Out of Alice (7 page)

Jack leaned back in his seat again, the key he had been reaching for left unturned.

‘Which job, and what man was that?'

Sara told him. Part of her wondered if this was what she had wanted all along and that the slip of her tongue had been intentional, just an excuse to confide in him. Then halfway through the telling she had the unhappy thought that it all sounded too strange to be credible. Would he think she suffered from hysteria, or was simply seeking attention? He was frowning by the time she finished and her heart sank. However, his response surprised her.

‘So this all began at the same time. I mean, you saw this man again in Mildura after he'd apparently followed you from Adelaide. You fainted in what, shock? And it was after that that the flashes of memory started?'

Sara goggled at him. She felt the blood begin to recede from her head, then rush back.

‘I am such a fool,' she said faintly. ‘I never put it together like that, but it's true. Does that mean . . . Do you think he's got something to do with . . . But surely he's too young to be involved? He looked to be about your age. And I never considered that the two events weren't separate. Him stalking me and me remembering things, I mean. I thought he just had some freakish fixation thing going. But if it's not that then how would he know who I was? And if it's to do with my past, then he must.'

‘The electoral roll,' Jack said, ‘the phone book, a private investigator – all you need's a name. People aren't hard to find. Vagrants might be, but not law-abiding folk. Of course, he might just have found you madly attractive.' He raised an eyebrow at her.

She shivered, unamused. ‘Enough to break into my flat? Is that normal behaviour? Besides, why did I feel such terror at the sight of him, that first time I saw him on the beach?''

‘No, none of that's normal,' Jack agreed. He leaned forward again and this time keyed the starter motor. ‘You were wise to clear out. Dr Ketch's advice on the matter is to be patient, and wait for your subconscious to heave up whatever it's been hiding from you.' His glance was sympathetic. ‘I'm sorry. That's not much comfort, but if it all gets on top of you again and you want to talk, I'm here.'

‘Thank you. I appreciate it, Jack. It helps.' And it did; fresh viewpoints were always helpful. She wondered if her stalker was somehow connected to the crash that had stolen her memory. Was it possible that he had lost a relative in the accident and blamed her? Or could she have somehow been the cause of it? If so, might he have been tracking her down in revenge for the death of some family member – a parent, say, or a sibling? Nibbling her lip, Sara considered then dismissed the notion as fanciful, if not plain silly. No six-year-old could be held accountable for her actions. What sane person could think so? As for the alternative . . . She shivered, suddenly glad she was out here in the middle of desert country, where nobody would ever think to look for her.

So occupied had Sara been with her thoughts that the Twelve Mile plain burst upon her much sooner than she had expected. One moment dusty grey mulga filled her vision, then the trees peeled back to disclose the swimmy light across the wide plain. She felt a sudden vertiginous shift in ground and sky and swallowed at the immensity of space before her, the overarching blue touching the far reaches of the rolling pale-grassed land that seemed to stretch ahead forever. She had never felt so small and insignificant in her life.

Jack seemed unaffected by its vastness. Without slowing at all he turned the wheel and drove straight out across the open ground. It was no rougher than the road, and the occasional anthills were both easy to see and avoid. When he finally pulled up and switched off, the click of his door opening was the only sound, apart from the ever-present buzz of flies.

‘Where do they all come from?' Sara waved her hands to keep them from her face.

‘Beats me.' Jack held the stick he'd cut. ‘There's nothing much to see, but if you want to grab a coupla those pegs and the tape there and bring 'em along.' He reached to pick up a hammer and thrust its handle through his belt. ‘Right, let's see what the ground's like.'

‘How?' she asked.

‘We walk.' Holding the forked ends of the stick two-handed, with the stem pointing up like an inverted Y, he set off, pacing slowly across the ground. Sara followed curiously, waiting to see what would happen. Nothing did for quite a while, and then the tip of the stick quivered. Jack slowed down and the next moment the stick twisted in his hands until the stem was pointing to the earth. He grunted with satisfaction and gouged a mark in the dry soil with the heel of his boot.

‘That's it?' Sara stared at the torn earth, examining the grass stems and the red soil from which it grew.

‘Yep. You wanna pass me a peg?' He hammered it in and tied a streamer of tape to the top.

‘So you bend the stick and that somehow makes this a likely place to drill?'

‘Pretty much,' he agreed. ‘Only the stick bends itself.'

‘Of course it does.' The green eyes narrowed at him. ‘How exactly?'

Jack shrugged. ‘I dunno, just that it does. There's plenty of things I don't know but if they work, who's complaining? Here, have a try.' He handed her the stick. ‘Hold it the way I did – tighter than that. Grab it like you mean it, girl! That's better. Feel anything?'

Was he having her on? Taking a firmer grip on the wood, Sara glanced suspiciously at him. Nothing happened, but she hadn't expected it to. ‘Is this the bit where you fall about laughing at the city slicker? It's a forked stick, not a magical object.'

