Beat Not the Bones

by Charlotte Jay

  ‘Rotten. I’ve got a bout of fever coming on, I think. Didn’t sleep last night.’

  ‘Darling, you should be home in bed.’

  ‘I might go home too. I’ve been thinking about it.’

  ‘I’ll come up and cook for you. Poor darling … Philip!’

  But he had hung up.

  Trevor Nyall entered the Department of Survey at ten. Stella, sitting in his office at the far end of the building, heard voices outside saying, ‘Good morning, Mr Nyall,’ and a man’s voice heartily replying, ‘Good morning, good morning.’

  She waited, staring at the typewriter on the table before her. But he did not immediately appear. On the big, empty desk in the corner a loose sheet of paper lifted in the air, drifted down and settled on the floor. She did not move to pick it up, but sat, waiting, her hands gripped in her lap.

  The door flung open and a gust of wind swept down the length of the building. The paper soared and dived at the window. A file flapped over on the desk and a jam tin tipped water and frangipani flowers on the floor.

  The man who had entered shut the door behind him and bent to pick up the paper. It was quite a task because he was tall and broad and his face, when he straightened, was beaded with sweat. It was a handsome, arresting face. His hair was thick and iron grey, his skin yellow tan, his eyes brilliant and youthful. He had an air, not exactly of complaisance, but of satisfaction. You would think, to look at him, that he had found life to his liking, that he had not been baulked, frustrated or put down, and had managed to make his way in the world without damage either to his conscience or his desires.

  Stella had never seen a photograph of him, and she put down his familiarity to the fact that he was so exactly as she had imagined him. He glanced across at her, smiled and said, ‘Good morning.’ His smile was charming. It isn’t everyone, she told herself, her heart warming towards him, who would smile at his typist, and she thought of the man on the hill who had not smiled.

  ‘I’ll pick them up,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks, it’s rather a way down for me.’ His voice was strong and hearty. Stella, bending down beside him to collect the scattered flowers, was beginning to tingle with excitement. He exhaled an air of vigour and optimism that had already infected her. He would help her.

  ‘You must be my new secretary.’

  She stood up. ‘I am Stella Warwick,’ she said.

  His heavy, dark lids lifted. His hands, which had been held clasped together on the desk, broke apart and lay there, fingers curled, palms upward. ‘No,’ he said softly and shook his head.

  He sat and stared at her, then he rose and walked around the desk towards her. He took her hands and, looking down at her, said, ‘Oh, you poor girl. What are you doing here?’

  Stella’s eyes filled with tears. She was happy. She had found a friend. He would look after her, tell her what to do and how to do it.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he repeated, still holding her hands.

  ‘I came to see you. I wanted your help.’ She fixed on him the wide, dependent, childlike gaze that had so endeared her to her father and her husband.

  ‘Of course I’ll help you. I’ll do anything I can for you.’

  ‘I came to find out why my husband was murdered.’

  He did not start or flinch but gazed steadily back into her dilated, shining eyes. Then he pulled up a chair and made her sit down. He walked to the door, opened it, looked outside, shut it and turned back. He stopped in front of her, looked down at her and slowly shook his head. ‘Stella,’ he said, ‘your husband was not murdered. He committed suicide.’

  ‘No, you’re wrong, Mr Nyall. He was murdered.’

  ‘Now, don’t think that I’m surprised that you should think so,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘You don’t like the idea of suicide, do you? You think that it’s dishonourable and you know that David was not a dishonourable man.’

  Stella felt his words did not do justice to what she felt and moved to interrupt him, but he held up his hand and went on, speaking in the gentle, explanatory tone with which people were prone to address her and which reminded her now of her husband. ‘But this isn’t a romantic fabrication. This is true.’

  He beat his fist on the palm of his hand. ‘It will be hard for you to understand. This isn’t Australia, Stella. People here behave differently. We are none of us in this country normal, balanced human beings.’

  She looked at him gravely. She felt she had never seen anyone so normal and balanced. ‘Everyone says that David had debts,’ she began. ‘I know he was extravagant and he hardly left anything. But debts …’ She paused. ‘He didn’t care about money.’

