Black Water (13 page)

Farren sat on the edge of a big wooden chair and basically told Matron Plow, a woman with forearms like a sawmiller, the truth about bringing Isla from Queenscliff. He just couldn’t see any other way of getting out of it.

‘And who, may I ask, did the driving?’ The Matron, with six grey filing cabinets behind her like soldiers in reserve, looked sceptically at Farren through steel-framed glasses.

‘Mister Robert Grice,’ Farren answered, prepared. ‘A mate of – a friend of mine. From Queenscliff.’

‘And where might your friend, Mister Grice, be now?’ The Matron had capped her pen, as if she’d decided the answers Farren was going to give would not be worth recording. ‘He seems to have vanished into thin air.’

‘He’s parking the motor car and he’ll be back in a few minutes.’ Farren felt no real sense of wrongdoing; he doubted the Matron would’ve asked him these types of questions if he was older. Besides, the last thing in the world he was going to do was dob himself, or Robbie, in. That’d be mad.

‘Then we shall wait.’ Matron Plow folded her hands on the desk. ‘And you can tell me as much about Isla’s health and living and working conditions as you can. She’s a very sick young woman and indeed she will be lucky to survive.’

So, sitting stiffly on the edge of a big wooden chair, Farren told the Matron that Isla was Johnny Landsowne-Murphy’s niece, that she was deaf, she used to live in Melbourne, and now she worked in the wash-house at the Victory Hotel.

‘She wears an engagement ring.’ Matron Plow stated this as if it was a fact Farren had been trying to hide. ‘Does she not? And why did you, or the infamous Mister Grice, not inform her fiance of her illness? Do you actually know to
whom
Isla
is
engaged?’

‘To Mr Derriweather, I guess,’ Farren said, ‘He’s the teacher at Queenscliff State. And we didn’t tell him about ’er because we didn’t have time.’ Farren felt strengthened by the truth. Robbie was right. They’d done nothing wrong – or not very much. ‘D’you think she’ll be all right?’

The Matron peered at Farren as if he deserved a second look.

‘It is touch and go,’ she said finally. ‘And since Mr Grice doesn’t seem to be about to make an appearance, you may go, too. But mark my words, Mr Briggingham, honesty is the best policy. And could I enquire if we might expect visitors soon for Isla? She is critically ill.’

Farren knew that the Matron had decided to let him get away. He nodded.

‘Yep, real soon. There will be.’ He stood up. ‘And thanks for lookin’ after her. She’s a real good girl. And if Johnny comes,’ he added gamely, ‘tell him she ain’t allowed to work in that bloody wash-house again. That’s dog’s work, that is. Thanks, missus. See yer.’ He went to the door, pushed it when he should’ve pulled, tried again, and went out into the dark.

Farren walked across the empty road, the football goal posts, moonlight-white, pointing to a sky slathered with stars. The motor car was parked, Robbie dimly visible inside, wearing the doctor’s cap, one white-knuckled hand on the wheel. Seeing Farren, he got out.

‘How’d you go, ’Roon? How’s she going?’

Farren let out a breath that fogged in the air. It struck him, now that he had escaped the hospital, how seriously ill Isla was. The idea that she might actually die took all his strength. He could hardly move.

‘She’s real crook,’ he said. ‘That’s what the nurse said. Real crook.’

Robbie headed around to the front of the car. ‘But she’ll be right in hospital, I reckon. Now come ’ere for a sec and I’ll show yer how to crank this thing up. It’s dead-easy. This is a real good bus. The doc should be proud.’

Farren allowed Robbie only a few small sips of brandy on the way back to Queenscliff.

‘We’re probably gunna get sprung,’ he said. ‘So it’d be better not to crash this thing and make it any worse.’

‘Why are we gunna get sprung?’ Robbie changed gears easily, his left hand unerring, his left boot working the clutch. ‘Who’s gunna know? We’ll just park the old banger and take off. And if the doc’s home, we’ll just dump it around the corner.’

‘They’ll know Isla’s in hospital, won’t they?’ Farren said. ‘And they’ll know she didn’t ride her bloody bike there. And if they ask that nurse a few questions we’re done for. Or I am. She didn’t even see you.’

Robbie had turned the doctor’s driving cap backwards, his forehead wide and white in the glow of the headlamps. He lifted a hand from the wooden steering wheel.

‘Did what we had to do, ’Roony. End of story. I couldn’t give a shit if we get caught anyway. No one else was on the case. Only you and me. The boys from the bloody bush. What are they gunna do? Put us in prison?’