‘You're forgetting the
galli-galli.
' He moved behind her and she jumped as his arms came round her to grip her wrists. He encircled them with ease, knuckles and fingers very brown against her own pale ones, crushing her bones with his grip. She was on the point of protesting when the stick came to sudden life. It twisted like a live thing hauling against her grip until the stem was pointing straight at the peg with its bright-red marker ribbon.

Sara gasped, astonished, but her hands were cramping; she loosened them and suddenly the living rod was an inert green branch again. Jack released her wrists and stepped back, lips twitching. ‘Not a magical object, huh?'

‘That was amazing. How
does
it work, Jack?'

‘Like I said, I dunno. Plenty of people can divine, though.'

‘So what's this
galli
-whatever?'

‘Ah, that. Ketch family tradition. Anything different, that you can't explain, well, it's gotta be
galli-galli.
Covers the weather, women, divining. Useful sort of term, really.'

‘I can imagine,' Sara responded dryly. ‘Getting back to basics, though, does it guarantee you'll find water under that peg?'

He lifted the stick again and moved off. ‘Oh, it's there all right, but getting it up – that's the gamble. It might be too deep, or unusable. Mightn't be good ground to drill. A dozen things could go wrong; all I know is the stick lessens the risk of a dry hole.'

‘You've done it before, then?'

‘The odd time or two,' he agreed, walking on.

‘Amazing,' Sara was being left behind and hurried to catch up, her fascinated gaze on his hands. ‘How many more will you peg?'

He squinted at the sun. ‘A couple, ideally – if we get lucky. I've been south of the road, but it's as dry as a bone there. Truth? I'm not too hopeful.'

It took another hour but they finally pegged two more sites. A satisfied Jack tossed his stick aside and stuck the hammer handle back through his belt. Midday was behind them and the wind had picked up by then. Sara lost her hat to it twice before Jack bit off a length of tape and handed it to her. ‘Here, tie it on. You gonna stay out here, you want to get yourself a decent hat.' His own shabby felt, she noticed, never shifted. He simply angled it down against the gusts, squinting even more to keep the dust from his eyes. He slipped the tape into his pocket and turned to her. ‘That's that, then. You ready for lunch?'

‘Yes, please.' Sara swept a look across the undulating grassland, picking out the widely separated flashes of red tape. ‘Which one will you choose to drill?'

‘Ah, well, Len's decision. Let's hope the water's good and not too deep. This could save his breeders,' he said, waving a hand over the dry feed. ‘Or he could stick with the mulga and agist it out, bring in a bit of cash. Either would work.'

‘Like your place? Beth said you had it rented to someone.'

‘Agisted,' he corrected. ‘Yeah, I was dead lucky to get the rain. I was one of the few who did, so someone's looking out for me. Still, you've gotta win some of the time. You know what the definition of an optimist is in the mulga, Sara? It's any mug on the land.'

She didn't answer. He glanced across and saw her standing frozen, green eyes blank with shock.

‘What's up? Are you okay?'

His voice penetrated slowly through the clamour of her racing heart. Sara blinked and swallowed; her hands were trembling, her face chalky white. She swallowed again dryly. ‘God!' she said faintly. ‘I think I need to sit down.'

‘Something came back to you, a memory?'

‘Yes, I —' But she couldn't talk about it yet. She felt him take her arm as the shock worked through her, leaving her pulse jumpy and her legs weak.

At the vehicle Jack yanked the driver's door open and helped her in, saying briefly, ‘I'll get you some water.' Sara clutched the wheel, rested her head on her arms and closed her eyes until her heartbeat slowed. When she sat up he was waiting, the plastic water cup in his hand.

‘Thank you.' She drank it down to the last few mouthfuls, then dabbled her fingers in them and trailed them across her face and throat. ‘Sorry about that. It was just so strange.'

‘You want to tell me?' The concern he showed was real and warming. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand as she hesitated. ‘You don't have to if it's private.'

‘It's not that. The truth is it didn't make sense. There was a vehicle that drove away and I knew I had to stop it or something terrible would happen. I didn't see anything, or – or do anything, except scream, but it drove off and my heart broke.' Her voice wavered as she transferred her gaze to his face, her eyes bright with unshed tears. ‘I don't understand.'

‘Neither do I, not right now, but if you remember more it might help. How old were you?'

‘I don't know.' Sara stared at him. ‘I was
me
and this awful, awful thing was going to happen and I couldn't stop it. It was like the world was ending —' She broke off, made an effort and drew a deep breath. ‘Anyway, it was years ago now, water under the bridge, so . . .' Her voice trailed away, then she suddenly hit the wheel with a clenched fist, exclaiming, ‘It doesn't make sense! And why now?'

Jack scratched his neck. ‘Maybe it's time,' he suggested. ‘What about this lunch?'

