What Lies Buried Page 12

PART NINE

  REACHING BEDROCK

  Morning of a Funeral

  Wednesday 12th September 1990

  The pre-dawn kookaburra outburst did not disturb the permanent residents, but Caroline and Tony woke. It was four o’clock. Tony rolled over and went back to sleep. Caroline remained drowsily awake. She was used to long days and disturbed nights during parliamentary sittings, but was under no illusion that lack of sleep became easier to handle with experience. There would be enough on her mind today without becoming irritable from weariness. At first light, she got out of bed and went to sit at the window. At one stage in the past she’d practised simple meditation. She used the techniques now, allowing her mind to empty, gazing vacantly at the paddocks and features of the farm as they slowly emerged from night. As soon as she heard movement elsewhere in the house she padded down the hall to the nearest bathroom, showered, and pulled on the tracksuit she always carried when travelling. Bare feet on polished floorboards—another evocative sensation from her past. She made her way to the kitchen. Nobody was there but a pot of tea was already drawing under a knitted cosy. She went into the family room. The coffin was back in place. Tom must have retrieved it from the cool room before starting his morning rounds.

  There was a noise on the verandah. Tony came through the door, bustling as always. ‘There’s something about the air of a country morning,’ he said, taking a deep breath to illustrate the point. ‘Care for some tea?’

  ‘Would I what?!’

  They took a tray outside and sat at one of the trestle tables that occupied the entire verandah and much of the grassed area beyond.

  ‘We’re obviously expecting a crowd,’ Tony observed. A brown kelpie, which had been curled up in a corner of the verandah, stirred itself and resettled a short distance from them. Tony smiled down at him. ‘You’re well trained aren’t you my friend.’

  ‘Working dogs have to be. His name’s Barney.’ The dog’s ears pricked and his eyes opened. ‘I had one just like him. My father taught me how to... Oh god, Tony. I shouldn’t have come. I’m rekindling a love for all the things I learnt to live without.’

  ‘That must be hard.’

  She took a sip of her tea. ‘Did I overhear Judith telling you about our blow-up yesterday?’

  ‘She suggested I not raise the subject of the future of Banabrook.’

  ‘I was going to do the same.’

  ‘To save me being caught in the crossfire? You’re both very kind.’

  ‘You’re the only one who has any inkling about my past. Max is desperately trying to fill in the blanks.’

  ‘He’s a real terrier... well more of a hound I suppose.’

  ‘There’s something else. Do you remember the news reports about a minister who beat up a drug dealer in Kings Cross?’

  ‘My god! It’s him isn’t it? I thought there was something familiar.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s not my business—and I’ve been trying to keep them out of mine—but I can’t help wondering if I should raise the subject.’

  ‘With Judith? You think he might be a danger to her?’

  ‘I saw a documentary, quite recently, about a series of gangland killings. It mentioned three criminals who’d threatened witnesses with payback, and who’ve finished gaol terms and been released. Lenny d’Aratzio was one of them.’

  ‘Leonard Stanley d’Aratzio, jokingly known as LSD. It’s all coming back.’

  ‘I’m afraid if I raise the matter with Judith and Max it will seem as though I’m trying to scare them for some ulterior motive of my own. I won’t do anything before the funeral.’

  ‘Would you like me to take it up with them? Tomorrow perhaps, before I leave.’

  ‘It’s a kind thought.’

  ‘I know there’s a bit of drama going on with you people. I’m retired now. There are no demands on my time. So if there’s ever anything I can do to help... Troubles shared and all that guff.’

  ‘Now you’re being kind.’

  ‘Actually I’m being selfish.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I didn’t realise until Timothy died how isolated I’d become. I have dozens, nay hundreds of acquaintances, but, with Dad and May gone, Timmy had become my family—the one I went home to.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I loved Timmy, but I thought I was a self-sufficient person. Suddenly I realised I was old and alone. Christ, now I’m being the sad old queer.’

  ‘You’re not. I don’t know what the future holds for me, but don’t ever forget where I am. Don’t forget I’m short of family too. I know what it’s like to come home to nobody. I’ve two empty bedrooms in my apartment. One can be yours any time you like.’

  Tony looked steadily at his hands. ‘So kind,’ he said softly.

  Judith arrived. Barney went to her.

  ‘I am in the presence of angels,’ Tony said, rising to greet her.

  A cooked breakfast was considered but they all opted for something simpler—toast with marmalade, home made by Judith from cumquats grown in the house garden. They were still at the table when Max came, having already breakfasted with Tom and Fred. In contrast to the previous evening, conversation was sparse and stilted. There was an air of general concern for Judith, unexpressed until Tony brought it into the open.

  ‘Now my angel. We are all at your disposal to do anything to help throughout the day. You need but to ask.’

  Judith reached across the table and laid a hand on his. ‘Thank you. I think, between us, Max and I have everything covered. I’ll cry when the time comes, but I think I did most of my grieving while he was still alive. So, I’m cool. I’m actually ready to tackle another of the diaries. Somehow, having Maud and May with us puts the day into perspective. Daddy’s death is part of a continuum and we’re all just a few steps away from joining them.’

  ‘Half a step for some!’ Tony said.

  They drifted into the family room and resumed the places they’d occupied the night before—the territorial imperative drawing each to a particular spot.

  On a slip of paper used as a bookmark, May had written:

  “Black days! Mine started before the war. Dad said everybody has them. I wonder.”

  Caroline looked at the entries on that page. The one that had prompted May’s note was obvious.

  Alfred is in one of his black moods. I wish I knew what caused them, although we never lack for sources of frustration out here. I think our bodies sometimes have a delayed response to tribulations. When things are difficult, he is a tower of strength and buoys us with optimism. It is when I think things are going well, his sudden periods of grim countenance and grumbling utterances surprise me. I made his favourite pudding and he hardly looked at it.

  ‘Did Aunt May suffer from depression?’

  Tony looked up from his reading. ‘What have you found now?’

  Caroline handed him the bookmark and the diary, and watched the changing expressions on his face as he studied the entries. Eventually he looked up again.

  ‘Perhaps she did. With all her other problems I’d never noticed. My dad suffered something similar.’

  ‘Uncle Christopher? But he was always so alive.’

  ‘I’m told it’s often the way of these things. Happy one moment, inexplicably sad the next.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  It must have been her tone that made Tony look at her closely. ‘You too?’

  ‘Only mildly. But yes.’

  ‘So Alfred... my father... May... and you.’

  ‘And your grandfather, Simeon, apparently believed everybody experienced that sort of thing, so presumably he did too. Possibly he’d seen it in his own father, maybe even Richard as well.’

  ‘But not me. I have my own hang-ups, but I’ve never simply had darkness descend out of the blue.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how apt that description is. It’s exactly what happens. Darkness descends.’ Both fell silent. Then Caroline spoke again. ‘You’re aware I have a genetic condition that
affects my reproductive system.’

  ‘I remember you telling me.’

  ‘There’s a suspicion it passes through the male line, but the condition I have can emerge only in females. The specialist told me the genetic defect might show itself in some other form in males. I’m wondering if the unexplained depressive periods are a manifestation showing up in both sexes.’

  ‘But not in the homosexual.’

  ‘That might be the way it works. Who knows?’

  Realising Max and Judith had both stopped reading, Caroline looked at them and added, ‘It was the reason I took some interest in our genealogy, and why I first went to see Tony’s father.’

  ‘So. Something else in the blood.’ Max looked contemplative.

  There was another pause in conversation before Judith said. ‘I’ve found something sad. It appears to be Maud’s last diary entry.’ Now Judith was the focus of attention. She read them the entry.

  How can I live with myself? I have condemned Alfred, thought ill of him, only to find, now, it was my brother who was the rogue. Alured has known it all along. Today, feeling unwell, I sat with Al and, for the first time, spoke of my distress and the judgement I made when angry men arrived and Alfred burnt papers and receipts. I told Al how I'd pleaded with his father to reveal what he was doing, and how I was rebuffed with an uncharacteristic abruptness I took to be a sign of guilt. Now I learn he was trying to protect me from the knowledge of Rufus' dishonesty. To think my own flesh and blood was a thief and a dealer in forged works of art. The angry men were creditors of Rufus not of my darling Alfred, yet I thought ill of him. Had today's conversation not occurred, I would have gone to my grave believing my husband dishonoured himself. This news devastates me. It's as well Rufus is not here. We are blind to things so close to us. Al's solution is to gift the entire Blake Collection to the State so no unwarranted profits can ever accrue to the family. He says the paintings he suspects to be the fakes are probably as good as the real work of the pioneer watercolourist, but the artist's name is what makes a piece valuable. Neither Al nor Alfred could bring themselves to destroy any of the paintings, for they couldn't be absolutely sure which are authentic. Al believes the best course is to make no assumptions and leave it to posterity to discover and wonder, or not to. In the meantime he is adding works with undoubted provenance to ensure the collection is worthy of gifting to the State. I hope it is the right course but who am I to even think of suggesting it isn't? If only I'd pressed Alfred, confessed my doubts, expressed my condemnation. He would surely have revealed the truth when he realised how badly I felt about him. Now it is too late.

  Cosy Illusions

  Wednesday 12th September 1990

  When Judith finished reading Maud’s final diary entry, there was silence. Caroline stretched uneasily; she took a stroll around the room ending up, as so often before, at the picture window. Finally she said, ‘Maud’s distress is understandable, but her decision not to challenge Alured’s intentions leaves us with an ethical problem. One of Max’s draft chapters already refers to questions about attribution of some of the paintings. Now we have real evidence the Blake Collection contains forgeries, which means we have to decide whether to inform the gallery and the trustees.’

  ‘Is it a problem?’ Tony asked. ‘We know Alured bolstered the collection with genuine Heidelberg stuff. And it was a gift to the State. It’s not as if money changed hands.’

  Judith said, ‘Caroline has a point though. Here we have evidence that, before it was gifted, the collection was prettied up.’

  ‘Or tarted up,’ Caroline said.

  ‘We shouldn’t be too quick to judge.’ Max got up from his place at the desk. ‘Alured’s action might be questionable, but it was clearly well intentioned.’

  ‘I’d be happier if this didn’t seem to be a Blake trait!’ Caroline’s glance towards the coffin was involuntary, but it was sufficient to cause three other heads to turn in that direction.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Judith asked.

  ‘In my position I have to.... No. I’m sorry. This isn’t the time. We can worry about it tomorrow. Let’s just drop it for now.’

  ‘I need to know what you’re implying.’

  ‘It’s not the time or the place to shatter any cosy illusions.’

  ‘Well that definitely requires explanation.’

  ‘I’m choosing words badly. It was a silly comment.’

  ‘It was a cruel comment! Don’t you think it’s cruel to hint at cosy illusions? I think I’m entitled to an explanation.’

  ‘No. Please. Not before the funeral.’

  ‘Now!’ Judith’s voice was firm, compelling. ‘I’d rather hear it now than sit in church wondering what it is you’re keeping from us.’

  Caroline looked desperately towards Tony. His simple shrug and a small gesture with his large hands were eloquent. This was not his call. Turning back to Max she said, ‘Damned biography. I can’t stand by and watch it happen. I can’t be a party to lies or myth-making.’

  ‘Heroes make good stories.’

  ‘Heroes? It gets worse!’

  Max stepped towards her so unexpectedly she almost retreated. Swords had crossed; Caroline realised there was no way back for either of them.

  ‘If I were designing the dustcover,’ Max said, ‘I would have Walter on a white horse, with a ploughshare as a shield against despair, and a seed-bag full of hope.’

  ‘Is that really the image you have?’ Taking Walter’s hat from the coffin Caroline went to the vase, selected a frond of white grass, and put it in the hatband. Handing the hat to Max, she said, ‘You forgot the helmet.’

  Max considered the object before extracting the grass frond and returning the hat to the coffin. He turned to Caroline waving the frond.

  She gave a little shrug. ‘It needed a white feather.’

  ‘Oh, I recognised the intention. The white feather of cowardice. It was the specific allusion that escaped me.’

  Caroline turned to Judith. ‘I’ve only been trying to protect you. Sometimes it’s better not to know the truth.’ There was a pause before she continued. ‘When Walter was in his twenties, the country went to war. The heroes enlisted and went off to fight. He stayed at home.’

  ‘So?’ Max prompted.

  ‘To become a war profiteer, for Christ’s sake!’ In her frustration at having the admission prized out of her, she’d raised her voice almost to a shout. Now, she repeated quietly, ‘To become a war profiteer.’

  ‘A war profiteer?’ Tony was incredulous.

  ‘Good god!’ said Max.

  Caroline sat on the arm of the couch. It was out—a secret she’d harboured for three decades. Looking at Judith she saw the shock, and said, ‘I’d never been able to get him to talk about the war years. I’d often suspected there were secrets. I found things niggling at the back of my mind. Like the argument with Mr Adderley over the south paddock.’

  ‘The south paddock?’ Max looked to Judith.

  Judith said, ‘Where the horses are.’

  Caroline nodded. ‘It used to be part of Adderley Farm. Mr Adderley arrived here one night, and there was a row about the amount father had offered to pay for it. I’d left my bedroom door open; I heard everything. Adderley said the Blakes had a reputation for being robbers, but Banabrook was the farm adjacent to his and he had to sell the paddock because he needed the capital. He made some comment about deprivations of war forcing him to give in after all these years. He said Walter only had the money to buy the land because of his frauds. I remember him shouting about his son fighting for King and country while Walter had contrived to stay at home and make a killing of another kind.’

  ‘What did Walter say?’ Max asked.

  ‘Not a word! At the time, that meant nothing to me. But in retrospect, in the light of other things, the silence became significant. Would you have stood there, saying nothing, while somebody made such a dreadful accusation?’ She saw Max and Judith exchange glances.

  Judith said, ‘We
have to clear this up.’ She nodded towards the desk and watched as Max started rummaging in the drawers before she turned back to Caroline. ‘There are lots of confusing things. But, whatever Daddy might have done during the war, it didn’t include contriving to stay at home.’

  Max retrieved a file which had not been in the sorted stack. ‘In 1939, when he was twenty-one, your father was one of the first to try to join up. He was rejected on medical grounds.’

  ‘He was as strong as an ox. People joked about it.’

  ‘Which added to his frustration, and his embarrassment. He had high insteps.’

  ‘And for that they rejected him?’

  Max handed her the file. It was marked “Miscellaneous – War Years”. On top was a letter embossed with a Commonwealth emblem. In the margin Walter had printed the single word “SHIT!” She read the marked paragraph:

  A soldier with high insteps cannot be re-fitted in the field from the quartermaster’s standard issue boots. A man without boots is as good as wounded. If a soldier needed replacement boots which could not be supplied he could become a liability to his comrades in arms.

  She looked up to see the expectant faces of Judith and Max waiting for her response. She wished she could tell them the letter changed things. She sighed in frustration. ‘So he didn’t have to contrive to stay at home. Adderley got that bit wrong. It must have been Walter’s lucky break. Or perhaps what happened was a reaction to being rejected for service. Bitterness might have made him an opportunist.’

  Judith frowned. ‘I don’t understand.’

  Caroline turned to Max. ‘What does your research tell you about his behaviour after the rejection?’

  ‘He decided his war effort would be to keep Arajinna on its feet. He arranged for the older men to teach farming skills to volunteers: high school kids, women from the town, people with disabilities. Then he organised teams to work almost every farm in the vicinity. After the big hailstorm in 1944, he and the only builder left in the district repaired eleven damaged roofs in two weeks.’

  ‘Did you check who had the agency for building materials?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Judith was clearly disturbed.

  Caroline handed the file back to Max. ‘This is a compelling historical source. But only for why he didn’t go away. What do you have to support the rest of your story?’

  ‘There are written records to corroborate a number of facts. The main sources are oral. But they’re sound.’

  ‘Interviews with Walter?’

  ‘Others too.’

  ‘And what about the interviews with the victims?’

  Again Judith and Max exchanged looks.

  ‘Could you possibly have done all this research without talking to the victims? The Johnsons for example?’ This time the looks told her something else. ‘Good Lord, you haven’t even spoken to them have you?’

  Max made a gesture suggesting frustration. ‘Well... no... but...’

  ‘Often it’s what’s left out that makes the lie.’

  ‘So what’s left out?’ Judith asked.

  ‘My mother’s Uncle Bert set up a number of businesses. The most lucrative was the Kalawonta fuel agency.’

