Beyond the Horizon (23 page)

Tom nodded to the butcher as he followed the postmistress through to the back of the shop. In the back room animal carcasses hung from hooks and there was a powerful smell of blood – a smell Tom was very familiar with.

A young man was sitting at a wooden bench outside, plucking the carcase of a hen, and when Tom glanced down at where his legs should be he saw that he had none. Tom guessed that he had lost them in the war and had been medically discharged to return to civilian life.

Phillipe paused in his work but did not bother to offer his hand when Tom thrust out his own. Maybe it was resentment, Tom reflected, that he was still in possession of his own legs. The postmistress spoke gently to Phillipe, who was a handsome young man in his early twenties.

‘He and Juliet were childhood friends,' the postmistress explained. ‘He said that he saw her in a Paris street known for its brothels about four months ago before he was wounded. He spoke briefly with her, but she was with a man, a deserter from your army well known in that part of the city as a bad man. Phillipe said that the man was once known as Smithers – before he received false papers.'

‘Phillipe seems to know a lot about Juliet,' Tom said quietly.

‘He once had, how you would say, a crush on Juliet, but knows that now he has no legs she would never look at him,' the woman said sadly. ‘Phillipe says Juliet looked very sad and fearful of the man, Smithers, who was with her.'

Smithers . . . the name reverberated in Tom's memory. He already knew from what he had been told that Smithers had hated him; apparently the man had shot himself to avoid combat. Then he had deserted.

‘Could Phillipe tell me the name of the street where he saw Juliet?' Tom asked and the postmistress translated. She gave Tom the answer. ‘There is little else Phillipe can tell us.'

Tom realised now that Phillipe had not offered his hand in greeting because he resented Tom for being Juliet's lover, but as they left he said something over his shoulder.

‘What did he say?' Tom asked.

‘He said that he prays you will find Juliet and return her to the village,' the postmistress answered.

Tom stepped onto the street and turned to the woman who had been so kind and helpful. ‘Thank you for your help,' he said.

‘Juliet would come every day in the hope of receiving your letters,' the woman replied. ‘She spoke about you with love. I, too, would like to see Juliet return to us, and teach once again in the school. The children miss her; we all do. Adieu, Sergeant Duffy, and may God keep you well.'

Tom watched as the woman walked away to her shop. There was a bitter chill in the air and the surrounding open fields had long lost their pretty blue, yellow and red flowers. Another winter was coming to the trenches, and Tom wondered if Wallarie would still be looking out for him.

‘You are planning to do what!' Paddy exclaimed in surprise. He and Tom were sitting in a corner of a smoky little café among the many other soldiers packed in to drink cheap red wine.

‘I need to get to Paris,' Tom answered. ‘No matter what the risk. I know where to start looking for Juliet.'

Paddy looked around, hoping that his cobber had not been overhead. ‘You know you'll be marked as absent without leave, and that could be changed to desertion, depending how long you are away,' he said. ‘Tom, you're the platoon commander now; you're the one we all look to.'

‘I have to find Juliet,' Tom replied. ‘She's my whole life, I know that now, and I would rather risk a long time in prison than not find her. We risk our bloody lives every day out there in the trenches, and for what? At least this time I'm risking my life for something that has meaning.'

Paddy took a sip of wine and screwed up his face. ‘Wish this was a bloody cold beer.'

‘So, you know a few tricks,' Tom said quietly. ‘How would you go about taking a bit of unauthorised leave?'

Paddy thought for a moment. ‘You need civvie clothes,' he said. ‘In uniform every bloody red cap would be stopping you and asking for papers. That means you have to pass yourself off as a Froggie civilian, and for that you need papers. But that's not going to help much as you don't have a very good grasp of the local lingo.'

‘I think I know where I might get papers,' Tom said, staring at the blood-red wine in his glass. ‘As for the language, I might be a Froggie soldier discharged after suffering shellshock and unable to speak. We've seen that before.'

‘At least in this country the colour of your skin isn't a problem,' Paddy added in a matter-of-fact way. ‘You'll need a bit of money in the way of francs, and there I can help out. Our leave is up tomorrow morning so you will have to get your act together if you are going to go on this harebrained trip of yours to Paris.'

Tom smiled and Paddy could see a glitter in his eyes.

‘Well, here's to Gay Paree – and I pray that you don't get yourself shot,' Paddy said, raising his glass.

Tom grinned, then downed the rest of his wine. It was time to visit the postmistress again. No doubt she would be in a position to get her hands on official papers; all he had to do was convince her that he needed them to find Juliet. Somehow, he felt that she would be sympathetic to his illegal and dangerous mission.

