Out of Alice (23 page)

‘And Paul?'

Jack shrugged. ‘He can follow us if he's ready, or make his own way if he's not.'

Sara said mildly, ‘He did apologise, you know. Maybe all reporters go a bit overboard when they think they're onto something. I noticed he had quite a bruise coming where you punched him, too.'

‘He had,' Jack said without apology. ‘It'll remind him not to try anything.'

‘Like what?'

Jack shrugged. ‘JC Randall is a very rich man, Sara. Something to remember if he should turn out to be your father. Do you think our journalist friend hasn't thought of that too? Maybe he's planning to sell information about you to Randall? We only have his word for it that he's never spoken to the man.'

‘That's true, but —'

‘I know. We can argue ourselves into knots over it. Let's just wait and see, eh? And if you could pour me a drink – I'm as dry as chips.'

The following morning the two vehicles crossed the bridge over the Todd River, heading out of town just as the sun touched the rocky surface of the range looming behind them. Paul Markham had arrived earlier at the Ketch home driving a beige-coloured Pajero, while Jack was snugging down the last rope over the Toyota's load. Sara greeted him, kissed Frank's cheek as he held the vehicle door open for her, then slid her legs into the footwell, arranging them around the water bottle.

‘Good trip.' The old man patted the hand she was resting on the window frame. ‘Take care, my dear. I hope you find what you're looking for.'

Sara nodded gratefully, fussing with her hat. ‘Yes, me too.' She had slept poorly, her mind a-churn with apprehension, and now felt unready to face the day. Everything was happening too quickly. Yesterday, standing by the vehicle's side in the late afternoon as they finished their shopping, Jack had asked if she wished to visit the cemetery. His shadow had stretched behind him across the car park as he rubbed thoughtfully at his bristly jaw.

‘We'd just about have time before they lock up. They'll have a plan of the layout if you wanted to find your – the Randall boy's grave.'

‘Not yet. Maybe when we come back.'

‘Okay.' He'd left the subject there, sliding in behind the wheel and swearing as his hand inadvertently touched the hot metal of the cab. ‘Phew! I'm here to tell you officially, as a Territorian, that it's middling hot today. You can quote me if you wish.'

Sara had laughed at that. ‘Know what? I'd already figured it out myself. Let's get back before the butter melts.'

Jack started the vehicle, wincing from the heat trapped in the steering wheel. The cab was like a furnace; Sara felt momentarily faint and cracked her window open, letting the trapped air escape. She was afraid, she realised, and for a treacherous moment wished she had never set eyes on Markham. The man was a human vulture, like all his type, feeding on misery. Surely it would have been better never to know the truth, only it was too late now for that option. Markham with his unproven surmises had seen to that. He had left her no choice but to take this path to possible knowledge. Jack, thank God, had seemed to understand that and her heart lifted at the thought. She could never have faced it without him, but she didn't have to.

Paul caught up with them just short of Hermannsburg, a Lutheran mission, where they pulled up for lunch. The mission was started sometime back in the eighteen hundreds, Jack told her, as he cracked sticks over his knee to feed the fire he'd coaxed into life. Sara, unpacking food from the esky, looked around at the endless red flatness broken by low scrub and the distant ochre ranges. Paul was the only other living thing in view.

‘Wasn't it an awfully long way from anywhere back then? How did they live?'

‘They were tough men, the brothers. Made their way overland from somewhere near Adelaide, I believe. But the Aboriginals they'd come to Australia to Christianise were here, or hereabouts anyway, so I suppose they had no choice.' Jack set the billy against the flames and waved a hand southwards. ‘The Finke River's in there, and Palm Valley. We won't see either on this road; further along it takes a big loop around the end of the Gardiner Range.' He drew it with a stick in the dust. ‘There's the Mereenie gas field, 'bout there, then it heads straight south to Kings Canyon.'

‘Across Dare Plain,' Paul, who had come to stand at his shoulder, interjected. He cleared his throat, the sound loud in the silence. ‘That's where the cairn is. I've got the coordinates, but there's supposed to be a track in to it. One of the station owners looks after it apparently.'

‘Well,' Sara said, turning away for fear the fluttering in her stomach would be visible on her face. ‘That's for later. Come and eat, both of you, before the butter melts entirely.' She had put out salami and cheese, and hard little red apples that turned out not to have much flavour. None of them had any inclination to linger in the sparse shade the low desert trees provided, so they packed quickly and drove on, Paul's Pajero now leading the way.

