by Alison Booth
‘Let me draw you instead. I could do a good likeness.’ Pretending to look for her pencil, she stood and stepped back a few paces. Mick couldn’t be more than a quarter of a mile downstream. If she could keep Brady talking while edging back a little, she could try to make a dash for it.
But Brady jumped across the gully separating them and grabbed hold of her arm. Her heart turned over when she saw the hatred in his eyes. She’d seen the same expression on his face that night on the Guthrie: his features twisted, the eyes dark pools, the beard black against the gleaming white shirt. She’d seen the same expression on his face again when he’d spat on her in Chinatown, and afterwards the dark brown tobacco juice dribbling down her white skirt.
In an attempt to loosen his grip, she shook her arm and the sketchbook fell to the ground. The smell of his sweat was overpowering. His face was so close she could see the orange-peel texture of his skin with a scattering of blackheads around his nose. He put one hand on the small of her back and the other on one of her breasts, squeezing so hard it hurt. ‘Only little titties but little titties are better than no titties,’ he said roughly. ‘Just as black dicks are better than no dicks, wouldn’t you say? But I’ve got something better than that for you. Something that won’t let you forget your old friend Dan Brady in a hurry.’
Harriet broke out in a cold sweat and tried to struggle free.
Brady almost spat at her, ‘A dead black dick’s no good to you now, is it?’
When she flinched at this, Brady again tightened his pressure on her breast. There was a tearing sound as he ripped the fine cotton of her blouse. ‘It’s your lucky day for I’ll soon be giving you a glimpse of a white dick that won’t be forgotten in a hurry. And then you can see what you’ve been missing.’
Struggling to loosen Brady’s grip, Harriet tripped on a stone and fell to the ground. Brady landed sprawled on top of her. His weight pressed down on her, pinning her to the ground. There was no way she’d ever be able to wriggle free of him.
* * *
Bella shaking Sarah’s shoulder, the room spinning, Bella panting so much that her words were slurred, no way of knowing what the trouble was. Pull yourself out of this nap, Sarah. Make the walls stop rotating. Speak slowly, Bella. Speak slowly and clearly.
Later it would seem to Sarah that she’d metamorphosed into someone else that morning. Someone else who’d dashed out of the house after Bella had woken her by bellowing about no-good Brady whom she’d seen barely minutes before down by the creek. Later it would seem to Sarah as if it were someone else who’d loaded her revolver, put on the safety catch and fastened her holster before saddling her horse. Someone else who’d galloped in the direction Bella indicated, stopping only when she saw a chestnut roan tied to a sapling, a roan that she knew wasn’t from Dimbulah Downs.
Her clothes were saturated with sweat by the time she tethered her foam-whitened horse to a tree a few yards upstream. Stealing through the brush, avoiding piles of leaves and twigs that might crackle underfoot, she prayed she would find Harriet. Carolling birds concealing her footfall but not the pounding of blood in her ears.
But where on earth was the hollow Bella had described? Harriet might be anywhere and she could be stumbling around for hours trying to track her down. She heard a horse whinny. Not her own. Something – or someone – must have disturbed the chestnut roan. She hesitated, undecided as to whether to go back or carry on. At that moment she heard voices. Harriet’s, unusually high and tense, was punctuated by a deeper growl.
‘Brady,’ Bella had said. ‘No good Carruthers feller from Empty Creek.’
An instant later Sarah heard a piercing scream. Her revolver was in her hand before she’d realised it. No one would be allowed to hurt her sister, no one.
Even though she’d prepared for a moment like this, her hand was wavering as she raised the gun. It felt heavy, too heavy. Her palms were sweating and the grip slippery. Six rounds were all she had. She had to get this right.
Carefully she crept forward until she could see the clearing. Could see Harriet lying on the ground, with a big man sprawled on top of her.
Sarah raised the revolver in her right hand, its grip supported in the centre of her palm, her left hand underneath to steady it, safety catch off. She squeezed the trigger. The shot rang out.
