Thornwood House (56 page)

Luella was at my elbow, jostling me in her shocked state. She slid a hard object into my palm. A bone-handled hunting knife. Small and heavy, its leather sheath old and cracked – but the blade was sturdy and well-oiled, wickedly sharp.

‘It was my father’s,’ she said, peering into my face, her good eye watery with fear.

I clipped the knife to my belt and as I raced down the stairs, Luella’s voice called softly from the darkness behind me.

‘Do whatever you have to, Audrey. Just bring her safely home.’

The track winding along the embankment behind Luella’s house was a tunnel of darkness. Cicadas screamed in the thick creepers that walled either side, shadows clung to the ironbarks, bats swerved and dived over my head.

As I ran, my thoughts turned crazy. What if I’d acted too hastily? What if Bronwyn wasn’t up here at all, but instead was half-way to Brisbane with her abductor in a stolen car, or heading north to God knows where?

The gunshot I’d heard earlier still echoed in my head. I tried to tell myself it could have been anything – roo shooters,
a farmer culling foxes, feral dog control – but no amount of reasoning changed the facts: my daughter was out there alone, and the man from the settlers’ hut was armed.

The embankment widened, and ahead of me a broad shelf-like plateau of stone formed a natural bridge across the gully. The gorge was narrow here, its steep sides overgrown with blackthorn and prickly rock ferns, the trickle of creek water buried far below. When I reached the other side, the track veered left and led me downhill. A while later the ground evened out. I pushed through a break in the trees and emerged into the clearing.

It seemed smaller than I remembered. Silvery grass hemmed in by a perimeter of ironbarks, the tall curved stone at the centre looming like a grave marker. I cast about for evidence they’d been here – a trail trodden through the sward, or maybe a discarded scrap of clothing, but there was nothing. I approached the stone, listening over my ragged breathing for the sound of voices, for a muffled cry – but there was only the gentle drum of rain, the groan of branches, the crying wind. Overhead a boobook mewled, and from lower down the slope came the eerie thump of wallabies in the dark.

I approached the gully verge, in my panic treading too near the edge. A chunk of earth broke away and rubble spilled into the void. I stepped back. The ground appeared stable, but looking closer I saw it was a deadly trap. A flat rock shelf near the edge marked a section of earth around which a crack had formed in the soil, a zigzag fault line caused by years of drought and now carved deeper by the rain. One careless step and it would crumble away.

Moving along the verge, I found a more solid area of ground and looked over the side, dreading what I might see.

Far below, saplings grew from the steep walls, their slender trunks splashed by moonlight. Ferns trembled in the rain, and dead trees jutted like gangways over the chasm. All around were huge grey boulders, pushing from the soil and lending the
appearance of stability, but that was an illusion; one misplaced step and the whole edge might cave in.

Another spear of lightning blazed overhead. In its flash I saw every leaf, every stone, every twist of deadwood, every rabbit hole and glittering spider’s web as clearly as if in stark sunlight – an instant later it all plunged back to shadow.

Off in the distance, a branch crashed to the ground. I turned too quickly and my foot slipped, sending another shower of dirt and stones into the gully. As I hurried over to the boulder that sat at the clearing’s centre, other sounds came to me – sly rustlings and stirrings in the undergrowth – as if someone was edging nearer, trying not to be heard.

My hands shook as I grappled Luella’s hunting knife from its sheath. Aunt Morag used to say that it was pointless for a woman to carry a weapon because – in the event of an attack – it would most likely be wrested from her grip and used against her. Right then, dosed up as I was on adrenaline and terror, that old knife handle was melded to my palm. Nothing short of a nuclear blast could have prised it from me.

The moon drifted behind a cloud, plunging the clearing into near-blackness. In the sudden dark, my fears came to life. I saw another long-ago night in this clearing, a night I’d relived countless times in my imagination. Aylish had once stood where I was now standing, in the moon-shadow of the tall boulder. The darkness along the glade’s leafy perimeter would have shifted, as it did now, and the shadows would have seemed to gather substance, change form, perhaps even morph into human shape.