  Max nodded. ‘Life blood of the district in a sense. Those contracts were coveted everywhere ’

  ‘Uncle Bert returned from the war to find his agency had been appropriated by Walter—stolen!’

  ‘Stolen? Good heavens! Where did you get that?’

  ‘My cousin Stephen, a Johnson!’

  Max turned to Judith. ‘Things are falling into place. Walter as a war profiteer would explain a lot.’

  Judith said, ‘You’re right. It does.’

  Caroline said, ‘He’d always been evasive when anything about the war years came up. I didn’t want to believe he’d done anything wrong. Even after Mr Adderley confirmed Stephen’s story, I went looking for evidence to explain it away. What I found made things even worse. I realised I had to face the truth. Now I’m afraid you do.’

  Judith said, ‘So that’s why you left?’

  Caroline nodded—the forged signature, and the rumours about buried babies, would have to wait; she’d already given Judith enough to cope with. She said, ‘I couldn’t live with the lies.’

  From the front of the house, the sound of somebody knocking on the door brought them all back to the present. Judith left the room.

  Max said, ‘So much now becomes clear to me. History depends on the sources. I’ve never spoken to Stephen; I’d never heard his version of events. Adderley died long before I came here so he wasn’t even on my list.’

  ‘You see now why I’ve tried to avoid telling Judith.’

  ‘What an extraordinary story,’ Tony said. ‘We think we know other people, but we don’t even understand ourselves.’

  Max nodded. ‘I did try to find the Johnsons, you know. I traced them to Sydney but never got to speak to them.’

  ‘Well at least you tried.’

  They turned as Judith came back accompanied by an older woman. With the ingrained habit of his upbringing, Tony rose from his seat and moved aside, smiling in anticipation of an introduction, ready to offer his place to a lady. Later, he would say that, if he’d been asked to describe Judith’s demeanour, he would have used words such as edgy, flustered, even wide-eyed.

  ‘Caroline, this lady is Mrs...’ Judith turned to the new arrival. ‘I’m so sorry it’s...’

  ‘Henderson.’ The voice was quiet, but the American accent was obvious. She looked at Caroline. ‘Oh my! The newspaper photos don’t do you justice.’

  ‘Do I know you?’ Caroline thought there was a familiarity; but she couldn’t place the woman who, after a moment’s hesitation, went to the coffin and looked at the body.

  ‘Hello Walter,’ the woman said.

  ‘You knew my father?’ Caroline asked.

  Mrs Henderson turned to face them. ‘I knew it would be hard. I rehearsed what I might say. Now I’m here, it’s all gone.’ She looked at Judith and added, ‘You opened the door and I found myself looking at a ghost. It was unnerving. I guess there’s no easy way to do this. Caroline dear, I’m your mother.’

  Tony said, ‘Emily? Emily Blake?’

  ‘I realise what a shock this must be, but I didn’t know how to handle it so I hired a car and drove on up here.’

  ‘My mother?’

  ‘Oh my! Oh my! I can see it... I can see my little girl... in the woman.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t see my mother. She’d be waving... She’d be waving and I’d know who she was.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand.’ Mrs Henderson made the barest movement towards her.

  ‘I’d be riding in the Grand Parade, and... I’d see a lady...’

  Suddenly Tony moved towards Caroline. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I will be.’

  ‘Oh my!’ said Emily Henderson. ‘I have really shocked you, haven’t I?’

  ‘It’s silly. This shouldn’t happen.’

  ‘Honey. Honey. I was worried but... Oh my! I didn’t figure on giving you a heart attack.’

  ‘I’m all right. Just... overcome.’

  Tony said, ‘I think, in the circumstances, it would be amazing if you weren’t.’

  ‘Surely you can’t be old enough to be my mother.’

  ‘My vanity has made a cosmetic surgeon very happy.’

  Further scrutiny. Then Caroline held out her hands to Emily. Realising her mother had noticed the brooch, Caroline said: ‘It’s the only thing of yours I could find.’

  ‘Well I’m sure glad you did. Now you take it real easy, okay?’

  Return of the Prodigal Mother

  Wednesday 12th September 1990

  Emily Henderson found herself alone and uneasy in a room full of memories.

  Caroline had declined Judith’s offer to call a doctor. Banabrook might be a long way from the city, but the media was sure to get hold of the story if an overworked country GP was called to drive two hours to tell Senator Blak
e she was perfectly all right. Nevertheless, under pressure from the others, she had agreed to lie down. Her mother, here. The shock had passed, and she was starting to feel calm. Many questions would now be answered; conclusions and surmises would be confirmed. Unfortunately, there was a downside. Judith had taken the news about Walter’s shady past with composure, but the additional detail she would hear from Emily would be hurtful.

  Judith hovered near the bedroom door, watching over the half-sister for whom she was starting to feel some affinity. Stephen’s disclosure that Walter was a war profiteer would have been shattering for a twenty-year-old. Had Caroline discussed the matter with Rachel? Had she suspected her stepmother of complicity? Some of Caroline’s information had clearly been wrong, but there might be other things yet to emerge. There’d been a day at the hospice when Rachel had rambled about bringing troubles into Walter’s life. Something about making a good man do bad things. Judith had never shied away from the truth, but establishing it had not been easy. She had long been resigned to having a mystery for a mother. About her father, she wanted to know everything, good or bad. Emily Henderson might light the dim corners of her understanding.

  Having discovered that Emily had arrived thinking the dilapidated Criterion Hotel would still offer accommodation, Max was making up a bed for her in the old nursery. He was thankful for the opportunity to be alone and to think. Caroline’s disclosures had taken him by surprise. In any investigation it was common for each source to add its own colouring, particularly when the source itself might otherwise appear in an unattractive hue. Rarely did anybody know the entire story, and far more rarely did they disclose it. Truth, whole truth, and nothing but, was an elusive commodity even from sources of the highest integrity. He had learnt that people are imperfect witnesses at the best of times, and that the challenge for the historian is to sift away the overburden and uncover what lies beneath.

  In the kitchen, Tony was making tea and coffee, and rummaging in the pantry for ingredients to conjure something to go with it. He’d met Emily only once before, at her wedding to Walter. The American now in the family room was an engaging lady, but so far removed from his recollection of Walter’s decidedly Aussie bride that he’d found this second meeting quite bizarre. He was also trying to come to terms with Caroline’s disclosures, which he found both a worry and a compelling mystery.

  Emily wandered around the familiar room. The trophy cabinet took her attention. Photographs of a young Caroline. One snapshot, of a serious child barely as tall as her pony, must have been taken soon after Emily’s departure. Another showed an adolescent girl draping a blue ribbon around the neck of a black mare, and fixing the camera with a self-conscious grin. Yet another showed an assured young woman in full riding gear. In another section of the cabinet, she found confirmation of something she’d guessed. From the instant Judith opened the front door, it was obvious she was Rachel’s daughter, and the identity of the other parent was implied when she introduced herself as a Blake. This photograph showed Walter and Rachel, on either side of a pony, with a very young Judith in the saddle. Proud parents, Emily thought, but somewhat older than they were when I left—which fits. Judith can’t be older than early thirties, so some time must have elapsed before she was born. The question not answered by the photographs was Rachel’s current whereabouts.

  The rattle of a tea trolley heralded Judith’s return.

  ‘Is she all right?’ Emily asked.

  ‘She’s having a shower and changing.’

  ‘I knew my coming was risky after all this time. But she seemed okay; I mean, after the first surprise, then...’

  ‘Body chemistry.’

  ‘Now there’s a Walter Blake expression. Body chemistry fascinated him.’

  ‘I’d never thought about it, but you’re right.’

  ‘Every now and then, over the years, something’s brought my mind back here. An expression like body chemistry. Somebody talks about adrenalin, and I’m here, right here—Walter at the easel, Caroline doing a jigsaw. I think adrenalin was what got me to Arajinna today. But when you opened the front door...Wow! I’d prepared myself for Caroline, and I’d steeled myself to cope with meeting Rachel again—a much older Rachel of course...’

  ‘She won’t remember you.’

  ‘Then she is here?’

  ‘We had to move her to a hospice. It’s about an hour’s drive, but we couldn’t care for her properly any more. She has Alzheimer’s. When I told her Walter had died it didn’t register. She didn’t know who I was talking about.’

  Emily reached out and touched Judith’s forearm. ‘Oh honey. Does she know you?’

  ‘I’m not sure. She doesn’t seem to know anybody. But when she’s agitated there are only two of us who can calm her. The other one is a nurse who started working with her early after the onset. If we hold her close, something in that poor brain seems to know we’re different, special to her in some way. It’s a cruel disease.’

  ‘May I ask how old you are?’

  ‘I’m thirty two.’

  Emily mentally computed the dates. Yes, it fitted.

  Judith asked, ‘Did you know?... about the marriage... him and Rachel...?’

  ‘Not that they had a child so like her mother. You’re about the age she was when I left. Which makes the likeness... quite disconcerting.’ It was obvious Judith found the scrutiny unsettling, but Emily found the likeness of mother and daughter drawing her on. Struggling to find the words, she said, ‘I wonder... if I’d returned to find Rachel in good health, but older... I wonder if I’d have felt the urge I feel now to say things to you... to the image I knew as Rachel.’

  ‘You mean to apologise?’

  ‘So he told you.’

  ‘Call it intuition.’

  ‘Do you think Rachel knew?’

  ‘That you said things about her?’

  ‘Cruel things,’ Emily said quietly.

  ‘She never said anything to me. Until recently, she never spoke about the past at all.’

  ‘Until recently?’

  ‘They say there are two kinds of victims—those who want to forget, and those who want to rage. Until the onset of her illness, Mama was a controlled and private person, even with me. Any attempt to get her to talk about her early life was... well, suddenly you found you were in another conversation. It was obviously a defence mechanism. Then, some time after her health started to deteriorate, she began telling me about incidents from the past. The change was a shock. Things came tumbling out, as if the barriers she’d erected in her mind had cracked and started to spill her secrets. It was frightening because she seemed not merely to be remembering the events but re-living them. Somewhere along the line I think she must have had an abortion. I suspect she was raped. But the main subject was to do with burials. Max thinks she must have seen the mass graves. She keeps saying: “you can’t bury memories, you can’t bury memories”. It’s horrible. What’s worst is not knowing if these images have really been locked away until now, or if she’s actually been reliving them all her life, secretly, over and over. Alone.’

  Judith’s sadness was palpable. Emily could think of nothing to say.

  When Max entered, they must have presented a strange tableau: Judith’s eyes cast down, Emily’s hand on her arm, neither of them speaking or moving. They both looked up, acknowledging his arrival.

  ‘There’s a bed made up and a towel on the end of it. Caroline will be with us shortly.’

  Emily said, ‘Thank you, Max.’ She saw his glance towards Judith, eyebrows raised—an unspoken question of the kind that flows between intimates who know their thoughts are running parallel.

  Judith said, ‘I’ll be all right. I want it cleared up.’

  Max said, ‘Caroline has already had a considerable shock, and I’m concerned about what might happen next—concerned for all of us. We’re still coming to terms with Walter’s death. Mrs Henderson is not aware–’

  ‘For gosh sakes call me Emily! You make me feel positively ancie
nt.’

  ‘Forgive me. You, Emily, would not be aware that Judith and I have been pressing Caroline for information about the past. Obviously, now you’re here, we should try to uncover the whole truth, or at least as much of it as we collectively know.’

  ‘You want to pump me for information, right?’

  ‘You must know the truth about some things we’ve been trying to guess.’

  ‘I suppose I do.’

  ‘I fear some of what we learn will be hurtful. Were I omnipotent, I think I would declare these conversations temporarily off limits, at least until after the funeral. As I’m not, and the revelations probably have to run their course, I merely suggest we all be conscious we might have fears confirmed or learn unwelcome things.’ He put an arm around Judith. ‘Somehow we have to get through a difficult day.’

  Caroline’s arrival precluded any response. She was elegant in black. Emily was delighted to see she’d pinned the brooch to the lapel of her jacket. There was a brightness which hadn’t been evident earlier. ‘Sorry about all that,’ she said. ‘Taxed the system, a bit.’

  Emily grimaced. ‘I feel so guilty.’

  ‘I’ll forgive you if you stay a while so I can get used to you.’

  ‘You can bet on it. We’ve got a lot of time to make up, you and me.’

  ‘I’ve telephoned my secretary to cancel my appointments for the rest of the week. I think she’s in a state of shock.’

  ‘Oh Caroline, honey that’s great.’

  Emily hoped it wasn’t too obvious to the others how close she’d been to giving her daughter a massive, uninhibited hug. There was a time they’d called them “big warm cuggles”. Now, she held back, fearful, after all these years, of getting things wrong again.

  Caroline turned to Max. ‘You’ve been bursting with curiosity since I arrived. Now you have someone of far greater interest to interrogate. You should start a new tape.’

  ‘I think I’ll just listen. But we should wait for Tony.’

  ‘Wait no more!’ Tony bustled in from the kitchen with a platter of food. ‘It’s cobbled together: little sandwiches, things on toast, “wolf from the door” stuff. No time to make canapés or anything exotic—although I did see a bottle of anchovies so the thought crossed my mind. Voila! Nibbles Antonio.’ He put the platter on a small table next to Emily, and busied himself with cups and plates.

  ‘So mother,’ Caroline turned to Emily. ‘We’ve speculated about your departure from Banabrook. Now we can hear it from you.’

  Conscious of Max’s warning, Emily looked at him. His little shrug confirmed her own feelings. Sooner or later, her story must be told. ‘In some ways it starts with being brought up in an anti-Semitic household. If there’s such a thing as a fundamentalist bigot, my father was that. He even corresponded with the Ku Klux Klan. When the overseas mail arrived, other folks got four weeks of the Saturday Evening Post; we got racist pamphlets.’

  ‘How extraordinary,’ said Max. ‘Was he a Nazi sympathiser?’

  ‘Yes and no. He approved of Hitler’s attempts to rid the world of Jews. That was goddamn Holy work! But Hitler was a Kraut, and my old man couldn’t abide anything foreign. There’s a word for that isn’t there?’

  ‘Xenophobia?’ said Tony.

  ‘He had it like mad dogs have rabies, and some of it rubbed off on me. My guess is folks become bigots the same way we become Christians, or Muslims, or whatever. We’re born into families that believe.’

  Caroline said, ‘I don’t remember my grandparents.’

  ‘On my side you didn’t miss anything. Walter’s dad was an absolute darling. After I started going steady with Walter, you couldn’t keep me away from Banabrook. Life at Weatherlee was never much fun. The lucky thing for me was I had a way to connect with the outside world. I was good at sport. I helped the school win athletics competitions, and netball, and hockey. That gave me an entrée into other social activities. Walter’s dad used to practise golf down the back there. One day he let me have a go. Next thing I know, he’s taking me down to the golf club and paying for lessons from the pro.’ Emily paused to relive the warmth of those happy times. Judith’s question brought her back to the present.

  ‘Do you still hate Jews?’

  ‘No honey. I don’t think I ever did. As I grew up I rejected my father’s views. But I lived in his house, so I knew the language of evil. I was not a believer, but I sure knew the Devil’s catechism. When I needed to justify myself, the words were all there, ready made.’

  ‘Justify yourself?’

  ‘I wasn’t handling things too good. Rachel was sexy. Her accent was... you know... Marlene Dietrich... and she had that way of touching people when she talked to them. Walter’s motives when we took her in were noble enough, but he hadn’t figured on the effect she’d have.’

  ‘So he just dropped you?’

  ‘Not immediately! It took a long time. But you didn’t have to be Einstein to read the signs. I’m sure he’d never even looked at another woman before Rachel. When he realised she had feelings for him, he was probably more confused than anybody. You see, Walter never understood how irresistible he was—not just to me, to most folks he came into contact with, certainly the women. Trouble is, when you live with a guy you start to take him for granted. Years later, when I sat on our porch in Boston, and thought about what I’d left behind, I realised I had to cop some of the blame. We sign up “for better or for worse”, but for a long time I hadn’t even been making an effort. My Ivan was a good man, a kind man, but there were times I’d sit on the porch, alone, and long for Walter, and you honey, and everything else I’d left behind here.’

  ‘Even after everything he’d done?’ Caroline said.

  ‘You can’t explain these things. I knew I’d lost him, but I still wanted him.’

  ‘At the time you left, however...’ Max prompted her.

