‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ she whispered.
‘I thought it wasn’t going to happen for ages yet. But they had a cancellation. I got a letter this morning.’
‘But you don’t have to go now.’
‘No,’ he said steadily. ‘I don’t. But I want to walk again, Flinty. I need to. I didn’t feel that a few months ago. But now I do. It’s time for me to be part of the world again.’
‘Yes. Of course.’ She’d been thinking only of herself. Just like I did with Andy, she thought. And then: I’m selfish.
And what had she been dreaming of? That maybe one day she could push Nicholas’s chair out of the mist and he could exist in her time? That she could take him up to the house and fix up hoists so he could lift himself, just like he said he’d done in his own time? That one day, somehow, he might be able to leave wheel tracks — or even footsteps — in the mud on the track?
Maybe it was best Nicholas was leaving for a while, she thought, before I live too much with ghosts and dreams.
He was still looking at her. Somehow he seemed far away already.
‘Dad said that the mountains healed him.’
‘Maybe they’ve healed me a bit then. Maybe you’ve healed me too, and the people here. I think, sometimes, when things are bad, you feel like you are the only person in the world. You shut out everything else because your pain is all that you can deal with. But then I met you. Suddenly I wasn’t unique any more. Your brothers, the boys you knew…they faced stuff like I did, or even worse. Some of them couldn’t take it, but some did. And not just men,’ he added quietly. ‘Girls like you. Women like you. You kept going, Flinty McAlpine. And suddenly I wanted to keep going, get on with my life too.’
She tried to smile. ‘You’ll be walking next time I see you then. I…I will see you again, won’t I? You will come back?’
‘Yes. I’ll come back. I want to see you again. I love these mountains too.’ He hesitated again, as though trying to find the words too hard to speak. She could see pain wrinkles around his eyes. Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Flinty, I have to tell you something. I wish more than anything in my life I didn’t have to tell you this. I can’t even tell you everything, because if I do it mightn’t happen, and it did happen.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered. It’s all impossible anyway, she thought. Impossible to meet a ghost from another time. Even the war had been impossible. A whole generation of men couldn’t just march away with bagpipes playing and children laughing, and a third of them never come home again. It was impossible that Dad could die, that she’d never see his grin again. Impossible that Mum had gone. Mum was always there — always.
Impossibles happened all the time.
‘Flinty, dear Flinty. Something bad is going to happen to you. Very bad.’
‘What sort of bad?’ Her whisper was like the rasp of wind on the Rock. Surely the bad had already happened. How much more bad could there be? Mum, Dad and Jeff gone…
‘Joey and Kirsty,’ she said in sudden terror. ‘They’re not going to be hurt too?’ Her lips couldn’t form the word ‘dead’.
‘No. Well, things will be hard for them for a while, but they aren’t going to be hurt. They’re going to grow up strong and happy.’
‘Andy? Sandy? The Macks?’
‘No. Your Andy is going to be all right,’ he added gently. ‘That will all work out too.’
‘Then it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters if they’re all right.’
‘This will matter. But I can’t tell you more about it. If I did then you might do something to stop it happening.’
‘You want me to go through something bad?’
‘Of course I don’t! That isn’t even what I need to tell. What I have to tell you is this.’ He took a breath, then took her hand in his. It was such a warm hand, for a ghost. ‘Please, please remember this, Flinty. It’s all I can give you. No matter how bad things seem — and they might seem impossible to face at times — it all works out in the end. You have to go through the bad bits to get to the good. But I promise, Flinty, it all works out.’
‘Will you be here when the bad thing happens?’ She hated how small her voice sounded.
‘No. I wish I could be. You have no idea how much I wish that. But I can’t be, because I wasn’t. Do you see that? And even if I could be here, I couldn’t help you.’
‘Your just being here would help,’ she whispered. ‘Just being able to talk to you.’
‘No,’ he said gently. ‘You’ll understand why when it happens. I’m sorry. Flinty, you don’t know how sorry I am. Truly. I can’t say more.’