Another thread of lightning pulled at the seams of the sky. The night tore open, and in the brief illumination I saw motion in the trees. The bushes at the outer edge of the glade trembled, as if disturbed by a breath of wind. The darkness quivered, fell apart, and reassembled. Then a lone shadow broke from the gloom and moved slowly across the glade towards me.

I
recognised him at once.

Because, despite the shifting moonlight, despite the misty haze of rain, despite only having glimpsed him before now – the long passage of years following childhood had not changed Cleve Jarman so very much. Aylish’s description of the boy still resonated in the man.

His hair was no longer bristly, but long and caught back in a ponytail, dull silver in the moonlight. His face was exactly as I’d conjured it in my mind’s eye – the crease between his pale brows, the wide eyes brimming with unease, the whitish gleam of his skin. Now, though, he had a grungy beard, and wore a shapeless jacket and jeans. He was holding his right arm stiffly, straight at his side. I wondered if it was injured – then guessed that he was keeping something out of view . . . possibly Samuel’s handgun.

‘Hello, Audrey. Did you bring them?’

His voice shocked me. It was soft, cultured. Polite. At odds with his ragged, unkempt appearance.

With my free hand I drew the bundle of letters from my pocket and held it aloft, then hid them back out of sight.

‘First I want to see her,’ I bargained. ‘I want to see that she’s unharmed. Then you get your letters.’

‘A fair trade.’

I waited for him to move. Waited for him to turn and shamble toward the uphill track, perhaps look back and beckon. But he continued to stand motionless in the shadows, watching me.

Had I misunderstood? A fair trade, he’d said. His letters in exchange for Bronwyn. So why was he lingering? Why weren’t we going to her?

‘Where is she?’ I couldn’t stop myself asking.

‘Throw your knife to the side. Then we can talk.’

No need for a nuclear blast, after all; plain old garden-variety fear did the trick. I tossed the hunting knife into the shadows near the gully edge.

‘I’ll only hand over the letters when I see she’s safe.’

‘She’s safe for now, you still have time. But first, there’s something I want from you.’

‘What . . . ?’ I cringed at my eagerness, at the ragged desperation in my voice. ‘What do you want?’

‘You’ve read the letters, then?’

I nodded. In the back of my mind, his earlier words niggled.
She’s safe for now, you still have time
. Time for what? What did he mean?

He trod closer. ‘You’re a seeker of the truth, aren’t you, Audrey? I can sense it in you. You’re driven by curiosity about the past – a passion I also share. But if you’ve read those letters, you only know
her
side of the story. Meanwhile mine remains untold.’

A sharp pain shot into my temple. I was struggling to grasp what he was saying. My heart had begun to beat erratically, my palms dripped with sweat. Understanding dawned. It wasn’t going to be a simple exchange, after all. Cleve was toying with me, playing some sick game; a cat batting its claws at a frightened mouse.

‘The police are on their way here, Cleve. If you don’t take me to Bronwyn now, they’ll find her. And you’ll go to jail.’

Shadows danced over him as he ventured closer. ‘That’s what Glenda said. But there was no jail then, and there’ll be no
jail now. I cut the phone wires, Audrey. At Thornwood as well as William Road . . . and there’s no mobile coverage out here. Unless of course you sent an SOS via telepathy?’

‘Luella went for help.’

‘Then you’d better pray she takes her time.’ Cleve’s tone turned grim. ‘If anyone interrupts us before we’re done, then our sweet little Bronwyn is as good as dead.’

I faltered, lost my nerve. ‘What have you done?’

‘I’ve put her somewhere for safekeeping.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s my security. If you do as I say, she’ll survive. But if you piss around and prattle on about cops or anyone going to jail or other such crap, then I’ll stall. And if I stall, our sweet little girl will . . .’ He drew his finger across his throat.

My skin went cold. A dozen images flooded in. My daughter crumpled on the floor of the settlers’ hut, her blood leaking from a fatal gunshot wound; or lying on the gully bed, her body battered and broken by the fall; or slumped in some dark crevice, vomit drying on her chin as her heart slowed by degrees from a lethal dose.

