A Cry from the Dark (13 page)

“The car? Well, I don't know. I suppose Bill—”

“
Look,
you fool!”

Betty, on the floor, turned away, almost wanting to hide her bloodstained dress from him, but she heard Naismyth say, “Oh, my God,” and run to the door. As they helped her up and then through the door and out to the street she heard the voice of Miss Dampier saying the same words, and was dimly conscious of her turning in the street and running back to the school to put an end to the Leavers' Dance.

So they drove her home and put her to bed, and in the first part of a long, sleepless night, with the only noise the odd car, she heard the drone of her parents' voices, then her father talking to Sergeant Malley, then her parents again, and at last silence, intense silence, and only the sound of her own thoughts.

In the morning her mother brought her tea and toast in bed and said that Sergeant Malley was going to get an inspector over from Walgett. The case was too important for him alone, he thought. Betty agreed. Sergeant Malley was a fine rugby player and that was about it. His brain was either in his shoulders or his boots. The thought of being questioned by him made Betty want to vomit.

 

On Monday morning, Bettina met her brother and daughter on the forecourt of King's Cross, having said good-bye to a distinctly complacent Katie at the door of her flat and taken a taxi to the station. Her body was alive with pleasure anticipated. The ten past ten train to Edinburgh was not too crowded, and Bettina, Oliver, and Sylvia were able to settle themselves around a table for four without much danger of their being joined by an intruder. Bettina had not booked them into first class because she thought the others should be observing British people, and in first class you never overheard anything of interest and could only look at a selection of the decaying and the dubious, mostly male. She had an old-fashioned view of pinstripe-suited businessmen traveling on expense accounts: she thought they should get a real job, earn an honest living. On her trips to literary festivals and promotional events, Bettina always traveled standard class, and she didn't see any reason to change her habits.

“What's this about a buffet?” asked Ollie as they sped through the desolation of Stevenage. “Or shall we wait for the trolley?”

“The water for the tea is nowhere near boiling on the trolley,” said Bettina. “I thought we might go for a proper lunch later. It can be quite pleasant if they manage to get everything on the menu loaded onto the train. I'll settle for a proper cup of tea for now.”

“I'll make for the buffet, then,” said Ollie. “Coffee for me, tea for Betty—”

“And tea for me too,” said Sylvia. “I've decided I don't like English coffee.”

“Is Ollie horribly henpecked at home?” asked Bettina, as he scuttled off in the direction of the buffet. “He seems to think he should be at the beck and call of females.”

“If you listened to family friends they'd probably say mildly so. But if you looked at the decisions made in the marriage, I'd guess that rather more than fifty percent would be Ollie's—engineered by him.”

“Engineered—yes, I recognize that,” said Bettina. “I think I do it myself. The trick is, you organize things around you so you get what you want.”

“In your relationships with men?”

“Oh, those! I'm not sure I got what I wanted in those. I was thinking more of the rape. After the rape.” She could talk of that, the determining factor in her life, quite matter-of-factly with Sylvia now. She didn't even lower her voice. Other people had as much right to hear interesting things on a train as she herself did. “I think after it happened I
used
it. I don't feel terribly guilty about that. I'm sure any woman who had had that done to her in a little, inward-looking town would feel as I did: they would want to get away. So one of the things that influenced me over the days that followed—not the only thing by a long chalk, but one important one—was the desire to leave Bundaroo.”

“And you succeeded in that.”

“Yes. I can't feel altogether good about it, because it meant a degree of cutting myself off from my family. We loved each other, but we could never be
close
again, because we couldn't be together. And that hurt me, and it hurt my father, him particularly because I was the apple of his eye. And it wasn't usual, back then, for a girl of sixteen to fly the family home. But of course we all realized that the circumstances were exceptional; they accepted the need for me to take off, but still…I'm sure it devastated Dad. And now I feel at least a twinge of guilt that I was so happy to be out in the wide world.”

“It seems a very mild sort of manipulation,” said Sylvia. “And really necessary. Probably something similar is true with Ollie and Judy. She
needs
to feel that she's in charge, so he engineers things so that she can believe that. Hey, presto—the marriage is saved.”

“Yes. I suppose most successful marriages are based on successful dishonesties of that kind.”

“Maybe. I wouldn't know. I've never really let a man into my life.”

That was something Bettina quite understood.

The doctor came quite soon after breakfast. He said it was so Betty could get cleaned up—“a bath works wonders,” he said, and the way Betty's body felt convinced her that he must be right.

Dr. Merton lived in Mundehai, the third of the townships in the area, all of which he served, as well as some properties on the edge of Walgett. He was an old friend of Betty's, having seen her through measles, scarlet fever, and the usual selection of childhood illnesses. He was in his fifties, unambitious, content to work out his time in northern New South Wales, and with no thoughts of retiring to the beach areas of southern Queensland even after that. Beaches were good for nothing except sitting on, he said. And he could do that where he was. Above all in this situation, he was sympathetic, a calming influence.