‘Randall can't have towed a caravan out here,' Jack said, as they jounced over gutters and slewed through heavy sand drifts that gripped the tyres causing the vehicle to slew violently about. ‘Not twenty years ago. So he must've just had a camping rig on his vehicle, or maybe he towed a trailer and put up tents. It would've been fairly warm too. Didn't it happen about this time?'

‘That does seem a bit odd. So it wasn't school holidays, then?' Sara's lips felt stiff. ‘Maybe he thought the twins were young enough to miss a few lessons. You'd think the June holidays would've been a better choice though.'

‘Not for him. That's the middle of the cattle season. Anyway, he had a governess along, according to Markham.' Jack was assessing the country. ‘This must be crown land because there's plenty of feed, and I haven't seen a single track – well, beyond camel and emu. No stock, I mean.'

Sara pointed in mute answer and he slowed to watch a little mob of camels with their curious undulating stride trot through a low patch of wattle. Their dun-coloured hides blended into the scenery, wide pads raising little dust, identical woolly tufts on their humps and necks.

‘They're such funny-looking animals,' she mused. ‘Do you have any on your place?'

‘We saw them occasionally when we were kids. Dad hadn't finished fencing the boundary back then and they'd drift in from the desert further south. The Simpson's full of 'em. When the season's good they can stay down there living on the parakeelya. Supposed to be a million or more of 'em in the Territory, all wild.'

‘And parakeelya is?'

‘It's a native succulent, full of moisture. The blackfellas used it too, Dad says.' He glanced at the sun. ‘Sing out if you'd like a break, we're making good time. We can afford to pull up for a bit if you want.'

‘No,' she said starkly, and after a moment, as if to soften her refusal, ‘We'd lose Paul.' The Pajero was a dust cloud dwindling into the mirage dancing before them. Abruptly she said, ‘Tell me about yourself, Jack. Did you always want to work a property? And how did you come to meet Marilyn?'

‘As to that, it's in the blood. Think of young Sam now and you've got me at the same age, cracking my neck to grow up and run the place. I never imagined any other sort of life. When I was about sixteen Dad tried, not very hard, mind you, to point out that I didn't
have
to follow him into the business. I could do an apprenticeship, get a trade. But I was like, why would I want to do that? Funny thing is I did in the end. Mum was responsible. She reckoned I should get away, sample a bit of what life had to offer and learn something at the same time. So I wound up apprenticed to a workshop. I only agreed because I fancied myself in love.'

‘Oh, yes.'

He was glad to see her smile.

‘Who with, then?'

He sighed dramatically, corners of his eyes creasing. ‘Fittingly enough, a Juliet – Juliet Marani, my boss's daughter. An Italian family and hotshot Catholics, so she was guarded like Fort Knox. I thought it only right at first, but it was damn frustrating. Took me eighteen months before I even managed to kiss her. Just as well, I suppose, because it dragged the whole thing out and kept me going in the garage till it didn't make sense to stop. Teenagers, eh? What about you? Anyone you broke your heart over?'

‘Not really. I couldn't take boys home and I didn't have the clothes or the confidence to attract them anyway.' Sara shook her head, dismissing the matter. ‘A bit of necking at the movies – all spit and sweaty hands – and that was it until Roger. So you forgot about Juliet and went back to Arkeela with your ticket, I presume. What then?'

‘I pretty much stayed. Mum was right about the trade though. When the seasons weren't so good or the work was slack, I took jobs at neighbouring properties sorting out broken-down machinery. Then when the government introduced the campaign to test the national herds for TB and brucellosis, I became a fencing contractor. There was good money in it. That's when I met Marilyn.'

‘When was this?'

‘Let's see. I was twenty-eight when we married, back in eighty-seven. I met her the year before at a dance in Katherine. She'd come down from Darwin with the friends she'd been holidaying with. I was working on a property near Adelaide River and she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen.' His voice hardened. ‘And that's about all she was – pretty. Mum didn't like her, or Beth. That shoulda told me something, but it didn't.' He shrugged. ‘We lasted three years, then she lit out for the city. Four years ago now. I suppose the notice that she's started divorce proceedings means she's found somebody else.'

‘I'm sorry,' Sara said. ‘Marriage break-ups are messy things.'

He glanced across at her. ‘Was yours?'

