Bereft (4 page)

Quinn remembered the driving rain of that terrible day, a flicker of lightning, a red shoe in the dirt. He winced at the unbidden images. He ran a hand over his sweating face, disbelieving, cursing his luck for having walked all this way to avoid encountering anyone who might recognise him, only to meet this idiot Fitch on an otherwise unused dirt track.

Edward retied his bundle of rabbit carcasses. “I'm not afraid of you, though.”

Quinn shoved the rabbit Edward had given him into his kitbag and wiped his hands on his tunic. He turned to leave.

“You must be confused, sir. I don't know you. I'm just passing through—“

“They were talking about you the other day. Last Wednesday, I think. Bloody hot it was. Down back of Sully's place, saying what a life your poor mother has had, what with one thing and another …”

“Who was saying that?”

“People. You was reported as dead ages ago. That's what your mum said. In the war. Killed in the war, you know.”

Quinn had heard of countless instances in which the Army registered men as dead or missing when they were, in fact, hale and hearty. These kinds of mistakes were common in the chaos of war; men considered dead often reappeared in the ranks, having been in English hospitals where they had been patched up. There was even the story of a bloke showing up at his own wake in Brisbane, asking,
Who died?

“But they all say how they'd love to string you up if they saw you again,” Edward Fitch continued. “Even your father says it. And your uncle, too. Kill ya all over again.”

He tugged at the excess skin at his neck, rolled his eyes back and lolled his tongue to clarify his meaning.

“My uncle still lives in Flint?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Quinn paused. “And is my mother alright?”

Edward made a face. “She's sick with the plague, you know. There's lots of them around here with it. Lots of people dying because of it, too. Ginny Reynolds, Solomon Quail… .”

Quinn wiped his forearm across his brow. He had become aware, in the past few minutes, of the
thunkity-thunk
of his heart and the crackle of sweat as it seeped from every pore. He felt faint.

“What about the rest of my family? My father?”

“Well, your father is alright, I suppose. Still at Sparrowhawk. Your brother went to Queensland a long time back. I don't know why.”

Quinn placed a hand on Fitch's shoulder. “Listen. You don't need to tell anyone you saw me.”

Edward was crestfallen. “Oh. What will I say then?”

“Don't say anything. Nothing. You don't need to say a word.”

Edward straightened his belt of carcasses and waved a clutch of flies from his face. His Adam's apple somersaulted against his furry throat, and Quinn sensed what he'd said making itself understood in the fool's muddy intellect, like the delayed splash of a rock dropped into a well.

Taking advantage of his momentary confusion, Quinn snatched Edward's rifle from him, made sure it wasn't loaded, then handed it back.

“Is your mother still alive, Edward?”

“My old mum? Course.”

“Still living alone down the end of Main Street there? In the little green house?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If you tell anyone you saw me up here today, I'll go down and kill her. Do you understand me?”

“Why would you—”

“Do you understand me?”

Edward's bottom lip trembled. “Yes.”

Quinn lingered in the cathedral shade of the hillside pines, where the air was soft and scented. The war had taught him to mistrust open spaces and it was only among such trees that he felt suitably inconspicuous. He felt ashamed for having threatened Edward Fitch in such a manner, but it was crucial no one knew he had returned to the district. The fool was certainly right when he said they would hang him if they found him.

The town of Flint was arranged a mile below in a shallow valley. It comprised little more than half-a-dozen proper streets spread over an area of about three miles, criss-crossed with numerous cart tracks and alleys furrowed between properties by the scampering traffic of children and animals. The business district, such as it was, slumbered on a slight rise leading up from the flatter environs of the Flint River, beside which hunched a number of willow trees. The more prosperous citizens lived in the elevated section around Orchard and Alexander streets, a leafy area bordered by lush apple and nectarine orchards on one side and the grounds of the Anglican church on the other. Dotted along Gully Road were the wrecks of long-closed businesses—a tailor, Kilby's photographic studio, a fancy gift shop—that had flourished during the rush but struggled to remain viable once the big-spenders had decamped.

During the gold boom, the population had seeped into the surrounding bushland. The Flats, which sprawled along the north-west shoulder of Flint, had once sustained almost one hundred shabby miners' tents and dwellings, but was now little more than a few haunted acres of blackened stumps, treacherous ditches, broken glass, shards of crockery, rusted cooking equipment and rotted clumps of clothes. When the miners left the Flats for goldfields further away or for more salubrious accommodation, the more forward-thinking citizens of Flint were eager to clear the land and make use of its proximity to the river, but nothing was ever done and the Flats remained squalid, prone to flooding in winter and restless with snakes in summer. Even the children of Flint, who were generally an adventurous and fearless bunch, avoided the area and preferred to take the long way to the river rather than risk being grabbed about the ankles by the bunyips and yowies that lurked in its waterlogged gullies.

Quinn recalled his father once telling his children how he'd witnessed an Irish woman giving birth unassisted on a patch of muddy grass near the river amid the chaos; and how, afterwards, when the woman had staggered away with her mewling baby, a dog sloped from the shadows, snatched up the many-veined, bruise-dark afterbirth and fled with it twitching in its jaws.
That's the bloody Irish for you
, would be his father's laughing postscript, a comment guaranteed to prompt a fierce
Hush, Nathaniel
from Mary Walker.

