrises, Yatty’s

10 family, were invited - to Waratah Bay for three weeks every Christmas. Much planning went into this. Bedding was inspected. People flopped on stretchers to test them. The cottage-sized tent, with its airlock to stop flies getting in, was erected in an East Melbourne park and examined for fraying seams. Tempers were short on these occasions, for the whole family, Yatty excepted, regarded themselves as expert at juggling ropes, rods and poles to get the thing up, and this rehearsal of what they’d have to do in the scrub took so long that Yatty would send Nell, her youngest, to the park with a basket of lemonade and cake and an outsize thermos of tea. Terrible eruptions occurred if a cup, or spoon - Yatty counted everything that left the house - wasn’t brought back. They were an unrestrained, feuding family who showed the intensity of their ties in ridicule and scorn. The Bowdens regarded a particular clearing in the tea-tree as theirs, but feared losing it, so, each year, a fortnight before the family proper took its holiday, a party of male Bowdens left Melbourne in their 1930 Fiat, pulling a trailer piled high with the big tent and a number of subsidiary, sleeping, tents; Fort Tea-tree, Yatty dubbed it. There was always an argument as to whether George had pulled up in the right clearing, and a recall of the year they’d put the tent in the wrong spot, and had to re-erect it because Yatty insisted. Then, when the tents were secure, the billy had been boiled and sausages cooked, the family drove away, leaving one of their number as sentry. This year, Michael had volunteered. He was left with books, a hurricane lamp, a bike, an axe, squares of paper and a shovel, water, flour to bake bread, casseroles for the first couple of days, tins of ham, peaches and sardines, and the solitude he felt he needed.

We are primitives, my love. Do you know what that means? You are asking me things with your eyes, Giles, without opening your treacherous mouth. I prefer your silence to your hypocritical speech. We’ll observe a lifelong silence, you and I, except in absolute need. I can read your mind, you swine, you swineherd. Though I hate

11 you as early as this in our marriage, I’m prepared to see how many generations it takes before I win. It means our experience is the base-experience of all that follows. Look down, please - for I feel a challenge in the silence which is your gift to me - into this great basin where creation might have happened, and where it happens every day. I wonder if we’ll laugh at each other? I think we will. And at the world we’re going to make? Perhaps. You’re telling me I’ll have no neighbours except the miserable little people trying their luck down there. I don’t care if I never see them; my battle with you will occupy a life. I accept. You are brave, even formidable.

It was a hot night. Michael took a rug and pillow to the beach, settled on a hummock of sand, and managed to get to sleep. It was the sea that allowed it, breathing quietly in the dark. When he woke, it was because he felt that someone had passed him. The moon was up, he looked, and yes, someone was walking to the water. As he watched, she threw off her nighty, bent low to scoop tepid water onto her body, then stepped forward with a pride and determination he felt he knew. A toss of the head as the water rose above her ankles, and he was sure. He watched, then felt an irresistible urge. Dropping his pyjamas beside hers, he joined her in the water; she seemed unsurprised. She put her hands on his shoulders, examined him, then led him further out. He was in her hands. When the water was deep enough, they sat on the sandy bottom, only their heads breaking the surface. Over the ocean, there were stars; above the land, the moon held sway. It was as if they had no will, no origins, no tomorrow. In the vastness, each felt an isolation, and a mutuality. When the emptiness around them no longer interested them, they turned to each other. She put her legs around him and squeezed. Their bodies dried quickly as they walked up the beach. She ignored their sleeping garments. He wondered when, or if, their silence would be broken. Sharing the pillow, they lay on the rug and caressed

12 each other. Later, she said, ‘A strange occurrence, wasn’t it?’ He dared not say that he’d been distracted by her for weeks; an element of secrecy and shame clung about him which she didn’t share. ‘We can’t keep risking it like we did just then. You’ll have to get into town and go to the chemist’s. I’d do it myself, but my father doesn’t let me take his car.’ At the first sound of birds, she slipped away. He slept an hour or two, then crept back to the tent, made breakfast, and got on the bicycle for a long ride and then, he hoped, a return to that mysterious world that had opened itself, unexpectedly, in the night that was now giving way to sunrise, blowflies, corrugated roads, and sand drifts that made it hard to ride along the track to Foster, sparse outpost of a civilisation that produced thin rubber interventions in the act of generation.

That hump on the left is Seldom Seen. On the right, in front of the bald one, is Mikado Hill. We will live behind the mountain, which only I will visit. You will know what you need to know. The children, when they come, will learn to keep away. I do not mean to share it. Our possessions will be few, and yours as much as mine; the children will get what we can give them. We have not come out here to suffer time’s decay. They will live, and develop, in the place we are on the verge of making. Try - I think you understand, despite our silence - to treat the next day with reverence. It will be the beginning of your fixed moment in the otherwise endless rush of time. You will be creation. I embody it, I will place it in you, when we perform that act from which we have restrained ourselves. Tomorrow night, in the wilderness I am going to clear, you will begin your journey into mothering. I pity you, I envy you, but your lot is not my lot. I am strong, you are fluid. Life comes from me, and passes through you. Death is in my hands. Beware my rage; it too is sacred.

The family gathered. Uncle Varney, Auntie Jean and their two, Honour and Howard. Bachelor Bill. Luke, a cousin who attached himself to George and Yatty more than to his parents, buried on a profitless farm near Violet Town. Yatty’s sister Edna, her three children, and

13 Norman; and Muriel and Max, and their two pairs of twins, and their fifth, later, child. Ten adults and fifteen kids. The night before they arrived, Michael and Helen met on the beach, loving the more vigor- ously because their privacy was about to be invaded. ‘The next three weeks are going to be hopeless. I wish I could go back to Melbourne with you.’ ‘We wouldn’t have a place.’ ‘Yes we would.’ He told her about his stable. ‘I want you to come and live with me.’ All major decisions are gambles, no less so if well considered. ‘All right, I’ll risk it. Are we going into something we’ll never get out of, do you think, or won’t it last very long? We’ve got every convention stacked against us.’ ‘Just how I like it.’

The Buick, the DeSoto, the Dodge and the Pontiac ranged themselves alongside the Fiat; most of the Bowdens were comfortable. Only Bill’s A-model Ford looked rusty and out of date, while he, erect and fit, found himself under question from Diana, one of Max and Muriel’s twins. ‘Uncle Bill, why do you walk with a stick, when you don’t need it?’ ‘It lets me feel sorry for myself.’ ‘Why are you sorry for yourself ?’ He said something surly, and went to his car. She was waiting at the front of his tent when he came back. ‘Why is it the same people who come here every year, Uncle Bill? Why don’t we get new people, so it’s more interesting?’ ‘Because ...’ - his scowl broke into the beginning of the smile she’d been waiting for - ‘... we’re a family, which gives us the right to bore each other stiff. Or backbite, or quarrel, and there’s no way we can get out of it.’ She saw that he was happy being unhappy. ‘Why can’t we get out of it, Uncle Bill?’

14 He twiddled the stick. ‘One of these days when you’re as old as I am, you’ll look back on this moment, and you’ll think that was the best question you ever asked.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Families ...’ - the scowl was malice mixed with glee - ‘... are what you are born into, they’re where you come from, they’re the barnacles you can’t scrape off, they’re the trap you’ll never get out of, they’re the only support you’ll get, outside of war, they’re a mish-mash pretending it’s got a common history ...’ He was just warming up, but Muriel, the girl’s mother, emerged, frowning, from the big tent. ‘Bill! Stop putting such silly ideas into the child’s head! It’s Christmas! We’re all here because we want to be. Really! I think you just love the sound of your own voice!’ Bill, by now, was leaning back sharply, staring at the cloudless heaven, his weight transferred to the stick, lineal descendant of the rifle he’d fired in South Africa, and the baton he’d carried behind the trenches of Flanders. ‘Come in here with me and Aunt Yatty, Diana. We’ve got better employment for you than listening to ideas of that sort. We’ve got lunch to prepare.’ ‘I hate peeling potatoes, mum.’ Bill beamed, as if what he was going to say had the authority of the sky above him. ‘You can get out of it, you know. You’re a girl. You can marry into another family. And peel their potatoes instead!’ He roared laughing, and walked down the bush track, swinging that stick. An angry Muriel soon had her daughter turning the handle of the bean-slicer clamped to the trestle table where work was done; it occurred to the girl that her mother hadn’t always carried the name of Morris. ‘When did you start to be called Morris, mum?’ ‘When I married your father.’ ‘How did you get to know him?’

15 Muriel and Yatty gave each other smiles of the deepest connivance. Diana, who would soon have to play by adult rules she didn’t understand, said, ‘Aunt Yatty, what is it?’ ‘What’s what, darling?’ Frustrated by this question which asked her to express something she didn’t know, she tried another tack. ‘How did you get to meet Uncle George?’ ‘Everyone knows that. We were in the streets one night, putting up posters.’ ‘What were you trying to sell?’ ‘We weren’t trying to sell anything. We were trying to persuade people not to vote to send young men away to be killed in a very silly, completely unnecessary war.’ ‘Is that the one Uncle Bill went to?’ ‘Yes, he was in it. And the one before it.’ ‘Have there always been wars?’ ‘Yes,’ she said bitterly, ‘and there’s going to be another one, and God knows who mightn’t get killed in it!’ Her eyes filling with tears, Yatty put down the chop she was trimming, took off her work-gloves and turned to the tent’s nearest window as if danger might be lurking in the tea-tree. Muriel flashed a glance of condemnation at her daughter. ‘Look what you’ve done now, with your silly questioning!’ But Diana ventured another thought. ‘Does Uncle Bill know you think this? About him being in the war, I mean?’ ‘He’s your great-uncle, not your uncle,’ Muriel said. ‘You might as well get it right. Now do what you’re supposed to do, and slice those beans. It’s time they were on!’ Muriel had met Max when he came around trying to sell a car to her father. She said to Yatty, over the washing up, when the family had left the long trestles where they ate, ‘It was one of those Hispano-Suizas. He walked father around it a few times, then he insisted on taking him for a drive. When he came back, he said, “Tomorrow night we’re taking the whole family for a drive. In the meantime, think about it!” And

16 when he came back, he made father drive, and he put mother with him in the front, and he sat right behind them, with me beside him, and my brothers and sisters back behind us. And he squeezed my hand - but I’d had a feeling the night before that he’d really come to see me. And he kept coming back. He knew father didn’t have enough money to satisfy his extravagant tastes, so whenever he came, it was with some wonderful car that cost pots of money. It was always some rare old thing, or something really new that everyone was talking about; he was dazzling my father, and mother knew it, and she encouraged him. I think she was learning new tricks for handling her husband!’ ‘I’ve never had to learn tricks to handle George,’ Yatty said. ‘I’ve always got what I wanted ... I think.’ ‘If you’re not quite sure, if there’s any doubt at all, you probably haven’t.’ The two women, Yatty forty-two, and Muriel thirty-nine, looked at each other, and behind the tiny doubt transplanted from one to the other, loomed the larger uncertainty, the brewing chaos, of a world that had lost control of its warring instincts and was already preparing for a descent even deeper than the four-year disgrace that Bill, and millions of others, had participated in. ‘I met this girl when I was in South Africa’, Bill was telling Michael, the pair of them sitting on a dune where a lot of lovemaking had happened in the last two weeks. ‘Old story. Soldier falls in love with nurse. You’ll see it often enough when the next one starts. When they tipped me out of hospital - and I’d’ve stayed there forever while I had her nursing me - I saw her as often as I could, which wasn’t very often because I had to get back into action. Anyhow, I met her parents - her father was a very sick man, actually, and he died not long after - and they agreed we could marry. It was all arranged. When I’d got back to Australia ...’ he stared at the water, thinking of that other land behind it ‘... and I’d got myself a farm, somewhere in the wheatbelt, I was to write, and they’d come over, all three of them. She was their only one.’ He continued.

17 ‘Well, the time came, and I wrote, but by then her dad had died, so it was just mother and daughter I was expecting. But by then she’d contracted some sort of fever, and she was really too sick to travel, but she insisted, and her mother had been a nurse too and she felt she could look after Amy ... That’s strange, I haven’t said her name in years.’ He looked at Michael. ‘What made me do that?’ Michael wondered if his nightly meetings with Helen mightn’t have created a psychic field where they were sitting. ‘But the fever got worse, and the ship’s doctor couldn’t do anything for her, and she ...’ He waved his hand. ‘They buried her at sea. Silly expression, isn’t it? You can’t bury anyone in water. Anyhow, that’s what they did.’ He went on. ‘I can still see that ship coming up the bay, carrying all my hopes, as I thought, and it took ages to dock, and even longer before they let anyone on board, and there was her mother, and Amy ... hell, I’ve said it again, something’s been released in me ... wasn’t there. I thought she must be in her cabin, really sick; nothing else would stop her being at the rails, waving to me. Then her mother told me. Later on - much later - I wondered why she hadn’t sent a telegram from Perth, or Adelaide, but I didn’t think of that then. I felt myself go bitter and hard, because the thing I wanted most had been taken from me. It was as if I had a stone inside me instead of a heart, and somehow I knew that was how I’d always be.’ He paused. Michael said, ‘You don’t sound bitter and hard right now, you know.’ ‘Thanks my boy.’ Bill put his arm around the young man for a moment. ‘But I was bitter for a very long time. You know, I wrote to her mother for years. She would have been my mother-in-law. I’d already accepted her as that. I wrote to her because I knew she needed it. But I hated her till the day she died. It was most irrational of me, but, do you know, I blamed her for not delivering her daughter safe and sound. I blamed her. She was every bit as distraught as I was, but someone had to get the blame. I couldn’t just say it was fate. I hope

18 she never realised. I made a point of writing nice letters to cover what I felt.’ ‘I can understand that,’ said the young man. ‘If we told everyone all the things going on inside us, people wouldn’t be able to stand each other. It’s like wearing clothes for decency. Ever thought about it? If we went around with nothing on, most people would be ghastly sights!’ ‘Talking about having no clothes on ...’ the older man erected his thumb ‘... are you getting any?’ Michael smirked. ‘What! Eh? Who is it? Is she any good? Eh? How’d you meet her? Come on, come on, don’t be shy!’ So Michael told his uncle - his great-uncle - and Bill was starting to give his usual flood of advice, when Steve and Mark, the twins, happened on the scene, and Michael’s sister Karen, and then Norman and Edna, Luke the farm boy, and Jean and Varney all found their way to the beach, and suddenly the spot where the secret had been shared, and love had been celebrated, was swarming with talkative, active family, last of whom to arrive was Yatty, in a hat only slightly smaller than the sun umbrella she was carrying, and a bathing garment composed of metres of black fabric so heavy that if it got wet when she was out of her depth she must have been in serious danger of drowning. ‘Come on in,’ she cried from the water’s edge. ‘Why else do we come down here?’ and she waded a full twenty steps into the shallows before returning to the brolly she’d left at the shell-line. ‘That first dip,’ she proclaimed, a funereal Venus on the shore, ‘is the best thing that happens all year. Happy holiday everyone!’ Happy holiday! They could play on the sand, they could make excursions into the coastal heathlands, they could gaze at the mountains, freshly arrived each morning on their carpet of mist, or row in the dinghy Max had brought down on top of the Pontiac. The youngest could do things with uncles and aunts instead of being hand-held by parents. The twins could get away from each other, Rose with Karen,

19 who was about to start her course at the Conservatorium, while Diana hero-worshipped the adolescent Adrian, Michael’s youngest brother, and the despair of Yatty because he shed sand in the family tent, was never on time for meals, and disappeared for hours in scrub she swore was full of snakes. Mark played beach cricket with Howard, Vernon, and any of the adults who could be prevailed upon to bowl, while Steve, his twin, explored the miracle of George and Yatty’s field glasses, bringing boats, mountains, birds and bushes to the tip of his nose; the summoning of distant objects for examination made him feel powerful. At night he studied the waning moon, and it crossed his mind that there were times when Michael was mysteriously absent from his tent. He even asked his cousin where he went. ‘Walks. Just go for walks.’ ‘Where do you go?’ ‘Any direction, really.’ Steve knew he was lying. ‘Can I come with you?’ ‘No, I prefer to be on my own. I can walk really fast, go a long way, you know.’ The boy didn’t know, and he wondered when he would know, about the strange behaviour of those who were older. Children, he felt, had all the advantages, but grown-ups were in possession of something that made them feel superior. He decided to ask Luke, his farming cousin, a sturdy young man who seemed sufficiently lost to be his ally. ‘Where does Michael go at night time?’ ‘I didn’t know he went anywhere at night time.’ Steve’s instincts told him he wasn’t being lied to. ‘How do grown-ups get together and get married? And have kids and all that?’ ‘Having kids is the easy part. They just, you know, do things with …’ He touched his fly, flushing slightly. Steve considered. ‘But how do you pick who you’re ... going to do things with? You have to be married. Who am I going to marry, does

20 anyone know? Or do I have to let myself be picked by a girl?’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Funny you ask me that. Sometimes I ask my mum and dad how they got together, and they look at each other, and they don’t say a thing.’ ‘They’ve got a secret.’ ‘Yeah. It makes me uncomfortable, I must say. Why don’t they say how they met? Must’ve been something wrong about it, eh?’ ‘Is it wrong for Michael to go away at night?’ ‘No, he can please his bloody self, can’t he?’ ‘I went into his tent yesterday when he was at the beach. He’s got these things.‘ He described a packet of condoms; Luke’s face lit up. ‘Really! Who’s he ... there’s a red-headed woman about four camps down, it’s gotta be her! Wow! Lucky bastard. He was here on his own for a fortnight, that’d be when he got onto her.’ He laughed, envy and bitterness in his eyes. Steve saw that his ally had withdrawn behind the invisible line crossed and recrossed by adults when they wanted to. He took himself back to the beach, but the binoculars had lost their magic.

We are nearly there, my love. I think my trees will surprise you, their roots all exposed by digging. I worked hard before I came for you. We must attack the two giants, with axe and fire, then wait for a storm to topple them. Our marriage has been seasonable. Storms are common at this time. Then our tent. We’ll camp where we’re going to live, and the trees will drop on either side ...... if his calculations were correct. We were to live or die by his judgement. I could have slept well away, but my survival was only possible if I met every challenge. I had to keep abreast of him, or fall into my own contempt. Whose world was it, after all? I had determined to make it mine as well, and I could have no ownership without contest- ing.

21 Two days before Christmas, George, Bill, Michael and Luke set off, with plenty of instructions from Yatty, for Foster (a leg of ham), and the hill farmer who dressed their poultry every year. They hadn’t gone far before George braked. A heavily laden vehicle was stopped by the side of the road. A man was trying to change a tyre. Two women were sitting in the car. The Bowdens got out. ‘Spot of bother?’ ‘Puncture. I’m having trouble with a wheel nut.’ The owner stepped back a pace, inviting help. George said, ‘You’re the most experienced, Luke. See what you can do.’ Luke’s eyes were on the redhead from four camps down. She and her mother got out to watch. To start work he had to turn his back on her, which he found hard to do. ‘The nut’s cracked,’ he said, after an examination that gave him greasy hands, and dust on his shoes and trousers. ‘It’s going to be hell’s own job to get it off. I’m going to need a clamp, Uncle George, have you got one in the car? And a shifter spanner might help.’ ‘Actually, I think I have. Could you get them for us, Michael?’ Helen and Michael were ignoring each other more rigorously than strangers do. Helen’s mother noticed. Uncle Bill - great-uncle Bill - knew. George and Helen’s fathers, whose son and daughter were about to live together, were kneeling on bags, trying to find the cause of the puncture. ‘There you are,’ said George, head under the mudguard. ‘There’s your villain.’ Mr Orbiston - Helen’s father - moved around Luke to George’s side of the wheel. George said, ‘Hand me the pliers please Michael. I think it’s a horseshoe nail, but we’ll have a look.’ Michael fetched the pliers, avoiding Helen’s eyes. ‘Thanks son. Here we go. Ah! Yes it is. Horseshoe nail!’ George handed the offending nail to Orbiston - Ron, married to Penny - for his examination, then gallantly took it to Mrs Orbiston. ‘What’s that old poem say? “For the want of a horseshoe nail my kingdom was lost”? Do you know that one?’ Penny Orbiston smiled, meaning no. George handed it to her. ‘This is what brought you undone.’ She examined it, while Luke continued with his part of the

22 job; it was a bugger having women around when you wanted to swear, and when there was one of them you knew your cousin was rooting and you wanted a share of the action. Michael was holding himself very still. Helen wanted to laugh in all their faces. George kept the talk going until Luke had the spare on, but, somewhere about the moment that the group was going to break up, which he formalised by saying, ‘We’d better introduce ourselves, anyway. I’m George Bowden, this is my uncle Bill Bowden, my son Michael, and my nephew Luke, who’s been your Good Samaritan this morning ...’; among the handshakes, nods and pleased-to-meet-yous, he sensed a stiffness, a certain withholding between members of the gathering. Looking at Michael, he found something in his son that hadn’t been there before, and then he looked at Helen Orbiston with interest and admiration in his eyes. With a quick glance at his son which Michael knew was a congratula- tion, he said to the Orbistons, ‘Well, you’re ready for the road again. I do hope we run into you some other time. I have a feeling we might!’ Helen loved him. Would Michael ever be as good as his father?

Do you have a sense of destiny? Somewhere in this forest are the trees I’ve been working on. Can you feel them pulling you? Unhappily, yes. Give me the horse’s bridle. You will never be able to say that I didn’t collude with you.

Yatty was up at six on Christmas day. George already had the fire burning in its trench, and tea made. She moved around as she sipped; the jellies were set, and the herbs, standing in their glass of water, reasonably fresh. She got the brandy out of her sleeping tent; since the men weren’t allowed near the preparation of food, it would be safe from Bill. She lifted the tea towel to inspect the bowl of stuffing, then allocated, in her mind, places on the fire for the camp ovens, the saucepans, and the pot for the pudding. A ball of string for trussing the poultry, and the needle for sewing up the flaps, were laid out, ready. The potatoes, beans, onions, carrots and pumpkins were waiting in

23 their bags and boxes. She sat. Someone would wake up soon, and the struggle to delay the opening of presents would begin. She looked at her husband, standing near the fire, head lifted to the sky. He was an atheist, but she knew he was giving thanks in his own way for the morning. She put her cup in front of her. Staring into the red infusion, she prayed to God: ‘Heavenly Father, give us peace, at least until the smallest of those who are sleeping here is dead and gone. If everything that’s terrible in your creation has to be unleashed, don’t let it be now, while the family’s holding up pretty well. They’re an argumentative lot, and most of them don’t believe in you, but they’re good people who don’t deserve ... ‘ She felt a tear or two starting: ‘George!’ she called. ‘Have you got plenty of firewood? We don’t want to run out while the meal’s being cooked!’ He spoke to where her voice came from, in the tent. ‘Yes, truly darling. Lots and lots. Truly, heaps.’

Weeks of smoke have cured us like legs of ham. I’m not ready. I’m sick with fear. It’s the ordeal that changes us. We’re never ready. If we were ready, it would mean the change had already happened. On the day the storm comes, I’ll chop and saw the last roots. You’ll help. We’ll release them on the northern side, watch how they sway, then cut roots to east and west. When the winds know what we’re doing, and come for their victims, we make the last cuts to guide the fall ... And stand away! We’ll stand - we’ll lie - at the heart of our drama then. A marriage is a defiance of death. How can you tap into the power of life if you don’t give it a chance to kill you? Of course you’ll be terrified; don’t you think I’ll be trembling too? But under the fear will be exultation. You’ll lie beside me and it will well up inside you. Madness! It’s the ordeal that changes. One has to pass through it. It’s only in approaching that we suffer. When those monsters are swaying above us I’ll seize you, and then I’ll be part of you, even though you want to keep me separate!

24 They’ll hit the earth with a wallop that would knock a comet off its course, and the courage that enduring it will have given you will last a lifetime. It’ll be your second birth.

Christmas lunch was over. The presents, mostly toys, and modest enough, given the times, had been unwrapped. Yatty had the crockery and cutlery, the pots, pans and camp ovens stacked on trestles waiting for the wash, and three kerosene tins of water coming to the boil on an endlessly replenished fire. ‘It’s time for photos,’ she said. ‘We don’t know when we’ll all be together again.’ ‘This time next year, surely,’ Norman said. A ripple of uncertainty ran through the adults, to be picked up by the older children. ‘A photo might be a good idea,’ said a sombre Tom, Yatty and George’s second son. The family began to cluster, and conversely, to pull apart. ‘Where are we going to sit?’ ‘Who’s got the camera?’ ‘Who’s going to take it, and get left out?’ ‘Get someone else to take it, from one of the other camps!’ ‘How many chairs? The littlies can sit on the ground.’ ‘And some of us can stand behind’: this was Adrian. ‘Bring the chairs out of the tent,’ Max commanded. ‘Come on Di, Rose. Come on Steve, Mark, get to it!’ ‘Hang on you children!’ Yatty cried, rushing to defend her tent. ‘I’m not having flies in there. Don’t imagine you’re going to open the door and just tramp in and out. You’ll go in and out the proper way. All into the cell, button up behind. Check? No buzzing? All into the tent, together. All out the same way!’ Nine chairs were brought out, then a fly got in, and another. ‘That’s the end!’ Yatty insisted. ‘I don’t care how many have to stand or sit on the ground. Come on, put these chairs in a row. Michael! Go and find someone to take the picture, and be quick about it!’ ‘We haven’t found the camera yet.’

25 ‘Your father will find the camera. Adrian, you help him look. Go on, Michael, and try to find someone intelligent!’ The chairs were lined up. Luke staked his claim to adulthood by sitting on the second from the left. Bill claimed the privilege of age by taking the last chair on the right. Yatty took the centre. ‘Come on Tom, I want you behind me and your father. Karen, you get beside him. Put your hands on our shoulders, the pair of you. Nell! You sit here at my feet. And get that look off your face or I’ll take it off for you. Tom! Come on, where are you?’ Her daughter Karen said, ‘This picture won’t get taken for half an hour yet, mum. Don’t get so excited.’ She was soon proved right. Mark wanted to be taken holding the bat, which had been left on the beach. He ran off to get it. Muriel and Edna decided they needed hats. Varney felt he’d like his straw hat too. Bachelor Bill lit his pipe. Michael showed no sign of returning. Then the grocer, who’d stopped for beers with people he knew, pulled up on his way out. ‘Recording yourselves for posterity?’ he yelled, and Luke yelled back, ‘We need someone to press the button. Doya mind?’ The grocer, flushed and brown, hopped out of his truck, banging the door fiercely. ‘Give’s a look at ya camera. I should be able to manage!’ But George couldn’t find it, and nobody was ready, and Michael wasn’t back. The grocer joked noisily with the disorganised clan until his patience ran out. ‘Sorry everyone, but I’m late as hell for my Christmas dinner, my missus’ll be sweating on me, I’ve really got to go!’ And he hopped into his truck, revved it, yelled ‘And a happy new year to you too!’ before disappearing in the scrub. After a minute the sound of his engine had died away. The children were quarrelling. Michael still hadn’t returned. Then, at the nadir of their frustration and gloom, Karen uttered the word guaranteed to ignite the family: ‘Story!’ This was a demand-game they played, starting with the innocu- ous, but edging ever closer to the bone. ‘Who’s going to start?’ said Karen.

26 ‘I will,’ said little Mark. ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to be when I grow...’ ‘You’re breaking the rules,’ shouted his sister Rose. ‘Someone has to ask you. Just be quiet!’ ‘I’ll give him a start,’ said the boy’s Uncle Norman. ‘It’s a future story, is it?’ ‘Eh?’ ‘You want to tell us a story set in the future?’ ‘Yes I do.’ ‘All right. I call on Mark,’ Norman said loudly, ‘to tell us what he’s going to be doing on this day in ten years time.’ ‘I will,’ said the boy. ‘Is tomorrow called Boxing Day?’ Voices said it was. ‘Well, on this day in ten years time, I’ll be oiling my bat because I’ll be playing for Australia the very next day!’ They all laughed. ‘That’s the right attitude,’ said his father. ‘You’ll never get high if you don’t aim high. Good on you Mark. What about you, Steve?’ ‘Against the rules,’ called Karen. ‘All questions have to be from one family branch to another. Sorry Uncle Max. Who’s next?’ Max was miffed at being cut short by a too-knowledgeable female wielding a rule he suspected her of having made up. ‘I’ll tell you a story about your future,’ he said. ‘Your husband’s going to beat you one day for being cheeky!’ Karen flushed, as if, somewhere in her being she believed it would happen. Her mother was shocked. Putting her arm around Karen, Yatty pronounced ‘He will not! The day that sort of thing starts I’ll have something to say. You should be biting your tongue, Max, for saying such a thing!’ They were getting into their stride. Max mumbled something to Muriel and clapped his hand assertively on his son’s hand holding the bat. ‘I reckon there’s a century in this little fella any day!’ Luke was next, with the question he couldn’t ask his parents. ‘I’ve got a question for you, Auntie Jean. Hope you don’t mind. I’m asking you to tell us the story of how you met Uncle Varney.’ Varney beamed, and lifted his straw hat to scratch, as his wife began.

27 ‘Well, it was through a song. I don’t know how to tell this. To understand, you have to imagine yourself on both sides of a fence ...’ ‘Don’t beat about the bush, Jean,’ said her husband. ‘It’s quite simple. I was living in Carnegie with my parents at the time, and this new family moved next door. There was a high fence, and I couldn’t see much, but I got a few glimpses of Jean, and I liked what I saw. And I’d heard her high heels on the path. I reckon you can tell a lot about a woman from the way she walks.’ This met a noisy response. Karen flushed again, her mother still holding her tight. ‘I tell you it’s true. Anyway, one warm night, I could hear this piano. They must have had the window open, I could hear it very clearly.’ He paused. ‘Go on, darling, it’s your story, you tell it.’ Jean said, not without a sidelong glance at her husband, ‘My mother had invited some people around. One of them was a fellow she’d met at church. She didn’t tell me, but I could tell two things about him. One was that he was thinking of becoming a minister ...’ her voice showed how unthinkable that made him ‘... and the other was that mum thought he might be a suitable husband for me! Not on your life!’ She stroked the back of Varney’s hand, smiling. ‘Then mum asked me to sing. So I sat at the piano and I started up with “Madamoiselle from Armentières, parlez-vous?” She was a lady of the night, you understand. Mum was horrified. No no darling, she said, not that song, it’s a little bit too ... she meant vulgar, but she didn’t want to say it. Give us a nice folk song, she said. You do those so nicely. So I obliged.’ Varney was inflated with joy. ‘Sing it darling. Sing it now.’ She said, ‘This is what I sang,’ and with a voice that surprised Karen, whose first study at the Conservatorium the following year was to be the voice, Jean sang: Gin a body meet a body, comin’ through the rye, Gin a body greet a body, need a body cry? Ilka lassie has her laddie, ne’er a ane hae I, But all the lads they smile on me, comin’ through the rye.

28 Applause. ‘Keep going, Jean,’ said George. ‘Give us another verse.’ She smiled on them, cheeks flushing slightly at the admiration radiating from her husband. Gin a body meet a body, comin’ through the rye, Gin a body kiss a body, need a body tell? Ilka lassie has her laddie ... As she started the refrain, her husband joined in, his uncertain baritone full of pride. She broke off. ‘That’s what he did! From the other side of the fence. Everyone laughed, including mum. Everybody but this poor glum man who was going to be a minister! And next morning, when I was in the garden, I could hear him - that’s Varney, I mean - whistling the same song!’ ‘She was calling,’ he said. ‘She was calling for someone better than this fellow to come and save her.’ ‘Well, darling, I don’t know if save is the word ...’ ‘Someone had to do something. And I’m happy to say it was me. That’s how we met,’ Varney concluded. ‘There you are Luke, there’s your answer. And I hope something like that happens to you before too long.’ By now Michael was visible again, coming down the track with four women, ranging from sixteen to sixty in age. God, thought Luke. Four of ’em. How does he bloody do it? ‘Thanks Uncle Varney,’ he said, hope missing from his voice. ‘Next!’ called Karen. Adrian, who’d been keeping well away from his parents, spoke up. ‘That was lovely, Aunty Jean. Now it’s my turn. I’d like to ask Aunty Edna and Uncle Norman the same thing. How they met?’ By now Michael and the quartet he’d enlisted had entered the clearing, George and Yatty had stood to greet them, most of the adults were preparing to be introduced, with Uncle Norman - Luke and Karen noticed - keen to get some distance between himself and the story. The children stopped listening. Edna began, as if speaking to herself, so that Adrian, Luke and Karen, the ones who wanted to hear, had to move down the row of chairs to catch what she said.

29 ‘Yatty and I were holidaying in Warburton, with our mother. We were doing a lot of horse riding. Mother approved of this so long as we chaperoned each other. “Don’t let me hear of you getting out of sight of each other,” she’d say. It was an idle threat, since she’d never have known. I thought I should stick to the rule, but Yatty didn’t care.’ Yatty was by now being ornately gracious to the four newcomers, who, Michael explained, were doing some painting at a little spot near the water. ‘So I was riding along this track by myself when I saw five young men coming in on another track. There was no way I could have avoided them, unless I turned around and galloped. Maybe I should have. Within a minute I had the five of them all around me, and I felt overwhelmed. I’d never been on my own with five men before. But as we rode along they stopped clustering around me, and first one and then another rode with me for a while, chatting. I relaxed, I was enjoying myself so much. They were brothers, they told me, and when the third one moved alongside me, something hit me hard. I was going to marry one of these boys. Not straight away, but eventually. My head started to swirl, but I knew I had to keep it clear. The fourth one rode with me for a while, and then Norman. He was the youngest. He seemed very shy, and I suppose I’d been completely softened up by then.’ ‘Softened up, Aunty Edna?’ This was Karen. ‘Yes. That was how I felt. Defenceless. After that day I didn’t see Norman again for months, but when I got back to the chalet that afternoon - with Yatty, who was very impressed when she came upon me with five admirers - I knew I’d met the man I would marry.’ ‘Sounds like a fairy tale,’ said Luke. ‘I wouldn’t mind something like that happening to me. When I go out riding.’ He grinned weakly. Adrian and Karen smiled at him. ‘I can assure you,’ Edna continued, ‘it hasn’t been a fairy tale since then.’ Something dark refused to pass her lips. ‘But I never had a chance, you see, because that moment was decisive. I knew, sitting on my horse, that whatever happened in those few minutes would decide

30 my life for me.’ The young people knew she wanted to cry, and they wanted to hold her, but this was not the family’s way. And by now the introductions had been completed, the camera explained, and George and his eldest were settling everyone in place for the first of two photos taken that day. In the first, the twenty-five of them, were - and might be to this day, if you could find the photo - standing, sitting, kneeling in the little clearing in the teatree which was their summer retreat for sixteen years and some later visits when a new generation fell under the spell of the picture: a fleeting moment, of no importance to the about-to-be warring nations, made eternal by the trick of film. In the second picture, Michael, who, together with Helen, entered the world of love in that brief holiday, is out of the picture, holding the camera, and the four visitants from the world of art have placed themselves among the standing Bowdens and Morrises. One, and we shall meet these people later in this story, has come between Norman and his wife, and Edna, close to tears a minute before, is smiling, some soothing having been given by the stranger’s hand placed lightly on her neck.

31 2 In which two trees are felled, and young soldiers die horribly in war

That storm is ours, my love. This is the hush before it. If I panic, I may kill you. There are things to do it with. Will you watch your back? Consider this, my love. If, when the storm hits, something strange happens, affecting us, how will we know whether it happened on purpose, to help us? Or will it have been caused by powers in our minds we don’t understand? I demand the right to drop the second tree. Drop them both. Start now. There’s your axe. Your silence, normally malevolent, has grown insidious. You are quite jocular, I see. I heard a story not long before I met you. It amuses me to think about it while you project your confusion onto me. There was a Jew, and his son. The Jew told the boy to climb the lemon tree, and jump. He would catch him, he said. The boy was scared. Trust me, said the father. The boy overcame his fear and jumped. The man stepped back. As the boy lay on the ground he yelled, You said you’d catch me! You said I could trust you! The lesson I wanted you to learn, said the Jew, is that you never, ever, trust anybody. Remember it! I can’t pick up your thought, but I know it’s hateful, and about a tree. When you have sons, as you will if you keep putting that square hand in the middle of my back to bend me for your lust, you will find you must change, or they will become as murderous as you are. First they will be scared of your cruelty, then they will learn to hide; then they will learn to track your innermost thoughts until they find your vulnerability - everyone is unguarded, somewhere in their person: and

32 no one can hide it because the opening that leaves us exposed is the one we don’t know about - and then the moment will come when they will have your weakness in one hand, and an axe in the other. You will die at the hands of your children, and I, having known long before them where your unprotected spot is, will be torn between wanting to save you because it will save my children from murdering their father, and wanting to see you buried in this forest you will have blighted by then with ringbarking. Change now! Live in humility! Serve me! I can hear the wind thrashing on the ridge over there. It’s on its way. So I, pregnant and swirled about with this diaphanous death of smoke, have only the power of waiting for those uncommon moments when fortune’s shape can be influenced. My child. My child.

War began in September 1939. The world’s sickness enforced a silence in George and Yatty’s household. Karen stopped singing. Adrian felt history’s spotlight burning; at eighteen, would he have to enlist? Tom kept playing his clarinet in orchestras, thinking music might protect him, the way Michael’s occupation was supposed to do. Michael used his father’s Leica to do nude studies of Helen, which he overprinted with stripes and patterning. His interest in women’s bodies grew; he photographed others from the circle that partied in the stable. Helen was sure he took some of his models to bed, but there was something so off-hand, sharing, in the way he left their photos lying around, that she stayed with him. She, like the world, was waiting: the Prime Minister’s declaration that the country was at war was only a signal. Where and when the emptiness would erupt, and who would be affected, were yet to be known.

Remember my question? In the brooding thunder now feathering the heavens, I think I hear a signal. Lightning skitters all over the place, waiting for an order. Which now I give! Or do I hear it, working on our behalf, in a superior mind? That’s the question: now wait!

33 Your unbelievable lightning, and your tree that no one else could imagine, have met in unholy juncture. It’s falling on us! Time stands still. Time expands to contain, in an extended moment lit by electric fire, all the stresses, the groaning, the fracturing of root supports, the grappling of upper branches with proximate upper branches, and the enormous lust of gravity to pull this thing down, which will together decide whether it destroys us or falls beside. In this numbness I know that a normal life will never be possible. Let it crush me! And yet you have been chosen to survive. Your children will be born, while this monster, though its cells and sap don’t know it yet, is dead. One down, one to go! One to come! Attack that one with your axe my love. There will be no second bolt of lightning, only a wind to give the treetops its brutal caresses in the dark. You are a force whose hand is in everything. Remember my question? We don’t need to answer it. We have one side of our home. What magic have you got in you to give us the other? I’m powerless without your power. Lie down in our tent. We’ll listen, in the noise of wind, for the clink of hobble- chains. Reassured, we’ll sleep. In the morning, the other tree-God falls!

The King of Denmark, anxious to avoid bloodshed, surrendered his country after a single day.

He’s laughing in his sleep. What he’s thinking about is closed to me. This is strange. Are these blanks covering his weakness, that spot that must be there, or are they a limitation in my power? I’m awake, my love. When I came to town to get you, I heard a story in a billiard saloon. This is how it goes. A man went out one night and got drunk. When he came back to his boarding house, he flopped on the side of his bed, took off a shoe and flung it on the floor as hard as he could. Then he realised that everyone else would be asleep, so he took off the second shoe and placed it silently on the floor. Then he got into bed and slept the sleep of the just. Until, an hour later, he heard

34 someone shouting at him from the room beneath: ‘For Christ’s sake, throw the other one so I can get some sleep!’ Tell me why you’re laughing, swine!

The Norwegian army capitulated to the Germans in June 1940. A fortnight later, France sought terms.

That tree knows it’s dying. Listen to it groaning. It’s giving birth to our marriage! It’s caught, swaying above our tent. Snagged in another tree. You’ll have to climb up and chop it free. I? One of us, you mean, must scramble up this future half home of ours, with axe and belt, and spring off where the two crowns meet. Then embed the axe in a branch while the belt goes around the standing tree to hold ... you? Me? Which is it to be? You must do something decisive, in this moment, or be dependent, as I plan. Nothing to say? Then let me see your lips shape, in your convent French, your promise of devotion. Nothing less. Je te promets. Fear. How strange it is. The day you see fear in me is the day I admit my coming death. Murder, according to you. Well, so be it. I have a tree to shinny up. What a beautiful angle is sixty degrees! From the vertical to the horizontal is all the life of man! Thank you for the axe and belt; you are considerate. Where one lies, there should always be another; isn’t that what marriage means? Placing this monster will be relatively easy. I say ‘relatively’. Give me that promise again. Je te donne ma promesse. I had good spikes screwed into these boots. When I come down, I’ll be able to fling them away. Je te donne ma promesse.

A troubled Adrian began taking long walks. Yatty woke her husband one night. ‘He’s not home yet. Go and look for him George.’ Her husband dressed, and let himself out of the house. Some instinct took him to the lane where he’d met Yatty, years before. In the gloom he distinguished a figure squatting against a wall.

35 ‘What is it, son?’ ‘Something’s got into me and I can’t get rid of it. It’s like you read about people being possessed by devils. Which I happen to think is stupid, except it’s happened to me.’ ‘It’s the war. Quite mild and sensible people are joining up because they think it’s expected of them. You have to fight off those expectations. You’ll be safe, anyway. Your mother and I intend to keep you away from the eyes of the manpower people.’ Adrian hadn’t moved from the wall. ‘Come home now son. Your mother’s worried.’ He got up. ‘I know you want to protect me, dad. I want to be protected. But this thing’s got into me. I’m terrified of it. I know it’s determined to destroy me, and I can’t fight it, because it’s inside me. It goes quiet for days, and then it seizes me and I know I haven’t any hope. The only hope of killing it is to kill myself.’ ‘You need to sleep. Tomorrow morning, Michael can open the plant, and I’ll stay home and talk about it with you and your mother. And for goodness sake, when you get home, tell her you’re sorry you’ve made her worry so much. She’s hardly sleeping these nights.’ ‘Mum’s tough, dad. Tougher than you realise. We think women are weak because they suffer. And it’s us that make them suffer. That’s our weakness. If you know about something, it makes you suffer. But if you don’t know about it, you’ll pay a bigger price. Michael and Tom are going to avoid this war, just like I wish I could. But they’ll pay a price for not meeting it head on, perhaps a bigger price than those who go to it.’ George walked beside his son, trying to understand his heresies. When they got home, Adrian went to his mother’s bedside. ‘I’m sorry that I’ve made you worried, mum. We’ll talk about it in the morning. Dad’s staying home from the plant. I’m really lucky to have you both.’ He kissed his mother, and went to his room. But at sunrise Yatty heard a sound, sat up, and saw Adrian in a chair at the foot of the bed. She prodded her husband.

36 ‘I know this will upset you because you’re pacifists,’ the boy began, ‘but I’m going to join the army. I’d like to be a pacifist too, because I agree with everything you say about wars, but, to my amazement, I find that I want to fight and kill. The world’s gone mad, you keep saying. And it has. The trouble is, the madness has entered me. I told you last night, dad, how this thing was in me and I couldn’t suppress it. For a long time I couldn’t work out what it was because I feared it too much to look at it. But last night, when I got into bed, I actually looked at it, and I saw my own death, and other people dying at my hands. And I was calm at last. And I made up my mind to tell you straight away, because you’ve always been wonderful to me, and you’ll hate what I’m doing, so the only thing I can do for you is to have it out in the open.’ George said sadly to his wife, ‘I forgot to mention last night, darling, that I found him in the lane where we met, hiding from the police.’ He regarded his wife sadly, their lives torn apart. She answered her husband’s unspoken question. ‘I remember it.’ To her third son she said simply, ‘It’s decided then. When you’re in camp, and when you’re overseas, you must write to us. Very, very honestly, if the censors will allow it. You must pay your father and I the compliment of not trying to shield us from anything. We’re not head-in-the-sand pacifists. We’re pacifists not because we fear war but because we think it’s stupid. In your head you know our position’s right, but in your own life you haven’t reached that position yet, so you have to move forward in whatever way’s right for you. We’ll never condemn you for what you do, and we’ll try very hard to be proud of you.’ The boy, choking with tears, nodded and left the room. The sound of his shoes in the passage seemed heavy, and masculine. ‘He’d had a shower,’ Yatty observed. ‘He’s been up for ages, waiting to tell us.’

You have all the energy of the first-pregnant woman. You are my true partner. We have a roof, a back wall, and the fireplace I always promised, where the first of many thousands of logs is burning. Smoke rises into a sky claimed only by us. My axe rings. Your bread satisfies. In these months before the child, you must stay beside me.

37 I know this country well. Elegant birds, shy creatures, and exquisite grasses people its places. Fortune has chosen us for blessing. Each morning, as you come outside for water, I smile a smile which perhaps you do not see. My dream has been populated. We live on uplands unavailable to others. Take no notice of the foolish blacks; there are no marks of their presence here. We are the first and favoured people. The light that illuminates our lives will never shine for others.

War burst into Greece and Crete. Armies advanced and retreated along the Mediterranean coast of Africa. Italy joined in. The world looked nervously at the Japanese, raping and beheading in China, and at America, clinging to isolation. England feared for its safety, under threat of German invasion. Then the maniac allowed by cowed and adoring masses to hurl his swastika-tagged air force at enemies made a mistake. Russia was invaded. Every cliché of national stereotyp- ing flourished. The armies, peasants and wolves of Russia would do to Hitler what they’d done to Napoleon when winter settled on the steppes. Jews were sent to gas ovens under the eyes of brutal guards. Experimentation with living humans flourished. Research into more effective ways of killing flourished. Life, never more precious than when under threat, was stripped from the living with abandon. Japanese forces, having rid themselves of American naval deterrence, swept south. Bastions of empires fell before them. Australia was terrified. Karen, George and Yatty’s daughter, met an American Colonel who picked her up for nights of dancing. And sleeping together, until he got her pregnant. When she told him, he said, ‘This is really bad news. If you want an abortion and you know someone who’ll do it, I’ll pay. But you have to make up your mind pretty quick, because I’ll be gone in a fortnight. It’s a mission I’m not allowed to talk about.’

She told her mother. Yatty said, ‘There’s doctors in this suburb who’d fix you up. I know two myself. God knows how much they pay the police, but I know what they charge. Fifty pounds. As far as I know,

38 Flack’s never botched a job. You’d be safe with him. But tell me what you want yourself ?’ ‘Do you remember that last Christmas at the Prom? Just before the photo was taken? I was so hurt when Uncle Max said my future husband would beat me. I had this terrible feeling that he was right. That I was born to be a victim. That in some way I’d always invite suffering. I’d protest like mad, but I’d put myself in positions where it kept happening. Well, it looks like I’ve started. I can’t win, can I? If I go ahead, people will start sneering as soon as it starts to show. They’ll call me a slut, and won’t want anything to do with me. Of course I’ll be fine, here at home, but going out will be an ordeal. And not going out will be just as bad. I’ll have become a mother in the way I didn’t want it to happen.’ She paused. ‘But if I go to Dr Flack, I’m killing, in a world that’s full of killing. I’m as bad as the rest of them. Yatty considered her daughter. ‘Weren’t you using contraceptives?’ ‘We had been. This particular night, he ... made a movement. I’m sure he slipped it off. I know he did, because when I told him I’d missed my period, I could see this gloating in his eyes. He’d lured me into danger and destroyed me.’ ‘Stop there !’ said her mother. ‘Do you really feel destroyed? Think before you answer. Never mind that that’s what he wanted to do to you. How do you feel in yourself ?’ ‘I’m dominated by contempt for that man. Most men, probably. I feel that if they can misuse the most precious thing we have ... no wonder the world’s the way it is.’ ‘What’s your answer?’ ‘Love properly.’ ‘What if you go ahead with the child, and it’s a boy?’ ‘The way I feel at the moment, I’d want to expose it on a barren hillside, or cast it adrift in a boat - all those silly things they did in stories.’

39 ‘They weren’t only stories. Those things happened. And you’re in the same position of deciding. This is a terrible moment in history, but it’s not the first terrible time. Hence those stories. Now. Imagine yourself five years from now, looking back on this moment. How does it look, from there?’ ‘In five years time I think I’ll say it was simpler, and cleaner, to go to Dr Flack, and that going ahead with the child would have taken a lot more courage.’ ‘Yes, it will take more courage. Long term courage. It would be harder, but it might also be your answer.’ ‘And it might not. I’m sick of people wanting to be heroic. If I’m going to have children I want to have them in my own good time. And with someone who wants to share my life with me.’ ‘That’s natural,’ said her mother, ‘but sometimes an accident is wiser than we are.’ ‘You’re thinking of yourself and George. You were lucky, mum.’ ‘Some luck happens, and some luck has to be forced to happen.’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by that. I need to think about it some more.’ It was four days before she brought it up again, and this time George was there, a little tired after a day at work, and sipping a sherry. ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ Karen told them. ‘The key factor is my determination not to be a victim. I don’t know if you remember, dad, when we were having that photo taken, at the Prom ...’ ‘Yatty’s reminded me,’ he said. ‘I know what you’re talking about.’ ‘This is how I think about it, then. If I don’t want to be the Southern Gentleman’s victim, I go to Dr Flack. But I’ve decided to call the Colonel an accident of sperm, and I’m not his victim.’ Both parents smiled. ‘Even though that’s how he thinks of me. And I don’t want to be a victim of the war. Every time you pick up the paper, particularly that horrible Truth, you read about girls in my position.’

40 She’s going to go ahead with it, George thought, and he sensed that Yatty already knew. ‘And what I think about them is that they’re only victims if they let people describe them in that way. Calling them victims is another way of calling them sluts. If I feel sorry for myself and dwell on the fact I’ve been tricked, I’m a victim because I’ve allowed myself to be one. I don’t think many people get things given to them on their terms. We have to take what we’re given and try to shape it, so that eventually it comes around to being on our terms, not someone else’s. So’ ... her voice became quieter, more intense ... ‘what that means is that if I go to Dr Flack and say give me an abortion, I’ve passed up the chance to turn something I didn’t choose into something which, by love and subtlety, could become what I want. If I go to Dr Flack I’ve chosen to be a victim of myself.’ She broke into a triumphant laugh. ‘I guess that makes it pretty clear what I’m going to do!’ ‘My wonderful daughter!’ cried George, banging the glass down so hard that sherry slopped all over his hand. Beaming, and giving grunts of joy, he licked the wine off his fingers. ‘I had a feeling that’s what you were going to do. Do you know why? Because you’ve got a wonderful mother, and you’re as clear about yourself as she is, and the only other thing I can say is that I hope that in twenty years time this little baby appreciates how well it chose its mother when it wanted to be born!’ Yatty smiled. ‘Where are the others? Get them in. They need to be told.’ George jumped up. ‘I’ll do that. You two share the secret for a minute longer.’ In the passageway he turned, recording for his memory the cameo of them side by side, facing the chair he’d left, confirming for each other a future full of strength and, if Karen was right, love and subtlety. Flowers, flowers, flowers, was all he could think of, and he rushed into the garden with his clippers and that was where Helen saw him, from the upstairs window of the stable. ‘What’s the occasion?’ she called, and it was only when he looked up at her, framed in the window, red hair filled with light, that he realised he’d

41 sidetracked himself. ‘Come down, Helen, come down, darling, I’ve got such wonderful news.’

War turned Uncle Max into Captain Morris when he moved from the motor trade to an office in Saint Kilda Road as Coordinator, Transport, Victorian Division, Southern Command. The job took him into pomp- ous middle age. He suspected the secretaries of conducting their social lives on the telephone, when phones, desks, even their capacity to think, belonged to the military. His mind, never very adventurous, filled with clichés. What they were doing was part of the war effort. He suspected them of the careless talk that costs lives. With these ideas he found himself rejudging those closest to him. George and Yatty were fools, still stuck in the Great War when the Japanese were on Australia’s doorstep, and their shielding of Michael and Tom was something he determined to do something about. In this, he had an ally in his brother in law Norman, always a bully and wife-beater, who, in the way people gravitate to jobs that in some way replicate the worst in themselves, had found a place in recruiting. Both were proud of the insignia on their epaulettes, and looked at their sons in terms of whether they’d turn eighteen in time to serve in the Pacific campaign. Both were at odds with their women. Studying her husband, Muriel saw a man trying to paper over cracks that he dared not admit in himself. He was both tender and voyeuristic towards his daughters, fearful of their virtue, and wouldn’t let them do anything when they knew that a sordid but fascinating life throbbed around them at night. His response, when he became aware of Karen’s condition, was to hold her up as a terrible example of what could happen to them. He felt both loathing and fascination for his sister’s family who acted as if their purposes were somehow larger than the war’s. The freedom to think in this way was not one of the freedoms he was fighting for. Muriel decided to stake out her ground carefully. One night, as Max was holding forth over dinner about the number of rolling stock that were out of commission for one reason and another,

42 and how certain union leaders and fifth columnists should be charged with treason, Muriel announced that there was to be no war talk at the table. ‘I get it everywhere else, all day,’ she said, ‘and I’m determined that there’s going to be one little island where we’re safe, and this is the island.’ She slapped her palm on the table. Steve, her third child by four and a half minutes from Mark, wanted to laugh. Half-afraid, he said, ‘You’re trying to condemn dad to silence, mum. What’ll you do if the war keeps going, and Mark and I have to go?’ ‘What’s this ‘have to go’?’ demanded his father. ‘I’d bloody well expect that you’d want to go.’ His wife extended her claim further. ‘And I’m not having any swearing in this house. Not one word, any of you. We’ll let all that sort of thing stay in the streets, where it belongs!’ Max got up and made the pot of tea he’d been on the verge of demanding. This action - and the victory for their mother that it implied - was not lost on the two sets of twins, and little Lily, who’d been waiting to ask her father what the Japanese would do to them when they came to Melbourne. Now she knew that if she went on with her question, she’d be taking sides with her blustering father against her mother who seemed in some way Lily couldn’t understand to have her back to a wall. Confused, the youngest held her peace.

The boy twins discussed the war. ‘If it lasts so long that we have to join up, we ought to be able to halve the danger.’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Say I join up first. After a while, you take over. Hardly anyone can tell us apart. Then I take over from you. You take over from me. As far as the army knows, there’s one soldier. Each of us plays the part half time. Half the risk. What do you think?’ ‘Might work here. But what about when the unit’s sent overseas? You wouldn’t be able to swim back from Singapore, or Egypt, and swap with me, would you?’ ‘Could be a bit beyond me! Actually it wouldn’t even work here because you know how they catch blokes that go AWOL? The MPs see

43 a chap in civilian clothes, and he’s got the white line of his chin strap down his cheek. That’s the give-away and they grab him.’

The girl twins discussed the war. ‘What’s mother doing?’ ‘You mean no war talk at the table, and that?’ ‘And no swearing. Mum swears a lot in the kitchen. And she swears like a trooper when she’s arguing with dad.’ ‘She’s making a safe haven where the war doesn’t exist. Did you notice how angry dad was when she brought in the kerosene lamp and taped up the light switch? “What’s the point of this?” he roars.’ They both giggled, remembering the exchange. ‘Saving power for industry. Part of the war effort!’ ‘Every little bit helps!’ “Well, if you’re so concerned with the war effort, whyn’t you take out all the light bulbs and we could get around with candles? Have you thought of doing that?” “No! Do you think it would be a good idea?” ‘What is it she’s doing?’ ‘She’s playing along with what he does, but when he gets silly, she gets sillier.’ ‘And when she lights the lamp, she’s saying we’re safe when we’re in its light.’ ‘I hope we don’t have air raids. Lamps like that get knocked over and start fires.’ ‘I almost wish there would be air raids and fires. Di, the way things are, we’re never going to be able to grow up. We’re going to be stuck with Steve and Mark.’ ‘Back seat chaperones.’ ‘I don’t want a soldier who’s going to go off and leave me. And I don’t want one of these boys who are too frightened to leave school.’ ‘Looks like it’s sewing in the lamplight.’ ‘But not forever, dear God, not forever! Just stuck at home, never going out. Never ... you know.’

44 ‘What we need is a lamp that lights the whole world, but there’s plenty of dark spots for ... you know ...’

In the way of women who think they know these things, you think the child is female. I fancy you’ve thought of a name that you refuse to acknowledge, even to yourself, because it’s an optimistic name. The wildness of this place worries you, but consider: by placing ourselves in the wild, we’ve left two great hindrances behind. We’ve no divinities and their self-appointed priests to pester us, and we’re rid of the destructiveness of other humans. Consider: some hawker, some traveller, enters our clearing; they do so on our terms. Who else can claim that, that you have known? Consider, too, the clearing, as it gets larger, and the word: clear: who could improve on that simple notion? Clarity, clearness, a lifetime in a clearing; isn’t that something to be envied? Do you intend our children never to leave? The mind’s natural state is freedom. He’s content with himself for the moment; I’ve yet to find his weakness. He’ll show it one day without realising. He’ll do two things which are connected, a seamless whole, in his mind, but which, to me, will have a chasm between them. Then, one day, he’ll see the chasm, and fall. Or step back, weakened by what he’s seen. Do I wish that on him, when I’ve got his daughter, Hope, inside me? It’ll only take her a minute to run around his clearing; he’ll have to ringbark, and burn, to make room for her. This little space in me won’t hold her much longer. He’ll teach her to walk to the top of the divide without us, and find her way home. She’ll follow the stream back to the bald mountain, and follow it down again. It’ll lead her to the falls at the big bend where it turns for that other home, the sea. When she’s almost a woman and we’ve nothing left to give her, she’ll travel the track that brought us here, in the opposite direction, and one day she’ll be in the same place as I am, but far away: close, but far from here. And Giles? Giles will destroy until those he’s damaged turn on him. Knowledge is a curse. His ignorance keeps him content, and safe, for the moment.

45 Edna’s problem was one of hiding her despair from the children. She was to some extent able to focus the attention of Vernon, in his sub- intermediate year, on study; he would need, she told him, a good education if he was to play his part in building the postwar world. Stanley, on the eve of his teens, and Jessica, still at primary school, watched her more closely. Something was eating away at their mother, and it had to do with their father, but they were never witness to the origins of bruises, nor could they find words to offer her when she put her head on the table and sobbed. These scenes frightened them so much that they spent as much time as they could in the homes of their friends, whose parents could also disconcert them by asking, with a certain note in their voices, ‘How’s your mother?’ ‘Okay,’ they said, knowing that the bad feeling they had when they lied must have something to do with the bad feeling their mother carried all the time. Was mum lying? Not when she said she loved them, surely? Mum was too upright to lie; was it that she was carrying, and concealing, the lies of others? Whose? The house felt strange when their father entered in uniform. Sometimes, if they were near the phone and no parent was there to answer it, one of the children lifted the receiver to hear a curt voice demanding ‘Is Captain Rowe there? Get him please.’ These voices had to do with the terrible things on the front page of newspapers. The soldiers, in these pictures of destruction, or triumph, were supposedly all volunteers; a great many had already given their lives, and more were needed; that was what kept their father busy. Volunteers had to be persuaded. ‘Dad,’ they asked, ‘how do you get them to join up?’ Norman always skirted the question. When he spoke of the war, which was uncommon, he mentioned, in roughly equal measure, acts of extraordinary daring, and cases of breakdown. Desertions. Self- inflicted wounds. Soldiers running away. One night he brought home a photo which he insisted on showing the children, despite the distress it caused Edna. They gathered around, although none of them ever

46 touched him, if they could help it, when he was in uniform, to see a poor quality picture of a hand poking out of the ground, and a soldier wearing only boots and shorts, bending down to shake this hand. ‘It was a Nip,’ Norman, being Captain Rowe, said. ‘Buried beside the Kokoda trail. As usual, the Nips didn’t do the job properly. Left his hand poking out. Our boys drove them back, but they were too busy to bury this ... properly, so every time they went past him, the boys’d say gooday.’ He smiled on his children. ‘Not very hygienic. You couldn’t recommend it. But what a fantastic fighting spirit those boys have got!’

Annie weights the earth down this morning, walking through the forest like a heavy, flightless bird. How round she is! Am I destructive too, in wanting a place for my children? Already I imagine them running through these trees, shy as rabbits, and coming to the call of my gong. I must have a gong. Chimes I can do without; the wind is always speaking here. I want them to know all the signs and sounds of nature, but there must be one central call to answer. Am I that call? The wish that creates that call? The yearning that creates in them, by counter-reaction, a deeper yearning, for home and safety? Will I ever let them go, once their lives are established? Am I another Giles, wanting to hold what I have? My lot is change, subversive in this little principality. Metamorphosis. Look at me; one swelling to become two, most myself when producing another. Nothing lives forever. We dragged down two of these trees to make a home. Their seed spills like dust on the dirt and replacements begin their struggle. For every giant standing, millions of seeds fell on unresponsive earth, or blew on the rancorous wind. Not many birds nest here. They visit and fly away. I love the black cockatoo, with its yellow patch half hidden; I love the melancholy of its cry. I love the happiness of seeing blossom, nuts and twigs littering the ground where it’s been busy. I love the busy-ness of everything. I must have a garden,

47 I want a harvest. It amuses me that when I try to grow vegetables the animals nibble my plants. What hope? Annie is heavy this morning, moving slowly between the trees.

Nell, George and Yatty’s youngest, opened the door to a heavy knock one morning. Two men in worn, shiny suits were on the verandah. ‘Department of Manpower,’ they announced. ‘We’re here to interview a Mister Michael Bowden.’ Nell went to the kitchen. ‘Two men want Michael. They look like trouble to me. What’s he done?’ Yatty ignored the question and went to the door. ‘You’ve got a son who’s a musician,’ they challenged her. Tom, who’d been playing his clarinet at The Dug-out, a club much frequented by service men and women, was upstairs asleep. Yatty thought quickly. Her brother Max, or brother in law Norman, or both, were behind this. ‘There’s a little bit of confusion here,’ she said. ‘Come through.’ She led them to the kitchen. ‘If you’d just like to stand here at the door for a moment, you’ll hear someone who lives here practising. On no account disturb her; she’s a professional musician. I just need to speak to my daughter for a moment; she’s home from school today, but she has to keep up with her study.’ She left them to make fools of themselves while she sent Nell upstairs to watch Tom’s door. When she came back the shiny suits were banging on the door of the stable. The viola broke off for a moment as Helen called ‘Go away!’ They banged louder. ‘Go away will you!’ They started to drag the heavy door open. Yatty rushed across the garden as an angry Helen appeared. ‘Who the hell are you? Clear off! Who are they Yatty?’ ‘They’re two very confused gentlemen from the Manpower Department. They’ve been given misleading information by people who should have known better. This ...’ she indicated Helen ‘ ... is a family friend who plays in the Victorian Symphony Orchestra.

48 Michael Bowden, my son, is a lens grinder and trainee optician and at this moment, he’s at his father’s plant in the city. It’s a restricted occupation, as you ought to know, and I think you should go there right away, just to satisfy yourself that he’s there.’ The two of them looked at each other in some confusion. ‘I assume you would realise that players in the nation’s leading orchestra are not normally interrupted while they’re practising?’ They apologised to a stony Helen. ‘Come with me and I’ll give you the address.’ In the kitchen she wrote on a pad, then led them to the verandah. ‘This is where you’ll find my son. And I’d just like to say that I think you got your information from a most unreliable source, and I want you to promise me that once you’ve been to Bowden Optics you’ll let whoever sent you know that the information you were acting on was tainted. To be frank, certain people who are no better than they should be, wanted to use the Manpower Department on their side in a certain family matter, and the less said about that the better.’ The bums of their suits, as they left, were the shiniest part of all. Yatty closed the door, then called to Nell that they’d gone. When she went to the kitchen, she could hear that Helen wasn’t playing. She sat in the garden, waiting for her to come down. At the sound of Helen’s shoes on the old wooden stairs, she started to sob. ‘It’s got into the family,’ she told herself. ‘My own brother could do that?’ Helen sat beside her. ‘Were those morons after Tom?’ Yatty nodded. ‘It’s getting very dirty.’ Yatty nodded, thinking. ‘I won’t have him going into hiding. He’s got a right to a normal life. But he plays at The Dug-out. Servicemen see him all the time.’ ‘That might be his best protection. Them thinking he’s one of them.’ ‘That could be. But my problem, not that it’s as big as Tom’s, is that I have to decide what I’m going to do about Max and Norman. If

49 you fight dirty, you get dirty yourself. If you don’t fight dirty, the wrong people tend to win.’ ‘That’s the world’s problem at the moment. It makes playing the viola look pretty foolish.’ Yatty, who often wondered about Helen and Michael’s relationship, and how it seemed to be stronger for being built on impermanence, said, ‘No, never stop the music. Once there’s no music there’s nothing worth living for. Get up there and get on with your practice!’ Helen smiled at her briskness. ‘I can’t. My hands are still trembling. You ring George and Michael, and warn them about what’s on the way, and I’ll make us a sandwich.’ Yatty acknowledged the suggestion. ‘I think we could let Tom sleep a bit longer, don’t you?’

You are like an underworld when you give birth. Like the hot mud springs of New Zealand. The babe emerges from what can only have been a stifling place, however secure, into clear air, and yells. People say this is a cry of pain on entering the world; I say it’s a cry of relief. Wouldn’t you yell if you’d entered the arena where life fights its way towards clarity? This little one, so sickly that I wonder how many days she’ll last, seems not to like what she sees. Was I right about a girl? How is it made between the legs? The female cleft, my love. One of the two curses available. There’s not much choice.

The last letter George and Yatty got from Adrian came from the Dutch East Indies. Numerous deletions had been made with scissors, but they gathered that his unit was on the verge of being over-run, and that he expected soon to be a prisoner. Only the Red Cross would be able to get through to him then, if anyone could. ‘I feel as if he’s been swallowed up,’ Yatty told her husband. ‘I know he’s still alive, but he’s disappeared. I haven’t been able to contact him for ages.’ She touched her brow. ‘I wonder if he feels separated from us? I think he does. I think he’ll still fight on when he’s a prisoner, because he hasn’t finished

50 fighting. That only comes when you’re at peace with yourself. I wonder how far away that peace is for him?’ The guards on Adrian’s ship handed out frequent bashings. Rations were meagre. Adrian was at the head of the food queue one morning when an insolent Japanese spat in the rice. Adrian punched him. The Japanese slipped to the deck, then got up, reaching for his rifle. Adrian knocked him down again. Other guards arrived. A brawl broke out. Prisoners, cooks and guards battled each other in a wild mêlée. An officer blew a whistle. More guards rushed up, swinging batons. Some prisoners, protected from the guns by the presence of Japanese in the flurry, tried to drag the man Adrian had felled to the side and throw him overboard. The officer blew his whistle sharply, shouted, and the Japanese began to extricate themselves from the fight. Order of a sort was restored when the prisoners were surrounded by rifles and bayonets. The officer moved to the edge of the prisoners, watched, now, by the Colonel in charge of the boat. The officer, sword in hand, indicated five prisoners who were dragged, screaming and struggling, from their fellows. Then the Colonel gave orders. The food disappeared. The prisoners were forced to line up on one side of the boat. Machine guns separated them by a line of fire from what was going to happen. It was a Saturday morning. Yatty was washing dishes. Suddenly she called loudly. ‘George! Come to me, please. Quickly! Hurry please George!’ He rushed in from the garden. ‘What is it?’ She touched her chest, then her hand slipped down to her stomach. ‘I think I’m going to die!’ She was pale. He felt her brow, her pulse. ‘No you’re not. I don’t know what it is, but you’re not ... Lie down for a minute, I’ll get you a cup of tea, and I’ll ring the doctor.’ Even more disturbing than her agitation was her complete passivity as he led her, half-carried her, to their bed. The voice of the Japanese Colonel carried well. ‘You were warned about discipline. The punishment will be another warning.’ His English could be understood. The menace in his Japanese was also clear. He smiled as he gave orders to the Filipino sailors who crewed

51 the boat. There was a delay while they went below, and returned, to the amusement of the Colonel and surprise of the Australians, dragging five wool bales, on which could be seen, stencilled, BOONOKE, DENILIQUIN. Another order in Japanese and the five selected troublemakers were tied to these bales, clad only in knee-length shorts. ‘When we took over this boat in Singapore, we found this wool. Now we find a use for it.’ Another order, and five guards stepped forward with bayonets fixed. The Colonel lifted his sword and said something solemn. The sun was high above the tropical sea. Guards had their rifles directed at the lines of prisoners who, knowing very well what was going to happen, began to sicken. ‘Stand still and don’t show them any feeling,’ said an officer. ‘Our turn’ll come another day.’ The Colonel ordered him to be silent. ‘If you can’t bear to look,’ the officer went on, ‘shut your eyes. But it’s better to look. You’ll know what you have to pay’em back for.’ Most of the Australians looked as five soldiers from a land of ancient warrior codes lunged at their bound and helpless victims, who screamed, and continued to scream, as bayonets ripped into them again and again. A roar of rage came from the mouths of the prisoners, standing stock-still under the guns of the loathed, the hated captors. The bayoneting went on until there was no more screaming, and the hessian bales were saturated with blood. ‘I’ve rung Doctor Flack,’ George said, coming to the bed. ‘He’s just finishing morning surgery. He’ll be here in twenty minutes.’ His wife wasn’t listening. She was staring at something straight in front of her. George felt there were people in the room that he couldn’t see. Yatty stiffened, sitting up straight against the wall. George felt his body chill. ‘Yes, I see,’ Yatty said. ‘I think I already knew. Thank you.’ The vision began to disappear, of the fourth of her children, a male whose lower trunk had been despoiled by the entry and exit marks of steel, and whose only garment, a pair of shorts, was dripping with the blood that had been his life. Four figures, four wingless angels, tilted his head back so that she could see that he had died screaming with pain and hatred, unable to defend. As the vision faded, the four who’d brought

52 the son to the mother, looked on her sternly, tenderly, their eyes saying, ‘This is the worst you will have to bear. You will go on.’ She even felt they were saying to her - but they vanished as she received the message - ‘We will see to it that you go on.’ ‘It was Adrian,’ she whispered. ‘They brought him for me to see.’ ‘What was he like?’ She said nothing. He knew it had been horrible. A door opened upstairs. Tom came down in pyjamas. Michael rushed in from the stable, Helen following. ‘Did you feel something just then?’ Michael said. ‘I felt I got a message. Some people seemed to rush past me. I had this feeling that I should have known who they were!’ Yatty’s eyes were still fixed where the vision had been. ‘You did. It was Adrian. Some people brought him back to show me. It’s strange, I felt I already knew them. Where’s Karen? I want her beside me. And Nell. All of us that are left.’ ‘They’ve gone up to the shop for bread,’ George said. ‘They won’t be long.’ Those that were standing sat on the bed. ‘They were there,’ George pointed. ‘That’s where your mother was looking.’ A silence fell on them. They’d learned in a way that couldn’t be discussed. Then Karen, her unborn child, and Nell came back without the bread. ‘Something told me we had to get back,’ Karen explained. ‘Your mother saw a vision of Adrian,’ George told her. His face was tight. ‘Could you tell us what you saw, mother?’ Karen asked. ‘When you’re ready?’ ‘I’ll be ready in a minute,’ Yatty said. ‘I want us to hold him while he’s still with us. This will be the last time we’ll all be together. We won’t be able to hold him much longer, because it’s not something we can do, but he was here in the room. How wonderful that they brought him. They knew he needed help.’

How she loves the child, walks it and walks it, showing it the earth it won’t be seeing long. How lightly she skips through the forest, across the clearing and into the forest again, much too soon after the birth, but who could stop her? Who would want to stop her, even if it killed her? This walking, this demonstration, is her song.

53 The little eyes aren’t focussed yet, they only see blurs of blue sky, the fox-brown soil, the other browns of trees, and pipes of light streaming through the leaves. Does the blessedness in our clearing come out of Annie’s throat, singing to the babe, or has the child brought it from another place? Where did it come from? I can’t believe we have the power to do more than let them in. How do they arrange, in that other kingdom, who will enter where? Was there competition to come here? These blessed slopes, this calm divide, and eagle-gliding ranges are made significant by the presence of the babe. Annie knows its name, but keeps it locked secretly in herself. No, I think it’s clear; after desperation, she carries the embodiment of hope!

A bitter argument took place on the ship. The senior Australian officer insisted on a full sea burial, with weights to take the bodies to the sea bed, and, there being no flags, clean white material to wrap them in. The Japanese Colonel said nothing heavy could be spared, ‘unless you want some more bodies’, and there was no canvas. The commander of the dead men said, ‘I warn you. This war will be over one day, and when that day comes I will pursue you through every court in the world. You’ve just committed an act of unparalleled butchery, and now you want to throw the men you’ve murdered to the sharks. You’ll stop the ship, and we’ll hold a proper military burial.’ ‘That is not possible. These waters are too dangerous. There are submarines about. If the ship stops we are a good target. You will go down too.’ ‘I’m told you have sheets in your cabin. We’ll wrap the men in those.’ The Colonel denied it. The argument went on for hours. The bodies, cut free from the bales, lay on the deck uncovered. The prisoners, after much abuse and struggle, were forced below. Filipino sailors washed the deck. The ship sailed on, trailed, as the Japanese suspected, by a submarine.

And now in the night she holds it by the fire. When she feels its brow and it’s too hot, she brings it back, and lays it between us. I reach for its spirit but it’s surrounded by Annie; my support has an outer orbit. Where did it come from? Where

54 will it go? It’s already dying, though Annie won’t allow herself to think so. As it weakens she gives it more of her own energy, keeping it alive. She’s out of sidereal time, consuming herself to maintain it. She’s blooming, she’s haggard, and her eyes blaze with exhaustion. Bring the babe to lie between us, love, I have force to give it while you sleep. You’re slipping away from me, little one. I know you know I need you. You’ve lived before, has anyone ever willed your existence like this? Have you lived on other worlds, do you have voices calling you back? You’re mine because you made your claim on me; you have to stay. It’s a two-way bargain and you’re failing it. Do they hand out disappointments too, in that place that issued you? No guarantees? Are they fickle, vengeful, letting you loose for a time, till their jealousy consumes them, and they jerk you back into their miserly, capricious arms? Strange that the most alluring is the weakest. You’re my balloon, painted with a seraphic smile. I blow air in, but the universe of whimsy sucks it away. Silently, without a cry, the space behind the smile emp- ties, and the blessed lines, drawn elsewhere by handless clouds, crinkle and distort. You’ve already lost the identity of your name! Giles, my husband, I’ve given up! Lie beside me, my love. Put the child between us. We’ll share its departure. No one should leave unnoticed. I have a job with the shovel in the morning. Hope’s back in the arbitrary universe of traded souls; we have each other for comfort. There must be a marker, though; I see you, tomorrow, burning a board with the poker from the fire, and writing on it the four letters that sustained you. I see you chipping the board with an axe to give it a point, I see you driving it in the mound. It will be the first word ever written in this place. The birds tell us there’s only an hour till sunrise. Sleep now, my love. Keep the little one company in sleep.

The submarine commander upped the periscope. The prison ship lay between it and the moonlight, an inviting silhouette.