‘I…I sort of do understand.’ She hesitated, looking down at the bunch of roses. ‘I just…don’t want to. And you should go, I’d hate it if you didn’t get your legs. It’s just —’ Like he’d told her a black cloud hovered behind the ridges, she thought, but wouldn’t tell her what the storm would bring.
‘I promise I couldn’t help. Even my being here wouldn’t help.’
She knew this time there was no point coaxing him, trying to get him to say more than he meant to. Didn’t he realise that just knowing he was down here on the Rock — a friend, who smiled when he saw her, who thought she was beautiful — helped more than she could express?
But if she told him that he might stay. Might lose his chance to get new legs, or at least the life that they might lead him to. If only he would tell her more.
Men and their mysteries, she thought. Do all men have a world they can step into where women can’t follow? All we can do is wait and see what happens next.
Nicholas sat, silent, staring out across the valley. A rainstorm was sweeping across the far ridges, a sunlit wall of white. She doubted the sun shower would reach up here though.
‘I’m going to miss this so much,’ he said at last. ‘Have you noticed how every tree is different here? All twisted by the wind and snow, but if that was all, they should have been twisted in the same way. It’s as though every tree has made up its own mind exactly how it wants to look. Flinty, may I tell you about how I lost my legs?’
Her mind felt buffeted: too much to take in. ‘You already did.’
‘No, I didn’t. I told you what I told Mum and Dad and everyone else who wanted to know. I didn’t tell the truth.’
‘Why not?’
He faced the valley, not her. A wind slapped them suddenly, the snow wind that Dad said hid around the hill, then jumped out at you when you weren’t looking; it pushed the sun shower further away from them. The wind tasted sharp, like tin, carrying the scents of far-off Kosciuszko. ‘Because it hurts to remember. Because they love me and it would hurt them to know.’
‘Then why are you telling me now? Are you trying to hurt me?’
‘No. Flinty, I’d do anything I could to stop you being hurt. No, that’s not true. I could tell you to go away — today, tomorrow. Take Joey and Kirsty and stay in town till winter.’
‘The bad thing wouldn’t happen if I did that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said honestly. ‘Maybe something even worse would happen. What I’m trying to say is, there’re bad things going to come, but good things too. Very, very good. If I stop you experiencing the bad you mightn’t have the good too. Trust me, Flinty — the good is really good.’
‘Tell me about how you lost your legs,’ she said softly.
He nodded, his face expressionless, his hands flat on his knees as though to keep them still. ‘I told you it was at Long Tan.’
She nodded, though the unfamiliar name had slipped her mind.
‘It wasn’t.’
‘Then why did you say it was?’
He shrugged. ‘Because we won that day, maybe. It was something to feel good about.’
‘Then what did happen?’ She spoke quietly, partly because his voice had grown so soft, partly because it felt like a loud noise would shatter whatever connection held them together.
‘It was a couple of weeks later. A routine patrol… We were
walking through a village and suddenly something bounced out of a door. For a moment I thought it was a kid’s ball. My mate Sam was walking next to me. He was quicker than me. He picked it up and threw it back, just as it exploded.’ The wind muttered around the Rock as he added, ‘He saved my life.’
‘It was a bomb?’
‘A hand grenade. A kind of bomb. I threw myself down and began to roll as soon as he reached for it. Saw someone in the doorway, managed to fire. Got him, saw him fall. Then I thought it had got cold. It’s never cold in Vietnam. It was so cold it was hard to breathe. There was a pain in my chest — not in my legs; I told you the truth about that. They didn’t hurt till much, much later, days after I woke up from what was probably the second, maybe the third operation.
‘Anyway, I lay there, trying to get my breath. I tried to get up but nothing seemed to work, and then I thought about the person in the doorway, the Vietcong. I managed to push myself up onto my elbows again just as he looked back at me. I shot him again and this time I killed him, shot him right in the face…’
He gripped the arms of the bathchair now. She put her hand on his, feeling its warmth, despite the fifty years between them, even though he was shivering, just as she supposed he had back then.
