What would happen to Ellen then?
Even worse, if they thought he’d had a hand in the actual killing …
In the old days, back in Cornwall, they hanged wreckers at the crossroads.
He might hang, along with Kelsey Reinhardt.
On the other hand, if Marybelle had died from natural causes, why shouldn’t Kelsey bury her the way he’d said she wanted?
People said she’d inherited money and gone to Melbourne.
A week later, in the midst of another storm, with the thunder hurling brickbats along the coast, the door was thrown open—no knock, no nothing—and there Kelsey Reinhardt was, dripping wet from the rain, looking in at him.
They stared at each other: Marrek unable to speak, Kelsey, it seemed, unwilling to do so. Until, finally, Kelsey took a step inside the house and pulled the door to behind him.
‘I got to talk to you,’ he said.
Ellen’s frail voice from the bedroom: ‘Who is it?’
‘Never you fret, Mother,’ Marrek said. ‘Just Kelsey wanting a word.’
He went and shut the bedroom door, then turned to look warily at his visitor.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘Sit down and say your piece.’
The chair creaked under Kelsey’s weight. He looked at Marrek, then at the floor, then out the window where, impelled by the wind, the rain continued to slant diagonally out of a grey sky. Finally, he said:
‘Reckon you’ve heard how Marybelle was supposed to have come into money?’
‘There’s been talk.’
‘People saying she’s gone to the mainland to get it? Or maybe to get away from me?’
Marrek said nothing, unsure what direction the conversation was taking.
‘You know them rumours aren’t all true. She got something from her uncle when he died—that’s true enough—but the rest, no. What I want to know, what d’you plan to do about it?’
Marrek hadn’t known what he should do but now, with Kelsey’s words, the answer was clear.
‘I wasn’t planning to do anything about it,’ he said. ‘I reckon it’s none of my business.’
‘You helped bury her. Nobody forced you but you done it, anyway. That’s against the law.’
‘I reckon it’s none of my business,’ Marrek said. ‘I helped you dig a hole. I saw you bury something. Might have been a sack of old clothes, all I know. You say it was your wife, then I believe you, but how she come to die, if she did, I don’t know. Don’t want to know.’
‘Her heart,’ Kelsey said. ‘Her heart gave up on her. It gave her trouble all her life.’ He gave Marrek a black look. ‘She was kind; so kind. She knew you was spying on us. Wouldn’t let me draw the curtains. Let him watch, she said.’
Marrek was horrified, not knowing which way to look, but unwilling to admit it, either. He sat still and said nothing.
‘“Don’t do us no harm,” she said. “His poor wife the way she is, I reckon he don’t get much of it at home.” That’s what she said, true as I’m sitting here. “Bury me here,” she said. Not in no boneyard. Born by the sea, died by the sea, that’s what she wanted and that’s what she got, by God. Least I could do for her.’
He sat, big hands hanging between his knees, expression brooding, eyes staring at images only he could see.
‘I killed a man,’ he said. ‘It was murder, all right, and he deserved it, right ratbag he was, but I got away with manslaughter. Seven years. Used to fight me like the devil, she did, like the devil, but when it come to the point she stuck with me. Thousands wouldn’t. That’s why we moved down here. Fresh start, she said, but you kill someone, even when he deserves it, it don’t go away. Not ever. The ghost stays with you.’
Marrek didn’t want to hear anything about Kelsey Reinhardt’s past life. Why the sudden need to unburden himself? Unless—the thought poisoning the air around him—Kelsey really had killed her, this talk of a heart attack just a made-up story? It was all he could do not to shout at him to be quiet, but what was the point? Peace of mind was no longer an option. How could he ever feel safe again, with a self-confessed murderer his only neighbour for miles?
‘I didn’t want to know any of this,’ he said. ‘Don’t want no part of it. But you needn’t worry: I’ll never say a word.’
‘Blab all you want,’ Kelsey said. ‘Tell you the truth, I wouldn’t care what happened to me, if I could be sure they’d leave her be. But they won’t. They find out where we buried her, they’ll dig her up and I can’t have that. Yet without her I got no life.’