55 The only Australians not locked below were two officers allowed to keep vigil over their dead. When the torpedo hit, they hid themselves before their captors could start looking for them. As the ship began to list, conscripted sailors and Japanese guards busied themselves with life- boats, ignoring the voices bellowing through the steel doors, ‘Let’s out you stinking bastards!’ The first lifeboat was lowered, and the second, crowded and confused. A struggle was developing among the guards for places in the third and fourth boats; the ship was carrying far more men than it had been designed for. The officers fled their hiding place for the door where the hammering was loudest, and forced it open. Desperate prisoners spewed out, determined to take the boats off their captors. Men flung each other all ways, brawling in the moonlight for survival. Japanese in the fourth boat were dragged out by crazed prisoners, and thrown into the water. Prisoners got themselves into the third boat also, where captors and captives battled for possession. Shots were fired from hand guns, knives flashed in the moonlight. The battle was still rageing when someone began to lower the boat. When the fourth boat hit the water, the ship was sinking by the stern. ‘Row you bastards for your lives, the fucking thing’ll suck us under!’ They rowed clumsily, standing up, kneeling, heaving and panting, until they felt they were far enough away. The sea was calm, their view of the ship good. It went down steadily, until only the deck where the killings had taken place was standing vertically above the water. The five bodies, and the two officers, were in the water. The troops in the overcrowded lifeboat were to some extent sustained by the presence of each other, and the lingering presence of the ship they’d abandoned. Then it sank. Someone in the bow called out, ‘All right, let’s find out who’s here. Name, rank, and platoon, call’em out. We’ll start at the front.’ He identified himself. As the call got closer to the back, an agitated figure pushed men aside, trying to jump into the water. ‘It’s a fucking Nip! Grab him!’ He was tied up, and passed to the bow to

56 spend his last night in the bottom of the boat with the feet of his captors prodding him. Dawn allowed them to study him. He was the soldier who’d killed Adrian. There was a discussion about what they’d do with him. If he’d understood what they were planning they’d have prolonged the torment, but they decided he didn’t know what they were saying. ‘We’ll give him till sun-up, so we can all get a good view.’ As the sun rose with suitable majesty on the ocean, someone took the knife they’d taken from him, and jabbed him in the thigh. Blood came from the wound. ‘That should do the trick. Just wait till there’s a bit more!’ Despite his struggles, the man was pushed over the side, his bleeding leg in the water. For a minute nothing happened, then two sharks could be seen, circling. The Japanese, aware of them, tried to get back in the boat. A second knife jab increased the bleeding. The sharks closed in. Shouting soldiers urged them on. ‘Go for him! Get him! Rip his guts out!’ And more, much more: they wanted the evil that had been done to them given back. Those closest to the Japanese could see the shocks run through his body at every attack. The sharks became wilder as they tore more of his flesh away. Amazingly, he was able to retain some grip on the boat with one elbow, until one of the sharks leapt out of the water to seize his arm. Then, in a welter of blood and frenzied swirling of sharks, he disappeared. One of the sharks flung itself out of the water at the boat, causing panic. ‘Bring the fucking oars up here, hit’em if they try to do that!’ A second shark made a lunge, and landed in the bow. Men went down in terror. Some flailed at the danger with oars. For a moment the shark engulfed the consciousness of everyone in the boat, then it twisted itself with an energy as terrifying as its teeth, and flipped itself back to the water. ‘Row you bastards, row for your fucking lives. Get away from the blood before there’s any more of the cunts around us!’

57 3 In which an old man dies in the arms of four mysterious women, and a young man throws his life to the winds

The male cluster, my love, this time. Then the naming belongs to you. When I look into this face I find myself thinking of my uncle George, who lived at Lizard Town, in Cornwall. He had a daughter in Falmouth and another in Penzance, and as he grew old they asked him to live with them. Stubborn as a mule, he stayed in his hut and died there, looking out to sea. Foolishness or vision, how shall we account for him? We won’t, we’ll give his name another run in this forest where a five minute walk would have lost him. The little fellow’s going to spend his life in the bush. I’ll teach him its ways. Your eyes remind me of the danger you see in the male. It’s all innocence at the moment; I’ll watch for the power, as it comes. The animosity’s already in you; you’ll give it to the boy.

When Karen had her baby, Helen and Michael were the first to visit. Helen stroked the tiny fingers, then said to Karen, ‘What was it like?’ The new mother was full of energy. ‘For a long time there, I wanted to die, it was hurting so much. I thought he was stuck, and we’d both die. Then he came. I can’t describe it. All you know is, you mustn’t resist. Then there he was, and I had this feeling of importance. It had happened to me!’ Overwhelming her modesty was radiance. ‘And what’s his name?’ This was Michael. ‘Jesse. It’s one of his father’s names. I’m going to tell him how he was conceived. One day he might want to find his father.’ She looked at the few sleek black hairs on Jesse’s scalp. ‘Strange to think he’s got

58 a journey in front of him, to find what’s missing.’ It crossed her mind to wonder what Helen and Michael wanted their lives to bring them. ‘What about you two? Are you going to follow suit?’ She wouldn’t have asked if she hadn’t been on a high. ‘I think I’m too selfish to let myself be upstaged by a baby,’ Michael said. Helen looked uncertain. Karen, concentrating on the baby, and only loosely aware that she was troubling them, ruled the scene. And more so when Yatty and George swept in, tenderly embracing their daughter, identifying themselves to their grandson, and sweeping a diffident Michael and Helen into their enthusiasm. Yatty wanted to know about the birth. Karen answered shyly, men being present. Michael, finding difficulty in rising to the occasion, said he’d go and get the camera. ‘Do you have to do that, son?’ Yatty asked. ‘It could keep till tomorrow.’ But George thought it was a good idea. ‘One day this little fellow will want to know what his mother looked like on the day she had him. And we mightn’t be able to describe her.’ He looked with love on his daughter, wondering what stresses might erode her beauty. When Michael left the hospital, Helen went with him, wanting to get away. They walked to the stable, where no cleaning had been done for days. While Michael rummaged for the camera, Helen looked at the mess. ‘What Karen’s got now,’ she said, ‘is a lot of things she’s got to do. She made the big decision to have the kid, and that takes lots of little decisions out of her hands. It’s tempting, in a way.’ ‘Feeling clucky are we?’ ‘No. Dissatisfied with myself.’ ‘And that rubs off onto me?’ He was judging her slyly. ‘What’s the point of talking? We’re sick of each other.’ Desire stirred in him. ‘Oh no we’re not.’ ‘I’m not getting into bed with you now. You’ve got to go back, and I have to go back with you. I’m sick of bloody appearances. We appear to be so bloody Bohemian, with anybody who can scrounge a bottle of whisky thinking they’ve got a right to drink it here, and we think if we surround ourselves with people who live on the fringe of this shambles

59 that’s consuming the world then we’ll never face anybody’s judgement, but what about our own judgement? The way we look to ourselves?’ He smiled an elfin smile of self-satisfaction. ‘Can’t you ever be serious?’ He imitated a steam train hooting. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘I’d rather be childish than serious. Look what all the serious people are doing right now.’ Contempt pressed on the borders of her affection. He put his hands to his mouth, hissed as if letting off steam, hooted again, and whistled. ‘Jesus, Michael!’ ‘I’ve got some pictures to take. You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.’ ‘Of course I have to come. You’re so infantile. Yatty treats me as her daughter because you’re her son. You can carry on childishly because you know she can’t withdraw her need for you. You must have worked that out very early on. But I’m a woman, so I have to take her side when I know she’s not happy, especially with you. She doesn’t like the disorder of this place, and she’d hate it if she knew what some of the people you allow in here are like. But I know, and I can’t help seeing it her way, sometimes. Most of the time.’ ‘Mother Judgement!’ She ignored him. ‘And Karen having a baby makes me feel I’m only a doll-woman for you to sleep with, and photograph ... and by the way, I’m not posing with my clothes off again.’ By now he’d found the camera and checked that it had film. ‘Coming?’ She nodded grimly. He went into his train act again, making her feel keenly the immaturity in herself which couldn’t force maturity on him, and went grudgingly back to the hospital.

It’s weeks since I visited my mountain; how domestic I’ve become. Annie thinks our next is coming. Let it keep clear of this place. Climbing in cloud is always satisfy-

60 ing. A shrouded summit and a clear summit are happy alternatives. If only one could dispel the clouds, or call them, with a wave of the hand, but the power that brought down the lightning isn’t here today. I must be humble; Annie would smile at that. She smiles rarely these days. George will grow up knowing that his mother thinks he has something terrible to do; my murder. But I’m invincible on this height, whether shrouded in mystery or revelling in completeness. A peak where everything can be seen, where the water seeping through the grass will enter the distant ocean: beginning and end, and each visible from the other. Bald mountain, though the bush is beginnning to creep up on it. Wisdom’s chair, and serenity’s nest, long desired by me, striven for and possessed, where I’m out of the world and in it, part of it and separate, divinely passive and humanly poised, where all rifts are closed by the completeness of vision ... He’s disappeared, leaving me with this exercise book he brought back from Swift’s Creek. For my thoughts, a journal. Giving me a place of my own, he resumes his separateness. He’ll be on the mountain, communing with whatever it is in himself that can’t stand being with me. Spirituality and brutality spring out of the same spot in his psyche. How strange to be Giles. And look now - my book has writing in it.

The fortunes of war turned inexorably. The Russian front was a disaster for the Germans, whose homeland was under air attack. Dresden was fire-bombed. The reconquest of Asia began. Attempts were made on Hitler’s life. The spectacles, rings and gold fillings of the dead made little piles in concentration camps. In secret bunkers and institutes, scientists, some of them carrying cyanide pellets for instant death, developed weapons and counter-weapons. Desperate Japanese took off on kamikaze missions, without enough fuel to return. Jesse Bowden sucked his mother’s milk. Jesse Bowden’s father died in an air crash, on the last of his secret missions.

‘Michael, why are you so fascinated by women’s tits?’

61 ‘It’s a game. We make you cover them, then we try to uncover them. It keeps you on the defensive. The erogenous zones are war zones. Clever, eh? We choose the battlefields. When are you going to strike back?’ ‘You’ve been brooding a lot lately, haven’t you. Coming to bed later and later. You don’t really want me, do you?’ ‘So many questions. The fightback’s begun!’ ‘Put your arms around me. Whisper in my ear. Don’t tell me you love me. You don’t. Tell me what’s going on inside you. I’m not letting you go until you do. Whisper.’ ‘I’m not saying anything. So you have to keep holding me. Which makes you my prisoner, which is just how I like it.’ ‘I’m only a consolation prize for you, aren’t I. What you have to hang onto because you can’t have what you really want.’ ‘This is starting to hurt.’ She pulled his head against her breast. He sucked tenderly. ‘Say what you really want.’ ‘Mmm.’ ‘That can’t be all you want.’ ‘It’s not.’ He began to rub her on the inside of the leg. ‘No, don’t. I want to talk seriously with you.’ ‘Oh God. I hate serious talks.’ ‘Not so loud. I want you to whisper.’ He hooted very loudly; his steam train hoot, an insult. ‘Jesus, Michael!’ He hooted again, even more loudly. ‘Jesus, Michael!’ She snatched the bedding and hurled it down the stairs. ‘No, fuck you! You can have the bedding. I’m going into the house.’ ‘There’s only Adrian’s room, you keep out of there!’ They shouted at each other. When she stretched out on the sofa with her back to the room, he came downstairs, covered her, and lay on the floor beside her.

62 Annie’s journal The weakness of my position is that I can understand his position. He tries to live as if he’s not subject to change. How foolish, yet how tempting. In the mornings, my waking glance is to the fire. Then I get water. The springs are as pure as he promised. We toast our bread on the fire, we drink our milk, which we leave outside for the cream to rise. Sometimes it’s frozen. I know the seasons now, the changes; the storms, snow, the lightning fires of summer. When he brought cows I thought they’d wander away, but they stay close to the salt, and he milks them. He makes his deep-chested moan, and they come to him; the sight of them straggling into our clearing makes me feel that our poverty is richness inverted. Having little, our imaginations need no more. But the loneliness, which I never feel more keenly than when I write in this book. What a subtle means of torture he hit on! Every time I pick it up, I confirm that I’m alone. I’m not even free to go mad; I’ve got George, who runs away, trying to get to the edge of the clearing. When he falls over I have to pick him up. It’s the joke of a tiny person. There’s another inside me, which I think is male again, and there’s the strange imprisonment of my name. When the teacher stopped here on his way to Brookville, he called me Mrs Wainwright. I looked at him blankly, and he said, rather coarsely, as if being a loose woman might make me available, ‘You are married, I take it?’ I said I was, and over the cup of tea that I was giving him, I reflected on the completeness, the perfection, of the trap. Despite the strange dwelling, with its floor of trampled termite mounds, I was a respectable woman. The lust diminished in his eyes. ‘Though I don’t wear a ring,’ I said, ‘because we couldn’t afford it, I am Giles’ lawfully wedded wife.’ At this hint of poverty, his eyes changed again; he’d guessed we had no title to this land. ‘He’s a man,’ I warned him, ‘who doesn’t brook interference.’ And since he was thinking about how he might get the place off us, I said, ‘Giles has often told me how easy it would be to make someone disappear.’ Having got him scared, I went on, ‘There are abandoned diggings where it would be easy to drop a body.’

63 When he left, I walked sociably with him to the edge of the clearing, carrying George. On the edge of the bush, the burly young man, with a beard almost as big as Giles’, turned to me quite formally. ‘Mrs Wainwright, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. There’s not many educated people in these wilds. If I can ever be of assistance, send a message to one of the settlements I visit.’ I watched him walking up the track to the mountain, and I felt less lonely, not so much for the visit as for the knowledge that there was someone whose loneliness was greater than mine. He was longing for a wife. I wept. I had despaired of my prison until I found someone who wanted to be in it.

Karen told her baby creation stories that began, ‘When I met your father, I was an ignorant virgin. I knew Macbeth and Chaucer’s Prologue, and I knew nothing. He soon had me where he wanted me - in bed with my legs apart. If you try to be that sort of man, I’ll fight you. I might even do something about these.’ She tickled his genitals. The child gurgled. ‘Pleases you, doesn’t it. Well, someone will do it for you one day, but don’t spoil it for them with a bad outcome ... ‘ She reflected; it was her policy that Jesse hadn’t been a bad outcome. ‘ ... an unwanted outcome, I mean ... ‘ But he wasn’t unwanted, he was loved by the whole household; everyone but his father, who’d been listed as missing in action. And had been wanting in much else; it was a balance, in her mind, as to whether her steely-stern awareness of what had been done to her would protect her against another conniver of the same stamp. ‘I’m keeping away from them as long as I can,’ she whispered to Jesse, kissing his cheeks and brow as sleep closed in. ‘For the time being, little darling, you’re the only man I’ve got!’

Annie’s journal He was in an extraordinary state when he came home last night. He’d been away all day, on his mountain I presumed, and I expected I’d have to do the milking when the cows straggled home. But

64 I was in no hurry to start because it had been stormy, and there were still clouds rolling about as if they couldn’t find their way out of a barrel of anger. Then I heard that moan just behind the chimney; how he’d got that close without me being aware of him, I don’t know. It unsettles me if he gets inside my guard. I suspect his meditations up there have to do with finding ways through my perceptions. Anyway, the moan: more enticing than ever, in an animal sort of way, it was full of angry energy, as if he’d tapped the storm. I was holding George at the table, feeding him, when Giles came in. The boy quickened with fear, then his father, realising, shed his power and knelt by the fire to put the kettle on. He made me tea, which was unusual, then sat beside me, pleased with himself. I think he felt he’d devised a new protection. I think he’s been experimenting with shedding mortality for transcendence, and the means to reach this state is anger. At somebody, something? No, I think it’s an indulgence in perfect, almost dispassionate, rage. Storms are frightening, but the way to overcome fear is to side with the storm against yourself. I gave my self-hatred to the storm, and was free of it. Now I have to find objects of attachment, embodiment, for all my feelings, and I’ll be the first free man to walk these mountains. You, Annie, will be the object of my tenderness. Don’t quiver when I touch you; I warned you as we came here that I was your unavoidable fate.

As the war turned against the Germans and Japanese, George Bowden found himself studying his feelings closely. How truly pacifist was he? It seemed to him that the axis was getting its just deserts. Could it be, that in the madness, one side had more of the right than the other? Could he convince himself that the allies didn’t - or did - deserve some punishment equal to that being inflicted on the two countries his country had learned to hate? If he couldn’t resolve these questions, was he anything more than a man who’d wanted to protect himself, and then to protect his offspring? His family noticed that he was sombre at meals, and slower in his movements. He could no longer distance himself from the war by con- demning it. And a terrible yearning seized him to return to the time

65 when Adrian was alive. He went in search of photos. In a drawer on his wife’s side of the bed, he found the pictures taken at Waratah Bay in the threatened, but still peaceful summer of 1937 - 38. He was studying them when Yatty came in. She sat beside him. ‘You’re not a believer like I am, George. You’re a sceptic. Mind you, I don’t believe much either, but I need to believe. So I do. And I admire you for your disbelief. Remember the time the Reverend Hagenauer came to the door? You didn’t know I was listening. You said, I’ve made a point of studying what your church says, and if that’s the best you can think of, don’t come around bothering me! I put a hanky to my mouth so you wouldn’t hear me laughing. I could never have said it, but it needed to be said.’ He smiled. ‘The human race is so childish ... ‘ ‘I know darling.’ He stopped. ‘I’m glad you found the pictures. There’s things you need to know.’ He looked at her gravely. ‘You see the four strangers in this one? The people Michael found at their painting camp? Well, they’re not ordinary people, like you and I. They were the ones that brought Adrian to me, in the vision I had that morning. I knew at the time that they were familiar, but it took me ages before I realised where I’d seen them. These two were on his right, and these two were on his left. This one and this one lifted his head so I could see his face.’ He listened without comment. ‘Now there’s something else about them which disturbs me, but it also reassures me. Please don’t be a sceptic, George. I need you to have an open mind.’ She put in his hand the second picture, the one Michael had taken. ‘Look very closely, and tell me what you see.’ He studied it. ‘We’ve all aged. More than the ... what is it, seven or eight years? The war’s got inside us and aged us too. But the main thing I see is Adrian. I can’t take my eyes off him, and I can’t bear it!’ ‘Don’t cry darling. There’s something else you’ll see after a while, when you’re able to look past our boy. You see the four visitors? The painters. They’ve moved. They’re not in the same places. This one,

66 that used to have her hand on Edna’s neck, is standing beside Luke now, looking at him. And this young one, who used to be beside Adrian, is beside Uncle Bill. And these two have moved too. I can’t exactly remember where they were before, but I know they’ve moved. ‘Where’s the negative?’ ‘It’s disappeared. The other one, the one with just the family, the one they took, is in your picture file, but there’s no negative for this one. How could there be? It’s going to change all the time. They’re looking after us. That’s what they told me when they brought me my boy!’ He wanted to believe her, and he didn’t. His scepticism had protected him long and well. ‘There’s only one thing to do,’ he said. ‘That’s to make a sketch of where everyone’s placed in the picture, and that’ll have to do us until we can get a copy made, and a fresh negative, and we’ll take it out and look at it every now and then to see if you’re right. Though I’m damned if I can see how you could be.’ ‘The man of science! You do those things if you like. I’m worried about Luke and Bill. It’s ages since I heard from either of them.’ ‘You think that if one of these women is near one of us, in the picture, we’re in danger?’ ‘Half right, George; if they’re near us, we’re in their care.’ ‘You believe that?’ ‘That’s one thing I do believe in.’

This one looks like me, and will carry a discredited name. Robert. When I was in Swifts Creek a man with that name told me a story, expecting me to enjoy it. I despised him. In his story a man was taking his newly acquired wife to his property. After some hours of travelling, the horse pulling their cart stumbled. ‘One!’ the man called sternly. Some time later, the horse stumbled again. ‘Two!’ called the man. His wife was puzzled. At the gate of the property, the horse stumbled a third time. ‘Three!’ cried the man, picked up his rifle and shot the horse. The wife was horrified. She berated her husband for his cruelty. He listened to what she had to say, then, when she stopped, he cried sternly ‘One!’ You must appreciate that I do not like myself as I am. That Robert wanted to flatter me, thinking I would find his story

67 applicable. I restrained myself from knocking him down. Let him tell his story as often as he likes. Let him, as I know he will, cast me as his central character next time he tells it. And if his lying characterisation of me is accepted, so much the better. A lie is as good a mask as obscurity. This Robert can start with a handicap in his name, and spend a lifetime overcoming it. Bless you, my Robert. It’s true that we’re shaped by what we overcome, but without the struggle to emerge from the undesired state, we’re nothing. Thank you too, Robert of Swifts Creek, for showing me the ugliness of an ingratiating face.

The Japanese army provided itself with a comfort army of Korean women. Other armies equipped themselves with officers’ brothels and other ranks’ brothels. Death’s imminence gave urgency to passion. Bus terminals, ports and railway platforms saw desperate reunions and sobbing departures. Lovers clung. Drunken soldiers searched for the comfort of sex. Marriages were postponed, or ruined. The interven- tion of the war’s needs between individuals and what they thought they longed for created strange distortions. People hid those it was death to be caught sheltering, while others betrayed those closest to them. Whole populations said, ‘When this war’s over ... ’, not really wanting a return to undramatic, unheightened lives. An air of melancholy settled on the East Melbourne house, and of decadence on the stable. A pacifist household is defensive in war. Yatty woke every night, and sat by the bedroom window, until George pleaded with her to lie beside him. She said these sessions of silent lamenting were her only way of keeping the evil out of herself. One night he saw her take the photos from the bedside drawer to study in the moonlight. Sensing that he was awake, she said, ‘I thought I could trust my instincts, but I was wrong.’ ‘What did you think you’d see?’ ‘I thought I’d find them gathered around Michael.’ George hadn’t told her that Michael was becoming a liability at work, arriving late, reading the paper when he should have been super- vising. ‘It’d take more than those four to make him work.’

68 She caught the bitterness. ‘What’s wrong?’ Before he could answer they heard a powerful bass voice burst into song at the back of their house. ‘Who’s that?’ ‘What a voice!’ George got out of bed, following Yatty to the window at the end of the passage. The lights were still on in the stable. ‘It sounds Russian.’ ‘Who on earth can he be?’ When another voice in the song answered the first, the bass switched into falsetto, an eerie, plaintive ascent from a bottomless pit of misery. Nothing like it had ever sounded across their once prosperous, now ill-kept suburb. ‘It’s uncanny. It bores into your heart.’ ‘Where does Michael find these people?’ As they stood speculating, the door beside them opened. It was Karen. ‘Who’s that singing?’ She came to the window. Her parents could feel in her, as they waited to see if the singing would resume, a reopening of expectation and hope. ‘We’ll have to ask Michael in the morning.’ ‘How curious,’ Karen said. ‘I was wide awake, waiting for something, and it came.’ Her mother, after years of anxiety and gloom, felt dark and aged, beside her moonlit daughter. ‘It was a song of pain,’ Karen said, ‘and it made me happy.’ The stable door opened. As they watched, Michael and Helen came out with a small self-con- sciously beautiful man between them, of indiscernible age, followed by an entourage of noisy drunks. The visitors, led by the singer, slipped down the side path to the street, with Michael watching indulgently, until Helen drew him back. The door closed. The lights went off. The upstairs trio went back to bed, leaving the window, and the moon, to watch over what remained of the night.

Again? You are in your full fecundity, my love. It will be a mid-winter child.

69 Grigory - Michael called him Rasputin - had lived a crowded life. ‘If you add up all the things he’s done, he’s a hundred and ten years old!’ ‘Michael,’ said Helen, ‘he’s the most consummate liar!’ ‘Quite possibly,’ said Michael. ‘Either way, he’s a real spellbinder.’ ‘Have you noticed who’s caught in his spell?’ Karen had begun visiting the stable, even drinking a little, whenever she heard the distinctive voice. He knew she was waiting for him to sing. He told her stories. His father had been a doctor in Minsk, his mother a musician. She’d played the viola in the city’s opera orchestra. He hummed or whistled phrases she’d played; Helen took this as his challenge to her, because the repertoire familiar to his mother was voluminous. ‘You’ll never catch him out,’ Michael told her, after a night when his sister had hung on Grigory’s words. ‘He’s smart. He knows every note.’ Grigory’s father had taken the wrong view of the revolution, and had been forced to move to Kharkov, and then to Volgograd, where he’d had to act as a hospital orderly, while his wife, Katrina, gave les- sons to the children of the wealthy. When his father was arrested, Grigory had fled to Rostov, hung about the wharves, and got a job on a boat because its captain had fancied him. This pattern was repeated in his story. When he’d been captured by the Germans in the fighting near Odessa, he’d been picked out of a column of marching prisoners by a German general and given the job of translating captured docu- ments - by day; by night he gratified the general’s desire for his slender, Puck-like body. When the general was ordered back to Berlin, Grigory had found himself at the centre of intrigues among high-ranking offi- cials of the Reich. ‘To satisfy them all,’ he said, ‘I had to satisfy none. I became a master of enticement and withdrawal. But some of them were too important to refuse. There was one in particular who was very tender with me. He took me to Lyon, and then to Paris, and I could have anything I wanted so long as I pleased him. I asked him if he was jealous of me having a woman. ‘Nein, mein Schätzchen,’ he said, ‘as long as you come straight back to me afterwards.’ There was a very

70 famous singer I desired. Her husband was under arrest. My general indicated to her that if she would be kind to me, something could be done for him. She was very, very kind to me. Do you know who she was? She is Europe’s greatest singer of this role; you know it?’ In his haunting falsetto, he sang the descending melody of Tatiana’s letter scene. The stable filled with a sense, distorted by the change of vocal gender, of a world where passions could run to extremes. ‘You know it?’ Helen smiled. Karen shook her head. ‘You will. Now, tell me about yourself.’ Karen’s sense of story failed her. ‘You go on. I want to know everything about you.’

I am troubled by my duality of mind, but why? I see Annie going to the spring, her attention split between two boys, her own thoughts, and the one waiting to be born, but seemingly without division; can she really be united in that slowly swelling figure? Or is dichotomy her nature? Here, on my mountain, I’m restless today. The wildflowers bore me. Why do I need two places, here and home? Is some part of me still tagged with Cornwall, and calling me, though I never wanted to see it again? It was a mistake to give Annie that book. It encourages her to have thoughts she doesn’t share. But I have to give her privacy if I have this retreat, this throne: that, or demand possession I won’t give her in return. Strange that when I could have had it, I didn’t want absolute domination; tenderness floods in me, though she thinks me hard. Tenderness floods from my mountain, weeping water in two directions: at my back, our stream, our lifegiver; in front of me the rivulets, meeting, as if by chance, in fern-filled gullies, forming further and further alliances, a productive treaty of the ranges, finally signed, sealed and delivered to the pre-eternity of the lake, separated only by a strip of sand and scrub from ... This will be my fourth in four years. There’s no end to it, though there’ll be an end to me. My memory’s like a crowded cupboard, but one day it will be empty, and then there’ll be no cupboard at all. All that happens, all that we strove for and wept over, will be nothing. My children are born into nothing, except the active malevolence of their father, who wishes he could be tender, but marches in the opposite

71 direction. What if he’d met the teacher, walking away that day; would he have been jealous? Or would he have thought that no one living in his presence could have thoughts of anyone else? In his concern for a vantage point above time and world, he has no thought for George, Robert, and this one, which will be born, I think, on a day when snow surrounds our awkward, but courageous home. I can’t sense his name yet, but I see him between the trunks of my legs, paralleling the columns of the trees, and I admit the grandeur of Giles’ design. Perhaps the boys, finding their way slyly into his affections, will be able to open their father? How will I recognise that moment, if it comes? There’s only one answer. He’ll take us up the rising back of his mountain. When we’re together, eating and drinking on that secret top, we’ll know he’s found peace in sharing. Vision and flesh will be one. I fear my ideas have been tainted by the convent. I have far to go, and much to learn. Why can’t the sharing be here, instead of on high? Merciful God, if you are merciful, give me an answer to that, and let the child after this one be a girl; I have to have someone to share with!

Yatty and George heard a hammering on the front door. George went down. ‘Who is it?’ ‘It’s your Uncle Bill.’ ‘Bill! For heaven’s sake, come in. We haven’t seen you in ages. What’s got you up at this time of night?’ ‘Never mind that. Get Tom out of bed and tell him to pack. We’re moving him over to my place.’ ‘What’s all this about?’ ‘I’ve been having tea with Max and Muriel. Edna and Norman were there. The home front heroes. They’ve got a Department of Manpower order out on Tom. He’ll be taken into custody tomorrow, there’ll be a court hearing, and he’ll be conscripted to serve anywhere in the declared defence zone.’

72 Hearing the agitated voices, Yatty came to the top of the stairs. ‘Which means they can make him serve anywhere south of the equator, and once they get him into action they won’t be too fussy about where the line is.’ Yatty looked down on the grey, drawn old man, the one true soldier of the family. ‘Why are you doing this for him, Bill?’ ‘I’ve had a conversion, that’s about all you could call it. I’ll tell you about that another time. Get him out of bed and packed.’ Yatty knocked on Tom’s door and went in. ‘He can stay where I am for a while. It’s a bloody old warren of a place, and most of the fellas that live there are hopeless old bastards like me. No one’s going to look for him there. A mate of mine’s got a shoe factory. He’ll give him a job, cleaning at night. You’ll be able to see him. We’ll organise that later, when things settle down.’ ‘Settle down,’ George repeated sadly. ‘What are you Bill? Sixty- five? Have you ever seen any sign of things settling down?’ ‘That’s what hit me a couple of weeks ago,’ said Bill. ‘I’ve lived a life of madness, I’ve depended on madness to give me something to do, and then it hit me, this has got to stop! I’m not going along with this any more! I’ll tell you all about it later, if I can understand it. Get yourself dressed, George, then get the car around the front. Yatty!’ She appeared in Tom’s doorway. ‘Tell the young feller he’s not to bring his clarinet. That’s what really bugged’em,’ he said. ‘Max and Norman, I mean. He was playing the clarinet! Fair dinkum, if he’d been running a brothel they’d have thought it was a service!’

Grigory rationed his stories, tantalising Karen. Occasionally he sang - religious liturgies, folk songs, snatches of arias - bringing an abstracted, misty look into her eyes.

The Department of Manpower sent the two men who’d been made to look foolish on a previous occasion. Yatty confronted them at the door.

73 ‘You’d offer a pretty broad target if they got you anywhere near the shooting!’ When she refused to let them in, the Manpower men signalled to two policemen, waiting in a car. The cops had a search warrant. George, who’d stayed home from the plant, moved beside his wife. ‘I doubt if it’s legal, but we’ve got nothing to lose,’ he said, feeling belittled by his inability to keep them out. Karen, for the first time in months, was playing the piano as they came through, with Jesse squeezed on the stool beside her. Whispering her words, she was stumbling her way through Tatiana’s letter scene. One of the cops stood beside her. She stopped playing. ‘Sieg heil!’ She raised her right arm. One of the intruders wanted to know whose kid Jesse was. She raised her arm again. ‘Sieg heil!’ The cops were furious. One of them wanted to arrest her, but George intervened. ‘Yatty, go out the back with Karen for a couple of minutes. I want to get these people out as quick as I can. Please.’ Yatty was unwilling. Karen gestured to the door with an explicit thumb. The Manpower men tried to grab her. She spat at them. ‘Schwein!’ They accused her of being a Nazi traitor. George intervened again, talking non-stop. Eventually he persuaded the intruders to back off, and Yatty and Karen to go to the garden. Jesse was scared and had to be held in George’s arms. ‘I’ll escort you,’ he told the cops. ‘Don’t think you can hang around looking at everything in the rooms. Just satisfy yourselves that he isn’t here and get on your way.’ The search began, Jesse still clinging to his grandfather. In the garden, Yatty sat on her old cane chair, feeling broken. Helen, practising by the upstairs window, saw her and came down, leaving the stable door open. ‘Are they here already?’ she said to Yatty. ‘What are they doing?’ Through the open door, Karen could see Grigory sleeping on the sofa, her man of suffering who’d abandoned the luxuries, and the safety, afforded by his German lover. She went in. He’d slipped away from

74 the Ambassador on a trip to Madrid, found his way past innumerable guard posts en route to Cadiz, where, by favour of another sea captain, he’d got himself onto the first of several boats which had brought him to her city. ‘Grigory, Grigory,’ she whispered, covering him with kisses and crying for all the injustices which they would battle together, while in the lounge room of the big house, beside the recently vacated piano, Helen, whom the Manpower men well remembered, insisted that they leave the premises without further search. The cops, though still aggressive, were sullen, knowing they’d been beaten. ‘Someone tipped you bastards off,’ they grumbled. ‘We’ll find that fella too, and he’ll get ten years jail. As for your brother,’ they said to Helen, ‘we’ll have him in uniform before the week’s out!’ But they went. George put his arms around Helen, thanking her for being able to achieve, with her fiery presence, what he hadn’t been able to do. ‘I’m not sure who I was trying to protect,’ she thought, ‘and I’m not sure it was any sort of good idea, but I’ve done something, and I knew what I was doing, so I have to carry the consequences.’ In the garden, she sat with Yatty, and then George came out, holding the little boy. ‘It makes the house feel filthy to have had those people in it. Bloody Max and Norman! It sickens me to think of them causing that!’ Jesse wanted to know where his mother was. Telling him that his mother was upset, and needed to lie down for a minute, Helen took him in her arms, holding him across her shoulder so he couldn’t see into the stable where Karen had drawn her new lover’s arms around her while she lay on him, kissing that source of song, his fiercely-desired mouth.

That was your longest labour yet, my love, softened, though not for you, by the heaviest falls of snow we’ve seen. It started when you sent George to get me, and stopped, the little ones say, when you separated from this child. Its name? Is Nicholas, because this should be a Christmas scene, but we’re on the wrong side of the world for that. Our roof is holding well, our fire’s keeping the cold at bay;

75 some of the calves won’t go away from the chimney because it’s a source of warmth. I have to feed them just outside our door. When you cried out, they were curious ... I heard their calls. They seemed to be bellowing with my pain. They nuzzled me when I came out, bringing news. They know you’re of their kind, with the burden and chance of birth. Let me hold this Nicholas. Will he be a saint? A saint, I’m told, is a figure of heroic virtue. Where there’s no evil, there’s no virtue. He’ll have to travel further than I mean him to travel if he’s to become a saint! But perhaps he will. My aunt in Cornwall who bore your name - Annie - was full of tales of commoners, lay people, suddenly touched by divine inspirations. All fantasy, but if people believe things hard enough, they are inclined to happen, even if, in a capricious world, the miracle descends on someone else! Today the miracle is mine. Hand me the child. I wish to walk in the snow. George, you’ll have to walk. Robert, I’ll carry you. Your mother wishes to walk in the snow!

Karen wanted Grigory to live with her in the big house, but Helen warned her against it. ‘He’s a wanderer. You think he needs a home, but it’s the last thing he wants. He’s afraid of finding a home, because he’d have to stay there.’ ‘I want him to stay with me. He doesn’t have to stay forever, just long enough for me to suck all the mystery out of him. I have to know him inside out. There’s parts of his skin I haven’t touched yet!’ ‘You’re going to frighten him. He’s afraid of being known. His conversation is nothing but stories, spaced out by silences that almost scorch you. No wonder you’re fascinated, I’m fascinated myself, it’s such a dazzling act!’ Karen didn’t want to quarrel. She needed allies, most of all Helen and her brother, whose downstairs space was her only point of encounter with the Russian, but the word ‘act’ infuriated her, because it tore at her construction of her lover.

76 ‘It’s not an act! He loves me. Not as much as I love him, but I can feel the tenderness growing in him. He gives me more love every time I’m with him.’ ‘Does he say so?’ ‘He’s shy about making love with you two upstairs. When you shut the trapdoor last night, he opened my blouse and said, Anyone who walked away from this beauty ought to be certified.’ Helen sighed, and said, ‘I know what I’m doing is a case of Physician, heal thyself, because, as you must know, I’m not getting anywhere with Michael. He just won’t grow up. In fact, I think he’s going to make a career of immaturity, it’s about the only thing he’s good at ... sorry, that’s the cross I bear, and it means I shouldn’t be trying to tell you how to run your life, but if that’s what he said, I think you’re in danger. Have you spoken to George and Yatty about having him in the house?’ ‘Not yet.’ ‘Don’t. Has he ever picked up Jesse?’ ‘Lots of times. He says every man should have a son.’ ‘Is he careful about contraceptives?’ ‘Very.’ ‘What did he do when he opened your blouse?’ ‘He sucked.’ ‘And then?’ ‘He buttoned up my blouse again.’ ‘Leaving you frustrated.’ ‘We only go further when you two aren’t there. In the daytime, when you’re away. ‘How often has he talked about a man being certifiable if he walks away from beauty?’ ‘He’s always saying, You’ll never be without me.’ She said it very solemnly. Helen was appalled. The man had a Jesus complex. ‘Promise me something?’ ‘What?’ ‘Next time he uses the word ‘certified’, would you let me know?’

77 ‘Helen, you’re making me so uncertain. I don’t want these doubts. I’ve got plenty of my own.’ ‘Don’t you think his English is surprisingly good?’ ‘He’s got a gift for languages.’ ‘Have you noticed that in his stories there are lovers, enemies, and lots of intrigue, but never any friends?’ ‘Helen, please stop. I’ve a great gift of love which I can’t give him if I start analysing him like that. And giving is more important than knowing, at this stage.’

A few weeks later, Tom rang from the flat where his great-uncle Bill had taken him. Bill was in hospital. ‘He was on a tram, going into the city, when he started having chest pains. So he got off, walked into Prince Henry’s, and collapsed on the floor. I’m going there now. They say he’s not too bad.’ George started the Fiat, an event in time of petrol rationing, and with Yatty and Michael beside him, set off for the hospital. ‘A couple of gallons a month,’ George complained. ‘A good job I never go anywhere.’ The Shrine lawns needed cutting. The flower beds in front of the hospital were tatty. Tom was at the front, waiting for them. ‘You didn’t bring the girls?’ Yatty shook her head. To answer properly would have involved explaining Karen’s infatuation and the danger of Nell mentioning the whereabouts of her on-the-run brother to someone unsympathetic at her school, or even, if she were to see them, her cousins. War had destroyed Yatty’s trust. Bill’s face was grey against the pillow. ‘Don’t worry about how I look,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not going to cark it. I’ve got ambitions. I’m choosing my own time to go.’ ‘What are your plans?’ ‘I’m not fit for fighting any more, and when it’s all over, I won’t have anything to contribute. Young people are going to make a new world,

78 and there won’t be any place in it for me, except heating up miserable pots of stew in old dumps like the one I’m in now.’ ‘It’s not that bad,’ said Tom, while Yatty stroked Bill’s hand and put a finger to his lips. ‘It’s not bad for you, because you’ll be leaving it. The Nazis are finished, but the Japs are going to cop a lot before they chuck in the towel. I don’t know how we’re going to beat’em in their own country, but we will, and that’s when I’m going to make my exit. I might come here to do it, this isn’t a bad place. The nurses are nice.’ He smiled, forcing feeble smiles from his family, who could hear history’s clock ticking. ‘A funny thing,’ he said. ‘The last thing I can remember before I passed out was my stick slipping on the floor. They’d been polishing like mad. It’s got to be in the foyer somewhere, but the nurses reckon they can’t find it. Not that I ever needed it before, except as a prop ...’ He stopped. His mouth twitched. His fingers clutched at his chest. ‘Quick!’ George called. ‘Tommy, no Michael, get the nurses, he’s having another attack. Bill!’ George massaged his uncle’s chest uselessly. ‘Take it easy, mate.’ Nurses came. One phoned downstairs. The Bowdens found themselves ushered into the corridor. A doctor got out of the lift and made his way to where Bill was lying. A few minutes later he came out. ‘A follow-up attack. It doesn’t look too severe, but we can’t tell much at this stage. Give us a ring tonight and we’ll tell you how he’s doing.’ The Bowdens made their way to the foyer. ‘You wouldn’t think he belonged to us, the way they hoofed us out.’ A bell rang, telling visitors to leave. ‘More bloody regulations,’ George said sourly. But Michael had noticed the black ferrule of a stick poking from beneath a curtain. ‘Couldn’t find it!’ he said. ‘They didn’t even look.’ He retrieved the stick. The Bowdens, who’d seen it in Bill’s hands for years, looked at the object, made plain by separation from its owner. ‘Don’t all look so glum,’ Michael said. ‘He’s not going to die. He told us when he’s going to die. Besides, no one dies when their last word’s a pun!’ No one could remember what his last word had been.

79 ‘A prop!’ Michael twirled the stick. ‘Don’t you get it? Ah well, take us home in the Fi-at, Pop.’ He looked at his parents and brother with a query in his eyes. ‘No? It means, let thy will be done.’

An equanimity has settled on the clearing. The snow contains us. On the mountain, it’s thick, making the blue of the ranges deeper. The clouds are almost black. There’s something in the air that overshadows the birth, but accords with it. Annie was delirious last night, and talked of seeing people. Mature people, she said, and children, crossing the clearing with flames, like Mercury’s wings, attached to their heels. They bore with them, she said, a great message of love. She needs companionship, and now she’s inventing it. Mrs Hurley has sent one of her boys up here with a blanket and tiny jacket; she may be post mistress but can she read messages in the air as well? I think so; Annie and I do it all the time. My mountain is magical as well as majestic; this is another dimension I must teach myself about. Magic is a form of power. Power is a form of deceit. Deceit is at the heart of magic. Bluff is a card to be played at problematic moments. I’m a little envious of Annie, I think, for her phantasms; is she bluffing me by inventing what was never there? Are these figures deceiving her by appearing where they aren’t going to stay? I hope I see them, but if they’ve come to redress the balance for Annie, they won’t appear to me. I shall have the mountain I discovered in my youth. Its message of beginning and ending will always be simple: the growing, the increase of complexity, must take place in me. The mountain’s view reaches all horizons. That’s your task, Giles, the mountain says. Match me!

Bill’s body was found near the Shrine, on a slope facing Prince Henry’s hospital, by four Salvation Army officers called Jane, Eluned, Doris and Inge who’d elected to help the numerous alcohol-sodden men who’d spent a night in the open after the victory celebrations of August 1945. They’d begun their day early by setting up a field kitchen borrowed from the khaki army, the ‘real’ army, and beside it a tent with trestles and basins where the unwashed could wash. Then they wandered the King’s Domain looking for those who were stirring. These were sent

80 back for tea and toast, much as if they were being sent behind the lines for recovery. One had shat himself, and several had wet pants. These were given discreet use of the tent, and in the worst cases, trousers. Conversation at the field kitchen was carried on in mumbles, and had to do with the mercy shown the Japs by accepting their surrender when it would have been more just to keep dropping the astonishing new bombs on them until there were none left except a few cave-dwellers. The state of mind of the airmen who’d unloaded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was unconsidered. They’d done a bloody good job. In Bill’s last moments, the old realist had had a feeling that the pro- cession and bands, the marching soldiers and the civilian acclamation, the speeches half-heard from the great shrine on the hill had to do with his passing - as in a sense they did. The chest pains had been with him for some minutes, but this time he’d not passed out. He saw it as his duty to get himself to the hospital, clearly visible across the boulevard. Even a soldier who’d disowned the army should leave his regiment formally. When he began to stagger - not unusual in that crowd, since others were swaying, and mouthing the debris of what had started the day as thoughts - he sat on the grass, and proceeded in brief slides on his bottom. It hit him, as problems recur in dreams with increasing anxiety and no hope of a solution, that this method would never get him across the road. It was then that he saw four figures smiling at him, women he’d wanted to love but had never shared a bed with. ‘You’ve come for me,’ he said loudly - it was a day of release for everything suppressed in six years of war - ‘I’ll have you one at a time, but you have to get me to Prince Henry’s, that’s the only place we’ll get a bed!’ It seemed to him that they lifted him, desire vanished, and that he beheld himself from a great height, a lonely figure on a grassy slope, surrounded by a city made dowdy by war, but not destroyed, and a populace for whose rejoicing he felt a sharp contempt. Most of them had no idea how foolish it was to rage. The defeated nations would be back, the victors would come undone one day, to be up was to fall ... unless you were

81 aloft on the wings of departure. He took his hands from his chest and lifted them to the sun. Jane, Eluned, Doris and Inge came over the brow of the mound, four bonneted figures in red and black whose badges bore the motto ‘Blood and Iron’. When they touched him they saw that rigor mortis had gripped him. ‘He’s been a fine looking man,’ they agreed. ‘That stick’s probably his. His people may want to bury it with him.’ Two kept watch while two went for a stretcher and a sheet. Twenty minutes later he was in Prince Henry’s morgue, his stick beside him, and the note he’d left in his pocket being flattened by an orderly so it could be read.

His will left everything he owned - a few thousand pounds: modest, but useful - to his nephew’s son, Luke, the farm boy who’d joined up early and somehow survived six years of war. The note directed the young man not to delude himself that he could ever settle on his parents’ farm. ‘Go shearing,’ the note said. ‘Set yourself up as a bus driver. Run pubs in remote places. Wander. Don’t pretend you aren’t lost. When you signed up, you signed your life away. One day, in some unlikely place, you’ll find bits of yourself again. Stop there and enjoy what’s left. You’ll be surprised how merciful the world is when you make no demands on it. The money’s to get you started.’ When he was demobbed, Luke took the train north. He was thirty- one, fit, hard, and tanned. He found his parents uncertain of him. They assumed he’d sleep in the room that had always been his. He didn’t even enter it. He told them he’d sleep on the verandah, or in the shed. They knew he was waking in the night, smoking cigarettes and drinking from bottles of beer he left in the dam to keep a little cooler than the ambient air. He slept much of the day, and walked the farm by night, as if he could only consider it his - for his father kept talking of retirement, though he had nowhere to go - in the reverse reality of darkness. After a week, he borrowed the prewar truck that was the farm’s transport, and journeyed to the hills, Uncle Bill’s words in his

82 mind. ‘Wander. Do not imagine that your home is home to you any more.’ I’m truly lost, he thought. It would have been better if I’d died in Libya or Egypt, where I might have been killed half a dozen times. There seemed to be a veil between him and everything he saw. He sat on a hill in scraggy bushland, unmoved by eucalypts, and made up his mind. Then he drove to his parent’s farm, and wrote them a cheque for the whole of his legacy from Bill. ‘You’re sick of working yourselves to the bone and not making anything out of it. Sell up, let someone else bugger themselves trying to make a go of this place, and use this to get yourselves a house in a decent town.’ His parents said they didn’t see how they could accept but he made it clear that if they didn’t take the money, he’d burn the cheque in the bonfire he was about to have. He set a fire on the other side of the shed so they couldn’t see what he was doing. He lit it while they were in town. By the time they came home, he’d burned all the letters his mother had kept, and his diaries. He’d burned the few items of service clothing he’d been allowed to keep. When he’d gone, and his parents looked through the ashes of the fire, they found the service medals he’d acquired, and, scattered for a hundred yards around, the remnants of a hand grenade he’d tossed in to give death one last chance to claim him before he set off, rootless, childless, with a few pounds in his pocket and no more clothes than he stood up in, for the uncharted territory of the rest of his life.

83 4 In which a clearing is filled with spirits, and a female child is born

The first casualty of peace was Karen. Three days after Bill’s funeral - slimly attended, because Yatty held it at the Reverend Hagenauer’s church, and neither Max and Muriel, nor Norman and Edna, felt like venturing that close - Grigory disappeared. Karen had spent the afternoon with him, loving, as Karen thought, in deepest intimacy; he’d said he’d be back that night, he had to see a fellow Russian who’d jumped ship the same way he had - but he didn’t come back. ‘The other Russian was himself,’ Michael observed. ‘He jumped ship all right. He got back on!’ Karen wept before her brother and Helen. He’d sworn ... they’d spent hours mapping the years ahead ... Fatal, Helen thought, but he’d have gone anyhow, and sooner rather than later. She felt hypocritical, holding the weeping Karen, because she’d been approached by a Jewish businessman suggesting that she form a quartet which he would sponsor for afternoon and evening performances at private homes, initially, with the prospect of tours and eventually, perhaps, recordings. The eagerness with which she’d responded, while saying nothing to Michael, told her that she was looking to make her own exit from the household where she felt she’d become an institutionalised cover for her lover’s foibles. She’d given herself three months to make the break ... and she was fondling Karen’s hair, and caressing her cheeks as if she’d always be there for comfort. Karen said something, face pressed against Helen’s shoulder. ‘What was that?’ ‘I said story!’

84 ‘Story?’ ‘There was a stupid, stupid girl who was fooled by a soldier. All smiles and glamour. Always being briefed by important people for secret missions. He turned her into a mother with a minute’s fucking. She said she’d never be fooled again. But it only took a different kind of trickster. Instead of a colonel, a runaway. An escapee from the big dark world of generals. He said he needed love and pity. Bullshit!’ Helen said, ‘A congenital liar, actually.’ ‘A total opposite, and just the same! Where am I going to find the next one that’ll fool me? What’ll he have to be like to get under my guard this time? Helen?’ Helen’s lips ran along the sobbing woman’s forehead. She kissed the eyes that had seen but been deceived. ‘What story will the next one tell me, Helen? Helen! So I don’t realise he’s just the same man come back to undo me? When he’s gone, what story will I be telling then, about how I made a fool of myself again? Michael, remember Aunty Edna’s story ... no, you weren’t there, you were getting those strange women who said they were painting. I’ll bet they never painted a picture in their lives. That was just their story to get themselves into our lives. Mum thinks they showed her Adrian. That’s her story! She talks about it like a convert to a new religion. That’s what religions are - stories we like to believe. How do I know? Because I’m the biggest sucker you’ll ever find. You never heard Edna’s story, Michael, and Helen?’ She told them about the five brothers on horseback who’d surrounded Edna when Yatty had left her on her own. ‘Silly, isn’t it. But it’s her story. She told it to me, and Adrian, and Luke. No one knows where Luke is. He’ll walk back into our lives one day with a lot of stories, and we won’t know if they’re true, but to believe in him we’ll have to believe what he tells us. Don’t you understand, Michael, or are you too stupid? We’re only stories, and I’m the fool that believes them. That’s how I get hurt, and then that becomes

85 my story! Oh God, it’d be a tragedy if it weren’t all so stupid!’ She sobbed again, gripping the arms that enfolded her. ‘And Adrian ...’ She lifted her head, eyes closed, tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘He died screaming, and Mum thinks she saw him, but whether or no, he became Mum’s story of a miracle. Perhaps he’ll become a saint in a pacifist church, if Mum and Dad ever start one. If you haven’t got a church, make one. Adrian! Other people’s stories got into him. And he went to fight the monsters. And they ripped him to pieces in the cruellest way ... and he became a story. The stupidity of it all! And here I am talking about it, and I’m the biggest believer of all! You tell me a story, and I’ll say it’s impossible, but I’ll believe. And do you know why?’ Helen took Karen’s hands as she straightened herself. Michael was sobbing for his sister. ‘Because it’s in our stories that we exist. So-called real lives are just the food that stories live on. We have to do things, like we have to eat - but only so we can become good stories. Grigory was very successful. He told a story so well he believed it. That’s why he ran away. Because I believed him, I wasn’t a challenge any more. What he didn’t know was that I knew he was lying, and by telling him I believed him, I made him exist. He’s a ghost right now, out on the water in the dark. He doesn’t exist. But I made him exist, by believing his lies. And that’s why he ran away, because he didn’t want to exist. He preferred to be dead. I wish I had his child in me. I wish I’d deceived him, the way Jesse’s father deceived me. He put life in me and went off to die. What a story that was! Well, it’s mine. Helen! Michael! All I have to do is make a fool of myself again and there’ll be another amazing instalment!’

Annie’s journal I am large again. I am always large, or having Giles inside me, trying to fill me up again. His obsession with control sug- gests he fears me, but his hands, in delivery, are tender. The opening, and bursting forth, please him. He sees my births as fits, or spasms, that he causes. He acknowledges me fondly, when I’ve produced, because

86 I’m an extension of him. Then he holds the child, becomes indifferent, and eventually contemptuous. He teaches them little; to learn, they have to follow him. George and Robert walk like him, putting their feet down lightly, as if deciding whether or not to crush what’s under them. Nicholas is indifferent in these hot days, whimpering unless he’s left at the dark end of the house. I’ll never see him stand. He’ll die this summer, on a blazing day, the inverse of his birth. And this one is male too; Giles will name it unkindly. I’m longing for the next, my daughter, whom I already know. She’ll be Lucy, the saint who had her eyes put out because she saw too clearly. Lucy, lucid; Giles will love her too, because she’ll fit his ideal of clarity with the sharp eyes she’s going to have. She’ll write my journal for me when I’ve become indifferent, waiting for the day when I won’t feel that compelling hand slipping down my belly to open me; how pitiful, being young, to want to lose my youth.

The postwar world was a festering place. As time passed, the pacifist couple grew gloomier. The brave stand of their youth was looking pathetic against the communist claim to half the world, and the fighting cock response of capital. Yatty asked the Reverend Hagenauer to hold a memorial service for Bill and Adrian on the anniversary of VJ day; he told her he’d had many such requests. George was persuaded to attend. ‘Against my better judgement. I’ve never seen any reason to trust that man.’ His fears were well- founded. The reverend gentleman had had the colours of regiments hung from walls and rafters. Many of those who attended were in uniform, complete with medals. Hagenauer’s sermon was a tirade on vigilance. A new threat was enveloping the world. The young had to be prepared to take up arms again, to defend the liberties their fathers had died to maintain. George was livid, the more so because every mention of the dead wrenched his heart for Adrian, and Bill, whose sharp wit had always pleased him. The minister, he felt, was taking his family away from him. Michael wasn’t there, he was attending the

87 first airing of Helen’s newly formed quartet. Tom was restless, a hippy before the word had been coined. Jesse, George’s grandchild, sat on his knee, reminding him of his age. And the preacher fulminated against the armies of evil whose claim to domination would have to be con- tested. Hagenauer bellowed down the nave of his church that it was a burning moral question. Right or wrong! Truth or lies! Salvation or a new form of damnation that would corrupt the world! George, feeling sick, excused himself to his wife, and walked out. He felt he was taking leave of his son, who belonged, now, to a tradi- tion he’d always hated. Rhetoric had come between him and the boy. In the street, he stared gloomily about, still able to hear the preacher’s ringing voice. Then Yatty joined him, Karen, little Jess, and Tom. Nell, eighteen and embarrassed, had been trapped in another pew. When the preacher announced the hymn, she slipped out. The door through which she rejoined her family let the opening bars of ‘A mighty fortress is our God’ surge into the street, the organist decorating brilliantly via the trumpet stop. George struck his knee with his fist. ‘They’ve even coöpted Bach, the bloody bastards. Let’s go home. It’s about the only place we can go, it seems.’

Annie’s journal Mrs Hurley called. She was on her way to meet the coach at Seldom Seen. Her sister was arriving from Ireland. I asked myself why she didn’t call on the way back, and decided she didn’t want to alarm her sister about the sort of district she lived in. It’s our status as curiosities that makes this life hard to bear. I’m grateful for the isolation because it prevents comparisons, except on rare occasions such as this. Mrs Hurley looks more Spanish than Irish. She’s got an olive skin, fine jaw, and noble forehead. I thought of Sister Camilla’s stories about the ‘tender mercies of the Irish fisher folk’ to sailors of the Spanish Armada washed ashore. I always thought ‘tender mercies’ meant killing them; I see now that she meant something else. How strange that the physical traits of a man lying almost dead in the foam of a country he never thought to see should be transported to a coun-

88 try he never knew existed - transmitted by how many women, from that century to this? And how many men, too, accepted the sailor’s resemblance as they entered the world? My own stock is a matter of mystery, since I was given in my first hours to the convent. As those two unknowns coupled, the last thing in their minds would have been that they were producing a child who would serve tea to a piece of human flotsam from the Spanish attack on England. (Sister Camilla, I now realise, wanted us to understand that if a Spaniard’s blood had been in her veins she’d never have been a nun!) Mrs Hurley admired the apostle spoons we used to stir our tea. There was nothing else to admire! She brought me a little bag of daf- fodil bulbs. I shall plant them at the spot where I imagine her lifting her nose at the dung of cattle when I was giving birth to Nicholas. He was asleep while she was in the house. She didn’t ask to see him. I think she sees me as being beyond the reach of pity, let alone help, yet feels that common humanity demands that she let me share another woman’s presence. She must have seen Giles going past on his way to Swifts Creek, trickling a little maize on the track to keep his pigs following. So now I’ve had two visitors without him knowing. I am, however distantly, in contact with the outside, whose collective eyes I fear because they are the mirror that I chose not to bring to this place. My children will grow up without schooling, unless I do something I’m unable to do.

People say war is the great test; let them try fire, when the challenge of burning gum leaves comes drifting on the air. I warned Annie with a glance, and drove the cows to the falls, forcing them to the rocks where they didn’t want to go, with my whip. Cruelty is a pointed teacher. I marked their paths with pain on either side, and forced them forward. Though they smelt of fear, their tongues, lapping, told me their acceptance. Then back to the clearing. I let the sows and boars out of their yard, because to leave them there was to risk losing the lot, and loosed them by the river. Though they weren’t born here, they know where their home is. Then to the house. Annie’s fear couldn’t dim the gleam in my eye. The smoke, which alarmed

89 her, was my promise of release. I determined, though, that no flame should take the marker on the grave of Hope. Annie sensed this and feared me less. I took a look at Nicholas, born on a white-world morning. Fire purges weakness, and he would be gone by the end of the day. I sensed that Annie had been praying over him; there was some incense-like disturbance in the air. Incense and all the rituals of Rome! How powerless before a wall of flame. When the ridge erupted, I transformed myself. I was fire, destroyer and clarifier of the world, before which everything but what has strength to regenerate must fall away. It was stifling, the air was being sucked into the fire so we couldn’t breathe. The boys lay on the floor near their brother, while Annie, panic-stricken, threw buckets of water on the log burning in the fireplace. She expected me to help, but I laughed; my new characterisation had hold of me. The wind changed, a mighty gust of air, and there were spot fires everywhere on the ridge to our left; changed again, and vast balloons of burning gas flared like god’s rockets towards the sacred mountain. My demonic heart leapt with joy. An eddy of smoke circled downwards, and the clarity of the clearing was gone. My illumination was gone. I slashed at my hair with scissors, stifled, unable to breathe, then the voice of the fire called me to join it. I soused a rag from the kerosene bottle, wiped it over my tangled mop, and lit a match. Inside my head, then, was nothing but contempt for weakness, and the satisfaction of merging with the mightiest force of all. Trees were crashing on the ridges, the forest was full of the loudest reports, and in the clearing the ring-barked hulks were triumphant beacons of that desire that loves what it kills.

Annie’s journal So finally I knew whose hands I was in. I’m lucky I never believed anything I heard at the convent. Sister Camilla would say he was a devil. The devil. But he’s not. It’s storms and fires that excite him, and weakness that he hates. He lives as the embodiment of strength, and worships its enemy - that greater force, of destruction, that tests everything when it’s loosed. Logically, he should self-destruct, but he uses me to close his rifts, and displaces to the boys the emotions he doesn’t want to feel. We’re waste dumps for the poisons of his being. And since he sees me with a divided mind, he divides me, yet needs me united. Sister Camilla, even with veins full of Spanish blood, couldn’t untangle that!. Nor Mrs Hurley, with her sister as reinforcement. I

90 feel privileged, in an acute and horrible way: I have this perfection of a problem to solve on my own. But not for long; the next boy will be born soon, to start swimming down the current of years that will carry him and his brothers to their destiny: their problem - that of freeing themselves when he won’t let go. Then I’ll divide again, because they’ll want me to approve their plan, and whether or no, when they carry it out, I’ll have to face the loss of the years I gave Giles, and the fact that I splashed my life against a rock of a man, because I never had a choice. When they throw him down a mineshaft, my life will have been destroyed. Who else would have me, twenty years from now, with all the children I’m going to have? I mustn’t look beyond the moment, this life locked away with an embodiment of storm who doesn’t cry when he digs his offspring’s grave. Two of them, now, two bits of wood. Hope. Nick. How many more to join them? Hope and Nick won’t come back. They’ve seen what happens here. The new ones will all be strangers. I wish the one inside me would come out stillborn, but it won’t. He’ll be precociously strong, and keen to get about that business he’s destined for, which will end the active part of my life, and lead to the clearing being cleared forever. Reflecting on this, I place myself against the tide of demoli- tion, whether by Giles, fire, or murderous young men. What a mess of contradictions! To survive, I must detach a part of myself to observe; that is, I must divide. Or suffer every instant as it happens; that is, I must be exhausted by the passions of others. Quelle discorde!

Annie’s journal A swarthy man came to the house one day. Lost. He had a horse, and a pack horse. He said his name was Curcio. He was going to prospect in the Haunted Stream, near Dawson City, and he didn’t know how to get there. I made him tea. He lapped it up so eagerly, and a second cup, and a third, that I felt sorry for him. I said he could stay for a meal. When I started cutting meat, he took the knife from me, and shook his head. A moment later he was sharpening it,

91 spitting on a stone and slip-slapping the blade up and down. The boys watched him eagerly. When he’d finished, he gave me a conspiratorial look, and took the tip of the blade between two fingers. A flick, and it was trembling, handle towards me, in the log in the fireplace. He offered it to me. When I tried, it fell clumsily into the fire. He grabbed it and sharpened it some more. After a few tries I got it to stick in the log, but nowhere near the spot where he’d blackened the log with the poker. He told me I needed a properly balanced knife if I wanted accuracy. He had one in his pack. The boys went out with him, and came back, George holding the knife and Robert trying to grab it. The moment I took hold of it, fearing that they’d cut themselves, I felt a flush of some sort - whether hot or cold I couldn’t say - cross my cheeks and neck. The thing, the object, had made some decision for me. Even my first throw was good. My fourth hit the black spot. ‘Centro del bersaglio!’ he called. I laughed, secure against a danger I hadn’t yet imagined. ‘You got to pay a price for that,’ he said. Something in his eye told me that he had another, better, one in his pack, and that the price was a minute’s use of my body. I shook my head. I wasn’t having anyone on top of that belly, within days of expressing a child. ‘I lie down,’ he said. ‘You are on top of me. You are the boss of what we do.’ I nodded. He told the boys he’d give them a ride on the horse. He put them on the pack horse, which was tethered at the back of the house. ‘Come,’ he said. We left the boys, he put the knife on the table, and we did as he suggested. It was a new sensation that I liked. I wanted to practise until I was as good with my body as he was with his knives. When the boys began to wail, I went to them. ‘I not come back,’ he told me, outside. ‘Your husband is a dangerous man, and you got what you want from me. Tell me, please, how to find my way.’ I told him the tracks, and he left the clearing, waving as he entered the trees. I left the knife in the middle of the table. I wanted to leave it poking out of the log where I’d driven it in, but the fire was burning too quickly. When Giles came home, he saw it at once. I stood on the

92 other side of the table, staring into his eyes. What I saw there was rage - nothing unfamiliar - and a new respect. If he could call on storm and fire as allies, I could bring in help of my own. Then I saw a click of recognition in his eyes; he must have heard about the roaming prospector, perhaps had seen him. I feared for Curcio, if Giles’ rage reached out for him: there’d be a contest of knife and whip, and Curcio wouldn’t get the knife into a throwing position before the lash took an eye out of his head. But Giles had lost interest in the man who was instrumental in my changed position. He was examining me with close consideration, both of us aware that some rearrangement had taken place in the forces working in our clearing.

This one can be Ned, after the bushranger. He came to a spectacularly bad end. He’ll be stronger than you imagine. Look at those legs, the kick! Annie sees some portent in him, more ominous than that knife. Let him lie between my legs while we look at him. Better by far if it had been the daughter she wants. This is the first time I’ve delivered lying across the line of trunks. She hasn’t reached out for him yet. Giles doesn’t want to hold him, any more than I do. Kiss me. Properly, for the first time. Giles! For the first time in my life I feel burdened, ageing. He’s come from that war in Africa. There’s a smell of the rifle about him. We couldn’t keep our clearing pure forever. I’ll let this one go when he wants to. This is the saddest day of my life. My depression has arrived with the child. Annie’s tears have a breadth of application. They stretch from those affected by that stupid war against the Boers, to Mrs Hurley, dying of her bowel illness, and, I fear, and how deeply it touches me, to her husband, the father of this thing. Beyond every horizon is another horizon, but the arrival of Ned - since I gave him the name I have to use it - says that the horizon we see, now, is the edge. Life has a limit, and he

93 contains it. Murmuring and sorrowful, I’m going to leave her with him, and look to the animals, whose nature appears not to contain resentment. Why do we think ourselves superior? If you want my loyalty when the day comes, stay with me now. Stay. Good. Now sit, we have much to consider.

Annie’s journal I feed the little bushranger without any joy. Giles keeps away from him. When he isn’t working, he’s on his mountain, staring at the river running into the lake. He’s been given notice of his end, and has no philosophy to accept it. Worshipping triumphal energy, he can’t believe he’ll become a pile of waste. But what else will we become? Anyhow, my triumph. One night when I’d fed the little bushranger and put him down the end of this cavern that passes for a dwelling, Giles, desiring me, gripped my leg and levered himself to mount me. The usual delicacy! I fought him, and wriggled myself on top. He wasn’t having things that way. He got one hand on my throat, but I put my left arm there to stop him getting a two-handed grip, and with the other hand I snatched the knife - Curcio’s knife - from the little ledge where I keep these books. Suddenly he found himself with a point of steel against his throat, and he knew I was threatening to use it. It might have provoked him, but instead he laughed, a roaring bear of a laugh, a thunderous, rumbling, aggressive, jovial laugh such as might have come from the clouds when the work of creation was done, the laugh of a god who’s made a world full of contradictions for mortals to tenant: I mounted him gleefully, worked my body on him, one will- power summoning another, until, knowing his moment was close, I put my hand behind me to tickle him, and the stuff he likes to put in me spurted upwards at my trick. ‘There you are my darling,’ I called aloud; for a moment he thought I was giving him endearments, then he realised, at the moment that I did myself, that I was talking to Lucy, Lucida, the clear one: but of all the souls hovering at the edge of the clearing, waiting for invitation, which one would she be?

94 There are more wonders than destruction! Drug-induced dreams could give nothing to match it! That troop of women with flames at their heels and a train of little people following decided that they had nothing against me; indeed, I believe they were curious! Making the night bright as day, they surrounded these grandest trees in the forest and applauded. I would have risen to acknowledge them, but Annie was still astride me in the position she’d chosen for conception; ungenerously, she took the visitors to be hers alone. Miracle of miracles, Giles spoke. ‘Tell them,’ he said in a voice that seemed to be booming from the mountain to the falls, ‘that I see them too, and would appreciate it if they gave us a choice.’ The two rivers paused, and the bald mountain turned to listen. ‘It must be a girl,’ he called to the visitors. ‘She is to be my wife’s companion!’

Annie’s journal; the first entry in the last book written in her hand Night after night they came out of the bush, flames at their heels, and sometimes flames spurting from their fingers, talking in languages that had to do with the colour of their faces. Some were old as dreams, others had taken on childlike form, ready for their next incarnation. Giles could only see them at times. He wandered, wanting moments of vision. Watching, I could tell when he saw them. A strange grace, a courtesy, overcame him as he welcomed the immortals. This is the only name I can give them, but what I knew was happening was that everyone who’d ever lived had been called to inspect us. On the seventh night the population of our slopes was enormous; it occurred to me that there must be gossip and rumour in the afterlife to bring so many. The most seductive courtiers sprawled on the mattress with an oilsheet underlay which was our bed, inviting me, I felt, to spectral congress. How I wish, I told them, that I could cross to your realm for that pleasure, but I wouldn’t be able to get back without entering the vast lottery of souls which I had been made fortunate enough to witness, and I wasn’t ready for. I had decisive things to do, here on solid earth. The eighth night, there were only the four women, flames flickering lightly, and a band of children whose number diminished every time I

95 caught sight of them. The oldest of these women, whose eyes were so penetrating that she put me in mind of a queen whose business it was to see through lies her servants fed her, or perhaps of a painter trying to peer into the essence of things, made a circling motion with her right hand, and Giles, who’d been wandering the slope above our house like a blind ass hoping it might smell food, marched to the spot where he was bidden. A sudden surge in the flames flickering from their ankles, and they were sitting on our tree house, just above the door. Radiant children jumped off its roof, and were replaced. The magical women looked at me, waiting. ‘Please,’ I said, and then the queen-one, the painter-one, interrupted me with a gesture which I felt rebuked me because I’d not considered my husband. She opened her clenched hands, presenting two palms of light to the coarsely clad, rough-bearded male who was my partner. His face shone, and in his eyes I saw a gratitude I never knew was in him. ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Could you show us the one that will be ours?’ The four women smiled. ‘You have already seen her,’ they said, ‘among the thousands that have been here. When her time comes, you will see her again. We have matched her carefully to the name, and to your expectations. You must know that we think this is the best and worst of places. When she comes, she will give you both another chance.’ The smile, the beneficence, lingered in the air after the immortals - what else can I call them? - vanished.

The Reverend Hagenauer, bright as a button, turned up on Yatty’s doorstep, four days after the Bowdens walked out of his service. How had he upset them, and did it have anything to do with the rift which, according to rumours coming to his ears, existed between branches of her family? Professionally sympathetic, he invited her to talk about these matters. ‘I think you already know all you need to know to understand.’

96 ‘Is your heart absolutely hardened, then, against your brother, and sister, and their spouses?’ ‘I feel they set out to damage me and mine. If there’s to be any reconciliation, it has to come from their side.’ ‘How can I help?’ She studied the warrior Christian, wishing he’d never been called to the parish where she lived. ‘By spreading the gospel of peace. Of mercy, charity, hope and faith.’ He answered strongly. ‘The existence of these Christian virtues has to be guaranteed by struggle against those who don’t embody them. The only alternative is martyrdom at the hands of those who are unashamed in the use of force. I’m not a martyr by temperament, Mrs Bowden, I’m a defender and builder of the faith, and I’m praying for you and your husband and children. I know they mean well.’ She thought him presumptuous to suggest that they were in need of intercession. There was no way out, it seemed, but to be taken captive by his zeal, or to reject what he stood for. Feeling bereft, she said, ‘I don’t ask you to pray for us if that means suggesting there’s been some shortcoming in our behaviour. In fact, I forbid you to pray for us. To tell you the truth, I think you’ve got a blessed cheek to suggest it!’ The clergyman smiled at the pun. ‘I believe my intention is indeed a blessed one ...’ She snapped at him. ‘So many terrible things have happened in the last few years, it makes me doubt if there’s any sanity in the world. This just war, as you called it, has split my family. There’s a wedge between me and my own brother, and my sister too, because of her husband. If that can happen, never mind how it was caused, I don’t feel I’ve got any basis for faith at all.’ He began to refer to the differences of belief between her husband and herself, but the anger he detected in her frown deterred him. ‘Are you setting God the challenge of reuniting your family before your faith will be restored? It’s an act of temerity if you are. God, who won’t be

97 mocked, won’t be instructed either. It’s an old adage, but it’s a true one, that sometimes it’s not good for us to get what we want. The other old saying, that God’s ways are wonderful but mysterious is also just as true. What I think I can promise you is that in ways so subtle and unexpected that you may not recognise God’s hand in them, and it may not even be in this generation, the rift that’s opened in your family will be closed.’ With professional skill he’d found the words she wanted to hear. She softened. ‘Will you,’ he said, ‘on the basis of my faith that God never fails us in the long term, return to the services that I’m allowed to conduct in his name?’ Sceptical, but weakened, she said she would. In bed that night, she talked about it with George. ‘I don’t like what’s happened,’ he said. ‘And I’m afraid I’m not in any mood to forgive Max and Norman. As for a reconciliation in the next generation, what’s to say that that won’t happen in some coincidental way? It seems to me that what priests do is give God credit for all the mysterious things that would probably have happened anyway.’ ‘You’re always looking for proof,’ she said, ‘and you know there isn’t any. Can’t you ever take anything on faith?’ ‘The best thing I’ve got,’ he said, in a warmth and intimacy developed over thirty years, ‘is us. I never have any doubts about us. If a religion was any good, it’d be as good as that!’ She put her head against his shoulder, waiting for him to fondle her.

The next generation of Bowdens went to university, a step into institutionalised knowledge that separated them from the Waratah Bay parents. Nell, the last of George and Yatty’s five, took up maths and psychology, specialising in probability theory; it was a way of disguising her contempt for others and uncertainty about herself. One day, in the bookshop, she saw a reproduction of a painting by Zurbaran. She felt as if this Spanish mystic had located her soul, and gripped it. She paid five pounds, two shillings and sixpence, and took the book home. She saw her father thumbing through it and dreaded the possibility that he

98 might comment on her picture. He did. Her idolisation of her father fell away when he compared the cowl on the head of the kneeling monk to the cowls worn by the Ku Klux Klan when they lynched blacks and set fiery torches over mixed-race towns. ‘The two things don’t have the least bit in common,’ she told her father, but he said Spain was a fascist place. She determined that she would go there the minute she had her degree. ‘The Spanish don’t have a very good reputation for the way they treat women,’ George said, ‘I’d wait till I got married, if I were you.’ This statement gripped her, in an adverse way, almost as strongly as the Zurbaran. She enrolled in Spanish, and discovered she had a talent for it. Before long she was struggling through Cervantes, a translation side by side with the original. ‘I’ve set off something I didn’t intend,’ George told his wife, in another of those in-bed conversations. ‘Oh well. Decisions by reaction are as valid as decisions by agreement.’ Nell’s cousins Rose and Diana were also in the Arts faculty, two years ahead, still dressing identically. She felt there was something strange about them. On the rare occasions that she saw them together, they were exchanging information conspiratorially. The university was crowded with ex-servicemen anxious to make up for what they’d missed; this included the company of women. Prominent among them was Claude Stubbs, who was running for president of the students’ council. Nell saw him sprawling on the lawns with one of the twins, in a Carlton bar with one of the twins, at a college dance with one of the twins, and loading a car with supplies for a weekend at Mount Buller - with one of the twins. As she watched the skis being lashed to the top of an ancient Wolseley, Nell felt a wrench in the stomach, a little like the feeling Zurbaran had given her. The twins were swapping places! Claude Stubbs, and no doubt other men, didn’t know which one they were with! Nell felt envious; what a wonderful mask! They could appraise their friends and lovers from two points of view, but it could only work if they were frank with each other, and if their reactions to any habit, or trait, of someone they were with didn’t differ markedly.

99 They had to remain essentially the same person. This combination of being trapped and unusually free fascinated Nell, and disconcerted her: the nearest thing she could think of that would be available to her would be to travel where nobody knew you: Spain was calling loudly. The other twins were diverging sharply. Mark, who had aspired to open the batting for Australia, was at least doing so for University, while maintaining his position in a crowded commerce course with the minimum of work and an occasional endowment of the faculty from Max’s agency for Jaguars and Bentleys. Steve, planning to outdo his father, was doing engineering, with a view to designing what his father could only sell. Prickly, driven, troubled by an allergy that covered him with rashes, he looked down on the world from a tower in one of the colleges, and kept a weather eye out for the girl who would provide him with an advantageous marriage. She came. Tricia Courtney had afternoon tea in his turret room, and read him well. She and a few friends made sure he had a supply of invitations to house parties and weekends; when he began to talk of travelling in to lectures each day she knew he’d begun to find his tower retreat barren. She and her mother organised a flat, two blocks from their home, with a delightful garden, an airy bedroom filled with teasing breezes, and a discreet side door. Their engagement was announced the same weekend as Mark, drunk as a lord after a social match at Tumbarumba on the way home from Sydney, took Jane Urquhart, a squatting family’s daughter, to his hotel room where they stayed, with occasional forays to the dining room, for forty-eight hours. ‘I think we’ve made up our minds, haven’t we?’ the clumsy Mark said to a confused, swept-off-her-feet Jane. ‘There’s two things we have to do now, it’s just a matter of which we do first. Get ourselves a ring, or go and see your parents.’ Jane thought the ring would be the wiser course. So she disappeared from her euphoniously named town, leaving a message for the publican’s wife to phone through to her parents once the busload of cricketers was on the road, that she was safe, would be home soon, and would bring back a little surprise.

