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© 2012 by Chris Womersley
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ISBN 978-1-4027-9813-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4027-9839-9 (ebook)
This book was originally published in 2010 in Australia.
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For Roslyn, who always believed
“Every angel is terrible”
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Duino Elegies
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
PART TWO
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
PART THREE
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
PART FOUR
24
25
26
27
28
29
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PROLOGUE
On the day twelve-year-old Sarah Walker was murdered in 1909, a storm bullied its way across the western plains of New South Wales and unleashed itself on the fly-speck town of Flint. Sarah’s murder became the warm, still heart of several days of frantic activity in which almost every one of the town’s two hundred or so residents had a tale of chaos or loss. Trees cowered and snapped in the winds; horses bolted. Desperate to escape the river’s rising waters, snakes invaded the Porteous house, forcing Mrs. Porteous and her two infant daughters to spend several hours perched atop the kitchen table with dresses hoisted about their knees until husband Reginald returned from work to save them. Jack Sully the blacksmith broke his arm trying to secure his roof, although there were well-founded rumours he was actually drunk at the time. Dead cows, swollen tight, bobbled about in the floodwaters for days. And old Mrs. Mabel Crink lost her sight, which partly accounted for the name by which the maelstrom became known: the Blinder.
Sarah’s father, Nathaniel Walker, said he scoured the entire area for Sarah and her older brother Quinn, neither of whom had been seen for most of the afternoon. He searched their usual hideaways: behind the chook shed; under the house; in the hollowed-out gum by the eastern fence of their property. Nothing. Eventually, he stumbled upon them in the abandoned shed by the lake at Wilson’s Point, two miles from home. By then it was too late, of course. Nathaniel was speechless. The boy appealed to his father, but his words were drowned out by a rumble of thunder. Nathaniel’s brother-in-law, Robert Dalton, appeared huffing that very moment at Nathaniel’s shoulder, saying, “Good God, what happened here?” even though—what with the blood on Sarah’s thigh, the disarranged clothing, the knife in Quinn’s fist and the blue of his sister’s lips—Blind Freddy could have seen what had taken place. Young Quinn flung down the knife, clambered through a hole in the shed wall and vanished into the storming darkness. It all happened so quickly, Nathaniel and Robert were too stunned to give chase. The boy was able to slip away unhindered.
Sarah and Quinn’s mother, Mary, was home reading at the bedside of her eldest son, William, who was that week stricken with a fever. Rainwater spooled heavily over the eaves, and the air rattled with thunder. Their house was solid, well built, but she feared for them all and for many years afterwards she recalled stopping mid-page and looking up with a prick of dread. It was the feeling she recognised from when she lost another child back in 1890, the half-formed one that slithered from between her legs three months too soon. Come in, Huck, but doan look at his face—it’s too gashly. Mary closed the book softly so as not to disturb the drowsing William.
She was a woman of faith, mildly superstitious, and for the remainder of the dark afternoon was unable to shake off a sensation of doom so acute that when Nathaniel arrived home in the evening, bedraggled, weeping, it was with a certain resigned stoicism that she listened to the appalling news. Of the precise details she refused to hear anything, saying that it was enough it had happened, it was enough such a thing had happened at all.
Naturally, the town was aghast and the particulars of the horrific crime—such as they were known or deduced—were speculated upon wherever people gathered: at the bar of The Mail Hotel; in clattering kitchens; on verandas; round the back of Sully’s place where men huddled to smoke; on blustery, wintry street corners. A reporter from the Sydney Sun with the unlikely name of Mr. Philby Rochester arrived in Flint and proceeded directly to The Mail, where he gathered information for the wide-eyed delectation of his city readers. The town had not seen such drama for many years, certainly not since the gold rush had faltered, and there hovered about its public places a guilty air of ill-gotten excitement.
With the Walker family in mourning, Robert Dalton took on the role of unofficial chronicler of the event. He told the reporter and anyone else at The Mail who would listen that he had always known something sinister was brewing between the two siblings and that he could have prevented the terrible crime had he or the boy’s father arrived on the scene earlier. “Just a few minutes,” he would say, emphasising the tragic smallness of the moment with thumb and forefinger almost pincered. “If that boy so much as shows his face around here again, I’ll hang him from a tree.”
He claimed there had always been something unusual about Quinn, a feeling the boy’s father, Nathaniel, also professed to have shared, much to his eternal regret now that it was too late to do anything about it. He had tried to keep them apart but they clung to each other like bloody burrs to a sock.
The town’s notoriety was brief. On the third day after the murder, the reporter Mr. Rochester was found passed out drunk in an area by the river known as the Flats and unceremoniously bundled aboard a coach bound for Bathurst, some thirty miles away. Despite their best efforts, police and the local tracker Jim Gracie were unable to locate Quinn Walker, as the heavy rain had washed away all traces of the murderer. Sarah was buried several days later in soil still sodden from the storms.
