Bereft (8 page)

The heat of the room was mammalian, oppressive. Quinn stepped over to the curtain and parted it a fraction to peer outside. A slice of daylight keened into the dim room.

“Do you remember how Apollo inflicted a plague on the Greeks for kidnapping Chryseis? Do you remember how I read that to you, Quinn?
The Iliad
? When you were a boy? Those stories I read to you and … the others?”

She licked her lips. “When my parents died I inherited my father's library, as you know. He had been a voracious reader, had books sent out from London, journals and the like. This is right after I was married, and Robert had left for England. Your father and I had moved to Bathurst, and I was dreadfully lonely. And I recall picking a book at random from one of the crates and starting to read, and before I knew it the afternoon had darkened and my weeping had been kept at bay for several hours.”

Mary took another sip of water. “
A Thousand and One Nights
,” she said with relish. “Even now I think of the City of Brass, the dead queen with quicksilver eyes. Magic carpets. I read them to you. An old book it was, with purple and gold pictures. My goodness. Full of genies and bearded men and giant eagles, a magnetic mountain that sucked the nails from the hull of a ship. Those stories were better than dreams. They transported me, Quinn. Not even the Bible had managed that. Your father was quite alarmed, not helped by the foolish legend going around that anyone who finished all the stories would die. He thought it unnatural for a woman to read so much. I credit those crates of books for—well, not quite saving my life, of course, but something close to it. A good story is like medicine, in my opinion.”

His mother had become more animated, but now she closed her eyes, as if the effort of speech had exhausted her. Quinn traced the lumpy scar at his mouth. The bed squeaked under him when he shifted his weight.

“And do you remember all those other stories I told you?” she asked.

Of course he remembered. His mother's storytelling abilities were renowned. On winter nights all five of them would assemble in front of the fire—Nathaniel sucking on his pipe, William huddled with arms folded about his knees, Sarah resting against Quinn's shoulder—as their mother's voice, pitching and growling, altering with each character, swirled around the darkness. She told them of Tom the chimney sweep and his encounter with the water babies, of Peter Rabbit, of Gulliver's travels to the land of the savage and frightening Yahoos. She didn't even need a book. If called upon to manufacture something from thin air, she could stitch together a tale from all she had heard over the years, even adding a few creations of her own: a race of tiny folk who lived in the garden on old tea leaves, an insect with the face of a dog. She could make even the moral verses from the
Boy's Own Paper
exciting.

“How I have missed my children,” she continued. “A cavern inside me. And I have ventured there often searching for you, but it is always empty. I want to ask you more but I am unsure if I even want to know. I have resisted hearing too much about that day. It is enough that it happened. More than enough. I would often sit in your old room, the room you all shared, and an entire day would pass. Your brother was unable to sleep in there after what happened and left soon afterwards, in any case. He slept in the hallway or on the veranda until he went north. You all left, but the room is the same.

“You remember Sarah's little cigar box of things she collected? Her lucky things? She had a feather in there and I went through a period when I would clutch it—you will think me mad on this—in my right hand and hold it to my forehead and pray. Later I developed a peculiar certainty that by doing so and saying a part of some Byron poem she might return to me, or perhaps I to her. That you all would, because it was only after that day that so much went wrong. Her … her death was at the heart of everything.”

Mary paused again. “I did the same sort of thing with your cigarette cards, William's soldiers. Incantations they were, I suppose. Blasphemous, probably. Your father hates that I go in there. Says I'm being maudlin. Perhaps he is right but now he leaves me to my own devices. He almost never spoke of her death. Said he didn't want to infect people with our grief. In
fect
them, what a word! It is one thing to die but another thing entirely to do so in such a manner. Murder. No one knew what to say to me. Even the minister. And now the war, the plague. No one knows what to say to anyone anymore …” Her voice trailed away.

Soon she fell asleep. He watched her for a long time. She gasped for breath, twitched, whispered words he was unable to decipher. As he cooled her face and neck with a damp cloth, an idea took hold in him until it had assumed the status of a conviction. To care for his mother, to allow her some peace, at least, to ensure she knew no child of hers was guilty of murder: perhaps this was why he had been summoned? Somewhat heartened, he kissed her burning cheek, and returned to his campsite.

7

T
hat night, Quinn lay back, snugged into the curve his shoulders had made in the pine needles and stared up at the darkness. The moon hove into view. The forest spoke in its secret tongue, and if he turned his head and pressed his ear to the ground he fancied he might hear the millions of dead rustling in their mass, unmarked graves on the far side of the world. Sarah had always claimed to understand the language of animals and trees, the growls of possums and wallabies. But what of the dead?

The previous year, while on leave in London, he had visited a celebrated spiritualist with his friend Fletcher Wakefield, whose fiancée in Adelaide had died of tuberculosis. Fletcher grinned a lot, one of those fellows invariably described as
irrepressible
. In their dormitory at Abbey Wood, he talked to Quinn about his late sweetheart and of the wedding they had planned. Although this conversation took many diversions, it always ended with Fletcher regretting how he had missed his chance to tell Doris how much he loved her and how she was without a doubt—without
any doubt
in the world—the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Far too good for me
, would generally be the self-mocking postscript.
Far too good.

Quinn was reluctant to attend, but Fletcher, who had gone to numerous séances before, assured him the spirits only spoke to those with an open heart and who asked the medium a specific question. The spirits, by their nature, were only concerned with those interested in them. This was perhaps some consolation.