100 Two months later Max and Muriel staged what Max called an almighty bash for the two couples at a reception house in South Yarra. The Courtneys and the Urquharts, it emerged, had known each other for years, and were a little awkward at finding each other intertwined, via their daughters, with a family of lesser standing, even if its father sold his cars into the bracket that could afford real English quality. For Rose and Diana, the night was a virtuosic display of identity concealment. When introduced by their parents to the Courtney and Urquhart connections, they made a point of changing positions in the groups at the earliest opportunity. They spent much of the night tap- ping dancing partners on the shoulder, cutting in on each other. Each handed the other trays, or drinks, for a group she’d just left. Bland smiles and trite conversation-openers deflected the puzzled who were trying to work out which one they were dealing with. Direct questions were answered ‘Rose’ or ‘Diana’ indiscriminately. Claude Stubbs was the focus of their activity, Claude being the most noticeable figure in the university contingent. Claude thought he’d had Rose in his bed; both sisters had used him as they pleased. To blur his discrimination, they encouraged waiters to top up his champagne glass. Claude, whose chip on the shoulder was affected by the presence of the Urquharts and Courtneys, became sullen. When he put his arm around Rose’s waist, she removed it, saying, ‘Diana.’ When, a little later, he kept his distance from Rose, she said, ‘Why are you ignoring me? You’re so cool tonight.’ Laurie Mason, who’d served with Claude and was doing Arts with a view to journalism, noticed that the girls frequently ducked behind a screen of potplants and flowers at one end of the room, and tumbled to what was going on. ‘Which of those two are you rooting?’ A drunken Claude: ‘I’m buggered if I know. If you can work it out, you can have her. And get me the other. I wouldn’t mind notching up the pair!’ ‘You must be able to tell! If you’ve had someone in the cot, you’d know the smell. Don’t get offended. Their perfume. The fragrance. The ambience!’ Claude looked doubtful. ‘You get one, and dance with

101 her. I’ll grab the other. Don’t let go, and I won’t either. I’ll cut in on you, and we’ll swap. Make sure you put your nose in the cleavage ...’ ‘Corsage, I presume you mean?’ ‘Cleavage, you dill! And fuckin register what your fuckin senses tell you, right? Okay, into action.’ Laurie got Diana, but Claude stumbled, and Rose sped away to her mother. ‘Some of the men have had a little too much to drink. I think it’s time for the speeches.’ Muriel gathered Max, the other parents, Steve and Tricia, and Mark and Jane, at a table in front of the screen of flowers, where a microphone had been placed. Rose, putting herself beside Steve, beckoned Diana from the hall, and the embrace of the cleavage-sniffers, to stand next to Mark. The sisters exchanged a glance of triumph, caught by Mrs Courtney, who took it that the girls were gloating over their social rise. Max tapped the microphone. Photographers readied themselves, taking readings of the light. Prosperity had not yet returned to the country, most of whose inhabitants had lived with austerity, at best, for twenty years. Max’s ability to put quality cars in reach of those who thought themselves quality people gave him considerable leverage. He’d asked the city’s Lord Mayor to make the announcement and propose a toast to the couples. This dignitary had passed the job on to his deputy, who rejoiced in the name of Mortimer Wise. A beaming Mortimer, spectacles, champagne, and notes in hand, had just taken up his position at the microphone when an elderly man materialised at the Urquharts’ end of the table. He nodded to the Urquharts, as to friends he’d seen earlier in the day, and moved in front of the couples preparing for the ceremonial exchange of rings. Mortimer blinked; for a moment, this figure had disappeared, then was back again, offering his cold hand to Tricia and Steve, then Jane and Mark. ‘Lovely fabric,’ he said to Jane. ‘Such a pity I’ll never paint it.’ At a loss to know where this dandified figure in white wing collar and black suit had come from, she said, ‘Are you a painter, then?’ He smiled. ‘If you’d like to see my work, here’s my agent’s card.’ Mortimer felt this fellow should be got out of the

102 way, but he had an air of belonging, even of ownership; the Courtneys, too, seemed to know who he was, but were pale at the sight of him. ‘I think you’d better press ahead, Mr Wise,’ said Mrs Courtney. ‘It’s Rupert Bunny. You’d have heard of him. One of our finest painters. Unfortunately, he died last week. This was always one of his haunts. I suppose he’s going to keep an eye on us for a little longer. Don’t let yourself be put out. He made a point of never outstaying his welcome.’ The frail, almost transparent figure smiled graciously at Mrs Courtney, wandered off to a chair at the front of the waiting assembly, and lit a cigarette. Wise Mortimer, as he was called by his subordinates, tried to make a jolly speech, but found the quizzical eye of the painter disconcerting; he seemed to be appraising the family line in pictorial terms. When Rose and Diana moved, answering an unspoken wish of the famous portraitist, and placed themselves, one with each of the couples, in more satisfactory massings of form, the mysterious visitor disappeared, leaving his cigarette smoke in the air, and a very tangible business card in the hand of the rather frightened Jane. ‘Don’t you think we’d better stop, and recover?’ she said to Mark, her fiancé, who had no idea. ‘Mummy,’ she called, whispering, behind Wise Mortimer’s back, ‘shouldn’t we stop?’ Mrs Courtney, from the opposite end of the group, only half-hearing the words but catching the distress, took over. ‘Darling, you might have found it a little frightening, but he just needed to reassure himself that things were going on as he’d have wished. Please continue, Mr Mortimer, it’s what he would have wanted.’

Occasional sightings of the society painter continued for weeks, reported in Truth under headlines like Socialites gone ga-ga. A letter from someone claiming to have seen Bunny outside the newsagency above which he’d lived, scanning the front page in his accustomed manner, drew from the paper a challenge to its readers; any photo of the departed spirit which could be proved genuine would be given front page treatment, and the person who took it would receive a cheque for £1000. (A picture of the portrait painter could see you smiling!) The serious press

103 preferred to concentrate on Asian insurgencies. Rose and Diana talked about it in the library cubicle which was their place for confidences. ‘He disappeared when we made the picture right.’ ‘He shook Jane’s hand. She said it wasn’t icy cold. Just like someone with a naturally cool hand.’ ‘D’you think he was really there?’ ‘I think we made him. One of us, or maybe a few of us, made him appear. But I don’t know if we made him in our imaginations, or whether we conjured him up.’ ‘That can’t happen, Rosie.’ ‘Di.’ They laughed. ‘What did Claude have to say about it?’ ‘I fought in New Guinea. I saw a lot of dead men, and I never saw any ghosts!’ ‘Next time I’m with him, I think I’ll pretend I’m seeing Rupert Bunny. Right there! What do you mean you can’t see him? If you reach out you’ll touch him!’ ‘Sorry, Mr Bunny, my friend doesn’t mean to be rude, you understand, he just isn’t very sensitive.’ ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bunny, but my friend’s seen so many dead men he’s become a bit blasé.’ ‘And his picture’s not worth painting anyhow.’ ‘Di, let’s not see him any more.’ ‘He is getting a bit stale. And there’s lots of nicer men. The trouble is, if they had any brains, and they were even half sensitive, they’d know.’ ‘That’s what I mean. Let’s not do it any more.’ ‘Rosie, has it stopped being fun?’ ‘It’s a trap. I can only be you. You can only be me. And it can’t go on forever. What about when one of us gets married?’ ‘That’s when I thought it’d be best. We could share the marriage, and be free as well.’

104 ‘If he was any good, even halfway decent, we’d get jealous. We’d both want sole possession.’ ‘No we wouldn’t. We’re not that silly.’ ‘People get very possessive. And we’d fight over who’d have the honeymoon. And what about when the kids came along? They’d know us, no matter how thick their father might be.’ ‘You’re right, the kids. Rosie, let’s never get married?’ ‘Just have each other?’ ‘Yes.’ They looked at it, the solemn option, not available to others; or, if you like, the option available to everyone - to refuse to possess, or be possessed. ‘As we get older, our bodies might age differently. People would know us apart.’ ‘We wouldn’t care, by then.’ A shiver ran through them. ‘It’s frightening, just to think about it.’ ‘But look at the alternative. We lose each other anyway.’ ‘We’d see each other all the time. We’d live really close. Our kids’d grow up together. We’d go on holidays together. By the sea.’ ‘Did you realise that’s where Michael and Helen Orbiston got together?’ ‘Yes. I think I half knew, even at the time. But ... I think if you really love someone, you have to let them go, sometimes, so you can find your way back to them in some new way.’ ‘So you don’t want to get married, after all?’ ‘Not particularly. But I think in a good marriage that’s what’s going on all the time, in lots of little excursions and separations.’ ‘I don’t want to lose you!’ ‘I don’t want to lose you, either. But do you think we really love each other? I think we haven’t learned to love yet. I think we simply are each other. We’re the same person. I think we’re held together by fear of growing up.’

105 ‘Isn’t doing it with Claude Stubbs grown up?’ ‘No, because he doesn’t know about us, so we’re safe. He doesn’t force us to grow up.’ ‘Okay, you win. The fact that we’re having this conversation means we’ve grown out of each other, anyway. Do you realise that, darling? We’re split, at last? We will get married and we will have kids. We might even swap husbands now and then, if we can cover the jealousy thing ... but we’ve got two paths, now, not one!’ They looked at each other in amazement, eyes beginning to moist- en. ‘Don’t. Let’s try and be happy about it. It’s what most people have to do anyway.’ ‘Who’s going to have all the clothes?’ ‘We’ll split them, I suppose. It’ll be fun buying new things for each other. That way we can create new personalities for each other, it’ll be a way of keeping our shared thing going.’ This idea sobered them. ‘Do you want to get a photo taken? It’s a pretty big day in our lives.’ ‘A photo? A photo, yes ... ‘ ‘You don’t.’ ‘I wish we could get Rupert to do our portrait.’ ‘We’d tell him he wasn’t allowed to write on the back which was which. Only you and I would ever know.’ ‘We’d swap places every sitting!’ ‘He’d notice. He’s trained himself to notice things about people.’ ‘Well, darling, he won’t be able to, will he. He’s just a ghost, now.’ ‘Not much of a fate, when you think about it.’ ‘Fate’s not something that bears much thinking about.’ ‘Do you realise ... ‘ ‘Yes, darling, I realise.’ They left the library together. That night, after they’d undressed, each chose the other an outfit for the morning. Their mother sensed something profound happening in her house. Looking at Max, check-

106 ing his company records beside the fire, and looking up, occasionally, to smile at her, she wondered how men could be so unaware.

Scientists worked, in high security laboratories, and with devilish intensity, to attain even higher capacities for destruction. Their rhetoric said they were striving to unlock the secrets of the universe.

Annie’s sitting on a tree I ringbarked. The boys go to her when they want her; she listens, but ignores them when they want her to move. She is larger than I remember; this will be the sixth time she’s submitted to the process by which spirits get back into the world. At least they can say that in this clearing they’re wanted. Each time I look up from my work, she’s unmoved, like a rock with a bulge, in the middle of the clearing. I took her hand this morning; it was warm enough. Her pulse was steady. I began to gather sticks for a fire at her feet, but she waved me away. I think Lucy will be born today. Annie has her book and pencil with her; she’ll have to put that aside when Lucy says it’s time. A few yells will serve Lucy better than words. Sometimes I walk to the graves, and look at the words Hope and Nick; if the names attached to them while they were living, how do they attach to them when they’ve got flames at their ankles running around after those four strange women, waiting for another run at life? I decided that names have no meaning except for our memories; we have to have names so we won’t be forgotten. If we didn’t name people we’d have to see them as the spirits they are; apparently that’s too hard for everyday life. So a name on a grave is a sign of release. The spirit has left the name behind, like a shell, or an outgrown skin, to go somewhere else. When we’re born again we don’t remember our past lives, though people say they do. Their claims are false because they never remember their old name! If they knew where they’d come from, they’d know what they were called. Annie is so big, so motionless, I think she means to sit there all day, labour through the night, and show Lucy the clearing she’s already visited in the first cold light of morning. When the tingling air hits her darling cheeks, and she hears her own little voice calling, she’ll know she’s come back for the latest tragic, but unavoidable encounter with life. If we had memory, we might gather wisdom over all those lives, but we don’t. Memory’s recorded in books, and slabs of messmate driven into mounds of dirt. Wisdom evaporates, and the willingness to try again projects

107 us into the world. The process is so stupid it’s no wonder we make ourselves terrible in our attempt to prolong our pointless lives.

Annie’s journal Just a few words today. I wish to give thanks. This is something they made us do all the time, at the convent. But, with my body readying itself for the upheaval, I have to ask myself whom I’m thanking. Do I have an emotion without an object? I don’t thank God because my experience of the convent turned me against that story. The sisters could be thanked, but they did what they did in hopes of possessing my soul, and I refused them that. I’m drawn to the idea of thanking the sky above me, the river at the foot of the slope, and the massed armies of trees that seem to have forgiven us for cutting a place for ourselves. I wish to thank, I have a need to thank, and the paradox of this is that not only is there nobody to thank, but that if anyone is deserving of thanks, it’s me, Annie who calls herself Wainwright because she has no other name. The sisters never gave me the scrap of paper on which ‘Annie’ was scrawled: how desperate my mother must have been. And I don’t thank her, because, on balance, I scarcely think my existence is worthwhile - except today. There is something special about this unrecordable day. We have no calendars in the house of trees. I haven’t seen a clock in years. The sun’s time, the flow of the river, and the time that calls in the bellies of our animals are the only times I know - except for this special time that Lucy’s setting me. Today I am central. I am the greatest - am I not! - thing in this clearing. My training, my habit - that’s a pun; they like to put habits on you in convents - is to make me want to give thanks. Anything but being central! Anything but being the one with the biggest, most urgent claim, as God’s needs, we were taught, must take precedence over our needs. Who will I thank? The women with flaming feet? No, they only do their job, amazing as it is. No, I’ll break my habit, my training. I’ll give thanks to nobody, not even Lucy, stirring in there. I placed myself at the centre of the clearing this morning, refused Giles’ attempt to put himself into my act, and here I stay. I am the heart, I am the middle.

108 All distances are measured from here. There is a great quiet in the clearing today. I hear a kookaburra on the ridge. I hear magpies at the edge of the trees. I see a grey mountain jay walking at the other end of this hulk that Giles ringbarked when we first came. A storm brought it down last spring. The jay has decided to teach me a lesson in modesty. It’s just flown past without giving me a glance. The trees aren’t concerned about me. Why would I give thanks? We die, doing what I’m going to do. Why would I give thanks?

In a night of agony, Helen told Michael she loved the man who’d funded the creation of her quartet, and she was going to live with him. Michael sobbed, fell at her feet, swore he’d kill her, then kill himself. He got a carving knife and presented it to her face. Pale as death, unsure whether he’d strike or not, she waited. He broke down, told her he’d always love her, and all he wanted was for her to see him occasionally. He had no claim on her. She was free to do whatever she felt was best. Then he grabbed her by the throat and tried to choke her. She screamed. Nell, who’d known it was coming, was first there from the big house. George, Yatty, Karen and Tom, in varying states of dishevel- ment, and confusion, followed. ‘My family,’ said Michael bitterly. ‘My fucking family.’ Yatty took Helen back to the big house, poured her a stiff drink, and sent her by taxi to a hotel for the night, her new lover being out of town, for safety. Then she went back to the stable, to try to soothe her child.

The happiness that I saw on Annie’s face has no comparison, unless it’s with my unhappiness when she took the child on its first walk in this bit of the world we Wainwrights claim, leaving me and the boys to the fire and the house I’ve always thought the best thing I’ve ever done, while she, free spirit in the mountain air, showed this lately bound spirit its inheritance, leaving me feeling lumpen and the boys curious to know why their mother found Lucy more interesting than them.

109 5 In which an act of illicit love takes place, and a composer and an author appear

The period was darkened by the enmity of superpowers. Only fear of the atom bomb, it was said, restrained the USSR. Four years after Hiroshima, the USSR exploded a similar weapon. The race was on! America’s scientists tested, en plein air, a bomb a thousand times more powerful than the last. The human imagination had created a destructive force equal to itself. In cinemas around the world, citizens stared in fear at the mushroom shaped cloud above an atoll in the ocean called Pacific. The free world was in the lead again! Nine months later, the gestation period of a human life, the USSR tested a similar weapon.

We are happy now. The child that the spirit women gave us has bettered our lives. They thought deeply in choosing her, and it shows in a quality she has of concealing her perceptions. She is to all appearances normal for her age, but she’s brought a reserve of mind into our house. Annie, I can tell, is pouring everything she knows into her. Beside them, I’m unable to catch their dialogue. When I look at Lucy, inquiring, she gives me a smile of deceptive charm. She knows that I don’t know. Is that the balance that’s healing us? Who can say? She’s already envious of the boys climbing everything in sight, but her body’s not up to that yet. She’ll be a tomboy, no doubt of it, but that hidden observation will continue. Annie’s hardly touched her journal since the birth; her thoughts are bypassing paper as she forms Lucy’s mind.

The United States of America, in an aggression born of terror, upgraded its Strategic Air Command. Night and day, planes laden with

110 bombs were airborne, safe from surprise attack. As one flight prepared to land, another took to the air. Special tanker planes were developed for in-flight refuelling. A B52 bomber, with enough drinks, could circle the globe nonstop. Every time one took off, its captain carried a com- bat mission folder, to be opened only on a command relayed from the President. Each outward flight was a mission, to be aborted or not, towards a target behind the iron curtain. The cabins of these bombers were equipped with special blinds, so that in the event of an instruction to drop the ultimate weapon, pilots could seal their eyes from the fire- ball. The plane would proceed according to the dictates of electronic, man-made, intelligence.

On Jesse’s first day at school, Karen met the teachers, saw the boy settled, then came home to the piano which she hadn’t touched in ages. Nell, late for a lecture, only half heard what her sister was playing, but it came back to her as she walked through the parkland between East Melbourne and the university. She found herself humming it, and a bounce entered her stride. You’d need a wig, she thought, to march properly to this, and a rollicking style. You could be thin, but it wouldn’t hurt to be portly. Nell, an intent soul who looked as if she’d been born with spectacles, found herself smiling. People smiled back at her. All from a bit of music, she thought; is it because I’m hoping that Karen will go back to singing, or is there something else? At lunchtime she put a sandwich and two apples in her bag, and went for a stroll. Sitting on a row of bluestones which had once been the base of a fence, she ate her sandwich, considered her apples, then put the bag down in surprise. From the building behind her she could hear the same music being played, much more loudly than Karen had played it, more boldly, and with much greater characterisation. Handel in The Strand! The name came at last. She laughed at herself, remembering how Nell/George Friedrich Handel had trodden oh-so- lightly through the Fitzroy gardens that morning. Who was in there, playing?

111 When the music finished, and feeling she was being very bold, she went to the door of the squat, ugly building, said to be a museum, though it was never open, and knocked firmly, three times. Whoever was at the piano answered her with three sets of knocking chords; Freemason music from The Magic Flute. What a delightful game, thought Nell; this person has a sense of humour. She drummed her fingers on the door in the Handelian rhythm, heard footsteps, and watched as the door opened silently to reveal a tall, slender and extremely handsome man with sharply pointed features, the noblest of profiles, wild, tousled hair, and a grave expression on his face. ‘Yes?’ this man said. ‘What brings you to my door?’ ‘It was the music you were playing. When I left home this morning, my sister was playing the same piece. Not half as well as you, I have to say, but playing it well enough. I could hardly believe the coincidence.’ ‘Is your sister going to make a career in music?’ ‘We all hoped so. She was a very good contralto, but she had a big affair with an American colonel, got pregnant, and gave it all up. But if I hear her sing something, or she goes to the piano, I feel as if she’s starting to be all right again.’ ‘No one, no one at all,’ the stern man said, ‘should ever give up their art for any man or woman on earth.’ ‘Karen made a big mistake,’ Nell said. ‘You wouldn’t believe how foolishly she chooses her men ... ‘ She stopped. The face in front of her was wincing with pain; indeed his whole body seemed to be turning airy, as if he was dematerialising. ‘Karen!’ he cried. ‘Oh Karen!’ Tears ran down his cheeks, pale and becoming paler as he started to disappear. ‘I have to go back to England now,’ he told Nell. ‘I’m playing at a concert tonight. Lots of lovely Grieg pieces and a couple of my own. You overheard me practising.’ Nell wanted to say he couldn’t possibly play in England that night; he was here - but he wasn’t, he was fading from sight. ‘Stop!’ she said. ‘Who are you? What am I going to tell Karen?’ She wanted to grab

112 him, but she knew there’d be nothing there. ‘Come with me!’ she cried. ‘I want Karen to hear how you played that piece.’ But he was still fading, and would be gone in a moment. ‘What am I going to tell Karen?’ ‘Tell her,’ said the room, because Percy Grainger was gone by now, ‘that the most mysterious forces bring people together, and then pull them apart. There is nothing more tragic than being separated from someone you’ve loved. Tell her that on some plane we are together, and always will be. Tell her,’ the echoing, untidy room went on, ‘that her love was the closest thing to redemption I ever experienced. Tell her that I never deserved what she gave me, and what she let me do to her, but ... tell her also that if she ever thinks of me, she must sing. I will hear. I will be alive in her song. There is no other life worth living than to be alive in song.’ The voice stopped. A stunned Nell looked at her bag. Percy had taken one of her apples.

And now Gordon. Annie mothers him out of habit. She’s hardly more than a shell since she started passing all she knows to the girl. How lucidly Lucy sees me; she studies the boys with a frown. George and Robert climb in the forest. They look for areas where branches tangle, so they can travel without touching ground. Monkey- like! There are places, I notice, where, as they perfect this skill, they will be able to cover considerable distances. I never thought to have children who’d regress in evolu- tion. And they imitate the birds. They’re learning to skin the possums we catch, and the occasional fox. Next I have to show them how to cure the pelts so they can make themselves rugs. Lucy wraps herself in the skins that keep Annie and I warm at night; how the sight of those bead-bright eyes peering out of a furry wrap softens me. I contrast it with my feeling when I look from the mountain: I expand, become universal, but hard. There must be something unreconciled in me that I don’t soften then? But why should I soften? Who says softness is the right condition? I thank nobody for my farm. I cleared it for myself, and after that? There is no ‘after that’, only this strong will without which nothing would be done.

113 As world war gave way to cold war, Australia was obsessed with a visionary work. The Snowy River was to be reversed in its flow. Water wasted in the ocean would be delivered to inland farms. Dams would be built, streams diverted, and power generated. Huge caverns would house turbines beneath mountains known only to families grazing cattle in summer. This was a time of opportunity for engineers, surveyors, geologists, and migrant workers arriving in their new land. It caused an upset in the plans of Steve Morris and Tricia Courtney. Although no date had been set for the wedding, it had been understood that it would take place once Steve had graduated and found a good position. Tom Courtney, Tricia’s father, who had directorships in steel, wool-broking, shipping, and retailing, was sounding out men he knew. Margaret Courtney, Tricia’s mother, was looking for an apart- ment, because, as she told Tricia, ‘If you go and live where Steve is now, people will think you were living with him before you were married!’ A suitable place would be secluded, with a deep garden for parties. A few hundred pounds tastefully spent would ensure that it looked as it should until they got a place of their own. Then Steve saw an advertisement for graduates to work in the hydro-electric scheme. His next step had been placed before him. In the Courtneys’ kitchen, he told Tricia and her mother of his plan; that he’d visit the scheme, and if it was as attractive as he believed, he’d apply; that if he got a job he’d go there after graduation; and that as soon as it felt right - Margaret Courtney picked up this expression - he’d summon Tricia, he’d show her the region, and, if she liked it, they would live there after they got married. If she didn’t happen to like it ... he’d return to Melbourne. ‘Steve,’ Mrs Courtney said, ‘do you feel you’re not ready for marriage yet?’ ‘My feelings for Tricia - for you, Tricia - haven’t changed, but I’ve changed.’ Tricia looked pale. ‘I’ve become aware that while I’ve been a student, I’ve been assuming that I wouldn’t have to change when I

114 graduated. I’d go straight into a good position, and be a man. And I’d be lucky, I’d be a married man. I know Mr Courtney’s looking around for me. It’s very good of him. But - this is hard to say - I feel I haven’t grown up yet. I’m still a boy. I feel I have to experience the world until I know I’ve grown up, and then I’ll be ready for marriage. For you.’ Tricia: ‘And how long’s all this going to take?’ Her shock was giving way to anger. ‘And what am I supposed to do in the meantime? Study flower arrangement?’ Her mother tried to restrain her, but she went on. ‘Why can’t I come with you? I’m not very grown up either. Why can’t we grow up together?’ Steve flushed. Why not? And in asking himself the question, his feeling for Tricia changed. She was a woman, and they came late in the process of boys becoming men. It was a world of men he wanted to escape to. Mrs Courtney, filling the gap when she saw he couldn’t speak, said, ‘Thank you Steve. You’ve been very honest with us. Tricia and I need to talk about this with Tricia’s father. One of us will ring you soon. Have you mentioned any of this to your parents?’ ‘No.’ ‘Good. Just don’t say anything about it to anyone else - anyone else - until you hear from us.’ Her smile was full of a forced sweetness that contained a dismissal. Steve made his way to the door, head bowed. Mrs Courtney opened it for him, smiling again. As he reached the steps he heard a stifled sob which he knew meant Tricia was clutching her mother. Ashamed of the upset he was causing, but not so ashamed that he felt like relenting, he thought: this is what they mean when they say that to get out of a difficult situation you have to go forward. Three days later he got an embossed card with Mr Courtney’s city address. He was to be there at five the following afternoon. He went, afraid; his fiancée’s father managed more than uncertain young men. The accoutrements of the situation were masculine - desk, armchairs, glasses on a tray. Steve quailed, until he realised that in some way Mr Courtney was pleased with him. ‘Same thing happened with Marg and I. Firm sent me to London to learn about the business. She wanted to

115 marry straight away, come with me. She’d laugh about it now, but she had ideas of breaking into high society. Nothing came of that, thank God. The British upper classes, really! Though they are clever enough to train the natives to do their dirty work for them.’ He chuckled. They had a sherry. ‘You could be very useful to me up there. There’s things I need to know. Composition of the steels that’ll be needed; various design features of your tunnelling. All the other things: quantities; names of your major sub-contractors, and the timing of the release of tenders. Lead times are important in the steel business. A bit of advance notice would be nice, if we could get it.’ He smiled again. ‘You and Tricia been doing it together?’ Steve nodded. ‘First time for her, I think?’ ‘As far as I know.’ ‘First time for you?’ Of the two questions, this was the one that mattered. Steve nodded again. ‘Marg said you want a year.’ He remembered Tricia’s anguished face as she asked him how long ‘this’ was going to take. Since he’d never answered the question, a year was the deal. ‘Yes sir.’ His glass was topped up. ‘In a remote place like that, nobody down here’s going to know much about what you get up to. But women have imaginations, you know. Nothing’s to reach their ears which will upset them. Right? To put it simply, no nasty, messy, little situations. Mmm?’ ‘No sir.’ The older man relaxed. ‘To tell you the truth, I envy you. I’ve got a great life. Wonderful wife. Nothing more I could wish for. But ... ‘ While he paused, the room seemed to fill with nuances and com- plexities Steve wished he could grasp. ‘ ... I think I’d give it all if I could have my first glass of champagne again. My first night with Marg. That was in the cabin of the liner that brought me back from London. Marg was supposed to be staying

116 with an aunt in Adelaide. But she hopped on board and did the last leg of the trip with me. When we woke up, after that first night, she said to me, I wish I’d had an aunt in Perth!’ He chuckled. ‘Ever since, whenever we’re referring to something that sounds marvellous, but a bit out of reach, we call it an aunt in Perth. A lot of things about a couple are decided in those first days together. You don’t know it at the time, but when you look back, you see how much happened, and you can hardly believe it.’ The businessman looked tenderly on the boy. ‘You’re going to be all right, Steve. I’ll handle this end for you.’ Steve felt that this was the first event in his new quest for maturity.

How much joy she brings me as she runs across the clearing, eyes blazing and wanting to know everything there is to know. Annie regards her more cautiously, and the boys think there’s no place for her, as, in a way, there isn’t. She’ll have to leave us, if she’s to become a woman; that, or bring a man here, and I’ve no intention of sharing. I don’t want to give her to anyone else; I’ve seen nothing male in the settlements I’ve visited that deserves this creature the flame-women gave us. Perhaps I’ll consult them, when she gets older. Perhaps Annie can call them if it isn’t possible for me. It distresses me to think that the day must come when they’ll reclaim this brightness. I wonder if Hope signalled that she didn’t want to stay? How dark this clearing will be when Lucy leaves. I, who have no disposition to enter the darkness, would like to be gone before that happens. How bright are those eyes, how loving those arms, as she runs towards me over the close-cropped grass, making the pigs and chooks scatter, and the cows to lift their heads in wonder!

Steve and Tricia spent the afternoon with his parents, then met the Courtneys at Menzies for a quiet dinner, a port by the fire, then the good night’s sleep the older couple said Steve would need. He was up at six, loaded his cases in the car, then drove to the Courtneys’ for breakfast. Marg Courtney took the key of his flat to return to the agent. Tom Courtney came down wearing a cardigan which he would replace with his coat, and picked up the grapefruit which his wife had sliced and sprinkled with sugar. Tricia ate nothing, but made herself coffee

117 in the heavy, elaborate percolator her parents had bought at Harrod’s. A shaft of light passing through the breakfast room caught the corner of a Rupert Bunny oil of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Glancing outside, Tom Courtney observed that the tennis court needed mowing, and that it would be a beautiful day for driving. Marg Courtney put a huge plate of bacon, eggs and tomato in front of Steve. ‘That should see you through to lunch,’ her husband observed. ‘Where’ll you stop? Benalla? Wang?’ ‘Wangaratta, I think. Possibly even Wodonga. I’d like to get the back of the journey broken before I stop.’ ‘Cross the river at Albury? Or ... ‘ ‘I think I’ll follow the river to Jingellic. That’ll bring me into Tumbarumba on the opposite side from the Urquharts’ place, but a few more miles at that stage won’t matter. It’ll give me a chance to look at the country ... ‘ ‘Jingellic: that’s about a seventy mile drive from Albury, isn’t it? Seventy-five?’ With these commonplaces of land and distance the men kept at bay the uncertainties of what was happening: Marg, putting toast near her daughter, said to Steve, ‘You must write to us the moment you get there. And some photos too, as soon as you get them developed.’ She’d given her future son in law a Leica as a sign of approval, as well as to bond him in what he was doing. Then, when Tom went to his study to gather papers, she retreated to the kitchen to let the young couple have a moment alone. This was when their hearts were heaviest. There was nothing to talk about. The maps were folded away. Tricia was starting work at a milliner’s in Toorak Road, and felt it compared poorly with the great undertaking of which it was being said, in political rhetoric, that faith could truly move mountains. Steve had felt a call. Tricia wondered if she would be asked to follow. If she did, would it work? And if it did, might there not be another moment, perhaps long after they were married, when she felt a later, more urgent call to leave him? It was always, as the saying had it, on the cards.

118 Annie’s journal Lucy tells me that the boys know when Giles is going to the mountain. He thrusts his spade in the soil, or with some sort of emphasis he closes the gate on the pigs, then he makes his way up the track. George and Robert, and now Ned, she tells me, run ahead and climb trees so that they are above his route. He knows this, and sometimes heads into the bush to frustrate them. They know this, and fan out so that he has to pass close to one of them. Part of their game is to try, once he’s passed under, to get ahead and be above him again. There is some dimension of this game that worries me. It will develop in a way I cannot predict. Though they are too young to know it, they are trying to trap his psyche, perhaps to divert him from his so firmly held purpose. It’s the vision that sustains him that they want to discover, then block out. I’m the victim of that vision, but, strangely, I respect it. When we were first in this place, I used to ask him, in the way we know each other’s minds, what it was he saw up there. He never answered, but occasionally, when he was going, he paused, allowing me to come. I never went. I watched for a change in him when he came back, but he always gave the same feeling, of breadth without kindness, penetration without compassion. Sister Brigida took us for Latin at the convent. One of the girls noticed that ‘similis’ was our word similar. Maeve Ferguson, who had to be cleverer than everybody else, said it wasn’t our word similar, it was like similar, in fact it was similar to similar, or maybe it had given rise to our word similar, but it wasn’t the same word. Challenged on this, she said all things, even words, were unique, and that one thing couldn’t be another. Sister Brigida said ‘Who knows what a simile is?’ and when someone got that right, she followed up: ‘Who knows what a metaphor is?’ This part of the lesson got very noisy, with everyone talking at the same time, some of us to Sister Brigida, others arguing across the room. ‘This is like the Tower of Babel,’ Sister called out, and Maeve, who was quite clever, I suppose, called out ‘Simile! Now give it to me as a metaphor!’ She called it out in just the way Sister Brigida called her questions.

119 ‘Well, class?’ Sister said, giving us the question, but Maeve, who was a wonderful mimic, insisted: ‘Sister Brigida! It’s you I’m asking!’ There was a real challenge in it. If Sister couldn’t answer, she’d have lost face. Lost our respect, really. There was silence, then. Sister thought for a while. Then she put up her hand. We all waited. She said, ‘Before I put my hand up, you, Maeve, were being me. You had assumed my being. Borrowed it for the time. When I put my hand up, I reclaimed myself. If you speak with my voice again, now, you will only be imitating. You will be trying to be similar to me. A simile allows things to be separate from each other, and invites a comparison. A metaphor is a more ... ‘ We were hanging on her words. She was a born teacher. ‘ ... carnivorous activity. One thing assumes, no, it takes over, it devours, the meaning of the other. There is a fusion. For a fleeting moment in speech, or writing, one thing is the other.’ Maeve, speaking very solemnly, because she knew she was on dangerous ground, said, ‘So Christ’s blood, in the Eucharist, is a metaphor drinking the wine?’ Sister Brigida said, also very seriously, ‘We can get ourselves tangled in words. Your homework tonight’ - she was reasserting herself as teacher - ‘is to copy from the dictionary the meanings of the two words we’ve been talking about, and give an example of each. Your last question, Maeve, you can put to Father Halligan on Friday.’ We all knew she’d forewarn Father Halligan, and somehow we’d be cheated again. As usual. Why does all this remind me of Giles?

When Steve stopped at Wodonga to get petrol, the garage man said to him, ‘Perfect day for driving.’ These, he realised, were the first words he’d heard since Tricia whispered in his ear, ‘Stay true to me darling,’ when he was leaving. He looked at the man screwing back the petrol cap. He seemed unselfconsciously part of his town. ‘They serve a very good lunch at the Imperial,’ the man said, pointing across the road. ‘If you’re thinking of stopping for a bite.’

120 In the dining room Steve was given a table where he could look onto the street. New cars were replacing pre-war vehicles, but there were a couple of horses and carts to be seen. The tablecloth and napkins were of heavy linen, and the cruet stand was gleaming. A uni- formed waitress brought him the menu. ‘The fish is Murray cod,’ she said. ‘Actually, my brother caught it.’ Steve smiled at her, feeling that the world was in pretty good shape. When he’d eaten the fish he told her it had been delicious; she asked him where he was going. ‘A pity you can’t stop for a day or two,’ she said. ‘My brother’d take you out in his boat. He knows all the good places.’ He knew she wanted him for herself. ‘I have to keep moving,’ he said. ‘Tumbarumba tonight; relatives. Future relatives, actually. Family my brother’s going to marry into. Then Cooma tomorrow night. I think I’m going to get a job with the Snowy Mountain Authority.’ ‘Is your brother older or younger than you?’ Inside that uniform, he thought, is a very attractive body. ‘Five minutes younger. We’re twins.’ He smiled at her, desire showing through. Desire was naked in her reply. ‘Tell him if he’s ever passing through Wodonga, to have lunch at the Imperial.’ Back in his car, he put it behind him as an incident of travel. He followed the winding river, rejoicing in the light reflecting from the waters of Lake Hume, a sky trailing stratocirrus cloud, and the mild slopes, reaching back to foothills, behind which must be the sterner mountains where the years of his young manhood were waiting. The simple wooden bridge at Jingellic made him, young engineer, smile. Tumbarumba he viewed with patronising affection, then found his way to Mountain View, the Urquharts’ rambling, white weatherboard home, on a sheltered slope surrounded by green grass and white sheep. He felt very much the expected young man, as Jane, her mother, and then her father parted the excited dogs. John Urquhart said he’d show him the property later, Gillian Urquhart took him to his room at the end of the back verandah, and

121 Jane was deputed to show him the garden while her mother made tea. It occurred to Steve that if his brother played his cards well, he’d come into this idyllic sheep station one day; the Urquharts had no children but Jane. Lucky Mark! He wondered if he, working for a public authority, would ever do half as well. The shadows began to lengthen as they lingered over afternoon tea. John said, ‘We’d better hop in the ute and I’ll show you round.’ ‘If you don’t go soon, John, Steve won’t be able to see anything.’ ‘You coming Jane?’ ‘No. I’ll change now. I’ll talk to Steve later,’ The sight of their master striding to his ute brought all the dogs, barking and getting in each other’s way. ‘Beggars can’t miss out on anything. All right! Here you are. Hop in!’ John Urquhart dropped the tail of the ute, slammed it while the last dog was still in mid-air, and took Steve for his tour of the property. He cruised along tracks and over paddocks with indolent authority, occasionally stopping to shift something or shut a gate. Sometimes he lifted a finger from the wheel to indicate a flock of birds, or a mob of sheep in what he called ‘first class condition’. Steve envied him his certainty. ‘How long ... ’ he started, meaning to ask him when he’d acquired, or how he’d developed, this undivided assurance, but the question came out as ‘How long have you been here on this property?’ ‘Mountain View - actually I’ve forgotten to show you the highest spot on the property, haven’t I; we’d better go back a bit - came into the Urquhart family two generations back ... ’ When he’d heard the family story, seen everything, and was back at the house, Gillian Urquhart put glasses and sherry on the verandah: Steve thought of Tom Courtney’s office, where his year’s leave had been granted. It had started well, he felt. Then Jane came around the corner of the house, her mother went in to prepare dinner, and the two people, engaged on the same night, were alone. Steve felt something shift inside him. Jane stared at him.

122 ‘When you and Mark are together, I can tell you apart. I think it’s some quality of your voices. But ... with you sitting there, where he sat last time he was up ... actually, I wouldn’t know if it was him or you.’ She was clearly disconcerted. He felt desire stirring in him for the second time that day, and searched her face. She flushed. Dry-mouthed, startled at what was happening, she said, ‘He usually pours. When he’s here.’ Steve dropped the cork when he took it out of the bottle. It rolled near her. She bent down for it. He jumped from his chair to pick it up, and rubbed against her. She stayed, bent forward, her shoulder against his thigh. She sensed his erection rising, and pressed his leg with her body a little more firmly, then straightened. He sat down. Neither had picked up the cork. When he poured, he spilt sherry on the wooden verandah. When they touched glasses, they were careful not to let their fingers meet. ‘Cheers,’ he tried to say; it was hardly more than a croak. She was too frightened to speak. The sound of an engine firing up in the distance meant that her father had been successful in restart- ing a troublesome pump, which was his reason for not being there and preventing a mess like this from occurring. ‘Daddy,’ she said. They looked in the direction of the sound; anything but look at each other. He felt his heart beating harder and knew his face would be a bright red. When she lifted the glass to her lips, she couldn’t swallow. ‘How do we get out of this?’ she said to her fiancé’s brother. ‘I don’t know. I suppose it’s only lust, but I’m helpless.’ Jane’s mother appeared in the doorway beside them. ‘Steve, the phone’s in the dining room. I know you’ll want to make a couple of calls to Melbourne, and our local exchange closes at eight. You’ve got an hour.’ She withdrew.

He rang his parents first, hoping it would be his father who answered the phone. It was. He described the drive, and the property. When he heard his father say ‘What’s John Urquhart driving?’ he knew there’d be no difficulties with the conversation. ‘Love to mum,’ he said, hang-

123 ing up. Next the Courtneys; what if Tricia answered the phone? She’d hear the falsity in his ‘Hello darling.’ He sat by the empty fireplace in the light of a golden sunset, paralysed by lust, guilt, and confusion. It was less than twelve hours since he’d seen her. It crossed his mind that in ending the talk with his father he hadn’t said ‘Love to Mark’, because he hadn’t any; how on earth was he going to get through dinner, let alone a night sleeping in the same house as Jane? He drummed his fingers angrily on the telephone table. Gillian Urquhart came in, bringing him his glass. ‘Getting through all right?’ The phone rang as she spoke. ‘Excuse me sir,’ the telephone said. ‘We’re closing the exchange early tonight. Do you have any further calls you’d like to make?’ Steve knew that whatever had just been said to him would be relayed by gossip to the Urquharts. ‘Yes, one more,’ he said. ‘Here’s the number.’ He gave the Courtneys’ number with two digits reversed. It was up to the gods, now, whether these unknowns would be home, and if they were, he’d have to say, in front of Jane’s mother, ‘Sorry, wrong number’, and give the right one. ‘I’m sorry sir, that number’s not answering. I’m closing the exchange now.’ Steve’s relief was intense. ‘Strange’, he said, acting as best he could. ‘I really thought they’d be home. I’ll try first thing in the morning.’

Dinner was difficult, with Jane looking flushed. When her mother remarked on it, she said she had a headache and would go to bed early. After dinner was harder for Steve, sitting with the Urquharts who were curious about him, and wanted to take him through their family history when all he wanted was to be alone with his shameful problem. At last they saw him to his room, he got into bed and turned off the light via a cord-pull that dangled above his head. He slept eventually, and woke, mouth dry. Getting out of bed, he went first to the toilet at the other end of the verandah. Passing Jane’s room, he saw the light was on. The toilet flushed noisily; a signal of sorts. Passing her room the second time, he saw that there was a gap

124 between the curtains, and through the gap he could see her dressing table mirror, which showed him a reflection of Jane’s face - tight, full of stress and excitement. He went to the kitchen and got himself a glass of water in the dark. His heart beat faster when he heard the sound of softly padding feet. A moment later they had their arms around each other, kissing. ‘We have to go outside,’ he said. ‘Or to my room.’ She took his hand to lead him. ‘I can’t do this in the house.’ They went to the shed and climbed on some wool bales. He tried to mount her but she whispered to him to lie down, then took his penis and kissed it, rasping her tongue provocatively across the tip. The lust that had been latent since his arrival flared in both of them. They fucked, and soon after fucked again. ‘We have to go now,’ she said. ‘And do some real hard thinking, because we’ll only get a minute to talk in the morning. If we’re lucky.’ Gillian Urquhart heard her daughter come back into the house, and got up. ‘Are you all right, darling?’ Jane was quick. ‘It was puppy. I thought I heard him whimpering outside my window. But he’s all right now.’ Her mother went back to bed. Puppy had been chained in his kennel for the first time that night. Secrets, she thought, there are so many secrets, and it’s usually better to carry the secret, because a secret is always someone’s necessary desire, than to confront the liar. Liars.

In the morning, Steve and Jane got the minute they needed, because Jane’s mother saw to it that they did. Jane told him that he was on no account to ring, or even write, because the people at the post office were sticky noses and would comment on any letter from an unusual - their word for improper - source. If she could write to him, and it could only be if she was away from home, she might send him a letter. ‘But it’d be better if we just left it right now. Pretend it didn’t happen. Forget it. No, don’t contradict me, I’m as hot to go on with it as you are, but we can’t. We just have to forget it. Deny it. Really. Just put it right out of our minds. Don’t say anything Steve, I’m making the decision for you. Now go and get your cases, Dad’ll be back in a minute.’

125 Gillian Urquhart, glancing at them through the kitchen window, was confirmed in her suspicions. Steve hadn’t made his call to Melbourne yet. She was about to remind him that he should do so, when the phone rang. The Courtneys. Tricia in fact. ‘Yes, he did try to ring you last night. Our exchange told him nobody was answering.’ An anxious Tricia: ‘We were here all night. Waiting for him to ring! He should have kept trying!’ ‘Our exchange may have dialled a wrong number. They do that, sometimes. And they closed a little early last night.’ Tricia: ‘How could they close if there was someone still trying to get a number?’ ‘Well, you see, the exchange is in someone’s house, in little places like this, and if they want to go out, they have to close down early. They do us lots of favours in return. Relay messages, that sort of thing. But he’s just outside, I’ll get him for you.’ Steve lied with vigour, industry and art. He even realised that when you lie, you mustn’t say too much, or you give yourself away. He realised also that when lying you don’t change the subject, because it’ll be noticed. The person lied to must be allowed to do that. He promised her he’d ring that night from Cooma. ‘It’s a big town, they don’t shut the exchange at silly hours like they do here.’ Eventually she was soothed. He promised photos and a letter. ‘I have to go now,’ Tricia said. ‘Daddy’s here, he wants to talk to you before he goes to the office.’ Another ordeal, Steve thought. Sex! Love! Lies! ‘Morning Steve. Tom Courtney. Everything okay?’ ‘Yes sir, everything’s fine. Great trip. Had lunch at the Imperial in Wodonga. I can recommend their Murray cod. Caught by the brother of the waitress.’ ‘Waitress, eh? There’s always diversions to be had, when you’re travelling. Tricia and her mother were in quite a state when you didn’t ring.’ Steve talked about the exchange, then decided to take the plunge. ‘You can tell them sir, that there’s no aunt in Perth!’ The businessman

126 chuckled. ‘Okay my boy, ring them tonight though, won’t you. Good trip!’ Clunk. Clunk! No aunt in Perth. Acting nicely, Steve said goodbye to the Urquharts, shaking hands with Jane, kissing her mother on the cheek, and shaking hands with John: ‘Good trip, my boy. It’s been great having you. Stay the night with us any time you’re passing through!’ Waves all round, a double clink at the cattle ramp, and Steve was on his way, escaping, as he thought, the lie, then, as the miles passed under his wheels, becoming obsessed with it.

Annie’s right. Those boys will be dangerous as they get older.

Gillian Urquhart said to her husband, ‘I heard puppy whimpering last night. I had to go out and soothe him. I think we should let him sleep at the house a little longer. Just a week or two, perhaps.’ Tom was prepared to humour his wife. ‘Moving him down to the kennel is part of his training. He’s going to make a first class sheep dog. But if you think so, all right.’ It didn’t occur to him that she was covering a lie so that he never saw it, and, on another level, covering it so her daughter didn’t know it had been seen.

Steve’s car left the cleared country and entered the bush. He drove for some time then stopped, because there was a wooden cross beside the road. What may once have been a mound of dirt had subsided, and at the foot of the cross, which bore no name, there was a pool of dark water and blackened leaves. He walked into the bush, troubled by what he’d done the night before. Some distance in, he opened his trousers and examined his penis. Touching where Jane’s lips had caressed it, he became excited; the penis became hard. He ran his hand up and down until semen spurted onto the floor of the bush. The penis remained erect. He had to shuffle his pants to get it out of sight. Then he sat on a log, sighing. What on earth had he been doing, to have sex with Jane on his very first day away from Tricia? He’d have to tell her. He’d have

127 to tell Mark. He’d have to tell the Courtneys, and the Urquharts. His father and mother too. He’d have to call off his engagement. Mark would have to call off his engagement, and if he was lucky he, Steve, might finish up with Jane ... It was ridiculous. As he walked back to the car, resting beside the resting place of some stockman, killed, he supposed, by falling off his horse - or murdered! - his imagination began to fire. He started the car again, wanting to run away from everything, and most of all himself. Shortly after, the car brought him into the most beautiful valley he’d ever seen. The irony of the fates, showing him paradise when he was full of self loathing, and a problem he had no hope of solving, was not lost on him. He stopped again, walked to the edge of the large clearing, and clung to a tree, rehearsing in his mind all the actions he could take. It occurred to him after a time that everything he thought of involved telling someone else what he’d done. The secret was too heavy. But if he told Tricia, or the Urquharts, or anyone else, they would suffer terribly. He had either to make others suffer or carry the load himself, or rather, share it with Jane, who had to carry it too. He wanted to rush back to ask her hundreds of questions that he knew had to be answered, even if he hadn’t formulated them yet. In a stew, a frenzy, he noticed that a magnificent grey filly was bearing down on him from the bush behind, and on it was a little girl of six or seven. ‘What are you doing here, mister?’ ‘I suppose I could ask you the same thing.’ ‘No you can’t. I live here, so I belong, and you don’t, so you have to tell me.’ ‘Tell you what?’ The child wrinkled her nose with contempt. ‘Are you lost? Do you need someone to rescue you?’ The perception was extraordinary. He felt sicker than before. ‘You are lost. There’s your car over there. Why don’t you jump in and drive wherever you’re going? Or have you made a mistake and taken the wrong track. Plenty of people do, you know.’

128 It was starting to hurt. As a diversion, Steve said, ‘What’s the name of your horse?’ ‘Nullah-Mundoey!’ ‘What?’ He was clearly stupid. ‘Nullah-Mundoey. You must know what a Nullah-Mundoey is.’ ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’ ‘Well, you are in the wrong place. I think you had better keep going, mister, or go back, whatever you want to do.’ ‘That’s the problem,’ the young engineer said to the wise child. ‘I don’t know which way I want to go.’ The girl sniffed. ‘The homestead’s back in there, if you’re in trouble and need to stay the night.’ Staying at a homestead to get out of trouble, Steve thought, would be about the last solution to his problems. The child raised her eyebrows, nudged the horse she was riding, and cantered across the clearing to a track which led to the homestead. Steve walked back to his car, a 1948 Holden, traded in to his father because someone wanted to buy something newer.

They are anticipating me. It’s the pathways in my mind they want to learn. Doubtless they are intelligent, but we shall see.

At the edge of the idyllic clearing was a sign: ‘Talbingo’. It meant nothing to Steve. As soon as he re-entered the bush, the road climbed steeply. In places he was down to first gear. Fearing the engine might overheat, he wished he’d checked the water level that morning, but he’d been preoccupied with making the best exit he could - and now he wanted to go back. The grinding climb got on his nerves. When, finally, he reached the top of the range and the road levelled out, he stopped again, and went for another walk off the road, sexually aflame. Back and have it out with everybody! Go on, and deny that it ever happened! Live by the minute because it was unbearable to think that he might never have again the fierce gratification he’d had on the wool

129 bales. He wanted it every night, yet some strand of realism told him that if, by an extraordinary turn of events, he managed a liaison with Jane it would only hold its excitement while it was forbidden. It was the fact that it had happened across a tabu line that gave it ferocious zest; a marriage to her would finish up no more exciting than a marriage to Tricia or anyone else. This meant, he saw, that what had him in its grip was a desire which, though it took a sexual form, wanted to break convention, social requirements, accepted norms of decency. ‘Love is blind’, he’d read, ‘but desire just doesn’t give a good goddam’. He finished the sentence with an angry cry. ‘Fuck!’ On the road, a horse reared. The magnificent grey was back. It must surely be the same horse because there couldn’t be two such animals in the district? Or was it possible for horses to have twins? The rider, this time, was a most attractive woman in her early twenties who was brandishing a whip in his direction. ‘There are people whose uncouthness makes them unfit for the company of anyone more refined than the occupants of the pigsty, and to say that is to be unduly judgemental on our porcine friends!’ He looked at her in amazement. ‘Come out on the road,’ she said, ‘and give account of yourself, or as sure as I’m going to rest one day by the Jounama Creek which you crossed down there at Talbingo, I’ll be putting this around your shoulders.’ She showed him the whip again, held tightly in a deli- cately gloved hand. She was dressed in ankle length black, the colour of denial, but jutting from beneath the brim of her sharply-outlined hat were a couple of the red and blue feathers of a mountain parrot. ‘Can’t you speak up for yourself ?’ the apparition said. ‘Don’t tell me your admiration for such a modest exemplar of colonial womanhood has stopped your tongue?’ He smiled. She slashed the whip perilously close to his right shoulder, removing the top leaf on a eucalypt sapling with awesome accuracy. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘What’s going on? I saw that horse half an hour ago, but it was a little girl that was riding it. How did you ... ?’ He stopped. The nose was the same as the little girl’s. The rest of

130 the face, the balance of chin and brow, was similar too, but the nose was unmistakable. What was happening? He felt sure his mind must be giving way. Oh God how he wished he hadn’t chosen this route to Cooma. ‘What’s the name of your horse?’ he said, weak to the point of exhaustion. ‘Aren’t you believing the evidence of your own ears these days? It’s the same as it was half an hour since, when I told you it was Nullah- Mundoey, bred from the line of Nullah-Mundoeys that Danny Delacey, Fearless Danny, my paternal grandfather, is to be remembered by with more certainty of appraisal than he’d get by being judged for his human offspring, various as they are.’ In his morally weakened condition he found the woman’s energy terrifying, yet her riding boots were so dainty, and the long black plait tied with a white bow was so strongly feminine, that he felt himself drawn to her on a level of attraction far removed from the events of the previous night. She, looking down from the Nullah-Mundoey, saw in his eyes the softening she’d come to expect from foolish admirers. She cracked the whip again. ‘What’s wrong with you? Why are you stopping all the time to maunder alone in the forest, sick of yourself and sorry for yourself all at once? Do you think you can hide what’s going on in your heart? You’re an open book to an intelligent woman, and there’s more of those by far than men are willing to concede.’ He hung his head. ‘I can see by the hangdog look about you that you’ve been as busy as can be in trying to ruin a young woman’s life, and in those cases, when the young man’s as personable as I fancy you were until the shame overtook you, then there’s always another young woman’s life to be ruined too, or maybe more than one if the man is as careless, and wanton, as you appear to be!’ Still looking at the ground, he said, ‘You talk like a book.’ ‘You’d have read My Brilliant Career?’ He shook his head.

131 ‘Well do so. It might put a bit of insight into you. You can’t be entirely without the potential for some understanding, since you have the grace to hang your head when your shame is presented to you!’ ‘When I left Melbourne yesterday morning,’ he mumbled, ‘I thought I was starting my brilliant career. I’m afraid it’s in a mess at the moment.’ ‘Gone bung,’ said the twenty-three year old Miles Franklin. ‘Well, pluck up your courage! If you’ve made a mistake, admit it. A moral code that condemns has always got elbow-room for forgiveness. To wipe the slate, you have first to show it to others. Your next step is to make your promise never to repeat the offence. And after that, you’ve simply to live by walking that straight line that’s known to anyone who’s got a nose and two eyes in her face.’ The pain of his position, the impossibility, overcame him. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’ The observation infuriated her. She slashed the whip again, trying for his back, but he managed to jump out of the way, and the lash coiled around a branch. Bending low, and running hard to get a few metres distance, he picked up a stick and turned to defend himself, but she was gone. Nullah-Mundoey was gone. The whip dangled, and fell on the bush floor as its lash uncoiled. Steve wanted to run, but he made himself pick up the weapon she’d wielded - so neatly plaited, so terrifying - and put it in the boot of the Holden. He sat in the car for a long time, too stirred up to drive.

Well, my boys, I’m on my mountain and you’re perched above my path. You should be with your mother, grieving for Prudence, who lasted no longer than Hope. The flame-women were nowhere to be seen when we drove the third grave marker into its mound. Fair weather friends; they could have come to check on Lucy, but they didn’t. There’s too much cloud today to see the ocean, but it’s there, inescapably, at the end of the long journey of this river I think of as mine - no, myself: why do I make that distinction? Nobody can own a river, although you might think so if its whole length ran through your property. But that’s a conceit, too. How can we say we own

132 anything that will outlast us? If it exists outside us, we can only own it by devour- ing it. Cannibals, I’m told, think that if they eat the bravest warrior of another tribe they’ll gain his strength; how quaint! Spiritual growth is the only growth, and that comes with an enlargement of the mind. I could lash you out of your trees, my boys, if I had a mind to do it, or light a fire at the bottom; that’d test your mobility. But today is Prudence’s day. Annie’s grief rejected me, so I left the clearing to her. As we buried her, Annie said - the only time she spoke loudly all morning - ‘I know you’ll come back!’ I took it to be a claim on the mercy of the flame-women, whom, if there was a trace of fear in my nature I might be inclined to fear. What power they have, allotting new lives here and there. Kushwant, the grain trader in Omeo, says souls are on a path towards the ultimate release from endless rebirth. Kushwant, I’d have to say, would need to slim considerably before he’d get through the opening again! Question: are the flame-women among the released, or are they still treading the mill to keep their own cycle going? Question: why do Kushwant’s theories and even the presence of the mysterious birth-arrangers not make me feel that I’m caught up in all this? Doesn’t everyone feel unique, exempt, sui generis and special as I do? Question! Question, my monkey boys: when and where is the end of the line for you? Think about it, or do you too think you are exempt from the common fate? Prudence, Prudence, come back if they’ll allow you. Your mother grieves for you, sitting on the trunk she’s made her own, and staring at the spot at the edge of the bush where we buried your empty flesh. Nature has no way to bring you back but through your mother, but if I had the power to summon you out of air, I’d materialise you here, this afternoon, on my mountain, and take you back to your mother with pride. But men are not given this. Prudence, cold virtue, I await your return.

Steve could find no acceptance from the mountains. Occasionally he saw four wheel drive tracks heading into the bush and it occurred to him that those who’d made the tracks may have been the first whites ever to explore that range or gully, and the same experience might soon be his, but when he walked down these tracks he could feel no connection with his surroundings. Perhaps it will come, he thought, but not in this period of self-rejection.

133 Would there be a shapely waitress in Cooma to make him forget? Would such an acceptance by another overcome his hatred of himself ? Forgiveness through fucking, or an animal trail to nowhere? How long would it be before he’d be able to cast his mind across these empty spaces, knowing them in all their moods and seasons? Would he have to camp out in hot weather and cold, with only a sullen fire struggling to keep alive against the snow, to warm him? And why, he asked himself, if we choose our own apparitions - every man his own monster - had he been met by the woman with a whip? By late afternoon he reached Adaminaby, a town destined to be drowned by a hydro-electric dam. It was bleak, now that cloud was obscuring the sun and a cool drift of air stripped the summer day of warmth. He would have driven straight through, but he saw a street stall, a couple of trestles, with four women offering its wares to an empty street. I’ll get something to send Tricia, he decided, and stopped. Looking at the women as he got out of the car, he felt a deeper need. Presumably they lived nearby; if they accepted him, could their warmth be turned into forgiveness? The oldest would have been sixty, the youngest sixteen, and they offered, he saw, jams, honey, green tomato pickles, ill-inflated sponges, a small pile of baby apparel, and some clumsily embroidered milk jug covers, dripping with beads. He greeted them as one in need of greeting, and they chatted to him. They told him how they melted wax to seal their concoctions, how babies needed to be warm in mountain winters. He asked them how much they’d taken for the day, and they confessed it had only been a few shillings; they expected better from the church fête next month. When his conversational overtures were exhausted, he chose four jars - one for the Urquharts (Jane); one for the Courtneys, mère et père and one for Tricia; and one for his parents. While they were packing these purchases securely with brown paper in a shoebox, he examined the faces of these kindly, lonely women, wondering if they had more to offer. It was then that the youngest of them remarked on his num-

134 ber plate: he was a visitor to New South Wales. ‘I am,’ he said with a little pride. ‘I hope to work with the Snowy Mountain Authority very soon!’ Their faces froze. The oldest was quick to condemn. ‘They’re going to flood our town, did you know that?’ He confessed that he did. ‘This place mightn’t look much to you, but it’s one of the earliest settlements in the high country, and every one of these buildings was put up with a struggle. And now American contractors and crowds of foreigners from countries we fought not long ago are going to wreck the homes where we’ve lived all our lives. If you want my advice, you’ll turn that car around and go right back where you came from.’ As she berated him, the business of wrapping went on. Coins were handed over, and change was found by scrabbling in another shoebox serving as a till. ‘But this is progress,’ he said. ‘There’ll be all sorts of results from what the Authority’s going to do. Power, and water for irrigation ... ’ They were staring at him coldly. ‘ ... and power, and, ah, power ... ’ One of the women gave him a way out. ‘We’re not blaming you, son. It’ll go ahead whatever you do. But if you join them, you need to know that not everyone’s happy with what you’re doing.’ When he got to Cooma, he took a room at what had been a hotel for the squattocracy, and asked for a phone. He was shown a little cubicle partitioned off the hall. ‘Tricia darling,’ he said, when he got through, ‘I need your love. I’ve just arrived, and I’m feeling pretty down, and I don’t know if I’ll ever achieve anything up here, and I need to know that there’s someone who accepts me as I am.’ As he listened to her telling him she loved him, he knew that her eyes would be filled with tears and her face with hope.

Grief, my love, is no exception. Grief is the underlay, the unchanging basis of our existence. Why else do we have to invent virtues like Hope, Prudence - and the next one, Faith, when the little one that’s lost to us comes back - to sustain us in the idea that there is some redemption from being what we are? Redemption there is none. As you see us, naked when we couple, naked when we give birth, naked as we arrive, and

135 clad when we dig our garden, dam our stream, clad as we are when we pull milk from the teats of our cows, that is the sum and total of all we contribute to the world.

136 6 In which a little girl learns to write, a young man makes a confession, and the holy art of music plays a part

Annie’s journal I’ve been teaching Lucy to read and write. The boys walked out of the first lesson, to follow Giles. I’ve told Lucy that when she’s ready, the task of keeping the journal will be hers. A child’s eyes must see more clearly than mine what’s happening here. Giles came back from Swifts Creek with a mare for his stallion. The boys thought the horse was for them, as in a way she is, because they’ll get the foals to ride, and they’re already hopping on and off the mare, which they’ve named Nik-Nok because sometimes one hoof clips the other as she gallops. Nik-Nok doesn’t look very safe to me, but they swing themselves on and off. I can’t bear to watch. Giles laughs when they tumble. He tells them to roll with the fall, and they seem to be good at it: he’s raising a trio of horsemen who’ll ride him down one day. But Lucy. She came out of the forest one day smiling. She said a woman with flames at her ankles had appeared to her, asking if she was happy. I didn’t know whether to believe her or not. The flame women can see whatever they like, so why would they need to ask? Perhaps they need her shining presence as much as I do. She’ll need their help if she’s to get away. How have I been defeated? I think about this often, and the fact that I can’t find an answer tells me that the alternative, what might have been, has been kept from me. I am circumscribed by Giles.

137 I think that lately he has become a little scared of what he sees from his high place. If there’s a completeness which is larger than him, then he’s insignificant - something he won’t admit. So he has to be part of this larger whole, but he can’t have it on his own: he has to have me. And he has: it’s years since I wanted to get away. I love this place as deeply as he does. My life’s gone into it too. In living in this strange dwelling, in feeling faintly proud of its eccentricity on the rare occasions when we’re visited, I’ve become its owner too, and responsible for what happens. The wall of bush that surrounds us is no wall to me, since I walk in it as freely and with as much delight as Giles. Lucy must marry, but on different terms. I can’t imagine what those terms will be, so I’m no use to her except to sustain and encour- age. There’s always heartbreak where there’s love. If she doesn’t get away, I’ll feel sorry for her, then bitter as she grows bitter; but if she does go, and I see her getting smaller as she walks to the tiny townships of the valley, my wish to continue will dwindle as she dwindles, and disappear as she disappears, carried away, as my last gift of life to her, by that shining, fragile, spirit-given presence who’s given me my greatest joy as a mother.

The Snowy Mountains Authority welcomed Steve. They had a big project starting, estimates had to be done, and one of the engineers responsible had left. Steve worked night and day. Pencil marks on his papers made him aware that someone outside the office was checking his work. He said to his section manager, ‘Some silly bastard has que- ried this and changed this. Would you mind telling whoever it is that he’s wrong in both cases and he’d be saving himself a lot of time if he left it to someone who can actually do it!’ The manager lowered his eyes and said he’d pass it on. When the estimates had been completed, Steve told his manager he’d like to see the sites his work related to; he was told that the Commissioner was taking a party of American contractors over the scheme, and had asked for Steve to accompany them. ‘The lad’s on the

138 way up!’ his manager said. ‘Now, a bit of advice. Remember everything they say, don’t offer opinions, and if they look like they want to talk about something, ask them how they’d do it. They’re Yanks you know.’ Steve liked being treated as a man by men. He liked the way the Americans were keen to get into gumboots, hard hats, and fleecy jackets. He found, to his surprise, that one of the younger men in the American party not only looked like him but was also known as Steve. ‘Not my real name,’ the American told him. ‘It comes from a character in a film. This guy has five girls falling over themselves to get him, and he locks himself in an attic, but one gets in and of course it’s true love when their eyes meet. Real corny stuff, but his name’s Steve, and some of the fellas decided to hang the name on me. Why’d your folks call you Steve, you know?’ Steve didn’t know, but he told him about his twin brother, and people seeing them with each other commented on their likeness, and they found themselves dubbed Aussie Steve and American Steve by the members of the Commissioner’s party. For four days they toured the mountains together, lighting huge fires in the Authority’s huts, poring over maps spread on trestle tables, ‘figur- ing’, as the Americans liked to say, pulling off the tracks, when there were any, to go walking over rocky escarpments, staring at gorges that were going to be dammed, and mountains that were going to be penetrated by tunnels. A mighty work in the highest places of the country; a decisive action, on a scale that might never be repeated. Steve felt himself inflated by good fortune, and held off writing to Tricia for a few days, once the party had returned to Cooma, until this feeling had dropped away. He suspected that it was not entirely healthy to take such command over natural things. Sitting in his well-heated room in the barracks one night, reading, he became aware of someone singing. The engineers’ quarters ran parallel to the barracks of the catering staff, and it was from there that the sound was coming. He took himself into the night to listen, but the music died away.

139 When he heard it the following night, he went out again. He stood in the cold outside a window, listening to music unlike anything he’d heard before. It was a woman’s voice, soaring and swooping, but slowly, as if to suit the terrain he’d just covered in the Commissioner’s fleet of cars. This is another way of knowing, he thought, and of saying what you know. He went back to his room. The third night he took the plunge. He located the room where the record was being played, and knocked. An English woman called Wendy opened the door. She was neat, plump, several years older than Steve, and her bearing suggested that she saw the world with delicacy and precision. She invited him in. The music died away in murmuring chords and trilling flutes as he sat down. She made him coffee. She told him she had been a librarian in Launceston, Cornwall, but had felt an urge to go somewhere remote. ‘I heard about this scheme and decided to come here and get a job ... ‘ ‘Exactly what I did!’ ‘ ... and they asked me what I was like at kitchen work, and I told them I could barely make myself a piece of toast, but if they liked to teach me, I’d soon learn. To my surprise, I found I was good at it.’ ‘Tell me about the music. Can you sing the songs on that record?’ She dropped her head a little. ‘If only I could sing like Elizabeth Schwarzkopf. I did learn. I trained for years, but I was never going to be anything very special. So rather than be a second rater, I gave it up.’ She said it decisively, but Steve felt that sorrow had entered the room. Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, her hair coiffured like a figure from what was for Steve the unthinkably remote world of eighteenth century opera, stared from the record cover, everything about her radiating supreme confidence in her art. His heart flooded with a need he didn’t recognise. ‘Would you mind playing it again?’ Wendy, on the opposite side of the world from her disappointment, put on the Four Last Songs, and opened a score. Steve, seeing Wendy

140 tracing the notes with her eyes closed, as if it were notated in Braille, of immense importance to her, yet mundanely familiar, felt inferior, and touched by a mixture of sensations he didn’t recognise. Suddenly he felt a prickling in his neck, and, staring at the narrow bed where Wendy slept alone, he saw a stocky, grey-haired man coming into view. The man was smiling. ‘This is my wife singing,’ he said to Steve. ‘She’s more than perfection to me. She’s an angel. There is no one in the world who can sing this as well as Elizabeth. And do you know why it’s a special favourite of mine? I can see you’re new to music, so I’ll tell you. When Strauss was a young man, he married a singer. And when he was a very old man, he wrote these songs. He seems to have written each one fairly quickly, but he put into them a lifetime’s study of the voice he loved best - his wife’s. I suppose he had his affairs with other women, and I don’t know that Pauline was such a great singer - not in Elizabeth’s class, you can be sure - but when he listened to all the leading singers of his day, and heard what they could do, he wrote for all of them, but at bottom he was only ever writing for the one.’ Walter Legge smiled. ‘I think that’s the way to live a life. Excuse me for breaking in, I couldn’t help it. I saw how much pleasure - and revelation - Elizabeth was giving you, and I wanted to share it.’ He smiled again, and faded from sight. The soprano on the disc soared in ecstasy. Wendy opened her eyes.

Annie’s journal (written by a child) This is my first story in my mother’s book. George, Robert, Ned and I went to the mountain across the river. (in Annie’s writing) Mount Delusion. They let me ride Nik-Nok, but when it got steep they made me get off and George rode Nik-Nok. On the far side of the mountain we found a hole. The boys said it was dug by miners. We all got stones and dropped them in the hole. It was ages before we heard the splash. We threw lots of stones and there was a splash every time, but we had to

141 wait. When we got home I told Annie, my mother, what we had been doing and she cried.

When the tunnelling started, Steve moved to the construction site. For weeks he worked twelve and sometimes sixteen hour shifts. When he wasn’t working, he slept. His notes to Tricia worried her. His life in a construction camp was making him limited, and hard. In one letter he described the migrant workers playing two-up. ‘They all claim they’re saving to bring out their wives and girlfriends, but the minute they get their money a game starts. There was a brawl outside my hut last week. There were ten pound notes blowing around on the ground while these fellows slugged it out. Eye-gouging, kicks below the belt, you name it. I’m banking everything I get. So is the chap in the room next to mine. He’s Czech, and he actually does want to bring his wife out here. Apparently she’s still in Austria, where they fled when the Communists took their country. I try not to work the same shifts as he does, because the work can be dangerous and I don’t think he’s careful enough.’ There was no mention of missing her. Tricia took the letter to her mother, who thought it might be a good idea for the three Courtneys, and perhaps the Urquharts too, with Mark and Jane, to make a visit. ‘Ask him what’s the best place to stay in Cooma. Ask him if it’s possible for us to get a cottage at the construction site for a few nights, or isn’t that allowed? And the best time of year. I’ve never been much of a skier. I think I prefer the spring, for the wildflowers.’ Steve found Tricia’s letter problematic. If she was coming, he’d much prefer to have her on her own. On no account did he want the Urquharts there with Jane and his brother until he’d overcome his unruly desire for Mark’s fiancée. And he didn’t really want any of them observing him in this stage he was exploring, of young manhood and becoming a mature, professional engineer. He couldn’t imagine how he was going to say this to Tricia, so he knocked on the door of Anton, the Czech whose standards of care he doubted. ‘My young friend, you have something on your mind.’

142 ‘All over my face, is it?’ Anton nodded. Steve didn’t know how to start. ‘Anton, do you miss your wife very much?’ ‘Terribly.’ ‘I know this is awful, but how did you ever let someone get that close to you?’ ‘My heart was always more open than yours is. Why are you so closed? You are too young to have dark secrets.’ Steve sensed that this was an invitation to tell his worries. ‘I’m all bottled up,’ he said. There’s things I have to say to someone.’ Anton got up and put a record on the tiny gramophone in his cupboard. ‘This music will ease you. Don’t look to see what it is. Try to catch the flow of it. When you are ready, say whatever you want to say.’ It seemed to Steve, who knew no music beyond the songs Wendy had played him, that Anton’s music was about grace and mercy and that it was church music far removed from the hymns he’d sung at school. It flooded him with an urge to confess what he’d done with Jane, and how he wanted to do it again and again. And now Tricia and the two families were asking him to help them arrange a visit when it was the last thing he wanted. So he told Anton the story. There was a noisy section in the middle of the music; Anton, in not turning it down, created a pause in Steve’s confession. ‘Jesus I feel mean,’ he said, while the choir chanted ‘Sanctus’ over a busy orchestra, ‘but I absolutely have to tell someone the lot.’ When he finished, Anton nodded and said, ‘It was good for you to say all that. Now we’ll listen to the music again.’ Steve found it a little less strange. ‘Passion,’ said the older man, ‘can make us do the stupidest things. Let me tell you something. I was in the army during the war, and at one time I got it in my head that my wife was being unfaithful to me. There was a certain man in our street, a very charming man, who I believed was her lover. I wrote her the most terrible letters. I’ll show you one.’ Steve showed some agitation. ‘No, no, I’m not embarrassed now. I think you should read one at least. I have them all. My wife

143 kept them, and when I left for this country, she gave them to me in a little parcel, and told me that if ever I felt foolish thoughts about her, I was to read them again.’ Steve took the parcel Anton handed him. In the music there was a passage where time seemed to stand still. ‘Open anywhere,’Anton said, ‘they are all crazy.’ When Steve opened the bundle of letters he recognised the writing straight away. He’d seen it on the papers where he’d done his quantities estimates. He swallowed hard. ‘I don’t think I want to.’ Anton took the letters back. ‘That’s all right, I’ll read you the worst. You see how well- thumbed it is? There have been times when I’ve been so lonely that I’ve needed this letter to keep me sane. My wife writes me very loving letters - I’ve got all those too - but this is the one I call my medicine.’ The letter was full of vile abuse, all the worse because it was the work of someone who knew his victim intimately. Only a powerful love, Steve felt, could have had such an obverse. ‘Don’t read me any more, Anton. I recognise myself in that awful thing you wrote. What I don’t recognise in myself is the courage to face it. I want to go back to my room and cry my head off, and I’m ashamed of that too, because the reason I want to cry is that I’m sorry for myself, but that’s ... ’ Anton finished it for him: ‘ ... a stage you have to go through before you can forgive yourself. Go to your room now, my friend. In a little while I’ll look in, and if you’re still awake I’ll offer you a brandy. Yes, I know they have rules about alcohol out here, but I need a sip at times. What other vice can I indulge? I don’t gamble.’ When he judged that Steve would be drowsy, he put on the healing disk again.

A young teacher, a new one, caught me on the track, wanting me to send the boys to school. He thought they could learn from him; he was a boy himself. His hands were soft and white, but he had an engaging smile. There’s no fool like the enthusi- astic fool, I told him, and he wanted to know why my mind was closed. I told him my mind was more receptive than his. I told him that to live where I did, you had to be on the alert all the time. Foxes wanted your chickens, cattle strayed, branches

144 fell suddenly after a storm. Did he think he could survive out here for fifteen years, as Annie and I have done? That made him change his tack; he wanted to know all about us. I told him there was no fool like the inquisitive fool, and that it was getting dark, and he had a long way to go, and couldn’t he recognise that there was going to be a storm? He changed his tack again, and asked if he could stay the night. No fool like a cheeky fool, I thought, but allowed it. I challenged him to talk the boys into going to one of the schools he runs. It was an amusing night. The boys talked in the private language they’ve invented, making fun of him. Annie was very quiet, hurt by the boys’ unsociability. He took it well for a city boy, but, although he didn’t see it, Lucy was fascinated by him, wondering what he knew. I nodded to Annie, and she said he could call in when he was walking from Dawson City to Brookville. In the morning, as I pointed out a short cut, he told us his name was Alfred Lamington. I was hard put not to laugh.

Lucy’s journal The moment my father turned his back on Mr Lamington, the boys rushed away to get above his track. In a spot where the bush is dense, Ned grabbed his hat. Mr Lamington chased him, but just as he caught him, Ned gave the hat to Robert, and Robert climbed a tree. This was at a place where they can go from tree to tree for a long way. Mr Lamington chased them. They got away from him, and he was lost. When I came up, he was crying. I took him by the hand and showed him the track. The next day I found the hat. The boys had done poop in it. I got my father’s spade and buried it.

The Lamington boy has had a strange effect on me. He wanted to know how we came to be here. I told him that when I first found the place I recognised that it had always been destined to be mine; it only remained to take possession, to marry, and to work, as I’ve done. Then he asked me how a young man brought up in Cornwall could think that a river flat in the mountains of Australia had been destined for him. I could only say that I wasn’t curious: what counted was that the place gave me a sense of arrival and completion and that every bit of work I did added to the wholeness of the place. He wanted to ask more questions, because he hasn’t finished the business of finding himself, and I grew tired of him, and prodded the fire to make a

145 good blaze for the kettle: anything rather than listen. But his questions are hovering in my mind, trying to prise me loose from certainty. Why bother about your ‘self’, as he called it? Why invite doubt? I think that what I want to tell him, next time he passes, is that examining yourself can only weaken you, and it’s a dishonest way of dodging whatever your fate’s going to be. Questioning yourself is a way of backing away, of trying to take control of what you can’t control. It’s a truer thing to do to ride the horse of your nature wherever it wants to go, and if there’s a downfall or disaster in the path, then you have nothing to do but suffer it. Blast the boy, he’s unsettled me!

Lucy’s journal Nik-Nok won’t come to George because his voice has gone funny. My mother says he’s becoming a man. I asked her how it was possible for a boy to become a man. She says it happens to everyone and I’ll be a woman one day. This makes me frightened. She told me about babies - how women do all the work and a man might only do one little bit of effort. She told me what men have to do and I looked at George’s dick. It’s getting bigger and he’s starting to be hairy. I said I thought everything on our farm would always be the way it is now and she said no, time is changing things every second. I asked her what a second was, and she clicked her fingers and said that it had taken a second. I still don’t know what a second is. She said there are big changes that you can see. She told me how I’m going to bleed one day. That frightened me a lot more. I said I’d be ready for babies when I wanted to be ready, but she said it wasn’t like that: we have no choice. I went off to my father and took his hand, and when he smiled at me I knew he would always keep me safe. When I nestle up to my mother I can tell she’s afraid of something. (Annie’s writing) Lucy asked about Mr Lamington. I told her it was not very long since he’d been a boy, and now he was ready to make babies, as she puts it. I said it would be nice to do that thing with him, but that it would be wrong. I said that I could only do it with Mr Lamington if it could help Giles in some way, and it wouldn’t. I said I felt I would conceive another child very soon, and that it was to be a

146 sister for her, called Faith, and I had to keep faith with Faith, because she’d been here before, and would be coming back. How strange it all is, and how much more satisfying, though terrible, than anything they taught us at the convent. The nuns, the sisters, how misguided they were, half-women and perpetual girls, wedded only to abstractions. A life of servitude is better by far than no life at all.

