“How can I help you if you won’t tell me what the matter is?” she whispered. She felt her friend take a deeper breath, as if she were about to speak, but then she let it out again, and Grace began to wonder, despairingly, whether Darcy would ever answer.
7
Tom took a few more shaky steps and then stopped. There was a road beneath his feet but its flat hardness felt more like the deck of a rolling ship. The road glistened with dew and there were lights shining upon it. He blinked and looked down at his feet for a moment and then he looked up at the source of the lights and began to walk towards it.
It was much further than he thought possible and more than once his legs nearly gave way beneath him, but he kept walking, a determination untainted by reason or any other consideration keeping him moving. A sound grew and swirled around him. It was like a swarm of wasps, maybe a whole plague of them. He thought he heard words in the sound but he was also quite certain it was not speech and had nothing to say to him. He stopped and sucked in air until the sound receded back into nothing and all he could hear were the trees on either side of the road and the leaves rustling in the slight evening breeze. He walked on, his head down, until he reached the gate of the house. He put his hand on the gate and rested for a few moments and then he opened it and walked up to the front door and knocked. Golden light streamed from the windows. He thought he could smell food. A flustered-looking woman opened the door and stared at him for a moment, her eyes growing slowly wider and wider.
“Tom Ferry!” she breathed. She crossed herself as if he were a ghost and then she brought up her big arms and embraced him. He looked into her eyes and saw the worry, the big buttery dollops of concern, and was overwhelmed, lost for even the simplest of words. Then the woman’s children came and thrust their heads between the doorway and their mother to blink and stare at the ragtag boy on their front step. Then she looked through him, past him, behind him, already looking for his little slip of a brother, his little shadow.
“Where’s your brother, Tom? Where’s Flynn?” asked the woman— over and over—but he could not answer her, and could not even begin to. Things began to whirl around him then. One of the children raced by, up the road, into town, shouting at the top of his lungs. Tom stepped back and sat down, pulling his legs up and hugging his knees. The woman came and helped him up and together they walked down the path and out onto the road. When he next looked up there was a whole crowd of people running towards him. There were girls in nice dresses, boys in suits, men and women following behind. He could see the hall in the near distance, the people standing on its front steps holding candles, their flickering shadows falling in every direction.
Grace Mather was one of the first to reach him. She stopped a few yards away, sucking in breaths like a Gift runner, and just stared at him. He saw Sonny, his sister Darcy, and then everyone was around him, all talking at once, all making no sense. Sergeant Mather elbowed his way through the crush and bent down and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder and peered hard into his face. There was a hush as he began to speak.
“It’s Sergeant Mather, son—Pop Mather,” he said quietly. “Can you tell me your name?”
Tom nodded. “Thomas Ferry,” he said.
“Good boy,” Pop said. He let the air out of his chest through rounded lips and then helped Tom to his feet. “All right,” he said, turning round. “Give him some room, folks. Let’s get him to the doc.”
An opening appeared through the people and Tom took a few steps along it before Pop picked him up and carried him the rest of the way to the station house. When they arrived Pop set him down on a chair in the kitchen, a wide-eyed audience of children peering round the doorjamb at them both. Pop swung the door shut and jerked his head and then there were only the two of them. Lil had set a candle on the table and Tom stared into the flame.
“You look like you’ve been through the wars, Tom,” Pop said.
Tom nodded and was about to cry but then he gritted himself and stopped it.
“I don’t know what’s happened to Flynn,” he said. “I don’t know where he is.”
“That’s all right, Tom. We’ll work that one out soon enough.”
Pop looked at the boy. His face was pinched and pale and his large green eyes seemed about to fall out of their orbits. His clothes were about to give up the ghost and his bare legs were covered in scratches and scabs and there was a nasty-looking gash across his forehead. He appeared in serious need of a decent feed, a hot bath, and a good bed, but other than that he seemed in fair physical shape.
“Wait there a minute, son, then we’ll get you home.”
After he rang the doctor he had Lil fry up a couple of eggs for Tom to eat. Between tiny mouthfuls of egg and bread Tom told scraps of his story. A kangaroo, Flynn running, something about smoke. Pop listened and let him take his time. His nerves seemed to have taken a beating. He’d lost track of the days and was confused about the sequence of events leading up to the Saturday afternoon they’d gone missing. Soon the words dried up. Pop went into his room and came back with some clothes.
“Here’s a clean shirt of mine you can change into. Some shorts. They’ll be too big but, well, better than what you’ve got on now. Can you manage?”
“Yes.”
Pop handed him the clothes and left him to it. Grace watched from the half-open door of her bedroom down the hall. She saw him stand naked by the table for a moment—not a boy any more, but not a man either—then climb into her father’s huge clothes.
The doctor arrived soon after, a little out of breath, to look Tom over. He peered at his forehead and shone a light into his eyes.
“How did you get this bump, little man?” he asked, as he cleaned it up, but Tom didn’t answer.
“He’s taken a decent knock there,” he said to Pop, “but not too serious. He needs food; nothing too heavy, a bit of bread and such to start with.”
“Can he go home?”
“I should say so. Though I’d like to see him tomorrow, look at him with some decent light.”