‘No cops,’ I assured him, lifting my palms in a sort of shaky surrender. ‘I’ll do whatever you say, I just want her to be safe.’

Lightning flickered, but it was distant, its brightness fleeting. Cleve’s face loomed with corpse-like pallor, then fell back to shadows. The purple twilight returned, but not before I’d registered the object he had, until now, been concealing. A wooden shaft that – though indistinct in the blotchy moonlight – was vivid in my mind’s eye. Splintered and blackened, worn smooth by the years. I recalled the feel of it from the settlers’ hut, the near-warmth of the old wood, the greasy patina. Blood, I’d realised later. Aylish’s blood. Maybe Glenda’s, too. Was Cleve now planning to add mine to the mix? And Bronwyn’s?

Understanding gripped me with such great force that it caused a split between my inner and outer selves. I felt that time was shifting, changing shape and form. No longer running forward, but back. Back sixty years, when the creek had roared and the bellbirds chimed their calls, and another woman had stood in the shadow of a tall stone and trembled for her life.

I just knew.

For whatever deluded reason, Cleve meant to kill me.

I had a flash of Bronwyn that day in the kitchen, standing by the window, worry creasing her brow. ‘If you died,’ she’d said in a trembly little voice, ‘what would happen to me?’

Now her words took on a disturbing new meaning. If I died or was otherwise immobilised, Cleve would no longer need her as security. Panic made me shut my eyes; again I saw his finger slicing his throat in silent warning. I clawed the panic away and measured my options.

I would fight, if I thought I had a chance. Or run, if I knew for certain I could get away. Run up to the settlers’ hut to find my daughter, and then . . . then what? Cleve was in his seventies, but he had the body – and, I guessed, the strength – of a much younger man. He knew the surrounding bushland and he’d soon outflank me. And while I’d never used a knife before in self-defence, it was clear that Cleve had past experience wielding that axe handle. And, I reminded myself, he was armed.

I recalled something he’d said, and it made me realise what he wanted.

You only know her side of the story  . . . while mine remains untold
.

‘You said we shared a passion for the past,’ I said, fighting to steady the breathless wobble in my voice. ‘You were talking about Aylish.’

‘Yes.’

‘You tended her grave. Left roses for her.’

‘They were her favourite.’

‘What happened to her? I mean . . . what
really
happened?’

He stepped nearer. ‘You want to know about the night she died?’

I nodded.

His gaze drifted to the tall boulder with its fin-like curve and dots of pale lichen, but I sensed that his awareness of me had grown acute.

‘That would’ve been March, 1946,’ he said. ‘Samuel had returned home from the war, thin and gaunt as a scarecrow. Later I learned that he and Aylish had made a bit of a scene in the street that morning, had a row. Samuel was brooding about it, and Dad wanted to cheer him up. So he invited Samuel over to our house for a few beers. Of course, a “few” turned into a few dozen. By eight o’clock that night they were maudlin, singing at the top of their lungs, reminiscing like a couple of old sailors. It was around that time my father called me in. He told me to take a message to Jacob Lutz over at Stump Hill Road. “Tell the unsociable old coot to get himself over here,” my father said, “and make sure he brings a couple of flagons of his best brew.”’

While Cleve was talking, I surreptitiously scanned the edge of the clearing. The gully was perhaps ten paces away. Along its verge, the soil was unstable. If I could keep Cleve’s attention on the past, I might be able to lure him to the gully rim, to the loose rock shelf with its zigzag fracture and bed of crumbling earth.

Shifting my weight, I tested my theory by taking a half-step back.

Cleve moved into the space I’d created, and went on.

‘I’d just turned fourteen. In my eyes, Samuel Riordan was a hero. After reading his letters, I felt I knew him and in a strange way felt close to him. I was reluctant to leave the party, but dutifully got on my bike and rode over to Stump Hill Road. I knocked for ages. Finally I gave up, but just as I was turning away Jacob answered the door groggy and dishevelled. The wireless was crackling away somewhere in the house, the static
was deafening. Jacob must have fallen asleep, and he was as cross as a bucket of flies. He told me what I could do with my father’s invitation, so I got back on my bike and started towards home.’