Although police forces in Victoria and Queensland were notified, and a reward of £200 posted, Quinn was never found. It was generally assumed the sixteen-year-old fugitive had met a fate satisfying to the world’s innate sense of justice. Theories popular for a time held that he had been eaten by wild dogs that roamed the nearby ranges; had fallen into a disused mine shaft; had been speared by blacks.
Flint residents continued to tell stories of the dreadful crime, particularly on stormy afternoons that prompted men to remark to their wives something along the lines of: “Terrible day. Always reminds me of the Walker girl murder.” Whereupon the fellow’s wife would stop rolling out pastry or plucking a chicken, stare wistfully into the middle distance and shake her head. “That poor, poor woman. To have a son like that.”
Years later, in 1916, Mary Walker received a telegram from
an officer serving in the Australian Imperial Force in France regretting to inform her that her son Quinn was missing in action, presumed killed, but that he had been a wonderfully brave man etc. etc. It seemed the boy had escaped all those years earlier after all, only to die somewhere far from home. When he heard the news, Nathaniel sniffed his good riddance and went about his business. Mary wept all over again.
Over the years, the townsfolk indulged their human propensity to make something from tattered scraps. They embroidered a tale as one might a blanket or quilt—a rumour here, a supposition there—until the story of Sarah Walker’s rape and murder became historical, complete with a beginning, a middle and an end.
Part One
THE LURE OF
THE OCEAN
1
The troopship Argyllshire carved through the ocean. Sergeant Quinn Walker leaned against one of the worn rails along its deck. He listened to the endless hiss of the waves and watched the glitter and trick of sunlight upon the water. A cigarette burned down to its soggy nub between his fingers, the tips of which were as yellow as ivory piano keys. Not only was his hair now flecked with grey, but also his eyes, as if the ash of the passing years were silting down through his innards, turning perhaps even his liver and heart to soot. Although only twenty-six years old, he had grown up in unexpected ways. No longer did he resemble the boy he had once been. He had become furtive, alert to the turning of the world, a man perpetually on the verge of departure.
A pod of dolphins threaded out and back beneath the water, spinning and hanging suspended for a second before vanishing again under the waves. Birds bathed in the rainbows that materialised in the spray. Quinn found it impossible to watch the ocean’s surface without imagining what might be swimming in the dark universe below: whales and sharks; fish that barked; lizards that prowled the coral beds; the mighty leviathan. All the creatures known and unknown.
From a tunic pocket he withdrew his Military Medal, a bravery medal awarded for actions undertaken on a night he now could not even recall, even though it was little more than two years ago. Perhaps the spit of gunfire, the wailing of men, the taste of dirt in his mouth, but these sensations could be from any night of the war. Of all the things in his life of which he had reason to be ashamed, he was perhaps most ashamed of this medal. Conspicuous gallantry, the citation had read, and devotion to duty. He has shown great courage in rescuing men buried in galleries and has performed consistent good work throughout. The coin and attached ribbon fit snugly in his palm. What a bloody joke. He cared not a jot for his own safety: that was not the same as bravery.
When he was certain no one was watching, he drew back his arm and flung the medal out over the waves. He was disappointed to lose sight of the medal immediately; he had hoped for the cruel satisfaction of seeing it trace a shining arc, glimmer in the sunlight and vanish with a minuscule plop into the vast ocean. No matter. The thing was gone.
All around him men drew on their English cigarettes, forming wraiths of smoke that were whisked away by the wind. A line of soldiers rested on the rails and stared at the horizon. Those soldiers who had become afraid of open spaces stayed below deck with the sick and the lame, snug within their hammocks, more secure in the warm, smoky brotherhood of men.
Quinn kept to himself, always shy in the company of others. At the start of the war they had nicknamed him Meek—Meek Walker—but as the war dragged on, and more and more men had become remote and wary, such shyness as his was no longer deemed worthy of comment, was barely even noticed.
Sometimes blokes clambered onto the railing and launched themselves into the air, arms flailing as they fell to the water, perhaps a glistening head before it went under for the final time, never to be seen again. A dark, wide mouth inhaling a last breath, lured by the enchantress Morgan le Fay into her palace beneath the waves. Quinn imagined these men descending into her dim and peaceful realm with seaweed about their necks, garlanded with bubbles, free of the earth and its mortal woes.
Those on deck shook their heads at the waste and reminded each other they had been warned before they set sail that the ship would not turn around to rescue anyone who fell overboard. There was no point in even mentioning it. Imagine surviving all that we survived and then going like that? When so many men were lost? Bloody crazy.
Quinn understood it, however, this lure of the ocean. To be so engulfed. Absolutely. Yes.
At North Head quarantine station, he stood with the rest to be hosed down. After everything, the sight of naked men still shocked him. Their unguarded selves were delicate, unwieldy creatures beneath their uniforms. Skin so thin and pale. Hidden away. Armless, many of them; legless; boys and men spattered with burn marks and coin-shaped scars. No wonder so many millions of them died: men are nothing when thrown into the machine of history.