From his eyrie, Quinn could see his family's farm on a low rise at the town's fringes. It consisted of a stone house built by his father, a stable, a chook pen, and a paddock for a few sheep and goats. The tin roof of the house gleamed in the midday sun. A glimpse of dirt road lay like a fuse through the elms.

Around him in the trees near and far, in the bracken that littered the bush floor, animals and insects whispered and thrilled, atwitter at his return after all these years. After a while, he lay down and dozed on the ground. He thought of what Edward Fitch had said:
They all say how
they'd love to string you up. Kill ya all over again
. He checked his revolver and tested its weight in his palm, prepared for anything. Shapes stirred on the outskirts of his memory, yawning and stretching, casting about for him. It was not a comforting thought.

Quinn watched over his father's property for most of the following day, but saw no one arrive or leave. The apparent abandonment disturbed him. Had everyone fled the influenza? He gnawed at a thumbnail. He rolled and smoked cigarettes. From habit, he checked the linings of his coat and trousers for lice.
Reading your clothes
, they had called it in France, as if they might ennoble the practice by imagining themselves scholars seeking meaning in tattered manuscripts.

A crow on a nearby branch harked and shrugged its neck feathers before turning its gleaming gaze on him. Again the bird cried out in its language. Was it a greeting? A warning? They watched each other for some minutes, two creatures of God's earth, before the crow shuddered as if displeased and launched itself into the air. It landed on the next gum tree and set about preening itself jerkily while keeping a beady eye out for food or danger. He wondered if it could see the ocean from its vantage point, other countries, the desert? The future, the past? This was the bird that Noah dispatched from his Ark to check if the waters of the great Flood had receded from the lowlands: surely it knew everything.

Every now and again, Quinn's stomach and chest were racked by burning, and he was forced to stop whatever he was doing and double over until it passed. His eyes watered and unstrung hammocks of saliva hung from his lips. The gas. The bloody gas was what did it. It was in him like a disease. There was no doubt it would infect him forever.

Holding up a shaving mirror to his face, he practised speaking from the right corner of his mouth, the undamaged side, making a flattened circle of his lips as they had instructed him at the hospital all those months ago.
My name is Quinn Walker. Ring a ring a rosie. Fee fi fo fum …

Sometimes he wept, just wept, would wake from drowsing with a damp face and a leaf or twig pressed into his cheek.

Towards the end of the day, smoke began to unfurl from the chimney of his parents' house. Twenty minutes later, borne on a rising wind, Quinn detected its scent. He saw no other sign of life until a lamp was lit inside the house and set the kitchen window aglow. Although unable to hear any of it, he knew dogs were barking down there in the twilight, screen doors were slamming shut, and mothers were calling in their children from the streets and orchards. Soon the house was swallowed by the creeping darkness.

He scooped out a hole in the ground, made a modest fire and sat hunched with his hands clasped around his knees, a blanket over his shoulders, shaking. A fire was a greedy luxury. Back there, during the war, there was rarely a chance to light a fire, even in the coldest months when snow dusted them.

He cooked the rabbit Edward Fitch had given him. The lean creature, skinned and rammed through on a stick from mouth to arsehole, dripped its juices into the fire. After devouring it with his bare hands, cracking open each sinewy piece and placing it morsel by morsel into his mouth, he balled his trench coat into a pillow and lay down to watch the flames. The coat smelled of foreign places, of mud and, faintly, of chlorine. The darkness beyond was made deeper by its proximity to the flames, and the trunks of nearby trees twitched in the flickering light. He tried to calculate how many days since his arrival back in Australia. Four? Five? Beneath him was the dense meat of the turning earth, going on and on for thousands of miles. He imagined fires down there, the screech of metal, those goblins and devils with their peculiar industry.

Something shouldered through the nearby undergrowth. He sat up brandishing his revolver and waited for the snuffle of a wombat or the hoarse cry of a possum, but nothing was forthcoming. Then, dimly, moored in the fog of his partial deafness, the snap of a twig. He raised his weapon and waited for several minutes. Surely that idiot Fitch would not have followed him? Had he told someone of their meeting? He tilted his head to favour each ear in turn but heard nothing more. Probably a kangaroo.

After half an hour he relaxed and went to sleep. But in the middle of the night, when the fire was embers and the world was otherwise silent, he heard the distant lull of artillery, almost a heartbeat, as he knew he would. Then the sound of the gong from deep within his dreams.

He woke immediately and scrambled for his cotton satchel, usually right beside him but not tonight for some reason. Damn. Damn. He was getting lazy, and lazy soldiers die. It was hard to see in the meagre moonlight. The night was unusually warm. He tried to stay calm, remain low to the ground, to keep movement and breathing to a minimum, the way he had learned. He glimpsed the satchel, partially hidden beneath his coat.
Gas, gas, gas, gas, gas.
If you taste it, it's too late. His fluttering fingers pale as moths. The fabric strap snagged on something. Christ. He tugged, to no avail. A rock dug into his knee. He tore his way into the satchel and fitted the mask over his face—straps across the back of his head, clamp tight on his nostrils, then the rubber mouthpiece. Breathe through your mouth only. Always worried the mask wasn't the correct size, or that he had in his haste picked up the wrong one, that he would wind up dead and swollen like that poor bloke from Melbourne, face down in the mud. The goggles rendered the world glaucous and vague.
Move it, move it, move it.
The interior of the mask reeked of rubbery sweat, of his fraying lungs. God help me, he thought. God help me.