Tricia decided she was going to the mountains. She told Steve to arrange it. He wrote letters, made phone calls, then wrote back. When she arrived, she was to find Wendy, in the catering quarters, who would give her the key to Steve’s room and look after her until he could get away from the construction site. They would take adjacent rooms in the Monaro Arms, where he’d stayed on his arrival, and they’d have a week together. He’d take her everywhere. ‘Then,’ he wrote, ‘we must decide whether to pitch camp together’ - she winced at the expression - ‘up here, or back in Melbourne.’ Pitch camp! It implied an insub- stantial commitment. She took the letter to her mother. Margaret Courtney said, ‘Yes, I think you do well to be worried. Listening to people’s choice of words is like staring them in the eye. Some things can’t be hidden, certainly not by someone ... ‘ - she wanted to say as gauche as - ‘ ... like Steve. But he’s leading a very different life up there. Go and assess what you see.’ So the engagement hung in the balance. At the construction site, a concrete pour got underway. This involved powerful compressors shooting slugs of fresh concrete through vast lengths of pipe, from the aggregate plant to the section being poured. Tubular steel moulds, of huge diameter, were located in the gloomy tunnel with near pinpoint accuracy, then the concrete was fired into the gap between the mould, which would later be removed, and the rock. Working in the poorly lit space was dangerous. The pipe that spat concrete had to be guided. When the pipes were to be moved, a message went back to the source to hold fire until the signal to start again. On a morning when Steve was on the same shift as Anton, the

147 Czech made a false step in the space between tube and rock. A slug of concrete caught him in the thigh, throwing him forward. A second slug smashed into his shoulder. There was a yell from the workmen next to him. Steve phoned to stop the pour and shouted at the men to point the pipe away while the last slugs were coming through. Anton was screaming. Men ran for a stretcher. Slugs kept firing from the mouth of the pipe. Steve grabbed the phone a second time, got his voice under control, and repeated the message. Stop! When they had Anton at the opening in the tube, a mobile inspection stand was moved beneath him, so he could be lowered. He was in a state of shock. The left leg was all but torn away, and blood was streaming from an artery. An Italian worker, a huge man with weightlifter’s shoulders, said, ‘We gotta stop that if we can. Clean rag. Mista Engineer, getya shirt off!’ Steve stripped. The shirt was wrapped tightly around the bleeding stump. The unconscious Anton was rushed to daylight at the opening of the tunnel, four thousand yards away. Steve felt he should go with him, but was, in some ambivalent way, relieved to be ordered by the tunneling superintendent to keep the pour going, and not let the men stop until they were in the open air. ‘They’ll have a reaction sometime, but it mustn’t be while they’re down here. Okay Steve? That’s for you to see to!’ Steve drove his crew with energy so frenetic that when finally they tramped to the tunnel’s mouth, the wide-shouldered Italian said, ‘You really crack the whip today, Mista Engineer. I tellya what, you got the right idea. Men go to pieces when something bad happen if ya don’ stand over them. I reckon you gonna be pretty big boss one day.’

Grandeur greater than usual surrounds me this afternoon. I feel a storm brewing; there’ll be lightning, perhaps a fire. I feel the need for destruction to sweep through me again, loose as quicksilver. My house in the clearing will never burn, except the bark, and that’s easily replaced. Such security - here in my god-place, there with my wife. It has not escaped my notice that the boys’ aerial pursuit of me is mostly over the paths between the two places. They’ll find I’m invulnerable, and if I weren’t,

148 I’d drive them out with whip and fire. They chatter in their private language, but it has no frame of reference, therefore it has no meaning. How grand is the approach of brooding cloud; how clear the sea seems today. If I had better eyes than humans are given, I’d see the whitecaps, the sharks prowling, the shoals of salmon! And if I had prescience to match, I’d see the future, a thousand years from now, but what relevance has that? I am the moment, the moment is now, this moment turns into the next, and the story of my life, now I’ve reached this point, is stationary. They ask whether the chicken or the egg came first. Fools! They should learn to be both. The storm is coming closer; the currawongs are quiet in deference. I’ll not defer to the power, I’ll become it. Alfred Lamington is right about the lad from Cornwall being fortunate to reach this point; I think few people find it. The storm is with me: I am the happiest of men!

Anton died in the van that was carrying him to hospital. On a mountain road deep with dust, his body was transferred to an ambulance from Cooma. Someone in the Commissioner’s office wrote a letter to his wife, and the head of the contractors’ office, an American without the imagination to know what his letter would look like in Vienna, wrote also. The job of cleaning out his room, and deciding what should be sent to Anton’s wife, fell to Steve. He parcelled up Anton’s possessions for the Red Cross to sell or use, then made a small packet of some photos, a ring, and the letters to his wife. When Steve came to the letters, he searched through the Red Cross box until he found a record set that was familiar, the Requiem Mass of Verdi. He knew that the music he was looking for came at the start of a side. On the third dip of the needle, he found it. Then he went to his own room, got a writing pad, and came back, locking the door. Opening the letters written to Helena Czerny, thirteen years earlier, he felt acutely uncomfortable, but made himself go on. He needed to know what to say. There was only one letter he could decently read, because Anton had already read it to him - the most-thumbed letter, the one Anton had called ‘my medicine’.

149 The most painful part of the letter, which Anton had left out on the night of Steve’s confession, was an imagined encounter between Helena and Bohumil, the ‘most charming man who lived in the same street’. Anton had imagined Helena opening the door to Bohumil, swiftly, late at night. Steve sensed that this described Anton’s and Helena’s first sexual encounter. Then the undressing, the sipping of tokay as they sat side by side, naked on the bed they were going to use. The flirtatious conversation, as if it was possible they might turn back from what they planned to do. The lovemaking, described in detail, then a sickening pillow conversation about how they’d get rid of Anton. Poisoning, strangling, stabbing; hiring someone in his unit to arrange an accident. Then they decided, caressing each other intimately, that the best way to achieve their aim, the cream of the joke, would be to persuade him to go away because there was something he wanted more than Helena’s love. One of the ideas they thought of dangling before him was that of making money in a remote place: a gold mine, a diamond mine, emeralds - or an engineering project close to his distorted heart. This passage ended with the lovers smearing each other with tokay, then lick- ing it off, Bohumil drawing the liquor onto his tongue from her vaginal lips while she drew a like pleasure from his penis. ‘By coming out here,’ Steve thought, ‘he enacted his own worst fears’. He wrote the sentence down, knowing he’d have to use it. Then he put on the music Anton had played him. ‘Lord Jesus Christ, king of glory, deliver the souls of all the faithful departed from the pains of hell, and from the deep pit. Make them, O Lord, to pass from death unto life.’ Sobbing shook him. Anton, poor bastard, had gone the other way. Leaving the music to run its course in an empty room, he went for a walk in the bush behind the camp, until he found a rocky eminence where he could sit down. Range after range stretched before him. At his feet, dainty green orchids flowered modestly. How to reconcile something so vast with something so tiny? Anton, he remembered, had told him about two Americans who’d lived with their wives in the married quarters in

150 Cooma, Kerry and Jim, two of the biggest and toughest of the contractors’ men. ‘Kerry was seeing Jim’s wife, and Jim was seeing Kerry’s wife. It was all so very funny. At the same time each day, Kerry would leave his place and go round one side of the hill to Jim’s place, and at the same time Jim would go around the other side of the hill to Kerry’s place.’ Anton had not only been observing, Steve saw, he’d been tortur- ing himself. Steve wondered about the lack of care in Anton’s work. Had there been a death wish operating inside the man’s professional life? He felt there had. He stood up, looked lovingly at the flowers, and the ranges bathed in light, and went back to Anton’s room. ‘Dear Helena,’ he began. ‘You do not know me, but I feel I know you because Anton talked about you. I have your photo before me as I write. I am sitting on the edge of his bed, and the things you will find in this little parcel are beside me. I am many years younger than Anton, and he helped me when I desperately needed it. I can’t help him now except by trying to understand him, and offering that understanding to you. I hate to say it, but I think that Anton was tormented much of the time. I know it is a very selfish way to look at things, but I wouldn’t have been able to get his help if he hadn’t been able to recognise the torment in me because he had it in himself. Out of his pain he offered me a great kindness. The rest I must do for myself. Now I want to tell you about this place and the life he’s been leading here.’ When he finished the letter, he sealed it in the packet to go to Helena Czerny, in Vienna. The things for the Red Cross he delivered to the site office. The recording of the Requiem he took for himself, thinking that it belonged to him now, by a right of transmission that Anton would have understood.

Lucy’s journal When I saw my mother talking to one of the flame women, I waited until she was alone, then I ran up and asked lots of questions. What can the flame women do? Are they our friends? Are they watching us all the time, or do they only think of us now and then? My mother smiled, and rubbed her tummy. I asked her if she had a

151 baby in there. She said in a few days she would have. She’d been told. I wanted to know what it was like where the flame women lived. (Annie’s writing) You came from there my darling, but when they put you inside me, they made you forget.

Tricia was pleased with the changes she saw in Steve. He was quieter and more serious. She liked the affection he offered Wendy, a woman older than himself. He planned their excursions with care. They talked a lot as they travelled about, and they spent long periods in silence, walking in the bush. At the hotel, there was a door connecting their two rooms; he respected it, going to the passage door of her room, and knocking, if he wanted to come in. On the third night she opened the connecting door herself, and slipped into bed with him. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we did this?’ ‘I was waiting for you to want to.’ After they made love, they sat on the balcony outside their rooms, wrapped in sheets. ‘We’re Roman lovers! Imagine what a pillow conversation in Latin would be like.’ ‘Te amo. It doesn’t sound very romantic, does it.’ ‘I thought it’d be freezing up here at night.’ ‘It usually is. A night like this is rare.’ She looked at him. He went on. ‘Tricia, do you realise we won’t have this moment again? We’ll have lots of others, maybe even better ones, but we can’t have this time twice.’ She laughed, got up, letting the sheet drop, and sat on him. ‘Don’t be so serious. Actually, I want to be serious for a minute. I want to know about your family. There’s something funny about your sisters. When I’m with them, I get the feeling they’re working out whether they can trick me in some way.’ ‘That’s exactly what they’re thinking.’ ‘Why? Tell me why? What have I done to them?’ ‘It’s not you. They do it to lots of people. It’s quite simple. They’re watching to see if you can tell them apart. Very few people can. If

152 you notice, they dress differently now. They didn’t always do that.’ He told her about Claude Stubbs, and the games they were playing on the night of the engagement party. ‘How strange. And yet, now that you’ve told me, I realise that in some way that I couldn’t have said at the time, I did know what they were doing. It must be strange, being a twin. Did you and Mark ever play that game - of one pretending to be the other?’ The question rocked him. They had, of course; or rather, he had, just once, with Jane Urquhart, on another verandah, not so very far away. He wondered if Jane was asleep or restless, this hot night. ‘Darling, you’ve gone strange. What is it?’ He didn’t speak. He couldn’t tell her what was in his mind. Getting married to her was the only way out, and even then, he had somehow to find a way of placing the burden somewhere else. She felt afraid. He seemed to be shrinking from her. She felt she had to pursue. ‘You’re really a twin twice over, aren’t you. You’ve got American Steve to get people mixed up, except when he opens his mouth.’ A flicker of a smile crossed her face. ‘Two lots of twins in the family, and another twin outside the family. What’s it like? What’s it done to you? Tell me Steve, I have to know.’ It was the question he needed. ‘It makes you very uncertain of yourself. There’s someone who’s too much alike living far too close. Rosie and Di handled it for a long time by being two parts of the same person. Maybe that’s easier for girls, because boys are competitive. Mark and I are competitive. I want to be better than him. I am better than him, intellectually. But you watch him playing cricket. He’s very good at it. When he smashes the bowling, he’s smashing me. Maybe he isn’t, but I feel he is. I find it very hard to go and see him play. And American Steve’s an engineer like me. He thinks he’s better than I am. I think I’m better than he is. He was jealous of me when I got sent out to the construction site. I was jealous of him because when I went out there, he got a promotion in the office. It’s not very nice. It’s ugly in fact. I have to grow out of it Trish. You probably don’t think you were

153 lucky, being an only child, but you were. Being up here has been good for me. All right, there’s American Steve to be my rival, but at least he’s not my brother. I am finding my feet, gradually.’ She got off him, wrapped herself in the sheet again, and sat on the other chair. ‘Steve, are we going to get married? If we’re not, we should say so. Now, or make up our minds pretty soon. We need to decide.’ He looked at her, feeling cold inside, despite the warmth of the night. The headlights of a car turning in the street below briefly flashed across their faces. He searched himself. He bowed his head, then lifted it, searching, as he studied her, for the aura which some people said surrounds a person and, if you can glimpse it, reveals what they most truly are. As he spoke, he felt her concentration pressing on him. ‘There’s two things,’ he said. ‘You’ve been questioning me about myself, and I don’t think my answers show a very nice person. I think they show a person that doesn’t deserve to be allowed to marry you. The second thing is that when I look at you I have not the slightest doubt that you and I will marry. I know it. I say that with more confidence than I’ve ever said anything before. I’m not the man you ought to marry, but I will become that man. Will you wait?’ ‘How long? That’s the second time I’ve asked you that question.’ ‘And the first time I didn’t answer. Now. I don’t know why I say this, but I’m absolutely sure of what I’m saying. Within a year. This time next year we’ll be married, and it will be good.’

Lucy’s journal Strange events took place last night. Handsome men wearing silver and blue costumes such as I’ve never seen before stood by the fire, warming their backsides, while my mother and my father were puffing and grunting the way they do when they do that thing that makes babies. Then the boys started talking in their sleep, babbling in that silly language which they won’t teach me. I’m going to have to work it out for myself. Annie was rocking on top of my father, as if she had a horse jolting underneath her. My mother is usually very quiet,

154 but last night she was crazy. She was moving very fast (galloping), and then she let out a great cry. I stayed very still. Then the men at the fire moved back to let the flame women in. I knew they couldn’t keep away. There were four of them as usual and they knelt around my mother, holding her in their arms. My father said to them, ’We’re honoured by your attention.’ They weren’t very interested in him. They started rubbing my mother’s tummy, and nodding to each other, kissing her until she laughed. Then she put her arms around them, put her head back, and sang. It wasn’t her voice that came out of her throat, though. It was a very deep voice and it wasn’t a song like my mother sings all the time, it was some other music that we don’t have in this place. Then the men left the fire and sat on the mattress, congratulating my father. For a minute he glowed as if he had a fire inside him, then he went ordinary again, and the men slapped him on the shoulder. All this happened right beside my bed. When my mother was quiet again, the flame women sang, and the men joined in. It was so wonderful I thought I was dreaming, but I wasn’t. As they were leaving, one of the men saw I was awake, and he said to me, ‘You will have a sister, Lucy. You must look after her. She’s been here before, and she’s still very weak.’ He gave me a smile I’ll never forget, and they were gone. The fire in the fireplace glowed, but the wood wasn’t burning. It wasn’t till the morning that it burned in the normal way. I told my father, when he was digging in the vegetable garden, that I’d seen what had happened. He didn’t stop digging, but he said that I now knew lots of things I didn’t know before, and that I was to keep them to myself, because one day I would have to do what my mother did, and later on, I might have to look after my mother when people thought she was old and useless, and I should remember what she’d been like in that remarkable night. I always knew my father was the most wonderful man in the world.

155 A letter came for Yatty, postmarked Cooktown. She studied it for some time before opening it with a knife. It was from Luke, the nephew she hadn’t seen for years. ‘So that’s where he’s got to!’ she said, caught up in wonder. ‘Why’s he writing to me?’ ‘Dear Aunty Yvonne,’ the letter began. ‘Sorry to have been out of touch for so long, but it’s the way I live these days. This is the first letter I’ve written for years. Would you mind passing it on to my parents? Tell them that whenever I get to Brisbane I get the letters they write to the post office there.’ ‘I’m writing to introduce a Danish friend who’ll call on you soon. His name’s Gustav. I don’t know his second name. There’s a lot of us who don’t want to be reminded of where we came from. The blokes on the ship call him Gus. He’s brilliant on the flute. Plays anything. Songs, classical, gipsy, jazz, you name it. Occasionally we take passengers on the boat and they’re staggered when they hear him.’ ‘He had a row with the ship’s master, and was paid off when we got here yesterday. I persuaded him to stop bumming around on boats and take his music seriously. So he’s heading south. I thought Michael and Helen might be able to do something for him. Introduce him around. Or maybe Tom could get him work with one of the groups he plays with. You’ll find he’s a really nice fellow, and maybe Michael and Helen could give him a bed in the stable till he finds his feet, that is unless they’ve gone off and bought a house in the suburbs. Somehow I can’t see it ...'

This one is already named, my love? This is Faith, is it not? See, Lucy? This is the shining face of Faith. Be ever so gentle with her, both of you. She brings us something we all need. Count her fingers, count her toes. Listen to that little heart beating, tiny pump. This is the ninth you’ve brought into the world. The current of life is strong in you.

156 Your mother has been waiting for you to come back, little one. With you, and Lucy, I may consolidate. It must have taken great courage, Faith, to have elected to come back, when they could have offered you anywhere in the world. Your mother, and I, and Lucy, will see that you don’t regret your choice. I am too weak, just now, to show her the clearing. I’ll show her the changes tomorrow. Perhaps we should destroy her grave marker now? Something of what was Prudence must linger there. We should leave it, I think, to show the way she’s not to go. Count her fingers, count her toes. I’d know those eyes anywhere, now that I’m seeing them again. You mustn’t be afraid of having babies, Lucy, when your time comes. This is when your mother is most wonderful.

Lucy’s journal It’s too big for me. I’ll never be grown up enough to do it, even when I marry, as it seems I’ll have to do. But the pain, the agony, my mother’s yelling, even while her hand held my hand, reassur- ing me when I was supposed to help. And the mess to be cleaned up! I don’t believe my body could ever produce a child. And my mother thinks she will do it four more times. I’m ashamed to say that I hope I’ve grown up and left before these new children come. Mother, you are not allowed to read this! For no one’s eyes but mine!

Three weeks after the letter introducing him, Gus arrived. Yatty found him perched on the ugly, Italianate fountain in the front garden which she’d never had the heart to get rid of, though she’d long decided that the classicism it claimed as its origin was nothing more than a well craft- ed lie. He was faun-like enough to be bare-footed and open-shirted despite the approach of winter. Her heart melted at the sight of him. ‘Welcome, Gus,’ she called. ‘Come inside.’ ‘You’ve heard about me, then?’ ‘From Luke.’ Her voice quivered, in saying the name, with her consciousness of the vast continent, and the lapse of years in all the

157 lives involved. His pants, she saw, were wet from the splashing water. ‘Come in and change,’ she said. ‘You need to be dry. It’s cold this morning, and the forecast says it’s going to get colder!’ ‘I’m a sailor, Aunty Yvonne,’ Gus said. ‘It doesn’t bother me to get wet.’ She loved him claiming her as his aunt. She’d have done anything to make this apparition happy; he was so lean, ascetic, and so much in need of a fulsome, particular attention. Suddenly she felt jealous of her daughter Karen, who might fall in love with this man with the stupid passion of someone who’d never learned from her mistakes. ‘What’s your family name, Gus?’ she asked. ‘Jespersen,’ he said. ‘Carl Nielsen wrote a flute concerto for me!’ ‘Liar!’ she said. ‘But come in. A lot of things have changed since Luke knew anything about us, here in this house. I’ll get you something to eat.’ Her tenderness knew no bounds. While he ate the toasted sandwiches she prepared for him, she rang George at work, and told him what had happened. ‘Don’t say a word to Michael,’ she told her husband. ‘I haven’t said anything to Gus about what’s happened to our boy and Helen. I need to think about that before I give him any information!’

Lucy’s journal I love Faith. She’ll soon be walking. She calls me Oossy because she can’t get her tongue around the L. The boys have picked it up and call me Oossy too. I’ve noticed that they’ve got a number of new words which sound nasty when they say them. They’ve invented them to describe what their bodies can do now that they’re turning into men. Some of them are about me, I know, and when I hear those words I know not to trust them. I don’t go any more to the places they’ve given special names because I feel uncomfortable there. The only one I visit is the deep hole near Mount Delusion, and that’s because I beat Ned in a fight. He tried to push me down the hole, but I grabbed him by one leg, not letting him get his balance, and I pulled him right to the edge of the hole before I let go. He cried with anger at being beaten by a girl. He said he’d throw me in for sure, but I told

158 him that if he tried I’d use another trick on him and he’d end up being one very large splash. I only go there when my father’s got the boys working, because I don’t want the three of them to gang up on me. Perhaps I shouldn’t go at all, but there’s a mystery about the hole that I don’t understand. It was abandoned long ago, but it seems to have a life of its own. There’s no one I can ask.

Gus told lies all the time. When Michael was showing him his home- made apparatus for cutting long playing records, Gus declared that the two of them would issue a disk of him playing solo flute. ‘It won’t be my first record,’ he said. ‘I played with the New York Philharmonic for three years.’ Michael was used, by now, to drifters, although he rarely went outside Melbourne. ‘You’re a lying bastard,’ Michael told him, ‘but you’re good enough for any orchestra if you’d only stay in one place for a while. Do you want to stay here?’ Gus looked around the stable. ‘What have you got upstairs?’ Michael told him to look. When Gus climbed to the attic rooms, he found them taken over by a model railway. Tracks passed under the shambles which was Michael’s bed, and made their way from one room to the other via tunnels through the wall. To let the passengers see out the window, the engine made a series of zig-zags across and back a ricketty construction put together from Meccano pieces to simulate a mountain. ‘What the hell is all this about?’ he called down. ‘I presume you recognise the Blue Mountains zig-zag?’ ‘I worked on it. But that was a while ago.’ ‘About eighty five years. You’re getting on, Gus.’ ‘Not so old I couldn’t do something with your sister.’ Michael had a thought. ‘You didn’t come down here to be the latest bastard to bugger up her life. You came down to get serious about music.’ ‘Maybe just to get serious about something. Do you know I’m thirty six and I’ve never actually achieved anything.’

159 ‘Of course not. The New Yorkers can’t even play in tune.’ ‘So what are you going to do with me Michael?’ ‘I’m going to send you around to see my ex-girlfriend.’ ‘This is the one that plays in the orchestra?’ ‘And lives with a fat, rich Jewish turd who sponsors her quartet.’ ‘You wouldn’t be trying to make mischief would you? Micky uses another man to get revenge?’ Michael gave his most spiteful, most childish, laugh. ‘Whatever put that in your mind?’

Their bodies are darkening. Their minds are full of destructive ideas which they hardly recognise for what they are. Lucy reads the boys well; she’s outsmarted them in some way I don’t know about. They treat her with a wary, if sneering, respect. They’re ashamed of themselves in front of their mother. They see me as their prey. Gordon they ignore, and Faith embarrasses them because she’s sweet and trusting. They know I know the darkness in them, and want to challenge me to draw a line they’re not to cross. But I am the line, as they will find if they annoy me. They have youth on their side, but I have years of practice at sucking in energy from the world around me. They must know they can be broken, and fear it? No? Perhaps their status as a hating trio prevents them seeing that a savage fate, if it falls on them, will be suffered individually. We shall see.

Yatty rang Helen and told her about Gus. Helen said she’d like to meet him, and could Yatty put him in a taxi to her place on Monday of the following week?

Lucy’s journal I asked my mother how she and my father got married. (Annie’s writing) Giles came to the school, saying he wanted a wife. He had a property in the mountains, he told the sisters. They wanted to know if his wife would be able to practise her religion there. ‘Assuredly,’ he told them; this was something he told me later, in those early days when we spoke. As we walked together, I knew it was no ordinary man

160 I’d accepted. Until then, all men had been the same to me, but in the wedding service, which the sisters arranged, I felt that my husband was in some way equal to the panoply and ceremony of the church. He could tolerate it because it was giving him what he wanted. And I wanted to be given. I didn’t know there was such a thing as indepen- dence. We exchanged vows, and to my cost I’ve lived by them. On the way out here, my darling, I saw the tragic inflexibility of my husband, and I knew that he would be the force that passed through me, and used me, as I’ve been used, reducing me to what you see today. If I’d had experience of other men, I might have been able to win a different balance between us, but I hadn’t and I couldn’t. On the way out here, my darling, we came to a rise as we left Bullumwaal, and I told Giles I wanted to get out of the cart and walk. He said to me - I’ll remember this always - ‘This is not the Via Dolorosa, you know. You can let the horse do the work.’ I said to him: ‘I know what these steps are in my life. I want to take them for myself.’ He slowed the horse,and dropped back, letting me lead the way. And later, when we were getting close to Seldom Seen, he walked beside me - we’d already stopped talking by then - and I heard in his mind the thought, ‘She is my equal. I thought it would have been easier than this.’ That was when we were truly married.

Helen asked Gus to play for her. He said he hadn’t brought his flute. She handed him a case, with the maker’s name in silver letters on the lid: Rudall & Karte. ‘My teacher had one of these,’ he said. ‘I’ve always wanted one.’ She looked at him shrewdly. ‘And you’ve been running away from your talent ever since. Play Bach, please Gus. Bach.’ He played Nielsen idiomatically, then Gluck. She applauded. ‘Bach now Gus. Please.’ ‘I don’t feel like it just yet. Let’s go for a walk.’ They walked at the water’s edge until they came to the pier. ‘The trouble with walking on a pier,’ he said, ‘is that if you haven’t got a boat, you have to come back. I like to dis-appear.’

161 ‘No corny puns. I want to hear about your life.’ They were standing in the arrival house. Wind brought the smell of salt water from the bay. Plumes of smoke rose in the western sky. Cranes leaned over the river, while a ship lay at anchor offshore. ‘Let’s walk,’ she said. Their destination was an elaborately gabled and finialled building with its legs in water. ‘Why have you come to me, and why have you been running away so long?’ ‘I’ll play you Bach when we get back. The water’s making me feel at home.’ A seagull with bright red legs, and beak, perched on the rail beside them. ‘Tom’ll get you theatre work. I’ll get you an audition, that’s as much as I can promise.’ ‘Are your family all do-gooders?’ She ignored him. A schoolgirl with bright red hair under a black beret pedalled past them towards the tea-house. Helen felt Gus’s pain, loneliness, and the impish confidence he used to mask them. ‘Will you stay, or have you got your escape prepared?’ They stopped. He looked forward, and back. An elderly couple they’d passed a minute before were standing in the bleak shelter of the arrival house, gesticulating angrily. They seemed too frail to contain such passion. Gus pointed at them, and laughed. ‘They must be seventy-five, and they’re still arguing. Who wants to stay with anyone?’ ‘Don’t disguise from yourself what you’ve been doing.’ ‘Why did you leave Micky? Did the toy train get on your nerves?’ ‘Michael. Yes it did. He said to me “I’m going to grow old without growing up.” And he was proud of it.’ ‘The fella you’re with now must be worth a mint, from the house.’ ‘He is. And I’ve left him too, but he doesn’t know it yet because he’s in America. I’ll be telling him when he gets back.’ ‘You’re really turning them over, aren’t you.’ ‘I’ve lived with two men. I don’t sleep around.’

162 ‘I’ve slept with dozens of women, but I prefer to be alone.’ ‘You won’t be sleeping with me, but you’re going to stay in Moshe’s house. You’ll have a key. You can come and go as you please. You can run away if you need to, but if you do, you won’t be allowed back. And there’s one more condition. I don’t want to listen to you sobbing your heart out, or rageing about others being the cause of your problems. You’ll succeed or fail on your own terms and nobody else’s.’ ‘You play it pretty hard.’ ‘I’m forty. I’m childless. I’m in a man’s world.’ He looked at her. They were close to the teahouse. ‘Are we going to have something here?’ They had coffee and pear cake, sitting in silence. Figures on the pier grew larger or smaller as they came and went. The girl with the black beret and red hair was at the next table, writing. Helen murmured to Gus, ‘My hair was that colour once. Bright as a flame! But the hot-head, you see, has become a very determined person.’ Gus was sweating. She’d forced him into a moral crisis. ‘It’s hot in here,’ he said. ‘Let’s take all this outside!’ ‘It’s not at all hot. Go upstairs and look at the view. In that direction’ - she pointed to the open water - ‘there’s nothing whatsoever to be seen.’ The ship had swung on its moorings. ‘Nothing whatsoever.’ She was smiling, and it unnerved him. He went outside, leaving her sitting sternly, while he paced the deck that surrounded the little resort. Helen wondered what the girl with the red hair was writing. As she stood up, she saw that it was a poem, and felt suddenly happy. ‘My hair was the colour of your hair,’ she said. ‘Once.’ The young woman looked up at Helen. ‘Once? You’re very beautiful.’ Joy radiated from her. ‘Thank you,’ Helen said, smiling at this giver of love, and went out to Gus. He expected to see judgement in her eyes, but found her overtaken by affection and the purest appreciation. ‘Don’t ask me to make any sort of decision just yet,’ Gus said, nervous and awkward. ‘Strangers,’ Helen said, ‘can do the most wonderful things for us, sometimes.’

163 7 In which weddings break out all over the place, and one generation is replaced by another

The city’s biggest store was having a sale. Two young women clutched, at the same time, a silk blouse worth many pounds that had been put on the wrong rack. Whose should it be? They looked into each other’s eyes; a test of wills. Then they sensed they knew each other, and they did, each the youngest of her family: Lily and Nell. Lily at twenty felt privileged by her beauty; she clung to a sleeve. Nell, nearing twenty- eight, and feeling she deserved some consolation, rubbed the fabric between two fingers. ‘My dad would say we should toss for it.’ ‘We should be able to do better than that, don’t you think?’ Nell considered her cousin. ‘We could share it.’

My hatred for my sons is overpowering. They are bent on my replacement, or extermination. We shall see. If I let them leave, it weakens me. If they stay, we are competing for a space that only one can occupy. We shall see.

Sharing wasn’t what she’d meant at all, Lily realised; but she could hardly raise objections the moment a suggestion had been offered that had a chance of working ... Nell said, ‘You don’t like that idea?’ ‘No, no. It’s fine. Yes, share it. Let’s do that. The one that wants it sends a message to the one that’s got it. That should work all right.’ She had a feeling that she was making a mistake; that she was being led into something with consequences still out of sight, hidden, but there.

164 ‘Actually,’ Nell said, ‘I’ve just thought of a difficulty. Our families aren’t speaking to each other at the moment. Messages could be difficult.’

Their tender white flesh would sting under the whip. Their cries would be shrill as lightning, my malign displeasure dark as cloud.

They took themselves to a coffee shop where they could explore the rift that lay between them. ‘My father’s got a down on your family. There’s a quarrel I’m not allowed to know about. It’s something to do with the war.’ ‘Your father couldn’t stand it that two of my brothers didn’t join the army. He tried to get them rounded up to fight.’ ‘But one of your brothers went, didn’t he?’ ‘Adrian. He was killed. On a prison boat, by the guards. My mother had a vision, the minute that it happened.’ Nell described it. ‘How do you know the name of the ship?’ ‘Tom found out. He was playing at a services club. He said it was the best place a conscientious objector could hide. Right in front of everybody!’ They laughed. ‘Your family’s into music, aren’t they? None of us can play a note. Mum’s tone deaf, I’m sure.’ ‘Michael and Karen are failed musos. George and Yatty are pretty sad about that. And none of us have left home. Little Jesse, that’s Karen’s son, starts high school in a few weeks. I really think he’ll be the first one to leave, when he grows up. My parents have become grandparents without anything changing much, except that I can tell they’re sadder than they expected to be. In some way they’re still carrying us all, and they’re starting to find it heavy. They were pacifists, and it was very hard for them to maintain their principles during the war, and now I think they’re sick of principles, and would just like to have a bit of fun.’‘It’s rather different in our family. We’ve got two weddings coming up before long, and it’s time Rosie and Di did something too.’

165 ‘Tell me about them.’

Lucy’s journal Faith is dead. This is how it happened. There was a storm hanging around. I told Faith that ants know when it’s going to rain, and they dig their nests deeper. We pretended we were ants, and we started digging holes under one of the logs lying around the clearing. When the holes got bigger, we said we were wombats. Faith was giggling. She was happy all day, except for the last few seconds. Robert was riding Nik-Nok around the clearing, shouting and ho-ho-ing. He wouldn’t have been doing this but my father had gone to the falls, after cattle. Suddenly Faith and I heard Nik-Nok’s hooves thundering in our direction. Robert was going to make the horse jump the log. I pressed myself hard against the log, but Faith got scared, and as the sound came closer, she screamed and ran. The next moment Robert and Nik-Nok were in the sky above me, and then Nik-Nok’s silly hooves that clip each other when she goes fast landed on Faith’s back, and head. She screamed one last time, Nik-Nok stumbled, Robert did a rolling fall the way my father taught him, and looked at his sister for one tiny moment. He was the first to realise she was dead. My mother, who’s got another baby inside her, came running out, but before she could do anything, Robert was back on the horse, galloping in the direction of my father’s mountain. (Annie’s writing) I gave up. That was the moment when I wished for an end to this lonely experiment. (Lucy) The sound of Nik-Nok’s hooves hadn’t died away when my father rode into the clearing, as if the scream had called him. At the edge of the bush I could see small groups of the spirit people watching to see what he would do. He turned Faith over, saw that she was dead, then became two men. One streamed with tears of grief, and the other was alight with rage. The two men merged back into one, and I knew that my father, whom I had loved without limit or question, was about to do something as terrible as it was mistaken. I shouted at him, Giles

166 Redruth Wainwright, not to chase Robert. I said, let him go, he can’t survive without the house ... (Annie’s writing) The cause of all our trouble! (Lucy) ... he has to come back! But my father remounted his horse in a rage it must have understood because it fled the clearing as if by going fast enough it could appease the demon on its back. I looked into my mother’s eyes and I knew why she had always carried a sense of fear and tragedy. She had lived with his fury for years.

‘Tell me about the weddings.’ ‘Mum and dad are really keen to make it a double wedding for the boys. The Courtneys and the Urquharts are happy with that. Mark says he’s keen, and he says Jane is too, but he sounds a bit doubtful. I think he’s realising he doesn’t know her very well. Mark’s way of working out what someone feels is to announce very loudly what he wants to do, and if the other person doesn’t put up a fight, then he thinks it’s okay with them. Typical boy.’ ‘And Steve?’ ‘Steve’s been funny since he went to the Snowy. He says he and Tricia will be marrying soon, but he’s not ready to set a date. There’s something fishy about the whole thing, but he’s too far away to talk to. When Tricia came back from seeing him, she said it was still going ahead, but you could tell she was puzzled in some way. ‘And you?’ ‘I’m enjoying uni. I go out a lot, but mostly in groups. I don’t want any boy thinking I’m his. We only get one choice, and I want to know the moment when it comes. I’m not going to let any boy, or his family, make me feel under obligation. That’s the killer. If they get you feeling an obligation, you’ve thrown away your power of choice, and that’s all we’ve got. And you, Nell? What about you?’ ‘I think I’m on the shelf.’ ‘That’s such a harsh expression.’

167 ‘I know. I’ve grown up in the kindest family you could find, and I think that’s why none of us want to leave it. We know marriage can be good because we see it in our parents, but one of the things that bonds them together is a denial they made as young people. They denied the use of violence. But the world is violent. So they’ve made saints of themselves, and they’re truly gentle people, but they’ve made us too weak, or scared, to commit ourselves properly to another person.’ ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ ‘I’ve never had a serious boyfriend. I’ve never been in love. I’ve had silly infatuations, but never to the point that I’ve acted on them.’ ‘What are you interested in?’ ‘Mathematics - that turns you on, doesn’t it? - and the occult. And I know I wouldn’t be so interested in the occult if I wasn’t weird myself.’ ‘It’s not healthy to speak of yourself in that way. Let others do the criticising. You must know people who are interested in the same things that you are?’ ‘I don’t like them. That’s why I think I’m weird.’

The storm broke as the boy got to the mountain. The northern side was too steep for an old nag like Nik-Nok, so Robert rode, as I knew he would, to the spine, the backbone, leading to old Baldy’s pate. But the rain was blinding, his horse slipped, and he ran into the bush. I leaned from my saddle, grabbed Nik-Nok’s bridle as she lay writhing on the rocky ground, and dragged her to her feet. I cracked the whip and she headed for home. I cracked the whip again, and Robert appeared. I waited for him to see what was required. He stood in front of my horse. I pointed down the track, and he walked obediently in front of me, not that he had any choice. Sometimes I played the whip in the air above his shoulders, or let it curl in front of his face. When we reached the clearing, the rain stopped, and he wanted to dry himself by the fire, but I pointed to the graves, and gave him a shovel. He would dig the hole for Faith, and dig it deep, because I didn’t want wild dogs disturbing our dead. He felt he’d done penance enough by walking in the rain, and by showing his fear of me, but he had more to do. I tied up my horse and stood over the digging.

168 Lucy’s journal It poured rain as Robert started. My mother looked out in despair. My father came to the house to get George and Ned. They had to make a coffin for Faith from a few bits of board. The digging went on for ages. My mother took Robert a hot drink, but my father wouldn’t allow it. Robert isn’t very tall and after a while we couldn’t see him behind the wall of red mud he was piling around the hole. My father kept guard, and the longer it went on, the more I hated him. When the hole was deep enough, my father tossed the lash-end of the whip to Robert, so he could haul himself out. He was nothing but mud. My father made him strip and stand in the rain until he was clean. That was when he was most scared; his nakedness might invite a lashing. My mother called to him when she saw him trembling, and he ran in by the fire. Then came the awful bit. Faith’s body in its box was put where Robert sleeps.

It’s a vigil I’ll make sure he keeps.

Lily and Nell agreed to meet weekly. Since Nell, a lowly paid tutor, couldn’t take Lily, a student, into the staff club, they met in the rapidly Italianising suburb next to the university. It was a time when Melbourne was trying to ready itself for the Olympic games. The city, which ran its own sporting occasions with verve, had never done anything so big. State government and city council were producing confused decisions over venues and accommodation. With less than a year before the lighting of the Olympic flame, the city quavered with doubt. Television hit the place at the same time, changing forever people’s notions of who and what they were. Stump orators and street corner preachers were still to be found, but, amid the smouldering hatreds of the Cold War, some glimpses of the new era were to be had. Lily said to Nell, ‘It’s a pity our families have split up. There’s all these cousins I don’t know anything about.’ Nell: ‘The last time we were all together was before the war, down at Waratah Bay ... ‘

169 ‘I was there, but I don’t have any memory of it.’ ‘There was a photo of us all. As far as I know, mum’s still got it.’ Nell, knowing that her mother never brought out the photo, assumed it was because it meant looking at estranged relatives. ‘I’ll ask her about it. And there should be a copy at your place, too. Ask your parents if they know where it is.’ Lucy’s journal The next day was awful too. My father made Robert carry the box to the hole he’d dug, then George and Ned had to lower it on ropes. They got them tangled and the box wouldn’t go down. My father was seething again. I could read the boys’ minds. Robert wanted to push his father in, but he and George were too scared to get close. My mother wept all morning. Not for Faith, who - I could read her mind, in the way she reads father’s - she thought was well out of it. Her tummy was starting to swell, and she was crying for the one that was coming, and for herself. Somehow I knew that she felt the situation was not beyond me, and that her faith in me was the only thing that gave her strength. Would I ever marry? Looking after my mother might become the task of my life. Did I want to marry? Not if it meant listening to the thoughts of children wanting to kill their father.

The lines of battle were starting to be drawn. I had to untangle the ropes and push the box down myself. Then the boys took turns with the one spade I allowed near the grave. We found a few flowers in the bush and put them on the mound. Annie’s heaviness of heart as she burned Faith’s name into the marker made me think of some words I heard in my short schooling: ‘a grievous sore burden’. Amazingly, she grows in stature at every setback; she is truly, and grandly, the converse of myself.

Lily and Nell compared photos. The two pictures had changed since they’d found them. In Nell’s print, four Salvation Army women were propping up a much-decayed Uncle Bill. The four women that Nell half-remembered coming into the clearing to help with the photos had clustered around the nine year old Mark, with his cricket bat in hand. The compassion evident in their regard was disturbing to Lily. ‘It looks

170 as if they think he’s doomed!’ she said. ‘Who are they? I’ve never seen them before! They weren’t in the picture when I found it!’ As she put her photo forward for Nell’s inspection, they both saw four men moving into the picture, rearranging the group until they were seated in the centre, and the eleven year old twins, Rosie and Di, were sitting cross-legged immediately before them. The attention of the men was fixed firmly on the two girls. ‘What’s going on?’ Lily wanted to know. ‘Are we dreaming?’ Nell: ‘This is one of the rarest phenomena ever recorded. There’s only ever been one reported incident of this before, in America, wouldn’t you know. Nobody thought it was genuine. Now we can confirm it. We’re fantastically lucky!’ ‘I’m terrified. Look at my hands shaking. We’ve got to burn these pictures. Have you got any matches?’ Nell: ‘Don’t be silly. We have to study them. Let’s look. Just about everyone’s the right age, except Uncle Bill. He’s been dead for years. But look at you! That doll you’ve got hold of looks about twenty. Actually, it looks exactly the same as you do now. Look at it! Little two year old you is holding your present self in her arms!’ Lily reluctantly conceded that this was so. As they watched, the cricket bat in Mark’s hand turned into the steering wheel of a car, and a loutish, irresponsible expression came over his face. The four women from the artists’ camp reacted to this change with an even deeper show of concern, turning to the boy’s parents, Max and Muriel, who dis- solved in tears under their gaze. Lily: ‘Cover them up! Put them away Nell! I don’t want to look!’ She turned the photos over and placed the menu on top of them. When she tried to take a sip from her cup, she spilled coffee on the table. Nell: ‘Don’t let it touch the photos!’ She snatched them away. When the table had been wiped, she put the photos back. ‘It’s disconcerting, Lily, when other levels of reality break into our so-called normal lives, but that’s the very moment when you need to

171 focus your concentration so that you can remember what actually happened, and what, exactly, you saw.’ ‘Let’s wrap them up. We’re not meant to see things like that!’ ‘Yes we are. We were chosen. Out of the whole human race, the curtain was parted for us.’ Lily decided that Nell was as weird - cracked, actually - as she’d said. ‘How can I take that thing home,’ she said, ‘and put it back in the drawer where we keep our pictures? How could I get on a tram with that in my hands? I’m going to leave it here and not come back!’ She was rejecting Nell as much as the lively, warning photos. Nell flipped them right way up again, forcing Lily to take another look. The families were standing, sitting, and kneeling once again, as they’d done in 1937, but the pictures hadn’t given up their signalling. The four women in Nell’s photo - this was the one without Michael because he was behind the camera - were still grieving for Mark, the little boy with the bat; and the same four women were still absent from Lily’s photo, but the four men, powerful personalities with disdain all over their faces, had moved themselves from the seats to the edges of the picture, and by now Rosie and Di were standing, one looking left and one right, as if they felt an urge to follow these strangers out of the bush to the noblest parts of civilisation on the other side of the world.

The boys have entered my dreams. I see them darker, and more dangerous. I see them trapping animals, and shooting birds - things which I know, in my dreams, are aspects of my free self they want to exterminate. I imagine myself walking through a forest without its proper wild life, some of which they’ve managed to wipe out, and the rest of which has fled, as if recognition had passed among the creatures that a fire was coming. And in some of my dreams, the fire leaps over the range, but it stops at our little river, unable to cross. I can’t interpret that, but I know how I feel when I wake up - that the river has quenched the fire, and the fire has been me, and now is only embers.

172 Nell was going to put the picture back in her mother’s bedside cabinet without saying anything, because she planned to take it out from time to time and add whatever she saw to her notes for an article she would write for the American Journal of Paranormal Studies, but Yatty was in the room when Nell entered. ‘What did the picture do for you?’ Nell wondered how long her mother had known of the picture’s powers, and what it had shown her, over the years. ‘It showed me that Mark - Lily’s brother Mark - is in trouble. All four of those women were looking sorrowfully at him. He had a bat in his hand, and it turned into a steering wheel, and they looked even sadder.’ ‘No wonder, the way he drives that car of his. He’ll kill himself. What else?’ Nell was amazed at the sternness of her mother’s viewpoint. ‘Lily’s mother’s print was doing something else. There were four men instead of four women. It was like a film. They shifted everybody about till they were at the centre of the picture, and they were so contemptuous of everybody, except they were really curious about Rosie and Di. You could see they wanted Rosie and Di to follow them when they left. And when we looked at the picture again, they were leaving. And I felt Rosie and Di would follow, eventually, if not straight away.’ ‘Did you recognise the four men?’ ‘No. But I felt I would, one day.’ ‘So you’ve been seeing Lily. I suppose you know why your father and I don’t see Muriel and Max any more?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘I hope you keep seeing her. I wouldn’t like that rift to move into the next generation.’ ‘It may have, though. She was pretty thrown by the pictures. She blamed me. She was scared. It was too much for her to handle.’ ‘That was her first reaction. But as we speak, she’ll be hiding that picture so she can look at it without anyone knowing.’

173 Max had a study where Lily sometimes did her university work. She put the photo beneath the pile of papers in his tax folder; that way, she felt, it should lie undisturbed for ages. She increased her reading, sitting at a mahogany table in the study. Her father was pleased at the extra contact this gave him; he felt he’d overlooked her in favour of the two sets of twins. One day, when she was writing, and he was at his desk, she found she couldn’t carry the secret any longer. ‘Dad, I have to tell you this. You’re going to think this is mad.’ He turned to look at her. ‘You know that picture of us all down at Waratah Bay, before the war? All the family?’ He didn’t remember it. She told him where it was. ‘Would you look at it closely, and tell me what you see?’ Apart from seizing commercial opportunities, he was not an imagi- native man. ‘What about it?’ ‘You don’t see anything unusual?’ ‘No.’ ‘Pass it to me, would you?’ He gave it to her. ‘The women aren’t there,’ she said. ‘The four women.’ He looked at her. ‘What women?’ ‘There was nobody to hold the camera,’ she said. ‘So Michael went off and came back with four women. One of them took the picture. Then they joined the group, and Michael took a picture with them in it.’ Max remembered that this had been what happened, and was astounded to find that she knew. ‘But you were only a child. You wouldn’t remember any of that. So who told you? Who have you been seeing?’ ‘I ran into Nell, Uncle George and Aunty Yvonne’s youngest. She told me.’ ‘What else did she tell you?’ ‘About the quarrel that means we don’t see them any more.’ Her father flushed. ‘And what sort of story did you get from her? That it was all right for two able bodied young men to lounge around

174 Melbourne, playing a clarinet, one of them, and the other doing bug- gerall at his father’s business, while others were fighting for the freedom of this country ... ‘ Afraid that his tirade would activate the photo, she tried to stop him, but he ploughed on, and she saw that Adrian the boy was changing into Adrian the young man, clad only in shorts and boots, his belly disfigured by brutal bayonet stabs. She pushed the picture under his nose and pointed to what was happening. For a moment she thought he couldn’t see it, then his anger changed its target. ‘What sort of magic’s this?’ he said. ‘Someone’s put a spell on the bloody thing! Some bloody witch, that is!’ He ripped the photo into pieces, smaller and smaller to accommodate his confusion. ‘Nell, was it?’ His voice was all accusation. ‘Keep away from her. The things I’ve heard about her ... she’s a very strange piece of work.’ He pointed his finger at his youngest. While he raged, Lily noticed that one of the scraps of the picture he’d flung at his bin had fluttered to the floor. Blazing from it was Adrian’s face, contorted by a scream of resentment at the bloodlust that had taken over his generation, and finished him with a bayonet.

I dream, I dream. Though I welcome fire, storm and wind, dreams attack me from within. Last night I saw a man who had his back to me reading Lucy’s journal. He was shaking his head from time to time, and it disturbed me that I didn’t know what he thought. Was he contemptuous? Amazed? Admiring? Or could he see in my heroic appropriation of mountain and clearing a pattern which was no more and no less than any minor life? My pride in Lucy does not overcome my qualms about her journal. I’m tempted to throw her books in the fire. Why don’t I? My dreams give me no answer, but yesterday, as I looked down the river to the lakes and the sea, I thought fondly of the words set down by Annie and now Lucy, hoping that they might be as grand, in their way, as our enterprise. My daughter has an uncommon understanding. Might she not leave a record to match the action?

Lily searched the house while her parents were away, and found the companion photo to the one her father had torn up: the one taken by the women which included the younger Michael. She took it to a

175 studio and had it copied. She put the copy back in the drawer, and kept the original with her books; her father would never look through Norse sagas and lays of Marie de France. She wondered at his inability to sense the photo’s presence in the room. She discovered that if she listened in a certain frame of mind, she could hear the little figures talking, and could occasionally make them hear her too. They were limited human beings, Uncle Bill the wisest, but they could all offer something. Even her two year old self gave her piercing insights into lost childhood as she moved towards twenty one.

Lucy, my little darling, as I watch you scribbling I say to you, be just! Be generous! Have vision, but above all, get it right! Bringing my wife to the mountain, I placed myself above human judgement, but judgement has sprung up from within. There you sit concentrating, a stub of pencil between two fingers, a girl between two trees. You have your back to me, writing at the table. I have the fire at my back, making me genial. Your mother is in front of you, watching tenderly from her bed. Have vision! Above all, do the duty of a recording angel, and get it bravely, passionately, right!

The handwriting was an elegant black script which Yatty knew, but couldn’t, for the moment, place. Dearest Yatty and George, I’ve been dreading this moment, while knowing I would have to face it. I want you to know that Gus and I are getting married. I’ll let you have the date as soon as it’s fixed because I’d like to know that you were thinking of me on the day. I’ve always been closer to you than to my own parents, who supported me well enough when I chose music as my path, and were proud of me when I got into the orchestra, but never really understood why anyone would want a life in music. That understanding, and so much more, I had around me in the years when I was with your family. I always took your good times and bad times as my own. Do you remember the day the Manpower men (man-power!) came looking for Tom, only they’d got him mixed up with Michael? I felt very close to you both that day, and respected your principles. I’ll

176 never forget the minutes we sat together, Yatty, in the garden, after they’d gone. And I’ll never forget, George, how I looked out of the stable when you were cutting masses of flowers because Karen had told you she was going ahead with Jesse! Moments like those are too important to walk away from. There’s an irony, isn’t there, in the way I came to get Gus. He was sent to me by your family. Luke sent him south in search of music, and Michael sent him on to me. I don’t want to say too much about Michael and I. We met in a wonderful way, down on the dunes where you’d been camping for years. I was with my parents, on their first visit, so you could say we walked into your territory, and now, sadly, I’m leaving that territory. When I left Michael, it was very painful, particularly since Moshe, who made all sorts of opportunities for me, was so determined, so effective - so hard! - that I was forever thinking of the sweet- est moments I shared with Michael, usually in the small hours of the morning when he smiled at something someone said. He never wanted to grow up, so he kept a child’s understanding of the importance of moments, this one, that one, strung together like beads on a string. It was painful leaving Michael, but it’s much more painful to realise that in taking this next step, I am leaving the two most precious people I’ve known. Thanks for every minute of the years we had together. I feel very nervous about starting out again. It’s hard to believe that what lies ahead can be as rich as what lies behind, but I guess I just have to have faith, and hope, and trust. Please think well of me. There isn’t anybody whose good wishes I need as I need yours now. I will always love you, Helen

So what do I hear in the hotel at Swifts Creek? Mrs Hurley has died, and her sister, out from Ireland, has married Hurley. Four boys and two girls have a new mother. I’d say there’d not be much love lost there. We can expect the boys up here with my boys, making mischief. And Hurley! They say he had the sister in his bed while his wife was dying in the back room. They say! The imagination reveals its own evils

177 in attributing them to others. Nevertheless, I condemn Hurley for what he’s done, and the sister too. What are we if our actions are only about filling vacancies? Wife dead, spare woman, new wife. A half-empty bed sucking in the nearest one who sleeps alone. If that’s how we live, we’re admitting our needs are stronger than our purposes, and to prove that’s not so, I offer as testimony my life.

The Courtneys were ‘old’ Toorak people, ‘old’, in their suburb and country, meaning they had five generations of continuity and solidity, from the desertion of Melbourne when gold was found, to the early mass-consumer days when a nation made affluent by selling primary produce could afford anything the old world might produce. The Courtneys had catered to mass-market tastes, donating generously to the university, state library, and charities: they knew that to live safely you had to hedge your position with largesse. The weddings, christenings, confirmations and funerals of the Courtneys had been held at Saint John’s, Toorak. Successive vicars had offered discreet advice, when invited, in family matters, for discreet rewards - organ repairs, memorial windows, charitable distributions, pews, printing and the purchase of hymn books. Tom Courtney’s father had said to him, and to the vicar of his day, ‘The Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible, and the works of William Shakespeare, are the truest, richest sources of the English language, and the English language is the greatest civilising influence the world has ever known - even more than the language of the Romans!’ Tom Courtney senior had never known this to be questioned; nor had his son.

Lucy’s journal I do not understand it. My father needs to hate. I thought it was the boys who were to blame, but now I see they’re trapped. They will kill him, or he will kill them. He goads them all the time. My mother is helpless. I can do nothing except keep this journal. The boys can’t read it, and my father, whom I shall now call Giles, leaves my books alone. He must want some more substantial record to survive him than sticks marked Hope, Nick, Prudence, Faith.

178 Little Gordon is haunted by those names. He keeps asking Annie, my mother, when there’s going to be a stick with his name. She says it won’t be for many, many years, and it’ll be a piece of marble, or granite, and it will be a long, long way from here. Then he asks Giles if he can look from the top of his mountain because he wants to see his piece of stone. Giles tells him not to worry yet. Gordon thinks that the day he’s allowed to look from the mountain will be the day he’s grown up!

White for the bride, black for the groom! Margaret Courtney carried a sense of foreboding. Some barrier, some event yet to happen, lay between her daughter and the happiness which should come to her with marriage. White for the bride, black for the groom! The ceremony meant different things for women and men, and each had to approach it via their own psychic paths. There was a barrier, not of Tricia’s making, her mother felt, but a barrier nevertheless, some blockage in the current of events. Something had to happen to let other things happen. Margaret invited Max and Muriel to dinner: no barrier with Steve’s parents, she felt, although she had to work hard to make them comfortable. Max and Muriel left with a feeling that once the wedding was over there wouldn’t be a great deal of contact between the two sets of parents. When the Urquharts were next in Melbourne, John to see his wool sold, Gillian for shopping, she had drinks with them at Scott’s, the squatters’ hotel, before Tom joined them for dinner. There was an unfamiliar opacity about Gillian when talking about Jane and Mark that told Margaret that Gillian knew something of the block, but not how to remove it. Impasse.

Steve was able to get a fortnight’s leave from the Snowy diversion project. He chose to drive to Melbourne via the base of Mount Kosciusko, thus avoiding Tumbarumba. This, he knew, would be commented on, but he could give as reason a wish to see new country. He got as far as Tom Groggin, high on the Murray, before he felt hungry. Leaving the

179 car, he took his billy down to the river and lit a fire. The billy boiled, and he had just added tea, when he saw a lonely, somewhat dumpy figure, though possessing a fine straight back, leading a miserable grey horse. Horse and figure crossed the clearing, apparently bent on wad- ing through the stream. Realising that they would pass close by, Steve stood up. The dismounted rider paused, noticing him at last, and spoke. ‘You’re leaving us, then?’ Steve felt the chill of mortality run through him. He’d seen the figure before, and the horse. This time it was they who were lost. ‘You haven’t got your whip, today.’ The figure was still pert, but sad. ‘There’s no chastisement that would make this one raise a gallop any more. A bag of oats and a warm stall is as much as she can wish for nowadays. This poor old Nullah-Mundoey’s the last of her line.’ A reverence for the woman and the horse spread through the young engineer. ‘Where are you going?’ The woman feigned a feeling that it was impertinent of him to ask. ‘I might put the same question to you, except I already know. You’re heading back to where you came from for a wedding and a funeral.’ ‘Neither. Two weeks leave. I do have a fiancée, but there’s no funerals in the offing.’ The woman looked at the ground, as if reflecting on her own demise. Some connection took place in the engineer’s mind. ‘You’re heading for Talbingo.’ ‘Where else would I be going, if I want the peace of knowing that I’ve ended where I began?’ ‘The fire’s gone out of you. Are you peaceful, now, as you ride along?’ ‘If you care to observe a little more perspicaciously, I’m not riding. We’re dragging each other to the boneyard, like all those that went before us. You’ve read about’em in All that swagger.’ It showed in his eyes that he hadn’t. ‘The young are so disappointing,’ Miles Franklin said. ‘They let go knowledge of where they came from so they can

180 dream about a future, and when it arrives they’ve got more new things to excite them, and more after that, and they fail to see the mysteries that are under their noses. And when they’re old bags of bones that can hardly raise a puff, and they’re visited by the mysteries they’ve been ignoring all their lives, and they want to tell their children and their grandchildren, nobody wants to listen. They’re humoured. They’re put up with. They’re given a chair by the fire, and maybe a rug for their knees if the household can be bothered.’ She looked at the fire, which was smoking because it had caught some damp bark, and said, in a whisper that drove into Steve’s heart, ‘Oh Talbingo! Talbingo, I’m coming to hear the old Jounama whispering as it’s done since eternity opened its face on the world.’ Miles’ face paled with the enormity of what she was saying, but Steve, of a practical profession, pointed away from the river. ‘You’re well off line, I have to tell you. Talbingo’s over that way. You ought to know, it’s where I first ran into you, and pretty frightening you were, I must say.’ The old lady looked at him with contempt. ‘I was brought up in this country. I don’t need any city-based youth with scarcely a hair on his chin to tell me the way home.’ She shook Nullah-Mundoey’s reins and led the unwilling mare through the water. Steve called after her. ‘Don’t be silly. You’re heading in the wrong direction!’ Miles turned for a last pronouncement before she became indistinguishable from the smoke. ‘What would you know about it? You’re leaving the mountains, and I’ll be here forever.’

White for the bride, black for the groom! On an end of season trip, Mark’s team visited a township in Western Victoria, no bigger than Tumbarumba. Mark spent his first night there with the daughter of the people who ran the fish and chips shop, and the next day, the next night, and most of the day after, she returning occasionally to the shop to convey to her socially marginalised family the import of the offers this visitor was making. A flat in Melbourne’s wealthiest area, not far from where he was going to live. Her parents became enraged and a

181 quarrel took place on the stairs of the hotel. Mark shouted until her parents had been thrown out, and their daughter fucked one further time. Then he advised her that it was better not to break with her family, vomited in the street, and returned to the bar to see who else he could pick up. The following morning, the team, heavily hung over, crawled into their cars, leaving Mark groaning in bed, comforted by a jug of water and some aspirins. When he recovered, he felt a deep remorse that could only be satisfied by a high speed drive to Tumbarumba. It was plain to the Urquharts that something was wrong. After a tense dinner, the young people quarreled in his room - the guest room where Steve had slept - and on the back verandah, and then, at the point where Jane’s parents felt they must intervene, a chastened, stern-faced young couple came to them and said they were going for a drive. John Urquhart wanted to restrain them, thinking that sleep and another day - his most-trusted medications - might work the necessary change, but Gillian felt it was better to let events run their course: some resolution had to be achieved. The Urquharts went to bed. They were almost asleep when it happened. A tremendous bang sounded from the bottom of the slope leading to their house. The only thing to be hit, down there, was a red gum of enormous age, so far from the road that the only way one could run into it was to do it deliberately or to be so blind drunk that a car driven with a death wish could find the tree without further aid. The Urquharts threw on their dressing gowns and rushed to the point where desperation, unable to find a way out, had chosen the most despairing thing to do. The car, crushed against the tree, expressed the frustration and self-hatred of those trapped within.

Lily was devastated by the news. Her brother was dead and his fiancée in Albury base hospital. It was many hours after the accident before Jane recovered consciousness. Lily blamed herself for not having warned Mark of what she’d seen in the photos. In her parents’ anguish,

182 too, she sensed a strand of resentment at her for being in some way responsible. She rang Nell. ‘I could have stopped it happening.’ ‘No you couldn’t. You had no power to do anything about it.’ ‘That’s not how I feel. I feel wretched, and rotten. I’m rotten to the core because I didn’t do anything for them.’ ‘Not didn’t, couldn’t. Tell me if you ever had, for one moment, a feeling that events were in your control?’ ‘No. Never.’ ‘Well, there you are. For almost every terrible thing that happens, someone has a precognition. Someone. Maybe they suppress it, maybe they go around filled with dread. It’s natural to think that an accident is somehow cleaner if it hits you all unsuspecting, like a hammer from behind. But it’s not. An accident is like a disturbance in the air. There’s always someone who’ll sense it coming. You just found out in an unusual way. Look at it this way. If you felt sure that something terrible was going to happen, and it didn’t, you’d know your mind was giving you unreliable messages. You’d think you were mad. But the message you got was right. You received the truth. You couldn’t do anything about it because the cosmos won’t let you. The universal mind has been made up. And besides. If it hadn’t happened to Mark and Jane, it would have happened to somebody else. With other names. We aren’t really individuals, we’re just cells that reproduce, or don’t. Or die, or don’t. Tragedies are always going to happen. The best we can do is to try not to be where the lightning strikes - but someone will be there. You, me, someone ...’ Lily couldn’t stand this. She wanted her brother back, and even more she wanted ignorance to return like a comforting blanket. She hung up. There was no comfort to be had. She sat by the phone, trembling; she wanted to do better than Mark, to love, have children, to reach maturity and enjoy it, but something told her she’d already committed herself to a wilder, more passionate path with an early, mysterious, disgraceful end.

183 I have never felt vulnerable before, but on my mountain, today, I do. The water draws me down, not to the town where I married Annie, but to my origins: the sea that laps another land. I’ve come as far as one could come, but the water is flowing back. Where do the storms, and rain, come from? That we don’t know; none of us can make them happen. What we know is where they go to, always draining downward. This dooms me; gravity must not be allowed to describe a life. The water comes and goes; I stay. We stay. This beloved mountain, and its bristling coat of forest, stays. The mind cannot imagine its end, though preachers conjure Armageddon. I align myself with all that’s lasting, but today I am troubled, and think of Cornwall, and wonder why this thought has come to me. We are mortal; but death comes only when despair opens a crack to let it in.

Lucy’s journal Annie’s new baby came easily. She didn’t scream, just whimpered occasionally. When he looked at it, Giles said so solemnly that it annoyed me, ‘The female cleft, my love.’ Who’s he to know? It seemed to me that the baby, though sweet and simple, hadn’t entirely arrived. Annie drew the baby to her and said very quietly, ‘Dorothy, but we’ll call her Doll.’ It came out so simply I could tell she was leaving something important unsaid.

The baby, to be frank, is not the full shilling. Are our powers in decline? I can feel the flow of life going backwards, down, down, down. I’ve avoided the mountain since Doll’s arrival; I must go there soon, to consider.

Mark’s burial was delayed a few days to allow Jane to attend. At the doctor’s insistence she had to remain in a car, then be taken back to hospital. It grieved Mark’s parents to have him buried in Tumbarumba, but it might have been his home eventually, and there was no other way Jane could be present. So the Bowdens and the Morrises, Urquharts and Courtneys, gathered to hear prayers and readings about resurrection and eternal life which none of them believed in, but which apparently had to be said. Staring across the open grave from among his parents and sisters, with Tricia beside him, Steve sent Jane a compassion

184 he alone could give because her situation was like his own. He knew that there must be more to what had happened than the stated explana- tion that Mark had arrived in an agitated condition and that there had been a quarrel. What had caused the agitation? A handful of Mark’s cricketing friends were present, and Steve knew that they would know, but wouldn’t be saying anything yet. So something else that was ugly was lurking in the air, something as bad as his own performance with Jane many months before. The occasion demanded that he be more generous, more comprehending, than the cautious sympathy for his once-lover that he’d shown at her bedside in hospital. The stitches on her forehead, cheek and chin were marks of her inner being, and he was brave enough to know that some of the healing had to come from him. As the service ended, he said to Tricia, ‘We have to do something for Jane’, and led his fiancée to the woman he had until that day desired more. Seeing them coming, Jane turned in the car seat, put her feet outside the car, and tried to stand. Steve and Tricia lifted her with their arms, the three of them pressed together in a moment of unplanned but revealing intimacy. Tricia knew, in that moment, what knowledge had been missing from her understanding of Steve’s postponements, and in the same moment forgave, because, not only was the depth of Jane’s suffering apparent as she pressed herself against her, but she also knew that the undisclosable desire between the collusive, double-dealing couple had evaporated. Steve, in being moved by the pain he saw in his late brother’s ex-fiancée, was free of the lust he’d had for Jane, and she, Tricia, could have him again - if she wanted him.

The Courtneys stayed with the Urquharts while Jane recovered. The Morrises went back to Melbourne, and Steve to his job. Tricia chose to go back to her millinery, staying with an aunt so as not to be alone. Gillian Urquhart and Margaret Courtney, the two mothers, discussed what they should do. ‘I can’t bear to see her on the verandah all day, staring into a void.’

185 ‘She’s hardly said a word since she came home.’ ‘She only gets up to walk down to the tree.’ ‘It might be better, I think, if she could cry.’ ‘And she doesn’t. She’s not mourning. She’s still stunned.’ Jane felt that the Morris twins, between them, had destroyed her life, but wasn’t disposed to hate them. It was more a matter of shock that the thing could be done so easily, without apparent malice. None of us were wise, was the only conclusion she could reach, and it felt like no conclusion. She wanted to restart her life, but couldn’t see how to do it. One morning she said to her mother, ‘I think I should travel. I should go a long way away.’ It was the signal Gillian Urquhart had been waiting for. ‘You’re not ready to travel on your own just yet. Your father and I have been wanting to see what they’re doing, up there in the mountains. I’ll see if Tom and Margaret would be able to come with us. And Tricia ... ‘ She studied her daughter’s reaction to Tricia’s name, and decided that Jane no longer feared anything from that quarter. ‘ ... and it would be rather rude not to ask Max and Muriel.‘ A few days later, it was all organised. The Morrises would join them in Cooma, bringing Tricia with them. Tricia had gone to her employer, a stormy Belgian, and told him that she had to have leave and if he wouldn’t give it to her, she’d go anyway. The Belgian, who had built a fortune out of impetuosity and high-handedness, cursed her, gave her a month’s pay in advance, and said he needed her when she got back. So Tricia joined the travelling band of mourners, with Steve, to his surprise, given his age, and the embarrassment of the bond with Jane from which he had so recently felt released, as mentor and host. Events are running out of control, he thought, as he secured accommodation, and decided when he would be able to travel with the travellers, and when Tricia would have to take them to some place they’d seen together in the days of adjoining rooms at the Monaro Arms. Events were also, he felt, running in his favour. There was a current moving him to maturity, and it would find a way of getting him there. Studying

186 his plan for the visitors’ movements, it occurred to him that something was missing. He walked to the other end of the barrack building, and knocked on American Steve’s door. ‘I’ve got a job for you mate,’ Steve Bowden said to the foreign engineer. ‘You’re going to be a part-time tour guide, and I’m not taking no for an answer. Get me a coffee and I’ll tell you what you have to do.’

Lucy’s journal The flame women never come to see me now, though I’m sure they’re watching and sometimes I think they’ve been reading this journal. They tricked me when they put me here. I won’t get a life of my own until whatever’s going to happen here has happened, and I’ve set it all down. Annie doesn’t tell me fairy stories any more. I always thought they only happened in the imagination, but now I know that all stories are true, and that someone has to suffer to give people a story to think about.

As Jane travelled around the mountains with her parents, the Morrises, the Courtneys, Tricia and one or both of the Steves, she perceived how focal she was, in her subdued state, for the others. All were waiting for some indication that though she grieved for what had happened, she could separate herself from it to some degree. But she couldn’t. Some veil hung between her and her future. American Steve made her accompany him on walks. One day they were sitting on a rock, staring at the tiered ranges, when the other Steve, and Tricia, came on them. Steve said it was extraordinary how the first couple had homed in on this point, and he talked about a Czech engineer who’d been killed in a tunnel below where they were sitting. It clearly mattered very much to Steve Morris, this coincidence, but it didn’t dispel the fog in Jane’s mind. American Steve took her hand as they sat in the presence of what must once have been turbulent landforms, now quiescent: a view. The others came up: three couples - two Morrises, two Courtneys, two Urquharts. Jane began to giggle. ‘It’s like Noah’s Ark!’ Her passive hand, held in American Steve’s, took on life. She gripped this

187 other hand. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said. ‘Am I?’ Steve Morris and Tricia felt troubled; the adults didn’t know where her mind had wandered to. ‘I can’t get out of what happened, can I? So I have to live in it.’ She had everybody’s attention. Only American Steve sensed that their sympathy was misplaced, because only he could feel the current running through her hand. He flushed under the scrutiny of the older women: the mothers. Jane wasn’t going to leave the moment. She’d snared him in it. Did he want this? He had only a second to escape. He remembered that when he’d said goodbye to his parents, his father had suggested he might find himself a wife in his new country; his mother had told her husband not to be silly, because Steve would always want an American girl, and he, all set to board the ship, had told them not to worry; he wasn’t hunting for a partner. But he had one, or she had him. He looked like Steve, therefore he must have looked like Mark. Steve Morris, smitten by a thought, said, ‘Helena.’ Tricia looked at him suspiciously. ‘That was Anton’s wife’s name,’ Steve explained. ‘I had to write to her, and send her some of his things. A ring, I remember, and photos.’ He looked at his parents, as if surprised that these undistinguished people had brought him into the world. ‘What’s come over you people?’ said Max, his father. ‘Is this place enchanted too?’

American Steve became a regular visitor to the Urquharts’, working on the property with John, charming Gillian, sitting, or walking, for hours with Jane. Sometimes they drank sherry on the verandah, sometimes they sat under a hoary redgum scarred by the impact of a car. When they walked they were followed by a well grown dog, still known as Puppy. One night Jane got out of her bed and went to the guest room. Steve was ready to welcome her with love, but she made him come with her to the shed, full of machinery, and some bales of wool. ‘I have to do it here first,’ she told him; when, some time later in the night, she opened the door to go back to bed, her mother caught the sound, and

188 the padding of bare feet in the passage, and decided that things had been made about as good as they could hope to be.

The Olympic Games had Melbourne alive with excitement on the afternoon of the double wedding. Tricia and Steve and Jane and Steve were the third wedding for the afternoon at Saint John’s. The pave- ment was already covered with confetti and petals. It was an occasion of some solemnity and not a little tension, because Steve had insisted that all family branches should be present. The rift in the older generation had to be closed. George and Yatty found themselves standing with, then sitting with, Edna and Norman Rowe. George and Yatty found themselves welcomed by Max and Muriel Morris. Hands were shaken. Questions purporting to convey goodwill were asked, and answers given. Michael, Tom, Karen and Nell mixed with relatives they hadn’t seen for years. George said to Yatty, ‘When your quarrels are not important any more, you know you’re growing old.’ Yatty clung to Karen’s teenage son, whose body was darkening as puberty took hold. The guests were ushered inside by Rosie and Di; Lily was to be Tricia’s bridesmaid. The cars bringing the two brides came in convoy down Toorak Road, tooted by exuberant sporting fans. The Games! Gillian Urquhart and Margaret Courtney stood together at the brides’ entry, while their husbands brought their daughters to the altar. Vows were exchanged. The register was signed while the organist played Sheep may safely graze. Johann Sebastian Bach! After a bidding prayer, the doors of the church were opened to let the newly married couples be carried into the city on a flood of music. Courtneys, Urquharts, Morrises and Bowdens mingled. Women carried all the colour. Hats! Veils! Flowers! Gloves, bags, shoes, whispers, confidences, speculation, questions about the identity of people discreetly distant. The vicar joined the smiling crowd, then absented himself to prepare for the fourth and last wedding of this sought-after day. Then it was time for photos. Steve and Tricia. Jane and Steve. The two couples together. Each couple with mothers and fathers; the

189 American parents had come out for the occasion, and with them their second son, from officer training school, and paying a great deal of attention to Lily, whose apparent readiness for marriage gave her a radiance that stole the occasion. Next time, the family thought, would be hers! Photos. Ever-enlarging groups of wider and wider families, until all the living Morrises, Bowdens, Courtneys and Urquharts had been squeezed into the recording camera! Gossip! When would Rosie and Di give their family another double wedding? They, however, seemed distracted by four stern men who’d stopped on the footpath. Men: but one was dressed as a woman, and held a giant bunch of gladioli, while another made his comment on what was happening by looking tenderly on a Greek army officer: his lifelong companion. The third was tight-faced, somewhat dandified in air, while the last was a raw-boned Irish-Australian with a glamorous woman on his arm. All had suitcases; they had come from somewhere, or were going away. Their presence rendered Rosie and Di helpless, as if they represented a challenge the young women would have to face.

190 8 In which a mineshaft acquires a voice, a young girl’s hair is washed for the first time, and certain artists distance themselves from their public

A letter came down from Cairns. Dear Aunt Yatty, I’ll bet this’ll give you a surprise, getting a letter from me! Do you know what became of Gus? I haven’t heard a word from him, or Michael, or Helen, since the day I saw him off. The bugger must be up to something! He had so much talent, I hope he found a way to use it. I guess I’m missing him. It’s probably time to move on, but I’m not sure where I want to go. I hope you and George are keeping well. Michael must be taking over the business worries by now? Love, Luke Yatty held the letter for a long time. Luke wants to find his way home, she decided, but hasn’t got a home to go to. She posted it on to Helen, care of the orchestra. Dropping it in the box, she asked herself: if I weren’t here to keep this message moving, what would become of it? It’d lie around until George had a clean up, or Michael threw it in the fire. The expression dead letter office came to her mind; what were such places like?

Helen said to Gus, ‘You have to write. Invite him down to stay with us.’

191 Lucy’s journal I must be sixty, or close. The two visits have brought me back to the writing I swore I’d never do again. I think I was mad for a long time. Now I’m alone and a frightening clarity has descended on my failed life. What hopes, what ceremony, were at my birth. The visits. I heard a car; a young man came to the door. He knocked, he saw my fire. It was an educated voice. ‘Anybody home?’ Then the disclaimers. ‘I won’t hurt you. I won’t interfere. I’d just like to have a talk.’ I shrank. When a mess has been made there’s always someone offering to clean up because they want to see what happened. He went away; I heard the car. Then Tim Hurley came. In the same car. So my past and the modern world had found each other! Tim’s warm and tender voice spoke to me through the years. ‘You’d remember me, Lucy. Tim. You’d remember Leo, and Nick, and mum when this was the post office.’ He went on. How had he found such softness? His voice was the caress I hadn’t had in years. ‘I was up at the old place, havin’ a look around. I thought you might like a chat. I’ve got my wife in the car, and a friend, if you’d like to meet’em.’ I didn’t speak to him, I turned off the radio, to hear more clearly. Speak, Tim. I could tell he was moved. I learned about silences from my parents. Into that silence I sent a message: don’t expect me to appear. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said, those tender words of parting, and moved away, footsteps on the path. The car: loud at first, then quieter, then a faint drone. I went out. They were still there, looking. Just like the spirit people: betrayers! I ran into the clean, empty bush where humans should never go because they dirty it. Chop it down. That night I got out the few photos acquired in my years in the world, and threw them in the fire. The visits had told me I was an object of fascination because of what I’d seen with my once innocent eyes.

Rosie went to England; Di followed on the next ship, a decision they’d made. Rosie worked for a theatre company - promotions, organising

192 tours. Di worked for some stockbrokers, thanks to Tom Courtney’s help, instigated by Steve. Their mother, Muriel, pinned a map of England on the kitchen wall, and a smaller one of the continent. She took their letters to these maps, finding places. Their father, Max, wanted them to visit the major vehicle manufacturers - Bentley, Jaguar, Rolls Royce, Daimler, Rover - and the grand old country houses. There was so much they could absorb in England. He suggested to Muriel that they too should take a trip. The old world was beckoning brightly. Bookings were made, and Rosie and Di informed of the arrangements.