‘I’ll not say a word.’
‘Up to you,’ Kelsey said. When he stood his head nearly touched the ceiling. ‘After what happened, I just thought you had the right to know, that’s all.’
He left and Marrek didn’t see him for a while, but in Boulders the talk went on.
‘Look on his face,’ Mrs Willis said, wrapping up knickers for old Mrs Boothroyd. ‘I never seen the like.’
‘Don’ reckon she’s ever coming back,’ Mrs Boothroyd said.
‘Maybe she can’t,’ said Mrs Willis. ‘Never know where you are, bloke like that.’
‘You saying he done her in?’ Eyes owl-wide in the dimly lit shop.
Mrs Willis was swift to deny any such intention. ‘I’m saying nothing. But a woman can think what she likes, I suppose.’
The next thing that happened was in April of the following year. That really set the cat among the pigeons.
1937
CHAPTER 21
The Cameron place had been built on the site of an old convict settlement. In April Professor Alexander Donkin, busy making a name for himself out of his convict-era excavations, turned his attention to the land now owned by Kelsey Reinhardt.
The word in Boulders was that Alexander Donkin thought he was the best thing since sliced bread. He’d not bothered to contact Kelsey, simply rocked up at the Reinhardt place with a trailer-load of gear and two assistants, never dreaming that Kelsey would give him a hard time over digging up sections of his land. He quickly learnt otherwise, with Kelsey, madder than a dozen bulls, chasing them off his property at the end of a shotgun.
Very indignant Alexander Donkin was, his ego in splinters, and he made sure everyone in Boulders knew of Kelsey Reinhardt’s disgraceful behaviour.
‘My research is of historical significance,’ he said. ‘It helps uncover the secrets of our past. Unconscionable behaviour. You’d think he had something to hide.’
Well. As the weeks had gone by, talk about the missing Marybelle had died down, but now Kelsey’s behaviour stirred things up again. Word got to the boys in blue and the next thing Marrek knew he was watching Sergeant Haggard driving past. There was nowhere else for him to go, so it wasn’t hard to guess where he was headed.
He saw Haggard draw up at the Reinhardt place and a minute later go inside. An hour passed. Next thing Marrek knew, the sergeant was knocking on Noamunga’s door.
‘What you know about Kelsey Reinhardt?’
‘Not a lot. Keeps to himself, mostly.’
‘What about his wife?’
‘Haven’t seen her about lately. Talk in town is she’s over on the mainland, some place.’
‘Any idea where?’
‘Mate, I know nothing about it. Okay?’
A month went by, then another month. By mid-year, Kelsey Reinhardt and his missing wife were no longer subjects of conversation; she’d gone, that was certain, and nobody thought she’d be coming back. Nobody thought about her at all. There was nothing for gossip to feed on.
Marrek saw nothing of Kelsey nor had much time to think about him, because Ellen was sinking day by day.
Jory was still working the fishing trawlers out of Strahan; he came back for a few days and was then gone again. Early in September, his mother asked him to go to Mole Creek, where her cousin was married to the local butcher.
‘Thick as thieves we was, when we was kids. Tell her I’d come meself, but I’m not up to it. I’m on my way out—you know that—so say I�
��m sending you in my place, with all my love and kisses.’
‘Get her old man to give us some meat,’ Marrek said.
With Jory gone, and when the weather permitted, Marrek took his dinghy and rowed out to the reef, put a line over the side, came back with flathead, tuna, couple of whiting. Everything as normal. Then, on a day of unusually calm weather, it wasn’t.
Once again Kelsey walked over from the Cameron place. He was carrying a suitcase and Marrek barely recognised him: unhealthy skin, red-veined eyes and stinking of booze, he looked like he’d aged twenty years since he’d last seen him.
‘I’m looking for a favour.’
Marrek said, with a cautious face, ‘What favour would that be, then?’