Their luggage was fumigated and afterwards they were forced to inhale a solution of zinc sulphate to clear their lungs and prevent the influenza from taking hold.
The accommodations at North Head were lousy and there were angry grumblings among the men. It was much less than returning soldiers deserved, they said. No way to treat war heroes. After all they had done for their country, for the Empire. Some whispered of escape, of setting out into the scrub. The mood turned mutinous, and it wasn’t long before the men, all one thousand of them, marched through the gate down to the wharf at Manly where they took the steamer to Fort Macquarie. Quinn had imagined a cat’s cradle of streamers; mothers and sisters and wives, a doughy press of women welcoming home their men, or what was left of them.
But there was no such fanfare. The soldiers were a rabble, ill-shod and half-broken, tubercular, mutilated and blind. Many hobbled with crutches, on bandaged legs. They all wore the gauze masks issued to prevent the spread of the epidemic. They marched as best they could from the quay through Sydney towards the cricket ground where they had been promised better accommodation. A crowd gathered about George Street and Oxford Street to have a gander. Trams were held up in the crush. Boys dashed out to touch the soldiers’ legs or shake their hands. Young women smiled nervously and twittered to each other. Quinn shrugged past them all with his kitbag, acutely aware of the disappointment on the faces of those older women who hoped he might be someone else, a husband or brother or son—or a man at least known to them. He was glad of the mask that covered his ruined jaw; unlikely as it was, he had no wish to be recognised.
Quinn concentrated on the ground immediately ahead of him until he could bear it no more. He recalled some of the stories his mother had read to him and decided the Greeks should have been grateful the gods prevented their homecoming after the sack of Troy; the return from war was surely worse than the leaving.
In the excitement it was easy to peel out of formation, slip between the crowds and disappear into the city’s quiet and muggy streets. His heart shivered in his chest. His stomach cramped. In a dank Darlinghurst alley, he coughed and doubled over, hands on knees. Sweat jewelled on his forehead. A frightful sensation, tearing at his innards. He had been gassed during the war, and the residual malevolent fogs still hovered about the hollow parts of his body, settling here and there when he slept or was otherwise still. Although not as badly injured as many, there was no doubt the gas had damaged him, particularly his throat, which sometimes felt like, say, a violin with a frayed string that fluttered useless and annoying, tangling in those strings still tuned tight and in working order.
A marmalade cat eyed him dispassionately before setting about licking its paw. Quinn thought of oranges. All through the war in France he had craved one. Sometimes he woke at night with his lips dry as carpet, having dreamed of cramming a sliced quarter into his mouth, as he had done when he was a boy. On occasion he became obsessed and was unable to pass a farmer’s cart or street stall without trying to locate one. The fruit assumed mythical, magical dimensions, as if it might cure him of not only his thirst, but of all that ailed him: his homesickness, his guilt, his sorrow.
Some months ago, in France, he
glimpsed one in a girl’s basket as she passed a truck in which he was sitting. She was only about ten, but she possessed the manner of someone much older, the way all children did in those long years. She had the basket wedged on her hip and paused to talk with a shawl-draped crone before hoisting her load and entering a tabac. In the truck’s cold and smoky cabin, Quinn watched her and prepared to follow—had even tensed his body to do so—when the burly sergeant returned with the orders and rumbled the engine into life. Righto, let’s go get some of them Germans, eh?
A thin, harried doctor working at a special table at Central Station examined Quinn and issued him with a certificate declaring him free of influenza. A nurse from the Red Cross pressed a paper bag full of cheese sandwiches on him and warned him the state borders were closed because of the epidemic. He boarded a train and travelled across the Blue Mountains, dozing in the heat, then down onto the brown pelt of the western plains beyond.
The train was packed with returning soldiers—a few silent and withdrawn, most of them smoking and carousing—but civilians as well. There was an elegant woman with her arm around her young son’s shoulders, a hare-lipped farmer who reeked of beer, a boy with milky eyes, and a pair of girls who each wore red ribbons cinched tightly about their left wrists—one of the latest superstitious protections against the epidemic. The carriages were warm, the air thick with cigarette smoke. Quinn stood in the narrow passageway and stared out the window. He had removed his influenza mask to better enjoy the breeze upon his face. The countryside was dun-coloured and exhausted. A cluster of men at the far end of the passageway gossiped about the Wynne murder, in which a well-known Bathurst doctor had shot his philandering wife and fled the previous week. A sickly baby whimpered.
Like a bizarre spider unaccustomed to its surfeit of appendages, four drunken soldiers lurched arm in arm down the passage. Each was singing a different song with ramshackle gusto, and one of them appealed for the others to start again so they might sing in time, but they paid him no heed. One tripped and cut himself on a metal window lock. The soldier held up his bleeding hand. “I’m wounded,” he wailed in mock despair as his friends laughed and clapped him on the back, grins splashed across their foolish faces. “Send me home, Captain. Oh, please send me home.”
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