“Try to pretend this is happening to someone else,” he said, as soon as Dot had left him alone with Betty. “Or that my hand is attached to some kind of robot—you know, activated by an electronic brain.”

“There's some play about that,” said Betty, anxious to think about anything but
that.
“All the characters are robots.”

“You'd know all about things like that. So imagine I'm something on wheels, with steel hands that send messages to some kind of radio or recording apparatus. Shut your eyes if it makes it easier.”

So she did close her eyes, and tried to float away to some distant planet, only giving a small yelp when his electronic hands probed the throbbing bruises on her neck and throat, then began to raise her frock. “Burn it!” screamed something at the back of her brain. “So I can never, ever see it again.” Finally, after inspecting, gently feeling and tut-tutting, he pulled the sheet over her and sat down beside the bed, making notes in a cheap notepad such as Betty could have bought in Phil Pollard's general store. It seemed to lack the dignity of a serious crime, of a possible court case in Walgett. Then Betty thought this was probably right: this was a crime without dignity.

“Now,” said Dr. Merton, “as I said, a bath can work wonders, and your mother has kettles on the stove now.”

“What about the policemen?”

“Don't you worry about them. I take the medical evidence, and no one else.”

“Thank goodness.”

“They're not qualified to do that, you see. But they are qualified to investigate a crime, and I'm satisfied that's what this is. I know Inspector Blackstone from Walgett. There's no better policeman in this area. So just think—try to remember every little thing—”

“Ugh!”

“I know, I know,” he said, genuinely soothing. “But you'd regret it later if you remembered something that could have been vital in a court case, wouldn't you?”

Betty thought. She couldn't admit to the doctor that the idea of a court case was intolerable.

“I suppose so,” she said.

“Of course it would. He's got to be caught. So get it all over now. Then the police can get on with their investigations, and you can get on with your life.”

“I never want to see Bundaroo again,” said Betty loudly. “Never want people there to see me.”

“Now, Betty—think!” said Dr. Merton, taking her hand. “Be sensible. You've done nothing wrong. Everybody knows that. You're talking as if it was you who's guilty. It's not. It's the man who's done this to you. Right?”

“Right,” said Betty eventually. But something inside her said, “I bet they're all saying in Grafton's and Phil's that I brought it on myself with my dancing.”

As the doctor said, Betty's mother had kettles and saucepans on the Crown, and before long she was lying in a warm bath, feeling cleaner and better, and trying to think through the terrible event of last night, trying to remember anything that the policemen from Walgett would need to know. The thought of the approaching interview nauseated her, but she didn't need Dr. Merton to tell her how important it was.

Betty lay luxuriating in her bath for as long as she could. It helped, as the doctor had said. How did he know? she wondered. At last her mother shouted, “You'll get cold if you don't come out of that bath!”—which seemed unlikely in temperatures over one hundred. Her mother had put out a clean nightdress, and when Betty tried to insist that she would talk to the policemen properly dressed, not in bed like a sick child, her mother, unusually forceful, insisted that she had to go back to bed and talk to the policemen from there. She used words, or supposed words, of the doctor to back up her command.

“He says you mustn't
think
of getting up for the next couple of days. And what would the policemen think if you were up and dressed as usual? They'd think what happened was nothing very much.”

So when the two men arrived in a police car two chairs had been placed for them in Betty's tiny bedroom, with its musty picture of the water babies on the wall and the wire grill up against the open window, through which could be heard the sounds of the farm—the cattle lowing from a distance, the occasional bleat from the few sheep, and noises from the chicken run at the back of the house.

“Hello, Betty. How are you feeling now?” asked the policeman from Walgett, sitting down immediately beside the bed, and letting the local man have the seat by the door.

“Better. The bath helped,” said Betty, looking curiously but she hoped not rudely at the police contingent. Inspector Blackstone was pushing fifty, with a neat little mustache and kindly but penetrating blue eyes. Less impressive and interesting was the constable Betty knew: he was laboriously getting out his notebook and pencil, then settling down to take notes, holding his pencil as if it were a screwdriver. Sargeant Malley was tall, broad, and heavy, a familiar figure in Bundaroo but not a greatly respected one. He was rumored to extract confessions from suspected “crims” by threatening to sit on them.

“I'm sure it did,” said Blackstone. “Now, Betty, I know this is going to be distressing, but there's not much we can do about that: I'm going to have to take you through the events of yesterday evening.” Betty nodded. “Let's start then, shall we? It was to be a big night for you, wasn't it? You went into Bundaroo with your parents, I suppose. How did you go?”

“We walked. We always do if we're going to something. There are always people doing the same, so we meet up.”

“I see. And who did you meet up with last night?”

Betty considered.

“Oh, the Broughtons, the O'Haras. And Alice Carey—but she lives practically in Bundaroo.”

“She's your best friend, isn't she?”

Information from Sargeant Malley, thought Betty. She decided to be truthful.

“She used to be. Not any longer. She's got a bit jealous since Hughie Naismyth came to the district. She felt out of it, because Hughie and I have been together so much.”