  ‘Sorry Max. I got off the point. At the time I left, all I could see was my husband had lost interest in me. It’s a shock when you’re a wife and you realise another woman arouses his passions. And the three of us were stuck here where we couldn’t get away from it. I think I already knew the best place for me was somewhere else. All it needed was the spark to ignite everything. The day I left I’d been drinking with my cousins.’

  ‘Graham and Stephen?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘You remember them?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘In today’s parlance they “wound me up”. One hundred reasons to hate Walter Blake—the greatest bastard this side of the black stump. They bent my ear about Walter ratting on me. They got me going, and I came right on home and regurgitated it all in one great big spew.’

  ‘You can hardly be blamed for that,’ said Caroline, ‘When he’d betrayed you with Rachel, on top of everything else.’

  ‘Everything else?’

  ‘Your uncle’s fuel contract... the profiteering.’

  ‘Oh yeah, they told me about the fuel contract, and lots of other stuff Walter had done to them. I didn’t know it was a lie. Not then. But I was burning the bridges anyway, so what the hell? I gave him the full serve.’

  ‘A lie?’

  It was Max who responded. ‘A Johnson special! A lie supported by just enough truth to be credible.’ Looking at Emily he added, ‘When you arrived I was about to tell Caroline of my failed attempt to interview the Johnson brothers. Stephen is in gaol for organising the bombing of a gay bar. Graham skipped bail and disappeared.’

  ‘They’re in their seventies for chrissake!’ Emily said.

  ‘Once a redneck...,’ Tony shrugged.

  ‘They told Caroline that Walter stole their family businesses while Bert was at the war.’

  ‘Now, there’s a laugh. Bert was too old for war service, but he did go away in the early forties. The boys told everyone he’d been seconded to advise the Army Supply Corps. You know “special expertise” in transport, and other bullshit. And I believed them. So did everybody else. It had the ring of truth. Walter must have known d
ifferent. We had this pact not to talk about my family, but when I was told Walter was taking advantage of Bert’s absence to get his hands on the fuel contract, I said I wanted to know what was going on. He pretty much told me to butt out.’

  ‘He had reasons,’ Max said. ‘Reasons in the form of threats. Against him, and you, and a seven year old daughter.’ When he turned to Caroline her confusion was palpable. ‘I’m sorry Caroline. In 1944 Bert Johnson wasn’t advising His Majesty’s Army, he was in His Majesty’s Prison serving time for black market dealings. Bert was the profiteer, and his sons were bully-boys. But they were also masters of the big lie. The credible lie. The lie repeated again and again until others take it up.’

  ‘But earlier...earlier, you said Walter’s being a profiteer explained things. You said it made everything fall into place.’

  ‘What I meant was your behaviour fell into place. For me and Judith. We’d been struggling to understand your attitude. When we realised the extent of the misinformation you’d been fed, things started to become clear.’

  ‘Dear god!’

  ‘When Bert went to gaol, the fuel contract automatically terminated. Walter picked up the pieces. It wasn’t easy. There were others who wanted a share of the action. But Walter had a plan. It meant convincing a government minister to let him take over the agency, as a trustee, until the troops got home. Then he assigned the contract, with all the accumulated profits, to a co-operative he set up for returned soldiers, at no cost to them.’

  ‘No cost?’

  ‘One peppercorn, to make it legal.’

  Emily looked at him. ‘This part I didn’t know. I’d left town before the troops returned. I knew Walter had a signed contract, and I’d swallowed the story about his ratting on Bert. So had a lot of others, particularly the ones who disapproved of Rachel. The Adderleys and their ilk.’

  Caroline turned towards her mother, shaking her head as though in disbelief. ‘The Adderleys?’

  ‘Adderley was as rabid as my dad.’

  ‘Truly?’ said Max. ‘I hadn’t twigged! He was definitely after the agency. Walter suspected the Johnsons had tipped him off, and that they’d suggested some sort of deal to keep them in the game as silent partners. Having been a shire councillor, and with the support of reputed knee-cappers to frighten off the opposition, Adderley would have thought there’d be no contest. Walter made a lot of enemies that year. He used his influence to undermine a pack of greedy thugs. It was a brave act—one he nearly backed away from after some nasty telephone calls. I’m afraid Walter is the only source for that information. But I have no doubt he feared for your lives.’ Max paused and looked at Caroline before adding, ‘It’s awful, but things do fall into place. You were the victim of a massive lie, and a trail of circumstances seeming to confirm its truth.’

  ‘Circumstances like the unexplained disappearance of a mother.’

  ‘Caroline? Honey?’ Emily was only now realising how unexpected her revelations had been.

  Caroline screwed up her eyes and shook her head as if trying to remove an image. ‘It all seemed so clear,’ she said. ‘Dear god, what have I done?’

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ Emily said. ‘I’m a bit lost here. Surely Walter told you what happened. You know, all the crap I went on with the night I left.’

  ‘He never said a word against you. I thought it was because he felt guilty.’

  ‘I’d always imagined he would have told you.’

  ‘He told me nothing. But your cousin did. Oh yes! When I was nineteen Stephen took me to the Garden of Roses and explained it all—why my mother felt compelled to walk out and leave me. And I walked out too, without even saying good bye.’

  ‘You left too?’

  ‘This is the first time I’ve been in this house for thirty years!’

  ‘Sweet Jesus! I didn’t know that. All this time I’d imagined you here, or at least keeping in touch from Canberra, or wherever. I’d always thought of you and Walter being together.’

  ‘Stephen told me another story—about Walter taking livestock which really belonged to Weatherlee. Was that a lie too?’

  ‘Maybe not. I do remember him getting me all confused about a mob of sheep and a couple of stud rams. I told you I loved the guy; I never said he was a saint.’

  Caroline crossed to the desk, opened the Weatherlee file, and retrieved the carbon copy she had found earlier. Turning to Max, she said. ‘You must have found this in the storeroom.’

  Max nodded.

  ‘Did you know it was written after mother left?’

  Max did not respond. Caroline handed the letter to Emily. ‘He forged your signature; to help rig the books.’

  Judith gasped and put a hand to her mouth.

  Emily examined the letter. ‘The sneaky bugger! I’d like to say I was surprised, but I’m not really.’

  Tony seemed stunned. ‘You don’t mind?’ he said.

  ‘If I’d known at the time, I probably would have used it to bring him down. That’s the sort of mood I was in when I left. I’m glad I didn’t know, because I’m sure I’d regret it now.’

  ‘Because of the good things he did?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Because the settlement I got for Weatherlee was way more than I’d expected, which was certainly his doing. If it had been left to me, even the piggery would have gotten run down. I wasn’t coping. Sure, I resented being bullied. But, because he pushed me, we expanded the pork business, got some good crops in, and spruced up the place no end. Perhaps I did pay for sheep I didn’t get. Walter could be as devious as the next bloke, but he did a lot more good than bad. So what if he took me for a buck or two? I’d be less happy if he did it to somebody else. I assume there wasn’t any suggestion of that?’

  Caroline shook her head. ‘Only by the Johnsons, and their accusations seem to have been explained.’

  Max said, ‘I’m sure Walter would have been the first to agree with Emily that he wasn’t a saint. I know he had an uneasy conscience about how he achieved some things. Sometimes, if things didn’t fall into place, he took the law into his own hands.’

  Judith turned to Caroline. ‘So you took everything as proving him evil, and didn’t give him a chance to explain.’

  ‘I’d given up asking for explanations. Any mention of the war years and he’d clam up. I thought the reason was... Well it all helped to confirm... Oh my Lord!—the meeting in my office. He must have thought I was talking about his marriage to Rachel.’

  ‘You met with him?’ Judith was incredulous.

  ‘He came to see me.’

  ‘He never said.’

  ‘He was in Canberra for a conference—wool marketing, or something. Parliament was sitting. We must have been at cross-purposes from the outset. He said he hoped I’d have got over the hurt—not condone what he’d done, but at least understand. I said things like “How could you do it?”, meaning the profiteering; and he said things like “It was beyond my control”. I remember being horrified because he didn’t show any remorse about defrauding others. The bells started to ring for a division.’ Caroline stopped; a tear formed. ‘I told him to leave and never try to see me again. He must have thought I was angry about him and Rachel. He’d have known the things I’d said publicly about family law and the need for forgiveness. He must have thought me a dreadful hypocrite.’

  There was a pause. Tony handed Caroline a clean paper serviette. She dabbed the corner of her eye.

  Turning to Emily, Judith said, ‘What brought you back?’

  It was a few seconds before Emily registered she’d been asked a question. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say?’

  ‘What brought you back to Australia?’

  A struggle to focus. ‘When Ivan, my partner, died last year, I decided to sell up and return to my roots. As far as Sydney anyway. I bought a home-unit at Neutral Bay. I would have liked to come back here, but I didn’t want to upset Walter’s life a second time, and I think I was too much of a coward to face Rachel.’

  Caroline said, �
�And Caroline’s life? What about Caroline’s life?’ Emily’s head dropped. Caroline turned away from her. ‘It’s hard to grasp,’ she said. ‘At every turn I got it wrong. Canberra wasn’t the first time he’d confessed his infidelity hoping I would forgive him. He wrote me a letter when I first went to Melbourne. I missed the point then too. It’s dreadfully ironic because I would have forgiven him if I’d known that was the whole story.’ She turned back to Emily. ‘I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been angry he’d betrayed you. I’ve never argued infidelity is acceptable behaviour, only that avoiding violent outcomes is the overriding consideration. I suppose your anger was justified. You had been faithful to him, hadn’t you?’

  ‘To be honest, no!’

  ‘You admit it?’

  ‘Why not? You asked the question. Perhaps I can help you understand a few things. I was unfaithful to Walter, just once. It happened on a weekend trip to a golf tournament at Bullermark. I teamed up with one of the men to win the mixed foursomes event on the first day. We were elated. I went for a drink in his motel room. He was attentive in a way Walter hadn’t been for some time. It wasn’t even a one-night stand; we had an early night, sleeping in our separate rooms. Driving home the next day I realised I didn’t feel any more guilty about what had happened than I did about the simple pecks on the cheek we’d exchanged on the eighteenth green. All of that came back to me when I realised Walter was besotted by Rachel. It might seem like I’m trying to excuse myself, but I thought there was a difference. Walter loved Rachel; he really loved her. That was the betrayal. It wasn’t a physical act; it was his emotional commitment to her instead of to me. There was never a moment I didn’t love him. I still do.’

  ‘Even knowing now he cheated you in other ways?’

  ‘I’m like the Mafia wife who knows her man’s not straight, but can forgive him anything. There was a sort magnetism. I loved the look of him, the smell of him, the feel of him. That’s the part we lost later. I'm sure both of us changed. I lost the confidence I’d gained over the years. He became impatient with me. Even so, I hated leaving you both. You were my life. But I wasn’t his; not any longer. When I took up with Ivan, I re-gained a lot of the confidence I’d lost, and I re-discovered a gentle supportive partner. But the special thing I’d had with Walter was never there. Ivan’s wife had died. It was a second time for both of us. We were both headed for loneliness until we found each other.’

  As though sensing her need to move on, Tony asked, ‘How did you know about the funeral? How did you know he was dead?’

  ‘Over breakfast yesterday I came across an item in the morning paper.’

  Judith frowned. ‘I didn’t know about that.’

  Max said, ‘When I faxed off the death notices, I attached a press release in the hope the city papers might publish something.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Sunday.’

  ‘You might have told me.’

  ‘I hoped it might be seen by one or two of the sources we’ve been trying to track down. But I didn’t count on finding Emily.’

  Emily said, ‘And I didn’t imagine my coming here would cause...’ she shrugged and opened her arms ‘...this.’

  Max nodded. ‘How much our lives are governed by chance and coincidence. You open the paper one day and the name Blake leaps from the page.’

  ‘I thought it was an omen.’

  ‘You called Mr Henderson your partner. Were you married?’

  ‘He asked me often enough, and we lived as though we were. He was your typical Boston churchgoer, so it bugged him that we weren’t proper. But somehow I couldn’t take the final step.’

  ‘So what happened after you left here?’

  Emily shook her head. ‘Please. Not now Max. I’ve already hurt Caroline enough.’

  Caroline said, ‘Caroline wants to know! Isn’t it time? Hasn’t there been enough deceit?’ Emily hesitated. Caroline almost shouted, ‘Just tell me the truth!’

  ‘I didn’t know Bert was fresh out of gaol. When the proceeds from the sale of Weatherlee came through, he and the boys tried to get me to bankroll some new business ventures. Which must have been their plan all along. But I was drowning my sorrows in fancy bars, and missing my family. I met Ivan in a nightclub, followed him back to the US, and I’ve lived there ever since. What became of the Johnsons I’ve no idea.’

  Max said, ‘When Bert died, Graham and Stephen came back here to manage Jeff’s Real Estate Agency. Jeff had recently suffered his first heart attack. That must be when they got to Caroline.’

  Caroline nodded. ‘Half an hour at the Garden of Roses was all it took. But what had we ever done to them?’

  ‘With Emily, it seems they were after the proceeds of Weatherlee. With you, my guess is they wanted to get back at Walter. What better way than to alienate him from his much loved daughter?’

  ‘And I was... expendable?’

  ‘I’m afraid Stephen didn’t give a stuff about you.’

  ‘But my meeting with him... the Garden of Roses... it was pure chance.’

  ‘Evil is always alert, and often opportunistic.’

  ‘What happened to the real estate agency?’ Emily asked.

  ‘The brothers Johnson left town again a few steps ahead of the law. That wasn’t long after Caroline left. Judith was just a baby, the toast of the town.’

  ‘I find that hard to believe,’ Judith said.

  ‘In a country town where every birth, death and marriage is an event?’

  ‘But Rachel was... well... a pariah.’

  ‘No, no, no. She was a goddess! Walter had re-established the troops by handing them the co-operative. His brainchild, The Institute for Rural Studies, was creating new employment and bringing money into the district. He was the visionary, creator of all things good, a god. And his partner became a goddess.’

  ‘What do you mean by his brainchild?’ Caroline asked.

  ‘The whole nation was preparing to cut down large tracts of forest so returned servicemen could set up as farmers. I’m not saying Walter actually predicted the salinity problem, but he was convinced mass clearing would lead to unwanted consequences. So he founded the country’s first and only institute aimed solely at improving our understanding of land use. What you called “an anachronism” was invented, right here. And if politicians had shared his vision in the forties, the government would have far fewer environmental disasters on its hands now.’

  ‘How could I have lived with him for twenty years and not known any of this?’

  ‘You were seven or eight. You were playing on swings and seesaws. By the time you were aware of bigger things, life in the town was back to normal.’

  Caroline turned to Emily. ‘Stephen wasn’t the only one who didn’t give a stuff about me, was he mother? Didn’t I mean anything to you?’

  ‘If you knew how hard I tried, Caroline. Giving birth to you wrecked me, but I never let it be your fault. I gave you all the love and care a baby demands. But as soon as you were big enough to move around on your own, it was always your dad you ran to, never me. He was the one who got to “kiss it better” and cuddle you. I tried not to resent it. But I did.’

  ‘I loved you, mother.’

  ‘I’m not saying you didn’t. You were always my little helper when we went to Weatherlee. You’d bring your grazes to me then. But not if your dad was available. I envied him that relationship. And there was nothing I could do about it. I’d make myself a cup of tea, and go and sit on the verandah.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Of course you didn’t. You were only four... then five... then six. I couldn’t blame you, or him. But when he started looking cow-eyed at Rachel—that I could resent.’

  ‘So you really were going to leave me for good.’

  ‘Oh no. I wasn’t going to let you be brought up by the man I thought had cheated my relatives.’

  ‘You wanted me, to spite him?’

  ‘I’d like to think it was because I was still trying to be a good mother. T
he law thought otherwise. There were no easy divorces in those days. As a deserting spouse, I was the baddie. I had no proof of adultery. The solicitor told me I wouldn’t even get the divorce, let alone custody of a child.’

  ‘You didn’t even write.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘But I never...’

  ‘I tore it up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Who was there to read a letter to a seven-year-old and make sense of a story like that? Walter? Rachel? I decided to wait. But the longer you leave it the harder it becomes. You begin excuses. She’s probably better off without you. This might be a critical stage of schooling. After a number of years, I guessed Walter would have managed to secure a divorce, but I was afraid to ask. I managed to keep track of your career though. I read about you in a magazine. There was a big article about women in politics. After that I took out a subscription with an Australian clipping service.’