Steve and Tricia had a year of bliss in Khancoban. Tricia was one of the young wives, whose men did energetic things. They drove earth- moving machines. They detonated explosions. They tunnelled, drilled, surveyed, created camps in untouched bush. They changed the face of the country. Their women were pouring energy into painting the Authority’s cottages, putting down lino, creating cosy rooms for their babies, playing tennis, drinking cups of tea as endless as their gossip. Dances. Half-hidden flirtations. Letters, letters, and visits from city friends. Exploration of the mighty mountains, and some skiing. Glüwein, gloves, and white breath on freezing air. They took photos of themselves at campsites, on walking parties, and in the dwellings they’d made hastily into homes. Instability was everywhere. Farewell parties. Parties for new arrivals. Excitement in the voices of many lands, new as their generation. Sometimes Steve and Tricia saw Jane and the other Steve. They went through photos from the wedding day. Steve’s contentment, and American Steve’s evident happiness, meant that the Steve/Jane thing lay well buried. Something about Lily’s presence in the photos disquieted her brother; the others would only say, of this quality he couldn’t define, that she looked stunning, really had glamour, was photogenic, and so on. Steve sometimes thought his sister might walk out of the photos and into the room, and that he, after his encounters with the writer whose books he hadn’t read, might be quite unsurprised if she did.

193 Lucy’s journal Four crazy horses burst into the clearing; three crazy boys and a skull full of brains, on view for the first time though we’d all been a part of their handiwork. Giles had seen for the first time the meaning of his rivers, and had given the boys their chance, foolish man! The three of them were stupidly jubilant, bouncing along on NikNok and her offspring, with Giles’ crow-black stallion between them, showing the other nags for what they were, and our father’s body loosely tied on his horse’s back. I screamed. As I ran to them, his body slipped so the head hung down, and I could see in where I had no right to look. At the same moment his whip fell to the ground. I decided to shoot them with his rifle. His gun was in the fire, the stock flaming as I got there. Annie was sitting on Giles’ seat, a stump he’d carved to give a backrest and two curves to accommodate his bum. Seeing my face at the destruction of the weapon, she spoke like an oracle. ‘There’ll be no more of that.’ I stared into her mind. She was calm. It had come to pass, and it had changed her. Her passivity had become marmoreal. Even when, months later, Alfred Lamington the teacher and Curcio the miner came to see if they could have the widow for their woman she accepted them briefly in her body, gave them tea and sent them on their way with the indifference of an inlet giving a boat shelter. The bullets for Giles’ gun were in a box on the table. ‘Throw them in the hole after him, and what’s left of the gun too, when it’s cooled down.’ She wouldn’t answer my questions. ‘Use your own insight. If you can ask the question, you can know.’ In a state of shock, for I’d lost two parents in as many minutes, I walked towards the edge of the clearing, away from the graves of my sisters. A terrible fear at being unprotected swept through me, making me shake. I thought I’d fall over. Then I saw Robert entering the clearing again, after the shovel. They were going to drop dirt over his

194 body, so the stink wouldn’t give them away. I hid the shovel in a hollow log, to make him look. That gave me the chance to get on his horse, awful creature that it was, and head for the mineshaft. I’d have taken the whip, but my mother was carrying it to the fire. His weapons hadn’t lasted long. I had nothing but my anger when I faced my brothers. The body was in the hole. Without Robert and the shovel, George and Ned didn’t know what to do. They were crestfallen without their enemy. They had no reason to exist: that was what their father had done for them! I told them that whenever they ventured near the hole, they’d hear him, and sure enough a rumbling started. Not a loud noise, a hum, as if the caverns of the underworld were connected to the shaft. At my urging, the hum became louder, and they were frightened. I invited Giles to groan once or twice, just to see their fear, and they gave me what I wanted: the sight of pure terror. I asked them about the bag he’d been carrying. ‘It’s on the ground where we hit him. It was full of bits of paper.’ They were too stupid to know what money was. My mother would need it, when she chose to act. I said to them, ‘You’ll never be free of this. Your only way was to work yourselves out of his clutches, and you couldn’t. He’s got you, as long as you live and as far you travel, because he made you the same as he was.’ When Robert arrived and they started shovelling, Giles began to whine. I told him to shut up. He wasn’t used to orders from me, and grumbled every time a bit of rock fell on him, but eventually the spirit people came out of the bush to see what was going on, and he settled into a silence bitter with resentment.

A year after Tricia and Steve settled in their mountain home, it occurred to Tricia that her period hadn’t come. She was going to have a child! This realisation came while she was under the shower. She took the towel into the bedroom to dry herself in front of her husband, who smiled as he noticed how reverently she was rubbing her body. ‘Do you love me, darling?’

195 He looked up happily as she stood beside him, her pubic hair on a level with his eye. He kissed her thigh fondly, the pressure of his fingers telling her he wanted her back in bed. ‘Not now, darling. We’ll come straight home after tennis. I’ll really feel like it then.’ That was when she was going to tell him. But as they were playing their first set of mixed doubles, the phone rang in the house next to the court, and Tricia was called. It was her mother. Margaret Courtney, finding them not at home, had been ringing their friends until she tracked them down. Tom Courtney had had a heart attack. Not a bad one, but his doctor was keeping him in hospital for a few days, under observation. Tricia told Steve she was driving to Melbourne. She’d ring every night until she was certain about her father. She packed swiftly - ‘I’ve got heaps of clothes at home’ - and within half an hour of the call she was racing past the tennis court in their little blue Renault, waving brightly.

The spirit people are rabble. I never expected to be flung into such company. Half of them have been massacred or mutilated. Between them, they have every sickness in the textbook. There are lepers’ colonies, warring factions, and endless intrigues. All they want is to get back to life, but there are committees, and potentates, and black market dealers, all peddling and promising the one thing that anybody here desires - the chance to be reborn. For my part, my daughter, I keep well out of it. My only hope is that you can get me out of the shaft: but beware! Magic alone can do it. There is no oxygen for you to breathe down here.

Tom Courtney’s second heart attack came a week after the first. He was buried from Saint John’s, where, at the end of the previous spring, Tricia and Steve had been married. Margaret Courtney was shattered. She told her daughter she understood how Indian women could follow their husbands into death. Tricia told her to put such thoughts out of her mind; she was about to be a grandmother, and could she please

196 dissemble the pleasure that had sprung to her face until Steve had been told? The two women shared the secret until Tricia, lying beneath her husband with his semen freshly in her, told him she had a child growing inside her. ‘Let’s sleep now, darling,’ she said, ‘and see what happens in our dreams tonight.’ At breakfast, they were laughing over what they could remember of their dreams when Margaret joined them. They were sitting in the same places as on the morning Steve had left for the mountains - and an interlude with Jane. A ray of light caught the Rupert Bunny in the next room. Tom’s chair was empty. Something in the smiles between the women told Steve that his mother in law knew; birth being women’s business, there was a rightness in their prior confidences that told him things were working out naturally, and well. That evening, when he was coming down the ornate staircase of the Courtney home, he heard their voices again: Margaret was saying how useless she felt. They were in the study, which looked onto the rose garden and the tennis court: a room used only by Tom. Steve could see in, without being seen, if he took a few more steps. Feeling that an important development was upon him, he took those steps, and listened. Margaret was pointing at the portrait of Tom’s father, lit by a concealed bulb in the ceiling. He, Margaret was saying, had trained Tom in everything to do with business. None of this experience had been handed on to Margaret; Tom had believed it wasn’t her sphere. In adoring her, he’d kept from her everything to do with the money that gave her the life she’d enjoyed. What would she do now? Before Tricia spoke, Steve knew what the answer had to be. He’d be taking charge of the investments, the shareholdings, and once he’d proved himself in the eyes of Tom’s peers, responsible positions on the boards of companies. In years beyond his present horizon he’d be asked to head government inquiries. His advice would be sought on changes to company law and regulation. He’d live with his wife and children, because there’d be more, in this assertively comfortable house with his mother in law, the real owner, moving to the guest suite,

197 which would have to be refurbished, because it was an impersonal set of rooms full of objets that nobody bothered to look at. He stood up. The mountains, his young manhood, and the little Authority house into which he and Tricia had poured such energy, were behind him. The shame of what he’d done with Jane evaporated. It belonged to the past, and his future had been revealed in the talk of two women whom marriage had made his. He walked heavily as the man he’d replaced into the study, suggesting, by a nod to Tricia, that she should draw the curtains, sat on the sofa beside the troubled Margaret, and took her hand.

Lucy, my daughter: I brought you into the world, through your mother. Cannot you and she combine to get me back? Pain and suffering are here a-plenty, but the uselessness of our existence is what racks me. Can you not get me out of this city of flickering ants who used to be men and women? Throw down a rope so it falls in my hand? I know that sometimes we’re allowed into the bright upper air, but who gives the orders, and when, I’ve no idea. Speak to someone, Lucy my daughter: I must be redeemed from non-being!

Throwing streamers from pier to boat and ship to shore was still in vogue when Max and Muriel left for London. Max was farewelled by a contingent of people who worked for him, and Muriel, looking down, could see Varney Bowden and Jean, with Honour and her husband and child, Howard and his fiancée, Norman Rowe and Edna, with Jessica, their youngest, but not their boys, because they were interstate. Steve and a just-visibly pregnant Tricia were there, with Margaret Courtney, and Lily, with the halo of beauty so mysteriously about her that Muriel felt that it was dangerous to leave her daughter, even though she would be well chaperoned at the Courtneys’ Toorak home. The mysteries of throwing a streamer so that it unrolled properly had been explained to Muriel by her husband, but when she tried to throw, they snapped and those that fluttered to the pier never reached their target. At last she had only one left and she asked her husband to throw it so it reached Lily.

198 Max threw, and it did. At once Muriel took the streamer from him, trying to feel a connection with the daughter she felt she was losing. The smile and the bright eyes were closed to her. ‘Look after yourself darling!’ she called, her voice overwhelmed by the ship’s siren. The Oriana edged away from the pier. More streamers were hurled, but one by one the ribbons broke and the liner moved down the bay. ‘Something’s going to happen to Lily,’ Muriel told her husband, and wiped her eyes with an already damp hanky. ‘She’s going to experiment, she’s going to do strange things and we’ll never know, Max, because she’s closed to us already.’ Max had been expecting his wife to cry, because women did, and because he felt daunted at being away from a routine he controlled. It crossed his mind that he might get work in England; one of the car companies would surely have something for him to do while Muriel went places with Rosie and Di? Then he too felt the snapping of some tie with his youngest, and he remembered the scene he’d had with her over the photo he’d believed had had a spell put on it. Whatever had been at work that day was active now; she’d been pleased, he realised, to see them go because their presence restrained her. Trying to blunt the concerns, and pain, this gave him, he said broadly, ‘I suppose we’ll all be changed a bit by the time we get back.’ Muriel knew he was as troubled as she was. ‘We should never have come on this trip, Max,’ Muriel said. ‘We’ll get off in Adelaide and come straight home.’ Max shook his head. Whatever damage might have been done had already happened. Miserably he looked back. He was going to be a fish out of water in England.

Lucy’s journal The boys hung around for months, doing nothing. My mother fed them. They wore their father’s clothes. Once she sent them down to Swifts Creek in the cart, telling them to say to the storekeeper that their father would pay when he came down next. While they were away she dug a small hole under her mattress and put Giles’ bag in it, with all the money. ‘They don’t know what this is yet,’ she told me,

199 ‘but they’ll find out eventually, and they won’t get it without killing me too.’ Annie knew they’d give themselves away, and had decided to let events take their course. One morning, at about the same time as the boys had frolicked across the clearing with their father’s body, a policeman rode out of the bush, taking his rifle out of its bucket and slinging it on his shoulder. I felt a thump in my heart; I hadn’t known that our clearing was under outside control. I’d never seen anybody enter our space with authority, as this man did. He rode up to the tree house, eyes on the alert, and called loudly, ‘Good morning there! Anyone home?’ Gordon, who’d wept when he knew what his brothers had done, came out first. The policeman knew I was watching, but didn’t say anything to me. Doll came out second, with her sweet smile of non-understanding all over the flat planes of her face. Then Sam, still a toddler, came out, naked, and then my mother, who accepted the armed rider’s presence as if everything was proceeding according to a script. ‘Mrs Wainwright?’ My mother nodded. ‘I want to speak to your husband. Is he around?’ My mother shook her head. ‘Where is he, please?’ My mother, who had a frying pan in her hand, banged it on the iron chimney. My brothers, George, Robert and Ned, filed out. The policeman, making sure that our eyes were on him, cocked his rifle, put it to his shoulder, and fired. A hundred yards away a small branch broke off one of our fallen trees. ‘Go and sit over there,’ he ordered George. Our clearing rang with his second and third shots as he indicated two other logs to Robert and Ned. The boys walked sullenly to their temporary jails. The policeman put the rifle back in its bucket, dismounted, and introduced himself. ‘I’m Sergeant Benson. I’ve been made aware that your husband took out all the money he had in his bank account, and has subse- quently disappeared. Where is he?’ I had never heard my mother spoken to in this fashion, and I sensed that forces which my father had kept at bay were flooding into

200 our humble settlement. The sergeant, though a man of sixty, and frail enough, had frightened my brothers more than Giles had ever done, because his authority was impersonal, and he was a deadly shot. Each of them was sitting where a bullet had hit its mark. Unworldly as they were, they understood his menace. My mother took her time before giving him a simple answer: ‘Who knows?’ ‘Where’s the money he took out of the bank?’ ‘It’s in a bag under my bed.’ ‘All of it?’ ‘All of it.’ ‘How did you get it off him?’ ‘Lucy’ - she pointed at me - ‘found it on the track, where it crosses the shoulder of his mountain.’ ‘His mountain?’ He emphasized the pronoun. ‘He identified with it. He drew all the meaning in his life from what he saw from the top.’ ‘Have you been on the top of his mountain, Mrs Wainwright?’ ‘I am a woman.’ The sergeant seemed to understand this answer. ‘So why was he leaving his mountain?’ ‘He became afraid of what he saw.’ ‘What’s there to be afraid of ? I understand there’s only grass up there, once you clear the trees.’ ‘It’s people’s thoughts that frighten them.’ ‘And what had he to be frightened of, Mrs Wainwright?’ He glanced at the boys, pinned to their fallen trees. ‘If you could find him, I dare say he might be ready to tell you.’ ‘He told the publican in Swifts Creek, the last time anyone down there saw him, that he was thinking of making a trip back to England.’ ‘Cornwall, where he was born. Lizard Town. And he was thinking of Land’s End, too.’ ‘What did these places mean to him?’ ‘They’re closer to the sea.’

201 ‘And what was the attraction of that?’ ‘It had suddenly hit him that he was heading that way.’ ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ She waved her hand at the boys. ‘You could ask them.’

Max was unsettled by London. It was still the heart of the Empire - Commonwealth, these days - but it offered him nothing to do. Once you’d seen Saint Paul’s, and the Tower, and the Houses of Parliament, and you’d watched the Guard being changed at the Palace, you went back to your hotel to study the guide books, and have a cup of tea - which, he declared, the English didn’t know how to make - and you realised how boring it was to be a looker and not a doer. Dutifully he undertook all the excursions Rosie organised for her parents, but his resistance was building, and when they emerged from Anne Hathaway’s cottage, he said to Muriel, ‘I hated Shakespeare at school, I’ve never seen one of his plays, and now I’m walking around these places as if I thought he was God and it makes me a hypocrite, and if I’m really honest with myself I have to say that I think I’m a bit of a hick from the sticks. I don’t like these people, they’re so superior!’ He began making opportunities to slip down to Australia House to read the papers. One morning, while Rosie was taking Muriel through Harrod’s, he sat in the only place in London where he felt he had any right to be, and wrote to his youngest: ‘Dearest Lil, You name it, we’ve seen it. Westminster Abbey yesterday, Stonehenge the day after tomorrow, then the Lakes District. Just between you and I, I hate these dead poets. I gather some of them were on drugs. Rosie and Di have adapt- ed to life over here, but I’m finding it hard. I’m doing my best because I don’t want mum to be disappointed, but there’s times when I’d just like to be back in my routine. I hope you’re keeping well, darling. I’d like to get you something very haute couture, but mum’s postponed that till we get to the continent.’ What he didn’t say was that it was coming up to the start of the football season, and he’d have given the crown jewels to be in the stand with his mates, watching his team.

202 The skies were gloomy over Stonehenge. The famous rock circle was smaller than he’d expected, overshadowed, Max felt, by the line of buses parked on the road in a curve which suggested a circle far larger than the famous place of heathen sacrifice, or astronomical clock, or whatever it was. Unwillingly he drew close to the tour guide who began to speculate on where the much-photographed stones had been brought from, how they’d been transported, and how put into position. Max was ready to nod off, for all that he was standing on the moor in hat, gloves and overcoat, when the guide seemed to transform himself: suddenly he was a woman, with a prodigious bunch of gladioli in his arms, and he was talking about something that mattered: ‘Kingston! Handpass on to Tuck. Left foot kick, centring. Weidemann!’ The falsetto voice - was it a woman, really, or an anarchic, transvestite man? - shrieked with the excitement he knew from the radios of his own country. ‘The Weed flicks a pass on to Fellowes. Who’s tackled, handpass to Dorman. The Horse gives it on to Gabelich. The big fella touches the ball to ground, takes a run! Bounces again, eluding everybody. A third bounce, not such a good one but the big arms of the Gabba clutch the pill, and he sends a long, driving torpedo punt deep into Collingwood’s attacking territory. Big pack in the goalsquare, no one can mark. The ball comes to the ground, there’s a struggle for possession ...’ ‘Twomey! Runs away from goal, looks over his shoulder. Pivots! AND PUTS IT THROUGH! And the Pies are back in front by the narrowest of margins! Max shook himself. ‘What is it, darling?’ his wife asked. The guide, a Pommy after all, and how Max hated their voices, was talking about equinoxes and solstices, and where the sun’s rays, at these times of the year, struck these lumps of rock which were supposed to be fascinating. When he didn’t answer, Muriel took him by the hand and repeated her question anxiously. ‘What is it, Max?’ ‘I’d give anything for a bottle of Melbourne Bitter,’ he said. Swiftly she let go of his uncouth, apparently unimprovable, hand.

203 Lucy’s journal The sergeant remounted, not intending to leave his horse with my mother, whom he suspected as a party to the murder. As in a sense she was, for passivity on one person’s part leaves the way open for others. He rode to George’s tree, with the rifle across his knees, and placed himself so he could see Robert and Ned while he questioned his first suspect. Watching my eldest brother fumbling under the interro- gation, I could see the advantage a sure mind had over an uneducated one: my father had made nothing of his sons except repositories for his violence. Sergeant Benson spent a minute with George, then rode to Robert. Again he placed himself so he could see the rest of us, even mother, who might, after all, have had her late husband’s gun loaded, ready, in that space between two trees where she’d conceived and delivered the devil’s number of children: seven of us with her for the last time, that morning, and the other six remembered by grave markers. Mercy and Charity were the two who’d died since Faith. After Robert, Ned: then he waved the three of them back to the house. He watched as we formed a group, our mother and her offspring, against the mighty trunk our father had felled in his prime. When he rode up to us, we formed a line, instinctively, pressing our backs against the tree as he delivered his judgment. ‘The boys’ stories are full of holes, Mrs Wainwright. If I charge them, any jury would know they’d done away with their father. It’s as clear as daylight. And since you tell me you’ve got your husband’s money, I’d have to charge you with being an accessory before the fact, after the fact, or both. If you had a lawyer to represent you, you might get off that one, because he could argue that, as your husband’s widow, the money rightfully passes to you, and the possession of the money is no proof that you did anything unlawful to get it.’ Though it was still bright in the clearing, there were dark clouds over Mount Delusion. I could hear my father rumbling angrily; Sergeant Benson heard it as thunder. ‘My problem,’ he said, ‘would be to convince the jury that the children’s father was dead, when I couldn’t

204 produce a body.’ I could feel my mother willing me to stay silent, not so much to save the boys, as insisting that I comply with her pattern of letting events happen without interference; it was her version of my father’s iron will. ‘I could lock the boys up,’ the sergeant went on, ‘and give them a certain amount of attention’ - I saw that the man had considerable reserves of cruelty - ‘so a confession should be possible.’ The rumbling from the mineshaft had increased to the point where the sergeant glanced over his shoulder at the dark range behind him. ‘Getting a bit stormy over there. All right, here’s my decision. It’s an offer really, but you’d be wise not to refuse.’ Giles, my impassioned father, had almost forgiven the boys their crime, for their hatred only mirrored his own; the clamour he was setting up, and the lightning he was calling down, was only his desire to be back on the surface, fleshed and full of warmth, in the sun. Again the policeman commented. ‘Blown up real sudden, that one. All right. You’ve heard about the war, I suppose?’ None of us had heard about the war in France. He had to tell us. King and country. Struggle of good and evil. Stalemate at the front. The enemy’s attacks had to be contained, then a counter-attack launched, so powerful that it could break through, all the way to Berlin. Berlin! How I wanted to go there. It seemed like a source, a fountain of energy like my father’s, but more constrained, more civilised. I wondered if I would ever see a foreign country - or would I be going to the jail this man was talking about. Men were needed. It was a good life, soldiering, the sergeant said, and I saw his fingers tighten on his rifle with some pleasure of remembering. He’d fought against the Boers in South Africa, and been deco- rated. Looking shrewdly at my brothers, he said, ‘I’m giving you boys your chance. This is a lonely place. You were never going to make anything of yourselves up here, and he wasn’t going to let you go, was he? All right. Into uniform, and we’ll say no more about it!’

205 The boys didn’t know what a uniform was; my mother had to explain. Nor did the boys know what a jail was, but hanging was something they could understand, and best of all they’d seen the sergeant shooting, and didn’t realise there were laws restraining him from turning his gun on them. ‘A week or two,’ he said, when he could see agreement in their eyes, ‘and they’ll have you handling a rifle like this!’ He celebrated his powers of persuasion, and the successful conclusion of a case that mattered very little to him, by picking a crow off a dead tree with one neatly executed shot.

Muriel took a walk from their West End hotel. She was troubled by her daughters. She hadn’t had a letter from Lily, though they’d been in London for weeks. Rosie insisted on them going to the theatre, and, really, she couldn’t see much in Wilde, or Sheridan. That night it was to be The Ascent of F6, and next week, of all things, Hamlet. All these words! These contrived situations. Yet she had to admit that she’d been forced to see that all her life she’d striven for simplicity and goodness, and these wretched plays were about complexity and people’s vile motives. You couldn’t make good drama out of ordinary people, and she aspired to nothing more than a contented life and good marriages for her children. Di’s work took her into the highways and byways of the British economy, and she was even acquiring an accent. She had a boyfriend who would never fit in with the Bowdens and Morrises so if it came to marriage she’d be lost to her parents who, Muriel could see, reading Max, would never visit this country again. Why hadn’t Lily written? She thought of Tricia, carrying what would be their first grandchild: only the second - no, the second legitimate - child of this new generation. Why hadn’t Lily written? She turned into a place called Nutford Close. Windows placed with a discipline unfamiliar to her looked down on a squareish oval of lawn and bushes. She was tired; she wanted a seat. But the garden was fenced, and the gate was locked. A sign informed residents and public

206 alike that no ball games were to be played in this area. Sunbaking, too, was proscribed. ‘Items of dress, except for coats, should not be removed within this precinct.’ Feeling irritated - where could children be children, for heaven’s sake? - she became aware that she was being observed by two men she felt she’d seen before. ‘There’s my Mrs Everage,’ said one, meaning, Muriel realised, herself. The other took his eyes from the orderly facades - four stories high, right the way around - to look at her. ‘I think her feature wall,’ this second man said, with a voice that was un-Australianly crisp and cutting, ‘would be a light mauve, tricked out with borders of Old Gold.’ ‘Turquoise taffeta cushions on a sofa of softest sage,’ said Barry Humphries. ‘The newest house in the oldest street of her suburb,’ said Robin Boyd. ‘A double garage with lozenges painted on the doors. But what colours?’ he inquired of the comedian. ‘I think a nicely judged blend,’ Dame Edna said, for Humphries was metamorphosing into a formidable Flo Bjelke Petersen look- alike as Muriel watched, ‘of the baked bean and the tomato sauce it swims in!’ ‘Speaking of swimming,’ said the architect, ‘do you think’ - he made an elegant, if contemptuous gesture - ‘do you think they’ve indulged themselves with a backyard pool?’ The arbiters of taste considered Muriel, who, to her shame, did have the cushions she’d been accused of. ‘No,’ said Dame Edna. ‘The pool will be put in for the grandchildren, who haven’t arrived yet, but they can’t be far away, can they, with those nubile daughters and their vigorous Australian - I hope - menfolk!’ Having said this, Dame Edna disappeared, leaving only the architect to face Muriel’s wrath. ‘I heard every word you said. How dare you talk about me like that. To my face!’ Before the architect could answer, a tall man appeared beside him, rushed to the scene by his anger at the ordinariness of people who lacked a vision, or at least an occasional moment of illumination, to light them on their way. He had a scowling face full of the struggle of

207 one who couldn’t easily accept himself. ‘What else is there to talk about, and where else should one say it, but to your face? Is your decency’ - he spat the word - ‘only the raincoat of the flasher?’ Muriel felt herself withering before him, and wished she had Max here to punch this snooty man on the nose. ‘My decency,’ she said, and she knew she’d break into tears the moment her reply was finished, ‘is something that you, Patrick White, if you’re lucky, might achieve one day, and I hope you live long enough to find it!’

Lucy’s journal Putting the horse in the cart was the saddest thing we’d ever had to do. Even the boys, keen as they were to reach this place where every man had a gun, knew that their mother’s world, not such a happy one, but complete, had been destroyed. The clearing! She drew me aside as the boys tossed their meagre possessions into the cart, and told me to watch out for a place where we might live when we left the mountain. I started to cry. She gripped my arm fiercely and made me promise that once the boys had gone off to their destiny, I would come back. ‘No matter how terribly you’re tempted to follow them, or go off with someone else, no matter what promises some man or men may make to you, come back! I’ll never get away from here without you, and if I came to believe I’d never get away, I’d throw the little ones down the shaft where Giles was thrown, and I’d say a last prayer for you, all alone in the world, and jump in myself.’ I swore I’d be back. Then Sergeant Benson fired off three more ringing, reverberating shots, in some gesture of farewell on behalf of the boys, and I suppose of indulgence to mark his easy triumph. The echoes rang off Mount Delusion and back from my father’s empty peak. He, destroyed all over again, stayed silent. The clouds over Mount Delusion cleared, as if he’d gone to find, somewhere in those endless caverns that opened off his shaft, some power that could give him what he would think was justice. Sergeant Benson led the way and we followed, as the pigs used to follow Giles on his long descent to market.

208 It was a narrow track, and steep. George held the reins. I dangled my legs from the back of the cart until we were out of the bush I knew, then I sat at the front, next to our horse’s tail. When we passed the Hurley’s cottage, George asked the sergeant if we could stop; he wanted to tell the Hurley boys where he was going. The sergeant allowed it, the new Mrs Hurley made us tea, and as we drank, she told me that they were moving too; the government was closing the post office and the loss of income meant they had to find something else. She showed me through their house, the first real house I’d seen, and said if they couldn’t sell it, they’d break it into parts and re-erect it in the town. ‘There’s talk of a timber mill starting up.’ I said nothing to her, but in my mind it was already ours. My mother should have a new home, Gordon and Sam would go to school, and Doll too, if she could learn anything. We resumed our journey. Sergeant Benson invited me to ride on his horse in front of him, but something warned me to stay with the boys. By early afternoon we were on the edge of a wide and peaceful valley, with sunlight streaming on houses and sheds, and by the end of the day we’d entered Swifts Creek, the first town of my life, and had been given rooms at the hotel. My rags caused great amusement among the men at the bar, drinking. ‘Ready for a quick one,’ they said, I not knowing what ‘one’ they meant. The sergeant told the boys he’d buy them their first beer, and the glasses were filled. ‘Here’s to three fine soldiers!’ he said, laughing, and they drank. I was curious, so the publican went looking for something for me; he came back with a couple of bottles with bright labels, the policeman chose, and a tiny glass was filled with water for me. I tipped it down and felt as if I was on fire: I thought of my father burning his hair when it got too long, but this fire was inside and couldn’t be quenched. I flushed, and looked so overwhelmed that everyone in the bar burst out laughing. ‘Get her a drink of water, Jack,’ the policeman said, but the water looked like the liquid that had burned me, and I refused. ‘Milk!’ I called, naming the only fluid I trusted, and they told me to go to the kitchen and ask.

209 Sergeant Benson left, saying he’d be back in the morning to make sure his happy warriors, as he called them, got on the coach; he’d have a letter for the driver to give the sergeant of police in the town my mother had left when she was just a little older than I was, to be my father’s wife. I wanted to get in the cart and hurry back to her, but I had to wait for the coach in the morning to take away my brothers, possibly forever, because I understood, though they did not, that the shooting would be a two way business, and the people they thought they’d kill without effort would be giving as good as they got. I asked the publican’s wife to tell me about the war, and what I heard made me terrified. I’d thought, at times, that my father was evil. What she told me magnified that evil beyond anyone’s comprehension. But I didn’t tell the boys. They’d find out soon enough that they too were being poured into those caverns in which, according to my father, the most dreadful happenings were commonplace. I went out on the verandah before I lay down to sleep - the publican’s wife had given me a bath before she’d let me into bed; she touched my breasts and washed my hair and told me I could be beautiful if I took a little care with my appearance - and I looked out to where I thought my mother was, and I sent her a promise that I’d return; yet as I did so, I knew that the events of the day had changed me, and that I too longed for the great world, and that having her, even in the Hurleys’ house on the flank of the mountain and the fringe of the outside world, was going to be a burden. I felt wrenched in two. If I acted on my feeling of responsibility for my mother, then I wouldn’t be able to make my own start in life, as she’d done with the thunderer, the cavern man, the roar of disappointment buried on Mount Delusion. ‘I’m coming back to get you,’ I promised, ‘and settle you again, but after that, who knows?’ I was, in some strange way, united with the boys.

On Anzac morning, Max attended the service at the Cenotaph in Whitehall. It brought to his mind memories which he found unsuitable

210 for the occasion - of quarrels with his sister, Yatty, who was sneaking around the city putting up Vote NO posters; humiliating sessions with his parents, when he pleaded to be allowed to follow his brother to France, and they told him they didn’t want his name in the casualty lists; of his secret relief, when he did manage to get their permission, that the war had ended before he got overseas. He rehearsed in his mind all over again the arguments he’d used to justify giving the names of Yatty’s boys for investigation, and relived his anger that they’d been able to escape military service. He realised that he’d never really known whether Muriel, who’d kept her silence on the matter, supported him or not. Now that they were on the far side of sixty, he felt he should ask, even though he knew she’d say, ‘Oh Max, let’s not rake up that again. It was all such a long time ago.’ The trouble was, time didn’t heal as it was supposed to do. If something rankled, it rankled forever unless you resolved it. A tall, raw-boned Irish-Australian man wearing a trench coat and felt hat approached him. ‘Memories, digger?’ Something about him made Max suspicious. ‘Yes. All the wrong ones, unfortunately.’ The man was skilled at getting people talking. He asked Max if he felt like a drink, and led him to a cosy pub. Over their second beer - ‘Warm, unfortunately’ - he introduced himself. ‘George Johnston. Melbourne Sun, London office.’ ‘Max Morris. Tourist. Of the somewhat unwilling variety.’ ‘You’re not finding it as stimulating as you’d hoped?’ ‘It was my wife’s idea.’ The reporter smiled. ‘Tell me about your war service.’ Max felt sour. ‘Tell me about yours.’ ‘Nothing much to tell. I was a correspondent in the second one, got around a bit. The funny thing was, I saw most of the main theatres of war, and my brother, who was mad keen to actually be in it - oops, splitting the infinitive would’ve got me the sack on The Argus - never

211 got out of Australia. I’m going to write about him some day. He’s not as smart as I am, but he’s a far better human being.’ Max told the reporter about his own brother Jack, who’d been gassed and died soon after the war ‘I’ve made a fair bit of money,’ Max said, ‘and every time I write a big cheque, I think of him. I’m still around, spending, and he’s finished. Hardly had a life, really.’ ‘What did he do after the war?’ asked the reporter, prising him open. ‘Farmed. Little soldier settlement block at a place called - of all things - Retreat!’ ‘I know it,’ said George Johnston. ‘Not far from another little settlement called Blighty!’ They both laughed. Max: ‘Funny how they took names like that back with them.’ ‘Speaking of names,’ George said, ‘have you ever had a close look at a map of Australia? The placenames, I mean?’ ‘More than that. I had a few years with Ford, going around all the dealers. Some of them just little shacks that did a few repairs for the locals. Nevertire. Digger’s Rest. Manangatang ...’ ‘They’re racing at Manangatang!’ They both laughed, again. ‘Wee Jasper. Bindi.’ ‘Mount Buggery!’ When they laughed this time, some new senti- ment had crept in. ‘Birdsville, Betoota ...’ ‘Don’t forget the blackfeller names. Wagga Wagga, Curl Curl ...’ ‘Bondi!’ George: ‘Is the Bondi tram still running?’ ‘No, I think they closed the line, and put in buses instead.’ ‘Pity. It gave us a great saying.’ Max smiled, happy for the first time in England. ‘Shooting through like a Bondi tram!’ he roared. A few drinkers glanced up at the noisy visitor. Max suddenly had a doubt about his companion. ‘Are you with me? I can’t tell if this is affecting you the way it is me.’ George: ‘It’s affecting me all right. Let’s name a few more places.’

212 ‘Have you ever been to Seventeen Seventy, up on the Queensland coast? Ever been to Birdsville? Ever been to Broome?’ George had been to Broome, during the war. ‘Esperance. Albany. What about the politicians strung along the railway across the Nullarbor? Forrest, Hughes, Cook, Deakin, Barton ...’ The names were rolling out of them now, in free association. ‘Tibooburra, Milparinka, back o’Bourke!’ ‘Coota - bloody - mundra.’ ‘Pucka - fuckin - punyal!’ ‘Steady, gentleman,’ said the weedy-looking, pale-faced Cockney behind the barrels. Max ignored him. ‘On the outer Barcoo,’ he began, expecting George to join in: ‘ ... where churches are few, and men of religion are scanty/On a road seldom crossed, ‘cept by folk who are lost, one Michael McGee had a shanty/Now Mike was the dad of a ten year old lad/and something something something something/The boy had never been christened! The Bush Christening, you remember it?’ Max’s heart was opening. ‘God how I hate it,’ George said. ‘I swear I’ll never go back!’ Max was dumbfounded. ‘You don’t want to go back? How can you not go back? Can’t you feel it pulling you? I can’t wait, I tell you.’ ‘I loathe the bloody place,’ George said. ‘I felt driven out, by the crassness, the coarseness, the mindless stupidity of it all. I tell you; if I walked out that door, and the first thing I saw was a sheep, a cricketer, or a terracotta tile, I’d kill myself!’ Max wished he hadn’t drunk the bastard’s beer. Into his mind came visions of sandy beaches stretching to the horizon, of islands off the Queensland coast, shining in a sea of unbelievable purity. Mountains ... ‘You’ve got to go and get your head read, mate,’ he said, but George was starting to fade; another figure, a glamorous woman with full lips and faraway places in her eyes was claiming him, smiling tenderly, even on Max, who felt his manhood stirring at the sight of her. ‘There was

213 some interest in talking to that chap,’ George was saying as he disappeared. ‘He confirmed everything I’ve ever said about the place.’

A death notice appeared in the Melbourne Sun: BOWDEN, Dawn, died at Benalla, April 25th, after a long illness. Beloved wife of Cyril, mother of Luke. Resting in a long-desired sleep. If you read this, son, come home.

Lucy’s journal My brothers put the horse in the cart for me, though I could do it as well as they could. We sat in it while we waited for the coach. Sergeant Benson rode down the street when it was due. In this terrible moment of parting, he, because he was involved with us, was close to being a friend, even though I knew what he was doing to the boys. I suppose there was a sort of rough justice in it. He evidently thought so, because he was whistling ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary,’ ‘Madamoiselle from Armentières’, and other tunes I can’t remember. When the coach appeared, he rode off to escort it; I think he had a whimsical sense of his own importance. I said to George, Robert and Ned, ‘Goodbye my brothers. I don’t know if I want to see you again. When I get back to the mountain, I’ll tell your father where you’ve gone. He may be able to trace your fortunes in those caverns he talks about.’ The boys didn’t know what I meant. I said they’d understand soon enough. I told them I was going to buy the Hurleys’ house with the money Giles had been taking to Cornwall. I said, ‘You realise our mother felt betrayed by him making plans to leave, she felt betrayed by you three killing him, and she’ll feel betrayed when I move away from her to marry, as I will one day. Betrayal is a strong word, not that you three know much about words. She put everything of herself into one place, because that was all the opportunity she ever had, and the place has been broken apart. If you come back from this war, you have to marry and give her a place in your families. It’s the only thing you’ll ever be able to do for her.’

214 My brothers were insensitive, confused, and only had eyes for the coach, but I knew they’d registered my words, and that I’d given them a standard against which they might disgrace themselves a second time. Woe unto me if they did! The coach got closer and closer until it was beside us, the boys climbed on top, and Sergeant Benson, who didn’t have his gun with him, could do no more by way of envoy than slap the coach with his hand and call out ‘Safe trip boys! And safe return!’ There had been no embraces. I could feel the sergeant’s interest in me as I sat in the cart which had taken Giles and Annie to the mountain when they were first married, and I felt myself become as stone-like as my mother in my need to block him out. Yet he stayed beside me until the coach was a tiny spot on the road to faraway places, and when I flicked the reins to start the horse, he said, ‘Look after your mother Lucy. I don’t know that anyone can rec- ompense her for what she’s been through, and I don’t think the earth holds anything she wants, but give her what you can. And for Christ’s sake, get her out of that hovel you’ve been living in, into a decent house.’ Hovel! I felt rising in me an enormous pride: I was my father’s and my mother’s daughter. I was glad this man had never entered the dwelling, sacred to me now that I was going to lose it, that he’d called a hovel. Words were my only skill. I would judge people, all my life, by the words they used, and he’d characterised my life to that point with the word made of H, O, V, E and L. My horse, much fresher than I that morning, drew me into the enormous loneliness of mountains.

Another death notice appeared in the Melbourne Sun: BOWDEN, Cyril, loved husband of Dawn (dec.), father of Luke. At Benalla, May 16th. He lost his true partner, and couldn’t go on any longer. Sorry, dad, for disappointing you. Rest in peace.

215 Lucy’s journal We bought the house. There was money left over, so we furnished it, and each of us got a bed and mattress, sheets and blankets. The Hurleys left us a bath and I bought a hot water box for the stove. Washing behind the ears was to become the order of the day. All this meant a good deal of travelling - the mountain to Brookville, Brookville to Swifts Creek, back to the mountain. Mother left it all to me. I dressed myself neatly at the modest little store. The policeman said I could stay with him and his wife, but I told him I preferred the hotel. I’d bought a gun by now, and I’d taught myself to use it, on those dead trees lying around our clearing. I made sure the men who drank at the hotel knew I was ready for anyone who tried to invade my room. I knew enough by then about men, and nothing of my own need to love. The day came when I told my mother that we were ready for the move. We slept between the trunks one last time, then loaded the things we were taking in the cart. Mother wanted to throw water on the fire, but I told her to let it burn itself out. ‘He,’ I said, pointing to Mount Delusion, ‘might get some comfort from the smoke for a day or two.’ And so we left, with NikNok and her offspring, and Giles’ crow- black horse, the cows, our dogs and the last litters of pigs trailing behind us. We had our chooks in cages hanging off the cart. I had the gun at my feet as we left the clearing and wished that our enterprise wasn’t so fraught that I couldn’t make something more of the moment for Annie, who was dangling her legs at the back as I’d done a few weeks before. Her vegetable garden, her married life and the house, that extraordinary record of her courage, were being left behind.

Gus and Helen got a brief note from Luke. He’d pinned the two death notices to a page from a writing pad, and had written: ‘A few more things to tidy up, and then I’ll be down to see you. Don’t ask me to stay any longer than I feel I want to. I’ll take the bungalow you offered, not the room. Bit of a pagan, aren’t I. Sorry. Looking forward to catching up.’ He’d signed it simply ‘L.’

216 Lucy’s journal When we reached the track from Seldom Seen to Brookville, I stopped the cart, and tied the horse’s reins around a sapling. Annie looked at me and I told her we had one more thing to do. She knew what I meant, didn’t care for it much, but agreed. Gordon had to walk, though he grumbled, I carried Doll when she got tired, and Sam rode piggy-back on his mother. It was a steep climb at first so we had to stop to get our breath. Then the backbone of the old bald one flattened, we walked out of the trees and onto a small snowgrass plain. There was some rumbling from the other mountain, of acceptance, I felt, not resentment. The tree house was invisible from Baldy’s top, but other places, far to the south, were clear enough, and the river which ran off the opposite side to our river - it would always be our river - could be seen making its way into a placid lake, beyond which was the sea. In the beginning was the ending. At the end, no doubt, you could look back and see, if not us, tiny remnant of a family that we were, then at least the cranium on which we stood, five last strands of hair. In a sky of celebratory blue I sensed the enormity of the world from which Giles had separated us, and sensed also that in putting himself and his family apart, he had believed he could achieve a spiritual ownership of all that was spread beneath him. No wonder he visited this feast so often! And we were bent on going into this world, which we would own only by sharing, by taking part, but we would be moving into it with a wholeness of vision and a clarity of seeing that was beyond any price. I felt reconciled with Giles, and told him so, in a whisper that must have made its way from our range to his like the flight of a bullet, and down his shaft. The rumble which was his answer was a boom of triumph that his message had been understood.

217 9 In which love and death shoot it out in a bungalow

Luke moved into the bungalow Helen and Gus provided. On warm nights, when his hosts weren’t performing, the three of them smoked and drank in the garden. ‘Do you realise,’ Luke told them, ‘this is the closest I’ve had to a home since I was a kid?’ Sometimes, if there was a party after a concert, he went to work without sleep, because he’d got a job driving for a family of market stallholders, and work with the Furlingieris started early. ‘Crooked bastards,’ Luke told Gus and Helen. If Carlo’s there when I load, I get out of the way for a minute while he does whatever he does. And if Zeppe’s there when I unload, same thing. I go off for a smoke while he picks up whatever’s in the load. They follow me. If I pull up for petrol when they’ve got something on board, some Mafia character pulls in and watches me. I check the ropes, but I don’t touch anything on the tray. I don’t fancy a knife in the back.’

Lucy’s journal We got a broken down ex-miner called Harry to cut our firewood in exchange for meals. Mother’s simple stews and potatos contented him. He planted fruit trees for us, and vines. Sometimes mother worked beside him in the garden, staking tomato plants, turning compost into the soil. Strange that she’d had to endure so much before she found a man she could work beside. Doll was puzzled by rooms. Most nights she slept in front of the fire. Then she cut a blanket into three and spread the pieces on the floor to mark where George, Robert and Ned would sleep when

218 they came back. On cold nights when we gathered around the stove, mother and I had to nurse these bits of cloth before she could find the simple tranquillity which was her compensation for intelligence. Doll’s requirement - that we hold a bit of blanket in our arms, or place it over our knees - was a torment for Annie, who was never sure what she felt about her sons. When I visited the town, I had always to bring back a newspaper, which she read in deepest gloom. She could imagine what the trenches were like. ‘Giles could find them,’ she said to me one night, when the little ones were asleep, and the three bits of blanket lay on the floor beside Doll: ‘he’s got the run of the world. Tell him he owes it to them, as their father, to find out what’s become of them.’ I promised her I would ride up the mountain and put her question.

Steve was reading, late one night, with Tricia, eight months pregnant, already in bed, when he heard the sound of a car, very loud. Then a crash. Soon after there were more engines, and voices calling to each other. Surprised, because these things didn’t happen in Toorak, Steve went out. Police were inspecting a vehicle against a pole; the driver’s door was open and the engine was still running. Other police, with torches, were combing gardens. Two of them emerged from a lane, shaking their heads. Dogs were barking. Steve found himself being interviewed. ‘There’s been a shooting out in Footscray,’ a sergeant told him. ‘Chap from the market. One of our vans followed a car. He drove like crazy and almost got away.’ ‘Footscray? Why would he head in this direction?’ ‘The way he’s been twisting through these streets, you’d think he owned the place. Did you hear him hit the pole?” ‘That’s what brought me out.’ ‘How long was there between him crashing and us arriving?’ Steve thought. ‘About twenty seconds. At the outside.’ ‘Which is your house, sir?’ Steve pointed. ‘Did you hear the sound of anyone running, after the crash?’ Steve shook his head. When he

219 went inside, he found Tricia sitting up, with the bedside lamp on. He told her what had happened. ‘Steve, I’ve got a funny feeling. It’s as if there’s someone in the house.’ Steve examined his feelings. ‘I don’t know about someone being in the house, but I must say the whole thing’s made me feel dis- tinctly uncomfortable.’ He half expected Miles Franklin, or Rupert Bunny, to appear. Tricia looked at him, full of concern. ‘Steve, I want you to go through every room!’ ‘Darling, the house was locked, and every window was fastened except that one there. But I’ll go and look.’ ‘Don’t wake mother. But open the passage door, and listen. I won’t be able to sleep unless you do.’ Steve opened the door to Margaret Courtney’s suite. Silence. He stood for some time, listening. Though there was no sound, he felt, creeping over him, his wife’s feeling - that there was someone in the house. He went to the servant’s quarters, opening onto the back lawn, which was where his sister was staying while Max and Muriel were overseas. Uncomfortable for a reason he couldn’t locate, he knocked. Lily came to the door, black hair fallen on her white silk dressing gown. The glamour, the allure, that radiated from her photos was about her strongly. She couldn’t have been asleep. ‘Sorry to disturb you, Lil, but did you hear the noise outside?’ ‘What’s going on?’ While he told her, an incestuous thought appeared in his mind. Suppressing it, he suppressed also an intuition that she had someone with her. He wished her goodnight and told her to let him know if she heard anybody moving around. She said she would, so naturally, yet so artificially, that it was as if she was running through a script. Before going to bed he spent a minute in the lounge, where a photo from the wedding featured prominently. Lily’s aura could be felt from the other side of the room, and her jewelled smile mocked his incapacity to read her mind. ‘Mystery woman,’ he thought. ‘Rosie and Di were puzzling enough, but this one ...’

220 ‘She heard the crash,’ he told Tricia. ‘But she hadn’t heard anybody moving around the garden. Do you still have that feeling?’ ‘I do, actually. But maybe it’s because I’m the way I am. Feel me darling, aren’t I big!’ He rubbed where their child enlarged her. ‘You go to sleep now darling,’ she said after a time. ‘I’ll lie on my back till I settle down again.’ But he lay on his back beside her, and they heard the doors of the police cars slam, and engines start, then silence filled the gap left by frustrated police. ‘Our baby moved then, Steve,’ she whispered. ‘See if you can feel it.’ She took his hand to the spot. ‘There is someone in the house,’ he said tenderly. ‘Moving about ever so quietly.’ In the night she felt his smile. She squeezed against him. ‘Hold us, darling,’ she said. ‘Note my plural?’

Lucy’s journal I fired a shot to let him know I was coming, and then I rode up to the hole. He rumbled sullenly. I told him the boys had gone to France; I felt he already knew. I told him Annie wanted to know about them, and that I wanted to know - if what they were doing was as terrible as I imagined - what he thought about having produced a trio of indiscriminate murderers. The shaft said nothing. I tossed in a stone, but he’d gone, whether to France or not, I couldn’t say. So I rode on to the clearing. It wrung my heart to see it neglected. The door of the tree house was swinging idly; we hadn’t even bothered to fasten it. There were weeds in the potato patch, and rabbits had dug burrows under the trees. I saw them scampering for cover as I rode up, so there was still life in the old place, but not ours. I felt heavy; my childhood was behind me, available by recall, but never to be experienced again. I heard a rumble from the dividing range where he was spending his days and nights, if they had them in the spirit world, until he was beckoned for rebirth. I sat on a log and listened. They’re in a dugout, drinking rum, to make them crazed enough to charge. They’re sharpening their bayonets with a file. Miles behind them, huge guns are firing shells at the men they’re going to kill. There is barbed wire everywhere, and holes full of

221 water where the wounded drown if they fall. If every storm that had ever swept over this place was happening at once, it would seem like silence by comparison with the bombardment. I waited for the answer to my question. I feel no connection between what is happening in that place, and the man I was when I made our home out here. ‘Yet,’ I told him, ‘there must be.’ He tried to refute me with silence. ‘What about me?’ I asked him. ‘Can you see that far in the future?’ This war will end, and there will be another. Between the two, you will have a year or two of happiness. Your husband will die in that war. ‘How do you know?’ I know nothing. Prophecy speaks through me, never doubting itself. What it says burns me as it passes. Ask me no more questions, but listen. As your memory of me grows fainter, so will my voice grow weaker. To hear me, you will have to come back from the great world you are so anxious to explore, and live close to me. Your end will be where your beginning was, unless there is dislocation. See to it that there is not.

Luke was unloading cauliflowers at the market when he saw Zeppe take the shopping bag of a woman in her early twenties. He noticed that the Italian, having put various items into the bag, as asked by this customer whom Luke felt he should know, or had once known, took from the bag a piece of paper, which he put on the bench beside him as he got change for the woman’s ten pound note. Luke moved to glance at the paper. It was a small map, with streets neatly drawn, and the time, 11.10. Other things had been written on the paper, but Zeppe put it in his pocket before Luke could read any more. Luke didn’t look at the woman until he was hauling another box off the truck; she was looking at him with burning eyes that gave him a sense of danger greater than being watched by the Mafiosi who followed him from Werribee to Melbourne.

They survived the bayonet charge. I went back to watch, though it terrified me. They survived, when almost all their companions were cut down by a gun that

222 fired without pause. Its bullets were like a knife, cutting men off at the knees, or the stomach. A man who had only a pistol led the charge, and died in front of me, his mouth open in a last despairing scream. Its echo followed me back to this shaft, which, after that experience, I am almost glad to call home. But the clearing is still there. Lucy must think of something. Her will is as strong as mine; I know she’ll get me back.

Luke picked up the Sun after he knocked off work. The front page was about an abduction outside a bank. The son of a stallholder had been dragged into a car and driven away. The car had been found abandoned. The young man’s father had been tight-lipped about the money his boy had been carrying, saying only ‘It was more than just the morning’s takings. There was another amount involved.’ His suspicions aroused, Luke looked for the time of the abduction; a little after eleven o’clock. Luke remembered the young woman staring at him. Had she seen him glancing at her note? If so, he was in danger. As good as dead, probably. He’d felt he should have known who she was; how could he find out? A chill of fear crept through his body. He’d been a fool to leave Cairns for the crime-ridden south. Feeling his aloneness keenly - Helen and Gus were out of the house, rehearsing - he decided he’d better look up some of his relatives; they were mostly strangers to him now, after his years away.

I came across the courtiers who appeared at the time of your conception, Lucy. They were sitting around in foppish clothes, having never done a day’s work in their lives, listening to a man playing an instrument that made tinkling, clanging sounds which I found strange at first. He had a severe face which I felt could be trusted. I listened to his music and when the language of it became familiar, I decided he must have had a mountain similar to mine. I beckoned him to follow me, but he would not. I spoke to him, but he had no understanding of my words. When he spoke, it was in a language I didn’t know. The courtiers laughed, and though I was sure they knew both languages, they wouldn’t help. I wanted to gather his notes which flowed like a

223 brook, and thread them in the air surrounding my clearing, but of course I could not. Music is so abstract, so unlike a tree, or spadeful of soil. I tried to find him again today, but he was gone. I think he is still here, though, in this spirit world; such men cannot often be born on earth.

At George and Yatty’s house, it was Nell who welcomed the cousin she hadn’t seen for twenty years. They sat in the lounge, beside the mute piano. Luke heard how Michael was on the verge of getting married at last, to, of all people, a stern headmistress. Tom, seeing that Michael had no intention of filling the gap their father would eventually leave, had all but given up the clarinet, qualified in optometry, and had gone into partnership with his father. ‘Michael gets out of bed in time to pick up the Herald, goes to the plant and makes himself coffee for last night’s hangover, and reads! But Kathy, his new woman, intends to change all that. They’ve bought a block of land, would you believe, and are talking about building!’ ‘Sounds like the fire’s gone out of him!’ ‘He never had all that much fire. Just curiosity about who’d be next to drift into his life. Not to mention his bed.’ ‘And Karen?’ ‘She’s thirty eight now. Jesse’s fifteen.’ She said it with a little of the awe that time compels. ‘Fifteen? And I’ve never even seen the boy. Shows you - shows me, more like it - how long I’ve been away.’ Not wanting to be asked about herself, Nell said, ‘Why did you come back?’ There were his parents, Luke explained, and the need for a man approaching fifty to look at where he’d come from. ‘You reach a point where you can’t go on, without repeating yourself, unless you either own your past, or disown it. I disowned it when I went north. When mum and dad died, it was time to have another look.’ Each felt that a stage in their conversation had ended. Nell: ‘And what now?’

224 ‘I’m scared,’ he blurted out. He told her about the abduction, the note that had given instructions for it, and the penetrating eyes of the woman who’d brought Zeppe, the suspect stallholder, his orders. ‘I had my back to her as I glanced at it. I don’t know if she saw me looking, or not. If she saw me, something about her tells me I’m a dead duck. I should have known if I’d been seen, but when I saw her looking at me, I had this feeling of knowing her, and that got me confused.’ Nell left the room, and came back with a photo. ‘Have a look.’ It was a group outside a church. He studied it gloomily, feeling that the single state was more vulnerable than the wedded; then he jabbed a finger at a face, and showed it to Nell. ‘That’s her! So she’s one of the family!’ ‘Yes, but which family?’ ‘How do you mean?’ ‘Don’t gangsters call themselves the family?’ He wanted to block out what he was hearing. ‘I’m a pretty ordinary sort of fella without much imagination ...’ Nell smiled. ‘All right, what’s wrong with what I just said?’ ‘It doesn’t protect you. Just a minute, let’s do some checking.’ She left the room again. This time it was the 1937 picture at Waratah Bay. ‘You were quite attractive,’ she said. He looked at it. ‘Sex starved, you mean. Bloody Michael was on with Helen, and I wasn’t getting any. Hang on, what’s going on here?’ The four women painters were kneeling by a two year old who was trying to pull her doll’s head off with her teeth. ‘It’s the same person.’ ‘Lily.’ ‘Lily.’ ‘We had very close thought contact for a period of some months. Then she shut me out. Her powers were developing quite markedly, and she didn’t want me to know. So she went off air.’

225 ‘Which family’s she going to favour? Me, or this other mob?’ ‘Them, because she’ll be more scared of them.’ ‘I could put her in to the cops, just like that.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘She would know that people like you don’t do things like that.’ ‘So I’m no danger to her, then, am I?’ ‘If you’re not, why are you so scared?’ ‘I have to find her, don’t I? Or do I keep away?’ ‘That’s the sixty-four dollar question. I think I’d keep well away.’

Why didn’t he go north again? He could run a pub, drive a bus, but he knew he wasn’t going to. He was going to see this thing through to whatever bitter end it had. It occurred to him that he’d never been fully involved with anyone, and now he was bound, life and death, or death and death, to a cousin who, for God only knew what reasons, had got mixed up with the underworld. He pitied her as much as he feared her and he found her entering his thoughts so often he suspected she’d developed the ability to read his mind.

If you would marry, Lucy, and conceive, there would be a chance for me to get back.

Luke sometimes loaded the afternoon before a run, slept for a few hours in the Furlingieris’ shed, and headed off in darkness. One night he was woken by shouts and the sound of a shotgun. There followed the scream of a dying man, a raucous call of triumph, and a motorbike heading away at speed. He pulled on his trousers and ran to the house. Carlo lay on the ground, clutching his stomach. A couple of children were looking on in horror, as Cara, the wounded man’s wife, tried to pull her husband’s clothes away from the wound. Carlo groaned terribly, convulsed a few times, then lay still. ‘He’s still breathing,’ Luke said. ‘Ring the cops, and ring the hospital.’ Cara did nothing, preparing to unleash her grief. ‘Show me the telephone,’ Luke said to the

226 oldest child. She ran into the house, and he found himself informing the world that a payback murder had occurred for an abductee whose body hadn’t yet been found.

A week before their baby was due, Tricia said to Steve, ‘I’ve made up my mind about names.’ She patted her tummy. ‘If it’s a boy, Tristan. If it’s a girl, Juliet!’ He looked doubtful. ‘Don’t those names have sad stories attached to them?’ ‘They’re names of distinction and that’s what I want. I think it’s awful when people call their children Rick and Royce and Sharlene and Leanne and Gaylene ... ‘ ‘Okay, okay. Tristan. Juliet. It’s just that it gives the child an awful lot to live up to.’ ‘So?’ He was being challenged to predict an unimportant life for their child. Giving in, without feeling positive, he half-intended to read up the stories; Juliet had Romeo, but Tristan? He’d been tragically linked to someone, but Steve couldn’t think who it was.

Luke was unloading when reporters found Zeppe at the market. The Italian raged at them to leave his family alone, and struck at men with cameras. Asked if this was a payback killing, and if so, for what, Zeppe made threats about the likely fate of reporters. ‘You print one word about me and you will hear footsteps in your drive!’ They noted this down with pleasure. Then they spotted Luke. ‘Are you the one who called the police? What’s your connection with the Furlingieris? Could you tell us what the scene was like?’ It was all over The Sun the next morning. Zeppe waving a fist at a camera; Luke’s cautious replies. Guilt by association, Luke thought; I was at the murder scene, so I must be mixed up in it. He felt an enormous pressure hemming him in, like a diver deep underwater. He rang Nell at the university, and asked her if she had a spare copy of any of the wedding phtos. ‘I think this is dangerous,’ Nell said, ‘but yes, I’ll

227 see you get a suitable picture.’ Both understood whose representation would be ‘suitable’.

Steve and Tricia were waiting for Tricia’s mother to join them for dinner when they heard on the radio the running rhythms of a Handel chorus: ‘For unto us a child is born, and his name shall be called WONDERFUL! Counsellor! Almighty God! The everlasting father, the prince of peace!’ Handel sent his violins off for one run after another at the climactic chords which hammered home the statement. Margaret Courtney entered to see tears streaming down her son in law’s cheeks. Tricia’s head was bowed. Margaret clasped her daughter. The music reached its end; Steve, turning it off, called loudly, ‘After that, I’m afraid there’s only soup!’ They laughed, fussed, Steve lit unnecessary candles, Margaret looked into her daughter’s eyes: ‘Well, darling, it won’t be a Tristan. That was too happy for a dolorous knight.’ Steve sang ‘Won-derful’ as he brought the soup to the table. Then to the same rhythm he said, or half-sang ‘Ju-liet!’ Tricia lifted her eyes. ‘Don’t get too excited. I’ve got a lot to go through, first.’ Her labour started soon after and by breakfast time Juliet Courtney- Morris had entered the world.

Lucy’s journal We didn’t have many neighbours. One week in three, Alfred Lamington, and after him, Mr Gleeson, taught at the little school. Gordon was slow to learn, but sturdy. Doll got things off parrot fashion, and Sam went to be near the other children. Mother made a flourishing garden, so we always had fruit and vegetables, but she never bothered with flowers. I yearned to surround the place with beauty, but I knew I didn’t have her permission; that need in me would have to wait until I’d made a place of my own with, I supposed, a man. Mother and I had our bleeding together at the same time every month.

228 One hot day I took off what little I had on and sat in the creek that ran behind our house, considering my body. Mother had an insidious habit of saying, when anything struck her as particularly unfortunate, ‘God’s design.’ I felt she was striking back at the sisters for handing her over to Giles. It was her way of saying that no design was apparent. She felt she’d been used, and had had her time, though she was scarcely over forty. Sitting in the creek in the little dam we’d made with stones, and trying to keep my body under water because I didn’t want to be bitten by march flies, I felt I was being observed. Wondering at my own action, I stood up and turned slowly around. The looker should see all that was to be seen. I wondered if I had made an offer. That night, lying on my bed unable to sleep, I heard footsteps, very light, just outside. They moved back and forth, undecided. Then I heard a tap at the window - mother’s, not mine. I heard her open it, and say something. A moment later she padded through the house and went outside. Someone had come, wanting me, and mother had intercepted his desire. So she too stood in the way of my development. The next day I rode down to see Sergeant Benson. I told him I wanted to be a policeman. I was as good a shot as he was, as good on a horse, and I could find my way through the bush in any sort of weather. He laughed. ‘You should have been a boy! Go to the hotel and ask Mrs Townsend for a job in the kitchen!’ He knew it was restricting advice, but if no other advice existed, what could I expect him to say? ‘Any word from your brothers?’ he asked me: ‘They can’t write,’ I told him, ‘but we’re in contact.’ That gave him something to think about.

Apart from the noble musician, these caverns are full of thieves. Travellers are drugged and robbed. Those who complain are tortured. Those inflicting the pain stand around their victims, gloating. I have seen humans, if that’s what we are down here, dissected live. The only light is an eerie afterglow. There is no love, no loyalty.

229 Positive qualities cannot exist. I am saved from the carnage and cruelty only by my ambition to get back. This hope alone sustains me.

Lucy’s journal I rode up to the clearing a few days after Annie appro- priated my lover, whom thereafter she met only at night, so I never saw who it was, though I could guess. The six grave markers were still at the edge of the bush. I straightened them, not failing to notice that five had been girls like me, and had carried the names of virtues. That, I felt, had been their downfall. Expectation of virtue is crippling. I determined to listen only to my desires; but Sergeant Benson had already shown me that my ideas would be laughed at. I put this to my father as I rode past the place where he wrestled with despair. You shall have your freedom, Lucy. Only you do I let go. Your mind alone can find an answer. The war goes on. Your brothers are inventive when it comes to fighting. Though they smell of fear, in action, and their trenches smell of unburied shit, they murder as to the manner born. Guard me, guard our clearing, when they come back, as, I prophesy, and warn you now, they will.

Luke pinned Lily’s photo to the bungalow wall. A case of know your enemy, he thought. He’d been interviewed a second time by the police, who felt he knew more about the Furlingieris than he was saying. He’d lied unconvincingly, and knew they’d come back. He had to be ready for them, which meant guessing what they might find out first. He didn’t know which he feared most - being questioned at the Werribee property, where God only knew what the family - the family! - would imagine him saying, or having his bungalow invaded by investigators. And yet he sensed that having Lily’s picture on the wall meant he was already under surveillance. There were times when there was so much life in those eyes that he could feel her scrutiny. On some days he expected to catch her blinking, so certain was he of her presence. He began to talk to her, and felt he was being listened to.

230 He told her that the secret of her involvement with the mobsters was safe. As soon as he said it, he saw condemnation in her eyes. She must somehow have known that he’d talked to Nell. But of course she would know, because Nell had brought him the photos. He realised that she could appear, invisibly, behind any of her photos, whenever she liked. He began to shake, certain that he was going mad. Nobody could assemble herself behind a picture: but that was what she was doing. Putting his face close up to the photo, he looked into her eyes, challenging, and caressed her neck with a finger. The glossy paper didn’t flinch at his touch. Then he stroked her breasts with the flat of his thumb. Growing bolder, because the photo still hadn’t gone inert, he rubbed the upper part of her thigh. Something told him she was still there, and amused. Holding her paper eyes with his, he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. This time he felt desire in her, and, as she moved back from him, a warning: he was not to proceed unless he was prepared for the consequences. Deliberately, although he was quaking with fear, he kissed the lips of the picture again. This time she was gone. When he saw her at the market the following Friday, something complicit in her glance before she zipped up her bag and walked away told him that the exchange he’d had with the picture had been mutual.

So now I know. I was visited, Lucy, by the four women who managed your conception. They were stern, impatient, perhaps, at my rampant use of thunder. They told me there are stages in returning to earth, and that it can happen in different ways. The first step is that all memory of the previous life has to be surrendered. I said that they must not ask this of me. They replied that the mightiest kings had had to divest themselves of their identity. I told them that the mightiest kings had been poor by comparison with me, and that I would not submit. They also said that some people ask, like me, to live in their old consciousness for a time, because they know that they would enter their next life carrying burdens from their previous one, and that

231 a period of reflection might give them a better start. I said that if that was the only way by which I could stay as I had been, then those must be my terms. They smiled at what they thought was my presumption, and faded quietly away.

Luke went around the Bowdens: Varney and Jean, Honor and Howard; Norman Rowe and Edna, and their three, Vernon, Stanley and Jessica. He went back to George and Yatty’s house, saw Michael and his headmistress, Tom, grown paunchy but business-like, and Karen, whose beauty was more fragile as she neared forty. He told Jesse that when he, Luke, went back to Cairns, Jesse would have to visit him. He’d show him the islands, the reef, and rainforest, and the crazy little settlements along that sweeping coast. An excited Jesse wanted to know when Luke was going back. ‘I’ve got a few things to finish first.’ Occasionally on these visits he saw pictures from the double wedding; if his relatives asked about his single state, he told them ‘I’m not without companionship,’ trying to keep the heaviness innate in that statement from showing in his voice. Lily’s observation, which was never relaxed when he was with family, was both a joy and a burden; he felt that he provided a like escape for her. She could destroy him with a word to the Furlingieris or whoever was behind them; he could destroy her and whichever of the gangsters was her lover, for he was sure there was a lover making those eyes glitter with life and danger. Whichever exposed the secret of the other would kill, would win, at the expense of having lost the intimacy of shared knowledge. Sometimes, crazed with lust, he wanted to make their intimacy deeper; sometimes, studying her eyes on his bungalow wall, he knew she too desired that this should happen. This deeper intimacy, he felt, was inevitable, but it would come at a price; one of them would become impatient, angry, with the other, and then destruction would be within the walls of their secret: or one of them would lash out under the tension and drop the secret where someone could pick it up, letting justice, or was it retribution, loose.

232 There is only one way out of this, he realised: one of us, or both, will die. He went to a lawyer and made a will, leaving everything he owned, including an island off the Queensland coast, to Jesse, Karen’s boy. He gave the will to Nell, and told her to put it somewhere safe. When he told Karen what he’d done, she was disturbed, and told him he should have children of his own, but he shook his head. ‘That’s not the way it’s going to go. Believe me, I know. Jesse’s a good lad, and I’d like to set him up.’ He suggested that Karen should sing at the service when he was gone. She wasn’t sure how seriously she should take this. ‘I might be gone before you,’ Karen said. ‘You look pretty fit to me.’ ‘Well, you’ll have to come back and sing,’ Luke said, grinning at her, because he’d always admired her, and love between cousins no longer seemed impossible. ‘That’ll give them something to think about!’

They asked me to give up my memory, Lucy, and I refused. Since then I’ve searched through the precious jewels of time, fearful of losing them. The first is when I realised that the forest I was standing in - tall trees, gun-barrel straight - would become the clearing I’d long desired. Searching for the source of my river, I found the mountain. From the top, the world was spread around me. I had been blessed, or cursed, with an immoderate pride: the mountain had a lordliness more than equal to mine, and the advantage, in age, of a million years. You will be my life’s companion, I said to it: my place. That was when I knew I must marry. I went to the lowland filled with the knowledge; I could, at one and the same time - but at the one place only; the mountain, with the clearing nearby - be fully alive and fully aware of being alive. The gods of old had no more than that, and probably less: and the women ask me to surrender memory. I laugh.

When the photo rustled, Luke knew she was there. Mostly she was content to observe him, but one afternoon as he lay in bed, fitting in a few hours sleep before his next run with the truck, he became aware that something was happening to the wall. Lily was half out of it, trying to materialise in his room. She said, or rather, she sent him a

233 mind-message ‘I’m not coming all the way. I’m not sure that I can get back.’ ‘This is how you will escape them when you need to. You can come here, and be safe.’ ‘I can’t live here with you. I have to extricate myself by my own efforts. I’ll come when I need support. You have to be here for me.’ There was more menace than love in her voice. ‘You have to come to me,’ he said, threatening her in turn. ‘I’m going now. And I’m taking the picture with me. I have to practise getting back into my own room. I’ll bring it back when I want you. Meantime you’ll have to wait.’ He sat up. The picture was gone. He felt a terrible emptiness. She’d taken with her - stolen, really - his capacity to love as he’d never loved in forty six years of living, and he would never have that intensity of loving unless she brought it to him. He thought of Harry Houdini, jumping into rivers enmeshed in chains, or plunging over Niagaras in barrels, living out his audience’s fantasies of death-defying escapes, and he knew with a sickening certainty, that there would be no way out of whatever was going to happen. He wondered if he would be able to keep it all to himself, or would he have to unload the burden on Helen and Gus. What music could they make of this?

Juliet Courtney-Morris was not an easy baby, and her parents were often woken at night, Tricia to feed her, Steve to walk her up and down. He said to Tricia, ‘I have this uncanny feeling that there are people coming and going from this house. Sometimes, if I’ve said goodnight to Lil, I have a feeling a little while later that she’s not there any more. Sometimes I’m sure she’s got people with her. Yet I never hear cars, or any voices. I’ve never heard footsteps, the dog next door doesn’t bark, I’ve never heard doors opening and closing. And she looks bright and charming every morning. I don’t know what to make of it.’ Tricia didn’t want influences she couldn’t understand anywhere near her child. ‘Ask her to go.’

234 ‘I couldn’t give her a reason.’ ‘You don’t have to have a reason, you’ve got a feeling. You can act on a feeling, you know.’ ‘Not this one. What could I tell mum and dad when they get back? I tipped her out because I had funny feelings when I was walking the baby? They’d say I was mad.’ ‘Say what you like, you’ve got this feeling. You’re either mad, or you’re right. Are you mad? Tell me, are you mad?’ He was surprised at the way she’d taken it. ‘No, I’m not mad. You tell me, can you feel this thing that I’m feeling?’ ‘I only felt it once, the night that car crashed outside, and I haven’t felt it since. But I must say that having Lily with us makes me uncomfortable. I haven’t got any reason to dislike her, she’s ever so pleasant and charming, but I feel it’s an act. She’s never shared a single thought with me. She’s somewhere else. And when I see those pictures of her in the social pages, with all those plastic people holding champagne glasses ... I know some of those people and I think they’re the empti- est people you could find. I can’t believe she’s satisfied with them for company.’ Steve felt the need to be decisive. ‘I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her that if ever she’s in any bother, we’re here to support her.’ Tricia smiled thinly. ‘She’ll tell you she’s fine, and you’ll have given yourself away for nothing.’ ‘So I don’t say anything, and I don’t ask her to go - I most definitely can’t do that - and we just wait and see, is that it?’ His wife shrugged her shoulders. ‘If you say so.’

It happened very easily, when Lily decided. Luke was in his bungalow, trying to sleep at a time when his metabolism wanted him active, when he heard a rustling sound. First, the picture appeared on the wall, then the wall began to buckle, as if it were made of dough. Under pressure from behind, it took the shape of a woman, then it split, and she was there, smiling with malevolent triumph. Her eyes comprehended

235 his fear, then she glanced at the wall she’d come through, which was already repairing itself, before she lay on the bed beside him, and drew him down. ‘I’m with you,’ she said. ‘As you see, things have moved on a stage.’

I was never in any danger until the day I saw that the mountain’s meaning had changed. It would remain, but I was expendable. Others would come after and find the vision for themselves. If the mountain could make me feel transient, might this not happen in the clearing too? My mind began to split. Your brothers saw as weakness my need to go back to my beginning and find my way up again. They were right, in that I was abdicating power to find wisdom. By killing me they locked themselves into the shortcomings I was hoping to overcome. This war, which they think is freedom, is only the freedom to be monstrous. It’s in seclusion that the spirit develops, because there’s time to concentrate. Their concentration, on the other hand, is that of the condemned man whose thoughts live only in the next five minutes. They spend their lives ducking to avoid being shot.

Lily’s arrivals became easier with each visit. Within moments they would be coupling, naked in his bed. Helen and Gus noticed, without feeling they could comment, how often Luke was washing and changing sheets. Lily, no matter how abandoned her lovemaking, always stayed on the side nearest the wall, fearing that Luke might prevent her escape. Sometimes they wrestled for this powerful position, writhing violently, joined at the genitals, tearing at each other’s fears. Once, when he’d dragged her off the bed to pin her on the floor, aggression in every thrust, she pulled his head by the hair so she could hiss in his ear ‘Let me up or you’ll be on the side of the road tomorrow morning with your balls cut off!’ Imagination working hotly, he said ‘I’ve put a note with my will telling the cops who to question if I die suddenly. You can have me shot but I’ll get back at you when I’m gone. I won’t be bested by you Lily, ma bellissima fiordaliso, Signora Giglio!’ She flung him off and spat in his ear ‘That’s what he calls me. Giordano! How do you know that?’

236 ‘I’m learning to follow you. I’m learning to overhear you, the way you do everyone else. I want you to get rid of him. Kill him in your room, come here, then we’ll go to my island. We’ll live two thousand miles away. We’ll never see a soul unless we want to.’ Squeezing her in his arms, and pouring kisses on her, he said, ‘There are paradises. I own one. We don’t have to live in fear and danger, hating each other, waiting for the bullet in the neck. The knife in the guts. None of this is necessary. I say to you - believe me, I’m desperate enough to do anything but tell you an untruth - I say to you, slip out of this city with me, come to my island. Live there in a place with beauty to match your own! Lily!’ He went limp, and let her go. She crawled back onto the bed, then pulled gently on his fingers, urging him in the way of lovers, so softly commanding, until he was beside her. ‘This is our island,’ she said. ‘The only one we’ll ever have. It’s not a paradise because it’s spoiled by two desperate people, but it’s the best we’re going to get. Resign yourself, mio apostolo Luca, mio carissimo Luca. I am the great love of your life. You are my escape. We will die together. You hear me? Together. Perhaps you will do it in anger. Perhaps I will do it in hatred. Perhaps I will tell Giordano about you. Perhaps you will get in first, then kill yourself. Neither of us will outlast the other by more than a minute. Embrace me softly now. My embrace is the last you will ever know.’

Lucy’s journal Eventually I followed the Hurleys to their house beside the lake, on the edge of a town. It was both comforting and daunting to look back at where I’d come from. There were times when I thought I should be able to see us, five wisps of hair waving on that bumpy-nosed blue bulk on the northern horizon. Sometimes when I looked out there I saw snow, and wept for discomforts I sorely missed. Mrs Hurley, who, I decided early on, was afraid of me, and therefore hated me, let me have a miserable bungalow at the bottom of their garden. ‘The bottom of the garden’, I soon perceived, was not only an actual place but one which in her mind meant sin.

237 I heard her telling someone I was shameless; I wondered why anyone bothered with shame, unless they felt some need that I didn’t feel to be sneered at. Father Moloney, the priest, drank tea on her back verandah, and they discussed her difficulties in restraining - restraint was a big thing in a virtuous life - four young men of whom she was not the natural mother. ‘My sister,’ she used to say, while he gestured at the teapot, meaning he’d like to have his cup filled, ‘let them run wild up there. I had endless arguments with my husband about making them accept a little schooling, such as it was.’ I had my uses though. When she wanted me to come to the house, maybe for a meal, she sent one of the boys down on his own. I was to be temptation. Their outlet. They would confess and be exonerated, and I would carry the blame. I kept them at arm’s length, but perhaps they made confessions of impure thoughts, or maybe they spilled their fantasies as facts in the gloom of the confessional, because one afternoon Father Moloney himself came to the bottom of the garden, in both meanings of the term. It was a hot afternoon and he was bursting with sex. He sat on the bed beside me, meaning, he said, to have a talk. I moved to a chair. He asked me my views on religion, sliding along the bed to be closer. I said I had none. He insisted that since we all had God in our hearts, we had to have some feeling about Him, and if we said we didn’t, we were trapped in the sin - it was a sin - of denial. ‘Denial?’ His neck, where his skin was reddest, was circled by a grubby though still shining collar. ‘Denial?’ ‘Would you like me to explain the meaning of the word?’ His breath was uneasy. I could almost hear his heart thumping. ‘I know what it means.’ ‘Do you practise it?’ ‘Practise what?’ ‘Restraint.’ ‘Why should I?’