* * *
Brady lurched as the shot sounded, and then lay still. Unable to move, Harriet felt her heartbeat pulsing at a faster tempo than his. His body was becoming heavier. Fleetingly she noticed that sharp stones were digging into her shoulder blades. Chest-to-chest she lay with Brady. As if he were her lover, and her stomach clenched at this thought.
If only she could see who had fired the gun. There might be more shots. It was an effort to expand her lungs against the weight of Brady’s body pressing down on her. A sudden rush of anger gave her the strength to twist her torso slightly, and now she could see around his shoulders. If she hadn’t been so furious at Brady, she might have wept with joy at the sight of Sarah. Barely three yards away, silhouetted against the brilliant sky, she was pointing her revolver at Brady’s legs, the sole part of his anatomy well clear of her.
‘Get up, you.’ Sarah’s voice was cold and her cheeks were flushed but she held the revolver steady.
Brady used his arms to lever himself off Harriet, who took a deep breath and felt a cooling draught of air as her diaphragm expanded.
Moving a few paces closer, Sarah said, ‘Get up, you, or I’ll blast your leg off.’
If the man hadn’t been lying on top of Harriet when she’d raised her gun, she would have shot him in the heart instead of aiming over him. If he’d been nothing more than a block of wood on a plank, he’d be lying shattered on the ground. He’d had a brief reprieve and now she had to decide what to do with him.
She kept the gun trained on him while Harriet stood unsteadily. Sarah’s peripheral vision registered the ripped blouse and torn trousers. She began again to feel that curious dissociation, as if she were an outsider looking down at the scene. It is shock, she thought, nothing more than shock.
A sudden movement from the other side of the clearing distracted her. Mick couldn’t have been here long for he was panting still. But she wouldn’t relax her concentration just because Mick had turned up. ‘Keep your hands raised, Mr Brady.’ Aiming the revolver at his heart, she said to Harriet, ‘Did he… you know, did he…?’
‘No.’ Harriet’s face was ashen. ‘You got here in time. He didn’t rape me.’ She pulled the sides of her torn blouse together, passing each corner around her waist and knotting them together at the back.
‘Dirty black bastard,’ Brady yelled at Mick. ‘I’ll get you, boy. I saw you kill Carruthers, that’s what I’ll tell the troopers when they come.’
‘Keep quiet, Mr Brady,’ Sarah said, her voice calm, though she wondered why Brady was shouting at Mick when she was the one holding the gun. Probably he thought she was a poor shot because she’d fired over his head. She sized him up as he stood before her, arms raised and legs wide apart.
‘Carruthers speared in the back by one of your niggers, that’s what I’ll say. Don’t pretend you didn’t know, you fucken bitch.’
‘Keep your mouth shut, Mr Brady, I’m a crack shot.’
‘I’ll tell the troopers I saw Mick spearing Carruthers in cold blood. You haven’t got a chance, boy. I’ll see you hang or shoot you myself. White fellows are never hanged for shooting a black.’
‘Keep still, Mr Brady. Stay exactly where you are.’ Sarah lowered the gun slightly and squeezed the trigger. The bullet went between Brady’s legs and hit the target rock a few yards behind him. A perfect shot.
Brady started and dropped his arms with the surprise, or perhaps he was reaching for a gun hidden somewhere that she couldn’t see. She shouted out, her words hard like bullets, ‘Hands in the air!’ When he raised his arms, she saw
that he was shaking visibly. ‘You must go away, Mr Brady,’ she said. ‘You must go a long way away and never come back. Go back to Empty Creek, you’re not wanted here. But before you go, I’ll give you something to remember me by. Keep very still. If you don’t, I might get your heart if you have one.’
It was another person who coldly squeezed the trigger. It was another person who heard with satisfaction his yelp of pain. It was another person who watched the blood-red flower blooming on his right arm that was now hanging limply by his side. Payback, she thought. He won’t do this to my sister again.
‘A little graze on your wrist, that’s all,’ she said. ‘It won’t hurt much, you’ll see. Or at least not for the first hour. That’s long enough for you to find your horse and head out of here.’