  ‘You left that seven-year-old to grow up wondering where you’d gone, believing in you, learning to hate her father.’ Caroline got up from her chair and went to the coffin. ‘All the pieces of the jigsaw fitted together. But I had the picture upside down. All these years I’ve imagined finding my mother would be the discovery of love. I’ve searched in the wrong places. I’ve arrived too late.’ She put her fingers to her lips, and reached in to touch the cold cheek.

  Judith went to her side and slid an arm around her waist. ‘You can’t change what happened. It’s done. Let’s put our dad to rest and think of him with love. Then we have to focus on the future.’

  ‘Is that the secret? Is that how Rachel did it? Focussing on the future? What was it you said “valuing people but not needing them”?’

  ‘And valuing herself.’

  ‘I didn’t even ask him.’

  Max said, ‘Judith’s right you know. The moving finger and all that. If I’d only. If he’d only. But you didn’t, and he didn’t. The cynics say: life’s a bugger and then you die.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re both right. But it’s going to take a long time.’

  ‘This is all so wrong,’ Emily said. ‘I thought finding the newspaper article yesterday was a sign that I should come. Instead, my visit’s been a total disaster. Now I’m here I’d like to stick around for the funeral. You won’t have to acknowledge my presence. Nobody’s likely to recognise me now.’

  Reference to the funeral brought Judith back to practicalities. She turned to Max and pointed to her watch. He nodded and became businesslike. ‘I’m afraid time is getting away. We must organise some lunch. I’ll have to go on ahead when the funeral director arrives.’

  ‘How about I make some more nibbles?’ Tony said.

  Caroline didn’t look up from her father. She shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I’ll bring you something,’ Tony insisted. ‘We can’t have you fainting during the service.’

  All but Caroline moved to return cups to the trolley. As Emily passed the coffin, Caroline turned to face her. She unpinned the brooch from her jacket and held it out. ‘This is yours!’ All other activity in the room stopped. Emily considered refusing, but the thought of further confrontation was too distressing. Sadly, she took the brooch. Caroline said, ‘I’m not blaming you for my mistakes. But I guess the romantic notion of finding you was one fantasy I let get out of hand.’

  Gathering the last of the tea things, Judith, Max and Tony headed for the kitchen. Emily followed.

  Caroline wandered around the room. Nothing had changed, but everything was different. Stopping at the sideboard, she looked at the pile of transcripts. She started reading a page marked Anzac Day.

  WALTER: It was our special ritual. I’d collect Olive and take her to the dawn service. Afterwards we’d go back to Land’s End. Once Caroline asked me to take her to watch the march. I think I just brushed her off. Sometimes you feel your children are in the way. You use that awful expression “under foot”. Until the day you realise they’re no longer “under foot” because they’re not there any more. It’s easy, looking back, to see the things you did wrong.

  Caroline remembered the incident. It was one of the many things she’d added up to get the wrong answers. Like a day in primary school when a boy brought his father’s medals to show the class. Like the day she stood in the family graveyard reading the memorials to her uncles. She’d wanted to ask her father what he’d done during the war. But what if the answer was better not known? Perhaps family harmony was of more value than knowledge. She’d had to wait until the age of nineteen before Stephen had given her an answer. She turned over the transcripts, reading some of the marginal notes and occasional paragraphs.

  WALTER: I tried to explain the divorce procedures, but she was only ten. Even at that age I suspected she felt I was betraying her mother. When she left so soon after Judith’s birth, I was sure of it. She must have lived with the hurt all those years and then....

  WALTER: I don’t know what I would have done without Rachel. There was a limit to how much she could fill in for Emily, but she was good at handling things like women’s issues about their bodies. I knew Caroline would learn the facts of life from her in a direct no nonsense way, as she would have from her real mother. It was the timing of Caroline’s departure that threw me. She was a well-adjusted young woman. I thought we’d reached the stage of treating each other as adults instead of parent and child. Suddenly she’d gone.

  Further down the page somebody had written ‘Caroline/Emily’ in the margin.

  WALTER: Everything I read attested to her having the right sort of values. That gave me the hope I hadn’t totally failed her. In the years before she left, I’d often look at her and see her mother. Emily gave her humour, and the precious ability to rise when she fell. And worldliness— earthy, practical, worldliness. Small wonder she survived alone.

  The text blurred. Caroline put down the transcript and went to her handbag. I clung to the notion I was self-made, she thought. What an arrogant concept that is! Self-made? After thirty years, a few hours unravels a lifetime.

  Homecoming

  Wednesday 24th October 1945

  Six weeks after Emily left Arajinna, the main contingent of troops came home.

  ‘Penny for a thought.’ Rachel stood in the doorway untying her apron.

  Walter continued looking out of the window. ‘Does she ever stop grooming the pony?’

  ‘When I was her age I discovered jigsaw puzzles. I did nothing else.’

  ‘I suppose we all go through these phases.’

  ‘Without the pony I think she would cling too tightly. You can’t give her the love of two people.’ Rachel hung the apron on the back of the door, and came into the family room. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting ready?’

  ‘I’m wearing my uniform.’ He turned and struck a pose—tough trousers with a leather belt, elastic sided boots, a high-quality checked shirt.

  She joined him at the window and linked her arm in his. Caroline finished brushing out the tail of the tiny Shetland. They watched as she stroked the mane and rummaged in her pocket for a treat. Rachel said, ‘You don’t have to go.’

  ‘If I don’t have the guts to be on the platform when the train comes in, I may as well leave town.’

  ‘Without you they would be coming home to nothing.’

  ‘They’re members of an exclusive club now. Not just here, but anywhere they go, they’ll be part of a new élite. The men and women who fought the war.’

  ‘You’ve built them a future. The co-op. The institute.’

  ‘If they get off the ground.’

  ‘If? If? Where is it this “if” is coming from?’

  ‘The co-op is a legal framework. They might not be interested. Who knows what plans they’ve been making for themselves?’

  ‘Hey! You snap out of the mood. This should be a day for rejoicing.’

  ‘I’ve lost a father and both my brothers. You’ve lost everybody. The institute will be bricks and mortar.’

  ‘It’s the found
ation on which new lives will be built, and you know it, so stop this silly talk. I want it no more.’

  Caroline opened the gate to let the pony into the bottom paddock.

  Rachel said, ‘What phases did you go through?’

  ‘At her age I used to spend entire days racing snails.’

  ‘Did you win?’

  ‘Against each other, you idiot.’

  Rachel saw the slight grin, and felt she’d done something to improve his frame of mind. The moment passed; he looked at her seriously.

  ‘Olive wants to come to the station. I said we’d pick her up.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘I want you there.’

  ‘Walter.’ She shook her head.

  ‘Nobody in this town has suffered more than you have. Apart from the troops, you’re the only one who knows what it is to be in a war zone.’

  ‘You’re right of course. I know what they know. Horror. Fear. Cowardice. Shame.’

  ‘For god’s sake forgive yourself.’

  ‘I should have left when Emily did.’

  ‘I won’t let bigots hound you out of this town. If we can’t shelter one casualty of war, the only one to seek refuge here, we’re not worth a thing.’

  ‘You are Don Quixote. A man who can’t see life for what it is.’

  ‘I see what matters.’

  ‘Emily taught me an expression, Walter. Bullshit!’

  ‘You and Caroline are my life now.’

  ‘I’ll get her to wash and make herself ready.’

  ‘You will come?’

  ‘If it’s what you want.’

  ‘I want you with me. You know I want you to marry me when it’s possible.’

  Of course you do, she thought—marriage is the only possible path for the honourable Aussie man brought up in the best British traditions. But the world was changing, and the places she’d escaped were in the vanguard. Honour was re-defined by circumstances and, where she’d been, it no longer rested on old values and institutions like marriage. For some, honour lay in maintaining a fierce determination to survive at all costs.

  ‘You don’t have to feel guilty,’ she said.

  ‘It’s not guilt. I want you to be my wife because I love you.’

  ‘How can you marry a non-person? It would open...what is your colloquial?... the box of worms!’

  ‘I’ve spoken to one of my contacts in Canberra. The fear of “enemy aliens” is not the issue it was. He thinks if you make an application in a few months, with me as your sponsor, you’ll be accepted.’

  ‘No questions?’

  ‘We can answer them.’

  ‘Always you pull the ropes eh?’

  ‘I’ve also made enquiries about a divorce. It’s a bit complicated with Emily’s whereabouts unknown, but there are procedures.’

  ‘You think Caroline will understand?’

  ‘Not yet. But I’ll try to explain.’

  ‘And you will fret because you won’t know what she is thinking.’

  ‘I can’t change what happened with her mother. All I can do is love her, and hope it’s enough. You survived worse.’

  ‘You can’t see scars on the mind.’

  ‘I hope love can help that too.’

  ‘I’ve taken many things in life without a second thought. You, my dear, naïve, blind, Walter. You I wish I deserved.’

  ‘Whatever you did, it makes no difference. I love you and I want you to be my wife.’

  She knew there was no point arguing. His was a generous heart, but he’d led a sheltered rural life. Good and bad were concepts he understood at the level of nice and naughty. The evil she’d known was beyond his imagining. She nodded towards the clock. ‘I’ll get Caroline,’ she said.

  For Walter, the knowledge that Rachel felt unwanted was an indictment of the nation he’d been taught to honour. He looked at his painting of gentle rolling plains, and thought: I forgot the wide brown swastika. Taking a brush, he painted the symbol in thick strokes, nearly obliterating his much-loved landscape. For some time he stood and looked at the despoiled canvas. Then he took it down, faced it to the wall, and put a new one on the easel. It would not do to let Caroline see the product of his anger. Anti-Semitism was not one of the subjects he was ready to try to explain to her.

  Another Burial

  St Mark’s Church

  Wednesday 12th September 1990

  Some drove for two or three hours on unsealed back roads. A chartered bus brought a contingent from Calway Junction. Those who couldn’t cram into St Mark’s stood in the doorways, or between cars in the gravelled car park, or sat on the grassed areas surrounding the church. Members of the Kalawonta RSL, medals pinned to well-worn suits or tweed jackets, formed a guard of honour. Max’s foresight in arranging for his students to set up a public address system allowed those outside to participate.

  Emily had refused to join Caroline and Judith in the front pew, and asked Max not to mention her presence during the service. Despite Judith’s insistence that she had a right to be with them, Emily was adamant. She’d already caused enough trouble. She would arrive separately, sit at the back, and leave as soon as Walter had been laid to rest in the graveyard behind the church.

  Caroline’s arrival caused a frisson of excitement, but decorum was maintained and nobody sought to speak to her as the young verger escorted her and Tony to places reserved for the family. Tom McLintock, now clean and suited, was already occupying the next seat, having been placed there by Max to ensure the visiting relatives would not be subjected to further introductions until after the burial. Tom acknowledged them solemnly, and handed them orders of service.

  Judith stood at the main entrance, greeting new arrivals, and putting frail or elderly mourners into the care of students who had volunteered to be ushers. Ginny arrived and was directed to the family pew.

  Despite his reputation, the elderly organist coaxed suitable background music from the ancient instrument. In the bellows room, two pairs of students took turns on the lever, under strict instructions from Max to ensure no sudden fluctuations. The exploits of Eddie Sampson had passed into Arajinna folklore.

  Caroline was conscious of Judith’s arrival beside her, and of Max moving to stand next to the coffin. For the first time she opened her copy of the order of service, and saw the photograph. Judith had chosen well—a picture taken at a sheep sale—a casual snapshot of a handsome man with one foot on the bottom rail of a fence, head turned to smile at the camera from beneath the big brown hat. A picture from the missing thirty years. She looked at the now closed coffin positioned before the altar, and mourned for the years of love and friendship she’d denied them both.

  She had wondered whether the eulogy would seem like ashes heaped upon her head, but, as she listened to Max’s retrospective on her father’s life, she felt strangely comforted by his words. He mentioned Judith and herself by name, but only in the context of their being the ones bearing the greatest loss—asking others to remember the bereaved daughters and Rachel in their prayers. Then he led the congregation in the singing of Walter’s favourite hymn, his wonderful tenor voice surprising Caroline in its purity, and pushing her to the brink.

  When the service concluded, the young verger and a team of senior students ushered the occupants of the family pew into position behind the coffin, and cleared the way for six shire councillors to carry Walter to the plot in which his mother and grandparents already lay. The umbrellas Max had arranged, as a contingency in the event of rain or sun, were not required. It was fine but not too hot, perfect for a wedding, a christening, or a funeral. To a bush symphony underpinned by cicadas in the undergrowth and overlaid by the carolling of currawongs in a nearby tree, the body was committed to the earth.

  Now came the time when Caroline must emerge from behind her protective shield of private grief, and speak to the other mourners. Max had announced from the pulpit that everybody was invited to the homestead for refreshments. There was a general move towards the car park and to the long lines
of vehicles on either side of the access road. The members of the CWA headed for cars strategically parked at the entrance, making a quick break to beat the mob home, put on the tea, and whip the fresh cream.

  Caroline found the young verger at her side, introducing people who approached, ensuring nobody monopolised her, gently keeping her moving towards the car. Max had thought of everything. Then she noticed Emily surrounded by an excited group of women. She approached her mother and said, ‘I see you’ve been recognised. You’d better stay.’ Emily touched her lightly on the shoulder—a touch she understood as a thank you. One of the women turned to Caroline and said, ‘Senator. Your mother was the best goal-attack who ever ran riot on a netball court in this State!’

  As she reached the car, Caroline saw an elderly bearded man in Jewish garb being helped to board a charter bus. Seeing her pause, the verger said, ‘That’s Rabbi Levi from the school at Calway.’

  ‘I remember him,’ she said. ‘He came to visit Judith’s mother when I was a girl.’

  ‘I think he still visits her at the hospice.’

  And so the complex ritual started. Country folk were good at this. Death pays its visits. Relationships need to be re-established and affirmed. Life goes on.

  Rabbi Levi

  Wednesday 13th October 1954

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I was hoping to find a Rabbi,’ Walter said.

  ‘Then coming here was a good move, I think. You have found one.’ The man smiled and held out his hand. Walter shook it.

  ‘I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘You were right to ask. Not every black-robed bearded man is a Rabbi. Not around here anyway.’

  ‘I was passing through Calway when I saw the turn-off. My coming here was an impulse. Should I be wearing a hat or something?’

  ‘It is thoughtful of you to ask, but don’t let it worry you. Something is on your mind, I think.’

  ‘My wife is Jewish, but I know little of your faith. She carries bad memories from the war in Europe. She was at Dachau. I felt if I could talk to someone who understands these things...’

  The Rabbi took Walter’s arm and squeezed it. ‘I have a little office back here. Come and sit a while.’

  Having wondered, as he entered the gates of the community, how the gentile husband of a Jewish woman would be received, Walter found Rabbi Levi to be concerned solely with ways to help. Nevertheless, it was some time before he felt able to disclose the purpose of his visit.

  ‘A few years ago, before I married Rachel, I persuaded her to bury some things I thought wrong for her to keep—things that reminded her constantly of a distressing past I know little about. She told me I was silly to think burying the items would change anything. I thought I knew better. Now, I fear she was right. There are times when her dreams are so bad I have to wake her and hold her until she stops moaning. She has never told me what she went through. I thought by now she might have.’

  ‘This is not an uncommon thing. Even where the husband is Jewish, if he did not experience these things himself, it can be hard for him to understand. Many are the conversations I have had on this subject. Here, in Australia even, it would surprise you how many families are affected. She is Polish you say?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Those of us who weren’t there might think we can imagine the horrors those people endured. I have come to believe that whatever we imagine probably does not approach the reality. For me, the hardest part is not knowing when something I say or do might unlock a bad memory and cause a hurt—a word I have used or an action I take, so simple I could not guess its effect. I used to be at the Synagogue in Sydney. There was a day I can not forget. I was closing up to go home, when I found a man huddled in an alcove, whimpering. I talked to him; maybe ten minutes I talked, getting no response. Then, slowly, he held out his hand and opened it. The hand was trembling. In it he was holding a metal button—nothing else—a cheap metal button as on a work shirt. What could it mean? I can only assume this metal button had unlocked some dreadful memory, but he never told me what it meant to him. I realised this object, which might be of no consequence to anybody else, was something of enormous importance to him—symbolic perhaps of a suffering, or a loss. Your wife is right. The things she buried are still present. You do right to wake her and hold her. This I am sure about. This is good. I no longer try to cure or banish these special evils I do not comprehend. I no longer feel surprise such a thing as a metal button can make a strong man crumple to the floor and weep. I think only that you my friend, and I, must absorb what we can from them, and give them love. Our efforts to do more sometimes make things worse. I have seen it often.’