Kelsey told him; even the idea of it sent Marrek’s brain whirling.
‘Bloody hell, mate, I couldn’t do that.’
‘You’d be doing me a big favour if you would.’
When he’d been doing his peeping-Tom act, even when he’d given Kelsey a hand digging the grave, he’d never reckoned on anything like this.
‘You gotta be dreaming.’
‘There’s twenty-five thousand quid in that suitcase,’ Kelsey said. ‘What her uncle left her. She never was one for banks, so she went over and brought it back in cash. I want you to look after it for me.’
More money than he’d ever seen in his life, or thought to see.
‘What for?’
‘Because I don’t reckon that Haggard bloke is buying my story. They know my record, see. They know I killed a man. I hear Haggard’s been speaking to Marybelle’s family in Melbourne. When he can’t find her, he may decide to give my place the once-over. If he found the money it might be a bit awkward.’
‘What did you tell him?’
‘That she’d taken off and I didn’t know where.’
Too right it would be awkward. But if Marrek hung on to the money for him, he’d be implicated, too, if Haggard ever found out. He’d be implicated, anyway, unless Kelsey kept his lip buttoned. How he wished he’d never got involved! But it was a bit late to be worrying about that.
‘I suppose I could hang on to it until you want it.’
‘There’s another thing,’ Kelsey Reinhardt said. ‘I don’t have no life, now she’s gone. Honestly, mate, there’s days I wish I was dead as well. I even got my gun out once, but when it came to the point I hadn’t the guts.’
‘Blimey, mate, you don’t want to do nuthin’ like that.’
‘You got no idea what I want to do,’ the big man said. ‘I’m only saying it so’s you know, if someday I blow me brains out, the money’s yours. Okay?’
Marrek didn’t know what to think. ‘You don’t want to do nuthin’ like that,’ he said again.
‘I told you about ghosts. The man I killed and now Marybelle. She’s asking what’s taking me so long. Every night she’s asking me. You think I want her to know I’m too much of a coward to do it?’
‘You reckon she knows? Or would care, if she did?’
‘Of course she knows. Don’t look at me like that: you believe in ghosts, too. You told me about them ancestors of yours, luring ships onto the rocks. How they killed the crews, stole the cargo. You told me the story like you was the one done it.’
He left, shutting the door behind him. Marrek watched through the window as Kelsey Reinhardt made his slow way back to the house where he lived, the house that had once been his home.
Marrek stuffed the case under the bed and did his best to forget about it.
Two days later Sergeant Haggard paid Kelsey Reinhardt another visit. What he wanted no one ever found out, because what he found was Kelsey with his head blown off.
Rumours and gossip, then, to fill ten tin trunks.
He was a murderer, killed himself to save the hangman a job.
He was an innocent man, hounded to death by the mongrel wallopers.
Some thought that narky professor bloke might have had something to do with it.
Marrek took good care to stay well clear of all of it. Within a week the story was dead, anyway, as dead as Kelsey himself; with both the Reinhardts gone and with no trace of any money, either, there was really no story left to tell.
A week after that, Jory came back from Mole Creek. He brought no meat with him; in the place of sausages, he brought a woman.
1970–80
CHAPTER 22
Tamsyn never really got over what had happened or how she’d lost not only her beloved husband but also her stepdaughter.
She became resentful, soured by the world and the destiny that had treated her so badly. She loved Noamunga, the unflinching way it withstood the ocean’s endless assault, and she loved her mother with all her heart, yet she knew she could not stay there. Somehow or other she had to escape, find a new path in the world that she had neither sought nor wanted but that had become her only choice.
She thought of moving away altogether, of finding another country and another life where nothing would remind her of the past—somewhere in Africa or South America, perhaps—but in the end her links to Tasmania were too strong. Also, she knew it would be futile; the past could not be forgotten so easily. She moved to Hobart, took a poky one-roomed flat in an unfashionable part of town, by luck met a man who was starting a new tourist agency and landed a job with him. Pitiful pay but with a future. She buried herself in work.