* * *
Once Brady was out of sight, Harriet began to shiver. Although she was still in a state of shock, angry thoughts churned through her mind. The man was completely unhinged if he’d ridden from Empty Creek Station to Dimbulah Downs to seek revenge. Perhaps he’d been passing by, brooding about Carruthers, and had seen a chance of getting even with someone on the other side. Whichever way you looked at it though, his goal had been her degradation.
Anger was soon replaced by horror that Brady had so nearly humiliated her. How brave Sarah was and how foolish she’d been to be dismissive of her marksmanship.
‘It was a minor wound,’ Sarah said. ‘I barely grazed his arm. Carefully judged.’
She seemed so calm, Harriet thought as she wiped her trembling hands on her trousers and longed for a shower. She felt filthy after rolling on the ground, filthy after what had happened.
‘What on earth was he doing here, Hattie?’
‘Something happened on the Guthrie. He thinks I humiliated him.’
‘How?’
‘He thought a few conversations we had were an invitation.’
‘An invitation to what?’
‘To make advances. He thought I was leading him on.’
‘So this has happened before?’ Sarah said, putting an arm around Harriet’s shoulders.
‘Not really. Well, perhaps it might almost have. His wife left him and I looked like her, he said. So I think he turned all that anger against me.’
‘But to come all this way…?’
‘Perhaps he blames me for Carruthers’ death too. The man’s unbalanced.’
‘Clearly,’ Sarah said. ‘And now he’s going to try to get Mick blamed for that. But let’s take you back to the homestead. It’s been a frightful day. And we’ll have to get someone tracking where Brady’s gone. We don’t want him bobbing up here again later.’
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘Bella told me where she’d seen Brady.’
Harriet thought of Sarah’s careful marking of the target, her perfect shots. She had metamorphosed into a calm and competent young woman who had dealt with danger as if she’d been trained to do so all her life. She was the strong active sister, when Harriet had always thought it was she.
‘Brady will head back to Empty Creek,’ Mick said. ‘That will give us some time.’
‘But he could be hanging around Dimbulah Downs waiting to take revenge,’ Harriet said. ‘That wound’s superficial. Just a graze, didn’t you see?’
‘He can’t do much harm while he’s blundering about on foot wondering if a black feller’s going to put a spear through him,’ Mick said.
Sarah said, ‘I take it that no one from here is going to spear Brady.’
‘Who knows about there, though.’ Mick stared into the distance as he spoke. ‘Different language group. Can’t tell what happens there. At least not yet. We’ll check later where Brady’s got to. They’ll know in the camp.’
Those smoke signals, Harriet thought. A flip, a flap, and news could be conveyed in a language she could never hope to understand.
Mick took Harriet’s arm as if it was the most natural thing in the world and guided her out of the hollow. At the top, he brushed some leaves and twigs from her clothes before taking her arm again. Harriet continued holding on to him tightly as they walked over the rough ground, and after five minutes, they reached the spot where they’d left their horses. It was hard to believe that was barely an hour ago. ‘Good job Brady didn’t find the horses,’ Mick said. ‘I thought he might have and let them loose.’
‘The troopers will be coming soon,’ Harriet said. ‘Someone would have telegraphed them.’
‘That won’t be good for black fellers like me once Brady starts telling lies.’
Sarah said, her voice indignant, ‘Brady can’t pin Carruthers’ death on you, because you’ve been here with us all that time.’
‘Brady will try to get Mick accused of murdering Carruthers,’ Harriet said. ‘It’ll be his way of retaliating for another humiliation. Brady isn’t a man to forget a grudge.’
‘He’ll probably head back to Empty Creek and wait for the troopers to arrive,’ Mick said.
‘But you’ve got an alibi, Mick,’ Sarah said.
‘Alibis don’t matter for me,’ Mick said. ‘White fellers’ law won’t protect me. I’m going to have to go walkabout for a bit. Go where they won’t be able to find me.’
‘But you’ve done no wrong,’ Sarah said. ‘And anyway, why should they believe Brady?’