The door to the room Paddy and Tom were sharing in their billet creaked open in the early hours of the morning and Tom entered quietly.

‘Got everything,' he said as Paddy came awake.

‘You're a bloody fool, Tom,' Paddy said as Tom stripped off his uniform to dress in the garb of a French working man.

‘I can hitch a ride on a cart to the next village, and catch a bus from there to a railway station,' Tom said, tying up the boots, which fitted nicely. ‘Everything will be okay,' he continued. ‘You can tell the boss that I must have gone mad – another bout of shellshock.'

‘That will not hold up, Tom,' Paddy said, sitting up in bed. ‘So get out of here and let me get some sleep. I'll be able to give evidence at your court martial that you were behaving like a nutter – and I won't be lying.'

‘Thanks, cobber,' Tom grinned. ‘I'd do the same thing for a white man.'

Then Tom was gone, walking along the cobbled streets of the town to a road junction just outside the village. The sun was rising when the promised horse and cart arrived to pick him up. He knew that he was now officially absent without leave, and if he did not find Juliet within days he would be marked on the roll as a deserter. That would mean a court martial and a long time in a military prison. He hoped that he would find Juliet quickly and then, when he had her safely away from Paris, he would be able to return to his unit of his own accord. With any luck he'd only face a charge of being absent without leave. Life was full of uncertainties, and all that Tom cared about for now was finding the woman he loved.

22

T
here was no way anyone could keep the attempt on the life of such a rich and famous family member out of the newspapers. George sat as he usually did reading the morning paper over breakfast.

‘Damn the bastards to hell!' he swore. The facts were reported, but he was not that obtuse that he could not read between the lines of what the journalist was saying about his private life. Although the coroner had already declared Maude Urqhart's death an unfortunate overdose from heroin, that did not stop the newspaper article inferring a link with the attempt on Mrs Louise Macintosh's life.

In a fury, George slammed the paper down on the dining room table, knocking over his boiled egg in its sterling silver holder. This scandal could seriously jeopardise his chances of knighthood.

George was still fuming when Louise joined him in the dining room. She barely greeted him as she gingerly sat down at the opposite end of the highly polished teak table.

George held up the paper. ‘Have you read the rubbish the paper has written about us?' he growled.

‘No doubt your dalliance with the dead girl has raised questions,' Louise replied calmly as George pushed the paper down the table to her. She did not pick it up.

‘Did Giselle tell you why she could not come down and stay with us at Christmas?' he asked, changing the subject.

‘She did not give any reason, other than she would prefer to remain on Glen View with her mother,' Louise answered and nodded her thanks as the cook placed a plate of poached eggs and bacon before her.

‘It will be bloody hot up there, and there aren't many comforts,' George said, ‘but it's time that I visited to see how that damned Scot is managing my station.'

‘Your station?' Louise queried. ‘If I remember rightly, under the terms of your father's will you share the ownership with Giselle's son.'

George reddened. He did not like being reminded that he was not solely in charge of the Macintosh empire, and he knew that his wife had done so to annoy him. Without another word George rose from the table, threw his napkin down and stormed out of the dining room, leaving his wife to eat her breakfast alone.

A thousand miles north the sun was over the horizon and the Aboriginal warrior knew the day would be hot. But it had been worth the trek to the ancient creek course because the woman, Giselle Macintosh, had left the valuable supplies of tea, sugar, flour and tobacco by an old gum tree that she had marked for him weeks earlier. The ancestor spirits had forbidden him to seek out those at Glen View, but they had said nothing about them seeking him out, and Wallarie could see the woman sitting by the tree while her mare grazed on the drying clumps of grass nearby.

Wallarie approached, trailing his long spears, and smiled to reveal teeth blackened by the white man's tobacco.

‘Thank you, missus,' he said as Giselle rose to greet him. He withdrew his battered pipe from a dillybag at his waist and immediately began plugging the pipe for a smoke. He sat down, cross-legged, and Giselle sat down opposite him.

‘I've heard stories from the stockmen that this creek was a place where bad things happened to your people,' Giselle said.

Wallarie glanced around as if expecting to see his long-dead clan members sitting with them. ‘Place
baal
at night,' he said quietly. ‘Spirits of the dead come here and cry for what has gone from the land. Wallarie a very young man when the native police come and kill all. Wallarie escape and found his brother, Tom Duffy. Together we ride and shoot. Together the whitefellas hunt us until they kill my brother, and his woman, Mondo. But no one remember all that 'cept me, and soon I will join the ancestor spirits in the sky. My kin, Tom Duffy, he must know all the stories so he can tell his sons who will tell their sons and sing the songs of our people.'