  ‘It is hard for me to ask this question but what would it mean to a Jew if she thought her survival had cost the lives others.’

  ‘This also is a question I have heard before. There is no easy answer. Human flesh is fallible. Choices can be difficult, particularly under extreme pressure. God is the only judge.’

  ‘It would be a breach of trust for me to tell you what we buried. Otherwise, I would seek your advice about the religious consequences for Jewish people. If I could persuade my wife to come here, she might disclose something to you, knowing the information would be safe.’

  More than an hour had passed when Walter, fearing he might already have imposed too long, thanked the Rabbi for his time and advice. As they were leaving the tiny office, Rabbi Levi stopped. ‘I am having a thought,’ he said. ‘Do you know what a mezuzah is?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  The Rabbi indicated a small metal box attached to the door-jam of his study. ‘It contains a small piece of parchment that bears writing sacred to us. Most Jewish families have one in the main entrance to their house; some put one in the doorway of every room, as I have done here. I know of a mixed marriage, such as yours, where the mezuzah is in the entrance to a room where the wife spends much time—her sewing room. If it appealed to you to give your wife a mezuzah as a gift—for a birthday perhaps—I would be happy to help you install it in a suitable place. Having a Rabbi in attendance is not mandatory for the process, but it does need somebody to say the special prayer, and I am good at that, I promise you. You could tell your wife the man who sold the mezuzah to you said Rabbi Levi likes to do this. And it will all be true—if you visit a shop I direct you to in Bullermark, a shop where you will also get the very best bagels. My visit would open the possibility your wife might like to talk to one such as me. If not, it is hard to see her being harmed by your thinking to give her the gift.’

  ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea. I have a sixteen-year-old daughter. I’d like her to be a part of it. I’ll get her to help me choose the gift.’

  ‘This is good.’

  As he turned the car towards Bullermark, Walter felt a lightening of a load—certain now that he should not press Rachel for answers, that he should simply be there when she needed him. If the gift of a mezuzah was welcomed as he hoped, she too might feel the lightening of a load.

  Coming to Terms

  Wednesday 12th September 1990

  It was late in the day when Caroline quietly withdrew from the garden and went inside, leaving a bibulous collection of guests yarning about old times and debating the prospects for the coming season. She’d survived. There had been no questions about where she’d been all these years. Nobody had turned their back in disapproval. For thirty years, Walter had let them all believe a myth. A loving daughter writes, and telephones, and sends photographs. Why would anybody think otherwise, unless a father told them?

  Having restricted herself to tea and scones, she now felt the need for something stronger. In the drinks cabinet she found a whisky decanter and poured herself a good measure. She took a sip. High-quality single-malt or she was a poor judge. On the desk, next to the stack of folders, Max had left the one marked “Miscellaneous – War Years.” Sipping the whisky, she read some letters on which Max had pencilled brief descriptions.

  LETTER FROM WALTER TO HIS FATHER.r />
  RETURNED TO SENDER UNOPENED POST-WAR

  Banabrook

  via Arajinna

  NSW

  31st October 1939

  Dear Dad

  We got your telegram a few days ago. The others know I am writing and have asked me to thank you for keeping us informed of your plans. They send love and wish you luck.

  Reports have already reached us that Australian pilots serving with the RAF have been killed. We can understand the need for surgeons to look after the wounded.

  Emily and Caroline are well. Mikey and Jono will write after they have been to a briefing where they will be informed about training, and what they may and may not put in correspondence.

  My own news is devastating. The army has rejected me for active service. The reason is so embarrassing, I feel unable to tell people other than my family. I have high insteps and can not wear standard issue army boots. The other armed forces have more applicants than they can accommodate. I could go on the reserve list for an army desk job, but I think I am probably more use staying in Arajinna where I will try to find a way to make some contribution.

  You must wonder sometimes if I am really a Blake. Olive told me I should apply to be an official war artist. She was joking and I tried to laugh. Brian has been accepted for service, so I will do what I can to help at Land’s End. I will also try to do something, worthy of the family, to develop Banabrook.

  Look after yourself.

  Love

  Walter

  LETTER FROM WALTER BLAKE TO HIS GRANDMOTHER FOUND AMONG ALICE BLAKE’S PAPERS AFTER HER DEATH.

  21st November 1939

  Dear Grandma Alice,

  I am delighted to know you will be back before Christmas. I wouldn’t want you to be on your own. Please wish Uncle Chris all the best from me for his trip.

  I have missed not having you to talk things over. Emily is much the same and still struggling. She takes much joy in Caroline, but everything seems an effort for her these days. Caroline has started walking, which brings new challenges. We’ve had to put breakable things out of her reach.

  I made the effort to go to church on Sunday so I could pass on your message to Olive. Brian left with Mikey and Jono to start training with the first contingent from Kalawonta. She’s missing him, and she’s already stretched managing Land’s End. I worry about her.

  Do you remember our discussion about taking opportunities? With Dad, Mikey and Jono away, I have been trying to think how I might do something to make a mark. Many local farms are expecting to wave goodbye to their men, sooner or later. Some women are keen to join up, and a lot of the fellows who used to work as casuals have already signed on for army training. Kalawonta has a history of service in times of war; it’s no surprise to see the current generation following family traditions.

  I’ve been working on an idea to get the older farmers to train those who are left to form teams to help work the farms. I know a couple of men classed as disabled who are fit enough to do some sorts of work. They’ve been overlooked for jobs in the past, so this could be a boost for their morale. Then there are young people who aren’t old enough for army service but who would love to think they were doing their bit. Anyway, I’ve floated the idea with the shire council and offered to be the organizer. I suggested the name Kalawonta Crisis Teams which has a ring to it, don’t you think?

  Now the real surprise. My name has been put up for appointment as a Justice of the Peace. At present there are no JPs close to Arajinna. I think the government has relaxed the criteria because so many men are joining the forces. I believe Mr Adderley has also been nominated. He will probably get the nod because he’s older. Nevertheless, it is a great honour to be considered.

  I am looking forward to having you to discuss things with.

  Lots of love,

  Walter.

  PS: Don’t worry that I’m neglecting Banabrook. I want to make a mark here too. I’ve been looking at our breeding program and it struck me there’s no reason we can’t become the top producer of quality wool in the country. How would that be?

  LETTER FROM FILES RELATING TO FOUNDING OF THE INSTITUTE

  The Trainor Partnership

  Agriculture and Livestock Consultants

  2 Bridge St

  Sydney NSW

  10th October 1945

  Dear Mr Blake

  By now you will have received notification from the Minister that The Trainor Partnership has been appointed to manage the setting up of the Commonwealth Land Institute in Kalawonta Shire. The passing of the necessary legislation must be some sort of record. This is an exciting project, and the writer intends moving to Arajinna to take personal control of Trainor Partnership involvement.

  Research of this kind will be a departure from our normal activities, as it would be for anybody, this being an innovative new idea for which there is no existing body of knowledge or professional expertise. We will all be breaking new ground (if you will pardon the pun!). I have examined the plans of the old warehouse, and I am sure it will be adequate for our activities.

  I understand that, as the originator of the idea of a land institute, you will be the first chairman, and will work with us to establish a board and employ the first staff. The minister is most particular that we adopt your suggestion to give preference to returning service personnel.

  My wife and I are booked into the Criterion Hotel, and will use it as a base until we can find longer-term accommodation. We plan to arrive by car on the afternoon of Wednesday 31st. I will telephone you when we have booked in.

  I look forward to meeting you.

  Yours faithfully,

  Malcolm Trainor

  Managing Partner

  Caroline closed the folder and returned it to the stack.

  The tapes were on the sideboard as she’d left them. Next to them, Maud’s last diary. She opened it at the final entry and read again, now with poignant empathy, the words written more than a century ago by someone else who’d misinterpreted signs and leapt to premature judgement: How can I live with myself?

  The next tape in the stack was labelled: Rachel, Caroline and Adderley. She put it into the recorder. Her father’s voice was not as disconcerting as she’d found it earlier, possibly because she was no longer listening for damaging sub-text which wasn’t there. That thought distracted her, and she didn’t register what he was saying until she realised he was talking about an occasion she remembered well. She wound back and re-started.

  I think parents always remember the circumstances when they treat their children unjustly. One I’ll never forget happened the day the troops arrived home. I was very edgy. It was an emotional event for everybody. Unfortunately, nothing could stop Martin Adderley being his normal obnoxious self. There was a crush on the platform. All the Arajinna boys were getting out of the same carriage. Adderley must have found his son, and turned to push through the crowd.

  I didn’t get the whole story until later. Caroline had disappeared; Rachel was looking for her, peering through the legs of the people at the edge of the platform. When she looked up, Adderley was there, right in front of her. I was some way off but he must have said something that made those around him go quiet. He had a loud voice at any time. Then he turned to his son and... it was awful Max... he said something like, ‘Oh, and by the way boy, you’ll find new kinds of riff-raff have moved in everywhere while you’ve been gone. Chinks and greasy Yids as well as the usual Boongs. You’ll wonder why you bothered fighting for our way of life!’ Rachel turned away, and moved along the platform. He shouted after her, ‘One of them’s young Blake’s bit on the side. One of his benefits for not joining up.’ I would’ve flattened the bugger if I could have got to him, but you could hardly move with people all along the platform. Adderley and his son pushed their way through, and I lost sight of them.

  That was bad enough, but later, as we started to drive home, Caroline yells, ‘We’ve left Aunty Olive!’ She wasn't to know Olive had gone home with the Muldoons! I snapped some
thing at the poor kid. She went quiet. And, it didn’t end there. It was one of those days when one bad thing piles on another. Rachel sits quietly for a while, then says, ‘I was afraid I’d lost Caroline. I found her in the waiting room.’

  So muggins has to look at his daughter in the rear-view mirror and say, ‘Well, Miss, what was that all about?’

  She put her head down and whispered something like, ‘I couldn’t see.’

  We get back to Banabrook. Caroline runs off to her room. Rachel goes off without a word. When I went inside I found Rachel in the family room, sitting at the end of the couch, her legs drawn up underneath her. It was the way she sat when she felt under attack. She looks at me, and I know she’s thinking: if you hadn’t insisted on taking me to the station, all our nightmares wouldn’t have been realised quite so publicly.

  Later, we sat down to dinner at the kitchen table. Caroline was glum, so I tried to mend the bridges a bit. I think I asked her how she’d liked the steam engine. No answer. When I look up there’s tears rolling down her face. Poor bloody kid. All I could do was go around to her side of the table and pick her up. It think it was the one thing I got right the entire day. After cuddles all around, she told us she’d seen flags in the main street and wanted to put her paper flag outside where visitors would see it. We found an old shoebox.

  Hearing a noise in the hallway, Caroline stopped the machine. She was extracting the tape when Max came to the doorway.

  ‘There’s a telephone call for you. Sounds aggressive. Says your mobile’s off.’ Without waiting for a response, he added, ‘Why don’t I say you’re not available?’

  ‘Do you mind? Unless it’s my secretary.’

  ‘A man with a booming voice? I think not.’

  Yet another tour of the room. This time she stopped at the easel. She picked up a brush and sniffed it. That aroma again, oil paint and gum turpentine, powerful evocations of the lost past. At the bottom of the house-garden, a young couple was seated on the lawn. Even at this distance, Caroline suspected courtship. Beyond them, down by the stables, she recognised another figure, her mother, alone, sitting on a bench.

  Max returned with a glass of red wine in his hand. ‘Buzzed him off,’ he announced.

  ‘What about the tea and scones brigade?’

  ‘I think we’re nearly down to... There’s a few left.’

  ‘Nearly down to what?’

  ‘I was about to say family.’

  ‘Have you and Judith set a date?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘How does the church feel about mixed marriages?’

  ‘Uneasy I’d guess. But, these days, loath to say so.’

  ‘You’ve certainly fitted into the community here.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I’ve had to make small talk for the last couple of hours. I made sure the subject wasn’t me.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Trudy calls you a principal’s dream. She told me she couldn’t believe her luck when you arrived.’

  ‘She exaggerates.’

  ‘Why would an MA Honours graduate decide to teach in a country school?’

  ‘You’ve never lived in a tiny flat on a housing commission estate. The posting to Arajinna was the opportunity to experience something different.’

  ‘And hide from the past?’

  He frowned. ‘You know something!’

  ‘What was the headline? “Violent Priest Arrested in Drug Raid”?’

  ‘Obviously you’ve a memory for detail.’

  ‘It was front page.’

  ‘My fifteen minutes of infamy.’

  ‘Fifteen months more like.’

  ‘It did seem to go on forever.’

  ‘I believe in the presumption of innocence, and I know you were never convicted.’

  ‘But you also know the evidence was damning.’

  ‘I must seem like the protective older sister.’

  Max sighed. Caroline could tell the conversation was hurting him.

  ‘The case appeared damning because a property developer was trying to get our shelter closed down, and paid the forces of evil to plant drugs on the premises.’

  ‘Was that proved?’

  ‘Not in court. But the police had evidence obtained from under-cover work and withdrew the charges to avoid blowing the operation.’

  ‘And the violence?’

  ‘That part was true.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘If they hadn’t pulled me off the bastard, I might well have killed him.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He’d been injecting some of the homeless kids with heroin to get them hooked.’

  ‘So there were extenuating circumstances.’

  ‘Yes. But it was no excuse for what I did.’

  ‘I suppose not in the eyes of the law.’

  ‘Or in my own eyes, unfortunately. You hope you’re above raging violent behaviour. Finding you’re not, shatters the ego.’

  ‘I think most people would understand.’

  ‘But not approve.’

  ‘So you resigned.’

  ‘My name was never cleared publicly, even of the drug charges. Some members of the synod wanted me out. Being arrested in Kings Cross by the drugs squad isn’t good for business. So I went quietly. Ended up going back to university. Did an MA in history, then Dip.Ed, and became a teacher.’

  ‘So how did you re-emerge as a minister?’

  ‘It was because of your dad’s friend Olive Sampson.’

  ‘Aunty Olive?’

  ‘A few years ago, when the diocese stopped services at St Mark’s, she started driving across to St John’s every Sunday. She was already in her eighties, and St John’s is more than two hours round trip even by the back road. Eventually she became too ill, and the minister could rarely make the trip over here to see her. I had no real faith any more, but I was still ordained, so I got permission from the Bishop to consecrate bread and wine at St Mark’s and give her the pastoral care she craved.’

  ‘And from that you returned to your vocation.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever had a vocation. But I was able to fill a void for some of the locals.’

  ‘Does Judith know the full story?’

  ‘Of course. I told her, and Walter, and Trudy. Fortunately none of them saw me as a ticking bomb. If others find out, they can make their own judgements. I’d been hoping it might not happen—at least until I’d been able to establish a reasonable reputation.’

  ‘Are you aware Lenny d’Aratzio is back in circulation?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve told Judith about that too. And that Vince, the undercover cop, has been murdered.’

  ‘Max! No!’

  ‘Vince was always the one in most danger. It wasn’t Lenny I beat up, and my testimony wasn’t what convicted him, so he mightn’t think me worth the trouble. Judith says she’s a bit of a fatalist, and she isn’t going to live in fear. She’s a remarkable woman, your half-sister.’

  ‘So I’m coming to realise. And if she already knows, I’ve raked over your past unnecessarily.’

  ‘We raked over your past well enough.’

  ‘This wasn’t a payback. It was just–’

  ‘You thought Judith already had enough at stake pairing off with a gentile.’

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘I sometimes wonder if I’m living an ends justifies means existence as a minister, but if you could have seen Olive’s response to taking communion.’

  ‘When I produced the letter with the forged signature, you were the only one who didn’t seem surprised.’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘The others were clearly taken aback. Mother laughed it off. But you knew, didn’t you? And you hadn’t told Judith.’ Max was looking particularly uncomfortable. Suddenly she realised. ‘Oh god! How gauche of me. Max I’m sorry. I forgot you were his confidant, and a minister.’