‘Yes. Roger was difficult. He kept wanting us to try to mend things. As if it were that simple, like, we could just try harder when . . . Never mind. He's happy now, so some good has come out of it. I think that he was first attracted to me because I was so vulnerable, walking wounded, if you like. Only I didn't know I was because I thought my life was normal. Well, not normal, but within the range.' She looked down, pleating the hem of her shirt. ‘I'm not explaining this very well but you see I never knew what real family life was, until I met yours. Then I could see the gaps in mine. Whacking great holes, really. And when I started to remember, I realised that I'd once known happiness and trust. It only really came to me then what Roger had taken on, when he decided to love me. It made me glad that I'd freed him when I did, because eventually he would've come to hate me. And he deserved better.'

‘But we don't, do we? Decide, I mean. It happens for whatever reason – a man sees a pretty face or, in your ex-husband's case, someone in need of help – and that's it. At a thinking level we have little say in it, so you're not really at fault. Do you know that old song, “Que Sera, Sera”? Mum used to sing it all the time,
Whatever will be, will be.
Just about sums it all up. I – what's he playing at now?'

‘He's stopped, I think.' It was hard to tell. Sara pulled off her sunglasses and squinted hard into the splintering light, but between the shimmering air and the elongated effects of the constant mirage, it was impossible to tell if the distant blob of Paul's vehicle was stationary or not. The uncompromising solidity of the range rose to the left and a little behind them, and elsewhere the earth stretched away, flat and apparently water strewn.

‘Maybe it's the turn-off,' Jack said. ‘We should be getting close.'

Sara didn't reply. She had replaced her glasses and was staring at the landscape as they neared the Pajero. It was definitely stopped, driver's door open and Paul standing beside it with map in hand as they pulled up. She caught her breath and Jack glanced at her.

‘You okay?'

‘I – yes. Is it much further to the canyon?' she asked faintly.

‘Depends on the road. Maybe an hour.' The dark lenses veiled her eyes but her cheeks looked pale. ‘Keep drinking; it's hotter than you think.'

That brought a brief, ironic laugh. ‘I doubt it.' She turned the fan up a notch as Paul came to the window, red-faced and sweating.

‘Christ! What a climate. This is the turn-off. The cairn is about half a k in. Shall we?'

Jack jerked his head. ‘You go ahead.'

‘Right then.' Paul re-entered his vehicle and they set off, following the wheel tracks – for they could see little more than that – that wound across the plain. It was as flat as the Twelve Mile, its red quilt of soil sewn over with dried desert grasses and the tangled balls of roly-poly. Something gleamed ahead and Jack was suddenly aware that both of Sara's hands were pressed flat against the dashboard and she was breathing in heaving gasps. His foot slammed onto the brake and the Toyota came to a shuddering halt.

‘What's wrong?'

She swallowed, face ashen, and he reached to pull the sunglasses off, exposing her features to his alarmed gaze. ‘It was here!' she gasped. ‘I – it's coming back. The man – the bad man – Benny said we had to run. He said he'd make them stop and when we got out, we had to run.'

She rocked forward, face buried in her hands, a wild keening sound coming from her. Jack reached for her but the gearstick and esky were in the way. He tore his door open and ran to hers, yanking on the handle, and went to pull her towards him, then swore and wrestled the seatbelt free. He eased down the hands she had curled over her face.

‘It's all right,' he said firmly, placing an arm around her. ‘You're not back there any more, Sara. You're here with me, you're safe. Shhh now, just take it easy. Breathe, that's it, in and out. It's old stuff, remember, it happened years ago. You're safe here with me.' Her heart was racing, and he could see a pulse hammering under the pale skin of her throat. His ears told him that the Pajero had pulled up; its engine note fell to an idle and then switched off. The sun was a blade against his neck as he bent his head to peer at Sara. ‘Okay now?'

‘Yes. Sorry.' She wiped a shaky hand beneath her nose, green eyes wide and blurred, saying, ‘It was him, Vic Blake, the man I thought was my father. He left him here to die. He must have
known
he would, but he —'

‘Shhh.' Jack caught the hands she was wringing and held them firmly. ‘From the beginning. I take it you and Ben were put in a vehicle and you both tried to get away?'

‘Benny said – it was all dark and Benny whispered we had to get out.'

Jack's skin prickled into goosebumps for her gaze had gone blank and wide, and her voice had softened to a childlike pitch, with nothing of its normal timbre.