They would believe Brady because he was a witness to Carruthers’ murder, Harriet thought angrily. They would believe Brady because he was white.
‘I’ll be all right,’ Mick said. ‘I’ll find somewhere to hide.’
‘The troopers will have trackers,’ Sarah said.
‘Of course they’ll have trackers,’ Harriet said. ‘They’ll have them as long as they have blackfellers in the lock-up they can blackmail to do the tracking.’
‘Anyway, they won’t find me,’ Mick said. ‘I’ll go when the boss gets back. Soon I reckon. Tomorrow or the day after. Maybe I’ll go further west. Or south.’
He seemed too confident, Harriet thought, worried. ‘If you go, won’t your absence be taken as guilt?’
‘My presence would be as well. Can’t win.’
‘We none of us can win,’ Harriet said, so overwhelmed with sadness that her voice emerged as a whisper.
* * *
Sleep wouldn’t come easily to Harriet that night. No matter what position she adopted, her body ached. Falling flat on her back with Brady on top of her had bruised and jarred her all over, though she’d barely registered this at the time. Far worse than these aches and pains was the consuming anger that now surged through her, followed by waves of fear and a sense of powerlessness.
She tried to focus on the deep gratitude she felt to Sarah for her quick-witted actions and her care of her once they’d returned to the homestead. Sarah had taken away her torn blouse and given it to Ah Soy to dispose of in the kitchen range, and she’d taken away Harriet’s other clothes too. ‘Here, wear my silk dressing gown,’ she’d said. ‘Go and have a shower. Take this new cake of lavender soap.’
That afternoon Mick had conferred with some of the camp elders and afterwards he and Bob had ridden out again. They hadn’t found any trace of Brady, although Harriet knew Mick hadn’t wanted to go too far from the homestead. Some of the Aborigines from the camp would track him at first light, Mick had said. They would soon find out if he was on his way back to Empty Creek Station.
Though Harriet had lathered herself all over in the shower, and shampooed her hair and scrubbed her fingernails, there remained a circle of red dust embedded around the nail cuticles, and at moments she thought she could still smell Brady: his sweat, and her own, mingled together. After the shower, her fury with him had remained; that was impossible to wash away. So too was that memory of his face, twisted with hatred. And for what? Because she’d humiliated him on the Guthrie. Because she looked like
his wife who’d run out on him.
Now she sat up in bed and fumbled for the matches to light the candle on the bedside table. Her clock showed eleven o’clock; it would be seven hours before the sun rose. There was something else simmering at the edges of her consciousness and refusing to be pushed away. With Mick’s departure from Dimbulah Downs – tomorrow, the day after, the one after that – she would lose the friendship of the person who had given her peace. But this wasn’t his only gift: he’d also brought her back to painting.
Of course there was more, she could freely admit that to herself now that he was going. She punched the kapok pillow into a more accommodating shape before lying down again. Never could she countenance marriage to Charles. Not after she’d grown to love someone else.
With that decision made, she fell into a fitful sleep.
Chapter 35
Sarah Makes a Decision
Sarah woke, rigid with terror. Her body was soaked in sweat, her mouth felt parched, and she had no idea where she was. Surrounded by darkness, her arms were fastened to her sides as if she were in a straitjacket. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. Several deep breaths later the nightmare began to recede: she was in her bed at Dimbulah Downs.
After untangling the bed covers, in which she was wound like a grub in a chrysalis, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. No lamp on the bedside table. No candlestick and matches either. Shivering, she felt her way around the unlined corrugated-iron walls to the washstand on the other side of the room. Immediately above her head, a gecko chirruped, followed by a faint scrabbling as it scuttled along a timber support. She ran her hand over the surface of the dresser and found the matches and the candlestick. Only back in bed, lit candle on the bedside table, was she ready to confront her nightmare.
She’d dreamed that someone had speared Henry. It hadn’t been an Aborigine though. Brady had speared Henry, knocking him to the ground, where he lay motionless, the spear poking out of his back like a darning needle in a pin cushion. In his hand he held the Louis Lot flute that glinted in the sunlight.