  ‘Not surprising when you consider how ill I fit the mould.’

  ‘I won’t ask why the letter was in your
files. Finding it there was almost as shattering as when I came across it in the storeroom all those years ago.’

  ‘If the letter was what prompted you to leave, I begin understand the level of enmity you felt.’

  ‘I thought I could never forgive the forgery. Particularly when it was mother’s signature. It seemed such a calculated betrayal. One can be very righteous at twenty. Now, I can at least understand what he was going through. More so since I came close to dishonesty myself.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Yes. And I’ve been in denial about it. When I was faced with the prospect of becoming bankrupt, I did wonder whether I would be better doing something dishonest than facing the consequences. It’s easy to justify our actions when we believe we are basically good people. When something beyond our control puts us in jeopardy, it doesn’t seem fair. After today’s events, I can admit to myself how close I came. And I can understand how my father took the next step and tipped over the edge. Mother was the only one to suffer any loss. He knew how much she’d benefited from the things he did to bolster Weatherlee. That doesn’t justify the fraud. But it does make me able to understand it, and to forgive it.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘You said yesterday something about understanding less about life the older you get.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It really is a weird existence, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’ll drink to that!’

  He raised his glass. She did too.

  Things Unearthed

  Wednesday 12th September 1990

  After their toast to the weirdness of existence, Caroline and Max maintained a contemplative silence until she realised she was still clutching the tape. She returned it to the stack. ‘I listened to the bit about the troops coming home. I’d always remembered Daddy being angry with me. Now I find it was the ubiquitous Mr Adderley who got him upset.’

  ‘Adderley is certainly a name that keeps cropping up. I suspect he would have scored a mention in Janet Niley’s book if she’d found the police records she was looking for.’

  ‘Janet Niley? Why do I know her name?’

  ‘She’s mentioned in the footnotes to one of the drafts you read. I suspect Adderley is the man she refers to in a chapter I’ve been working on.’ He went to the desk and found a couple of pages of typing which he handed to her.

  Lost Children

  In 1935, a bushfire swept through part of the forest. Some Aborigines were trapped and took shelter in a small cave. They were discovered next day by a party of volunteers patrolling the fringes of the fire. The only injuries were to a child, thought to have been about five years old, who had suffered burns and smoke inhalation. Richard Blake, who was on one of his visits to Banabrook, offered to provide medical assistance.1 The trust between the Blake family and the indigenous community, dating back to Alfred Blake’s arrival in the area, has been referred to in earlier chapters. Although it has not been possible to reconstruct all the detail, Richard Blake’s involvement with the injured child is referred to by two authors whose published works cover aspects of the history of Kalawonta.

  In The Good And The Bad, Stinson suggests indigenous people were suspicious of medical treatments other than those used by their own traditional healers.2 His examples of known exceptions include Richard Blake’s care for the child injured during the bushfire in 1935. Stinson suggests it was the long-standing special relationship between the Blakes and the Aboriginal community that led to the mother putting the child into a white man’s care.3

  Niley’s Languages of Kalawonta includes an appendix entitled Incidental Tales in which she records stories told to her during her research. The following is reproduced with permission of the Estate of the Late Janet Niley.4

  In any community, nothing is more concerning than the death or suffering of a child. The healing of the boy, Barung, by Richard Blake, was the cause of much ceremonial rejoicing. Members of the Blake household, familiar with many of the Aboriginal rituals, participated in a celebration lasting several days. During this time, one of the Blakes, presumably Richard, told of his own ancestors losing young children to illness. The author believes this was a story passed orally to Richard by his father Simeon. Aboriginal elders interviewed by the author referred to these events as being from “white man time”. It is presumed this is a reference to the first Blakes—Alfred and Maud. The elders taking part in the ceremony for Barung were greatly troubled when told the children lost by the Blakes were buried far away from their mother. They offered to help ensure the spirits were reunited. If, as we believe, the mother was Maud, this would be consistent with the stories of ceremonies conducted in the burial ground near the billabong. These are said to have included a ritual in which glowing sticks taken from a fire were waved over Maud’s grave to show the spirits of the lost children the way to their mother. It has been suggested that an official complaint about activities at the graveyard was lodged by a neighbouring farmer. The police records no longer exist, so verification is not possible.

  1. Kalawonta Weekly 4.3.1935

  2. Stinson, The Good And The Bad, p175.

  3. Ibid, p183

  4. Niley, Languages of Kalawonta, p 322, Appendix D, Incidental Tales.

  Caroline handed the sheets back to Max. ‘I’ve no doubt it was Adderley,’ she said. ‘He told Stephen he’d seen lights and smelt smoke down there—something about the Blakes burying more babies than people knew about.’ She saw Max’s brow furrow and added, ‘The footnote would be: Caroline Blake, Misleading Oral History, Garden of Roses Café 1957.’

  ‘Truly?’

  ‘You were right about the Johnsons’ stories containing enough truth to make the lies credible. Unfortunately I exacerbated the problem by interpreting other things in the light of my fears.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Something Rachel said one day. My guess, now, is she was referring to children lost in the holocaust but, because I’d been told Adderley’s story, I was prepared to believe it was more recent, and closer to home.’

  In other circumstances, Max might have pressed for more detail. There were still many mysteries surrounding Rachel. However, the question of other burials would have to wait.

  Caroline took another sip of whisky, breathed deeply and exhaled a long quiet sigh. ‘The whole district must have turned out. Everybody’s been so kind. So... non-judgmental.’

  ‘I know it’s hard to adjust to a different view of your father, but–’

  ‘The hard part is adjusting to a different view of myself. Yesterday when I looked in the mirror I saw a tough, successful woman in control of her destiny. Now I see a fool who wasted thirty years of her life.’

  ‘Not entirely wasted, Senator!’

  ‘Somehow, the successes I’d been so proud of have become hollow.’

  ‘I would have thought this was the time to value things like that. You know, is the glass half empty or is it still half full?’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

  ‘And don’t forget, you were only twenty.’

  ‘I came to see him in his grave. Do you know that sick joke? “I wanted to be sure the bastard didn’t talk his way out of it.” ’

  ‘At least, now, your love for him isn’t the burden it’s been.’

  ‘He died not knowing.’

  ‘If there is a hereafter, he might already be feeling the warmth of that love.’

  ‘And if there’s not?’

  ‘Then nothing matters to him now, and your future is what’s important.’

  ‘A funeral is meant to start the healing process. Instead it’s opened new wounds. Mother is obviously in her element. So much for nobody recognising her.’

  ‘It didn’t take them long did it. She’s been surrounded by people talking nostalgia all afternoon. Did you know she played in the all conquering netball team of 1936?’

  ‘Well she’s not surrounded by people now. She’s down at the stables.’

  ‘Is she?’

  ‘For a while she was si
tting on the bench under the big tree. There used to be a paved area and a barbecue. It was our party spot.’

  ‘I thought she was leaving after the funeral.’

  ‘I told her to stay.’

  ‘That was kind.’

  ‘There’s something buried there too.’

  Max turned. The image of Walter dead on the heap of rubble flashed into his mind. ‘Something buried. How interesting. What?’

  ‘I’m sure, as with everything else, there’s a simple explanation.’

  Max joined her at the window. ‘Do you think that’s why she’s gone down there?’

  ‘I doubt whether she even knows.’

  ‘Then how do you?’

  ‘Sometimes little girls wake up in the night. Sometimes they see things and hear things.’

  ‘Little girls see and hear things? Like what?’

  ‘They don’t actually know. If they say anything, they’re kissed and told they must have been dreaming. I was only seven, after all. But I’m sure my father buried something out there one night. I could see him digging by the light of a lamp. After my meeting with Stephen, it was one of the things I worried about. Now that I have Maud’s mistake, and my own, to ponder, I’ll not be so quick to judge others. What he buried is of no consequence. Probably a dead possum.’

  Max continued to stand at the window. He had no intention of saying it, but, if Walter had been looking for something when he died, it wasn’t the bones of a dead possum.

  Caroline said, ‘Do you think he was bitter about my mother? About the way she attacked Rachel, I mean.’

  ‘I had the impression he felt he was to blame for whatever happened.’

  ‘And what happened was not a greedy betrayal of the Johnsons, but his love for Rachel.’

  ‘He was totally besotted. You only had to watch him while he talked about her. Even in the last weeks.’

  ‘I liked her you know, despite...’ the sentence petered out as she searched for the right words. ‘I could never put my finger on it. She exuded a sense of mystery and excitement, danger even. She was, you know, “far away places with strange sounding names”. That and her physical beauty must have been a heady mixture for a young farmer. Which is why I could have forgiven him the infidelity, even if I disapproved.’

  ‘Into the isolated life of a simple Aussie boy comes a taste of the old world, something new and exotic. I know how he felt. Judith had the same effect on me.’

  ‘Max, I really do need my share of the estate to keep my business solvent.’

  Damn, Max thought. So much had already happened it was cruel to burden Caroline with yet another revelation. But, continuing to dodge the issue might be more damaging in the long run. It was time to play the last card. He said, ‘Judith wanted to put it off for today, but I think we have to tell you. Walter had a codicil drafted for the will.’

  Trying to appear unfazed she said, ‘A codicil? To what effect?’

  ‘Leaving the property to the shire, subject to conditions providing for Rachel’s care, and for you and Judith to be paid capital sums up front.’ He crossed to the desk to find the document.

  ‘Small capital sums I take it?’ She saw his brief nod. ‘Is this what you meant by bequests?’

  ‘Yes.’ He handed the codicil to her.

  She held the document without looking at it. ‘Why didn’t you produce it when I arrived?’

  Max could sense the hurt. It must seem as though they’d deliberately set her up. ‘We’d planned to tell you earlier, but your announcement that you wanted to sell the property took us by surprise.’

  From the verandah came the noise of the last mourners departing. Somebody must have decided the time had come to leave the family alone. Good-byes were called. Engines rumbled. Through the window, the young couple could be seen walking up the slope, hand in hand, to join the exodus.

  Caroline looked at the codicil, a single typed page. She turned it over. There was nothing on the back. ‘I assume there’s a signed copy.’

  ‘So did we. But Mr Ross says the execution was postponed because Walter wanted to change the wording of one of the clauses. They’d planned to meet again this week.’

  ‘So it has no legal significance?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Which is why Mr Ross didn’t raise it with me when he was here earlier.’

  ‘The significance of the codicil is it records your father’s wishes. Before you arrived, we’d been hoping you might decide to honour them even though he hadn’t signed. After you announced your intentions, it seemed a long way back. That’s why we’ve been dancing around the subject. There’s a letter as well. It’s also undated and unsigned, but you’ll recognise the hand. Walter insisted on writing it himself.’ He handed Caroline a second sheet of paper.

  Caroline glanced at the letter; the familiar handwriting was unnerving, and she tucked it behind the draft codicil. She shook her head—her sadness obvious. ‘I signed personal guarantees for the loans. My creditors would have rights to my share.’

  ‘There might be ways around that. There are protections for deceased estates.’

  Neither of them noticed Judith arriving in the doorway where, seeing them in earnest conversation, and the codicil in Caroline’s hand, she stopped.

  Caroline felt a pressure behind her eyes. She knew if she let go now the tears would come, and she would fall apart in angry hurt. Desperately trying to keep herself under control she said, ‘So on a day when I’ve learnt I wronged my father for thirty years, you’re asking me to make an emotional decision to waive my rights and let my company go under. Now who’s being cruel?’

  Max felt decidedly uncomfortable about what he was doing, but there could be no backing off. Cruel or not, he must focus on the bigger issues. He returned her gaze and said, evenly, ‘Without Walter, the town would already be dead. We’re trying to keep his vision alive. Why don’t you read the letter?’

  A quiet sigh, another sad shake of her head, then she started to read.

  Dear Caroline,

  For more than two decades after you left home, I clung to the hope you would return. Age has made me more of a realist. I am not as mobile as I used to be, which gives me added time to think. Unfortunately the decline hereabouts is not just in individuals like me. The entire community is in bad shape. Farm incomes are down; small businesses have been closing. There is no longer a doctor in the town. The institute, once a major employer, has been closed by government. We believe the rail depot is also in jeopardy. Duncan Ross and Sons is the last surviving professional practice, and dear old Gilbert, the end of that dynasty, opens his office only by appointment.

  Although you never communicate with me, your public profile shows you to be a successful woman who is financially secure. I am proud of you for achieving that. You have never looked to me for support, nor to Banabrook for income, and, from what I can glean about your personal philosophies (mainly from reports of your speeches in parliament), I think you might approve what I have decided to do with the estate.

  I have agonised over the demise not only of rural districts like ours but of historic places like Banabrook. Your mother's old property, Weatherlee, has been sub-divided into six small farms, all owned by city folk who visit infrequently and put little into the community. Three of the allotments are managed by one man, not well paid but grateful to still have work on the land. Although it was not of historical significance, Weatherlee was a good property and its break up is a loss to the community. Adderley Farm is now owned by an American business tycoon none of us has met. It appears he has some idea about emu farming, but we don't think he's done the research. If he does get started, there's hope of some funds dribbling into the local community. So far, in two years, all he's done is sell the previous livestock. The only person he pays is a caretaker.

  A run of dry seasons has caused us to cut back our operations and, unless current trends reverse, Banabrook will be increasingly hard to manage. Elsewhere, people have simply walked off their land a
nd left the problem to the banks. Fortunately we are not burdened by mortgage debt, but it's no fun being asset rich and cash poor, and I would hate to see the place fall into the hands of some foreign millionaire.

  All this has led to the notion of preserving Banabrook by turning it over to the shire to underpin a community project. I hope to live long enough to see some of the plans bear fruit and, to this end, I have already approved some work, which I shall be able to watch from my favourite vantage point, the window where I painted for so many years.

  I am attaching a copy of the codicil putting these changes to my will into effect. Apart from provisions for Rachel's care, there are legacies for you and Judith, rights for both of you to live in private quarters here as long as you wish, and provision for the two of you to be given a management contract to run the place for 20 years. The shire is confident of raising the necessary funds to get the project off the ground and to comply with the conditions I am imposing.

  I hope I am right to believe you will approve my actions in this regard.

  Your loving father.

  Not looking up from the letter, Caroline said, ‘You’d make one hell of a negotiator Max. What did Judith think of this?’

  From the doorway, Judith said, ‘The codicil was my idea. And it’s what Daddy wanted.’

  Caroline nodded. ‘It would be a splendid atonement for the way I treated him wouldn’t it?’

  ‘That might be a way to look at it,’ Judith said.

  ‘I said you were being cruel, Max, but I understand what you’re trying to achieve. It’s a splendid dream, one I’d like to support, especially now I realise how appropriate it would be to honour my father with a living memorial. Unfortunately...’ she paused.

  Judith sat down. Something new was about to be revealed.

  ‘Being a senator means little to me. I was recruited, pushed, groomed, and campaigned for. Women’s movements saw my high profile in business as an opportunity. I was swept up in it. By the time I realised this wasn’t a career I wanted, it was too late to back out. I’d made commitments, and I was trapped. Hubris played a part. I liked being the centre of attention. But I’d become an instrument for the drives and wishes of others.’ A pause for contemplation. ‘Blake Fashions, on the other hand, is something I built myself, from nothing. It’s my only real achievement in life, and I’ll be devastated if it fails. Therefore, ego does come into it. But there’s something else. How many people are you trying to save?’

  Max and Judith exchanged glances. He did a quick mental assessment. ‘It’s hard to say. There’d be some direct employment immediately. If it takes off, we’d save a number of shops and small businesses from closing down. Long term, there could be a much larger spin-off for the whole district. Every shop from here to the city might benefit in time.’

  ‘Put a figure on it.’

  ‘People who’d benefit? Initially... at least fifty... a hundred maybe.’

  ‘Blake Fashions has more than five hundred on its payroll. Fathers, mothers, young couples with their first homes and mortgages, juniors with their first jobs. When things got tough a couple of years back it was the employees who suggested a wage freeze to help ensure the business kept going. We deal with more than a dozen suppliers. For most of those, we’re more than half their turnover. How many families? I don’t know. Another hundred, maybe two. We contract deliveries, and a lot of other services. When it’s all totted up there’d be close to a thousand jobs at risk. If the company ceases trading, the business won’t be sold as a going concern; one of the big chains will gobble it up, and most of the jobs will disappear. The ego thing I’d get over in time. But so many employees, so many families... I can’t live with that!’