“All right. Thanks, Doc,” said Pop, motioning with his head.
“It’s good to have you back home, Tom,” said the doctor, “ah . . . anyway.”
Pop drove him home after the doctor had gone. He made some comments about the search they’d made but Tom said nothing. When they reached Henry’s house they walked up the path together and in through the open door. Pop rapped on the doorframe as he passed it.
“Henry?”
Pop stood in the doorway, squinting into the darkened house, his big palm in the middle of Tom’s back. The room was still except for the flicker of the television. Pop cleared his throat, waited until it seemed part of the couch broke away, stood, came towards them. Henry was not as tall as Pop but he was shored up by long hard days in the forest and seemed almost twice as big.
“Henry,” Pop repeated. “No one’s been down?”
Henry stared hard at Tom, then shook his head as if he didn’t trust his eyes.
“He knocked on the Reillys’ door about half an hour ago,” said Pop, then paused. “I thought someone might have come down to tell you.”
Henry shook his head again.
“No. No one came.”
“Henry,” Pop continued, in a soft voice. “Flynn wasn’t with him. I’m sorry. He doesn’t seem to know . . . tomorrow we’ll . . .”
He didn’t know what else to say so he pushed Tom forward, gently, like a consolation, though he did not mean it that way at all. Henry stood there with his hands hanging by his sides, staring down at Tom, who could not bear his gaze and hung his head. He looked instead at Henry’s shirt where it covered his flat belly, where it was grey, threadbare, odd-buttoned. He heard Pop continue on with other details but they seemed unrelated to him, seemed to be about some other boy named Tom. Suddenly his sight went grey, with red stars floating, and then black, without any stars, and he fainted.
“Thank you . . . for bringing him,” said Henry, standing over his step
son, after they’d revived him somewhat with a wet cloth.
“Where’s Ellie? She should—”
“She’s in bed. The doctor gave her something to sleep.”
“Ah. Well. I see. He wants to see Tom again tomorrow. I expect he’ll come down in the morning. I’ll be down as well.”
“All right. I’ll see you then.”
“There’s still hope, Henry,” said Pop, softly.
Henry nodded, but Pop could see he barely believed it.
Tom woke up on the floor, on the threadbare red carpet of the living room, spluttering. Water had been thrown across his face. The front door was closed behind his head and Pop was no longer there and Henry was coming towards him from the kitchen, unhitching his belt. His stepfather hoisted him up by the front of his oversized shirt, forcing his breath from his chest.
“Where’s Flynn?” Henry sobbed. “Where’s my little boy?”
“I—”
Without another word Henry stood him against the door and pressed his face hard against the wood. With a high little moan each time his arm lifted and with tears streaming down his cheeks, Henry swung the belt in a figure eight, the meat of it striking Tom across the back, the buttocks, the legs, twice each revolution. The pain was worse than kicking your toe into a table leg, worse than falling off a bike and skinning your knee, worse than biting down very hard on your tongue, but still nothing like the pain flooding his heart.
When Pop returned to the station house Lil had fallen asleep in her chair in the living room. He watched her sleep for a moment before heading into the kitchen. He stared at the hearth for a while and then began to set a fire there, not because it was cold but because he needed to think, to calm himself, and looking into flames always helped. Grace came and leant against the kitchen wall.
“Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I can’t sleep.”
Pop nodded. “Course not.” He held his arm out to her and she slipped it over her shoulders and they both watched the fledgling fire crackle and hiss into life.
“Where do you think he’s been?”
“I don’t know. They found a trail yesterday, nearly eight miles west of here.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “Unless someone found him, brought him back, or he walked . . .”
“Didn’t he tell you anything?”
“No. Not anything that made sense.”
“What about Flynn?”
“Sweetheart, I don’t know. A boy’s back where he belongs, and I thank Christ for that, but I can’t help thinking I should be able to see what’s happened, should know the right thing to do.”
“You always do the right thing,” said Grace. She slung her arms round his neck and put her head against the side of his. Pop lifted his hand and put it on hers.
“I just hope he can tell us something more tomorrow.”
They both watched the fire for a little longer and then Pop pushed his daughter gently towards the door.
“All right, my girl,” he said. “Off to bed now. Try to sleep.”
Grace went reluctantly, but she wasn’t about to argue. Pop stayed on to watch the fire and then, just after midnight, he heard the wind change and the first drops of rain hit the iron roof of the station house. He looked up at the flickering shadows on the ceiling and listened. The rain went from strength to strength until all other sounds were drowned out by the roar and in the morning it was still raining and for the next ten days it barely paused.
II
8
Gibson was dreaming when the telephone rang. He was drunk and couldn’t speak properly and kept wearing himself out trying to make the milling figures around him understand that he wasn’t sick, wasn’t foreign, was just an ordinary bloke who’d had one too many to drink. The sound drilled through all the palaver and woke him but it still took a few more moments for him to realise where he was and what was required of him. He stood up and a plate of cold food clattered and broke against the floor. He looked down at the lamb chop, potatoes and peas. There was a half-empty glass of beer on the coffee table, a television screen of snow. He walked to the phone, turning the television off as he passed.