‘Who is Tom Duffy?' Giselle asked, drawn into the old man's world of memories.

‘Tom . . . Tom is a mighty warrior, but I have lost him,' Wallarie sighed as the nicotine brought its rush. ‘Sometime by and by, he comes to my dreams and we talk 'bout our people, but he is lost in another world. He is in a place where the rain always comes and the plains are always green.'

‘Is he in Queensland?' Giselle asked and Wallarie glanced at her.

‘Tom is in that place where all the whitefellas are fighting for their king.'

‘France!' Giselle gasped. ‘Tom is a soldier?'

‘Mighty warrior who has killed more whitefellas than me,' Wallarie responded with pride. ‘He steal the stars from the sky, and now richer than all whitefellas hereabouts. The spirits have told me that he will one day restore the land to them.'

The old Aboriginal's rambling did not make much sense to Giselle but she knew it was not her place to say anything. ‘One woman, Kate Tracy, she my sister in the spirit world. She live in big house in Townsville. All these people share your son's blood – and so does Tom,' Wallarie continued.

Giselle recognised the name Kate Tracy as her husband had mentioned her. From what Alexander had said, his Aunt Kate was a very special woman and her son, Matthew Duffy, almost a brother to Alexander. Before the war the two had visited Giselle's father's plantation and she had come to know Matthew. As far as she knew from bits and pieces of news, Matthew was flying in Palestine, and she prayed that he would survive.

‘Are you a man who has magic?' Giselle blurted.

‘Some fellas think I am,' Wallarie replied and said no more.

‘I have had dreams that only you seem to understand,' Giselle sighed. ‘That seems a little bit like magic to me.'

For a moment Wallarie stared at the creek, now a mere muddy trickle. ‘Magic stuff is what whitefellas don't understand,' he said. ‘Magic stuff all around here. The water goes and the water comes back. The eagle can see further than any whitefella, and that is the eagle's magic, but the eagle does not know he has the magic.'

Giselle could see that she was going nowhere with this line of questioning. ‘I must return to the homestead,' she said, rising to her feet. ‘I will make sure that there is always a supply of goods left here for you.'

‘You are a good missus,' Wallarie said. ‘When the big death comes to all the lands soon, I hope that the ancestor spirits will protect you.'

Giselle turned to ask Wallarie what he meant by the big death but he was staring with cloudy eyes into the bush, and she could see that he was in some kind of trance. She walked over to her mare and threw her leg over her saddle. When she glanced back at the bank of the creek she noticed that Wallarie and the supplies were already gone. Giselle shook her head. He was an exasperating man and she did not know whether he was truly magical or simply an old rogue who liked to have people think that he had spiritual powers.

It was night-time in Paris and Tom Duffy huddled under the shelter of a stone bridge. It was raining and he drew up the shabby coat to protect himself against the cold. Tom was not alone under the bridge. Three other men also sought shelter there, and they watched him warily. They wore ragged civilian clothing and the Australian wondered if they were French army deserters, or simply homeless veterans, because they were all of military age.

Tom slipped his hand around the knife he carried which had once been a bayonet until a soldier in the battalion had cut it down and attached a brass knuckle-duster hilt. The razor-sharp knife was a dual purpose hand-to-hand weapon. Tom's instincts warned him that the three men were not to be trusted as they watched him with keen eyes.

The journey to Paris had gone well, with only one close call when French military police stopped Tom as he stepped onto the railway station. Tom had produced his falsified papers and to emphasise that he was a truly shellshocked veteran of the French army had fallen to the ground to scream and roll up into a foetal position. The military police, embarrassed by the spectacle of one of France's heroes being stopped for an identification check in front of the many civilians waiting for the Paris train, moved away, leaving his papers on the ground beside him.

By the time he had reached Paris it was late, and Tom had not been sure how to find the street Phillipe had told him about. For the moment he had needed sleep and a place to get out of the rain. As a soldier used to living in muddy trenches, the shelter provided by the bridge was like accommodation in a mansion. At least under the bridge no one was trying to kill him, and his companions were now passing around a bottle of some fiery liquid. One of the men spoke in French and reached out with the bottle to Tom, who accepted it and thanked them in the few words of French he knew, before passing it back.