  ‘Why couldn’t you have told us?’ Max asked.

  ‘I wanted to deal with my own problems. I thought it wasn’t your business. I can see now, it was.’

  There was a pause before Judith said, ‘I didn’t realise your company was so big.’

  ‘Me neither,’ Max said, sinking into a chair.

  For a long time, nobody spoke. It was Judith who broke the silence. ‘I’m sure, if Daddy had known this, he’d agree we have to sell Banabrook.’

  Caroline said, ‘I hate to stamp on such a wonderful dream.’ She made her way to the sideboard to pour another whisky.

  Judith nodded. ‘At least I can feel better, knowing the money means so much to so many people. And I can still do a lot for the town with my share.’

  None of them had noticed the figure walking up the slope from the stables. There was a sound of footsteps on the verandah, then a clunking as Emily kicked off her dusty shoes. They heard her say, ‘Sorry Tony, did I wake you?’ and his response, ‘I must have dozed off. How embarrassing.’ Both appeared in the doorway. Emily was carrying a rusted metal object and a dirty cash-box.

  ‘Well, Mother? What’s that you’ve got?’

  ‘An old horse-shoe, and this. There’s something in it but my hands aren’t strong enough.’ She handed the cash-box to Judith who tried unsuccessfully to open the lid, before passing it to Max who took it to the desk. ‘They were on a bench by the stables. There’s a heap of old junk the builders have dug up. I’d like to keep the horse-shoe, if nobody minds.’

  Finding a paper knife, Max started work on the cash-box. ‘A co-incidence, Caroline?’ he said. ‘Or do we believe in fate?’

  Judith looked at Caroline. ‘Do you know something about this?’

  ‘When I was a little girl I saw father bury something.’

  ‘Got it!’ Max cried. He turned and held the box out to the three women. Nobody reached for it. ‘I really think it should be one of you, not me.’

  Judith said, ‘Caroline saw it being buried.’

  Stepping forward, Caroline looked into the box. She extracted a cloth bag, and a gold necklace from which hung a small gold disc. She looked closely at the disc, and read the inscription.

  ‘Anna Wiesman. A+’ She frowned and turned to the others. ‘A...plus?’

  Emily took the necklace, and looked at the disc. ‘Don’t you remember? You had one during the war. Most kids did, even in Australia. Yours was cheap metal and it said: Caroline Blake O-. Your blood type.’

  Max was next to take the necklace. ‘Does the name Anna Wiesman mean anything to anyone?’

  He went to hand the necklace to Judith, but she shrank from taking it. She said, ‘It’s a very Jewish name, isn’t it?’

  ‘A relative?’ Tony queried.

  ‘Rachel’s name was Polak.’ Something in Judith’s tone made Max look at her. When she raised her eyes to his, he thought he saw fear. She looked at Caroline, and nodded at the cloth bag.

  Caroline peered into the bag. Frowning, she started to spill its contents into her hand. A number of small objects came out in a rush. Some fell to the floor; Max retrieved them. Tony took one from Caroline’s hand. Judith seemed unable to move.

  After a long silence Tony said, ‘The classic test is to bite it. But, in this case, you might not want to.’

  ‘Gold,’ breathed Emily. ‘Gold fillings; gold teeth.’

  ‘Any other suggestions?’ Max asked.

  Judith reached for a chair and sat down. ‘We all know what this means don’t we!’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Do we?’ asked Emily.

  ‘You can’t bury memories, you can’t bury memories. It’s what she’s been saying. Mama must have brought them with her. This is what’s been haunting her. Mama must have... Oh god, who knows what?’ She put her hands to either side of her face, her eyes wide.

  Caroline went to her. ‘Don’t imagine anything bad, Judith. She could have come by them any number of ways.’

  ‘Then why did they bury them? Why did father bury them? That’s what you saw.’

  ‘Rabbi Levi had told him an object as simple as a metal button could evoke dreadful memories. What better reason could there be to bury these reminders.’

  Judith looked at the small object in her hand. ‘This is not a m
etal button,’ she said. ‘This came from the mouth of a holocaust victim—from the gas chambers. This was her passport, her passage to freedom. Gold speaks all languages doesn’t it? She must have bought her escape with teeth and fillings taken from victims of the holocaust.’

  ‘She was a victim herself,’ Emily said.

  ‘Would it be so bad?’ Max asked. ‘The people who owned these fillings were dead. She was still alive.’

  Judith looked at them, obviously distraught. ‘There was a theory some years ago that the reason there were so many rich Jews around the world in the fifties and sixties was that to survive the holocaust you had to be lucky, or resourceful... or ruthless.’

  Caroline said, ‘Then Rachel was lucky or resourceful wasn’t she!’ She knelt in front of Judith and grasped her hands.

  Judith looked into her face. ‘She said you should try to value people but not need them. Could this be the value of someone? Is that what she meant?’

  ‘Stop Judith! These are dark thoughts.’

  ‘She never spoke about the past.’

  ‘Many people never spoke about the war,’ Max said. ‘Darling it means nothing, really.’

  ‘You mustn’t think the worst,’ Caroline pleaded. ‘Look what it did to me!’

  Emily said, ‘When Caroline was little I used to make up stories for her. Can I make one up for you?’ There was no reply. She continued, first slowly, but with increasing pace as the threads of the story came together in her mind. ‘A beautiful girl in a concentration camp is chosen by an SS Officer to be his housekeeper. It saves her from the gas chambers, at least for a while, but there are favours she has to provide if she wants to retain the position. One night, after using her for his pleasure, he taunts her by showing her a stack of jewellery and gold teeth he has tipped from a bag onto the bureau. Her parents, like many others of their generation, had teeth filled with gold. The parents had arrived at the camp with her, but she’d been separated from them and believes them dead. The pieces of gold are symbols of the things the Nazis have taken from her people—their property, their dignity, their lives, even the goddamn fillings from their mouths. The officer is lying on the bed smiling. Something inside her snaps. Suddenly, she takes a paper knife from the desk and plunges it into the heart of her tormentor. She knows there is little hope of escape, but she must try. Frantically, she sweeps the jewellery and fillings into the bag and flees, terrified, into the night. Early next morning, a truck leaves the area; she is hidden under its load. Months later, she is found in a train unloading at a country siding in Australia. Along the way, she’s used the jewellery to bribe border guards and officials. The only things left in the bag are some of the fillings and a necklace belonging to a dead girl she never knew. What’s to do with them? She asks Walter to dispose of them, to bury the sad reminders of a dreadful time. “If you bury them”, she says, “I can try to forget, and begin life again. Help me Walter. Please help me.” ’

  Judith frowned. ‘Could it have been like that?’

  Tony said, ‘Compared with other tales told by survivors of the death camps, that one wouldn’t be particularly extraordinary.’

  Emily said, ‘To believe your mother was good takes an act of faith. But honey, you have to want to believe.’

  In the ensuing silence, Judith rose and went to Max who hugged her to him.

  Apart from the formal responses she’d recited at the funeral, Emily could not recall when she had last prayed. Now she realised she was silently petitioning her maker for help. In part, it was a prayer for her story to become Judith’s truth; but she was also praying for herself, a selfish request for one last chance.

  Caroline’s mind was playing tricks. Several times on this extraordinary day her feelings for her mother had changed. Now, transported back in time, she arrived again at this same location, her memory unlocking an image of the same woman, much younger, crossed-legged on the floor, telling a story... inventing a story... about... she struggled to bring it from the fringes of her mind—yes, a story about a wombat who lived by the billabong, her own special wombat, not the famous muddle-headed wombat from the ABC children’s session, but hers. From deep within her psyche, she’d retrieved a memory earlier than anything else she had previously recalled.

  Eventually Judith turned from the comfort of Max’s embrace to speak directly to Emily. ‘Thank you for the story. I’ve never had reason to doubt Mama. I shan’t start now.’

  Caroline turned to Emily. ‘Did you know what was buried out there?’

  ‘I’d no idea. I knew Rachel had the cloth bag, but I’d forgotten about it.’

  ‘Then why did you go down to the stables?’

  ‘To get away from lovely people re-living old netball games. I wanted to think. Families are real funny things. Sometimes they hurt us; sometimes they heal us. I’ve been damaged goods for most of my life. I came here today not knowing what to expect. For a while, it looked like I’d buggered up Walter’s funeral, and made enemies of the lot of you. But, despite everything, you’ve been kind to me. You’ve shown me again why I’ve loved the Blakes from the day I first came here—and what a privilege it’s been to be a part of it all.’

  Caroline sat on the arm of the couch. ‘If anyone nearly buggered up the funeral, it was me. If you hadn’t arrived, Max would still be trying to convince me how wrong I’ve been. What you and Tony don’t know is that Banabrook is to be sold.’

  ‘To save Blake Fashions from bankruptcy,’ Emily said.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘When we were lunching on Nibbles Antonio in the kitchen, Judith showed us the plans for this place. She also mentioned your financial problems.’

  Judith said, ‘I wanted Tony and your mother to side with me. I didn’t realise how things were going to pan out.’

  ‘Well it saves me some of the explaining,’ Caroline said.

  ‘What it gave me was food for thought,’ Emily said. ‘I’ve failed you as a mother and I’m not about to try and buy your love. But I’m worth a buck or two, and I’d sure be sorry to see Banabrook in other hands.’

  ‘Have you enough to buy my share?’

  ‘At a reasonable price, probably yes; but–’

  ‘I only need enough to pay out the loans. If you support the plans, that might be a solution.’

  ‘This is your heritage. And I think we both owe Walter something. My fantasy was that we’d all become partners in this venture. Build something in his memory. Keep it in the family. His family. That’s what I was thinking about down there.’

  ‘It might be presumptuous for either of us to consider ourselves family these days. We opted out Mother. Me thirty years ago, you nearly fifty.’

  ‘I guess you’re right. I had this notion I might be able to come back—not to this house, but to the district where I grew up. I could be patron of the netball club, and go for nostalgic walks around the golf course. I was club champion one year. I still remember the speech I made. I waved the cup in the air and said, “You bloody beauty!” The Johnsons were all class. But this is the only place in the world where my name is on an honour board. And when I came over Two View Hill this morning, my body did strange things.’

  ‘The return of the prodigal mother,’ Caroline smiled at her. After a pause she added, ‘We’re like Rachel. The past will never cease to haunt us. But Judith is right. We do have to focus on the future. I already have a new life.’

  ‘Does it satisfy you, this new life? Or is it merely what you’ve got?’ Max surprised them all, not the least himself, with the force of his interruption. ‘What did you say earlier? Recruited, pushed, groomed? For what? To achieve other people’s goals in the world’s dirtiest business. I wonder if it’s worth it. You live alone, you work long hours, you get death threats...’

  ‘Death threats!?’ Emily’s voice went up in pitch.

  ‘Oh yes, she’s had those.’ Max continued to direct his comments pointedly at Caroline. ‘You know, as well as I do, why the press gallery gives you so much attenti
on. You denied them the gung-ho Maggie Thatcher they’d hoped for. Now they just want to be there when you finally crack. And what’s the alternative? A town that welcomed you back today with open arms and home made scones.’

  Caroline was acutely aware that all of them were now focussed on her. She was still trying to come to grips with some vaguely perceived issues when Emily spoke again.

  ‘For me, it’s a last desperate throw. If any one of you says “no”, I’ll go. Otherwise, I think I’d like to die hereabouts. And I’d sure like to get to know my daughter better.’

  There was another pause before Caroline turned to her mother. ‘I won’t stay. And I won’t take your money as a gift. But I do have an idea. How do you feel about investing directly in the future of Arajinna?’

  ‘I’d do it in a flash. Tell me how.’

  ‘Make Caroline Blake Fashions an offer it can’t refuse, an offer of new capital tied to a condition that a factory making fabrics for a new in-house label is set up in this town. How does “The Banabrook Collection” sound? Maybe our designers could use some of the tones and patterns from Daddy’s paintings. You might even explore ways to give locals a direct interest in the business.’

  ‘Honey, that’s brilliant. Get somebody to draw up the offer, and I’ll sign.’

  ‘A new co-operative,’ Max said. ‘How appropriate.’

  ‘There’s something else I’d like your agreement to. I’m sure Maud’s diaries will be of interest to the state archivist. I think we should donate them, and draw the attention of the State Gallery to the passages about the paintings.’

  Tony said, ‘I was feeling a bit left out but, as the family’s elder statesman—not to mention custodian of a questionable work of art—I’d be happy to handle those things. Might I also suggest we put Maud’s dresser on display, with diagrams of the secret drawer and extracts about her arrival here with Alfred.’

  ‘That has marvellous possibilities,’ said Max. ‘But I thought you’d sold the dressing table.’

  ‘Not after discovering the diaries. I withdrew it from sale. Too precious.’

  Judith went to Tony and, in a gesture that mirrored his arrival, took his large hands between hers. ‘You will be part of all this, won’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes, my angel. Having re-discovered a family I barely knew, I will not be a stranger to Banabrook in the future.’

  ‘Then let’s get it straight,’ Caroline said. ‘We adopt father’s plans to sign over Banabrook to the shire, including the provisions for private quarters for Judith, and a management contract. Mother will become a shareholder in Caroline Blake Fashions so she won’t be giving her money away. Some of my legacy can be used for legal work to set up a co-operative to run the factory.’

  ‘You have no doubts about your board’s approval?’ Tony asked.

  ‘They’ll be ecstatic. So long as I’m a senator I won’t play a direct role, but I could contribute ideas. To start with, I can see this as being far more than a holiday place. It seems every second person you meet is having a go at writing, or painting, or something. We can use our rights under Alured’s bequest to get custody of items from the Blake Collection. The gallery has many pieces not on display. You can surround your visitors with art works. Walter’s easel and paints would be the centrepiece, left as they are, with a photo of him and a précis of his life story. My old room might be a place where a young artist could be given a residency, for a year at a time say, to have the opportunity to work and develop. You could call it the Walter Blake Scholarship?’

  Judith went to Caroline. This time it was no awkward embrace. ‘Please stay. It’s a big property. There’s space to get away from each other. Won’t you give it a try?’

  ‘Unfortunately I’ve made commitments, and I’ll feel even worse about myself if I renege on those. I’ll pull out at the next election, but not now, not for death threats. If that was the Blake way, father would have caved in to the Johnsons.’

  ‘You’re talking three years.’ Max said.

  ‘Time for all of us to be sure what we want. Meanwhile, Tony’s going to move in with me. Well I hope so.’

  Tony appeared to swallow hard. He glanced towards her. ‘First meal, asparagus quiche, in memory of Dad and Café Quirk.’

  ‘Three years will go fast enough. There’s a lot to do, and I have to rebuild some self esteem.’

  ‘Possibly not as much as you think,’ Max suggested.

  ‘That’s the problem with self esteem. Nobody else can be the judge. I crashed a long way today.’

  ‘Don’t be too hard,’ Tony said. ‘You founded a successful business. You’ve been a caring employer. And you’ve been an honest politician which is a bloody towering achievement.’

  The mood was conducive to general laughter.

  ‘I know I should value those things, but somehow a failure of stewardship looms as something of greater import. Five generations of Blakes developed Banabrook and left Kalawonta a better place than they found it. Judith has been doing her utmost to ensure the sixth generation doesn’t fail in that regard. I came close to endangering the family record. So far all I’ve developed is Caroline Blake. When I can see the dream being realised, and feel a small part of it, I’ll be happy. That might be the time to think of coming home.’

  ‘Good thought,’ said Tony. ‘And I will sell my apartment to some lucky person who’s been itching to live in a Tony Blake penthouse—I blush. Then I will buy that beautiful but sadly dilapidated old house on the river. Three years should be time enough to get it in good shape, and provide excuses to visit.’

  ‘Your place is here!’ Judith insisted. ‘We can write it into the conditions.’

  ‘Kind of you, my angel,’ Tony said. ‘But let’s take one step at a time.’

  Seeming to remember something, Emily left the room.

  Caroline went to the window. The sun was just below the crown of the forest. The shadows interspersed with beams filtering through the canopy made strange patterns in the paddocks and house-garden. This was the time of day her father loved to sit at the easel to paint his favourite scene.

  Judith noticed one of the gold fillings caught in the pile of the carpet and bent to retrieve it. She thought of Rachel’s tortured past, and of Emily’s story. Tomorrow she would visit the hospice. She would go alone, and she would hold the now deranged shell of her mother, and hope for a repeat of the strange communication that brought the periods of calm.