Today there was no billy tea; instead it was Jack pulling a steel-clad thermos from behind the driver's seat. The sun stood past the meridian but not far enough to cast sufficient shadow to sit in and the interior of the vehicle was unpleasantly warm.

‘Tell you what.' He stayed Sara's hand as she was opening the lunchbox. ‘Let's find ourselves some shade first.' He drove back to the line of mulga and parked, pushing his door wide. ‘That's better. Make use of what nature provides, that's what my old man always told me.
She'll keep you cool and warm and fed and dry, son.
That's what he'd say. Course, you have to put in the effort to make it work, but it's the only way to handle this country. He grew up with the Aborigines, did Dad – there were still blacks' camps on the stations in his day – and you couldn't get better teachers. They were all gone into the missions by the time Beth and I were kids, though, so we learned from him.'

‘He sounds an interesting man, your father,' Sara observed. ‘What's your mother like?'

He grinned and bit into his sandwich. ‘Ball of muscle. She had to be, of course. It's not easy battling on a small block. She kept the books, cooked for the station, taught us kids, made our clothes, grew half our food. She never seemed to stop, but she always made family time, you know? Special cakes for our birthdays when we were little, treats when we were sick; and she always barracked for us at our school sports.'

‘I thought you said she taught you?'

‘Yeah, she did, but School of the Air puts on sports days just like every other school. We always went and Mum'd be bouncing up and down at the finish line, yelling her head off for us. Embarrassed the pants off Dad but it never stopped her.'

‘She sounds great.' Sara felt a stab of envy. She couldn't remember Stella ever turning up at her various seats of learning, not even the year she was dux of the school. ‘Are they very old now?'

‘No. Mum's only in her sixties, Dad's seventy-three, seventy-four – he's got a crook heart, supposed to take it easy. It's the main reason Mum wanted me to buy them out, so he wouldn't work himself to death. Well, that and to have a home for my wife.'

Sara kept the surprise from her voice. ‘I didn't know you were married.'

He shrugged. ‘I'm not; we split.'

‘Oh, were there children?'

‘No. Marilyn wasn't the maternal type. What about your –' he paused, searching for the right term – ‘significant other? Isn't that what you call 'em these days? Can't believe there isn't somebody back in the big smoke.'

‘There wasn't. Isn't,' Sara said, determined to keep it light. ‘I'm divorced, but that was years ago. I married too young, so what was your excuse?'

He grimaced. ‘A pretty face, and a failure to heed Mum's advice. She tried to warn me, but hey! When it comes to women, what man listens to his mother? Anything left in that box?'

Sara offered him the slice of fruit cake and watched him unwrap it, wondering about the woman his mother had warned him against, and what Beth had thought of her. Her own marriage had failed, she now knew, because she had entered it for the wrong reasons. She had needed emotional help and Roger had provided her with the crutch of his affection, to which she had clung like a drowning woman. There was no equality in their liaison, she had finally realised; she had taken and taken, giving nothing in return. He had idolised her, he'd been patient and long suffering, putting on hold his own desire for a move to the suburbs to start a family. He was admirable in every way, but she had gradually come to see that he would not always be gainsaid. Her own neediness had inevitably granted him control over decisions they would once have shared, and it had come as a salutary shock to Sara to realise she was in danger of being ensnared in a trap of her own making.

He was fair, Roger – fair-skinned, blond-haired, his open face a book in plain print. And far too easily hurt, a fact that had intensified her guilt.

‘But I love you, Sara!' he had protested, in bewilderment and pain, when she told him she was leaving.

‘You love the
idea
of me,' she had said sadly, ‘but I was never what you thought. I needed you, Roger. I didn't love you. And I'm leaving you because I've done enough damage. I just hope you'll be able to forgive me. I'm seeing a therapist to sort myself out.'

‘You don't need a therapist! We can fix it ourselves. If I made mistakes we can —'

‘No, Roger.' She had wiped tears away. ‘I'm sorry. You can't believe how sorry I am. It's all my fault.' She could cry because she pitied him, but shame consumed her. ‘I've been a greedy, insensitive bitch. You have to find somebody better, somebody who really deserves you, who loves you. Because I've come to see that I never did.'

It had been a painful awakening, one that had led her to despise her past actions. It would have been easier if he had got angry, if he had yelled at her or punched the wall – anything but stare at her with heartbreak plain in his eyes. She had lowered her own gaze then, shame searing deeply through her, vowing in future to rely only on herself.

Eighteen months later she had learned through a mutual acquaintance that he was with somebody else, and four years after that Sara had glimpsed him in the street with a child riding on his shoulders, a little girl who had laughed and clutched at his thick blond hair. A shadow had lifted from Sara's heart that day and she was finally able to forgive herself for the harm she had wrought. She had dated since her divorce but never seriously, shying away from men whose overt admiration reminded her of Roger's infatuation with her looks. If love was out there, as the books and songs maintained, then it had yet to come her way, but it hadn't worried her. You can't miss what you've never known, Sara thought wryly now.