London was teeming with such places at the time and there was no shortage of people wishing to communicate with dear ones who had crossed over. There were women who conjured spirits that rapped on the undersides of tables, men who photographed ghostly faces hovering about one's shoulders in velvet-dark rooms, a medium who spoke in the voice of a long-dead Indian chief. Quinn had even heard of a young lady who, from her ears, could draw forth the gelatinous substance of which ghosts were made. To Quinn it seemed the world was suddenly so full of grieving people that to wander London's streets was to feel the press not only of those present and alive, but also to be aware of their collective longing for loved ones killed in the Great War.

Along with eight others, Quinn and Fletcher filed into the wood-panelled parlour of the Marylebone house of a Mrs. Alice Cranshaw whose triplet daughters, it was said, possessed the ability to hear the voices of those who had departed this world, and to relay their messages to those still living.

Mrs. Cranshaw's parlour was warm and dark. The lady herself was stout and middle-aged and smoked a cigarette in a holder while casting an imperious gaze over the throng. Fletcher greeted an acquaintance, leaving Quinn unaccompanied. He felt conspicuous in his uniform and endeavoured to remain unnoticed, but Mrs. Cranshaw beckoned to him and drew him so close he could feel her breath's wet bluster on his cheek.

“And who are you here for, my dear?”

“Pardon?”

The woman made an odd movement with her mouth, as if chewing her own tongue, before sliding the glistening holder between her lips. Her hair was like so much wire arranged atop her head. Quinn cast about for Fletcher, but he was still engaged in conversation. Mrs. Cranshaw gripped his arm. There were flecks of spittle on the corners of her mouth. “Don't worry, boy. I won't eat you,” she said, although she nibbled on her cigarette holder, which he now saw was made of jade, as if preparing to do just that.

He longed to withdraw his arm but felt it would be rude to do so. She terrified him, a fact of which she was undoubtedly aware and in which she probably delighted.

“Nobody ma'am,” he said at last, and indicated Fletcher. “I'm here with my friend. He wishes to, er, speak with his late fiancée.”

Mrs. Cranshaw frowned. “Oh, but I am sure there is someone. We have all lost someone close in these dark times. A friend? A brother who might have crossed over? Someone in the war?”

Quinn glanced again at Fletcher.

“Are you afraid of death?” Mrs. Cranshaw asked with a hint of mockery.

Quinn thought about this. “No.”

“You don't believe what we do here though, do you?”

“That's not for me to say.”

“Very diplomatic, but you can tell me. I don't mind. You don't believe in the spirit world?”

“I don't think so, ma'am.”

“But you look afraid. Are you afraid, boy?”

“I have no wish to hear what the dead might have to say. Besides, why would they come back here?”

Mrs. Cranshaw sighed. “The spirits are sometimes—how to put this?—unquiet. Restless. Death is not always the end of things for everyone. There is often unfinished business, especially for those killed suddenly and violently—like in war. Sometimes the dead are trapped in an awful halfway world until they can say something to those left behind. Indeed, the living are sometimes themselves trapped, until they hear what the dead might have to tell them. There are some things that cannot be left unsaid. But if you don't believe in it all, then there is no need to be afraid, is there?”

Quinn realised he despised this woman and, worse, suspected she was a charlatan preying on vulnerable families. It was rumoured she kept the girls—who were probably not her daughters at all—against their will. Everyone knew the Bible prohibited talking with the dead. He attempted to withdraw his arm, a movement that only prompted the woman to clench him tighter.

“You know who was here a few weeks ago? Doyle, that's who. Sir Arthur. Ask the maid if you wish. Or Mrs. Beecroft wearing the white scarf. She was here. Seeking word from his son or wife, he was. My girl Lizzie was able to help him out. Ever so grateful, he was. I'm surprised he isn't here this afternoon, but I suppose he's busy. He's a doctor, after all. A man of science, you know.”

When Quinn offered no response, Mrs. Cranshaw lowered her voice. “You may think what you wish,” she rasped, now staring at him squarely in the eye. “But these good people are all quite bereaved. They need to hear from their dead. Their brothers and husbands. Their sisters. There's millions of them, you know.
Millions
. It softens their grief. Besides, this is part of the war effort; we need to remember their killers so they might be brought to account. If we forget those beastly Huns our boys will have died in vain, don't you know. See that lady there with the pale shawl over her widow's weeds? See her? Mrs. Henry Dance. Three out of four sons gone.” She held up three knobbly fingers. “Three out of four. Do you see the way she watches you and your grinning friend?”

Quinn shook his head. Indeed, he had not noticed the woman until that moment.

Mrs. Cranshaw was strangely triumphant. “Well, she
hates
you because you are alive while her sons are in a mass grave. In bloody France, of all places. Cold and alone. Quite dead. What would you say to her? What would you say to a woman like that, eh? What would you say to her husband?”

The woman in question was perched in a green armchair. Her thin and restless fingers wrung a pair of black gloves in her lap, as if to death. Her husband stood at her shoulder and each of them wore a startled, pensive expression like they had steeled themselves for bad news so many times that their faces were permanently set thus.

“They are tired of sympathy,” Mrs. Cranshaw went on. “Of people's kind words and the newspaper chatter about honour and bravery and sacrifice. They need a sign from their boys. Would you begrudge them that? Where should they go, these people? To
church
?” And she let go of his arm as if ridding herself of an ungrateful child.

Quinn felt humiliated and prepared to take his leave, but a warm hush descended on the gathering as three girls filed in with heads lowered. They took their places at a long table upon which were scrolls of paper, one before each girl. The girls were similar, aside from the fact that two were blonde while the last, the prettiest, had hair the colour of damp rust. Again he scanned the room, hoping to depart, but at that moment a maid had closed the door, trapping him in the parlour.