  He shook his head at her indulgently. ‘How simple it sounds to you. He was a gambler. He borrowed a great deal of money from his friends.’

  ‘I see no reason,’ she insisted, ‘why you should think he killed himself.’

  ‘If you stayed here for a month or so,’ he said, ‘you’d see reason enough.’ He spoke slowly now, emphasising each word with a movement of the hand. ‘This place is heartbreaking, Stella. Just heartbreaking. We have before us an insurmountable problem.’ He had turned away and was pacing the room, speaking now in an expansive way as if addressing a larger audience. ‘This is a young, savage, uncultivated land, full of people who are amongst the most primitive in the world. I wonder if you understand what that means. We must not only teach them from scratch our western ideas of law and religion, we must drag them, as it were, in a few years, over aeons of time. And so much that we have done has been wrong. It’s not always been our fault; the problem is immense. And frequently this country attracts the people who just want to make money. They make it impossible for us.’ His eyes returned to Stella’s face. ‘To those of us, Stella, who feel strongly about all this, the past few years have been heartbreaking. Think of this country as a young child whom we are trying to turn into a respectable adult. People like David have in mind a bright, strong youth, with all our knowledge and none of our corruptions, but what does he find himself producing? A cheap, shoddy waster, who isn’t an adult and isn’t a child. A sort of sly, seedy ten year old, who isn’t even happy. It’s terrible.’

  Stella did not understand. ‘Are you now telling me that gambling and owing money to his friends had nothing to do with David’s death?’

  ‘There are many ways of committing suicide’ – Trevor tapped a cigarette on a silver case – ‘and here you find them all. Sometimes it’s drink, sometimes it’s gambling, sometimes it’s just general moral disintegration.’ He paused. ‘I’m more distressed than I can say that you’ve got this idea in your head. Believe me, it’s best to let the whole thing lie. You’ll only injure David’s reputation.’ His face cleared and he smiled at her. ‘You must come and stay with us and we’ll show you some of the country. You can have fun here, sailing, golf … Who knows, you might meet someone here, you’re young …’ he ended optimistically.

  Stella contained her anger. ‘It isn’t true,’ she said, ‘what you said about David.’

  A faint frown appeared between Trevor Nyall’s brows. The corners of his mouth drooped.

  ‘You see, David wrote to my father.’

  ‘What!’ he said sharply.

  ‘He knew he was going to be murdered, and he wrote and told my father. He might even have told him who the murderer was.’

  Nyall’s face had entirely altered. His lips were tight and thin, his eyes had lost their softness.

  Stella’s heart lifted at these signs of firmness and strength. Now he’ll help me, she thought.

  ‘What do you mean? Did you see the letter?’

  ‘I’ve told you. Only part of it.’

  ‘Did your father tell you what it said?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he couldn’t tell me.’

  Stella had not heard from her husband for three weeks. He had written to her the day before he left on the trip to Eola and warned her that there might be no word from him for some time. But by the end of a month she ha
d looked forward to news. The postman, like most postmen in suburban streets, had taken an interest in the almost daily correspondence he had been delivering, and rarely failed to pass remarks about the devotion of husbands and the compensations of separation. He had been so concerned over the sudden cessation of letters that she had found it necessary to explain to him that David was away. One morning at about ten o’clock she was returning home from the shops at the end of the street, and met him finishing his round. He had just slammed the gate of a house about twelve doors down from her own. He swung his leg over his bicycle, but seeing her, dismounted again and smiled.

  ‘He’s back, Mrs Warwick,’ he called.

  ‘A letter for me?’

  ‘Not for you, for your father.’

  Stella ran up the front steps of the house, calling her father’s name. Since his recovery he had spent his mornings sitting in a room on the east side of the house, which caught the morning sun. She flung open the door of this room. ‘You’ve had a letter, Daddy! How is he? Is he back?’