  Max removed his starched collar and put it on the desk. It was a long time since he’d believed in the mysterious ways of an omnipotent god, but even a bolshie priest could live with the future they were planning for Banabrook. The history and biography would be honest and forthright without giving hurt, except to those for whom the cap of anti-Semitism or roguery fitted, and most of those were long gone from Arajinna. It had been a day of anger, prevarication, manoeuvring, and sadness; but also one of reconciliation and hope. Perhaps there really was a god working in mysterious ways.

  Emily returned and went to Caroline’s side. Holding out her hand, she opened it to reveal the brooch. After a brief pause, Caroline took it and pinned it to her jacket. The hug was brief and seemed to say: it is too early for some things, but we have time. They turned back to the window and the last rays filtering through the trees.

  Judith said, ‘That’s the light Daddy always hoped to capture.’

  EPILOGUE

  Escape from Dachau

  July 1944

  She has done the impossible. But only a few hours have passed; the chances of remaining at large are slim.

  The truck stops and the engine is turned off. She hears the scrunch of boots on gravel, the creak of a door opening, a dull thud as it closes. Cautiously she peeks through a crack where the canvas blind at the back of the truck meets the canopy. Despite heavy cloud-cover, she can make out the shapes of several other trucks. This must be a resting place for drivers.

  The Nazi officer whose plaything she had been will wake soon. Tonight he was care
less; he drank too much. She had encouraged him, taking swigs of the whisky and dribbling it from her mouth into his as she stroked his erection. He liked that. The foul taste of the spirits had stayed with her, but it had worked its magic on him.

  It will not be hard to trace this truck, probably the only one to have left the village in the night. Squeezing out from behind the blind, she looks for another vehicle to hide in. The choice is random: a small pantechnicon, its back secured by canvas curtains buckled together with straps. She loosens the bottom buckle just enough to squeeze underneath. It requires only a narrow gap for an undernourished body. She is wearing thin cotton and, although it is July, the night is uncomfortably chill. The truck’s load seems to comprise bundles of padded fabric; she makes herself a nest among them. Despite the cold and the thumping of her heart, weariness overtakes her and she sleeps.

  She wakes from a weird dream when the engine starts. As the truck pulls away, she feels a tiny surge of hope. Not long afterwards, she feels the vehicle slow and swing onto a different road. Dare she believe this might be good for her?

  As daylight filters into the van, she finds she has made her nest among padded jackets and pants of a kind she knows are worn by people living in the foothills of the alps. With cardboard in scarce supply, the contents of the van has not been packed in containers. She identifies the bundle containing the smallest sizes. Even so, the jacket fits her like an overcoat, and she has to roll up the legs of the trousers.

  For a while, the desperation of her plight has been forgotten in her alternating states of adrenalin-fuelled energy and grinding weariness. Now, as she sits in the back of the jolting vehicle, reality floods back. She cries quietly. She has never felt so alone. But she remembers the words of one defiant prisoner, an old man who told them, over and over, they must not give in to despair; some of them must survive to tell the world what happened to the others. This must be her mission. She is no longer a sex slave; she is a person again, a person who will tell the world stories nobody will want to believe. She reaches for the cloth bag hanging around her neck, stolen from the desk of her Nazi master. Perhaps it will convince the world her stories are true.

  Her geography is good enough for her to guess at the destination of a cargo of padded clothing. It is also good enough for her to realise how hard it would be to find her way through the high country into Switzerland. On the other hand, the difficult terrain must also mean there are places where the borders are not regularly patrolled. All that, however, is but a vague possibility. The first challenge will be to get out of the truck. At least she is already many miles from Dachau. Now, new problems present themselves. Soon she will need to urinate. Weeks at the camp have accustomed her to having little to eat or drink, but she is starting to feel thirsty.

  Eventually the truck pulls off the road. She hears the driver alight. After a while she peeks through a gap in the canvas. Seeing nobody, she slips out and edges around the truck. She is about to run for the cover of some trees when a hand descends on her shoulder and she is wrenched around to face the driver. He appears more surprised than angry.

  Like many Austrians, and others throughout German controlled Europe, Karl Seipel hates everything about Hitler’s Reich, but feels powerless to oppose it. He has heard rumours about pogroms and unspeakable cruelty, but he has never seen the evidence, never been sure what to believe. Now he finds himself face to face with a terrified girl. He wonders if she sees in his expression the fear he feels for both of them. He asks the obvious questions: who are you? what are you doing in my truck? why do you reek of whisky? She looks at him defiantly and tells him to kill her now because she will do it herself rather than go back. Suddenly, the pressure in his bladder, the reason he had stopped the truck, becomes too insistent to ignore. He releases his grip on her and walks into the trees, hoping she will simply run away. To his surprise she follows. As he relieves himself he realises she has gone behind a tree to do likewise. They both emerge onto the roadside wondering what to do or say. For Karl it becomes a moment of decision. He is a widower with no children, no family whose safety might be compromised. Here is an opportunity to at least try to help a victim of the war.

  In the cabin of the truck, he shares his food with her while she tells him a story that makes him want to weep. He asks her age. When she tells him she “celebrated” her twenty-first birthday “in there” he feels like weeping again. He comments on how thin she is. She tells him she had been at the camp only a few weeks—that many others are walking skeletons. He has heard rumours about gas chambers. She shakes her head, surprised, horrified. She had not seen gas chambers—only cruelty, hard labour, starvation, and death. Then he tells her he has heard talk of a network of resistance throughout France and neighbouring countries. There is a man he sometimes drinks with who might know how to make contact. It will be risky to raise the subject. It might be fatal if he has guessed wrongly about the man’s sympathies. But he will try.

  Simon Saint-Jacques emerges from a cottage in Toulon, satisfied with the results of a clandestine meeting. The route he had been using to move refugees out of France has become too dangerous. Whilst some still make the crossing from Marseilles to Oran and thence to Casablanca, for a chance to bribe their way onto an aeroplane to Portugal, the demands of corrupt officials have increasingly made this an option for only the very wealthy. The chances of capture have also increased. Now, for Jews in particular, Simon is helping to set up another route. It will involve crossing to Alger, then by road to Alexandria where various groups, mainly Jewish families, have plans to make the difficult journey down the east coast. The main participants are wealthy merchants who fear the spread of anti-Semitic fascism. Unlike the small groups trying to reach Portugal, their preference is to travel in sizeable parties for protection against a more common class of criminal whose objectives are not racial or political but simply to plunder loot from any passing stranger. This has led to merchants taking refugees with them—women as servants, men as workers and bodyguards.

  Had she been asked to detail her movements, from the time the Austrian, Karl, handed her over to a Swiss named Freiderich, until she arrived at the Côte d’Azur and met the Frenchman called Simon, Rachel would have been at a loss. She could only have spoken of moving at night and sleeping by day, of trucks without lights, bicycles taken from under sheds and left in thickets, walking through forests, wading through streams, arriving at cottages in the dead of night. She might also have spoken about grim-faced people ladling stew and giving bread without asking anything in return, and of many small kindnesses. She remembers, particularly, the quick hug and whispered ‘bonne chance’ from a woman who seemed to be caring for six or seven children in an old farmhouse. She has not removed the cloth bag from her neck since her meeting with Frederich. Then she had done so to retrieve a diamond ring to offer in exchange for his help. He had refused to take it, telling her the people guiding her through France expected no payment. Ominously, he told her to keep the ring because bribes might be needed later in her travels.

  Somewhere along the way, the winter gear she has worn since boarding Karl’s truck is exchanged for simple peasant clothes by a woman who keeps a strange array of garments in a trunk hidden in a barn. Rachel thinks of her as a sort of wardrobe mistress for a travelling show. For warmth at night, she is given an old shawl. The wardrobe mistress lends her some sewing gear to stitch up the hem of a skirt. While doing so she secretly takes some pieces of jewellery from her cloth bag and sews them into the hem of the skirt and into a fold in the shawl.

  Somewhere on the Côte d’Azur, Simon takes Rachel and a young Frenchman to a small boat, and rows them out to meet a trawler. Huddled together in the bow, they tell each other their reasons for flight. His story is simple. He killed a French policeman who had been collaborating with the enemy. At Alger they are bundled into the back of an ancient truck. They survive exhaust fumes belching from a cracked exhaust during a body-jolting journey to Alexandria. There, they are taken to a rich Jewish merc
hant who tells them bluntly about the conditions they will have to endure over many months on a trek of more than 5000 miles. The party will stay as close to the coast as possible, but there is desert to cross. He is taking the risk because he fears for Jewish communities as Hitler’s influence and ideas spread further into Africa. His objective is to reach Dar Es Salaam where the party will disband leaving each person to their own devices. Rachel and the young man accept the conditions. For them, the only immediate objective is to keep putting more miles between themselves and Europe.

  Despite the hardship, Rachel’s mood is almost buoyant for the first weeks of the trip. She becomes a favourite with the merchant and his wife. She had learnt from her mother to make tasty dishes from sparse ingredients, a skill she now puts to good use. She becomes the merchant’s personal cook, and is treated more like a member of his extended family than like a servant. But the edge is taken off her good fortune by the unwelcome attentions of the pampered son of the family. One night he takes her into the desert and rapes her. During the rape, he discovers her cloth bag. He steals the jewellery and questions her about the other items. When he realises what she is carrying, he threatens to tell his father unless she becomes his willing mistress. Thus begins weeks of horror as the party makes its way south. Apart from the abuse she suffers from the son, she shares the frequent periods of fear experienced by all of the party. Fortunately, the merchant is good at negotiating with bandits and at bribing officials. The advantage of being with a sizeable party has become obvious; they have no doubt that smaller groups would suffer devastating raids in these lonely, inhospitable places.

  By the time they reach Mombasa, the nightly sexual abuse has become too much to bear. While helping the merchant’s wife to shop for food from stalls near the waterfront, she sees a tramp steamer preparing for departure. Later she slips from the camp and stows away on the ship. She has no idea where it is headed. She has no food or water.

  After spending a day in hiding she does the only thing possible; she presents herself to the astonished captain. His surprise quickly turns to anger. The crew is already grumbling about limited rations; another mouth to feed will be an added burden. She offers him the jewellery, which is still sewn into the hem of her skirt. Suddenly he bursts into laughter and asks what makes her think he won’t just keep her jewellery and throw her overboard. Her response is a shrug, and her resignation must trouble his conscience because he asks her to forgive him for a stupid joke. He will keep the jewellery, and he will tell the crew all will share in the proceeds provided they leave her alone. She will have to share his cabin. There will be little privacy, but he will treat her with respect. She asks where they are bound; he says she will find out if they get there.

  ‘If?’ she queries.

  ‘The sea is always dangerous. Never more so than during war.’

  For some time Rachel has known she is pregnant. It is a worry, but fate intervenes. One night, during a violent storm, she falls heavily, and miscarries. Fortunately nobody sees her. She throws the evidence overboard, whispering words she thinks might be appropriate for a burial at sea. It is a secret she determines will go with her to her grave. Others are injured during the storm, so she does not have to explain the blood. Lying, ill, on her bunk she wonders if she has buried the only baby she will ever have. She fingers the cloth bag. Suddenly she is overcome with a feeling of shame. She had stolen the bag as evidence, but she has already used the jewellery for her own survival. The only remaining piece is a gold necklace with an identification disc bearing the name Anna. It is a name she likes. She will think of her lost child as Anna.

  Days pass and the captain appears increasingly troubled. One day he sits her down for a serious talk. Tomorrow they will reach a port and she must leave the ship. If he hands her over to the police, there will be enquiries, and things might go badly for all of them. Men often go to sea to get away from their pasts; this is the situation for him and for most of his crew. He says he will give her some local currency, and smuggle her onto a freight train near the docks. She has come half way around the world. If she can put some distance between her and his ship before she is caught, she will be repaying him for protecting her. Her English is good, and that is the language of the country they are approaching. Every city in the world has people who live on the streets. She will have enough money to buy food. There may be refuges for the homeless. Here, at least, she will not encounter armed soldiers. It is the best he can do. When she asks the name of the port, it means nothing to her. He takes her to the map on his wall and points. It is hard to believe she has come so far from home.

  Early next morning the ship docks at Fremantle. The Captain gives her some money and says, ‘This is the end of the penny section.’ She does not know the saying, but his meaning is clear enough. When customs officers come aboard, he conceals her under ropes in a locker. Later she listens to the sounds of cargo being unloaded. After nightfall, she is taken by a member of the crew and helped to board a freight train. Wrapped in her shawl, she clutches some sandwiches and a bottle of soft drink the captain has brought back to the ship from a nearby kiosk. The crew member tells her to avoid getting into railway trucks that can be locked from outside, and to be careful not to get between packing cases or items that might move and injure or trap her. He has selected a wagon, covered with canvas, in the middle of the train. He tells her this will probably mean it will be one of the last to reach its destination, because trucks are usually dropped off the rear or taken from the front. He has a number of other tips for survival; she suspects he has travelled this way himself.

  Rachel is amazed how easily she adapts to life as a railway stowaway. She quickly learns the routines of freight train movement; she feels she has almost a sixth sense about when to leave one train and find another. Parks near railway stations are good places to lose herself among the derelict and the homeless, who have a code of minding their own business. She has become used to being dirty, but often manages to clean herself in public toilet blocks. At one stop she finds a place to strip down and wash her clothes in a river. At another, she gets curious glances when she buys toiletries at a chemist shop.

  Only once is she stopped and questioned. A young policeman wants to know what she is doing. It is a situation she has expected, and she has concocted a story about being a student of languages who practises declining irregular verbs by walking and reciting. This was, in fact, a method she had used in her student days. She begins rhythmic declining of some French verbs to demonstrate. The policeman accepts the story. She suspects that saying she is a student has helped avoid too close a scrutiny of her strange clothes. Maybe here, as in her own country, students are known to defy dress conventions.

  Disaster nearly strikes when she finds herself in Kalgoorlie and boards a train bound for Port Pirie. The heat by day and cold at night are intolerable, and she has run out of water to drink when she leaves the train at Jamestown.

  Several trains later her journey ends at a place called Arajinna.

  Perhaps she had become blasé from the ease with which she’d evaded detection for so long, or perhaps it is simply inevitable that any journey must end, but she is fast asleep in an empty sheep truck when a surprised railway worker finds her and yells out to his mates.

  Curious people come to peer at her. A call is made to somebody to come and take custody of a grubby young woman. It is a threatening word: custody. But, as she sits drinking the tea somebody brings her, she feels she has honoured her undertaking to put distance and time between herself and the ship that brought her to Australia. Nobody else knows how she has made her way from Dachau to this country town on the other side of the world. Even she knows only vaguely the route she has taken and the people who have helped her. It comes to her then that the least said the better. Except that she must say she escaped from Dachau, and she must say that Jews are being exterminated in Europe. This is her bond with a defiant old man who is probably now dead. Something makes her reach for the cloth bag. For the fi
rst time for many months, she feels tears that are not anger, hurt, frustration, or fear—but deep regret. What if they take the bag from her? What will they make of its contents and of the tag inscribed Anna Wiesman, the girl she hardly knew, the girl who might have been the one who survived if Rachel hadn’t made a seductive play for the officer who was about to choose Anna Wiesman to be a ‘special servant’ in his house in the village? She had intended to use the items in the bag to support her story, but this might not be a good idea, here, on the other side of the world.

  A man arrives. She looks at him in wonder. She’d been expecting a middle-aged official in some sort of uniform. This is a handsome young man with a big brown hat. His expression suggests he carries the cares of the world. But he smiles and says, ‘Goodness me, what have we here? I think I’d better take you home. Emily will be surprised.’

  ~~~~******~~~~

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks to:

  My wife Jan and my family for unfailing support in the things that matter.

  Dr Chris McLeod of Wordworks for his helpful assessments and support.

  My dear friends Jo and Brian Smith, whose support and pertinent comments at a critical stage put the work back on track.

  Lynn Allen and Chris Coggin for encouragement to keep going.

  Joleene Naylor for friendly hassle-free design.

  ~~~~******~~~~

  ALSO AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD

  FIELD WALKING — A SEQUEL TO WHAT LIES BURIED

  A hit-man employed by Lenny d’Aratzio brings new threats to the Blake family at Banabrook.

  ~~~~******~~~~

  BLAKE FAMILY TREE