238 ‘To assist in the salvation of others. Mrs Hurley has acquired by marriage four fine lads, but as I know, because I’m in a position to hear their confidences, they’re sorely tempted by you.’ ‘Denial.’ ‘Pardon?’ ‘They come here, one at a time, with their trousers bulging, and all they get is denial.’ ‘That’s what I was going to talk to you about. It mightn’t hurt to be a bit kinder to them. They’re talking about going off to the war where your brothers are, and the only reason they want to is because they think it means getting away to where there’s lots of brothels. Do you know what I mean by that word?’ ‘No.’ ‘Well, it’s not from a priest that you should be hearing the word for the first time, but it means a place where women do for men - and they take money for doing it, shame upon them - what no one but wives should do for their husbands. You follow?’ I remembered well enough my mother hoisting herself on the cavern man, the thunderer, and how at times she cried out in excitement, and sometimes sobbed with disappointment. I nodded. ‘So, you see, if you could be kind to the boys, just occasionally, and very privately, here, they might keep out of this war which is something England’s wageing, and which has nothing whatsoever to do with people whose roots lie in Ireland. The sins they’d commit in war, and behind the lines, sins which would go unshriven, perhaps forever, would be mountainous by comparison with the occasional sinning - mortal, it’s true, but quickly confessed and absolved - which they might commit here ... ‘ I finished his sentence for him. ‘ ... at the bottom of the garden.’ ‘Exactly.’ He looked very pleased. ‘Well, what do you say?’ ‘If they sinned, you’d forgive them?’ ‘God would forgive them. I would simply pronounce absolution.’ ‘And if I was sinning, who would forgive me?’

239 He was happy with this line of conversation. ‘I would hear your confession, God would forgive you, and I would pronounce your absolution.’ Furious with this whole fandangle of hypocrisy, I took him by the hand, tenderly, teasing, the first hypocritical act of my life. ‘And if you sinned ... I refused to call this snivelling little sex-addict ‘Father’ ... who would forgive you?’ He jumped on me. He was off the bed in a moment, and had his head between my legs. ‘I’d be confessing nightly,’ he said. ‘And praying to God Almighty every hour of the day, but it would be you, and only you, Lucy, who could give me the comfort I so urgently need!’ I pushed him away. ‘You have to go now,’ I said. ‘And I have to leave this place and find somewhere cleaner. I didn’t come down here’ - I meant the lowland, with the high horizon always behind me, ever in my eyes and thoughts - ‘to be corrupted!’

As Luke expected, the police came back. There were two of them, and they came at a time when he expected Lily to appear. They made him go through the events of the night of Carlo’s shooting again, not, he felt, expecting anything new from him, but as a way of intimidation. They kept their eyes on him while he was talking, sensing that he was afraid. Would she arrive? Would they notice her picture on the wall? ‘It was a Mafia style execution,’ they told him. ‘The actual killer might have been unknown to the victim, but the person who ordered the shooting would have been connected in some way with Carlo.’ They probed his knowledge of Carlo’s family tree, and connections with local growers, showing him photos. Had Luke met this man? This one? Did he ever see this one, or that one, come to the market? None of them were known to Luke, but he was wishing they’d give him a moment on his own so he could hide Lily’s photo in his bed. He knew all too well what connection they were looking for. One of the detec- tives looked at the other. ‘There’s a few more pictures we ought to show

240 Mr Bowden. They’re in the car. Blue folder.’ The second man left to get the blue folder. The first pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Feel like one?’ Luke shook his head, and the man stepped outside, puffing quietly as he strolled around the lawn, apparently relaxed. This was Luke’s opportunity. He got up to take the picture off the wall. No! It was a trap. They’d see that the photo had been taken down, and demand to see it. He’d have incriminated himself. Staring wildly at the picture, he realised that the eyes were active. She was there. He felt she’d just arrived. He shook his head at her, violently. The wall began to soften. Summoning every ounce of refusal, of denial, in his body, he gritted his teeth and forced her back, waving, all the while, his hand with forefinger pointing at the garden. Then he felt relief as she realised, and withdrew, but still watching, hearing every word. They put the blue folder in front of him. The first picture was a blurred old family photo with no one he knew. The second was another group, and he recognised Carlo. The third showed Carlo and Zeppe. The fourth was of a suited and suavely shaven man whom Luke knew must be Giordano. He could hear Lily in the wall, waiting. ‘Good looking fella, I suppose, if that’s your type.’ ‘He’s somebody’s type,’ the first detective said. ‘Keep going.’ Luke turned to the next, taken in a vulgarly luxurious reception hall: a bridal photo. Giordano was in the background. ‘Recognise anybody?’ Luke touched the paper. ‘This is the same fella as the last one, but I don’t know who he is.’ ‘Keep going.’ He knew, as he reached some photos that must have come from the society pages of a magazine, that he was going to be confronted by Lily. And he was. She was naked, lying provocatively on a bed. A man’s leg ran down the side of the picture; the leg of the photographer. Lily’s eyes from the wall were like burning lamps. One of the detec- tives chuckled. ‘She’d stretch your jeans a bit, wouldn’t she.’ Luke was going to turn her face down, but the policeman put his hand on Luke’s. ‘Who is she?’

241 ‘Search me.’ ‘I don’t think we need to search you, Mr Bowden. You’ve got her picture on the wall. Like to tell us who she is?’ Luke looked up. In the beloved’s eyes he saw horror, rage and the certainty of his end. He swallowed, unable to lie, unwilling to take any further step. They’d caught him, she’d heard them, his life’s path had reached its end. He chuckled drily, feeling sick. A dead end! The policemen stood up. ‘You don’t have to answer. We won’t have any problems now, just a little extra leg work, that’s all.’ Luke hung his head. ‘Thank you, Mr Bowden,’ one said. ‘We probably won’t have to trouble you again.’ He sat there, under her eyes, looking down. The cops walked away. He could hear them talking as they went down the path.

Did you cry when you saw my body, Lucy? Did Annie cry? Was there ever a single tear shed for me, or was there none?

The photo’s eyes went blank for a terrible, ominous minute, then she was back. The wall went soft, there was a rustling, and she was there. Luke didn’t lift his head. He felt something cold pressed against his neck. ‘Do it,’ he said. ‘Have no regrets.’ To his surprise, and hers, at this moment of extremity, all tension went out of his body. She jabbed the gun against his ribs, then pressed it under his jaw, without making him stiffen with fear. ‘I have to do it,’ she said. ‘I’ve been sent.’ ‘Giordano’s orders.’ ‘Si.’ ‘Then do it. There’s no one in the house to hear you. You can get back to him safely.’ ‘Look at me first.’ He kept his head down. ‘You mightn’t be able to do it if we see each other’s eyes.’ He sensed her weakening. ‘Kiss me,’ she said. He put his hand on hers, refusing the kiss. ‘You hold the trig- ger, I’ll press your finger, we’ll do it together.’ She snatched her hand away from him and dropped the gun on the bed. ‘Love me first.’ He

242 looked into her eyes and what she saw welling up in him was murderous rage: but still cold. She started to shake, knowing that her fear would rouse him. ‘Curse you!’ he screamed. ‘Curse you a thousand times for bringing me to this point. And now I thank you for giving me the way out.’ He snatched the gun from the sheets of their lovemaking, she screamed, he shouted without words, only a belly sound of desperation and rage. ‘You first!’ he shouted. ‘You first!’ He had to work himself up to what he had to do. ‘You first!’ He was gloating by now. ‘You first!’ And laughing hysterically. ‘You first!’ She tried to wrest the gun from him but he was too strong. ‘You first!’ She screamed again, then dived for the wall. As she disappeared, he fired.

Steve was in the study, working at what had been Tom Courtney’s desk, when the house began to shake. Thinking it must be an earthquake, he jumped up. Where was Tricia, and the baby? And Margaret? Calling ‘Get out of the house, get into the garden, keep well away from the walls,’ he ran into the dining room. Everything was shaking in the psychic storm. An épergne crashed to the floor from the table. He went into the lounge, where the force was greater. Lily’s photo fell to the floor as if dragged by a desperate hand. Then the shaking moved to the back of the house, the servant’s quarters. He ran outside. Tricia and the baby, and Tricia’s mother, were already in the garden, terrified. ‘It keeps moving, it’s like it’s chasing something,’ Steve said incoher- ently. ‘Is Lily in there?’ Margaret Courtney called out. ‘Get her out for heaven’s sake! The place is going to fall over!’ None of them noticed that it was only their house that was being acted upon. ‘Where’s my keys?’ Steve fumbled, found what he wanted, then wrenched open Lily’s door.

It was my brain they went for, the back of my head. I had said goodbye, cordially enough, and turned my back on them, ready to go.

243 Tricia and Margaret, watching from the garden, saw him stiffen as he looked in, saw fear and amazement take hold of him. Though the back of the house was shaking more violently than ever, they ran beside him. Juliet Courtney-Morris, not that she understood, found herself looking at the first gun barrel of her life. A still suave, if terrified, Giordano found taking aim difficult on the wobbling floor. Then one of the walls ripped open, giving birth to a diving figure, there was a loud explosion, and blood appeared on the back of Lily’s head, while in another room, a modest bungalow, three suburbs away, a wretched Luke who, he realised, had been living for this moment, put the pistol to his head and fired a second shot, heard distantly, like an echo of the first explosion, in the room where Lily’s body lay on the floor.

244 10 In which two seventeen year olds get a grip on the narrative, and it on them

Juliet Courtney-Morris was told in her seventeenth year how an Italian gunman, discovered by her father in his sister Lily’s room, had shot Steve in the temple, and rushed past Tricia and Margaret Courtney to a car parked in a lane. How the house had shaken, and Lily’s photo, found on the floor, had been crumpled by a desperate hand. How the bullet extracted from Lily’s brain hadn’t matched that in Steve’s, but was identical with the bullet that had killed Luke Bowden. How the police had listened sceptically to what they thought were two hysteri- cal women. How the wall, when the police examined it, was sound, although the plaster had buckled a little at one point. Her mother went on: ‘What happened that day shattered everything. I’ve never believed in anything since. Your Morris grandparents were never the same again. They’d lost three of their five, all violently. They came back from England on a plane, which was quite adventurous for them, and tried to pick up their lives, but couldn’t. Max developed a cancer in the bowel, Muriel had to look after him. Then she got a disease of the nervous system. She lost all feeling in the outer parts of her body. Fingers and toes, then hands and feet. For a while she could still get around and do things, though clumsily, but the disease progressed until she could only sit and listen, and grunt if she wanted attention. And Max, who’d never done anything domestic in his life, looked after her, though he was dying too. On the day you were two, I knew the end was close, and I took you around so they could see you. They were sitting in the garden. Muriel’s mind was unaffected, but it

245 was trapped in this body that couldn’t do anything. She poured a look of purest love on you, and I knew I’d made her happy. Max nursed you for a while, and then you cried, and his eyes looked tired, and I knew his painkillers were making him sleepy, so we left. A few weeks later they died. Max died on a Thursday, and Muriel on the Wednesday of the following week.’ ‘Do I look like either of them?’ ‘Not at all.’ ‘What were they like? Could you describe them?’ ‘You’ve seen them in my wedding photos.’ ‘Which you put away when I was little, and I haven’t seen for years.’ Tricia found the album. ‘There’s your father.’ A beaming Steve had his arm around his bride of ten minutes, and was beckoning to someone out of the picture to join them. ‘There’s Lily.’ A radiant but somehow wistful Lily was holding her bouquet high, as if to hide a little of her beauty. ‘There’s Max and Muriel.’ ‘They look like they’re wearing hired clothes!’ Tricia smiled sadly. ‘They spent a fortune, and it showed. They didn’t look comfortable. They were unsophisticated people really, decent, pretty plain. They weren’t prepared for what happened. How could they be? They got hit from all sides, in the last few years.’ Juliet paused, then took the conversation back. ‘Mum. Do you remember the day that daddy died very well?’ Tricia assented gravely. ‘Why haven’t you told me before?’ ‘It was so strange that I waited until I felt you had enough faith in me not to disbelieve what I told you.’ ‘Mum. I want you to describe everything that happened that day. Take as long as you like. And you have to imagine you’re in court, on oath. Swear to me solemnly.’ Tricia nodded. ‘I do.’ ‘Okay, mum, start!’

246 Lucy’s journal I got a job at the Club Hotel, doing the same things I’d have done for Mrs Townsend at Swifts Creek, except I’d thought that job beneath me. Dishes, rooms, helping a one-armed man called Eddy stoke the boiler. Waiting on table when they were short-handed. I was kept out of the bar, because it was the men’s preserve, but a few months after the war ended I heard voices in there that I knew.

A shattered Juliet considered her inheritance. ‘I’m just getting ready to start out in life, mum, and you drop this on me.’ ‘Would you rather I’d never told you? You’d have realised eventually.’ ‘You always said he’d been killed by a burglar who was never caught.’ ‘That part was right. The fellow got out of the country.’ ‘And he’s somewhere in the world, killing other people.’ ‘Probably.’ ‘Which doesn’t help me. I’ll never be able to marry, mum, do you understand. If you want to get into a relationship with someone, you have to tell them about yourself and your family. No one’s going to want to know me.’ ‘That’s why we moved down here. So we could start again.’ ‘Toorak to Brighton, what sort of a move’s that?’ ‘It’s a very good suburb. You’ve made plenty of friends.’ ‘You said you couldn’t remarry, mum, after what happened. But at least you had married, and you’d had me. You could still appear normal. I’m going to look like an absolute freak!’ ‘Only if you tell people. So don’t tell them.’ ‘Keep all that stuff bottled up! There’s no way I can do that!’ ‘You’d be surprised how many people are carrying things they don’t want anyone to know.’ ‘I’ll bet they’re all twisted. There’s no way you can be clear about yourself if you’ve got stuff you won’t admit.’

247 ‘You didn’t answer my question before. Are you blaming me for not keeping it from you any longer?’ The teenager pondered in moody silence. ‘I’m not blaming you for telling me. But I felt one hell of a lot better when I didn’t know.’ ‘Knowledge is always a burden. We either shoulder it, or we let others do the carrying for us.’ ‘And I’m old enough to do some of the carrying, now. Is that it?’ Tricia nodded. Juliet’s despondency deepened. ‘Mum, what sort of man was my dad?’

Lucy’s journal George, Robert and Ned, back from the slaughter. Drinking beer. Talking loudly, eyes flicking around for any sign of challenge. George with scars on his face and arms. All of them bigger and stronger than they’d been. Ned stocky now, with the power of a bull. Expecting the barman to call them ‘gents’. Unspeakable memories swirling like a sewer in their minds. I went to my room and wrote a letter to Annie, telling her they were back. I slipped up the street to post it. Walking back, I saw them on the other side of the road. One of them whistled. I made a beckoning motion with my finger, and not believing their luck, they came across. I kept my back to them until they were close enough to make ‘sug- gestions’. Then I turned, greeting them by name. ‘George, Robert and Ned, Wainwrights all.’ ‘And Lucy fuckin Wainwright, as I live and breathe.’ I considered their auras of evil and decided that as their sister I was about the only person safe in their presence. Age would erode them, not mellow them, but here they were, at the peak of their strength and fitness, judging everybody in terms of respective powers. ‘How’s the old lady?’ I told them. ‘Gordon had his end in yet?’

248 I said he was a very shy and thoughtful boy, if a little slow. They laughed. They were still bonded by their soldiering. I asked them what they planned to do next. Their plans went no further than women and alcohol until I pointed to the mountain on the horizon. Ned said it would be a bloody good idea to go out and put a bomb down their father’s hole. ‘Shove it up him would be better!’ The three of them found this amusing. Robert pulled a hand grenade out of his pocket. They tossed it to each other, walking backwards to get a distance between them. George pulled a lemon off a tree, and juggled it with the grenade before lifting a leg and flicking the grenade beneath it to me. I lunged to catch it, not knowing what made it explode. ‘Just pull that pin,’ George said, ‘and you won’t be around much longer.’ The boys were merry when they saw fear on my face. I looked at the grenade, trying to work out what it meant that I’d encountered them between post office and pub, with the river flowing peacefully beneath us, and cows grazing on the flats. What circumstances had conspired to put a ball of death in my hand? I put the grenade on the ground and told them I’d be leaving the place to them, because I was going to what had been my mother’s town before the sisters handed her to Giles. They insisted on walking to the station with me. People in shops looked at us, wondering what I was doing with three men who had the brutality of death all over them. The walk was an important one for me. I’d catch the train, carrying something of mother back to where she illegitimately began, and I’d try to block out the voice of the shaft, and make a fresh start. I wanted a fruitful, long and happy life.

Juliet took Bozo, her labrador, to the beach. Yachts with bright sails were nearing the end of a race. At the moment when she realised that she could never go back to her mother’s and grandmother’s house, a small, neat young boy, no older than herself, approached. ‘Have you run away too?’

249 The recognition made her cry. He waited for a while, then asked, ‘What happened?’ So there it was; she either told him, or she made up something else. How could she say to anybody, however gullible, ‘My father was shot by a gangster waiting for his lover, an aunt of mine, who came flying out of a wall followed by a bullet that was fired thirty blocks away’? It was crazy. The idea that it might have happened could only exist in the minds of her mother and grandmother, who claimed to have seen it. Well, they were the mad ones, and if, to keep her sanity, she had to run away, that was what she’d done. ‘They made it impossible for me,’ she told him. ‘For seventeen years everything’s been fine, and this afternoon they wreck it! You know?’ ‘I know,’ he said. ‘My name’s Tim. Hi.’ ‘Hi.’ ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Juliet. Sorry Tim.’ ‘That’s okay Juliet. Hi.’ They looked into each other’s eyes. ‘Where am I going to live?’ ‘See that bathing box over there, the blue and green one? There’s a banana lounge in there and a couple of blankets. That’s where I mostly sleep. You can come in with me.’ Juliet realised that kindness and reciprocity were going to take different forms in the new life she’d started. ‘The dog could be a problem,’ Tim said. ‘Why?’ ‘Gotta feed him, and he’s too noticeable.’ Tim, she saw, knew the ropes, and she’d be dependent until she’d learned. ‘I can’t take him home.’ She was surprised how easily the word came out, now she’d disowned the place. ‘I can’t go back there.’ ‘Where d’ya mum and dad live?’ ‘Mum. Middle Crescent.’ ‘What number?’

250 She felt a stab of pain as she told him. ‘Big high hedge and an aluminium gate that’s meant to look like steel. It’s called Thule.’ ‘Ultima Thule.’ ‘What?’ ‘It means the farthest point of discovery. Henry Handel Richardson used it for the name of a book.’ ‘Do you read, Tim?’ ‘Everything I can get my hands on. There’s plenty of time.’ Everything he said made running away a new sort of occupation. ‘Don’t you miss having people tell you what you’ve got to do?’ ‘You’ve hit it in one. That’s the big difference for people like us.’ ‘Tim?’ ‘Yeah?’ ‘Where do you go when you want to have a ... go to the toilet, you know?’ ‘There’s empty houses. You’d be surprised. There’s one in Esperance Avenue. Been empty for months. Apparently there’s a dis- pute over who owns it now. The owner died. She was a nice old lady, used to give me jobs, sometimes.’ Juliet felt she was in the presence of a new type of being. ‘Tim. How long have you been running away, I mean, how long have you been a runaway, I mean, been on the run?’ He smiled. ‘Gets you tangled, doesn’t it. There’s no words for it. Coupla years now. It’s okay while you’re young and fit. Couldn’t do it forever, could you?’ She looked at the blue and green bathing box. Cloud was hiding the sun for a moment and she felt it was going to be cold that night. ‘I think you’re telling me I have to give up Bozo?’ ‘Fraid so. Nice dog.’ He patted Bozo carelessly. The dog pushed his nose into Juliet’s neck. ‘He knows there’s something wrong.’ Tim nodded. ‘Next bit’s going to be painful. You walk with me part of the way. When he knows he’s just about home, you slip away, and come

251 back here. I’ll tie him up near your mum’s place, so they’ll find him, and I’ll meet you back here. Might be best if you were in the cabin.’ There was a lock on the door. ‘How do I get in?’ ‘Crawl underneath, there’s a bit of the floor that lifts up. You”ll see it. I fixed it like that.’ Tim, Juliet and Bozo walked for a few blocks, then he nudged her. ‘That shed. Stay out of sight for a minute in case he doubles back.’ He knew what she wanted to do. ‘No, sorry, you can’t give him a hug. Don’t start to cry, it’s just how it is. Meet you back at the cabin.’ She ducked into a shed at the rear of someone’s property. It was full of garden tools, spider webs, and a half restored vintage car that someone had got sick of working on. ‘This thing used to go, once,’ she thought, ‘and now it’s not going anywhere unless somebody pulls their finger out.’ The worn upholstery looked inviting, but when she judged that Tim and Bozo were out of sight, she went back to the beach. The water was a field of flat steel. The yachts, apart from a couple of stragglers, were all in. The sand had become cold. Quelling the shiver that started to run through her, she dropped to her knees, then, on her stomach, wriggled under the cabin. A hollow in the sand showed her where Tim had been getting in and out. She wriggled there and lifted her shoulders. The floor lifted with her, and she squeezed in. It was no warmer inside than out. The whole thing was smaller than the laundry at Thule. It held the banana lounge, two blankets, a pair of sunglasses, a box of cigarettes, a lighter, and a bottle with a few drops of rum. ‘Home,’ she said aloud. ‘Mark two.’

Lucy’s journal By the time I got to the convent, Sister Brigida had retired from teaching. Annie had told me she’d had a genius for it. Well, the genius had faded and only its mad edge remained. They paid me almost nothing and worked me day and night, but it was where I needed to be. As far as they knew, my name was Wright. I shut up, did everything I was told, and waited. My chance came one night when I heard voices in the yard: a boy and a girl, and a faint gurgling sound.

252 I went outside and found a basket at the back door. I had a feeling the couple was still around. I roamed the garden until I found them scrambling through a fence. They’d have got away but the girl’s clothes, such as they were, got caught. She thought I was a ghost and started pleading with me as I came up. I told her it was all right, the baby would be looked after. I told her that whenever I saw her in the street I’d tell her how the child was getting on. Then I said ‘Has the baby got a name?’ She hugged the boy that was with her and said ‘Bobby’. She’d given the child his name. Bobby wasn’t much older than the girl, and she could only have been fourteen. ‘I need the basket back,’ the girl said. ‘I had to steal it, and that’s how they’ll trace it back to me.’ She started sobbing. Bobby put his arms around her, but he wasn’t up to helping her grief; he thought he’d done enough, and was getting pretty scared. I said if they waited in the shadow I’d get the basket for them, and they could leave. So for a minute, and it can’t have taken any longer, the baby lay on the step in the rags it was wrapped in, while I took the basket to the fence. Bobby and the nameless girl were out of sight, but I knew they’d be watching, so I dropped the basket over and went back to what was now my charge. As I approached, a shaft of moonlight found an opening in the clouds, and the child was revealed to me as spirit, and I was a spirit woman too, because I was to supervise its entry to the social world.

Juliet stayed with Tim until he said she should have sex with him. ‘A sort of rent, really, and because we’re friends.’ She gatecrashed a party that night and waited for someone to ask her home. Rodney, an engineering student, was the one. He drove her in a car that had to be his father’s to a house as large as the one she’d left. Between the costliest sheets available in their city, she moved with Rodney from virginity to experience. When he woke in the morning he seemed surprised to find a woman in his bed, but mounted her a second time, only just remembering to put on a condom. Then he brought her coffee on a

253 tray, and they sat up in bed, sipping quietly together. He had a shower, then dressed. ‘I’ll run you home whenever you like,’ he said, smiling at this neat end to their transaction. ‘Guess what?’ she said. ‘I don’t have a home. I’ll be staying here for a while, if you can stand it.’

Lucy’s journal As I expected, they made me the foster mother of Bobby, and Sister Brigida my supervisor. I called her my mother superior, and this amused her; she’d been ambitious in her day. We always had the child to talk about, and we talked a lot. Eventually she told me how a baby called Annie had been brought to the convent one evening by a man called Michael Roche, one of the biggest landowners in the district. He said it was the natural child of one of his maidservants, but since he brought it himself without the mother being sighted by the nuns, they guessed it was his daughter’s child, and he was the father, because his wife had died years before. ‘A child of incest,’ Sister Brigida insisted, ‘can’t hope for a happy marriage if she knows where she’s from. We saw it as our duty to bring her up in virtue, and place her where the story of her origin could never harm her!’ Naturally, although I knew the answer, I asked what they’d done with this Annie. ‘We packed her off to a secret place in the mountains, with a very determined young fellow who, we could see, would keep the rest of the world away. Ignorance and this man - I’ll think of his name in a minute - would protect her from shame. Giles Wainwright! She married him in our chapel, on a sunny afternoon, we gave them a little feast in the dining room, all decked with flowers, and they spent their first night as man and wife in that hotel opposite the railway station. The next day, as they passed by in the coach, we were all outside to wave to them. I can see her still, waving, her arm around her Giles, who didn’t smile easily, but nodded, pleasantly enough, as he took her away. We all felt a sense of loss. We’d loved Annie, not that she was an easy girl to control, but she was better than her origins, or maybe I should say as good as her breeding, if we overlook the sin. We’d given

254 this Giles our best, because we thought it would be best for her. I hope she’s been happy out there. Often,’ Sister Brigida went on, ‘when there’s been a storm in the mountains, I’ve looked out and wondered how it all worked out.’ I cried, of course, and Brigida said the baby was making me more natural than when I’d first arrived. Then she wanted to know where I’d come from, and I said I’d tell her one day, but for that particular afternoon we’d had enough stories. Little Bobby woke at that moment and I could hide myself in doing things for him. But a day or two later she whispered to me, ‘You know what they’re saying in the town?’ I knew she hadn’t been out of the place for months, so she couldn’t know what they were saying, but what it pleased her imagination to tell me was that people thought I was the baby’s mother, and the story about it being found on the doorstep was a lie to cover the fact that I’d given birth to it myself, right there in the convent. I raised my hand. ‘Sister Brigida, what does it mean when I raise my hand like this?’ ‘You could be swearing something on your holy oath.’ ‘And what else do you think it could mean?’ ‘It could mean you’ve forgotten your place and you fancy you’ve to teach me something when it’s I who am responsible for you.’ ‘Sister Brigida, look at me closely, please. Study my face.’ ‘My eyes are not as good as they used to be. What should I see ?’ ‘What would you say if I told you I was Annie Wainwright?’ ‘I’d say you couldn’t be, because you’re the same age as she was when she left us, and that was more years ago than I care to remember.’ ‘Sister Brigida, what am I to little Bobby here?’ ‘You’re his mother now he hasn’t got one.’ ‘No, Sister Brigida, I’m like a mother to him. Like. It’s a simile, as you used to teach us, years ago. Not a metaphor. You had to explain that to Maeve Ferguson. She nearly caught you out. Give us the Tower of Babel as a metaphor, she demanded of you. And you lifted your

255 hand by way of creating a quiet that you owned. Lift your hand now, Sister Brigida. Lift it like I’ve lifted mine.’ She did so, eyes filling with superstitious apprehension, and a hint of frightened pleasure too, as she recollected something long lost to her memory.’ ‘Maeve Ferguson! That was a long time ago, and God knows she went to an unfortunate grave!’ ‘And Annie Wainwright, Annie of no name at that time, was listening, and I know she was listening, so I’ve entered her being to bring that moment back to you. It’s not a memory I’m being, Sister Brigida, it’s a metaphor. You explained it so well, Sister Brigida, why are you surprised when it comes back to haunt you?’ She lowered the hand she’d lifted; I’d taken away her power. ‘You have to tell me where Michael Roche lives. I’m going out to see him. And you are not to tell a single, living, breathing soul.’

It was in the month Juliet spent at Rodney’s, before his parents came back, that she wrote to her mother: there were things she needed; she’d call at the house the following Friday, at half past two; she was all right, she’d contact them if she needed them; and she wanted the house to be empty when she arrived. They were not to be there. This was underlined heavily in pencil, then she felt her emphasis was cruel, and rubbed it out. What she’d intended was still visible, so she tore up the letter and rewrote it. Before she posted it, she arranged with Rodney that he’d take her in the car, and that he’d remain outside. She was silent throughout the drive until they entered Middle Crescent. She told him to park in the street. Pushing the gate open, it occurred to her that the big home would one day be hers. Margaret Courtney would leave it to Tricia, and her mother to her. She looked at it. They’d never sell it. They’d made their move. If they moved again it would prevent her coming back, and she knew that despite the severity of what she’d done, they’d never close their hearts against her. Those hearts would be painfully empty, but they would be constant.

256 The house, she thought, will yearn for me, though I’m not ready for it yet. Clothes! A few books, a pad, her precious pen. The diaries could remain until she was ready to rejoin them. She went to the front door. It was open, trusting. How much she was asking of her parent and grandparent. In the middle of the house, in a large reception area which gave access to the ground floor rooms, was a table, and on it, squarely in the centre, a bowl of flowers. And there was something else, under a linen napkin. She considered the flowers, celebrating her visit, and blessed them with appreciative eyes. When she lifted the napkin, she surprised herself by laughing. There was a piece of cake on a plate, a glass, and a can of rum and coke. Her mother was reminding her of leaving supper out for Santa. Touched, she filled the glass. She went upstairs, got a case from the cupboard, and filled it quickly. She couldn’t burden herself with too much. A leather coat would be her insurance against the coming winter. Keeping well away from her mother’s and grandmother’s rooms, she took her things to the front door, then came back to the table with the flowers. Flowers. What did they mean, in general, and what did they mean to her? They were beautiful because they represented the best in life. Everything in the natural world flowered in one way or another. They were an encouragement to a woman: that was a challenge! Best of all, they were silently eloquent. She sat in their presence, sipped rum and coke, and nibbled at the cake, a broad slice from something made that morning. The rest would be in a tin in the kitchen. She went and found it, and put it on the table beside her. She felt her throat tighten- ing. She wouldn’t be able to get the cake down, but she couldn’t reject it when it had been offered. Breaking off a few crumbs, both as offering to every power in witness of what she was doing, and as evidence of an enjoyment she had to fake, she put the slice neatly in its place in the tin. The cake was complete again, but the cut had been made. When she emptied the can into the glass and tried to drink some more, she

257 spluttered, droplets spraying on the shining oak. She was going to wipe them up, but decided to leave this evidence of her disarray. When she took her things to the car, Rodney remarked that she looked cool. ‘I don’t think I could do what you’ve just done.’ Rather rudely she said, ‘Bit of cake?’ offering him the tin. He wrinkled his nose, gunning the motor noisily. ‘I will be back, Rodney,’ she said, as much to the house as to him. ‘Though it may take time. They’ve done their best to give me confidence. I think I’m going to be all right.’

Lucy’s journal When I’d organised a horse to borrow, and a day off, I rode out to Michael Roche’s property. His house stood below the brow of the only hill on the place, and was surrounded by leafy, shade-filled trees. It had the air of a house that had once been full of energy, and now was tired. Michael Roche was on the verandah when I opened the gate: the father of my mother. Your expectations are too high, my daughter. Prepare for the first downfall of your exploring life. He watched me as I walked my horse the length of his drive. You will come back sooner rather than later. I am keeping myself for the day. This hole is no place for eternity. When I dismounted, and stood before him, he placed a hand on each knee, deliberating. He had a whip at his feet. You are too trusting, my love. Goodwill has to be wrenched from the grasp of the mean-spirited: that, or cow them. Fear will make them generous enough. ‘What brings you here?’ he said. Attack him, Lucy, wrestle him to the floor. Your inheritance is strong. I said, ‘I’ve come to tell you about your daughter.’ His face lit up with interest, fear, expectation, and relief. ‘Who are you?’ this wiry, elderly man said. I saw cruelty in his eyes, and a wish to be relieved of responsibility for what he was. His clothes were costly, but worn. I felt there would be an emptiness, a bleakness, in the rooms behind him.

258 It is a mistake men make, my love. Hollowness is not our natural state, it’s what we do to ourselves to make room for riches. But the richness can’t live in a clear space. The imagination feeds on lies. Nobody works harder to obscure the truth than those who seek to find it. To be wise, we have to walk backwards, stumbling into paradox. Believe me, Lucy, my months in these caverns have shown what I couldn’t see from my other, more elevated, point. ‘I am the daughter of your daughter,’ I said. ‘I’ve come to tell you about the life she had after you left her, and best of all, I will tell you where you can find her. It’s only two days travel.’ Don’t expect things, Lucy. An expectation is a demand people will never rise to because they see it’s in your interest rather than their own. Be wise, my daughter. Leave him. Joy, long bottled up, and anxiety, long suppressed, struggled for possession of this man whose vigil of many years had been kept in his cane chair beside a window that looked over fertile farmland. ‘My daughter?’ he said. ‘I heard a rumour, years ago, that she was dead. I never believed it, but no letter, no message, ever came.’ He’s dangerous, Lucy mine, as you’ll see. He doesn’t understand. Keep back! ‘She’s living,’ I told him, ‘in a little cottage at the edge of the bush, at Brookville, out from Swifts Creek. She’s had a life like no one else’s and has somehow come through it strong and whole, as far as I can judge; you see how young I am.’ Then I saw that he was doing some calculation of ages in his head. ‘Say her name!’ I stepped back, feeling for the horse’s bridle. One hand had detached itself from its knee, and was hovering in mid-air. Something warned me that the name I was going to say was the wrong one, and he’d strike. ‘Annie!’ I said, loud and bold. ‘And what’s so wrong about that?’ Of course he grabbed his whip and threatened me. It was his other daughter, the one who bore his child, that he was longing for, Lucy mine. He’d denied her a father’s proper love, denied her a husband, denied her her child. That was my good fortune, not his. Only some miracle that will let him get

259 back to that moment when he made his mistake can make him accept you. Watch for his weakness, then grab him: you may do something for him yet! ‘A bastard child of a bastard child,’ he said, meaning me. ‘Wanting everything I own.’ I shouted at him that I was no bastard child ... but he wasn’t listening. He was thinking of the daughter he’d ruined. He sighed, taking his eyes off me. I jumped onto his verandah and snatched the whip. I had it out of his hands in a flash, flung it off the verandah, and pulled him out of his chair. He’d been a strong man but I had fifty years advantage. I got him down on the verandah, pinning his arms with my knees, and pressed my thumbs into his throat. ‘Say that other daughter’s name!’ This is well done, my darling. Do as much for me! I took the pressure off his windpipe, but all he could say was ‘I can’t. I haven’t been able to for years.’ By now I had my face down, almost touching his. ‘Show me her picture then. Face her that way, if you can.’ He was putty in my restless, vindictive fingers. ‘I can’t do it.’ He must have felt my anger rising, because he whimpered. My horse was rearing about, disturbed by what was happening. I supposed he had a housekeeper somewhere, or maybe farmhands. I had to be quick. ‘See these fingers? I’ll gouge your eyes out, this very minute, unless you speak.’ And I slapped his face with a ferocity I didn’t know was in me. His mouth fell open and he began to cry. The tears are good, my daughter, but make him speak. I slapped him again and pressed my nails into his eyes. ‘She was called Lucy. My wife wanted her to be Hope, but I overruled her, and Lucy it became.’ ‘It’s a better name,’ I said. ‘Virtues are useless in this world, in case you didn’t know.’ I jumped off the verandah, and took hold of the horse. It kept rearing about, so I clambered into the saddle and pulled the reins until I was in control. ‘You have to go and see my mother,’ I told him. ‘And you have to see me before you go. I’m at the convent. Ask for Lucy,’ I said with a bitter smile, but accepting him nevertheless, bringing him to the point where he might be able to earn his own

260 forgiveness. ‘Ask for Sister Brigida, she has a good memory for faces.’ He still lay on the verandah. ‘Don’t let them see me like this,’ he said. I told him that was entirely in his own hands. He dragged himself back into the chair. ‘Walk to the gate with me.’ This is forgiveness, my daughter, of the rarest kind. You were always my jewel. He walked unsteadily, pleading to be let off the journey to my mother. He said he was too weak and too old. I said another strength would flood into him: that of reconciliation. I said he had to manufac- ture his own miracle, and must expect to pay dearly for it. He opened the gate. I went proudly through. He hovered by the gatepost, as if taking one step outside his property would lose it to him forever. At length he took the step. ‘If your mother wishes it, Lucy, I’ll do what you say.’ You gave him, my daughter, the greatest satisfaction there is: of being released from the prison of pride!

Juliet went home with women, went home with men. She slept in an abandoned car for a fortnight, and returned to it one afternoon just in time to rescue her suitcase before the car was towed away. My only constants, she thought, my case: and my monthly bleeding. She slept in a derelict boatshed by the Maribyrnong that night, a bad night because she sensed that girls had been violated there without anyone answering their screams. Walking up the bank in the morning, she found herself observed by a man looking over a fence. The insignia on his shirt revealed that he was a security guard. ‘Moving out?’ She nodded warily. ‘I thought there was someone there. I was gonna come down and warn ya.’ He meant he was going to see if she was alone. ‘You look pretty neat. How long’ve ya been doin this?’ ‘Long enough.’ She hoped she conveyed experience. ‘Gettin sick of it?’ ‘I’ve got a long way to go yet. I can’t afford to get sick of it.’

261 ‘Don’t tell me you’re doin this for the goodness of your soul. You got a home to go to, I can tell.’ ‘I moved out of that.’ ‘But it’s still there?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Nobody burned it down, did they?’ She shook her head. ‘Then you got a home to go to. Where ya goin now?’ She felt a rage rising in her that her life could be observed, and her thoughts forced into the shape of answers by the words of an illiterate head and shoulders. ‘Who the fucking hell are you to be asking me all these questions?’ she shouted, feeling grubby and disgusting. He grinned. ‘Who the fuckinell am I? I’m Sam. I live here with my sister. Come in and meet her, if she’s fuckin out of bed. She’s a bloody trollop, you might as well know that for starters.’

Annie’s letter to Lucy When I saw the postmark on your letter I put it in the fire. I wish to be reminded of nothing in that town. I left it saying good riddance as I leaned out of the coach. My mind was distorted by expecting big things. Indifference makes things clearer than hope ever did. Gordon works, mostly cutting sleepers or fence posts. There is a poet in that boy, pleading to get out. His sensitivity tears at me. He’s big and the work makes his muscles ripple, but the part of him that feels can’t find words. He’s read the journals we kept at the tree house and he asks me to tell him why things happened as they did. I tell him he knows as much as he needs to know. He saw his father’s body carried by his brothers. He saw them dump Giles in the hole. He asks about the war and I tell him that nothing so dreadful happened in France that his brothers couldn’t have found stomach to do it. He asks if I think he has to kill them when they come back, because he’s obsessed with them. I tell him they’ll come back when mischief gives them a reason, and they’ll be spoiling for a fight, and he’s not to be the object of their hatred. I tell him that to fight them is to be like them, and he’s to find another path. He squeezes his head with his big hands and declares he’ll go mad if someone doesn’t give him answers, and an outlet.

262 Doll is lovely. She put the three bits of blanket away when she saw how they provoked Gordon. He thinks his brothers have been made men by what they’ve done and what he wants is a virtuous, poetic access to that - he hopes - blessed state. Sam is writing his first words. He’s no scholar but he’ll find a way in the world. He remembers that we once lived somewhere else, but not where it was. The closest he can get is a memory of pressing against a tree the day his brothers went away. If you write to me again, let it be from another place. I can’t stop you searching but I don’t want to know what you find. I have disowned my past. Life is like a torrent that carves out a valley. It rushes through, in all its power, but, being fluid, it’s shapeless. Shape is the legacy it leaves in the earth it worked on. Character resides in the thing affected, not the force. Your father rumbles up there occasionally. Good riddance, I say, but you, I know, wish him better. Listen for him, when you can, and give him what you can. Come back only when you do it for a necessity you’re proud of. Annie Wainwright

Sam’s sister was called Flo. She was a big, buxom, blonde. A true appraisal of mankind was housed, she was convinced, beneath her cas- cading hair, held in piles by elaborately vulgar combs. ‘I watch’em goin past on racedays, eyes gleaming with all the money they think they’re goin to make. If they win a bit, they finish up here with me.’ ‘Here? You do it here?’ Juliet asked. ‘Course. It’s handy. Just over the road, more or less. Don’t interrupt. And if they lose, and they’re a little bit smart, they keep back a bit so they can still finish up here with me. Now, let’s have a look at ya. Ya got looks, good education ... ‘ ‘Only year eleven.’ ‘I toldya, don’t interrupt. Y’ll be able to write a book about’em when y’ve got to know’em. Don’t worry, they really like to talk, some of

263 them, we charge’em by time, that’s how we make most of our money. Listenin to’em. People wouldn’t believe some of the stories they tellya, if y’wrote’em down. But I reckon that’s what y’re going to do. Y’re gonna make the book of my life, out of my experiences and yours. It’s gonna be a best seller. Can’t miss!’ Juliet was dismayed at the idea of ‘working’ with Flo. ‘Hang on, I need to think about this!’ ‘Think allya like, y’got no bloody options, haveya? Seriously. Y’not livin here without payin some rent. Share of the kitty. No, don’t get that look on ya face, you can’t go back to that shed. Less ya want to be dead within a coupla months. Ya bloody lucky ya got through one night. Remind me to tellya some of the things that’s happened down there. One night when my tongue’s loose. Seriously.’ ‘You want me to ... er ... do what you do?’ Flo looked at the stranger and raised her eyebrows to put the question. ‘Why not? Ya think ya better than us that do it, or ya scared?’ Juliet flushed, surprised by the confidence with which it had been put to her. ‘I think I’ve been brought up to think that those who do it lose their self esteem. They come to think they’re worthless.’ Flo tossed the layers of interwoven blondness. ‘Y’not worthless, let me tellya. Ya worth sixty dollars an hour, of which ya get twenty five, I get twenty five, and Sam and his mates get ten. For protection, y’understand. Self esteem? My dear ... what’sya name?’ ‘Juliet.’ Giving her name to Flo was a surrender of self that hadn’t taken place in the weeks since she’d left home. ‘Take my word for it, Juliet, when ya can look back on a couple of hundred of the Romeos ya gonna have, and ya compare yaself with them, y’ll have no problems at all, let me tellya, with self esteem. Not one!’ Juliet knew she was clutching as she made the downhill slide. ‘But won’t I ... don’t you ...’ She didn’t know how to frame her question without either committing herself, or downgrading Flo, whose home sheltered her, and might continue to do so.

264 ‘Ya getting tangled, because ya scared. Ya never thought ya’d finish up doin this. Now, just say it simply. What’s ya question, Juliet?’ ‘Don’t we become like the people we work with?’ Flo considered. ‘That’s a good question. What do I think about that? I suppose I never considered I was any different, really. Just a bit smarter? No, not so much that I’m smarter, I’m just not so bloody stupid as most of ’em, that’s all. Y’got anything else ya wanta ask me?’ Juliet, mouth open, could find nothing to say. ‘Don’t let me rushya. Ya got till tonight to think about it.’

Lucy’s journal The town had a holiday for the Show. The sisters went, carefully shepherded by members of the laity, and were presented briefly over afternoon tea to the Monsignor and his guest, the Bishop of the diocese. This deity actually showed interest in the trio, kept well to the periphery, of Brigida, little Bobby and me. I could see him gesturing at us, making inquiries. I also had an uncanny feeling that Bobby’s real mother was somewhere in the marquee. Cows were mooing, bulls were bellowing and horses were neighing in the sheds nearby. There were sheep baaing and dogs barking, and the flowers in vases on every table were amazing. There were cakes and dainty sandwiches and cordial and I suspect there was a special little hamper with something stronger for the Monsignor and the Bishop, both of whom had a flushed, purple jollity about them. It was carefully explained to people, to save me embarrassment, that the baby in its pram was a foundling and not my natural child. Sister Brigida told people this as if it gave me special status. For my part, I’d much rather have given birth to him myself, for I loved him dearly by then, though I knew that once he grew a little older he would no longer be allowed to live in the women’s world of the convent. So my association with Bobby had a limit. Then a nun came across and Bobby, Brigida and I were led before the bishop, who took Bobby out of his pram. He had to know the child’s name, and whose choice it had been, and I told him, untruthfully, that it had been mine, because to do

265 otherwise was to admit that I knew who the real mother was, and that, I could see, was forming a delightful guessing game for the faithful gathered there in the so-called family of the church. Two people had sinned grievously, by succumbing to sexual desire, and were now carrying the curse of a secret which the whole town, and particularly the pretenders to virtue, were dying to ferret out. I knew that when the bishop’s show of affection was completed, and I turned to move away, I must not let my eyes betray whose body had swollen and strained in giving birth, yet I felt that person was near, watching me with envy. The bishop gave me back the boy and I turned. The girl who’d brought him to the convent was behind me, looking as if she’d wandered into the tent. I gave her all I could give her, a prolonged look at her boy while I made a pretence of rearranging the pillows in the pram. ‘Hold him, would you?’ I said, pretending that what I was doing needed both hands. When she gave him back to me, I felt between us the wid- est gap in the world, between the natural mother and the woman who does the job for love or duty. I wanted to drag down the bishop, the nuns, the monsignor, the priests, and the naves full of deluded souls the world over, who could accept the overruling of the flood of demand, of need, of yearning, of frustration, that was pouring from that girl. Could I alone feel it? I hoped so, because betraying her to the tent full of guilt-seekers was the last of my wishes. I wondered how long it might be before I could grant her a second chance to hold her child.

Juliet’s first client entered her as the first race was starting. ‘I like to have one on me way to the course,’ he told her. ‘It helps me pick’em better.’ He was a jockey-sized man who did it standing up. ‘Just open your legs a bit more, would you love. I see you’re new to this.’ His head pressed against her breast and he gripped her hip hard as he climaxed. ‘I just like to stay inya a minute. Stand still.’ He was soon tossing the condom in a discreetly placed bin. ‘Whatsya name?’

266 ‘Juliet.’ She wished at once that she’d said something else, but he was grinning. ‘Not a very good name for this business, eh? I’ll tellya what I’ll do. I’ll put a bit on forya in the second, same as I back for myself. Could be a little bonus at the end of the day, eh?’ She realised he’d be back at the end of the day’s racing, and would ask for her. When he’d gone, she felt sick; this cocky little man with the long, thin penis had made a booking for her body. His mini-shadow hung across the rest of her day. She went into the hall, where Sam had his mug of milky coffee on the table that served as Flo’s reception. ‘Howareya?’ he said. ‘All right?’ ‘I’m not all right,’ she said. ‘You realise I don’t have to do this!’ ‘That’s true.’ He didn’t look up from his paper; he was picking his bets for the afternoon. ‘I don’t have to do it! Sam! Fuck you, Sam!’ ‘Lot of funny characters come in here,’ he said. He grinned, remembering. ‘Jeezus, weirdos. They’ll stand where you are tellin me all the things they’re gonna do, and how they’re gonna make big fellas of themselves, and the more they try to convince you, the more you know they are never gonna do it. Born losers, the fuckin lot.’ She flushed. ‘I’m going for a walk.’ Cars were still making their way to the course, passengers full of anticipation. I have sold myself, Juliet thought. I gave up the place in the world that I inherited and if you do that, you go to the bottom of the pack because nobody’s going to give you their spot on the way down. The reason I’m revolted by what I’ve just done is that I still think I’m Juliet Courtney Morris, with money and comfort at the tips of my fingers. It’s not there any more. I’m calling myself Judy. I’ll take Flo’s family name, whatever it is. I’m going to make my way up again, but I’m going to do it by the rules they play by down here. Humility’s going to hurt, but it’s not going to last, because I’m fighting for air now. Space. One rung on the ladder and then the next and I don’t care who falls off as I climb.

267 She walked for two hours. When she got back there was a big Romanian there, built like a weightlifter. Sam introduced her as Juliet; she corrected him. ‘Judy.’ The big man told her to present herself bum first on the edge of the bed. He pushed into her in the manner of bull on cow. His big hands reached under her and he squeezed her tits as he thrust, as if to express the milk she ought to have. Angrily she grabbed his hands, but he squeezed harder. ‘Don’t call little Sammy in, I could push him off like a feather. Just relax. It’s natural. I wouldn’t do anything unnatural.’ He breathed heavily as he worked, in and out, in and out, until a measured excitement ran through those parts of his body in contact with her. It’s what he does for relaxation, she thought: the paradox being that he was right about it being natural. It merely ignored her existence except as a thing impaled by his desire. ‘You could just possibly become a real man,’ she said, as he pulled on his pants without bothering to wipe himself. ‘You get a better man than me, you let me know.’ Two horny high school boys, full of curiosity about women, and hatred. A businessman who slipped in and out of the house discreetly. An Indian doctor who made her sit beside him for ages, holding her white hand with his black. A drunken Maori spoiling for a fight. The jockey back again, with a hundred and twenty dollars, ‘Just for Juliet, my favourite. I’m gonna ride the favourite home tonight. I tellya what, I’ll be in front all the way.’ About ten Flo told her she could knock off. ‘You’re not used to it. You’ll be a bit sore tomorrow. Take her out for a drink, Sam. Get your mate Alex. Tell him she’s not for him, he’s lookin after her. He’s not a bad lad,’ she told Judy/Juliet. ‘More cheek than a baby’s bottom. He’ll end up in Pentridge but he’s a lotta fun.’ An hour later a bewildered Juliet, telling everyone her name was Judy, was going through the motions of rageing at the Cabriolet in King Street, squired by Sam and Alex, given a tactfully limited number of drinks, and laughing at their ridiculous jokes, their mimicry, their

268 conviction that the world was so ill-directed in its meaninglessness that it wasn’t worthwhile doing anything except giving your self respect an occasional polish, as your selling point. You always needed a selling point, or you were stuffed, mate, stuffed!

Lucy’s journal Natural mothers are smarter and more devious than foster mothers. There was an extraordinary scene one morning when Mother Therese, who was comparatively new to the town, summoned Sister Brigida, Bobby and me to the little office from which she held sway. Michael Roche was there, and his eyes told me to remain a stranger. Mr Roche had heard, our superior told us, that we had a foundling, and had expressed the desire to give the child a good start. Bobby was to go that morning to Mr Roche’s home, where he’d employed a young girl to look after him. I wouldn’t have been allowed to ask who she was, but I didn’t need to. The young girl’s brother - more evidence of Mr Roche’s goodness - was going to work on the farm too, to give support. He’d have his meals in the house and sleep in the shed. As chance would have it, this young man was called Bobby too. He might have to become Robert. His strength was going to be invaluable to Mr Roche whose health wasn’t what it had been. Bobby would have a lovely room and Mr Roche’s discovery, lucky girl, would have the room beside it. Sister Brigida would be relieved of her duties, and I should consider whether I had a vocation for the convent, or felt more at home in the secular world. So Bobby’s mother would have her lover at hand, and Mr Roche could exercise his superior pleasures by calling her across the hall. She’d be having another baby before long and there’d be a conflict about whose it was. Bobby senior, not yet out of his teens, would be driven out, and Mr Roche would have the surrogate daughter and grand daughter his peace of mind required. This new arrangement would drive out his real needs because, without me to wrestle him, truth against lies, he couldn’t face what he had to do.

269 And my mother, his real grand daughter, didn’t want him anyway, had in fact built her character on denial. The burden of living honestly had been handed squarely to me. Mother Therese suggested that as I was familiar with Bobby, it would be good for me to work with the young foster mother for a few days until she and the child had become used to each other. Sister Brigida, of course, knew who Roche was from the night, years ago, when he’d brought the young Annie to the convent’s care; I saw to the heart of the situation, and Roche knew very well that I did. Mother Therese, even though she must have sensed that there were peculiar aspects to what was going on, was firm in her position that the transaction must proceed as ordered. She saw, too, that I was rebellious. ‘This may not be easy for you because you’ve grown attached to the boy, but it’s God working in his mysterious way. Mr Roche lost a daughter many years ago, and he wants to do something for the child that’s been placed in our hands. To show his thanks to God for allowing him to perform this goodness, he’s going to help us build the extension to our chapel that we’ve long desired to do.’ So that was that. I asked Mother Therese a question pointed enough to satisfy my aggression, but natural enough not to challenge the artifice that she’d been persuaded to construct. ‘What family name will Bobby take?’ Mr Roche looked uncomfortable. Sister Brigida was intensely curious. I waited for the last and no doubt biggest of their lies. ‘We’ve decided to mark the goodness and devotion you’ve put into Bobby’s care by giving him your name. He’ll be Bobby, or maybe he’ll have to become Robert, Wright. I hope - she said the word with the intensity that brooked no disobedience - you’ve no objection?’ I might have been robbed of my name, but not of my pride. I said, ‘I knew I’d lose Bobby one day, but I didn’t expect it so soon. So if the cord’s to be cut, let’s do it swiftly. With your permission, and with your assistance, for I’ve no money at all, not a penny, I’ll catch this

270 afternoon’s train to Melbourne.’ Mother Therese was furious at being thwarted, but Mr Roche put out a hand to quieten her. ‘You shall have whatever you need Lucy. There’s a natural mother of this child, somewhere, who would want me to assist you in every way I could.’ That was how I lost the only child I ever had.

271 11 In which some of our characters hear the spirits sing, and the ocean plays a cruel trick on others

Annie Wainwright, to Lucy, May, 1929 My daughter, join me in mourning. The tree house has been destroyed. Your brothers came out with malice in their hearts and set alight to it. They had oil to start a quick, hot fire, and horses to help them drag logs beside it. Where we ate and slept for my years of child-bearing, there is only a black scar. There is a mill at the White Bridge now. The workers sometimes go past, to Swifts Creek. Tales were invented. A new generation jeered at the tree house. Your brothers, unwilling to be the butt of ridicule, struck at their origins, striking also at me. I am a shell, only, of the woman who came up the long range and camped where our farm was going to be. With fiendish energy I helped Giles bring down the trees, terrified because he insisted that we lie where they would fall. That was my first ordeal. Fire came later when flames crowned the ranges, leaping from the waterfall to the mountain, the sky full of incendiary gases, flame sputtering in a swirl of suffocating smoke. That was when I knew that if the world was mad, then all I had to retreat to was the stillness at my centre: that and my fertility. The tree house has been burned. They piled on it dead trees. Giles had been rumbling for days; I should have been warned. When there were paroxysms of thunder and the earth shook, I knew something was wrong. It was dark, and drifts of smoke made the track obscure, and when I detected no gum leaves in the smell, I knew what was burning. Dawn had entered the eastern sky when I got to the clearing. The

272 flames were high as the tallest trees, laughing and dancing while your brothers lay sodden with rum. ‘Here’s the old lady!’ they yelled, laughing themselves sick. I snatched their bottle and hurled it in the fire, but George dived into a box for another. When they started swigging, I went to the graves: Hope, Nick, Prudence, Faith, Mercy and Charity. When I called my sons - as I have to acknowledge them - they came, after a time, obscenely drunk but in no way forgetful of their purpose. George said, ‘We’ve no quarrel with those ones, mother, nor with you. It’s him we’re wiping out! Every trace!’ And he pointed to the shaft. ‘You’ve come at the right time,’ he said. ‘We’re waiting for sun-up!’ They hurled more branches into the flames, trying to make them higher. Nothing would divert them. Robert picked up a rag and tipped kerosene on it, then wiped his hair; his laughing siblings snatched a burning branch and passed it over his scalp, setting it alight. I rushed at him, beating his head with my hands, not that I wanted to stop him damaging such brain as he had in there, but because his mockery forced me to take sides with Giles. I smothered his burning hair, but he laughed wickedly, and I knew there was something else. They’d found some rags that had once been his clothes, his boots, his axe, his augur, his gold pan, his mattock and a host of other things that had been his. These they flung into the flames, one by one, with a shower of sparks rising on each occasion. The remnants of clothing, and his oilskin coat, were last. It seemed to me that the fire howled in as great a frenzy as they did at this destruction, and I felt complicit because I’d done the same to his weapons - the gun and the whip - as you, my daughter, will not have forgotten. I want you to share my mourning. You will have the courage, as I have not, to speak to the spirit in the shaft. I was powerless to stop them. Lucy, come. After flames, there is the redemption of love. You alone did I love properly. Your welcome here, and my need for you, will never fade.

273 Juliet was always Judy, to Flo, Sam and the customers, but when, after the races one Saturday, a tall tanned young man of about thirty entered the brothel saying ‘Hi, I’m Jesse, who are you?’, she was surprised to hear herself say ‘Juliet.’ Flo, in the hallway, and Sam, at the table, looked up. As her response to their curiosity she gave this man an appraising look, indicating to Flo and Sam that he was hers to look after. In the room where she did business, the man said, ‘What was all that about your name?’ Blocking, she said, ‘Where are you from?’ ‘FNQ.’ ‘What?’ ‘Far north Queensland.’ ‘Hence the tan?’ ‘And the loneliness, the laid-back attitude, the fact that I don’t wear a watch.’ ‘And your need to come here?’ ‘That. My need to see my mum occasionally.’ ‘No dad?’ ‘He was killed in an air crash before I was born. Bottom of the Pacific, as far as anyone knows. He was a Yank. Shouldn’t hold that against him I suppose. Any Yanks come here?’ She shook her head. ‘Foreigners?’ She felt that this conversation had a long way to go; that he would come back, and that, given encouragement, she might do something impulsive with him. ‘Foreigners,’ she said, ‘are strangers to us: but do they seem strange to themselves?’ ‘That’s a good question. A lot of people don’t know much about themselves. By your definition, they’re foreigners.’ She felt a current starting to move her in a direction she couldn’t foresee. ‘Could anyone who worked in a place like this not be a stranger to herself ? I couldn’t do what I do if I didn’t pretend it wasn’t actually happening to me.’

274 He looked at her with interest. ‘Let’s not go ahead with this. I want you to meet me tomorrow. We’ll do something together. How’s that with you?’ ‘Flo won’t let me. Sam, out there at the table, might look pretty relaxed, but he’ll punch me up if I don’t work when they want me.’ ‘When are you leaving this place?’ ‘When I’ve got somewhere to go.’ ‘How about a tropical island?’ ‘How about a fuck for fifty dollars!’ Frustration and despair ran through her. ‘Don’t dangle fantasies in front of me when you can’t deliver! I’m never going to get out of this! I’m only seventeen and I’m stuck!’ Seeing that she was about to cry, he took her by the wrist. ‘Don’t break down. You have to hold on a little longer. Until I convince you. That’s what has to happen, isn’t it. You’ve reached the point where you can’t let one thing go unless there’s something to replace it?’ Between hope and despair, she muttered, ‘Trust, that’s what I want. Certainty. Not this terrible feeling that everything’s stacked against me. You wouldn’t be able to do anything about that. It’s too big for you. What’s your name again?’ ‘Jesse, Juliet. Juliet. Juliet.’ The sound of her name was a tender pleading. ‘Reclaim yourself.’ He considered her. ‘You’re not sure. You need time to convince yourself. How soon can I come back?’ Trying to protect herself against the damage that might follow commitment, she said, ‘You can come back whenever you like. Flo’ll fix you up!’ ‘Not interested in Flo. How soon can I come back?’ Thinking that it would show his pressing to be only a fickle impulse, she swallowed hard and said, ‘A month!’ He let go her wrist and ran his fingers across the back of her hand. ‘A month it is. To the day.’

Annie Wainwright to Lucy, May 1929 The flames subsided, but the burning timber glowed no less brightly. My boys lay on the ground. Flies crawled over their eyes. Their orgy had exhausted them, but they’d stay

275 for as long as it took to reduce the trunks to charcoal. They had plenty of rum. I wanted to leave the clearing, but which way to go? There was silence from Mount Delusion; Giles was refusing me, or perhaps he was searching through that underworld, which resembles what I know of this life, for more evidence of his superiority. His unwillingness to give up his identity is somehow your responsibility more than mine. I took the track that brought the teachers to us, and Curcio the miner, and the second Mrs Hurley. Not so many people, really, apart from ourselves, but as I neared the White Bridge I found the bush full of spirit people, and as I began the descent we made that day in the cart, they accompanied me. When I stopped, they stopped, eyes lowered in compassion. Some of them, high on a ridge, were singing. They walked with me all the way; more were bathing in the creek at the back of the house. Their bodies, old and young, fresh or distorted by age, were transparent. Some girls, black as Indians but pellucid, were on the verandah, silent, deferring: inside, by the stove, beside my vacant chair, were the flame women who negotiated your birth. I told them that I was nothing but an ocean of grief, and that they would respect me by remaining silent. After thinking about what was was troubling me, I told them, ‘I’m still bonded to Giles. I can’t marry again, though I’ve been asked. I’m beyond the time of conceiving children. I’ve slipped off the mountain, but I’m unable to go further. My daughter’s escape,’ I told them, ‘has reached its furthest point.’ Nothing in your letters, my daughter, tells me that you’ve found anyone worthy of sharing your life. Customers in a bookshop don’t make a life. Your stirrings of passion have led to disappointment because you are attracted to impossible people. Your identity was forged on the range where your brothers, for all I know, are still stoking the fire of their evil with alcohol. They will become coarse, embittered old men. And you, my daughter? Your life lies here, Lucy mine. Nowhere else can it flourish. You will surpass us, your mother and I, however briefly: there will be happiness for you, before the long years of despair.

276 When they saw that I was weary of my desolation, the flame women put this pad on the table, this pen. When I addressed you, they filed gravely from the room. Those on the verandah followed, but the distant sound of singing is still in my ears as I write, my daughter. Your home is here. You can live in no other place.

Flo decided Juliet could have a few hours at the races - if she went with Sam and Alex. Juliet picked the winner of the first race and won forty dollars. Alex was impressed. Handing her his fieldglasses, he told her to examine the mounting yard and tell him who she fancied for the second. Adjusting the lenses, she pulled a section of the crowd into focus, and gasped: she was looking at Jesse, and an older woman. She felt a pang of jealousy before realising that it must be his mother. ‘Who’re you goin for?’ Alex wanted to know. ‘Just a minute.’ In sighting this much desired figure when he couldn’t know she was near, she felt vulnerable; he surely had no need of her? He’d have dinner that night with his mother without sparing her a thought. She must have had him quite young, Juliet decided: there was a certainty about the woman’s face - Karen’s face - that told Juliet she’d never done anything that wasn’t right for her, suffering included. Juliet longed to meet this mother, and be accepted. ‘Jesus!’ Alex said. ‘You don’t have to study their pedigree, it’s ya gut reaction I wanta know.’ Juliet stared hard at the man on whom, she realised, her hopes were fixed. Then it crossed her mind: if she could pick someone out of a crowd for study, mightn’t there be someone focussing on her, desiring her perhaps, seeing into her secret existence? She trembled, afraid that her mother might be at the course. She put the glasses down. ‘So what’s the verdict?’ Alex said. ‘Who’re we goin for?’ To keep him out of her thoughts, Juliet said ‘Seven. Back number seven.’ Alex snatched the glasses. ‘Number seven! Looks like a bloody old crock to me. It’s got funny knees! What’s it called?’ He looked at his racebook. Juliet took the glasses again and had to agree, looking at the horses for the first time, that she’d chosen badly. ‘Island Queen’

277 Alex said. ‘Nice name. All right, here goes. But by Jesus, Judy, if it doesn’t win, y’re in deep fuckin shit!’ Alex and Sam went to the betting ring. Juliet scanned the crowd again, but Jesse and his mother had moved. The men came back as the race started. Island Queen was last as they passed the post the first time. At the back of the course it was three lengths behind the field. Alex was rampant. ‘I have got a hundred fuckin dollars on that fuckin dope of a horse, Judy, and what’s it gonna do? Run off the course and have a swim in the river, the way it’s travelling.’ But the despised animal sprang to life a few hundred metres from home and came down the outside with a powerful run. ‘Island Queen! Island Queen!’ Alex shouted, and Sam joined in. ‘Island Queen!’ Alex dug Juliet in the ribs. ‘Barrack, fuckya!’ so Juliet called ‘Island Queen’ as loudly and often as they did. The rank outsider thundered past the post ‘two lengths clear and fuckin pullin up’ Alex yelled. He flung his arms around Juliet and slobbered kisses on her cheeks. Then he thought of his money. ‘How much is sixty to one on a hundred dollars? Quick, I’m no good at figures. How much is it?’ A minute later he was taking the rubber band off a roll of notes, and pressing some of them on Juliet. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she told him, ‘I don’t need it,’ but Alex was adamant. ‘Course ya bloody need it, what else’veya got, except one terrific figure?’ He squeezed her left breast as if it was common property, then, in a sudden access of humility, stooped and kissed it, softly, quietly, on the nipple. Pushing him gently away, she felt that something had changed. When he gave her a thousand dollars, counting carefully, she put the money in her bag, gave it to Alex to hold, and lifted the glasses for another look at the crowd. The faces at the mounting yard, happy, dejected, were all strangers.

Annie Wainwright to Lucy, May 1929 One of the workers at the White Bridge is called Bill. On his way to Swifts Creek yesterday, he told me the boys had gone. ‘I buried their bottles,’ he said, and I knew that

278 respect for others was central to his being. ‘They did quite a job. Very thorough.’ ‘What they can’t get rid of,’ I told him, ‘are the worst traits of his character.’ Then he challenged me. ‘Tell me about the good bits.’ I had a feeling he had things to show me, but he needed to know if I wanted to see them. So I told him about our life in the clearing. Of Giles moaning when he wanted the cows for milking. Of the dogs jumping to greet him when he came back from his mountain. Of my expectation, every time he went, that he might come back changed. Of the time that he came back needing to go away. Of our silent speech, and the paralysing power of his anger. Of his fear, when he decided to go to Cornwall, that this second journey of his life might not lead him back to our clearing. Of his question, so unmanning for him: would I be there when he returned, waiting? ‘That was when they got him?’ he said. I told Bill, my daughter, how you found his bag where the track crosses the nape of the mountain’s neck; how, on the day when we left, we visited the mountain. I could see that Bill, so gentle, so poetically self-contained, had explored the mountain himself and wanted to talk about it. ‘It’s an unusual place,’ he said, feeling his way. ‘You should talk to my daughter,’ I told him. ‘She understands it better than I do.’ He left it there. ‘Tell me more about him.’ I told him that Giles had had no other woman but myself, but that wasn’t the line he wanted to pursue. ‘Could he see the spirit people? Ever? Even just occasionally?’ I was slow to answer. His question had said the only thing that needed to be said. He’d seen them too. My lips parted in pleasure and closed in surprise. When I said ‘You too?’ he smiled. His fellow workers would have thought him soft in the head. It’s in softness that we create. I told him, my daughter, the circumstances of your birth. ‘You’ve been very fortunate,’ he said.

279 I asked him to show me what he’d brought. While he was outside, I put wood in the stove, not letting myself conjecture. He came back with a hessian bag, which he put on the table. ‘Just two things,’ he said. ‘I thought you might like to have them.’ Do you remember the thermometer that hung on the back of the door? He’d found the little strip of copper calibrated with the tempera- tures. At thirty two degrees it said, ‘Freezing’. And at two hundred and twelve it declared with sweet simplicity, ‘Water boils’. ‘Some things never change,’ he said, handing it to me. Bill’s other gift was the heavy, angry-looking head of Giles’ mattock. He’d forged it himself on a bed of charcoal, whittled a branch for a handle, and wielded it in the vegetable garden. The blade reached out in a curve and rested on my table. ‘He could never grow tomatoes,’ I told Bill. ‘Year after year they wouldn’t do any good.’ His eyes grew bright. ‘We all have to have a failing!’ I nodded, pleasantly close to him, and I thought of you, my daughter. Come back. The mattock and the thermometer will be yours. You must feel my need to see life pass through you. I was always expendable, and I have been spent. Refuse no longer what life wants from you. Let me know the arrangements for your return. Amen, I say, amen.

A month to the day, Jesse returned to Flo’s brothel. Juliet agreed to meet him the following morning, at the milk bar two streets away. As Jesse left, Sam said, ‘That was a quick one mate!’ Jesse could hardly restrain his triumph. ‘Very worthwhile though! Seeya.’ He had a taxi waiting to take them to the airport. An hour later, in the cabin of an Ansett Boeing, Juliet said, ‘I can’t believe this is happening. You know? I’m going wherever you’re taking me, and I don’t even have a toothbrush!’ ‘Isn’t that the way to be?’ She found pleasure in savouring her condition of nullity and hope; yet she knew that she was voyaging strongly now. As she looked out the

280 window, somewhere above the Snowy Mountains where her father had gone as a young man, she saw another aeroplane flying in the opposite direction. The sum of two speeds meant the planes had eye contact only briefly; when it was gone, that other plane, she felt affirmed. Her chance had appeared, and been taken. She hoped Flo’s customers would exit quickly from her mind. Jesse felt her stiffen, and said, ‘Would you like me to tell you about the island?’ ‘No. I’m with you, and I’m travelling. That’s enough. I’ll know all about it when I get there.’ Jesse chuckled. ‘It’ll take a while to get acclimatised. But you won’t be sorry. I promise you, you will never, ever, be sorry you did this!’ Lords of creation, they heard the pilot say that if they looked out the right hand side, they’d see the nation’s capital. The thought of any power but the mutuality of trust made them laugh. Jesse attracted a hostess by the happiness in his eyes, and asked her to get them a drink.

Lucy’s journal It took me ten years to find my way home, ten years of postponing the greatest happiness I ever knew.

The plane flew along the coast, straddling land and ocean. As it approached Cairns, the pilot veered over the sea. Juliet, beside a window, found herself looking at cloudless sky. Fearing that the pilot was turning back, she said angrily ‘Why’s he doing this?’ Reassurance flowed from his hand to hers. ‘He’ll swing around in a minute.’ And this time Juliet was looking down at water, hanging in the air as the plane prepared to land. She had an out of body experience as the wheels touched ground: an expression of wonderment mixed with urgency was stealing across her face. Jesse was a total stranger; it occurred to her, as psyche and body rejoined, that she didn’t know his family name, nor did he know hers. Neither could allocate a social place to the other, yet they were going to his island. Her mind racing, as the reverse thrust of jet engines made the plane shudder, she felt that there was, ahead of

281 her, a state of mind she had yet to reach, but, once having found it, the uncleanliness of the brothel would disappear, and the circumstances of her father’s death would no longer seem inadmissible.

She went to the bank while he got supplies. When he came out of the supermarket, he found her in a rage. ‘They wouldn’t let me start an account because I couldn’t prove my identity. I said, this is not real. You are joking, but no, they kept asking me all these dumb questions. Did I have a driver’s licence? Passport? A Medicare card? I told them I had a thousand dollars, and all they had to do was start an account and stop hassling me! Sorry, it’s the rules, don’t blame us! I made so much noise the manager came out and I said - I know it was the wrong thing to say, but I was really worked up - I said, if I robbed this bank, would the cops say we can’t sling you in jail because we don’t know who you are? Bull shit! He tried to be nice and smarmy and he asked me what I was doing up here. I said I’m going to live on an island with my boyfriend, and he said perhaps we could get an identification through you, and he wanted to know who you were, and I told him ‘Jesse’ and he said ‘Jesse who?’ and I said I don’t have to tell you that, you’re like the fucking police interrogating someone, you’re supposed to help and what are you doing for me? Sweet fuck all!’ ‘Don’t worry about it. There’s plenty of banks.’ It was only when he spoke that she realised the depth of her anger. ‘I just want to go back in there and rip the place apart. I don’t have to prove who I am to them.’ ‘They get people trying to launder drug money.’ His unconcern rankled with her. ‘Well, do I look like I run drugs?’ He looked at her with an infuriating patience, and shook his head. ‘So why don’t they open the account like I said?’ ‘Because they’re part of the money system, and we’re opting out. Let’s get a taxi to the boat. I don’t feel like carrying all this.’

282 Juliet was surprised by the launch, an elegant nineteen footer with ‘The Bulrushes’ on the stern. ‘What’s the name supposed to mean?’ ‘It’s where they found Moses. Pharaoh’s daughter. You know that story?’ She nodded. ‘How’s it fit the boat?’ ‘Maybe it doesn’t.’ She looked puzzled. ‘Well, maybe Moses was her real son, but they had to cover something, so they pretended to find him. What I’m getting at is that there’s the truth, and the story, and you’re never quite sure which you’re getting, or which is which.’ Thinking of her exit from the family home, Juliet said, ‘I can relate to that.’ ‘Let’s get these things on board.’ She’d already noticed that the beach was muddy, and the water, chopped up by a south-east breeze, was unclear. She had a feeling that paradise might disappoint. The smell of the engine, when it started, displeased her. ‘I only use this to get in and out quickly. This is my bus. My sportscar’s out there.’ He waved at the pylons marking the entry to the ocean. ‘You’ll love it.’ She was aware, as the pylons receded, that the anger was still inside her, but irrelevant to the world she was entering. She felt that Jesse’s disconcerting calm came from knowing himself in relation to the element on which they were travelling. Seabirds perched on the last pylon, somehow conveying that winds and currents, not places, were their home. She said to Jesse, ‘Let me steer for a while.’

Looking to the left, which she felt she would never learn to call port, she saw something white apparently lying on the sea. It troubled her, because it conflicted with common sense. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Sand cay.’ ‘What’s a sand cay? Is it floating there?’ He knew better than to patronise. ‘It’s a spot where the reef ’s close to the surface, and catches

283 sand. It could disappear after a storm, maybe turn up somewhere else.’ Wandering islands; what next? ‘Can we go and look at it?’ ‘There’s a better one ahead. About ten minutes.’ When The Bulrushes left the deep water, and drifted in the turquoise waters of the reef, she felt an adjustment take place in her being. Something about the place accepted her. It was as if she had reached a portal, open to anybody, beyond which there was only magic. She looked with a disbelief which was deeper than belief, on this new world of fish and coral which had welled up beneath their boat. And the white island he’d spoken of was a few hundred metres to their right, populated only by shells and some wandering gypsies which, as they drifted closer, flew somewhere else. ‘Do you want a swim?’ ‘Yes - but not yet. Is your island like that?’ ‘It would have started out something like that, but it’s bigger. Got vegetation. Some of it’s quite tall.’ ‘Started out like that? Do they grow?’ ‘Yeah, they do, really. You’ll see some where the vegetation’s just getting a grip. If they’re not dispersed by a storm, and the plants get a grip, then they stabilise. Well, as much as anything’s ever stable.’ She liked this idea of an unstable world with brief stabilities. If you learned to be like the birds, you could stay with the safe places, as they moved. ‘Do birds get killed in storms?’ ‘Oh hell yes. They really take a toll.’ ‘Let’s walk on the sand.’ He moved the boat closer, then lowered an anchor. ‘What do we do now?’ ‘Jump.’ ‘Into the water?’ Grinning, he stepped off the side into waist-deep water. She could see his feet, and his knees, as if he was standing in a bowl. ‘Catch me.’

284 ‘Just jump. It’s only sand.’ She jumped. She felt he wanted her to put an arm around him. She did it. He felt warm, and hers; something she’d not had before. ‘You’re going to be mine,’ she said. ‘You already are mine, but I’m so unsure of myself, yet, that I can’t claim you properly. You’ll have to wait a while Jesse, but I know it’ll be all right.’

As the sun lowered, an island came into view; Jesse’s eyes told Juliet they were near his home. When he lifted his hand, pointing, she had another out of body experience. This time she lifted above the water, somewhere between boat and destination. On the beach of the island, she saw, through telescopic eyes, three women waiting. Looking back, she saw The Bulrushes moving steadily from its quarter of the horizon, a crew of two bringing it from nowhere. One of the three women on the beach stood a little apart from the others. Juliet sensed that this space had been left for her. As she rejoined her body, standing on the launch, she felt her heart racing: Jesse too was aware that something had happened. ‘Where did you go, just then? In your thoughts?’ She told him about it, and how it had been her second experience of the kind that day. He accepted it flippantly, but without disbelief. ‘Could be handy if we ever get lost. Send you ahead for a bit of a scout around.’ Then he added, ‘Were you afraid?’ ‘No. It seemed quite natural.’ ‘If it seemed natural, then it was.’ She said, ‘What was it like for you, when it happened?’ ‘I’ve felt close to you all day, but particularly since you put your arm around me in the water. Suddenly, you weren’t there. For a moment I thought you must have fallen overboard, because I knew you weren’t beside me. I looked, and you were, but it was as if you were in a trance. Your eyes weren’t moving. They didn’t blink, either.’ ‘How long was I away?’ ‘About ten seconds, I’d guess. Normal time.’ ‘Do you think time can speed up, and slow down?’ ‘Nothing surer.’