‘So you stopped him killing anyone else.’
‘He was ten years old. Maybe twelve. You said your brother was twelve.’
Joey’s age! ‘You shot a boy like Joey?’ Shock bit like a dingo with a lamb. ‘But he tried to kill you…’
‘I never knew. Maybe he was the one who threw the hand grenade. Maybe he was just there, inside the house. I never will know now.’
‘And Sam? Your friend who saved you?’
‘Sam was a spray of bones and guts all over me, all over the dust in the village. And that is how I lost my legs, Flinty McAlpine. Lost a lot more that day, and not just a mate. And until I came here I thought I’d never get it back.’
She didn’t know what to say. Didn’t know what to feel either. At last she said, ‘Were children fighting the war in your time?’
‘Yes.’ He shrugged. ‘We were in their country. If an enemy invaded your mountains, Flinty McAlpine, would you fight them? Would you let your brother fight?’
‘Yes,’ she said. Of course she and Joey would fight to keep these hills.
‘Well, there you are then. Maybe he tried to kill me. Maybe he was one of the kids I was trying to protect. Like I said, I’ll never know. Maybe…maybe in some way I thought, the kid and Sam had lost their lives, so I lost my legs, sort of like a payment. Then I came here and I learned something. Flinty, promise me you’ll do one thing. I don’t know if it’ll change the past or not, but I want you to do it.’
‘All right.’ The words were automatic. She was beyond thinking now. ‘I’ll do whatever you ask me to.’
‘I want you to write to your brother and tell him that life goes on, that there’s only one thing we can do for someone who’s died — even thousands of someones — and that is to keep on going. Life should be good — life should be very, very good — and the only duty we have to the dead is to make it good, for ourselves and other people. Will you do that for me? Please?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you remember it yourself? If…when…the something bad happens, will you remember it too? Promise me the two things, Flinty.’ He took her hand and held it in both of his.
She looked down at the roses, the precious first flowers that would vanish as soon as she took a step away from the Rock. ‘I promise,’ she said.
Chapter 19
3 March 1920
Dear Diary,
A letter came for Jeff today. I don’t think he ever got a letter before. I didn’t want to open it, but Joey and Kirsty stood there waiting, so I did. It seemed wrong to open something of Jeff’s, even though he is dead.
At first I thought I just couldn’t understand the handwriting, but then I realised it was scribble, not proper writing. I showed it to Joey and Kirsty. Joey finally worked out a couple of words that made sense. There was ‘Jeff’ and ‘mate’, and ‘Morris’ or maybe ‘Boris’, which was part of the signature. Joey said he thought he could make out my name — Felicity, not Flinty — near the start of the letter, but I couldn’t see it.
I cried after Joey and Kirsty went to bed. I think the letter made me realise that Jeff really will never come home. Maybe none of us quite accepted it, except Mum. It would be different if we could have had a proper funeral, not just a memorial service, given him a grave down in the valley in the churchyard, with his stockwhip and hat on the coffin just like they did when Granddad Mack died.
It was so strange getting a letter so long after Jeff has died, even stranger getting one that didn’t make sense. The address had been written by someone else, I think, not the person who wrote the letter, because it was clear as anything, but there was no return address, so I can’t write back and explain about Jeff, or ask what the writer wanted.
The mist came right up around the house tonight. I wish I could have shown Nicholas the letter. I hope things are going well with his new legs. I hope that he is happy, and has made new friends. I heard the powerful owl call tonight, up past the horse paddocks, the first time since the cold snap last December. It seemed to cry, ‘Lonely, lonely, lonely.’
Flinty stuffed a shoulder of lamb for dinner, with breadcrumbs and lemon and thyme, a recipe from Mrs Mack’s book. The lamb was a present from old Mutti Green, handed to Joey in a hessian sack on his way back from school yesterday. There’d be cold lamb and chutney sandwiches for the young ones to take to school for the next few days.