“Hello?” he croaked. His mouth still felt like a whole sink of ashes even though he’d slept most of yesterday. He couldn’t remember making the meal now decorating the floor. The detective on the other end of the line gave him an address and hung up in a hurry, as if calling him had been an unwelcome, distracting task. He went into the bathroom and splashed water over his face, then put on a shirt he found hanging behind the door. Nothing more of the interrupted dream came to him, but a feeling of disconnection was left in its wake as if he had missed his cue and woken in the body of some other Gibson instead of his own.
He went to the lounge room and picked up the broken plate and the glass, carried them into the kitchen and set them on the bench. It took him a moment or two to realise that the strange flickering light in the kitchen was coming from one of the stove’s lit gas rings.
“Fuck it,” he said, turning it off.
He saw a cockroach struggling in the sink. He turned on the hot tap and let it run and then he filled a mug with steaming water and threw it over the insect. It wriggled for a moment, shat out some black liquid, died. He turned away and headed down the hall, plucking his jacket from the hook as he passed.
Once outside he stood on the step and took a few deep breaths before locking the door behind him. The morning was cool. The harbour, only a stone’s throw or two away, was cloaked in a silvery mist and the running lights of the ferries further out were little more than red and green smudges in the murk. He walked down to his car and set off. By the light of the rising sun he could see, when he crested hills, the red-roofed patchwork of the sleeping suburbs to the south and west, the gold stitch of streetlights joining them together. In the rear-view mirror he saw his own neighbourhood appear and disappear, the little houses holding tight to each other like rows of people with linked arms. Fading paint, rusting roofs, streets ending at the harbour’s edge, mixed feelings.
He lit a cigarette then rolled down the window to let the smoke out and wake himself up. Not much traffic, he thought to himself, and then he remembered it was Sunday. He flicked on the radio and listened to the squawk and crackle of interference, the flat tones of his colleagues. It didn’t take long for him to reach the address. Smith Street. Right in the heart of Surry Hills. When he pulled up, the constable standing outside the front door directed him around the block and down a little lane.
“She’s in here,” said the sergeant he found at the end of it. There was no sign of Swain, but he lived further away and wouldn’t be there for a while yet. Parked cars were dewed silver in the early cool of the morning. Weeds grew on the short stretch of back yard and a puddle glistened with flat oily rainbows. A warehouse loomed over the lane opposite the back of the house and cut out the light from the rising sun. The reek from a huge pile of rubbish in the next yard drifted into his nostrils. He sighed and rubbed his eyes and followed the man’s blue-uniformed back. Instead of the usual tingle of anticipation in his belly he found himself fighting the urge to turn and run. On the back wall of the house someone had used charcoal to scratch the words insanity and sadist across the bricks next to a stick man being hung from a stick gibbet. An old game of hangman. Others of tick-tack-toe. On the ground a blackened circle where a fire had been. Empty flagons of port and sherry resting in the grass. Swallows nesting somewhere in the building chirruped and flashed over Gibson’s head as he stepped through the broken doorframe. The interior was dim and musty, but he couldn’t yet smell the body. That could wait. The sergeant took off his hat and yawned.
“Who found her?”
“The demolition bloke. He was giving the owners a quote. All the doors and windows were boarded up years ago. You want to talk to him?”
“Who?”
“Either,” shrugged the sergeant.
“Yeah, but not yet.” He liked to take a walk around first if he could, record some
impressions of his own before those of others clouded his thinking. Today, though, there was something else, something which had smuggled itself in amid the untidy scrum of himself and his habits. He felt like he’d come to work and found someone else sitting in his chair and the feeling continued to unsettle him.
The sergeant wheezed, coughed, then lit a cigarette. Gibson looked at him. Barely in your thirties and you’ve seen it all already, haven’t you, he thought to himself. Seen too many tired bastards like me as well, I bet, old before their time.
“Stay here, will you?”
The sergeant nodded and handed him his torch. Gibson walked through the kitchen and started up a short flight of stairs.
“She’s in the bottom bedroom,” the sergeant called after him. Gibson raised his hand in acknowledgement. He continued up the stairs and then into the front bedroom. It was very dark but Gibson resisted using the torch and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Thin lines of daylight spiked in between the boards over the windows. He could smell rotting plaster and the floorboards moved and creaked as he shifted his weight. He flipped on the torch. Most of the wallpaper had sloughed off like old diseased skin. Where it still clung to the wall it was stained a dirty yellow; maybe cigarette smoke, maybe water from a leaking roof. There was a line of dust and rubbish along one skirting board where a last sweeper, years ago, had left it like a high-tide mark. The room’s dimensions were very similar to his own back in Balmain and he wondered about the people who had lived here and what had become of them and why their home had been abandoned to the elements this way. His mind tossed up a few of the more intriguing possibilities, but then he concluded that the reasons were probably much more ordinary. He sighed and went back downstairs and looked around the kitchen more carefully. He turned on the tap in the sink and water coughed out. He shone the torch across the floor. There were body-sized shapes in the dust as well as footprints. Whoever had lit the fire out the back had slept there. Maybe a few days ago now.
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