285 ‘Could we age more slowly out here than people on land? If we did, we’d live longer than they did, wouldn’t we?’ ‘I’ve never been particularly concerned about how long I live. More interested in what my life’s like as I live it. There’s an ending in store for me one day, probably when I least expect it.’ ‘My father died when he least expected it.’ ‘Tell me.’ ‘Tonight, after we’ve landed. By the way, are there any people on your island?’ ‘Not a soul.’ ‘Have you ever had someone live with you out here, before?’ His answer was important; she had Flo’s customers to get rid of. ‘No. Never. In Cairns I tell people they must visit some time, but I never do anything about it. Which means I don’t really want them.’ ‘When did you decide to ask me here?’ ‘I didn’t decide, I asked.’ She considered this, and the distance to the beach. ‘When I was out of body and looking both ways, I would have been about here. Above where we are now.’ He replied slowly. ‘We’ll call this spot the viewpoint.’ She looked at him. ‘You couldn’t find it again.’ ‘On the contrary. We’ll pass it every time we go in and out.’ She wondered about this until the island came close enough to appraise. There were trees and bushes, the bright yellow-green of tropical plants. ‘Where’s the yacht?’ ‘I dragged it in with the winch. I do that when I’m going to be away a while. You’ll see it in a minute.’ As soon as the boat touched the rickety little jetty where he tied up, she rushed ashore, following drag-marks of some sort of platform which had been hauled inland, holding his sportscar, as he called it. The yacht, lying on its side in an imprisoning set of ropes, bore on its bow the name ‘Island Queen’. She rushed back. ‘This is amazing. That boat. The name, I mean. It’s time you told me a few things about yourself, like, first, who the hell are you?’

286 He tried to laugh it off. ‘Isn’t that what the bank manager wanted to know?’ She paused only a moment. ‘I suppose it was. But it’s more important than anything else in the world, and you have to tell me this very instant. I know I’m immature, but I need to know. Tell me who you are! Tell me who you are!’

They were sitting in the mushroom, a concrete structure Luke had built to fend off a cyclone, if one caught him on the island. ‘Jesse Bowden.’ The name rang a bell. ‘I’m Juliet Courtney-Morris.’ ‘Guess what? I’ve got an idea we’re related!’ ‘I think we might be.’ They looked at each other in the light of a lamp. ‘We’d better trace our families.’ He got a piece of paper that had been wrapped around a parcel, and a pencil. ‘Okay, we’ll draw up a family tree.’ An intuition told her this was wrong. ‘No.’ She wrote their two names side by side in the middle of the paper. ‘Go backwards from you, and I’ll go backwards from me. We’ll take turns.’ He was smiling. ‘This could take all night.’ ‘We’ve got all night. All day tomorrow, tomorrow night too if we like.’ Lifting her dainty fingers to point into the dark, she invoked an infinity of time that ran away from them until it reached a point where it had to cycle back to where they were, a fixed position for as long as they held together. He began. ‘My mother is Karen Bowden.’ ‘Write it down.’ He wrote ‘Karen Bowden’ on the paper at a point where it was stained slightly with the blood of beef. ‘My father was an American colonel that my mother was on with at the time. It was during the war. I’d have been minus seven or eight months when he died.’ ‘Where did he die?’ It was Jesse’s turn to point. ‘Out there somewhere. Mum never knew exactly.’ Darkness surrounded them. In the sky above, stars as

287 numerous as the spirits of the dead sent their light, over vast distances of time and space, down.

Before long they came to a name that linked them. ‘Luke.’ ‘He gave you this island?’ ‘Left it to me in his will.’ ‘Did he know he was going to die?’ ‘Mum’s sure of it.’ She told him the story of her father, Steve, being shot by an escaping gangster, and how Lily, her aunt, not that she remembered her, had come flying through the wall, pursued by a bullet. ‘Fantastic stuff! Your mum says she saw it happen?’ ‘And grandma too. They were both there. Apparently the whole house was shaking as she tried to get back to safety. Mum thinks she knew there was a bullet behind her.’ A silence fell between them. ‘A bullet behind her?’ ‘Chasing her.’ ‘My mum,’ Jesse said, after a pause, ‘says Luke knew he would die violently, and alone. Apparently, when he left his parents’ farm to come up here, he lit a big fire to destroy all traces of himself, and dropped in a hand grenade to see if it would kill him. His parents found bits of metal in the trees, and ashes all over the place.’ ‘Why did he choose you to inherit this place?’ ‘That’s not something I’m very comfortable with.’ ‘So do you know why?’ ‘It’s a line of succession from his Uncle Bill, who left him all he had, to Luke, and on to me. And I don’t want to be in that line, for all that it’s brought me.’ ‘Do you think you’re going to die violently, and alone?’ ‘I try to reconcile myself to it. I suppose we all die alone. Well, that’s the saying. But violently? I’m not sure. Luke’s Uncle Bill was a soldier. Fought in two wars, died as a third one ended. I don’t want

288 to be a soldier. Most of mum’s family are pacifists, and I think I’d be one too, put to the test. But what worries me about Luke choosing me is that he seems to have felt I’d be as solitary, as destined to be single as he was. And Bill. How can you have a line of single males? You can’t, but he was forming one when he put me in his will.’ A warmth, a certainty, welled up in her. ‘When, finally, he loved, it was someone - they’d have been cousins, wouldn’t they? - who would kill him. And vice versa. What relationship are we?’ He looked at the lines curving here and there on the butcher’s paper. ‘The way I work it out, I’m one quarter Morris, and you’re one quarter Morris. I’m a quarter Bowden and you’ve got no Bowden in you at all. So it won’t be very incestuous if you stay with me. I hope you are going to stay with me ...’ She finished it for him: ‘ ... for a very’ - she gave the words an expanding emphasis - ‘ ... long ... time!’ As they slept that night, he in his hammock and she in a bunk on the launch, their dreams encircled each other. She dreamed of a bullet of love, fired years before, perhaps in the South African war, finding her in a brothel, and killing her with joy. He dreamed of a piece of paper inscribed with a curse that exploded in a fire, bringing riches to everyone standing around. The water lapped at his island, rocking her boat, and the sun rose on a day when they would go sailing.

She said, ‘Your island’s out of sight, now.’ He corrected. ‘Our island.’ ‘Sorry. How could I have said that?’ ‘You haven’t been away from it, to come back. Coming back is when you know it’s yours.’ She thought about this. ‘I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think you’ve given it to me yet. You’ve let me land. I’m the first person you’ve let do that. But you’re still cautious, in some way. Probably wondering, deep down, if I’m going to take it off you.’

289 ‘While we’re on that subject, Luke didn’t have any ownership papers, or anything like that. He just claimed it. Possession, in his case, was all ten points of the law.’ She was still thoughtful. ‘I’m wondering how I’ll know the moment when you let me share it with you.’ He studied the billow of the sail, and changed tack slightly. ‘I’ll tell you what! I’ll steer on the way out, and you can bring us back! If you can find it, it’s yours!’ The element of contest pleased her. ‘You’ll have to teach me to navigate.’ ‘You’ll have to work it out.’ She wondered what she had going for her: the sun, though it was moving; the direction of the breeze, though it could change; the compass at the helm, if she could remember the bearings; her watch, to give her timings: what else? He was smiling in a way that told her he would try to trick her, but wanted her to beat him. What else could she do? She could read his mind. She’d already noticed that he hardly looked at the compass, and didn’t wear a watch; he’d internalised these calculations. Taking possession of him with the antennae of her intuition, she had to suppress the desire quickening in her. She sensed after a time - normal, watch time was suspended by now - that the breeze was shifting slightly, and that he was keeping the boat at the same angle to it. Their path was a curve which he made appear a straight line. This went on until the sun was well past the midpoint of the sky, then he suggested that they eat. She’d brought fruit, and raisins, and some sharply pickled cucumber: he turned Island Queen into the wind while they ate, and let it drift; she suspected they were in a place where a current was moving them too. She tossed some pear skin into the water; he watched her watching it, unconcerned. Then she moved so she had her back to him. She could feel him trying to read her thoughts. Slipping back against the current of his mind, she guessed what he would do next. She turned to face him. ‘What’s that over there? Is that rain?’ He nodded. Taking control again, he put the boat in the path of the shower. A minute later

290 they were wet through, and visibility was only a few metres. Suddenly he had the yacht moving against the waves. The wind had shifted again, and he was using it as a chance to confuse her. Then they were out of the rain, pointed, she thought, for the so-called ocean of peace. ‘One of these days,’ he said, ‘I’m going to do the big triangle. Fiji, Auckland, Cairns again. Coming with me?’ Realising the danger of conversation to her concentration, she said slyly, ‘You might get lost.’ ‘I don’t think so. You’ve followed everything I’ve done so far, haven’t you?’ ‘I think so.’ ‘You take over now. I’ll do whatever you tell me.’ If I could make us go by the compass, she thought, I could point us straight for home, but the winds don’t let you do that; you have to use them to put you on the curve you need. She noticed some birds passing overhead, and decided they were heading for land. He smiled as she made an adjustment of the helm. They sailed for a long time in silence, then she felt a stiffening in him, appraised it, and made another adjustment. By now she was full of desire; she decided not to suppress it. ‘Come here, Jesse,’ she called. ‘Here.’ She put her hand on her thigh. He rubbed against her. She nodded. They had their first act of sexual union standing up, with her left and his right hand holding the wheel. Looking over his shoulder as they clung to each other afterwards, she saw three figures hovering in the air: her mother, her grandmother, and his mother, Karen. I have to join them, she realised: they were the trio on the island, yesterday afternoon. But they don’t want me yet, do they? The three women smiled invitingly, and disappeared. ‘I think there’s a pregnancy not far ahead,’ she said to Jesse. ‘I think we may have started it then.’

Their child was born on August 18th, 1977, in Cairns Base Hospital, and spent most of his first year on the island. They called him Don. Juliet reminded Jesse as they sat in the mushroom one night that Don

291 would need the company of other children, and that would mean moving back to land. Jesse accepted this. ‘It won’t hurt me to have a job for a while. Be an ordinary, everyday father.’ They were very happy, reading together, occasionally holding hands. Making love that night, she said to him, ‘Every night, it’s like the first time all over again ...’ ‘Though a bloody sight more comfortable!’ ‘... it’s so good I can’t believe anything can ever go wrong.’ He put his head on her shoulder. ‘Something will go wrong, because it always does. It’s just a matter of whether we can come through it, and what we’ll be like afterwards.’ Don loved the water and watched the birds for hours. Juliet played with him while Jesse worked on his yacht. She was wondering when they’d have a second child, though it would change the dynamic of their bliss, when it crossed her mind that Jesse’s Pacific trip, his triangle of excitement and lonely discovery, had to happen first. Making love that night, she whispered to him ‘What’s it going to be like when I haven’t got you?’ Kissing her breast, tasting a little of the milk she gave their boy, he said, ‘I’m not going away from you. Never.’ They held each other, deeply, unreflectively in love. ‘Only for a few weeks. While you make your big trip. Fiji, Auckland, Cairns. Back here.’ She stroked him tenderly. ‘You’re coming with me. Aren’t you?’ She moved on top of him. ‘It’s something you have to do on your own.’ She rocked on his hips, savouring him, this man who’d untwisted the bitterness she’d been carrying when they met. Flo’s brothel invaded her mind for a moment until she banished it. ‘We’ll be separated, but only by an ocean. It’ll make us closer to have been apart.’ As he touched her left breast tenderly, bringing it to his lips, she remembered Alex grabbing her at the races. ‘Distance is no problem with us,’ she said. With loving incitement he used his hands to empha- size her movement. ‘You think I should go?’ ‘When you get back, it’ll be the start of our second chapter.’

292 He felt unsettled. ‘Well, I’ve always said I would.’ ‘Go for it!’ She rose and fell on him till spasms shook her and he had to clasp her tightly to bring all the energy she was releasing into their domain of sharing. ‘I’ll be happy knowing you’re happy. It’s a way of saying you can have something besides me and Don, and then come back to us, just as much ours as ever.’ He worked on his boat a few more days, then they went to Cairns to get supplies. They studied charts, and marked where they thought he might be at the end of each day. They got another map of the ocean for her, and they rented some rooms underneath an old Queensland house, perched on piles. The people upstairs had children who became interested in Don, encouraging his efforts to walk. ‘He’ll be walking properly by the time you get back,’ Juliet told her lover. They went back and crammed all the lockers on Island Queen. Juliet said she’d spend the night on the island after he’d left, then return to Cairns in the morning. Jesse got worried. What if the motor wouldn’t start, or something went wrong? He said he’d prefer her to go first because then he’d know she and Don weren’t trapped on the island, unable to get away. There was only one solution: they must set off at the same time. So, on a mild morning, and under a cloudless sky, she put Don in The Bulrushes and started the motor, while he took Island Queen a few hundred metres offshore. Quivering with the intensity of her love, but determined to be practical, she took the launch beside the yacht, touching, then held up Don for Jesse’s inspection. He leaned over to kiss the child. He made a signal, but she’d already read his intention, that they should circle the island together. He took the yacht in a graceful loop of the island that had come to them from Luke, whose miracle it had been to bring them together after his own death, while she used the greater speed of the launch to orbit around him as he orbited the island. Then they brought their boats to kiss a last time, held each other for a moment, the child between them, then drew apart, he heading for

293 the horizon and his dream, while she pointed the launch to land. ‘Go for it!’ she called, admiring his handling of the gracious craft. ‘Go for it! You’ve always wanted it, now enjoy it. Go for it, Jesse, go for it!’

Lucy’s journal A saying of my father’s - that people become like the thing they work with - came to me on my first day at the asylum, an austerely noble building overlooking the city. One of the people I had to look after was Mister Albert, who’d been a regular at the bookshop till his mind wandered. He’d hold his head in his hands and tell me he wasn’t really mad, he’d simply been trapped in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up. A fair description, I suppose. To prove his faculties, he’d quote slabs of Shakespeare and Milton but they came out as a mish-mash. At any time of night and day he’d announce that it was Sunday and deliver a sermon. He’d been a lay preacher in the Baptist church and had always read theology. One evening he gave a long dis- sertation on why, on the day of judgment, rats would be the first creatures to enter heaven. Another time it was why all Jews were whores, even the males. On nights when the prisoners, for that was what they were in my mind, were howling for the moon, he would listen serenely, as if this was superior to any music. He had a friend who visited him occasionally: such people were rare. This friend, a blunt, simple man called Johnny, was a baker, and he brought rolls and a pot of jam for the people in Mister Albert’s section. ‘Not many luxuries make it into here,’ he used to say. He made a point of talking to me if I was on duty, and then he started bringing a thermos and sandwiches so I could have my tea break with him. I could tell he was lonely and building his hopes on me. So we sat, on stormy days and sunny, surrounded by insanity, for it was the time when the jobless were roaming the country looking for anything they could get, talking about Mister Albert when he’d been well. ‘He was a fiery preacher,’ Johnny told me. ‘He used to make me feel inspired. He used to make me want to lead a life that was filled with vision.’

294 ‘Johnny,’ I told him, ‘you are much better as you are.’ He smiled, and asked me if it would be possible for someone to like him. He meant me. He meant would I marry him. I said of course it would be possible. I pointed away from the madhouse to the suburbs of the sane. ‘Out there,’ I said, ‘there must be someone for you.’ His eyes filled with tears and I left my job at the asylum that night. Your humanity had deepened, my daughter: you were getting ready for love.

Lucy’s journal Mr McMurray gave me the job because he said horses responded to a woman’s touch. Mr McMurray kept his wife well away from the stables. One day, talking about a jockey who rode for him, he said that the little man had acquired someone to tumble in the hay. There was hay in every stall in the stables, and I suddenly knew where I stood with Mr McMurray. Often, when I was leading the horses to the beach, I’d be followed by young men asking for a ride. No matter how much or how little I liked what I saw, I responded by mounting one of the beasts and cantering away. The name of what you felt, Lucy, is pride: its ally is contempt, and it goes before a fall. My life in this hole has been one long lesson. Sometimes men who had no job watched me grooming the horses, sweeping out their stalls and putting in fresh straw. One day I noticed an old man crying when he saw me putting a nosebag on Lightning, a gelding that wouldn’t eat any other way. I went to the fence but when I got close, I found I couldn’t speak. The man was nothing but need: hungry, unshaven, with clothes that were more holes than fabric, and shoes that were scarcely more than their uppers. It upset me to look at him, because I knew he was contrasting the care these pedigreed animals got with the invisibility which was all that was allocated to him. He’d die beside a road and nobody would inform his relatives because nobody would know who they were. He was a hobo. And he grabbed my wrist with a hand like a vice, and said he was going to fuck me. ‘You,’ I told him, ‘couldn’t even drag yourself over that fence, and if you tried I’d push you back.’ I knew that if I lowered my head to bite

295 his hand he’d grab me by the hair. The strength in his grip was his last, and it was driven by desperation. ‘I’m not letting you go,’ this creature of skin and bone said. ‘If I give up on you, I’ve given up ... ’ He didn’t finish, because he saw Mr McMurray behind me. My boss moved up, and the grip slackened. I didn’t pull my hand away when I could have, because the man’s need was even greater now that he was beaten. Mr McMurray pushed him away from the fence. ‘Get outa here!’ The man took the tiniest, weakest steps. ‘Useless bastard!’ Then he said to me, ‘I’ve warned you Lucy, to call me if there’s anyone hanging around. I’ll deal with’em.’ He strode away, still full of lust. Lust for possession. The intention of never being thwarted. Shameless about overpowering the weak. He disgusted me. I went along the line of stalls and opened them, every one. Then I opened the gate that kept the horses from the road, and walked away. The old man turned, hoping I’d brought him something to eat. He smelt to high heaven. I walked straight past him to the station, and got a train, back to mother’s town. If I hated the shamelessness of the powerful, I had no pity for the weak. Strength is life. To be weak is to take the dying path, but to be soft, Lucy, is not weakness: to be soft is to be ready to receive. This I understand, now, too late.

Lucy’s journal A nursery not far from the station needed someone, but they wanted a local, not a blow-in. I told them my mother had been reared and married in their town and that I’d lived there myself. They wanted to know who my mother was, and I told them, mother, and they gave me a meal, and said I could sleep in a shed on the premises. They were good to me, but I knew I was far from becoming like the things I worked with - flowers and fruit trees and seedlings. I was twenty-eight and starting to lose my bloom. I was rough and unhappy, longing to marry. I didn’t want to push people away all my life. That was when I wrote to you, mother, that I was coming home. A message of joy from the lowland to the hills.

296 Lucy’s journal On the day the bus brought me home, the street was crowded. I realised that the spirit people were welcoming me, and that my energy made them more substantial than usual. How pleased I was to give them life! Their eyes were turned to Townsends’ hotel where a man stood with two horses, saddled for the road. I walked towards him, and the spirits began to push me forward, and currents of them occupied my body before being swept away by others crowding in. I felt that some part of the world’s history was giving birth to itself. As if unaware of these swirling spirits, the man spoke. ‘Good afternoon, Lucy. I’m Bill. I’ve got a good horse for you. He’s got the same name as me. You can call us both Bill. Your mother’s expecting you.’ And so the great climb began. Bill told me who lived in the houses, and he greeted the residents we saw with a wave. I knew that gossip would do its work, and was proud to be seen with a man I was starting to love. What fascinated me was that I knew, that for all his simple courtesy, he was teasing me by withholding something. As we rode out of town I could feel the madness of desire throbbing through me, in the form of curiosity. What was he keeping back? The spirit people bunched here and there along the road, but he took no notice, calmly talking about seasons and rivers. At Chinaman’s Bridge, I saw a band of horsemen drawn up, red-coated, with black capes buttoned to their shoulders. They formed a guard of honour as we crossed the humble bridge. Bill rode through as if they didn’t exist, while I was trembling with excitement. When we got to the end of the line, he turned his horse, and we looked back. Making sure that I was watching, he pointed, and said, ‘The plumed troop!’ He saw them too! I gave a shriek of joy, the first, full acceptance of a man I’d ever given. The cavalry waved their swords in the shining air, and shouted. When Bill kissed me, I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, the troop was gone, and we were alone together, on the road to the mountain, Bill and I, Lucy Wainwright.

297 Mine, mine: and now his. This is your hour, Lucy! Walk in it as if it had no end!

Juliet and Don got a card from Fiji, and another from New Zealand. ‘A few hairy moments getting near Auckland, but we survived. It’s a great little boat!’ With roughly hatched Xs he sent his love. Juliet looked at the postal date, and her ocean map. He was right on schedule. Coming up the east coast of Australia, Jesse thought of sending a card from Sydney, but kept going. He’d sleep for a week when he got to Cairns, if Don would let him, but while travelling, he lived on excitement. Darkness was best, sailing under the stars. One night, listening to the radio, he heard a cultivated voice: ‘Everything now in readiness. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Louis Frémaux, in the first work in tonight’s concert, the eighth symphony of Beethoven.’ Jesse smiled. He liked Beethoven. He turned up the volume and the opening phrase - Da, duh-dut, dut-dut dum - aroused the curiosity of the ocean. It crept closer to listen. Beethoven used all his tricks to create tension and decrease it. When he pulled his last and best trick, running the movement down to nothing so he could whisper that opening once more - Da duh-dut, dut-dut dum - the ocean was moved by what it heard. In the beginning was the ending! In the ending was a reminder of the start! With a burst of energy the ocean produced a freak wave, and rolled it over Island Queen. Jesse only had time to look over his shoulder before it swept him away, and the lively jog-jog of the second movement sounded for no more than a bar or two before Island Queen, broken and flooded, was sinking to the bottom.

298 12 In which two souls are tossed between four bodies

Juliet and Don spent the day of Jesse’s expected return at the pier. When he didn’t show up, she raised the alarm. A lifebelt was found four days later, off Byron Bay. She sent a letter to East Melbourne, introducing herself, with a photo of Don. Karen flew north the next day. ‘We were going to come down and see you, visit all the rellies, when he’d done the big trip.’ Karen wondered how her son, and his classically-named survivor, had been able to make so free with the family line: taken it out of sight, in fact. ‘Were you married?’ she asked; the answer was, apparently at least, just as unmindful. ‘I guess we would have got round to it, one day. It didn’t seem very important, on the island.’ ‘I want to see the island.’ They went in the launch. When they passed the viewpoint, which she could identify by now, Juliet told Karen how she’d had visions of her, with her mother and grandmother: once, waiting on the shore for her to arrive, and once, in open water, when she and Jesse were sexually together for the first time. ‘There was this space, both times. The three of you were waiting for me to join you. Well, I’ve got this far.’ Juliet pointed at Don. Karen picked him up. ‘He looks like Jesse.’ ‘He’s going to have the same body.’ In twelve years he’d be taken over by puberty, and sometime after by the power and burden of being a man. Karen said, ‘The first person he’ll be involved with is probably being born about now.’ They smiled

299 at each other. ‘Wonder what’s she’s like?’ Juliet said, ‘Tell me about when you had Jesse.’ It was the emptiness of the island, its desertion, when Don expected his father to be there, that joined them. ‘We’d better stay, and see if a message comes.’ Karen told Juliet how Adrian had appeared to her mother in the moment of his death. ‘I’m fairly psychic,’ Juliet said. ‘If he’d tried to contact me, I think I’d’ve known. Maybe he sent himself here for a last look, he was never all that rapt about the flat in town.’ They drank wine in the mushroom, then Karen took herself to the water’s edge. When she came back, Don was asleep, and Juliet was lying on the mattress she’d shared with Jesse. ‘Come beside me.’ Thirty-eight years apart, they lay holding each other. Each slept fitfully, walking by the water’s edge when they woke, sometimes alone, sometimes together. ‘We’re going to try something.’ ‘What?’ ‘We’re going to walk around the island. I’ll go slowly. You pass me, then drop back on the other side. Then I’ll do the same with you. It’s what we did on the morning he left.’ They circled the island, alert for any presence. Nothing happened. This time, when they lay down, they knew the finality of his loss.

Lucy’s journal Annie was jealous of me having Bill. She said she wasn’t going to listen to us cavorting all night, and took her bedding further up the creek. I abused her, saying what sort of welcome was that, and what did she think she’d been like with Giles? Bill wanted compromise and I snapped at him. He insisted on seeing her settled and when he came back I wouldn’t talk to him. He said ‘Are you often like this?’ and I told him I’d never been in anything like the same exalted, raging state, and he must know who was the cause of it. He said he’d sit by the creek and out he went, leaving me more furious than before. I was sick with desire and anger, and then I heard him singing: My wife and I lived all alone

300 In a little log hut we called our own; She loved gin and I loved rum, And I tell you what, we’d lots of fun! The bastard! He’d pulled a bottle of beer out of the creek and was swigging from it, head back while it gurgled down. When I came outside he put it on the grass, and went on with his song. Ha ha ha, you and me; Little brown jug don’t I love thee! I stood him up and undressed him, then I stripped myself. I led him inside by that part that stands up, and I possessed him. Thus I learned that to possess another is to be possessed oneself. This I resented. I fought him to a lustful standstill, at dawn. The first light inspected our satiety, and gave us sleep till noon, when we started again, despite my mother’s return. At dusk I told him to cook us a meal, while I saddled the horses, because we were setting out on the first of many journeys. We’re riding, I told him, through the mountains to Dargo, across the high plains, along the divide and down to Omeo, Swifts Creek and home again. And then, I said, we’ll be married. He thought I meant a ceremony with a priest, but I told him scornfully that Wainwrights didn’t believe in priests, and that what was sacred we found in ourselves. I meant, I told him, that by making this journey we’d be bonded, as my parents had bonded years before. He said, ‘So be it, then. We’re to be each other’s fate?’ Foolish woman, my body was bursting with new force and I thought I could change things by wishing them otherwise. We ate our meal, told Annie our plan, and saddled the horses.

Lucy’s journal We were setting off together. This was something I’d longed for all my life, and it had come. We let the horses drink at the White Bridge - ‘our river’, I said to Bill, sharing with him my past. The shaft remained tactfully silent, but I could feel my father’s goodwill. Annie had caught a cold from her unnecessary night in the open, but if I thought about it at all I supposed she’d be better by the time we got back.

301 And I was giving Bill my kingdom: myself. I was intent on going in so deeply that we’d never - either of us - be able to find our way back to what we’d been in our - too long in my case; I couldn’t speak for him - single days. We hobbled the horses so they could browse on the snowgrass and we spent a day and a night on the mountain. The stars shone down in their millions and we loved, loved, loved. Our bodies were so hot that we couldn’t stay under blankets. We rolled about, skins tingling with the breeze and prickled by the grassy tussocks, and that was when I learned that the keenest pleasure is made keener by a tinge of pain: a sauce, a flavouring, for the ultimate feast.

Karen persuaded Juliet to go back for the memorial service. Juliet felt uncomfortable about seeing her mother and grandmother and then causing more pain by leaving a second time, but was determined to make a separate life until she rejoined them. Karen said Juliet and Don could stay at the East Melbourne house - ‘Nell and I have it all to ourselves these days’ - and she would ask Tricia and Margaret to call. She asked Juliet if she had any stipulation for the service, but Juliet said her grieving belonged to the places where she’d belonged to Jesse, and had no need to be satisfied by a form of service. Karen announced, ‘I’m going to sing a song. I won’t be doing much more of that, but I’m going to do it for my son.’

Lucy’s journal When we left the mountain, we rode to Seldom Seen; the shanty had closed in the years I’d been away, but we explored the little rooms. There was an ancient bed and Bill was for using it but I said it was too dank, so we went outside and stripped for a standing act, bumped occasionally by our horses, who were nervous. I told Bill to bring me tea while I rubbed them down. I groomed them within an inch of their lives; they can never have been so sensually handled. The mating of horses is a rough business. I kissed Bill when he brought me tea; as the fire in me mounted it was all he could do to keep cup and

302 saucer from falling. And when I stopped he was so relieved that cup and saucer fell, and broke. ‘Our first domestic accident!’ I cried, and he started laughing and couldn’t stop, and we were still there, in our naked glory, if somewhat hidden by the horses, when Leo Hurley rode past, on his way to get things ready at the mill. Bill would have to go back to work, and though he didn’t know it, I’d be with him: it was going to take more than a bunch of men to separate me from my husband.

Juliet knew it would be awful, and it was. Her mother’s embrace was stiff, and when they stepped back from each other, they averted their eyes. Margaret, sixty six now, upright but frail, shook Juliet’s hand in cold, formal movement. The years of unforgiving had made forgiv- ing harder. Each knew that the moment they united their attention on the little boy would be the moment when they would give up on reestablishing closeness. Karen had arranged that when Tricia and Margaret arrived, Nell would take Don to play in the loft - empty now, after Michael had married, moved out, and died - and that she, under the pretext of fetching them, would leave Juliet, Tricia and Margaret to make what accommodation they could. Karen left. Resentment glued them unwillingly together. The bang of the back door emphasised the silence. They could almost hear each other’s hearts. Juliet said, ‘I had to make myself healthy.’ The older women considered this, looking for the criticism underlying her desertion. Tricia said, ‘Breaking the connections with those nearest to you is the last way anybody heals themselves.’ The youngest, most recently created, mother searched in her mother’s words for the aggression that must be latent there. Margaret said, ‘What were you doing, letting him sail away on his own? You should have gone with him!’ Juliet flared. ‘You wish I’d been drowned too?’ The oldest relished the chance to condemn. ‘You broke our hearts by running away. I’d have had the police after you, but your mother

303 wouldn’t let me. She said you’d be back one day. And look what it took to bring you back!’ Juliet said, ‘You both lost your husbands. That’s what it took to bring me back - as much as I am back.’ ‘You were married to him?’ ‘No mother, I wasn’t. We were going to get around to it one day.’ Their eyes condemned her for the morals of her period. ‘What did you mean - ‘as much as I am back’?’ ‘I’m down for the service. And I’m going back tomorrow.’ Margaret wanted to hold her in servitude, for years of punishment, and was furious: Tricia felt her links to the generations succeeding her being ripped away. Trembling, she said, ‘Stay a while?’ Juliet felt that she was lost if she agreed. ‘I’ll decide after the service.’ They heard the back door open, then Karen came back, carrying Don; Nell followed, fifty now. As Karen introduced her, a measure of civility overlaid the bitterness in the room. Don was passed around. ‘Who are you?’ he wanted to know of Tricia: ‘That’s my mother,’ his mother told him, ‘and this lady, Margaret, is her mother.’ Karen took the boy in her arms. ‘And I’m the mother of your daddy.’ The child called for his father, wanting something other than women. Juliet said, ‘I’ve told you darling. Remember, in the bath, with the boat? That’s what happened to daddy.’ Karen took control. ‘I told Tom we’d walk to the church and meet him there. I asked the Reverend Unsworth to start at eleven.’ Her father’s clock, standing in the next room, struck the three quarters. Margaret, seeing that the piano had been freshly dusted, said to Nell, ‘It’s such a huge house. How do you manage to maintain it?’ Nell, feeling her never-married status keenly, said, ‘I don’t know that we do, really.’

Lucy’s journal How did kings ride in the days of falconry? With supremacy on their brows, how else? And their peasants knelt in the mud. Lords of a better land, we took a high cool ridge where mess-

304 mate met silvertop above our heads, and woolly clouds displayed their crimp in the sky. A horse walking through a forest is the finest thing! Cockatoos screeched, and their beaks littered the track with blossom. Bees busied themselves and the smell of the forest cleansed us like vin- egar on a wound. We were in our prime. I told Bill I was glad it had taken so long to find him; it had given me time to become ready. I told him he could have all of me, and I would take no less of him. He said - him and his blessed rivers - ‘The track drops down in a minute. You’ll recognise the stream.’ It was our river, greeting us on our way to Dargo. Bill found us a flat where the horses could feed, and a miner’s hut, very dilapidated. I preferred to stay outside. I rolled him in the grass, and when we possessed each other, a strange thing happened: when I asked him to lie beside me so I could feel the air caress me, he couldn’t move. I said, ‘Something’s happened. Stay calm. When we work out what it is, we’ll be all right.’ So we lay there, introspecting, Bill on top; when he moved, it jarred on me, and then it occurred to me to examine my soul, and I found - and he, looking into himself, found it at the same moment - that we were now one person. Our souls had merged. He lifted his head a little, so he could look into my eyes, and we knew that we could never part, because only one would be able to have the soul, and the other would be left a function- ing shell. In the moment that this realisation hit us, Bill rolled beside me, and the sharp light played on our bodies, the breeze stroked us, and we could feel the soul enlivening our two minds, making our two hearts pump, but only one activating force. I said to him, ‘This will always be our spot. Nobody coming here will ever know what happened, because we’ll take the knowledge with us.’ I asked him if he’d ever told anybody about the spirits. ‘Only your mother,’ he said. ‘I’d never tell anybody unless I knew that they could see them too.’ I said that what had just happened to us was more precious, even, than being able to see the spirits, and that we must never, as long as we lived, let anyone know that we possessed between us only a single soul.

305 At the church, the regimental flags had long since been removed. A low table, covered in wreaths, stood before the step from nave to sanctuary. The Reverend Unsworth, a far cry from the Reverend Hagenauer, was prone to speak about caring relationships and the need for men to find the nurturing side of their natures. Welcoming the congregation, he reminded them of the dual nature of families - both centrifugal and centripetal, he said. A collection of individuals all going their own ways because they had to: this was right, and inevitable. But brought together in moments of joy and sadness. The Bowdens had had their share of both. While he sketched Jesse’s place in the line, Juliet asked herself how close she was to her mother and grandmother, picking up Don as he walked about the pews. ‘Where daddy?’ ‘Shoosh, darling. The man’s talking about him.’ The child, wriggling past Margaret Courtney, peered down the aisle, perceiving in some inexplicable way that his father had been turned into flowers: that there was now an emptiness in his being and that the flowers covered the hole. Burdened by this new awareness, he went to his mother and pressed himself against her. ‘He knows.’ Tricia and Margaret exchanged glances above the boy’s head. Juliet felt an acceptance of her via their concern for Don. But did she return it? Not yet, she felt: and her mind was made up. She would go north again, retracing her escape of three years earlier. The minister announced to the gathering that it was Karen Bowden’s wish to sing a song which they would all know. I bet he’s never rocked in his life, Juliet thought. Karen stood, fifty-eight, erect, in black, but hatless, her hair glowing in the amber light from a window, and moved beside the lectern. She glanced at the open bible while the organ outlined the melody, then began: Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine, Or leave a kiss but in the cup, and I’ll not look for wine. The thirst that from the soul doth rise doth ask a drink divine, But might I of Jove’s nectar sup, I would not change for thine.

306 Behind Juliet someone whispered in surprise, ‘That’s a love song!’ and someone - Tom, she thought - said with approval, ‘Yes!’ Juliet considered herself. ‘I’ve cried, and it hasn’t got me used to the fact that Jesse’s gone. I love Don, but I don’t love him in this more than earthly way that Karen loves her son. Her lover died in the sea too, and instead of feuding with her family she sings!’ Inadequacy, a blackness, were Juliet’s experience of herself. What sort of mother was she going to be for Don, back there in the flat? Karen waited for the organ’s second cue. I sent thee late a rosy wreath, not so much honouring thee, As giving it a hope that there it could not withered be; But thou thereon didst only breathe, and sent’st it back to me, Since when it grows and smells, I swear, not of itself but thee. Juliet tried to imagine what it was like to be able to use grief to make something more beautiful. Karen was telling them she was not to be pitied for losing her son, because she could prove her acceptance in a song. Courage, Juliet thought, is what she’s teaching me, and also how far I have to go before I belong to the quartet which it seems I’m destined to join. Mingling with the congregation after the service, the minister, having identified the dead man’s lover, asked Juliet what she would do now. She thought. ‘How far do you mean that ‘now’ to stretch?’ The minister was taken aback. ‘I think I wanted to ask if you have a plan for dealing with the next few years.’ Juliet looked around at the numerous Bowdens, Morrises, their wives, husbands, children and children’s children, with little in common but their genes and a sense of being tied to each other. ‘I’ll take Don back to Cairns. I’ll look after him. And if I’m lucky I’ll mature to the point where I can claim my place among these people.’ The minister, somewhat unctuously, but a little more sincerely than in most of the things he’d uttered that day, said, ‘I think that’s one of the best plans I’ve heard for a very long time.’

307 Lucy’s journal We rode into Dargo as if we owned the place, and had lunch at Lawson’s hotel. It was satisfying to be married, as I felt I was. I’d made the commitment and the only one who mattered knew it. On the wall of the dining room was a print of antlered stags eyeing each other defiantly. I wondered what Bill would be like if he was jealous. We talked to the people around the place, then retired to our room, desire surging again. Bill was already expert at provoking me, which I needed to reach my extremes of loving, and he provoked me a little too far. I jumped on him and brought the bed to the floor with a crash. The pettiness of people! We had Mrs Lawson with us, demanding that we pay for the damage. I told her that if the bed couldn’t stand up to use, they shouldn’t offer it to people, but Bill - peace at any price - was digging in his trousers for notes. His lust took a sharply reduced form under Mrs Lawson’s eye, but I was revelling in what my body still had to offer, and made Bill saddle up again, and ride to the walnut flat at the northern end of town. There, by the river, we loved the afternoon away, dozing between times, curled in each other’s arms. When the sun got low we took the track for the plains. Darkness fell with us still climbing, then a full moon rose on our right, filling the bush with a prospect of peace - falsely, as we were to find a few days later. We were riding in moonlight and shadow when we heard from far ahead the voice of a man singing, albeit not very melodiously. Ha ha ha, he he he, Little brown jug don’t I love thee! Bill started to laugh, and I joined him. Then he shooshed me. ‘It’s Harry Treasure. They say he always sings, coming off the plains. Quick, off the track!’ As quietly as we could - though Harry was making so much noise he’d never have heard us - we hid in the bush until Harry came beside us, roaring away: The rose is red, my nose is too, The violet’s blue and so are you; And yet I guess, before I stop, We’d better take another drop!

308 We joined him in the chorus - ‘Ha ha ha, he he he’ - and he bolted. ‘Little brown jug, don’t I love thee!’ He got a hundred yards down the track before he reined in his horse and turned: ‘Who is it?’ Bill sang out, ‘Bushrangers, Harry!’ and Harry came back. He had his tail between his legs, knowing that his panic had loosed one of those stories that haunt people the rest of their lives. Bill introduced me, very proudly, as his wife. Harry said ‘Pleased to meet you. Everyone knows about you of course,’ and it was my turn to realise that I existed for people I’d never met, and would never meet, through the story of my father and the tree house, burned all those years ago. ‘I knew your father,’ Harry said. ‘Not well, but I met him at a couple of sales. Remarkable fellow.’ I felt myself blushing, though he couldn’t have seen that. By knowing who I was he’d normalised me. I’d outgrown - I thought - my strange origins and entered the everyday world, where people who ran cattle came down from the high country, singing in appreciation of a moonlit night. ‘Stay in one of our houses, when you get up there,’ Harry told us. ‘They’re not far off the track, you’ll see’em easy enough.’

The people who lived above Juliet in the old Queenslander were Ian and Denise Adams, who still saw themselves, despite children of nine and eight, as young marrieds. They maintained this standing by fishing excursions, and parties around their pool. One humid day, Juliet, who’d had a late night, was tired. Asking the people in the yard to keep an eye on Don for a few minutes, she was reassured by their ‘Be right’ and ‘No worries’, and lay on her bed. When she came out again, there were no children in the yard. ‘They all ran in next door.’ ‘Yeah, I’m pretty sure he was with them.’ He was in the bottom of the pool. Juliet screamed for Denise, then jumped in, lifting her sodden son from the water. Ian shook him upside down, and to Juliet’s horror, water came out of his mouth. ‘He’s not breathing.’ They gave him mouth to mouth. ‘His heart’s stopped.’ Then he gave a flicker of life. ‘Get John Grey. Ring the hospital, tell’em to get an ambulance here quick-smart.’ The breathing stopped

309 again. Juliet knelt above her son, blowing inexpertly into his mouth. ‘Do it steadily. Evenly as you can. You’re trying to get a rhythm started again.’ She made way for Ian. ‘I’m too worked up.’ Denise told her, ‘John Grey’s the doctor who found Danny when he broke his leg. He’s really good. He’s on his way.’ Ian lifted his head. ‘Don’t give up hope. He’s given a couple of puffs. I haven’t been able to stabilise it yet.’ The thought of brain damage crossed Juliet’s mind. ‘How long’s he been there?’ This gave the fragmented party, as they regathered at the pool, something to think about. Their best guess was fifteen minutes. Juliet’s heart sank. Don’s brain wouldn’t recover, even if they got his heart going. Denise: ‘Don’t blame yourself. Blame the rest of us if you like, but don’t blame yourself, Jules, it won’t do you or Don any good at all!’

The ambulance men got Don’s heart started. Juliet squatted beside him on the way to hospital while one of the ambulance men gave him oxygen and monitored his pulse. It wasn’t guilt Juliet was fighting, but a feeling of uselessness. Lack of skill. Don was rushed into Casualty, clothes dripping. Reception got his particulars from an enraged Juliet, who couldn’t see why they wanted this stuff when the only information she needed was withheld. She tugged at the doctor’s shirt. ‘Is he going to recover or is he going to be a vegetable?’ John Grey offered little. ‘It’s too soon to tell. Don’t start building your hopes, and don’t give up either. Try and suspend your feelings till we see how he goes.’ She told him, only because he was there and she had to tell someone, ‘His father was drowned a few months ago.’ He already knew. ‘Yes, they told me. I’m very sorry.’ Suddenly she felt rage flaring in her. This fucking doctor could only have been at the house a minute but someone had found an opportunity to tell him. She wanted to tear the knowledge out of John Grey’s head, but that too, even if she could do it, would be a useless gesture. She went limp. ‘Tell me if there’s any change.’

310 Lucy’s journal It was good to stay in Harry’s house because his wife had stamped her character there. Pot holders. Bluebirds embroidered on the tablecloth. A wedding party in front of a church; I studied the bride, with her bouquet hiding half her body, wondering how I was different. Bill loved me as a wild creature, and never wanted me to become domestic; I had a feeling, in this house touched by another woman, that those nights would be the closest I’d come to proper marriage. That grieved me, though I could hardly understand why it should. Bill was for visiting a mine the cattle men worked when they weren’t occupied with stock, so we rode to the bottom of a valley. There was a hut, a trolley, and loads of rock tipped into the creek - and there was a black hole in the side of the gully. I told Bill he was by no means to enter, because I was afraid. I love him as you love him, Lucy; he’ll come to no harm from me. Bill wanted to know what I thought would happen, and I told him that the world had another dimension, behind that of the spirits; in the caverns where my father wandered, creatures not ready for re-release replicated the worst horrors of life in foulest shadow play. ‘Call to your father,’ he said. I said no. Be at peace, Lucy: start a child. Bill was annoyed. ‘I’m his son-in-law, but since we’re not married in law, I’m his son.’ I looked at this man I’d succumbed to, and I told him he was a murderer. He told me I was ridiculous, he wouldn’t hurt a flea. I told him that murder took many forms, and that to use a woman’s body without giving her children was murder, because a life not creating life was only life in a dead end, a cul de sac, a - it took all my courage to say this word - a cavern! You grieve me deeply, Lucy. You’ll find, in your memories of me, no whiplash like this one you’ve cut me with. Bill said, ‘Children are fine by me. It’s time you started. What do you reckon? Three or four?’ He smiled hopefully, thinking he had my trust again. I told him we had to leave the place at once. My heart was

311 heavy. The matter of a child, as well as the shared soul, lay between us. Do not ask too much of him. What isn’t freely given isn’t yours. Never insist, never take: people give what they can.

Breathing dominated Juliet’s first forty-eight hours; Don’s, then her own. He lay on his back in pajamas, oxygen piped via a tube into his nostril, and a drip-feed dangling from a gleaming stand. Every sixth second he began an intake of air, swelling the lungs beneath his ribcage, then releasing it. Silence. Then an intake, silence, the sigh of release. The nurses were so adept that Juliet was hardly aware that pissing and shitting were going on too. Early in her vigil she feared the breathing would stop; then she found herself trying to breathe to the same rhythm as Don; then she felt that only her concentration was keeping him alive. Something about John Grey, the doctor, disabused her of that idea. He studied Don briefly, felt his pulse, listened to his heart, looked into his eyes, then left, saying nothing. When he came back, Juliet realised that a night had passed without Don showing any sign of consciousness. ‘Will he live?’ ‘He’s hanging on quite strongly.’ ‘Will he be normal again?’ ‘I have to say the chances are against it.’ ‘You understand I’m not letting him go. He’s all I’ve got.’ The rhythm of Don’s breathing underlay these words. When the nurses asked if Juliet would like to wash and eat breakfast, she conceded only if one of them would stay with Don. A few thousand breaths later, when Ian and Denise Adams arrived - without their children, she was sorry to see; she needed the sight of a properly living child - they could feel the feverish energy she was pouring into her boy. Ian asked the sister on duty if she could organise somewhere for Juliet to sleep. ‘We’ll get another bed in there when the cleaning’s finished.’ Denise tried to take Juliet through the attempts by yesterday’s gathering to work out how Don could have got into the water unnoticed, but

312 Juliet wasn’t interested. ‘It’s happened. I have to deal with it now. I’m not looking back. I know your friends feel awful about it. I’d feel the same. But try to explain to them that it’s not relevant to me. There’s only one thing relevant now.’ Don’s breathing. At the end of the second day, when she was persuaded to lie on the bed that had been brought in, she became conscious of her own breathing again. In her fatigue she felt that if she didn’t make a conscious effort to breathe then her body would fail, and the boy would be abandoned. She had to keep breathing. With fierce determination, ten to the minute, she breathed in and out. On the parallel bed, Don’s body heaved, the plastic tubes moving at each intake and expiration. Eventually Juliet slept. John Grey returned, talked to the sister about the drip feed, then considered the child’s mother. ‘Her people are all in Melbourne,’ the sister said. ‘She doesn’t want them contacted yet. I don’t know what that’s about.’ The doctor nodded, and left. When Juliet woke, it was dark. Cars could be heard in the street, and an aeroplane rushing over the town as it gained altitude after take-off. In the dimly lit ward, Don’s breathing was the only sound.

On the third day, Juliet remembered her out of body experiences. Could she enter Don’s body, and reanimate him? She drew herself very close, concentrating hard. Nothing happened. On the fourth day, she noticed how tenderly the nurses treated her. She slept. The fifth day was a long, hard slog, energy flowing from her like water from a broken dam. When, on the sixth day, she resumed her vigil, she felt something had changed. Don’s charts, dangling from a clipboard on the end of his bed, told her nothing. She was putting them back when John Grey came in. She felt his attention spring to alert. Stung, she said, ‘I mightn’t be a doctor, but I’ve got a right to know!’ ‘I’ll explain them to you. It’s pretty basic information.’ As he took her through them, she sensed that he was talking to keep her occupied while he assessed her. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you? You’re looking at me as if I was a crim!’

313 He pointed. ‘Either you did it, or someone else did. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. It might be the best course to take. However, I’m not allowed to let this sort of thing happen.’ The tube that fed oxygen into Don’s nostril received its supply from a steel and glass bub- ble in the wall. The tube had been pulled out and left dangling. Juliet pushed him out of her way and reconnected Don’s oxygen. ‘Don’t get it in your head that I pulled it out!’ Anger flared in her that someone had taken it upon themselves to sever the connection. ‘Whoever did that tried to kill him! What are you going to do about it? They must have done it while I was asleep!’ John Grey looked at her with eyes that were at once indifferent, compassionate, and probing. ‘Well, they proved one thing, didn’t they. He can survive without the oxygen. We’ll discontinue it fairly soon, and monitor him to make sure he’s okay.’ She saw why it had been done. Someone had estimated the years ahead, and tried to spare her. ‘I’m stuck, aren’t I. He’s stuck too. He’s not going to get better, and he’s not going to get worse. He’s just going to stay like that. For how long? Can you tell me how long?’ ‘Two or three years, perhaps. It could go on indefinitely. If he cops an infection it might take him off. Or pneumonia. It’s probably better for you to set him up at home, so at least you can get someone to share the nursing, while you do a few normal things.’ Don breathed in and out, mocked by a photo Ian and Denise had brought from the flat, of an earlier Don sitting in a swing, smiling, eyes full of light.

In her second week back in the flat, Juliet noticed how rarely Ian and Denise, or their children, came to see her. She accused Denise of not giving her the support she needed, and Denise hurled it at her that she must have relatives somewhere, why didn’t she go and stay with them? Juliet spent the rest of the day brooding sullenly in Don’s room, fidgeting unnecessarily with the set up; the feeding tube, the sanitary pads, the drawers full of clothes he’d never wear. This kid, she recognised, amounted to no more than four pairs of pajamas and a few

314 hankies. He had no more needs than that. She put the toys away, the bears, and made the room into a look-alike of the ward he’d vacated. Then she stared sullenly out the door, waiting for Ian to come home. When he arrived, she called him, but Denise, anticipating, was down in a flash. They were arguing, shouting, denying, appealing, occasionally trying to reason about a situation impossible for all of them, when John Grey walked in. Ignoring them, he went to the boy. When he came out he told Ian and Denise he wanted to speak to Juliet. Their body language, as they left, made it clear that there was no possible resolution. ‘It’s their bloody fault, them and their friends, and now they tell me they can’t fucking hack it, having Don beneath them. Fucking Denise had the cheek to fucking tell me she can’t fucking sleep. How much fucking sleep does she think I get? What shits! What utter fucking turds!’ The doctor said he had a cottage at Redlynch that she could have. ‘How much are you paying here?’ She told him. ‘You can have it for half that. It’s bigger than this, and much nicer. I don’t really care if you pay me or not, but it’s actually owned by the partnership I have with my wife, so I suppose you’ll have to put something in.’ ‘I can’t stay here any longer.’ ‘If you’ve just had a row with someone, and you ask them a favour, they can hardly refuse, can they? Tell those people’ - he poked his thumb at the ceiling - ‘that you’re going to look at another place, and they have to mind Don for an hour.’ She smiled; the first smile since it happened, weeks before. ‘Let’s go.’

Tormented by the notion that Jesse’s fate and Don’s were somehow an outcome of her running away, Juliet thought of writing to Karen and her mother; but something held her back. Whatever forces had put her where she was, had to be overcome by her alone. John had suggested that she might run an arts and crafts stall. Tourists on their way from station to pub were a ready market. She studied them from her win-

315 dow, with their cameras, their tee-shirt advertisements, and their bodies needing disguise. The thought of servicing their non-needs made her stomach curdle. The pub was better, a two storey weatherboard with huge verandahs and a dog asleep at the door. Sometimes she slipped in to enjoy the deep silences and unstated affection of the men. They bought her a beer, even when she said ‘I’m only having one, I can’t return the shout’, and they asked her why she had to rush away. ‘My little boy.’ ‘Bring him with you next time. I reckon he’d be a terrific kid.’ She could only smile and think: he was.

She became the doctor’s lover a few weeks later. She’d known for some time that he was acutely aware of her moods as soon as he arrived; one afternoon when he called, she was lying on her bed, bored, unwilling to look at the little figure whose existence imprisoned her. After examining the patient John looked in on her, then came over and lay beside her. Sullenly she said, ‘Good. I needed something to happen.’ ‘So did I. But we mustn’t get too dependent on each other.’ ‘Why not? Don’t talk, just do it.’ She coupled him with a ferocity she’d never experienced with Jesse. He said, ‘God, you’re a whirlwind,’ and she bit him. Stung, he slapped her, and she thrust herself on him with extra vigour. ‘I’m so full of anger,’ she said, ‘and you’re part of it because you’re not a friend in need, you’re as much a part of my trap as anything else. So stir yourself a bit, I want some energy from you. Don’t think I’m going to let you lie back and enjoy it!’ Between bouts, they lay still. She noticed tears in his eyes. ‘Oh yes. What is it?’ ‘I did trap you. I gave you this cage. I deceived myself by thinking I’d help you when all along I wanted to do what we just did.’ ‘I’m trapped anyway, what’s a few more bars?’

316 ‘When people are lovers, there’s always a conflict of interest. You’re trapped by ... ’ he pointed at the wall. ‘When he dies, you’re free again. I’ll only have you while he lives ... ’ ‘Dead right. The moment I don’t have Don is the moment I walk out that door.’ ‘So I’m going to do my level best to keep him going, and you’re going to love me for it, and hate me too.’ ‘Dead right again. That’s what I feel about you anyhow.’ ‘I have the extra problem that I’m not supposed to get into affairs with patients.’ ‘I’m not your patient, so let’s not have any guilt trips.’ ‘It’s almost as bad.’ ‘It’s nothing of the sort. You’re picking up the worry that you can handle comfortably so you can forget about the trap. But you can’t forget about it, mate, because you’re in it too, aren’t you?’ ‘Call me John.’ ‘John, John, John. You’re part of it now, aren’t you?’ He nodded. ‘Tell me about your wife.’ ‘She’s in practice with me. We’re business partners. We have separate bedrooms and hardly communicate, in the house. Oddly enough, we talk a lot at the surgery.’ ‘Kids?’ ‘Eddie’s in Brisbane, playing in a band. Christ knows what sub- stances he takes to keep himself going. Jeannette’s at uni in Sydney. Hates coming up here in holidays, says it’s boring. Hates the tourists. You should see the corner of her mouth when she sees a Japanese carrying a stuffed koala.’ He laughed. ‘You love your daughter?’ ‘Very much.’ ‘Men love their daughters more than their wives, I reckon.’ ‘True in my case.’ ‘Why, do you think?’

317 ‘I’ve never analysed it. I suppose I’d better.’ ‘Am I the same age as your daughter?’ ‘Pretty well, I’d say.’ ‘Feeling a bit incestuous?’ ‘No. But I’m starting to feel stirred up again.’ ‘I lost my father not long after I was born. You can stand in for a while.’ He laughed again. ‘What happened to dad?’ ‘That,’ she said, ‘is quite a story. You’ll get to hear it, don’t worry. Get on top again, I’m needing this.’

Lucy’s journal As we were riding along the narrow neck between the plains and the divide, a blue valley plummeting out of sight on our left and calm peaks everywhere on the right, Bill said to me, ‘When you think about it, the further we go, the more of what we came to see is behind us!’ I laughed, and he went on. ‘You can never go back. It’s not the same, going the other way. And you can’t stop in one place. You have to go forward. There’s no choice.’ I told him we were going to spend the rest of our lives in the cottage where Annie would be tending the stove at that moment. All he said to that was, ‘Time’s a thieving bastard!’ We were in our prime. We rode over the top, the inland plains on one side, the ocean out of sight on the other, down through Dinner Plain and Cobungra, till we got to the fire- blackened areas near Omeo. The trees were starting to sprout again, but the trunks were still black and fences, sheds and houses were in ruins. The grass had come back, and the cattle, but the swift blighting of fire had left its mark everywhere. Bill, who’d known the town well, told me about the destruction. ‘This was The Golden Age,’ he said. ‘Beautiful pub. Good as anything in the city.’ There were carpenters and bricklayers rebuilding. Bill asked them when they were reopening, and they sent us to a shed at the back, where a man in shirtsleeves was sitting on some barrels, reading a paper. ‘War’s been declared,’ he said. ‘We’re fightin’ the Huns again. Didn’t finish’em off last time,

318 apparently. What’ll you have?’ We had two beers. Bill introduced me as his wife. I wasn’t letting him get to any wars. We had a cottage by a creek that never ran dry, and a stove where the fire burned night and day. We had a home. We had a great circle of mountains securing us, and we had a home. Ride quickly! Take the short cut through Cassilis. Your mother is slipping away! She’d left us a note. She wrote it sitting up, dropped pencil and paper on the chest by the bed, then lay back, clinging hard. When she heard the clip-clop of your horses, she let go. Her body was still warm. She looked serene. My marriage to Bill had released her. (Pasted in the journal) Bury me in the town. I can’t lie with my children because it’s too near Giles. Put a slab on top of me and have them write on it, ‘We shall all be changed’, and my name. Nothing more. I envy you, my daughter, for your special powers, but elation and height- ened awareness carry an increased capacity for the pain which I think you will come to know well. Be faithful to Bill. He waited a long time for your return. My life is ending. Wish me well, as I do you. I shall ask for a speedy rebirth, somewhere far from here. My daughter! A. I see I asked too much. Her parting punishes me for a life abused. I need your blessing, Lucy, and forgiveness, on your mother’s behalf.

Juliet told John the story of her father’s death, as it had been told to her. ‘And what did you feel, when you first heard that?’ She told him about the day she ran away, the bathing box on Brighton beach, and how she returned the dog. About the abandoned car, the brothel and its customers. About Jesse, the race meeting, and the island. The two boats, and Don. ‘He disappeared on his big trip?’ She nodded. ‘Did you get any message from him?’ She shook her head. ‘Do you miss him?’

319 ‘I miss the happiness I had with him. Also the feeling that I’d made a new start. Now ... ‘ she pointed to Don’s room ‘ ... I’m in a double bind. I’ve got to look after Don as long as he lasts - and sometimes I just wish he’d disappear, and other times I want him properly back - but when he does go, I have to start again. I can’t get rid of the feeling that I’m being punished for running away, and something tells me I have to go back to mum’s house in Brighton and start all over again, hopefully a bit wiser this time.’ The doctor fidgeted with his fingers. ‘Can I come with you?’ Juliet was surprised. ‘What? Don’t be silly. You’re staying here, and I’m getting away from all this, including you. Sorry, I don’t mean to hurt you, but you’re part of what I want to get away from.’ He said, ‘I think you’re wrong, but there’s plenty of time to talk about that. Time is something we seem to have lots of. I want to tell you something else. A story. I’m haunted by a story too.’ She thought it was a ploy. ‘Do tell.’ John Grey smiled feebly. ‘I’m going to. Open that bottle in the fridge and I’ll start.’

Lucy’s journal We buried her at Swifts Creek. I didn’t want any ceremony but Bill said we should have a few prayers. He was my husband, so I allowed it. A crowd of spirits watched, and as the priest went on about the resurrection of the dead, I thought - if only you knew, poor benighted man. Bill had the trace of a smirk on his face; he knew what I was thinking. A dignified old lady, who looked like she’d been a bush woman herself, threw a flower into the hole, and even the priest sensed that something that he’d call supernatural had happened. ‘I think her spirit’s leaving now,’ he said, ‘called home to join Jesus and the Holy Father!’ I motioned him to get on with his business, while I studied what was left of the Wainwrights. Doll was pregnant again, and her three children by three fathers beside her. Sam, a respectable storekeeper these days, had come without his family. Poor Gordon, racked by his sensitivity that couldn’t find an outlet, was there, in the only clothes

320 he had. The sight of his hands, made horny by axe-work, wrung my heart. Ned, wouldn’t you know, couldn’t come because His Majesty had decided that a few months in jail might improve his character. And George and Robert rode up, on horses they most certainly didn’t own, just after the priest had left and the gravedigger, who’d been sitting under a tree waiting to toss the dirt back in, was getting up to finish his job. I didn’t hear what they said to him, but he took a swing at Robert with his shovel, the horse reared, and Robert was thrown. He must have forgotten how to land the way his father taught him, or maybe he’d slowed up as he got older, because he fell on his arm and broke it. Roaring and cursing, he blamed the gravedigger, who rammed the shovel into the mound and told us to finish the job ourselves. ‘The Wainwrights,’ I said to Bill, ‘are not a happy family.’ The spirits thought the whole thing very amusing. One of them undid his fly and pissed on Robert, not that Robert knew anything about it. He was shouting at the gravedigger to get help, but that gentleman kept on walking without looking back. Sam stalked off in disgust, Bill got busy with the shovel, Robert raged in the way of a man who holds the world responsible for his failings, and I found myself retreating into my spiritual pride: they were all, I felt, beneath contempt. I snatched the soul I shared with Bill, unwilling for him to know how ashamed I was at being part of this collection of failures. I saw him twitch, but he kept his head down, covering the coffin with fertile valley soil. I loved him, but it was days before I’d let him share the soul again. When I did, with the Wainwrights dispersed and us back in our cottage, he put his head on my neck and whispered in my ear that he hadn’t minded. He said he understood. Tenderly as he caressed me I found it hard to let him into my innermost sanctuary again, but I did, and was rewarded with a flood of that love that flowed from him like water from a spring. ‘Bill,’ I said, ‘you are the other half of my heart.’

John and Juliet touched glasses. ‘Cheers!’ ‘Okay. You’ve heard my story. Tell me yours.’

321 He rubbed his fingers on the glass. ‘I’d just graduated. Elizabeth was two years behind me in the course. We were engaged. That’s not true. We were as good as engaged.’ She interrupted. ‘What’s wrong with you? You know if you’re engaged or not. Did you give her a ring?’ ‘Actually I had given her a ring, but she wore it on her right hand. The ring finger, but the right hand. I know it sounds silly.’ ‘It sounds like neither of you was really sure.’ ‘Who is, at that age? Well, some people don’t have doubts, but they’re usually pretty limited people. They only see one thing and they don’t know how much more there is.’ ‘Okay, you’d just graduated.’ He took a sip. ‘We said we’d marry when Elizabeth graduated. In the meantime, I’d do my interne at a country hospital.’ ‘A trial separation!’ ‘That’s about it. She said she’d visit me, and I said I’d see her as often as I could. They work you pretty hard in your first year out. I was lonely.’ ‘A few nurses, John? Little bit on the side?’ ‘No, I stayed faithful. But I found a cure for my loneliness. I went into the loneliest places, alone, and afraid because half the time I was driving around not sure whether I was lost or not.’ ‘Didn’t they have signs up?’ ‘Yes, but they didn’t mean much to me. Blazes Road. Argus Gap Road. I can still see some of them. Morris’ Peak Road. I’d drive along these tracks but they never seemed to get anywhere. Miles and miles of forest. When I walked around, I’d hear the wind in the tops of these enormous trees, and I’d think, if a branch falls on me I’m a dead duck. If a branch falls on the car, it could take days to walk out.’ ‘And you kept doing this?’ ‘I’d tell Elizabeth about these trips, but there was something I was keeping from her because I didn’t understand it myself. I was filling the emptiness in myself with the emptiness of a place where there was

322 nothing, only trees going on forever, and all these ranges, stretching out like the waves of the sea ... sorry.’ She said, ‘Yes, that did make me think of Jesse. Let me look at Don for a sec, before you go on.’

Lucy’s journal The undertakers got word through to the mill boss, who passed it on to Bill, that they’d put the slab on Annie’s grave, so we rode down to see it. They’d inscribed what she’d asked: ‘Annie Wainwright’ - she had no more names than that - and ‘We shall all be changed’. They’d made the A and the W very elaborate, as in a bible. Bill and I talked about why she’d chosen those words. I said she would have been thinking of her progress through the spirit world to a new life. Bill nodded, but he looked troubled too. He said, ‘If you think about it, the present only lasts a moment.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Now,’ he said, and he clicked his fingers again. ‘Everything you do, the moment you do it, it’s in the past. There’s no way you can hang onto it. Everything’s rushing through us. It’s as if we hardly even exist, because things are rushing through us so fast. Like the first time I set eyes on you, remember? The spirits were crowding around you like shadows, trying to get your energy for themselves. Thieving bastards!’ I loved him. I wanted to lie with him there and then, but it wasn’t a suitable place. When we got home we made up for that, good and proper.

Juliet heard a sound, ‘That was Don! Quick!’ She rushed into the bedroom, flinging herself on the boy. She took his hands in hers, and searched his face. ‘John!’ she called. ‘Come and look!’ Her lover appeared in the doorway. ‘Come and look. He called me!’ She saw scorn in his eye. ‘Didn’t you hear him? No, you didn’t, you were talking about yourself, weren’t you? You’re so bloody full of yourself!’ In a spasm of rage she hit him on the chest. He said sourly, ‘Listen to his heart, take his pulse, listen to his breathing ... anything changed? Talk in his ear. Any response? Squeeze the hands, pinch him a little. Any response?’ She flopped on the chair, sobbing. ‘He called me.’

323 ‘There was a noise outside. Someone in the street.’ ‘It was here. It was Don.’ He shook his head. She ignored him. ‘I’ll sit on the verandah for a while.’ ‘Do what you fucking like.’ The bitterness, the grief in her voice, tore at him. ‘Do you want me to go?’ ‘Don’t you dare leave me now.’ She watched him get a chair and sit on the opposite side of the bed. ‘Can’t you do something? Are you really that useless, or aren’t you trying, because while he’s like this you’ve got me where you want me?’ ‘You understand about brain damage. I must have told you twenty times. Let’s sit outside for a while. It’s a beautiful night.’ ‘It’s a rotten night.’ He wanted her to distance herself from her suffering, and he knew it was impossible. Distancing, or the separation of mind and feeling, was at the heart of the story he wanted to tell her.

324 13 In which our characters find that imprisonment and release can take many forms

Lucy’s journal The men liked me. I could do anything they could. I was stronger than most of them, certainly stronger than my darling who’d call ‘Steady on a bit’ when I was flattening him into the mattress. Each morning as we came out, Bill gave such a sheepish smile to the others, washing their faces in basins, that he gave them a little share of our excitement, reconciling them to their bachelor nights. On Fridays they hopped on the truck and went to whatever they had at home, and Bill and I rode back to our cottage, ignoring the war, lost in each other, caressing our mutual soul in everything we did. Then came Mimmo.

It was pouring rain as the doctor drove to his lover. The front door was open. Beside Don’s bed was a note: ‘Goodbye darling. He’ll see you’re looked after. I wish none of this had happened. I can’t cope any more. Sorry darling. I’ll always love you, but it won’t be long.’ John ran to the house next door. The family heard him jump onto the verandah, and a woman opened the door. ‘That you doctor? She was on the road, trying to get a lift. I was going out to speak to her, but someone picked her up.’ She pointed in the direction of Cairns. ‘Could one of you keep an eye on the boy for a couple of hours?’ John had to guess where she’d go. The idea of water filled his mind. The launch! He drove to where she kept it moored, jumped out of his car and ran down the jetty. She was struggling with the engine. It fired at the moment he jumped into the boat. She tried to push him

325 overboard but he wrestled her to the floor and switched the motor off. She screamed at him: ‘I’m not going back!’ ‘I’m not letting you run away again!’ They fought, rain pouring on them. When he flung the ignition key into the water, she broke down. Pressing her hands against her head as if to stop it bursting, she said, ‘I can’t do anything for him. You can’t do anything for him. I just want to die. I want to go out there where Jesse is, and jump over the side. Don’t you understand?’ He was sobbing too. ‘Stay with us. Don needs you. I need you too.’ She dropped her head in despair. ‘Fucking Don! He’s draining my life away. Can’t you understand? He’s my child and I can’t bear to look at him. How do you suppose I feel about that?’ ‘I know how you feel about that ... ‘ ‘You can’t know how I feel about it. You didn’t have him! I did! And I can’t bear to look at him!’ He had to chance it. ‘Look me in the eyes. I think I matter too.’ She looked at him, then dropped her eyes. ‘You. You’re just making a convenience of me. You’ve fouled up things with your wife so you fuck me. I’m walking out on you too, mate. There’s a torch in that locker. Get in the water and find that key.’ She said it without any spirit. He gripped her shoulders. ‘You’re coming back to the house with me. You’re having a shower and you’re putting on dry things. In the morning I’ll bring you back here if you want me to. We’ll find the key all right. And if you want to go ahead, I won’t try to stop you.’ She was like a zombie, getting out of the boat. He had practically to carry her along the jetty. A police van had pulled up beside his car. One of the cops flashed a torch. ‘You all right, doctor? They looked curiously at Juliet. ‘Brilliant fuckin doctor,’ she mumbled. ‘Livin fuckin death, he gives me, twenty four hours a day.’ The cop with the torch asked John if he’d mind calling at the station some time so they could make a report. He said he would. The other cop fixed Juliet in her

326 seatbelt. ‘Livin fuckin death,’ she said. ‘You think you could handle it better than me? You got another think coming, mate.’ John drove her away from the wharf. The cops did a tour of the boats. In the water, the key that would have let Juliet reach the ocean lay on the bottom, ready to glint in the morning.

Lucy’s journal His name was Remington, but he told us to call him Mimmo, the name he had in the war. He was always talking about the army. A great bunch of mates he said, but they sounded like irresponsible sadists, scarcely less brutal behind the lines than they were at the front. He salivated when he spoke of killing. He had only one souvenir of the war, apart from the scars on his body - the bayonet he’d driven into a post holding up the roof of the mill. He was pulling-out when he first came to us, but he wanted Nick Hurley’s job on the other side of the saw. He set out to undermine Nick’s confidence. ‘What did you do in the war, Nick?’ Nick, like his brothers, had decided not to go, but flushed every time Mimmo - I hate putting his name in my book - sneered at cowards. I could see that he was going to tackle each man in turn until he had them all afraid of him. I warned Bill. ‘He doesn’t worry me,’ Mr Peace-at-any-price said. I warned him again and again. ‘Keep away from him. Don’t talk to him. Never answer anything he says. He’s like my brothers, brutalised by war, and proud of it. A bully and a coward who wants to crush softness in others.’ Bill, because he had me, would be the target he left till last. When he had Nick rattled, he started to terrify him at the bench, letting flitches touch the saw so they flew back over the sawyer. When Nick tackled him about it at smokeoh, he said it was Nick’s fault for letting go the log too early. ‘You’re not controlling it right to the finish,’ he said, rolling his sleeves a bit further so we could see his muscles. When they started up again, they were working on a huge log that Bill and I had brought in on the tram line that went almost to our family’s clearing. It was bigger than the diameter of the saw and we didn’t have a breaking down saw, so the whole job had to be done on the bench.

327 Nick was watching every cut like a hawk. His aim was to shave off enough of the log to make it manageable. He was worried about a knotty bit at Mimmo’s end and had to have it in the right position to get a clean cut. If he’d had any sense he’d have insisted that the log be cleaned up with the axe before it got near the bench, but by then he’d had his courage questioned too often to do anything Mimmo - that putrid name - would have sneered at as weak. Mimmo pulled early, and with a twist. The flitch, a heavy one, caught the saw and was flung back. It was too quick for Nick and smashed his shoulder. Bill ran in to help. I called Mimmo a murderous swine, and the other puller-out stood back, horrified by what he’d seen. He knew it was deliberate. Mimmo stopped the saw, got a rug from Nick’s bunk, and flung it on the ground beside his victim, whose blood was running into the dust. Mimmo picked up the flitch that had done the damage with a pig-like grunt, and carried it to the firepit. Watching him throw it in, I saw his contempt for anything that got in his way, and felt like pushing him into the fire, but, strong as I was, I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough if a struggle started. No, my daughter, no. Stay where you are. Use cunning. Guile, well applied, will always find the weakness of a strength. We got the rug under Nick, then lifted him onto the back of the truck. Bill drove him down to the hospital, while I squatted beside him in the tray, listening to his groans every time we went over a bump. Looking up, he could see the forest bending over the track, and I knew that he knew he’d never work in the bush again.

The neighbours got Juliet through the next few weeks. John came every night. They sat on either side of Don for hours. She hardly looked at him when he left. Sometimes she met him in her dressing gown, and hurried him into bed. Sometimes she was out walking, coming home tired, and desperate to inspect Don for any sign of change. One night when she didn’t come back, he drove to the rainforest country, and found her sitting on the side of a chasm, listening to the waterfall.

328 ‘How did you know where I’d be?’ ‘Much as you might like to deny it, I have a very important connection with you.’ ‘Is he all right?’ ‘He’s all right.’ ‘No change?’ she said sarcastically. ‘No change.’ ‘Take me back.’ He drove her back. ‘Don’t come in tonight, John, please. The combination of you and Don makes the trap that much harder to bear.’ ‘As you wish.’ His docility, his acceptance of her will, angered her. ‘It’s not fuckin as I wish! Who’d want to be where I am? I’m the fuckin rat in the trap. The bird that’s had its wings clipped, you know? You know, John? Johnny John John? Do you really know, or just pretend? You do put on a pretty good act. The people next door think you’re marvellous. They tell me I’m lucky. They know bloody well you’re using me as a free root, but they tell me how good you are. Ach, it makes me sick!’ He said sadly, ‘Good night then. I’ve thought of something that might make the cage a bit bigger. I’ll bring it to you when it’s ready.’ The lights of an approaching car illuminated his face, and she saw tears on his cheeks. ‘You should just forget about me John. Go back to your wife. You and I haven’t got a future. I’m too young, you’re too old. I’m a mess, you’re okay. I don’t know when my luck’s going to turn, but it’ll be long after I’ve said goodbye to you. Really.’ She reached into the dark to touch his cheeks because she needed to feel his tears. ‘You’re a very real person, John. You have been good to me. I know I mean a lot to you, whatever I say when I get angry. I don’t really get angry with you, I’m angry with the hole I’m in. You couldn’t have done more, and I’m going to keep needing you, but ... don’t build anything on it. Don’t have expectations. If you want to see me, just see me, and go away whenever you please. Please, that’s the word that dominates my life at the moment, isn’t it. Please God let Don die

329 quickly. Please God let me make sense of the mess I’m in. Please John keep supporting me. Please love me a bit and please let me rage at you when I need to. And please let me be alone with him tonight?’ John nodded. ‘I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.’ She was startled. Was this a way of saying he wouldn’t see her again? ‘John?’ ‘Don’t be alarmed. I mean it. I’ll see you when I’ve got something useful to give you.’ He started the engine. She got out. He waved, and drove away. When he came back, it was another rainy night. She was in the kitchen, reading. ‘Put a coat on. I’ve got something outside to show you.’ ‘Got yourself a new car?’ ‘I’ve got you a new car.’ ‘What would I do with a car?’ He only smiled. She felt stiff and awkward as she followed. There was something different about him; unhappy, but prepared for what might be going to happen. Under a Moreton Bay fig there was a camper van; the side door was open and the lights were on. There was an adult-sized bunk and a child-sized bunk. Chrome fittings took care of the sustogen bottle and the feeding tube. There was oxygen and a mask, if Don needed it. There were cupboards for clothes, sanitary pads and a portable toilet. There was gas, water, a stove and a fridge. Juliet stared, more frightened than anything else. ‘What’s this? John? What’s it for?’ ‘I think you could call it freedom, or as much as you’re going to get for the next year or two.’ She looked at him, unable to comprehend. ‘Registration and insurance papers are in the glove box, and ... ah ... there’s money in there too, should keep you going for a while.’ When his voice broke, she knew she couldn’t leave. ‘I can’t take it, John. It’s a fantastic thing for you to do, but I can’t take it.’ She felt him go quiet. He waved a hand at the van, unable to speak. ‘John?’ He moved his hand in a series of waves, telling her she could explore the mighty hin-

330 terland, take Don with her. She looked in again; everything she might need was there. In the same instant she saw the real terms on which she could accept, as opposed to the grandiloquent terms of his gesture. Sure, she could travel now, but only to come back. His gift of freedom tied her more securely. She looked in the glove box. Beside the papers, there was a wad of hundred dollar notes. ‘If I travel, can you come with me?’ ‘I’ve got my work.’ ‘Your work’s only a habit.’ ‘My trap, I suppose.’ ‘Does your wife know about this?’ ‘Yes. She probably, in her subtle way, put the idea in my head.’ ‘To get rid of me?’ ‘She’s not that sort of person.’ ‘Everybody’s that sort of person.’ ‘Perhaps you’re right. But put the complications aside and take it for whatever you can do with it.’ ‘What about the house? Are you putting new people in when ...’ She faltered. ‘Sorry. I was going to say “when you get rid of me”. What I think I want to say, is “when I’m gone”.’ Then she felt her eyes filling with tears too, and knew that the freedom she’d been given had a central point, round which she could swing, and pivot, circle and gyrate. He’d put himself in her heart, and there was no escaping him - not yet. Only Don’s extinction could bring her to face that question - could she or couldn’t she escape him? Did she want to, or not?