We need a dog, she thought. A dog to eat the bones. A dog to keep me company, to bark if strangers come, to keep dingoes and native cats away from the chooks. Old Shep had died a few months after Dad, as though his heart had been broken like Mum’s had been. Mr White had offered her one of their puppies but she hadn’t wanted a dog then, another mouth to feed.
She thought maybe she should get one now.
She roasted potatoes, carrots, swedes and parsnips with the meat. No pumpkin — last year’s were finished and this year’s weren’t ripe yet. Sometimes, this high up, the first frost killed the vines before the pumpkins sweetened, but the Whites had a paddock on a sunny slope that didn’t get the frost till late. They shared their pumpkins with their neighbours in a frosty year…
Kirsty chattered about Enid Brown’s kitten, and Joey told her about the dead rat in the school water tank. ‘It was just a skeleton really and Mr Ross says we may as well drink the water as we didn’t get sick before. Flinty, why did all the skin and yuck dissolve and just leave the bone?’
‘I don’t know. You’d have to ask a doctor.’ She tried to smile, to seem interested as they talked.
‘Maybe I’ll be a doctor,’ said Joey. ‘Or a vet. Doctors just sew up humans. A vet would be more interesting, because there’d be all sorts of animals. Do you think every animal is different inside? Or are some bits all the same, like sheep and rabbit have hearts and red wobbly bits?’ He chewed his way through a hunk of swede. ‘Flinty, if a lion had a sore paw, how could a vet treat it without being eaten?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Or a crocodile,’ said Joey, warming to the idea. ‘What if it had a sore tail?’
‘Or a dragon with a tummy ache,’ said Kirsty, carefully pushing her parsnips to the edge of the plate.
‘Nah,’ said Joey. ‘No such thing as dragons.’
‘Are too! St George fought a dragon! They said so in church! Would you fix up a dragon if a knight had fought it?’
Joey considered. ‘I might,’ he said.
‘But then it would attack the knight again!’
The squabble brought Flinty back from far away. Was there any chance Joey could be a vet or a doctor? She had more than fifty pounds in the bank still, and Snow King might yet make their fortune. Was fifty pounds enough for him to go to boarding school for high school? Dad had hoped he would; and that he’d win a s
cholarship to university. Andy to get the farm, Jeff to be a soldier, Joey to go to university, the girls to marry…
‘I want to fly an aeroplane like Mr Kingsford Smith,’ said Kirsty.
‘Girls can’t fly aeroplanes!’ objected Joey.
Kirsty poked out her tongue. ‘Birds can fly so it can’t be that hard.’
‘Manners,’ said Flinty automatically.
‘Anyway, you don’t make any money flying planes, not now the war’s over,’ said Joey.
‘I’m going to wear a fox coat like Mrs White’s and great big diamonds and a red hat, and people will pay to see me fly.’
‘Where will you get diamonds?’
‘I’ll find them,’ said Kirsty firmly. ‘All sparkling in a stream bed. Flinty, do I have to eat my parsnips?’
‘Yes, or there’s no pudding.’
‘What is for pudding?’
‘Jam fritters.’
Kirsty stared at the parsnips in congealed gravy on her plate, weighing up the chore of eating them against missing out on jam fritters. Jam fritters won. She picked up her fork again.
At last dinner was over. Flinty washed up and put tomorrow’s bread to rise. The others did their homework, Joey helping Kirsty with her spelling. Then Flinty sent him off to wash in the yard — the boys always washed outside in the warmer months — while Kirsty scrubbed herself by the fire in the kitchen and Flinty checked their school clothes for the morning. Joey had a rip in his trousers; he’d have worn them again tomorrow if she hadn’t noticed.
She got them to bed, sat by lamplight with the needle and thread and made a hasty cobble darn. Mum would have told her to pick it out and do it again — a good darn should be invisible — but she was tired, deeply bone tired. A cobble darn was better than a hole. She’d pick it out tomorrow, or Saturday, maybe, and darn it properly so no one could see.
And at last, she was free to go to bed.
The Girl from Snowy River Page 13