  The high back of her father’s chair was turned to the door. A fire was going, for though it was spring and the plum blossoms outside the window were already falling, the air was sharp, and there had been heavy morning frosts. The room was filled with sun, but the silence chilled her. The flames of the fire were weak and pale, as they are in morning sunlight. ‘Daddy.’

  His hand moved and dropped listlessly down the arm of the chair. She moved across the room and round in front of him. She thought he might be asleep, but he was staring into the fire. Stella did not at first notice the grey pallor of his skin and the loose folds of his cheeks, as if life were already leaving his flesh to sag and crumble. She looked at the table beside him, and there was the envelope with its green air mail stamp and familiar writing. But the envelope was empty.

  ‘Daddy, David …’ she looked at him. His eyes were still fixed on the fire. She forgot the letter, saw the shrivelled horror in his face. It struck her that his eyes were trapped forever on some point in the fire from which he could never again break free.

  ‘Daddy, what’s the matter?’

  ‘I’m not well.’

  She looked around her wildly, feeling helpless and terrified. ‘What can I do?’

  His eyes still fixed on the fire, he raised a hand and groped in the air. She bent over him and his fingers struck her face, fumbling on her cheeks and lips, as clumsy as the hands of a baby.

  ‘Is that you, Stella?’

  He did not turn his head. ‘My poor little daughter,’ he said. ‘You are all alone. Murder! Murder!’ Tears started into his eyes, and his fingers, groping up her face, closed over a lock of her hair and dragged her head towards him.

  She pulled back but his fingers had locked in death. The last of his life poured into that clutching, desperate grasp. And when she jerked her head away strands of her torn hair were still clutched in his hand.

  The phone was on the windowledge by the side of the fireplace. Her father sat staring into the fire, his eyes wide and unblinking; his hand, still holding the torn strands of hair, dropped slowly to his knee. His mouth was setting into a tight, twisted line. One side of his face was quivering, the other was rigidly, terribly still. She could not bear to look at him. His jaw dropped and closed again to lock into its final immovable lines.

  CHAPTER 6

  Trevor Nyall had walked over to the open louvres and was looking out into the harsh sunlight. She sat waiting. ‘I know everything about the gold, Eola, Jobe. He wrote and told me everything. How Jobe threatened him …’

  ‘Threatened him!’ Nyall turned around.

  ‘He said that David was standing in his way, that he would get the gold in spite of him …’

  ‘David should never have told you about this. This matter was highly confidential. If all administration employees confided in their wives …!’

  She shrank away from his accusing eyes. ‘I know. He told me not to mention it. But I must find Jobe. Don’t you see? He killed David. There is no other explanation. He must have seen him when he returned. David was afraid and wrote to my father …’ Her eager voice rose. ‘I must find Jobe!’ She shivered as you might when you speak of someone you secretly love.

  ‘Please,’ he said, ‘speak quietly.’

  Her voice quivered shrilly. ‘I don’t care who hears me!’

  ‘You must. You don’t know what harm you may be doing.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said humbly.

  He looked down at her hands that writhed and clenched in her lap. ‘It’s all right,’ he said.

  ‘I must find him,’ she said, softly but passionately. ‘If I didn’t have this to do I would die.’ She shivered, remembering the evenings closing in, over no one, nothing.

  ‘My poor child,’ he said, looking down at her gently. ‘You’ve made such a grand game of this and how will you take what I’m going to say? Mr Jobe has left the Territory. He left straight after David’s death.’

  Stella stared up at him. She felt cold.

  ‘He was told of David’s decision,’ said Nyall, pacing again back and forth in front of his desk. ‘Which in case you don’t know, was a refusal of the claim. Apparently he expected it. A few days later I found he’d gone, left for Sydney.’

  ‘He could be back,’ said Stella. ‘He could have gone away until the affair died down, and then come back. Perhaps he’s here now. Perhaps he’s in Eola!’ She clenched her fists. The blood had come back to her face.