Eventually sleep overtook Tom and he dozed off, gripping the handle of his knife close to him under his jacket. He was suddenly awoken from a deep sleep by one of the three men shaking his shoulder and holding a knife against his throat.

‘English,' the man snarled and Tom could smell the rancid odour of cheap wine on his breath. ‘You call out in your sleep in English.
Non
?'

‘English, no, Australian, yes,' he replied, realising that they had already gone through his pockets and removed his official papers and money, along with his knife. There was no sense lying when they had the drop on him.

Unexpectedly, the young man holding the knife to his throat withdrew the weapon and sat back on his heels. ‘You deserter like us,' he said. ‘You know they will kill us if they catch us.'

Tom did not tell the French former soldier that the Australian government was virtually alone in forbidding the death penalty to its troops. ‘I am not a deserter, I'm looking for someone and I will return to my battalion when I find them,' Tom said, seeing that it was safe to sit up and doing so.

The young Frenchman looked at Tom with surprise. ‘I have heard that the Boche is reluctant to fight you Australians. Maybe the war end soon,
non
?'

‘I hope you are right,' Tom said. ‘You intend to give me back my things?'

The Frenchman didn't answer. Tom guessed he was in his late twenties, but he had the haunted eyes of a man who had already seen far too much. He was handsome in a Gallic way and Tom guessed that he was mixed race like himself. Maybe Algerian and European parentage. ‘You speak bloody good English,' he said in an attempt to gain common ground with the man. ‘Where did you learn?'

‘I was a seaman before the war and travel much,' the Frenchman said. ‘I like England. I even travel to Australia. I see that you are like me, not all white.'

Tom was surprised at the man's perceptive observation and guessed that as a former sailor he would have been in contact with many races. ‘I have Aboriginal blood,' Tom answered and saw the beaming smile on the other man's face.

‘You are half-caste like me,' he chuckled. ‘We fight for the white man who does not care if we die for him. That is why I desert. My name is Chason, and I was a gunner. My comrades wish to cut your throat, but I say no. We just rob you instead, and let you live.'

‘How about you give me back my papers and keep the money?' Tom said. ‘Then we can go our own way.'

Chason frowned and used the pointed tip of his knife to clean under his cracked nails. ‘I do not steal from comrades. I give back your papers and keep the francs. But I will help you so that you cannot say Chason is a thief.'

Tom was bemused by the man's logic but he was grateful to have his help. He told the man the name of the street he was looking for and Chason beamed.

‘I know it,' he said. ‘It is a place where officers go to find woman. You know a woman there?'

Tom did not know how to answer that question. ‘I don't know. Maybe.'

‘We go there today,' Chason said, standing and addressing his two companions in French before turning back to Tom.

‘They say they will go but they will take their share of your money. I cannot stop them but I will work for my share. I meet
mes amis
later. I have friends in Marseilles who can get me a berth on a merchant ship back to Africa. Maybe if you have money you can go with me.'

‘When I find the woman I am looking for I will be returning to my battalion at the front,' Tom said. ‘All they can do is throw me in prison.'

‘Okay, we go,' Chason said. ‘I know a café on the street and we will spend your money on breakfast there.'

Tom rose from the ground and brushed himself down. He followed the Frenchman, who waved to his companions as they sauntered away.

‘Here are your papers,' Chason said, handing back the crumpled pieces of valuable paper reproduced by the postmistress of the village. ‘They are very good forgeries.'

Tom did not comment but felt uneasy that Chason had spotted them as forgeries. They stepped onto a broad avenue lined with trees and already filling with civilians on bicycles, as well as a scattering of soldiers in the uniforms of many nations. What made Tom nervous was the occasional sight of a British red-capped military policeman or a French gendarme.

Chason turned into a narrower side street on either side of which were double-storeyed buildings that looked almost as old as Paris itself. Now it became busy with more uniformed soldiers bumping each other and walking off the excesses of sex and alcohol from the night before. They ignored the two filthy men wearing long civilian coats.

‘Here is the café,' Chason said, indicating a small shop that smelled of coffee and croissants. Tom realised just how hungry he was and, despite being anxious to seek out Juliet, realised he needed to eat.

The two men went inside and Tom noticed that the proprietor cast them a disparaging look as he poured a cup of coffee for an American officer. He was about to say something to Tom and Chason when Chason produced a fistful of Tom's francs, placing them on an unoccupied table by the large glass window. The proprietor sniffed and turned his head as both men sat down.

Chason ordered and their breakfast appeared minutes later.