Lucy’s journal In an age of dictators, we had our own little monster at the mill. How strange that as my father mellowed, in his limbo between one life and the next, Mimmo made himself king rat of the White Bridge. Tim Hurley and his brother Leo left, replaced by two old crocks with fingers missing. Mimmo kept dropping hints that the owners were going to close the mill. ‘There’ll be a shortage of men to run it as those of us who are men’ - he was very fond of that expression

331 - ‘go off to fight the Nips.’ He was protected from a second call-up by a gammy foot; I suspected he’d done the damage himself when the first bloodbath hotted up. Not that he ever gave us any evidence of that, apart from trumpeting a little too hard his lust for killing. He liked to pull his bayonet out of the post and tell stories of his exploits in the war, with the point of the weapon drifting menacingly from the navel to the knee of his listener. Once he’d intimidated him sufficiently, he’d hurl the bayonet at the post with alarming ferocity. He was a pathological killer - or so he wanted us to believe. A liar, a fraud, a man projecting his fears to make him less afraid! He boasted of not knowing how many children he’d sired; this was for Bill’s humiliation, in view of my childless state. ‘How old are you, Lucy?’ he’d ask. ‘Time to get started!’ The look in his eye boasted that he could do for me what Bill could not; the look in my eye told him he would be unwise to stand between me and the firepit again, and he was careful not to give me a second opportunity. Bill and I were still good in our nights together, and alone with each other in the bush, but the dictator had entered the mind of my husband, and he was gloomy around the mill. News of the Japanese advance troubled him, and I knew that in his mind he was opening up the possibility of death as an escape from life, and I loved him all the more fiercely because if our mutual need weakened, he was lost. At night, I took our soul into myself where it was safe from this evil that had entered our lives, and had him press himself against me to let the warmth irradiate our double self. We passed many secure nights in this way, with the stars almost pinging on the shed in their brightness, yet I feared for him, and he felt my doubt, and slowly the uncertainty became admitted between us, and Bill allowed me to keep the soul secure in myself for fear that he, if he had it more than a moment, might lose it. The world was in a phase of losing, and what we had was precious. Yet this was when I came to know that if something was so precious that it couldn’t be used in daily life, then it was already, through becoming of too great value, in

332 danger of being lost. Our spontaneity was edging closer to inhibition. We sensed what was happening, and were sad.

On the morning she set off, Juliet rang the surgery. ‘Please tell Doctor Grey ... ‘ The secretary was new. ‘Ah, which one? Doctor Elizabeth Grey, or Doctor John Grey?’ Juliet imagined two busy, professional people beginning a day much the same as the one before it, in rooms last redecorated years ago. ‘Please tell Doctor John Grey that I’ve bought a camera, and I’ll show him all my piccies when I get back. He’ll know who it’s from.’ The secretary, however, didn’t. ‘Your name please?’ It was easier to tell her than insist. ‘Juliet Courtney-Morris.’ She stopped for lunch at a quaint wooden pub on the Atherton tableland. The woman who showed her a place in the dining area asked why she’d parked her van so far from the hotel. ‘My little boy’s inside. I wanted him to have the shade.’ ‘Bring him in.’ Juliet explained. ‘Can I see him?’ The two women went to the van, and Juliet told Don’s story. ‘We’ve got an outside area with tables, and it’s sheltered by vines. Bring the van up. You can be right beside him. I’m Ellen Thompson, by the way. My husband and I run the place.’ Juliet introduced herself for the first of hundreds of times in the three months she was on the road. ‘I’m Juliet Courtney-Morris.’ ‘Courtney-Morris?’ ‘Courtney on my mother’s side, Morris on my late father’s side.’ The older woman’s warmth came mingled with curiosity. ‘And is Don a Courtney-Morris too?’ ‘No, he’s a Bowden. His father was drowned. Missing at sea.’ ‘Goodness me. Bring the van up. Go around the back, then swing in under the vines. You can get right next to the tables, and open the

333 door. And we’ll get you some lunch, and then we can have a talk. Where are you going next?’ ‘Actually, I’ve no idea.’ ‘Well, I’ll get my Don - that’s my husband’s name too - and we’ll tell you all the places you ought to see, and we’ll ring a few people so you’ve got someone expecting you when you get there.’ Juliet realised that she was being linked to a network of people, and they would receive her and hand her on, and she would tell Don’s story every time, and she would write the names of these people on her map, and they would ask her about herself, tactfully enough, and she would either tell them about John’s gift of the van, or they would sense that there was a benefactor behind her somewhere, and she would be asked to tell the people who welcomed her into their station homesteads, their fishing trawlers, their camps, their squalid humpies and their roadside petrol stations something about herself, and it would be her choice, based on the degree of empathy and trust she had with them, how much she told. The Thompsons would give her the visa that let her travel through the networks, and she herself - her story - would be the currency that paid for the journey.

The flame women took me to hear the man who plays the tinkling instrument. They hold him in the highest regard. He refuses to be reborn until the world holds a faith big enough; his contempt, which they know is defiance but prefer to disregard, is stronger than my own. I am weakening, my daughter, and I won’t be able to bear watching the pain you are going to go through. I am going to desert you, shameful as it will be. I am only waiting for the moment. I asked the flame women’s permission to show this musician my clearing; it was only when he stood up that I realised that he was blind. I led him through the caverns, the flame women following, to this shaft, and by their magic we were lifted to my clearing. How hollow I felt when I saw those ashes. I tried to explain my despair to the musician, but his ears, sharper than mine, had caught the rippling of water, and he hurried, stumbling occasionally, to our river. He sat by the stream, composing in his head, and I caught, with the ear of my imagination, the wondrous sounds, now rippling, now surging, light as a

334 dragonfly, heavy as rock, that were running through his mind, and I knew that I had wasted my time on earth because I had grasped, instead of sharing. To be rich is to give, not accumulate. To have is to hand on, not to hold. A fortress is insecurity made into a mound. The crossroad, the marketplace, the path anyone can walk, have all the advantage there can ever be. Love well, my daughter. Guard that soul, but share, and be prepared to lose.

Lucy’s journal Mimmo picked off the others before he tackled us. The two who feared him most he put on the other side of the saw, pulling out; he didn’t want anyone doing to him what he’d done to Nick. The shuffle meant he had two left-handers falling, a mismatch that led to trees dropping where we didn’t want them to drop, with lots of extra winching. There were arguments all the time, with no one game to put the blame to its cause. Bill became irritable, feeling himself surrounded. I wanted to leave, but I was too proud to let anyone drive me off my mountain, so I was reduced to hoping the evil would go away. But if the mill closed it meant that the war had become that much graver, and Bill, if he were working nearer the town, would be under more pressure to fight. On Friday afternoons, when Mimmo and the others drove away, our returns to the house became less joyful: the struggle in Bill intensified as he was caught between two poles that drew him with baleful attraction - there was the hate-filled world of Mimmo’s psyche, and the world of the town, which led by tendrils of social organisation, swiftly enough negotiated if you were so inclined, to the war. The men brought back papers on Sunday nights, and they lay around all week, so it was impossible to be unaware of the bitter struggle to our north. Fear filled our mill and its imprint could be felt even at our house. I caught Bill looking over the great valley with Chinaman’s Creek at the bottom, and I knew that he wasn’t appreciating the mellow beauty of farmland and bush, but wondering what it would be like if our country was invaded. The Japanese we read about were horrible little men, fond of using their swords for beheadings - or so those who wrote the stories said. I had a feeling that the world was being manipulated to

335 make people fight, and, much as I hated to admit it, this world-evil penetrated the clean-smelling forest which had been virgin when my mother entered it, fifty years before. There were no spirits in the bush any more, which meant a great loneliness for Bill. A shade, an infection, had darkened us, and there was no remedy but love, and that had become self-conscious. When we loved, there was a feeling that it was being done from necessity, not irrepressible desire. Something that had taken us beyond our normal selves could barely keep us going. On the night that Bill rolled off me without bothering to finish, I knew we were in deepest trouble. I went to my father’s shaft, but he wasn’t there. From the furthest distance, somewhere in the caverns, I could hear a tinkling instrument, not so faint that it couldn’t remind me of a stream splashing over rocks: the river of life, I felt, and I’d been allowed to overhear it, but it taunted me, giving me fear when I should have had delight. Everything wholesome and wonderful in the music was telling me what I was going to lose. The threats that surrounded my marriage, my happiness, came closer as the music concluded; the affir- mation it made on reaching its final chord was one I could no longer make. Desperation was going to be the current of my life until despair took over. I wished my father well, happy that he’d found serenity at last, and went back to Bill, and the struggle.

Juliet sent her lover a card.

It’s been wonderful so far. I’m dying to tell you about it, but I’ll stay on the road a while yet. No change in Don, big changes in his mother. I’m growing up at last. The people have been unbelievable, even some pretty scary types in the bush near Julia Creek. They were shooters, and mad, but they fell in love with Don, and that’s the story of my trip. XXX John put the card on his desk, and his patients got the benefit of an extra tenderness. Some of them remarked on it. ‘You seem very happy today, Doctor Grey.’

336 ‘I am happy. I think life’s taking a good turn.’ ‘Reckon it’ll fix my knee?’ ‘A smile’s more helpful than a grouch, I suppose. Let’s have a look!’ Juliet talked to Don as she drove along. Every time she stopped she described the place where they were. ‘You’re my diary, darling. Try and remember.’ The tenderness of strangers drew a tenderness from her. Her fits of weeping stopped. Her sullenness vanished. She found people, lonely to the point of pain, who envied her. People implored her to stay longer, or come back. Black people passed the word that she was coming, and white people phoned. In her mind she rehearsed the things she was going to say to John. ‘People wanted me. You understand? People wanted me!’ An article about her appeared in the Mount Isa Mail, and an execu- tive from a Melbourne-based mining company recognised the name. Courtney-Morris! Tom and Margaret’s daughter Tricia had married a Morris; what on earth was their grand daughter doing, traipsing around the outback with a comatose child? He took the paper onto the plane, and studied it. The girl had become a phenomenon, people vying with each other to have her stay with them. There was a photo of her, pointing into the van, with its side open. He found himself curious to know what the child looked like, and realised that a similar interest was affecting those who met her on the road. Back in Melbourne, he rang Margaret Courtney, got Tricia Courtney-Morris, and told her of the newspaper article, which he posted that afternoon. Margaret and Tricia were stunned that the lively child they’d seen at Jesse’s service had been irreversibly damaged. Hurt all over again that Juliet hadn’t contacted them, they talked of flying north to confront her, to take control of a situation they described in their pain as impossible. Then the breakthrough came. ‘It’s not impossible,’ Tricia said, ‘because she’s coping. In a strange way, she’s flourishing.’ They sensed some of the meaning behind her gratitude for the help she’d had from her doctor in setting up the van. ‘She’s equipped herself with a

337 lover,’ the elderly Margaret said sourly, ‘but when you’re as attractive as that, and you need it, I suppose it’s a case of why not.’ Tricia wrote to Doctor John Grey, of Cairns, thanking him for what he’d done for her daughter, and saying she wanted him to tell Juliet that she was aware of the situation, would do anything she could do to help, and if that meant keeping her distance until Don’s life had run its course, then she would do as Juliet wanted. In a revealing postscript she asked the doctor to ask her daughter to send some photos. Juliet rang John from Chillagoe. ‘I’ll be home tomorrow afternoon. I’m dying to see you.’ He said he’d have dinner with her at the pub next door to the house, which he’d secretly been delighted to hear her call ‘home’. She talked a lot as she drove towards the coast. ‘Come on Don, remind me of things. Tell me all the things I told you and I’ve forgotten. John wants to hear them all, darling!’ They were stiff, when reunited, and found it hard to open their hearts. He frowned slightly when he inspected Don and she told him not to carry on, her surveillance was closer than his by now, and she’d seen nothing new. She felt there was an undue deference in his manner when they were looking at the menu, and it irritated her. ‘People have been natural, really spontaneous, everywhere I’ve been, and now you’re handling me with kid gloves. I don’t need it, John.’ It hurt him that he should fail where the roughest and most unlikely had succeeded. ‘Okay, tell me the lot. Start to finish.’ She put a wad of pictures on the table. ‘I got these printed in Mount Isa. I’ve taken lots more since. I’ll get them printed tomorrow.’ They were on a deck extending the pub’s back verandah. A canvas awning replaced the stars. Evening air drifted through the wooden building as if it had forgotten how to close. The gleaming, vulgarly coloured records of her experience sat between them. ‘This is you on the day I left.’ He glanced at it, and winced. ‘This is the first place I stopped. The pub at Atherton. You’ve no idea how beautiful those people were. That’s when it really started!’ There was joy in her

338 matured features. He saw how successfully he’d given; what would she give back to him? ‘Tell me about them. You’ve got all night. I’ve organised to have tomorrow off, so there’s all the time in the world.’ She took his hand. ‘I was hoping you might have done that.’ He smiled shyly at her. ‘Darling John.’

Lucy’s journal Bill was driving the little engine that hauled the logs to the mill. We were having a hot spell and the wooden rails had warped. He drove metal spikes to keep them in place, but somehow they’d twisted by the time he came back with a tree he’d told the fallers was beyond the capacity of the trolleys to carry. But Mimmo had insisted that it was too good to leave, and it was in an easy place - all the sorts of reasoning people use when they want to cause trouble. The back trolley de-railed, the log slewed into a gully, Bill jumped off cursing, and of course he could do nothing on his own, so back he went to the mill. Mimmo stopped everything and they all went to the disaster. I’d been given the job of looking for new areas to cut, and I’d been in a gully where my brothers liked to sneak from tree to tree above my father’s track to the mountain: the furies he created from his internal rage. There were certain trees I hated, because I associated them with George, Robert, and Ned, and this would be my chance - I thought. The mill closed before I could get back at them. When the sound of the saw stopped, I knew something was wrong. I rode back to find the mill empty, the log upended and Bill’s little engine dangling like a toy. I thought he’d been injured. But it was worse. He was wrestling with Mimmo, and he wasn’t strong enough. Mimmo was banging his head on the ground. When Bill passed out, Mimmo got up and kicked Bill, with a hefty boot, in that part of Bill’s body which belonged to me through many acts of love. I jumped off my horse. Mimmo turned, sensing danger. There was worse than danger. All my rage at him for bringing evil back to my forest joined with my frustration as a woman in this senseless world of men, and my fury at Bill for being part of it: I

339 grabbed a crowbar and rammed the blunt end into Mimmo’s protuber- ant belly. The whoof of air from the throat that normally passed nothing but boasting and obscenities was the nicest sound I’d ever heard. That was how low I’d been brought. I was the wild Amazon most of them had always thought me. I stood over Mimmo and told him to pick up my husband. He couldn’t move. He was gasping, afraid he was going to die at the hand of a woman. I swung around in case any of the men were behind me, and he managed to grab my ankle. I smashed him again, this time on the temple. He fell back, and the hand that had grabbed me fell on his mouth, as if trying to stop a confession of weakness slipping out. Bill had come around by now, and looked stupidly at Mimmo, me, the men. He got to his feet, not knowing what he was doing, and lurched up to the log, and the dangling engine. ‘Looks like it’s the end of everything,’ he mumbled, and, dazed as he was, he was right. My fury relocated itself on him, the non-father of my non- children. ‘Useless man!’ I shouted at him, dropped the crowbar, which fell on Mimmo’s knee without him stirring, and got back on my horse. Energised by rage, but not so driven from my senses that I didn’t know that fear underlay everything I was doing, I rode from the mountain, knowing I’d never see it again as long as I lived, and lit the fire in my house for the first of many lonely nights. I heard Bill’s horse outside, later, but when my husband entered the house, he slept in the room that had been my mother’s. And so began our period of uneasy truce.

As the weeks passed, John noticed that his lover, though she made day trips in the van, said nothing about another three months on the road. He decided she was scared that the glamour of her first contacts would wear off and show her, to herself and to them, in some unfavor- able light. She said, hugging him one night, ‘Sometimes I think we’ve got a future John, and sometimes I don’t, but most of the time I just don’t know.’ He reminded her that he hadn’t yet told her the story that haunted him, but she asked him to keep it for a better time: ‘I’m too unsure of myself to take on your uncertainties.’ So they had each

340 other’s love, in a carefully traded way - and she kept her excursions to places within a day’s drive. When he told her about the letter from her mother in Melbourne, she nodded, accepting, but didn’t ask to see it. ‘Are you going to write back?’ ‘I have to.’ ‘Tell her I think about her a lot. Tell her all I need from her and gran right now is to know they’re there. Tell her I love you for all you’ve done for me, and when I’ve finished up here I think I’ll be able to go back. Mum’s got a beautiful place near the sea, it seems silly not to be there when it’s mine, in the line of succession. I suppose I feel I have to grow into it. There’s another thing about it too, John. John?’ He whispered gravely, ‘What, my love?’ ‘I have to become like those women, and I’m not at all like them, yet. How will I make the change?’ ‘I think it’s starting to happen, and you’re trying to stop it going any further. I think that’s why you’re too scared to make another trip. You know it’ll change you, and you’re resisting it.’ She pressed herself against him. ‘Do you know what it is I’m trying to stop happening?’ ‘No.’ ‘Not much use, are you.’ He put his arms around her. ‘When you go through that change, I’ll have to go through a change too, or I won’t be able to be with you.’ ‘You really want to be with me?’ He nodded. ‘In Brighton?’ ‘Anywhere.’ They kissed, uncertain whether an understanding had been reached.

Lucy’s journal Bill worked in the garden, and trapped an occasional rabbit. His heart wasn’t in it. Someone told him the mill had closed.

341 I was relieved, in a sullen way, that axes and saws had gone from my mountain, but I’d left the high country, and wasn’t going back. I’m ready for my next journey, Lucy, but you will have my company till he leaves, then perfection of loneliness will be yours. I was too proud to face them in the town, so I had no terrain to explore, except that of my mind. In those sombre days I rode my horse from morning till night, trying to work out what had gone wrong. I examined my years away, my parents, the sad troop of brothers and a sister that had shared my origins, and I reflected on the moments when I’d thought things might turn out otherwise. What did I hold against my shattered husband? He had not been able to create new life, so I would never become a mother, and he was increasingly failing in his efforts to shut out the war. No surprise, there, he had to look away to salvage something for himself, but he knew that the world beyond our valley held only a brutal end. Once when I came back to the house I could feel that he’d had the radio on; news of battle was trembling in the air. I picked up the radio to smash it, but he looked at me so pitifully that I put it down again. Every time he came back from the town he had batteries, and I knew that the news of death was increasingly his lifeline, and that he’d given up on the spirits giving us a child. Occasionally I thought I heard snatches of singing on starry nights, but when I went outside there was only a brooding silence. ‘You’re wasting your time,’ he’d say, and we’d lie in each other’s arms and I knew that he was getting ready to die, because that was what the world required, and that my force was not only not enough to hold him, but was, in some way I didn’t understand, repelling him. ‘Am I the problem?’ I asked him, and asked myself, day after day as I rode around the foothills, seeing my anguish reflected in the eyes of those I met, the saddest being my brother Gordon, whose pain was a version of my own, a crippling incapacity to act, even to think, as others expected us to do. We’d grown up in the narrowest of worlds, within the stubbornest pride, and really, though we were outside those walls

342 now, we had no connection with those whose fences put boundaries around us. Gordon’s eyes, though full of pain, didn’t, however, reveal a struggle like my husband’s, possessed as he was by a need to go. To die. He told me that the days and nights of waiting for the inevitable were a living death for him, and that it would be simpler for him to go, but that he couldn’t leave me, and I knew that his passivity meant that he couldn’t make a decision, and that something which neither of us could foretell would have to happen before the possibility of choosing life would be snatched away from him. I didn’t know then that it would be me, his wife, who would do this to him. It would be comforting to think that an enemy did the deed, but I did it myself. It started over the stupidest thing. Doesn’t it always? Anger and hatred, frustration and the desire for revenge wait for something to fix on. He gave them their opportunity. He’d smashed his shovel, God knows how, while I was riding. I came home to find him hacking away at a new plot with my father’s mattock. He’d taken it from the shelf where I kept it, alongside the thermometer calibration, the only survivors of my brothers’ fire, and he’d shaped a lump of wood to give himself a handle. He had a basin of potatos on the path, ready to plant. He must have sensed my anger because he spun around, keeping the tool in front of him. I’d told him not to touch my two relics. Ever. He gave me his weakest grin. ‘Sorry, Lucy, I thought I’d be finished before you got back. Job done and no evidence.’ He slipped the handle out of the iron head, and brushed the soil off with his hand. ‘Good as gold. Ready for the shelf again.’ He couldn’t have angered me more. I snatched the mattock from him, and this enraged him in turn. ‘Wasn’t it made to dig? What’s the good if it’s not being used?’ I tried to stare him down, but his eyes resisted. I asked him what sort of man he thought he was, and he grabbed the mattock by its long digging snout. We shouted all the stupid words people use when they struggle over a nothing that’s everything. We pulled and heaved, wrestled and gouged, we fell to the ground in this fateful, fatal wrestle. Sometimes he got it away from me,

343 sometimes I got it back. What had been our love entered the confusion of our quarrel, and, feeling him hard against my thigh, I knew that he would force himself upon me if I didn’t make him lose. Then a terrible thing happened. It sickens me to remember the sucking, vanishing feeling I had. I could tell by the look of agony on his face that he felt it too. Our single soul, shared evenly between us most of the time, was slipping away from us and entering the iron tool. Only one of us could have it. I’d seen him beaten by Mimmo and I knew I was the stronger. And more cunning. I let the object of our possession go, stood up, and waited for him to stand. I pulled the oldest trick in the world. I looked beyond his shoulder and let a startled sound emerge from my lips. My face made similar deceit. He turned his head, I grabbed him by the leg, threw him, sat on his belly to wind him, grabbed him by the throat, and squeezed. He struggled to throw me off, but, measuring his breath, I measured his life. After a minute he submitted and lay still, ready for asphyxiation if I willed it. I looked on him with contempt, and let him live. I got up. The iron thing lay inert on the soil it had been used to dig. He lay on the ground, groaning. I’d beaten him at too great cost. ‘I have to go.’ I indicated that he could go or stay as he pleased. ‘Why can’t I be your equal?’ he said. ‘Why do you have to overwhelm me? Is it because that’s what your father did, so you decided no one would ever do it to you?’ I told him there might be truth in what he said, but what did it matter? He had to deal with me as I was, wherever my motives came from. He accused me of wanting to devour him, to swallow him up and use him. ‘So what if we don’t have children? We can go on together, having each other’s company as long as we live.’ I told him that wouldn’t be long in his case, and far, far too long in mine. They’re calling me, Lucy, to go through it all again. The caverns are sibilant with my name. Farewell, my daughter! He swallowed hard, stopping himself from crying. ‘You know what you’ve condemned me to. We started off so well, but ever since you

344 realised there weren’t going to be any babies, you’ve wanted to get rid of me. You always said you didn’t want me to go to war, but you’ve forced me out, so what else is there for me to do?’ I told him I didn’t want any more of his lies; that he’d been torn between his desire to go, and his desire to stay; between accepting me wholly, and his wish to keep an exit in reserve. I said he was like all men in that he couldn’t commit himself on any terms other than his own; that he’d been longing for death ever since he’d realised his life existed only under sufferance; and that what he’d freely chosen he must now have the courage to embrace. A look of hatred came into his eyes, and then of spite. He dived on the iron tool which was now the relic of our love, and he ran to the creek. I watched him with bitterness in my heart as he scrambled onto the logs and rocks we’d piled as a dam to create a fishing pool, and I saw him, brimming with malice, fling the mattock into the deepest water. I went inside. Wanting to inflict damage on myself, as if any more could be done, I picked up the early books of this journal, meaning to put them in the fire, but some instinct told me that if I could find the courage to live the rest of my life I could surely have the courage to see it as a story. I put the journals down, as shortly I will put this one down, and close it forever. I heard him saddling his horse, then he saddled mine. He came to the door, his face like stone. ‘I cursed you when I threw that thing away. Now I want you to come with me. It’ll be awful, but we should do it together.’ His voice left me no room to refuse, nor did I want to. The story had to have its end. We followed the track until it reached the cleared country, we rounded countless rocky sides and looked across the efforts of settlement, the smoke of someone burning, the ranges on the eastern side of the town. We were high as birds, in this early part of the ride, but at the bottom of it all we’d meet the creek again at Chinaman’s Bridge, and there we’d part. My heart was never so heavy. At one point we stopped, the ranges cradling the dry grass of the cleared land, the val-

345 ley ringing with the laughter of a kookaburra and its friends in valleys further back, out of sight but not of hearing, each making an echo for the others until who knows how far away other birds were connected by their sounds to the little promontory of space where our horses stood side by side, indifferent to what their riders were going through. He touched my hand. ‘If this is what has to be, at least we’re doing it together.’ A lump came in my throat. We dawdled down, spinning it out as long as we could, but eventually we reached the bridge where our love had been celebrated by the plumed troop. They were nowhere to be seen, that sad afternoon. The horses’ hooves went clomp clomp on the wooden boards. He said, ‘We’ll stay on our horses. If I get off here I’ll never get on again.’ He put his arms around me, and I around him, and I left my body and rose into the air, high as the vantage point where we’d stopped on the way down, higher again until I was level with the ranges, and higher still. What was left of my spirit made its last great traverse and when I came back to him, I had been right around the rim of high country from every point of which we were visible, two sad, sad human beings leaving each other at the point where we’d begun. Was this the wisdom, the viewpoint, that had so fascinated my father? I supposed it was, and wished that some other life had been planned for me by whoever arranges the plot of this cantankerous world. I said to Bill that I loved him. He said he’d never doubted it. I said he was the only good thing that had ever happened to me, and he nodded, meaning he could say as much for me. Then, because moments are as brief as the space between two ticks of a clock, we let each other go, looked into each other’s eyes a last time, and stirred our horses, he to war, and I to the cottage where twenty years of madness lay between me and the next time I would write in this book. The following morning I found my brother Gordon, splitting posts in the bush. I told him what had happened, and said I would need support in the long night ahead. He understood, having had years of pain himself. He came out with a man who did the mail and bread run, and

346 they bolted a box to a tree beside the road. I was to leave a list of my wants there, and Gordon’s friend would bring them. I told him I would like to read a paper occasionally, so I could follow the course of the war. He nodded, and the two of them drove away. I didn’t see another human being for twenty years. Bread came, paid for, a note told me, by a pension my brother Sam organised when it became known that Bill was missing, presumed dead. He wrote to me from the training camp. It was friendly in an impersonal way, as if he was writing to a newly acquired pen-friend. I wrote a reply, but it was full of raving, and I put it in the fire. I got a second letter from ‘somewhere in Queensland,’ because the military love their secrets, and then a battered envelope came, bearing the signs of a long and difficult journey. The letter had suffered excisions by the censor, but it appeared from what remained that Bill’s unit was about to be overrun, and he expected to become a prisoner. ‘My next letter, if there is one, will probably come through the Red Cross.’ There was no next letter. There was a day when I felt troubled, because terrible things were hovering close to Bill. I stoked the fire over and over, for something to do, but couldn’t suppress my condition. Darkness fell, and my sense of something impending deepened. I saddled my horse, but whichever track I took him on, he only wanted to get back. So I gave in and lay silently on my bed, waiting. When the horses started rushing about their paddock, whinneying, I knew his spirit was close. I went out to the creek and sat on the bank where he’d been sitting the night he sang the song of the jug. I waited. A mist appeared on the surface of the water. Shafts of moonlight struck bright bands in the mist, and the shadows of trees darkened it as well: a zebra’s hide masking, for a moment, the spirit of my Bill. Then he appeared. A drowned man floated to the surface, then turned himself upright, as if he’d been floating, and had decided to tread water instead. Bill had never learned to swim, and this man didn’t look like Bill, or anyone: he was a blank face with water streaming off his scalp. ‘We were taken prisoner and they put us on this ship,’

347 he said, beginning the last story he’d ever tell. ‘We were lined up for rice and one of our boys knocked a Jap to the deck. A fight broke out. We gave as good as we got, but they had the guns, and they lined us all up. Then they got five of the boys that’d been doing most of the fighting, and they tied’em to woolbales they found in the bottom of the ship. They made us watch. Five Japs ripped the guts out of our boys with bayonets. They screamed so loud it’s a wonder you didn’t hear.’ I felt as if I had. ‘Go on.’ ‘When the killing was over, they locked us down below. A torpedo hit us. We were done for if we stayed down there. Someone got a door open and we rushed on deck. There were only four boats, and they were full of Japs. The brawling started again. If you didn’t get in a boat, you drowned. I got in a boat full of Japs. They didn’t notice me until it was in the water, but it started to sink because there were too many in it. They grabbed me, half a dozen of them, and threw me over the side. It was quick, Lucy, quick.’ He sank back into the water. The mist followed him down. I walked all night, but there was no sensation of him at the Chinaman’s Bridge. It was daylight when I got back, and there, on the edge of the creek, was my father’s mattock head. He’d given it back to me. I put it on the shelf above the stove. I’m looking at it now. We never had a ring. It’s an ungainly object, with a field of force that stretches for miles. Walk as I may, I am never away from it. I decided to stop riding. I left the gate open. The horses hung around for months, I think, but they wandered away eventually, leaving me alone, as I wished to be. Having shared my life with this journal, I had no wish to share it with anyone or anything else. My perfection of solitude was unbreached until the day the man with the educated voice knocked on my wall. ‘Anyone home? I won’t hurt you. I just want to talk.’ How could he hurt me? Was there anything else he could do? And talk? What could I say to him that he’d believe? I didn’t answer. People needn’t think their curiosity entitles them to look at my life. And then he came back, with Tim Hurley, whose voice had grown soft and loving as it wasn’t

348 when he and his brothers saw me as a fuck. He must have found himself a good wife. I wished him well, but I didn’t want to be reminded of what I’d had and lost. Before I close this book, I have to ask myself what those visits meant to me. My father admitted to his thinking no possibilities but those presented by his will. My mother admitted no alternatives at all. Immured in her fate, she found a way of being stronger than her circumstances by not resisting them. She let my father, thirteen children, and what three of them did to her husband, simply pass through. The things that happened energised her, while she strangely managed to maintain her own energy intact. I am the child of both. I found nothing that mattered in my years away, except a little learning through reading books, but I never had a chance of escape. I am as much a part of their world as they were. Bill gave me the chance to flower in that world, but when he fled, I was doomed. Everything unresolved in Giles and Annie had been handed down. The burden broke me. It never occurred to me, in my isolation, that I was of interest to anyone, except those who fill idle hours with little tales pretending not to be the sacs of poison that they are. I think the young man found me by chance, like the sleeping beauty, except that the thorns were not a hedge around the house, but my heart. I didn’t let him in. He must have told his tale to Tim Hurley, by some freakish coincidence, because who else could have told him the rest of the story? I didn’t let Tim in either, though I felt warmly towards him, and was curious to peep at his wife. Why did I refuse? I think it was because I knew what they would do. They would talk as they drove away, turning my life into a tale. They would find something of me in them, and of them in me, and I would have been given another plane to live on, always an escape. What’s their Lucy like? Did she love her father, and hate him too? Did she despise her elder brothers as I do, poor wrecked good-for-nothings that they are? Does their Lucy feel tenderness for Gordon and Doll, two other cripples? Does their Lucy

349 love the bush as I do, feeling at home in it as birds do in air? Has their Lucy suffered, and do they feel her pain, or merely know it’s there? Can they make music of me, or fill a few pages with my life? Perhaps they can do no more than talk, by an idly burning fire, about those events of long ago which were handed to me as fate. The spirit people have neglected me, but I’m not fit company any more. They’re waiting for me to rejoin them, telling the tale I’ve secured in these pages, begun when my mother asked me to write. Bless you, Annie, for that. What did Bill tell me about officers leaving the army? They have to return their commission to the king who gave it. You were no queen, were you, mother, but you gave me a work, and now, completing it, I hand the book back to you, wherever your spirit is stationed today, the 14th of March, 1963.

350 14 In which earth, air and spirits help our lovers to say ‘I will’ on Wainwrights’ Mountain

The children of the Redlynch school became aware that in a house near the hotel lived a boy who never woke. Juliet saw them under the Moreton Bay fig, whispering and pointing. She asked them in. They were nervous, so she sat them in the lounge while she told them what they’d see. She was aware that they were listening hard, in the silence of the house, for a sound. ‘Don’t you listen to the radio?’ ‘I want to hear him if he calls me.’ ‘Can he talk?’ ‘No.’ The children made frankness easy. ‘He hasn’t said a word since I pulled him out of the pool.’ They had to be told what had happened. ‘Can we see him?’ She led them in. Some of them were frightened. One touched Don’s hand. ‘It’s soft.’ ‘He doesn’t get any exercise, so he hasn’t got any muscle.’ Juliet sensed the moment when they wanted to get away. Later that night she told John, ‘I’m not going on another trip. I’m giving him to the kids this time. I’ll go down to the school tomorrow. Maybe they can do a health program. You can give them a talk. I want to do something positive.’ ‘This is good, darling.’ She rolled on top of him. Her lips were so close that he seemed to be listening to her mind. ‘It’s strange. I’m starting to feel powerful. For so long I was devastated. There wasn’t any hope, only the cage. Now I feel I have to do something with what I’ve got. This is where you come in. I want to do something with you.’ He murmured grate-

351 fully. ‘And that’s strange too. What could I do for you?’ His silence told her he wanted to be spared the pain of losing her. ‘And I have a feeling that if I’m getting stronger then Don’s getting weaker. It won’t be all that long.’ John said, ‘He’s had colds. There’s muck in his lungs. Breathing’s going to get harder. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’ll come. It won’t be nice.’ With her hands she cupped the crown of his head. ‘Right now I can’t imagine what it would be like to be without you. But what’ll I be like when he’s gone?’ His silence pained her. ‘I know I hurt you when I think about it, but I have to think about it. John. When I’m not dependent on you, I may see you in a different light.’ The next day they drove to the spot overlooking a chasm, where he’d found her one night, running away. They sat on the ground, Juliet smoking. ‘Time for my story,’ he said. She laughed. She could hardly run away from him here, with Don in the van. ‘Tell it!’ He smiled. ‘Once upon a time ... ’ She stubbed her cigarette in the grass and lit another. ‘I know this means a lot to you. I suppose that’s why I’ve been avoiding it.’ ‘Why?’ She thought. ‘It’s as if, when we get into this, we’re starting to make that final decision we’re going to have to make. One day.’ She gestured at the van. He dropped his head, accepting. ‘I have to start.’ ‘Okay!’ He picked up the butt she’d pressed into the grass. She took it as a criticism, but waited. He pressed it with the tips of his fingers as her lips had pressed it. ‘I’ve told you how I used to drive into the mountains, trying to overcome my loneliness by merging with the loneliness of space.’ She looked up. ‘I was a city boy, and those mountains were enormous, and bewildering, but bush men could find their way around. I’m sorry you’ll never meet the Hurleys, because, really, the bush was like their living room, you couldn’t lose them anywhere. And I was always lost. But I drove about so much that after a while I began to pick up the tracks. It was mind-expanding. I came to realise that long

352 before I’d marched into medical school, full of how clever I was, these mountains had been full of people, mostly battlers, panning for gold, setting up shanties, finding little flats where they could get grass for their stock, maybe hiding stolen beasts until it was clear to sell them. The mountains came to represent everything I didn’t know. I was so scared of being lost, or breaking a leg and not being able to get out, that I admired these people who’d done it the hard way, without a car or money. They made me feel humble - some of the time, anyway. God knows I was arrogant enough with the nurses at the little hospital. When I think of how superior I was, it makes me embarrassed.’ He paused, needing her to let him forgive himself. She touched the back of his hand. ‘Go on.’ He glanced at her, wanting more support. ‘John.’ ‘Thank you darling. I do ask a lot, don’t I. Elizabeth came to visit me a couple of times, and I think she was quite impressed, but it wasn’t special for her as it was for me. I knew that for her it would always be the interesting place where I’d worked before we married. A sort of glorified railway platform on my way to somewhere else. But I knew that my soul - sorry to get heavy, but I have to use the word - had found a place that understood it, and vice versa. I want you to understand that I was getting on well with my work, and making lots of friends in the town; I had quite a good social life, really, but whenever I could, I slipped away to the mountains. There was a message there, a secret, that I needed to hear. When I drove to Melbourne, I’d look at all those mountains, holding something that mattered profoundly to me. When I tried to explain this to Elizabeth I’d upset her. She’d say I was putting a condition on our relationship, and I’d say I wasn’t. I’d say I loved her, and I did, but I’d say I didn’t know myself very well, and that there was something I had to be told, something I had to hear.’ He looked at Juliet, wondering what she made of it; but she’d been driven by a story of her own, and it had brought her, too, to this point overlooking a chasm, and a stilt bridge that only an engineer with the imagination of a child could have placed where it was, straddling a white, frothy fall, on a track to the rainforest.

353 ‘Don’t you think, darling, that it’s nothing short of a miracle - two miracles, actually - that you and I are here together, today?’ ‘I do,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

‘I travelled far and wide, but there was one mountain and its slightly lesser companion that fascinated me, and I kept going back to them. As far as I could discover, there was no way onto the top, so I had to learn about it by getting as close as I could. Mount Baldhead.’ He touched his thinning pate. ‘Why it should fascinate me I didn’t know, but it did. There was a huge valley in front of it, and it presided mysteriously over it, all the more mysteriously because the lesser mountain, the companion, was more visible than the big presence behind it. That’s what I thought real power was like. An éminence grise.’ ‘Did you talk to people about this obsession?’ ‘I talked to people all the time. They liked my being curious. It reduced my power as a professional, looking in from outside. And they told me a lot, but they were holding back, too.’ ‘How did you know that?’ ‘It was the way they were when they came to the surgery. They’d never tell me everything straight away. They’d throw me a few crumbs, and I’d have to probe for the rest. It was their way of finding out if I was any good.’ ‘And you were? You got their trust?’ ‘I got their trust when they decided that I knew the important people in the district.’ He paused, self satisfaction in his voice. ‘Go on. This mountain.’ ‘I was driving around the back of it, and I stopped in a little clearing. I’d stopped there before, looking at the side of the mountain, which was very steep, wondering if there was any sort of path to the top. On this day I decided to go for a walk, and in the bush I found the remains of an old wooden railway track.’ ‘A wooden railway track?’

354 ‘I know it sounds silly. Wooden tramways - that’s what they were called - were quite common around timber mills once but I didn’t know that then. I walked along it until it had all rotted away and I didn’t know where it went after that. So I went on in the car, and I found a little track, dropping off the side of the mountain, that I’d never seen before. I was young and impulsive, I suppose - sorry, darling, I mean me, not you - so I headed down this track. It was overgrown, and in places I had to use the car like a bulldozer, making a path for itself, and once or twice I had to get out the axe and chop my way through.’ ‘And you were on your own?’ ‘Very much on my own. I had my heart in my mouth because I didn’t know if I’d be able to get back up again if I didn’t reach some civilised place. Bits of the track were slippery and my car wasn’t a four wheel drive. Anyhow, I pushed on, and I came to quite a good road, and I could see stone chimneys in the bush, which I knew meant an old mining settlement, and then, a little way off the road, behind a screen of trees, was a cottage, with smoke coming from the chimney.’ He smiled faintly; Juliet felt apprehensive. She looked from Don’s van to the chasm, where a train was rounding a bend on the all but impossible bridge. ‘And you went in?’ ‘I walked up to it rather nervously, and called out. You must never surprise people who live in out of the way places. They don’t feel safe unless they know where you are. I went up to the door, which was open, and knocked on the wall, very loudly, so as to be really obvious.’ ‘Go on.’ ‘Nobody answered, but the stove was open, and bits of wood in there hadn’t caught, although the fire was burning well, so I knew whoever lived there was pretty close. I called out again, and listened.’ They both heard it, a faint, piping sound, neither male nor female; disembodied, but impassioned: It would be better if I’d never lived. Leave me in my silence. Juliet rushed to the van. ‘Don! Don!’ His body was unchanged. John Grey looked into the chasm, where the tourist train was rattling

355 towards the waterfall where it would stop for a photo opportunity. ‘John!’ Juliet called. ‘If it wasn’t Don we heard, who was it?’ He stared at her, waving his hands stupidly, then they heard the voice again: Let me be. I was better in my madness. It protected me. Juliet had never seen John so disconcerted. He pulled open the door of the van. ‘Let’s get out of here!’ She walked up to him, using her eyes to ask him to move. He took a nervous sideways step. She took the key from the ignition, smiled at him, and suggested he sit down. He sat in one of the two canvas chairs at the open side of the van. She sat facing him, ready to accuse. ‘You were going to run away.’ He looked sourly at her. ‘The pot’s calling the kettle black.’ ‘Yes.’ She waited for him to speak. ‘You don’t know how uncomfortable that made me.’ ‘I can see very well how uncomfortable it made you.’ ‘You don’t know who it was.’ ‘No. But as soon as I realised that it wasn’t ... ‘ she nodded towards her son in his perpetual coma ‘ ... I also realised I wasn’t scared. But you are. Who was it, calling out to you?’ ‘Lucy.’ ‘Tell me about Lucy.’ ‘I told you about the cottage, and the fire. I asked a number of people about it. Most of them said I should talk to Tim Hurley, because he used to live out there. I hadn’t met Tim Hurley then, but as chance would have it ... ‘ ‘If there is such a thing as chance.’ ‘Of course there’s such a thing as chance. All our statistics depend on the notion of chance, and gambling, when it isn’t rigged.’ ‘John, you know so much more than me, but sometimes I know things you couldn’t imagine.’ ‘Well, what about chance, then?’ ‘I know what you’re going to say, before you even say it. The very next week after you found this cottage, Tim Hurley came to see you.’

356 He felt surrounded. ‘Very clever, darling. Why did he do that?’ She smiled, as if explaining a tricky diagnosis to a suspicious patient. ‘Because he had to. It was necessary.’ ‘No, I mean what did he think was wrong with him? His problem, that’s what I mean?’ ‘He told you he was worried about something, and you told him he had nothing to worry about. But you prescribed some pills, just to make him feel he was getting attention, and I’ll bet you any money you like he never took a single one. Because he hadn’t come to see you about his problem at all.’ ‘So why did he come to see me?’ John’s nerves were evident in his voice. ‘Because that’s what people do when they need to talk to doctors. It’s the way they get access to these lofty beings. You ought to know that.’ He was impatient, eyes straying everywhere. ‘I know that. It happens every day. People want to talk about their problems with their kids, their husbands, wives, the affairs they’re having. It all comes out. God, if my walls could speak ... ‘ ‘Get back to Lucy.’ ‘Tim told me he’d heard I’d been driving around his old stamping ground, as he put it. It was a small town, he’d heard about the fire, and the wood. You know who lives there, he said. Lucy. I used to know her. Brought up with her, practically.’ Juliet noticed a tenderness in his voice as he brought Tim to mind. ‘He told me he and his wife would take me there, and he’d soon have Lucy talking. But he said, would I mind calling on them one evening first, he’d like to tell me the whole story.’ He half expected the piping voice to call again. ‘The whole story.’ My story, which you’ve stolen. How can you show me you’re good enough to know it? Don’s breathing faltered for a moment. Juliet jumped up. John spoke into the air. ‘By telling it. What else is there to do?’

357 See you give us mercy, and more; tell it so that all who hear it feel better for having their worst fears confronted! Juliet looked at her lover, compassion creeping into her heart. ‘You’re in real deep, John. Let’s see you get out of this!’ He looked around, afraid of the spectral voice, yet inviting it. ‘So I visited the Hurleys. They sat me down in their tiny lounge, cluttered with furniture. Tim poured me a whiskey, and they had beers ... and then he told me this story.’ He paused, expecting to be interrupted, but there was nothing. ‘Many years ago, before Tim was born ... ‘ ‘Is he still alive?’ ‘No. I got a letter from his son, about five years ago, saying he’d passed on.’ ‘You’d kept in touch, then?’ ‘Yes, one way or another. Cards at Christmas, that sort of thing.’ You brought them to my door, prying, and you woke me. Juliet considered him. ‘If I go on with you, I’m going to have this all my life. How are you going to get rid of it, John?’ Though his helplessness was evident, he pressed on. ‘Many years before, because Tim must have been sixty when I met him, this man and woman made a house out of two trees.’ He saw that this puzzled her. ‘They felled them side by side. They made a roof of bark, and an end wall of bark, which they moved every time they had a child.’ ‘Where was this?’ He drew a map on the ground, explaining. ‘Go on. A house of trees.’ ‘And a great big fireplace. His horses dragged logs to the fire with chains, and as they burned away, he hauled them through until there was nothing left. Then he’d get another.’ Night and day, night and day, the kettle forever steaming, and my mother’s bread. Juliet felt uncomfortable. Sometimes she thought the voice was coming from the chasm, sometimes from inside her boy; and then from behind John’s chair. ‘Lucy’s homing in on us.’ He looked tired and inadequate.

358 ‘They farmed out there. He ran pigs. Tim told me he’d get them to follow him down to market. You’d see him riding along, he’d tell me, and all these pigs following, strung out for a mile or more. And he didn’t use dogs; the pigs would straggle along. I suppose he must have thrown bits of corn, or grain, behind him occasionally, to keep them following. Leading them to the slaughter, as you might say.’ To the death that was in them at their birth; the death that we search for in the world, though it’s inside us, waiting its time. Juliet half expected her son to cry out in protest. ‘Go on, darling. Don’t be flustered, and don’t be scared. You have to tell it now, tell it all.’ He said, ‘I’d give anything to get out of this, but there’s no escape.’ He glanced at the chasm. ‘These people had thirteen children, all delivered by him. He never let her have them in town, and he didn’t let her have a midwife. He was the doctor and the midwife.’ Hope, Nicholas, Prudence, Faith, Mercy, Charity, these six. ‘Seven of them lived, six died young.’ George, Robert, Ned, the patricidal trio: Gordon, Doll and Sam. John stood up, challenging the air. ‘And Lucy.’ You accept me then, knowing what you’ve done? ‘I accept you, knowing what I’ve done.’ I’m very old, frail, and frightened. I’ve no peace nor contentment to give you. ‘I’m fifty, and properly in love for the first time in my life. If happiness comes out of this, you can share.’ Tell your story, then. Tell my story. I will judge. John sat in his chair again, but Juliet stopped him. ‘Stop for a minute. I need to know what I want to get out of this. Don’t go on till I tell you.’ She glanced momentarily at Don, then walked to the edge of the chasm. The last time she’d been to this spot she’d been thinking of throwing herself over. What was different? Hope. She would survive the death of her son, when it came. There would be life beyond. She moved lightly over the grass, and sat in front of him. ‘Go on.’

359 ‘This man was domineering ... ‘ ‘You haven’t said his name yet.’ ‘Giles Wainwright.’ ‘And his wife?’ ‘Annie.’ The train hooted at the head of the falls. ‘Shall I go on?’ She nodded. ‘As his sons grew up, he wouldn’t let them go away, or work for anybody else. They never had any schooling. They grew up knowing nothing but the bush around their little clearing. And they grew to hate their father. In the end, they killed him.’ I saw his brains, a grey mess, not the faintest evidence of thought. ‘How did they do it?’ ‘Tim didn’t know. Giles just disappeared. Nobody knew he’d gone for a long time. Tim’s convinced they threw his body down a shaft.’ ‘A mine shaft?’ ‘Yes. There would have been abandoned diggings around there. Giles actually found the flat that was to become his farm while he was working for a mine. It was on the inland side of the divide, and they brought their water from the southern side through a low saddle. They had it flowing along a channel they’d dug. They really worked in those days. And Giles had the job of keeping the channel clear. He had to pick out anything that fell in it so the water kept flowing.’ ‘What a funny job.’ ‘There’s lots of jobs like that that have disappeared. There’s no place for them in the modern economy.’ ‘Do you know where they killed him?’ ‘No one knows where they killed him. We don’t even know that they did. It’s just what people in the area believed. But I was walking around with Tim one day, out at Baldhead, and we both stopped because we had a strong sensation. We’d been talking about Giles, and we were on the track from his clearing to Seldom Seen, a place where there’d once been a shanty, and we were at the point where the track runs over the mountain’s neck ... ‘ he fingered his own neck at the line where a barber had shaved to give a clean effect ‘ ... and we both felt

360 it could have happened where we were standing. Only a sensation, I admit, but when you have them, you’re foolish if you don’t take some notice.’ ‘It’s another way of knowing.’ ‘Tim said the sergeant from the town went out and made a few inquiries, and nothing happened. There was no evidence. But he said that not long after that, the three boys went off to war. Perhaps the copper gave them a push, I don’t know.’ ‘And what did the rest of them do?’ ‘Tim’s family moved away when the post office closed. Tim’s mother used to run the little post office. And when they left, they sold their cottage to Annie Wainwright.’ He paused. ‘So when Tim took me out the day we thought we were going to see Lucy ... ‘ he paused again ‘ ... he was taking me back to where he lived as a child.’ ‘And did you see Lucy?’ ‘Yes, we did. I tricked her.’ He waited. No sound came. He looked about nervously, needing some notice to be taken. Juliet stood up, and took his hand. ‘It’s a fascinating story. I’d like to see the place one day.’ John’s heart quickened. ‘But you’re the missing element so far. The world’s full of stories. Why does this one matter so much to you?’

John scratched his head. ‘Do I have to answer questions? Can’t I just tell it? Even that’s pretty difficult.’ ‘You want to be rid of this, so you mustn’t avoid the things you want to avoid. But all right, go on. You went out to Lucy’s.’ She looked into the air, wondering if she too could attract the disembodied voice. ‘We went to the clearing first. Tim made me stop a number of times while he looked around. He was trying to get his bearings from Mount Delusion. Eventually he pointed to a bit of old paling fence, covered with lichen. And Tim got a smirk on his face. We walked up this gentle rise and - I’ve never forgotten this - there were springs in the ground, with water oozing out of them. I got down and drank. It was so pure, and sweet. I’d never tasted water like it.’

361 I drank that water with Faith, the morning she died. John and Juliet grew sombre, held to a spot they both found uncomfortable, now, by a voice, a presence, that promised no release. He continued. ‘We came over this rise, climbed over a log or two, and then we were in the open. He’d really done an incredible amount of work, clearing. There were dead trees on the ground, some of them very big. It was undulating country, with porous red soil - ideal, the foresters told me later, for alpine ash - and there were rabbit burrows everywhere. They’d run wild in the years it had been neglected.’ ‘What about the tree house? Was it still there?’ Break, my heart, and conjure it to show these people. ‘No. Tim said the three boys had come out and burned it. They got a big fire going, and they stuck at it until there was nothing left. There were a couple of remnants. Two big lumps of rootball, from the base of the trunks. All blackened. I say they were big. They weren’t all that big. A couple of men could toss them onto a trailer if they wanted to.’ ‘And that was all?’ He smiled, turning to the air, and speaking slowly. ‘There was a clump of daffodils in flower. Not a very big clump, but it made me think of Wordsworth’s poem ... ‘ ‘What poem?’ ‘I can’t remember it now, but boys of my age had to recite poems off by heart.’ She thought this quaint. ‘Truly. Tim told me Mrs Wainwright had planted them behind the fireplace. They couldn’t have been too close, or they’d’ve been scorched. Anyway, there they were, bright as the day she planted them.’ Respect her, you educated man. Her other legacies, her children, are less inviting. ‘I asked Tim when he thought the Wainwrights would have settled there. He thought the tree house would have been made around about eighteen ninety four or five.’ I was born with the century in nineteen hundred and one. ‘And when were you there?’

362 ‘I have to think. About nineteen fifty seven, it would have been.’ ‘Twenty five years ago. Have you ever been back?’ The question had peculiar power. He shook his head, but they felt it was still to be answered. And, as if to underline the moment, they sensed that they were alone. Lucy had left them, for the time being. ‘It’s like waking from a dream.’ John was troubled. ‘I know why she’s gone. She thinks we have another appointment with her.’ ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ ‘Who knows. But I think we have. You said yourself you’d like to see the place. I’m going to take you there one day.’ She considered this warily. Were they going on together or not? It was the question that teased her, and kept being pushed away. She checked out Don while John folded their chairs. Driving away, she knew by the way he stared at the road that they would never visit that place again.

The teachers at Redlynch school were pleased with the idea of Doctor Grey giving a talk. After consideration of the sensitivities of some of the parents, who wouldn’t want their sons and daughters to be trauma- tised by looking at Don, they asked Juliet if perhaps she couldn’t leave him at home and show the children the van, with an invitation to those whose parents didn’t mind to make a visit to her house. John arrived for his talk. Juliet found it strange to see him relating to other people; she possessed him so privately. He shook hands with the teachers, and had the children around him talking, looking at the photos he’d brought, even before he was introduced. ‘What’s the biggest danger you face,’ he asked them, ‘when you come into the world?’ They thought of crocodiles, being run over, and getting shot by robbers. A nervous, thoughtful little boy said, ‘Having an accident.’ John told them their biggest danger was of coming into the world incomplete. Sketching in the various forms of birth defect - no photos at this stage - he made them feel fortunate to be whole. Having checked with the

363 teachers beforehand, he asked the children if they all had ten toes. They did. Ten fingers? A boy called Tom held up a hand missing the index finger. ‘I lost this in dad’s saw.’ ‘Can you use a knife, though?’ ‘Mmm.’ ‘Do up your buttons?’ ‘Mmm.’ ‘What about writing with your biro?’ ‘Mmm.’ The other children laughed. ‘That’s all he can say, sir! Every time you ask Tom something, he says mmm!’ They all hummed ‘mmm’ at various points of their vocal register. Juliet felt delighted by these children, but stricken: Don was at home, minded by a neighbour, for the hour that she and John were at the school. John showed the children slides. Rickety sheds. Ladders with rotten rungs. Tunnels about to collapse on those who’d dug them. Tyres that were ready to burst. Crazy electrical connections. He made them laugh to make them more solemn. Then he glanced at Juliet, asking her permission. She nodded, but slipped out as he flashed on the screen a picture of a backyard pool. A few minutes later, the children came out to look at the van. She told them they could visit her so long as their parents said it was all right. Then she was alone with John. ‘That was a good talk. I had no idea you were such a showman.’ ‘It helps.’ But when he’d gone back to his surgery, and she was alone with Don, she had her worst depression for months. It was so unfair. Those beautiful, bright children, all with ten toes and ten fingers, except for Tom, and brains that worked. She listened to Don’s breathing. He had mucus in his nose. He was getting another cold. Take him this time, God, she said to the window that gave her a view of the fig tree. He isn’t fit for anything else.

Don pulled through the cold, but his breathing was shallower. ‘Lungs are filling up,’ John said. Children from the school came to see him; Juliet was surprised at her need for this extended family that surround-

364 ed her, yet knew that her attachment to them, as to the neighbours who relieved her when she asked, was not so deep that she couldn’t walk away from it. She rang the airlines and found the times when planes left, heading south. When Don went, she decided, she’d have a morning funeral, drive to the airport with no time to spare, and leave without re-entering the house she’d shared with Don. And John. She told her lover this plan. He pleaded for an address, so he could write. She said she’d write the first letter, if she felt the need. He said this was cruel. She said fate had been cruel to her, and she needed to keep control of her life, at least for a while, when she was free of the trap. Don got another cold. His breathing grew faster and more anguished. Sometimes he frightened Juliet by coughing. His body grew hot and sweaty, no matter how often she bathed him. ‘How long?’ she asked her lover, certain that this time there could be no recovery. He told her it could take weeks. She said she’d thought of suffocating him with a pillow, but John told her sternly not to do it. She defied him, saying she would. He told her he’d have to report it. She broke down and cried, claiming that anyone who could report a mother to the coroner’s court for giving a merciful end to her child was so heartless that they must be leading a life without love. He took her hand in his and whispered in her ear, ‘It’s you I’m trying to protect. If you suffocate him you’ll live with it the rest of your life. You want to start a new life down there in Victoria; well, you have to go through with the whole bloody lot. You can’t cut it short if you want to be clear of it eventually.’ Don struggled through five more weeks, then Juliet rang her lover at the surgery. ‘There’s something happening. His breathing’s getting quicker and quicker.’ John told her he thought the rapid breathing would peak before long, then get slower and slower. ‘Then it may actually stop for a short period. Then, if he’s lucky - if that’s the word - it’ll start again. I think that’s what you’re going to see. Ring me back in a few minutes.’

365 It happened as he predicted. When the breathing stopped, there was no movement of his chest for a few seconds, and then a gurgling sound in the throat as the breathing started again. She rang him back. ‘He’s not getting enough air. It’s called a Cheyne-Stokes respiration. Do you want to put him in hospital? It won’t make any difference, but we can do it if you want to.’ ‘No. I want it to happen here, where I’ve lived with him.’ ‘I’ll be there in half an hour,’ She met him at the door. ‘He’s starting to go blue.’ ‘His blood’s not being oxygenated. Give me a look.’ They stood by the dying boy. John put his arms around her. ‘Go for a walk, darling. You don’t have to watch.’ ‘I’m not letting you do it. You wouldn’t let me, and I won’t let you.’ At four in the morning the breathing didn’t start again. After two minutes of tension and hope, relief and pain, Juliet said, ‘Is he gone?’ and her lover said, ‘You’re free.’

On the morning of her departure, Juliet put the white coffin on the back verandah, reflecting the sun. There were streamers, and helium balloons were bumping against the ceiling, strings trailing. Neighbours were there to welcome the children and teachers when they came. Some of the regular drinkers from the hotel stood among the children, beaming ruddily. The Thomsons, from the little pub on the tablelands where her odyssey of acceptance had begun, were there. A guitarist was singing Blondie songs in the lounge: ‘Fade away and radiate’ when John entered, to be given a cup of tea by the woman next door who’d told him where Juliet had gone on the night she tried to drown herself. While people were drinking tea and coffee, Juliet slipped out the front to make sure the funeral director understood his instructions. As she was speaking to him, she became aware of a woman, of about John’s age, and quietly dressed, sitting on the verandah of the hotel. She felt sure it was his wife.

366 When, some minutes later, everyone had been gathered near the back verandah, the Uniting Church minister told them that it was Don’s mother’s wish that their gathering should be a celebration of a life cut short. Then Juliet took over. She asked the children to come up for paper and textas because she wanted them to draw something they’d like to do one day. ‘There’s prizes for the best ones, and the judge is Don’s doctor.’ The children remembered him from his talk, and asked his advice about what they should draw. Adults peered over the shoulders of the children, smiling at what they saw. When the young artists were finished, the pictures were spread around Don’s casket on the verandah. John chose, and called out the names. The one he liked best was a bright yellow aeroplane rushing at an orange sun, with a tiny figure visible through the window at the nose. When the funeral director and his men stood by the little casket, Juliet called, ‘Balloons, everybody! Everyone has to get a balloon! Come on, young and old! And take them out the front!’ The undertakers moved Don and his stand to a spot on the front lawn. Juliet stood by the coffin, her hands full of textas. ‘If you’d like to write Don a message,’ she said to the children, ‘this is your chance. Or a drawing will do. Anything you’d like to say to him.’ She pressed textas on the children, who hadn’t imagined they’d be given the most inviting surface of all to draw on. Cats, dogs, islands, more aeroplanes and comic strip figures were drawn on the box. At Juliet’s nod the undertakers moved to their positions. ‘Everyone got their balloon?’ Juliet called. ‘Okay, hang onto them, and watch me. When I let mine go, you let go too. Please.’ She started to cry, then stopped herself. ‘Got a good grip? Okay, watch me!’ She followed the coffin to the hearse, drawing everyone after her. Don was slid into place, the funeral director stationed himself at the front of the vehicle, and walked slowly down the road. After a hundred metres he moved back, opened the door, and let himself in. ‘Now!’ Juliet called, and let her balloon float skywards. All the rest followed. Of those who had gathered to mourn, or celebrate, some watched the

367 balloons, and some the disappearing hearse. When the dark vehicle turned out of sight, the balloons were still visible, heading for the upper atmosphere. Juliet said to John, ‘No one’s going to the cemetery except you and I and the minister. I’m taking your car. You bring him in the van. Explain it to him somehow. I suppose he’s used to insensitive treatment. Tell him I’m sorry, it just had to be this way. I’ll leave your car at the airport. Ask at the Ansett desk for the key. Darling.’ With a quick glance to see who was looking, she gave him a fleeting kiss. At the cemetery, she had a feeling of being watched. Was John’s wife somewhere near, observing? She looked around. There was no one there, but the aura, the observation she felt under, resolved into being the concern of her mother, gran, and Jesse’s mother Karen. ‘Drink to me only with thine eyes.’ She rehearsed the song, and the unearthly calm with which Karen had sung it, in her mind while the minister was saying the committal prayer. This time, Juliet felt equal to the singer and the song. John, standing beside her, could feel the acces- sion of strength in his lover. Don’s body was lowered. The minister tossed in a spoonful of earth. Juliet did the same. ‘You too, darling,’ she said, and while John was gathering his spoonful of soil, she started to walk away. He wanted to walk with her, but felt tied to the grave. At the door of his silver Mercedes, she turned, dark glasses in hand. In her eyes he saw love, and an overwhelming need to get away. She put on the dark glasses and in doing so became another woman. A moment later the engine of his car had started, she was moving away, and he had the job of taking the minister home.

The plane took off with a roar that followed it down the main street of Cairns. In this decisive moment, she felt her soul shrivel. The recent energy, the long endurance, could carry her no more, and all she felt was loss, subtraction. It was six years since she’d been in her mother’s house. The blue waters out the left bank of windows reminded her of Jesse, the island, and the escape from the brothel - itself the escape from an escape. The forest and farmland on her right reminded her of her

368 journey in the van, and the sustaining love beneath it that had made it possible: the double love: her determination, faltering often enough, to see it through with Don, and the other love, unasked for originally, then daily sought, to see her through what she had to do. John. When the plane reached Coolangatta, Juliet, feeling suddenly nervous, opted for a flight to Sydney, where she booked herself on the last plane to Melbourne. She preferred to arrive home in the dark. At Melbourne airport she took a taxi. She sat gloomily through the long drive, resisting the driver’s attempts to draw her into conversation. But as they reached the bayside suburb, she came to life. ‘Turn down here. I want to see if the bathing boxes are still there.’ The driver assured her they were, and cruised slowly past them. ‘Stop! I’ll get out here. How much is it?’ The driver warned her. ‘There are a lot of homeless people around. Some of them on drugs. Not nice people, believe me. You let me take you to the address you gave me. Sounds like a pretty good place.’ Juliet said she knew about homeless people. ‘I was one myself. I know what I’m doing.’ As he drove away, she saw him glance in his mirror, as if he expected to see attackers scrambling out of hedges. She walked across the sand to the box where she’d slept the first night of her exile. Plucking up courage, she knocked firmly on its side. No answer. Another, louder series of knocks. No answer. She wriggled under the cabin and tried the floor. It resisted. She turned onto her back on the sand and pressed the floor with her hands, here and there, but nowhere did it yield. ‘Good. I just wanted to know.’ She walked through the once-familiar streets, pausing only at the spot where she’d relinquished her dog to hide herself in a garage while it was taken home. Was the vintage car fixed, polished and sold? Or covered with the webs and leaves of the intervening years? What did it matter? She was almost home.

369 At the house she’d run away from, there was a light in the hall. Reaching for the handle, she knew it would be unlocked. She wanted to tell her taxi driver that not everybody was afraid. Mother and gran’s compact to stay true to her, waiting, was greater than the fear bred by stories of intruders. She took off her shoes and slipped inside. She put the small bag which was all she’d bothered to bring at the foot of the stairs so they’d see it in the morning, and she walked upstairs on the soft, thick carpet. Luxury would be hard to get used to. The door of her room was open, and the window was open too, letting the mild autumn air freshen her room. They’d kept their contract and now she was ready to keep hers. She took off her clothes, slipped into bed, and fell asleep after whispering to her pillow, ‘Sorry John, you have to wait and see what happens. And if it happens, it’ll be a year.’

The year began when Tricia Courtney Morris saw Juliet’s bag, and went upstairs to find her daughter restored to her, and ended when Margaret Courtney answered the door to a neatly suited professional man of fifty or so standing in the porch, eyes full of hope and humility. ‘Good morning.’ ‘Good morning.’ Mrs Courtney expected him to announce himself. He expected her to know. She spoke first. ‘Have you come to meet Miss Bowden? She spoke of bringing a friend. A flautist.’ Her voice rose to interrogate. ‘No, I don’t know Miss Bowden, though her name is familiar. I was hoping to see Miss Courtney Morris.’ He took the further step. ‘Juliet.’ ‘My grand daughter.’ He could feel her disapproval of him for having stepped out of his generation. ‘She’s here. Is she expecting you?’ He searched for the level of response to give. His arrival had been as inevitable as death, but she didn’t know he was coming today. Mrs Courtney managed his silence sternly. ‘I ask because we are expecting a close friend of hers. Perhaps I should say a de facto relative.’ She

370 meant, he saw, that he was a nuisance. Speaking to the wire and steel door that separated them, he said, ‘My name is John Grey. Doctor John Grey. I would be most grateful if you would let her know I’m here.’ Mrs Courtney said, ‘I’ll let her know. Please be good enough to wait.’ She disappeared. Upstairs, Juliet felt her equanimity disturbed. She could hear gran wheezing as she climbed the stairs. Why hadn’t she called out? She put her head out the door of her room. Margaret tried to appear composed. ‘There is a Doctor John Grey on the porch. I told him I would let you know he was there.’ Juliet was used, by now, to her gran’s way of using formalities as barricades. ‘I’ll speak to him.’ Knowing that the old lady hated anyone to pass her on the stairs, because it made her feel infirm, Juliet stood at her window, trembling, till she judged that gran would be out of the way, then went down, heart full of apprehension. ‘John.’ He looked at the wire and steel door. ‘Juliet. I said I’d come. Did you get my letter?’ ‘Yes. I got it.’ She opened the door. ‘Come in.’ Stepping from light to dark, he felt he was relinquishing the advantages of what he’d been in the past, and would have to court anew. He blinked to adjust his eyes. ‘I hope it’s not an inconvenient time.’ ‘It’s neither convenient nor inconvenient. We’re ready for most contingencies, here.’ The thought that he might be a contingency rather than a special event deflated him. He looked at the hatstand beside her. This led her to say, ‘You’re still not wearing a hat. In the climate where you come from, you really ought to. There is such a thing as skin cancer, as you know.’ The hallway began to seem a little less dark. It was too early to say it, but he went ahead. ‘It would be more accurate to say “the climate where I came from”. I’ve left it.’ His eyes caught hers. She said, taking up the challenge, ‘And you’re here!’ ‘I’m here.’

371 ‘Then we’re going to have a lot to talk about. Later. We’re expecting Jesse’s mother Karen any minute. She often has lunch with us on a Sunday. Today she’s bringing a friend. His name’s Gus, and he plays the flute. Gran probably thought you were him, at first.’ ‘I think your gran wishes I was him. I don’t think she was very pleased to see me.’ Something of the Juliet he used to know came through when she said, ‘She worked out who you were. She needs to punish people before she can accept them. Come and meet my mother.’ Tricia Courtney Morris was setting the table when Juliet led John into the dining room. ‘We’ll need another place, mother. This is John.’ John and Tricia saw in each other curiosity, a need for and hope of acceptance, uncertainty, and some of those undefinable marks that tell people they belong to the same époque. Tricia put down the serviettes she was holding, and shook hands. ‘It’s a great pleasure to meet you. I know how important you were to Juliet over a long and difficult time.’ He lowered his head deferentially; it had been a time, not yet ended, and never to be ended, he hoped, of hope for him. But now his hopes had to thread their way through the formalities of whatever occasion he’d walked in on. ‘You’ll have lunch with us, I trust?’ ‘I’d love to.’ Juliet took charge. ‘I’ll finish setting the table, mother. And I’ll fix the flowers. You show John the garden and the house before Karen and Gus get here.’ She smiled formally on her lover before busying herself with the table. ‘The house was designed,’ Tricia said, ‘so you could see into the garden, and from the garden, back into the house. So where shall we start?’ Though nervous of what might develop, she had, John saw, a polish which had been hard-won. ‘Let’s start,’ he said, ‘in the depths of the garden, and find our way back to the heart of the house.’ Tricia and Juliet laughed. ‘The gazebo in the rose garden, mother. That’s where he means you to start.’ John showed surprise. ‘I never knew you

372 had a gazebo in a rose garden,’ he said to his lover. ‘That’s because I never told you. Mother will show it to you now.’

Many lives came into the conversation over lunch. Gus described his friendship with Luke, and Karen explained how Luke, aware that his life would not be a long one, handed his island on to her son. ‘I met Jesse when I ran away from home,’ Juliet said. ‘He took me to Cairns.’ They spoke of the far north. ‘I could never live in a tropical place,’ Tricia said. ‘Cold seems more natural, to me.’ Margaret Courtney managed to bring Tom into the conversation, describing him at the stern of the ship bringing them from Adelaide to Melbourne, saying, ‘I always thought wind was a nuisance, but on a ship I see it’s a force we can’t do without!’ After lunch, they moved to the lounge. Gus, putting his flute together, said to John, ‘My former wife used to do this for me, every time, before a concert. She said that a second person being involved in one’s efforts enriched whatever was to be done. She couldn’t stand me in the kitchen, I might add, but who cares about consistency?’ Karen found an opportunity to tell John that Gus’s former wife had once been the lover of her brother. ‘If you and Juliet come to visit me, as I hope you will, I’ll show you the stable where they lived. It all seems so terribly long ago.’ John decided that Gus lived with Karen now, but as companions, not man and wife. He wondered what they’d play. Karen and Gus played, in the softly panelled lounge with a view through the garden almost, but not quite, to the roses, a couple of Morris dances arranged by Holst, Bach’s air on the G string, and Sheep may safely graze. Tricia thanked them for this last piece so wistfully that they gathered up their music. They took themselves to the gazebo for tea and the petit-fours that Margaret Courtney’s sister had taught her to make on her return from finishing school in Switzerland. When Karen and Gus stood to go, Karen repeated her invitation to John to visit her. He said, with a conviction that surprised himself, ‘It’ll be a privilege.’

373 When Tricia and Margaret led Karen and Gus back to the house, leaving him with Juliet, John realised how smoothly the whole thing had been done. ‘I’m feeling very nervous about this, Juliet, but I’m committed.’ ‘What have you done about Cairns?’ ‘What I said in the letter. I’ve burnt my boats. Elizabeth is using a locum while she looks for a partner to buy me out. I’ve given her my half of the house. I sold the car and I gave the money to my son and daughter because I couldn’t see myself being in a position to help them in the next few years.’ ‘That was generous of you.’ ‘We don’t get anywhere by being mean. What about you?’ ‘I’m feeling good with mum and gran. They had enough sense to ask no questions. They let me tell it bit by bit, as it comes out. They don’t know about the brothel. I keep that bit under wraps. Mum asks me lots of questions about you.’ ‘Does she ask if you think we’ve got a future together?’ ‘She’s never actually asked, but it’s there, in the air, all the time.’ ‘And what would you say if I asked?’ ‘I’ve been asking myself that question all year, and I haven’t been able to answer it.’ ‘What are the pros and cons, in your mind?’ ‘The con is that we’re so far apart in age, although it never worried me when we were together. Just about everything else is a pro, really.’ She smiled dimly. ‘So what’s holding me back? All I can think of is that we came together when we needed each other, and I’m just not sure - I’m truly unsure - of whether we need each other now.’ ‘What would it take to convince you that we do?’ She lifted the fingers of her hand. ‘Don’t press me. If you pursue me hard, I know what I’ll do. I’ll retreat.’ ‘Escape again?’ ‘Escape again.’ ‘To nowhere.’

374 ‘To nowhere.’ He looked at her. ‘This is a beautiful place to live. You’ve been happy here, this past year. I could feel the healing of this house, and your people, seeping into your letters. But it’s not your last place. You’ve got a long way to go yet, and all sorts of things to do.’ ‘I know that.’ ‘Do them with me, Juliet. Please, please, do them with me!’ He was pressing her too hard. She flushed. She began to say, ‘I think it would be better, John ... I’m sorry, this is going to be very hard to say, and I know I’ll probably regret it all my life ... ‘ when the earth grew sick of human uncertainty. Let them follow their helium balloons. In the bowels of the earth, the levers of gravity were slipped a cog or three, and John and Juliet found themselves slowly, but ever so certainly, levitating above the rooftops of Brighton. The sky above them, beguiled by the charm of Melbourne’s autumn leaves, saw with some concern that two humans, dislodged from their natural habitat, were entering the province of bodies more lightly built, and feathered. It decided to consider any pleas they made with compassion. Our lovers, too passionate, too uncertain to know what to do with what was left of their lives, were filled, first with disbelief, then with terror as they saw the earth recede. Sky-divers in reverse, they saw that the two fates available to them were to fall back, breaking every bone in their bodies, or to drift into the void of space. The earth, John realised, with his scientific training, had not ceased to spin beneath them, and the Brighton rose garden, even were they to be spared, was already far behind. But the earth had forgotten them, absorbed as it was by nuclear testing in its bowels, the loss of its tree cover to chainsaws and bulldoz- ers, and the poisoning of its air and waterways: its preoccupation was not with a couple, but with the pestilent race. Only the sky, wrapping them in a cloud, had compassion. They clung to each other as they had never clung in the days when the comatose Don and their sexual desires

375 had joined them. For what seemed hours, they clung to each other, saturated by the droplets of their cottonwool wrap; terror and an overwhelming need of comfort filled their minds and bodies. Eventually they became aware that their breathing was a little easier; were they getting lower? There was a sound of wind in treetops, they could see a little green beneath them, and then they found themselves lowered, none too gently, but put down nonetheless, on an alpine plain where a few last wildflowers huddled in the grass. They clung to each other still. She realised before he did. ‘You always said you’d bring me here!’ He looked around him. ‘Are you hurt?’ ‘No.’ ‘Let’s explore.’ Welcome, strangers, to my father’s mountain, not that you can do anything for me. They found their way to the trees, shrouded in the mist that had been their carriage. ‘Do you recognise them?’ He shook his head. ‘It’s too long ago. They’re not all that distinctive anyway.’ ‘Neither are we, I suppose.’ Every life is a place for pain to enter the bloodstream of the world. They found their way slowly around the edge of the little plain. ‘There’s the track that goes down to the road. That’s our way out, when we want it.’ There’s always a way out, but most of us cling to the alternative. I’ve done it long enough, God knows. The cloud began to lift. They saw a skinny metal structure at the highest spot, covering a trig point, and walked towards it, as if it provided them for a moment with a purpose. Sunlight illuminated the cloud, and they became aware that strangely dressed figures were watching from the surrounding bush. Bill, my mother, and occasionally my father, are the only people I’ve ever known to see them. But they are always there, believe me, watching.

376 ‘Who are they, Lucy?’ Juliet said. The spirits of all who’ve ever lived, watching how the latest generation handle their chance. I hope to be with them soon. It seemed to John and Juliet that the spirits, who were coming into the clearing now, wanted them to take the track off the mountain. They gestured to Juliet to take John’s hand. ‘They want us to go down.’ The descent took hours ... I did it so many years ago. ... and it was almost dark when they passed a little cottage. Through the door they could see a fire burning in the stove. Lucy was well hidden, but they could hear her, singing in her pain. When you get to the Chinaman’s Bridge you’ll know your fate. John and Juliet felt they knew it already, walking along the track, with spirits beside them, in the bush, high on the ridges, deep in the valleys, before them and behind. Singing broke out here and there, and torches were lit. ‘This is enchantment darling.’ She agreed. ‘This is enchantment my love.’ Suddenly they were alone. There was a noise, ahead, of a truck. Then a battered old vehicle came round the bend, its headlights catching them. The driver stopped. ‘Whereya heading?’ John said, ‘Wherever the road takes us. Into town, I guess. What about you?’ The driver reached under his felt hat to scratch his brow. ‘I got stuff to drop out here. An old lady that doesn’t have enough sense to live anywhere else.’ Juliet said, ‘Lucy.’ ‘You know about her, doya?’ ‘She’s been talking to us.’ The driver was amazed. ‘Talking toya! I’ve been bringing her supplies for sixteen years and I’ve never set eyes on her! Ya say she was talking toya?’ ‘In a very special sort of way.’ He didn’t know what to make of that. ‘Well, ya got a bloody long way to go, I think ya might be needing a ride, eh?’

377 ‘Sure do!’ ‘I’ll just drop off what I’ve got in her box. Only take me a few minutes, and I’ll pick ya up on the way back.’ ‘Right!’ He drove away. The lovers sat down in the middle of the track. ‘What’s the answer, darling?’ They roared laughing, and they were still laughing their heads off, and embracing, when Lucy’s provi- dore came back, catching them in his headlights again. ‘Fucking crazy,’ he said to himself. ‘Abso-fuckin-lutely crazy!’

378 Chester Eagle Chester Wainwrights’ Wainwrights’ Mountain Mountain

ISBN 0 9592077 2 4 TROJAN a novel by