  ‘Why would he kill David?’ Nyall said, with a little hopeless laugh.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘Perhaps for revenge, perhaps because he was angry. Perhaps because no one else but David would remember Eola and he could then go and get the gold without anyone knowing. Perhaps he will put in a new claim that will go through. David had an assistant …’ She paused as Nyall looked up sharply, and then rushed on, interpreting his keen glance as some kind of approval. ‘Perhaps Jobe and he had come to some agreement. This assistant hated David. David said he was jealous of him. Jobe might be back. There are only two ways of coming into this country. We could find out if he’s back by checking with the airways and the shipping people.’

  ‘Stella,’ Nyall broke in. ‘Two words of a dying and delirious old man, and you come to this! Go back to Australia. This is morbid and unhealthy! It’s madness. What good will it do you?’

  ‘I don’t expect good,’ she said. ‘I expect the very worst.’

  He saw in her face unreasoning emotion. ‘Well, now.’ He smiled and patted her shoulder. ‘You’ve made up your mind. We can’t let you go off on your own now, can we? I’m your friend. I must help.’

  She looked up at him gratefully, her moment of passion and exultation over. She felt tired and very young.

  ‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ he went on. ‘We’ll go to the shipping people and the airways, and we’ll find out if Mr Jobe has returned. If he has, I’ll help to find him. If he hasn’t, you’re to forget about murder and try your best not to grieve for David. Will you shake on that?’

  She looked down at the hand he offered. She was not happy about the bargain, but her strength had gone, and he was at that moment so like David himself, spoke so strangely in David’s own indulgent phrases, that she took his hand. ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ she said. ‘If he’s not here, I won’t worry you any more.’

  He picked up his hat from the table. ‘We’ll try the airways first.’

  The airways office was a little maisonnette building in the main street next to the hotel. Nyall drew up his car at the same time as a bus bringing passengers in from the airstrip, and they waited for a few moments while luggage was carried into the office and transit passengers drifted off towards the hotel.

  ‘That’s the store down there,’ Nyall said, pointing to a low building on the right. ‘Not bad either considering the isolation of this place. See these fellows? They’re from down the coast. Never have one of those boys for a houseboy.’

  Three tall, sl
im, young men were walking down the footpath towards them. They wore red ramis, and around their throats necklaces of dogs’ teeth and thin strands of coloured beads knotted into tight collars that hung down to their belts and swayed to and fro as they walked. Their hair was uncut and stuck about with flowers. They did not smile or look to right or left but stalked past slowly with an air of truculent arrogance.

  ‘Most unpleasant people in the Territory,’ said Nyall. ‘Steal anything. Can’t trust them. When you need a laundry boy you’d better come up and see my wife. We’ll look after you, take you around a bit.’

  ‘I’m not interested in the country,’ said Stella. ‘I just came to find Jobe.’

  He smiled and patted her knee. ‘Of course, of course. And now we’ll go and see if he’s back. You stay here.’ He was out of the car and had closed the door behind him. ‘I’ll go and ask.’ He smiled at her again, turned and crossed the footpath. A fat Papuan woman with coloured, paper bows in her hair drew back to let him pass.

  Stella waited till he had gone up the steps and then got out and followed him. She stood in the doorway and watched. A young man in white uniform was weighing luggage. Behind him, sitting on the edge of a table, was the air hostess. She was smoking and dabbing polish on her nails. She looked up and tried to catch Stella’s eye. But Stella, leaning in the doorway staring at Trevor Nyall’s wide, white back, was praying. Let him be there. Let him be back! If he wasn’t there … it didn’t bear thinking of. There would be nothing.

  Trevor Nyall leaned forward. She heard his voice murmuring and the girl on the other side of the desk started turning the pages of a thick book in front. ‘I seem to remember the name …’

  Nyall moved his heavy body and leaned on the counter. Stella could see the girl’s bent, curly head. She turned the pages slowly, then raised her hand and straightened the collar of her white uniform. She’s not looking for his name, Stella thought desperately. She’s thinking of her uniform and how nice she looks, wondering if her collar is creased. His name is there and she won’t see it.

  The girl lifted her head and smiled brightly. ‘Yes, he’s here. He arrived yesterday. I’m afraid he left no address.’