“I see. So you all arrived in Bundaroo, and I suppose you went to the school hall. Where did your parents go to?”

“They went to Bob's to have a bite to eat.”

“Did they stay there all evening?”

“I don't know. Some of the parents walked around a bit—looked in at the school hall, or just gossiped in the street. Mum could have gone to have a chat with the vicar. She's a member of the mothers' group, and they're organizing the Christmas party this year.”

“Most of the fathers went to Grafton's, I suppose. We know about the little arrangement the landlord has when there's anything on in Bundaroo.”

“I bet you do,” said Betty, who had often seen Sargeant Malley emerging from the back room late in the evening.

“What about your dad?”

“No. He said he wasn't going there.”

She sensed at once a reaction from the two men.

“Why did he say that?”

“Just that he'd be in Bob's if I needed him…He and Mum were both there when I…when I did need them.”

“Right. Now what about yourself?” Here it comes, thought Betty. “You went along to the school hall, and you met up with all your mates, I suppose.”

This was beginning to feel like coming-clean time.

“I don't have many mates at the moment.”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“All the school turned against Hughie Naismyth, and I wasn't going to go along with the herd.”

Inspector Blackstone pondered this information.

“Well now, you'd better tell me who this Hughie Naismyth is, and why all your mates turned against him.”

“His parents are migrants—his father used to have a farm in Northumberland. I think that's in the north of England, isn't it? Hughie is very artistic, and that didn't help.”

“From what I hear you're pretty artistic yourself.”

“I read a lot. That's not quite so bad. I mean, quite a lot of people read. Anyway, I don't make too much of it. Hughie really knows about painting.”

Seargeant Malley now put in his spoke from the door, where he had been taking laborious notes, which Betty would dearly have liked to be able to read.

“From what
I've
seen he just sits talking to Mr. Blackfeller any chance he gets.”

“That's right,” said Betty, edgily.

“Why would he do that if he's interested in painting? That's just bullshit stuff old Blackfeller peddles. I wouldn't have it on my walls.”

“Hughie's interested in aboriginal art, especially the genuine stuff, not the stuff done for the tourists.”

Inspector Blackstone felt he should step in.

“Well then, Hughie is English, he's interested in art, and doesn't make any secret of it—is there anything else?”

“I suppose there's his father,” said Betty slowly.

“His father's out at Wilgandra,” put in Sergeant Malley.

“He's manager there,” said Betty, “since September. He's not very popular.” She saw Blackstone look at Malley, who nodded. “I don't know much about it, but I think he's too used to English ways and doesn't want to learn Australian ones. It puts people's backs up.”

“And that's rubbed off onto his son, has it?”

“Yes. And his mother's considered a bit snooty. She insists on doing things the English way, and she buys things at Phil's that he only stocks because Mrs. Cheveley uses them…Silly little things, but in a small place they influence people.”

“People often set a lot of store by silly little things,” agreed Blackstone.

“Anyway, what I'm saying is that at the moment I don't have a lot of friends in my year at school.”

“Which meant that you and Hughie were thrown together a lot last night.”

“Yes, though we would have been together a lot of the time anyway. We like each other's company.”

“So you danced together?”

He obviously knew about that, from the tone of his voice. Malley again.

“Yes, we did. Quite well, actually. So everyone said we were showing off. Then we came back to the refreshments table and there were one or two silly comments, so we just stood a bit apart talking to each other.” Rather brightly, thought Blackstone, too loud and with no natural pauses, to pretend that they didn't mind being ostracized, when they really minded very much. “And then the trio began their medley of songs from the shows, and the first ones were slow numbers…sort of yearning…”

“And they struck a chord?”

“Yes.
Yes.
Wanting something else. Wanting to be somewhere else. Like being chained and aching to escape…And first me then Hughie went onto the floor and began doing little dances on our own.”

“Dances you made up, do you mean, not regular waltzes or fox-trots or dances like that?”

“Yes. Just expressing what we felt through our bodies, and through movement. Oh, I'm sure it wasn't Isadora Duncan or anything like that, but it satisfied us, felt right for us.”

“So you've heard of Isadora Duncan?”

“Heard of her. Nothing more. Anyway it was just a way of expressing ourselves, like I said. It wasn't”—she tried out a word she had never used before—“erotic or anything like that. Probably pathetic more than anything else.”

From under her eyelids she saw a glance go from Blackstone to Malley. This time it was not an inquiry, more a command—to keep quiet, perhaps. Had Malley been among the group at the door? And had he told the inspector that it
was
erotic? Or perhaps that she and Hughie were just showing off, drawing attention to themselves—as if this somehow justified what happened later? Betty would dearly like to have known.

“I'm sure it wasn't either erotic or pathetic,” said Blackstone kindly. “So what happened next?”

“Hughie saw his parents arrive, and he went over to the door where all the parents and the others were standing, so he could make light of the dancing, as if it was just a joke, a big game.”

“Why would he do that?”