It was a year before her body’s needs became imperative, urging her to find a lover.
It wasn’t hard to arrange, but when it came to the point it was very hard to carry it through. They met for a drink; she sensed his urgency, this man for whom she cared nothing, nothing. She almost called it off, but at the last moment decided to let things take their course; it was a disastrous experiment that left her feeling degraded, more than ever out of love with life and herself.
She was good at her job; she discovered she had a flair for the work. She was able to save. It wasn’t long before she moved to a larger flat in a better part of town. Inch by inch she established a social life. Most of her friends were involved in the arts world—writers, painters, musicians. She had the occasional affair with none of her previous sense of guilt, pleasant interludes that left her heart untouched.
She bought a place with stunning views over the water; she bought a snazzy car; she was making good money; finally, she had reconstructed her life. Incomplete it would always be, but in the circumstances the best she could hope for.
On 14 June 1980, her thirtieth birthday, she received a letter. From India.
1980
CHAPTER 23
The letters did it.
Doctor Kumar died in 1979 at the age of seventy-eight. His widow, then aged sixty-three, had no wish to continue living in the Kasauli bungalow and informed Esmé that they would be moving to Darjeeling, where she had a sister seven years older than herself.
Darjeeling was on the other side of the country and Esmé had never been there. All her friends were in Kasauli; she knew no one in Darjeeling and had no wish to go there but Mrs Kumar, looking forward to the reunion with the sister she had not seen for many years, was uninterested in Esmé’s opinions.
Esmé would come with her; she would act as companion to the two elderly ladies; the matter was settled. In the meantime, Esmé would help in the packing up of Mrs Kumar’s possessions in readiness for the move.
Over many years Esmé had been trained, by the late Doctor Kumar and his wife, to obey; she did so now, but with reluctance and a mounting sense of resentment.
The packers’ job was almost done, with Esmé sorting through the last of her grandparents’ papers, when she found a large, unsealed manila envelope with her name on it. Mrs Kumar’s hand. Curious, she opened it. It contained a number of sealed envelopes. Letters, in writing she did not know, addressed to her; others, in her own childish hand, addressed to Mrs Grant Drake, at an address she barely remembered.
Her childish voice echoed in her memory.
‘Where is your home in Australia?’<
br />
‘A farm with a house on the edge of the sea. It is called Noamunga. Noamunga, near Boulders, Tasmania.’
‘Noamunga? That is a strange name. What does it mean?’
‘The Fishing Place.’
Now, ten years later, she held the letters she had written so long ago. Mrs Grant Drake, Noamunga, near Boulders, Tasmania. And the letters she had waited so long to receive. Letters she had never seen, here in her hand.
She had lost her father, then her new mother and friend. Here in her hand.
Her first feeling was joy, that she had not been abandoned, as she had believed. As her grandmother had wanted her to believe.
Her second feeling was rage, that she should have been so deceived.
Her first reaction was to confront her grandmother with the letters, to let her see how angry a normally obedient granddaughter could be. Then instinct said: No. Wait. Think. Only then decide what to do.
She pondered. Instinct was right. She took the envelope containing all the unopened letters to her bedroom and hid it beneath her pillow.
She remembered her stepmother’s name so clearly. Tamsyn. Another strange name. Tamsyn Drake of Noamunga, near Boulders, Tasmania. The house on the edge of the sea.
That night she sat in bed and read the letters that had been written to her ten years before. She wept a little, overjoyed that Tamsyn had never abandoned her after all. There was such a sense of healing in knowing that.
She read all the letters, every one right through twice. When she had finished, she put the last one down in her lap with the others.
She thought carefully. She decided what she must do.
* * *
Marina’s voice. ‘You’ve had a letter. From India. It’s handwritten. Do you want me to send it on?’
Tamsyn’s first reaction was to tell her to get rid of it. The only person she would be likely to hear from in India was Grant’s mother-in-law, and if she never heard from that witch again in her life it would be too soon.
Stars Over the Southern Ocean Page 15