Farren looked out the window. Beyond the silvery road the countryside was black.

‘I don’t care, either.’ He spoke slowly, examining the meaning of the words as he said them. ‘Stuff it. I’m glad we did it, too.’ And he was. It wasn’t going to war and being a hero like Danny, but it was trying to save someone’s life, and that was pretty good. Danny’d think so, anyway. ‘Yeah, bugger ’em.’

Robbie laughed. The trees by the road reached out to meet overhead as if they were playing Oranges and Lemons.

‘That’s the way, son!’ He tooted the horn, the abrupt, donkey-like braying making Farren laugh. ‘Now hang onto yer hat, Foxy! Because I’m gunna see how fast this old bucket can really go.’

Farren set off to Julian Derriweather’s house, kept company in his head by his mother, who urged him on, and his dad and Luther who strode along close behind, as if to guarantee he would not turn back. Farren was not worried by what he felt. This was how it was; these people were dead but still he heard their voices, and he knew how they had thought.

Robbie had offered to come but Farren had sent him home; and now he pushed open a gate that scraped along as if on one knee, and walked up the path, his footsteps deadened by weeds that clung to the bricks like starfish. A lamp burned behind a curtain, illuminating a figure at a table. Farren knocked.

As he waited he thought of Isla, a small shape in a big hospital bed, her face turned sideways on the white pillow. He prayed she’d get better and get away from those heavy white sheets, because he knew they used them to cover people’s faces when they died. And he didn’t want to think about them doing that to Isla.

The door opened, Farren stepping back as Julian Derriweather appeared, holding a lamp.

‘Farren?’ The teacher lifted the lamp, Farren’s shadow retreating into the tangled garden. ‘Is everything all right?’

Farren shook his head. He had to clear this throat before speaking.

‘Ah, no, sir. It ain’t.’ He tried to remember what he’d planned to say. ‘Isla’s sick an’ she’s in the Mercy hospital in Geelong. She’s got pneumonia, and I think you better go down there fast, and see her. But I gotta go now and tell Johnny because he might think she’s gone missin’ or something’.’ Farren stepped back down onto the path.

Julian Derriweather followed, holding the lamp higher as if the light it cast was a net that would hold Farren and his elusive shadow.

‘No, don’t go, Farren. Please. I’ll come with you and you can tell me more on the way. My God, this is terrible. Now where are my cursed shoes?’

Farren stopped dead in his front yard. There was a low light on in the house and he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, that he had not left one burning. A hard, bone-shaking shiver snatched his breath, turning it into a sob.

‘Oh, geezuz,’ he mumbled. ‘Oh, God.’ If that were his parents in there, what would he do?

Already his feet were trying to shuffle backwards and a sense of terror, like a cold black coat, drew in close, pressing against his skin. What if he walked up to the window and his mum and dad were sitting in their chairs? Would he go in? A second shiver shook him so hard he heard himself stutter.

‘Ohh,
J-J-esus
. B-b-bloody hell.’

No! It couldn’t be the ghosts of his mum and dad. It couldn’t be. No – the cemetery was miles away.
Maybe
it was Isla’s ghost? What if she’d died and beaten him home? And now she might be about to float out through the wall wrapped in one of them white sheets!

Then he smelt cigarette smoke, sweet and pungent, known and normal, and his fear released him as surely as if he’d ripped the fearful black jacket off and slung it away into the scrub.

Stealthily Farren went forward, peeked through the window, and saw with joy that pierced him like mid-summer sun that it was Danny,
Danny-boy
, sitting there in their father’s chair, staring at the unlit stove, with Hoppidy sitting calmly on his knee.

Danny, wearing a new army shirt and old army trousers, nursed the rabbit as Farren knelt at the firebox, feeding sticks in.

‘Will you get into trouble for leavin’ the hospital?’ Farren realised that Danny wasn’t wearing his eye patch, his left eye staring out at a different angle from his right, odd-looking, stiff in its socket. ‘Like, you’re not allowed to do that, are yer? Just go? Like even in cadets, unless you –’

With one hand Danny lowered the rabbit into her box.

‘Ah, well.’ He tried to grin, the left side of his face looking not nearly as amused as the right. ‘I reckon that since I’m supposed to be a bit of a mental case, Farren, I can do what I bloody like.’ He studied the room, the chairs and table, the small sideboard, and the one picture of a child with a kitten, as if he’d never been in the place before. ‘I’d had enough of that bloody joint. It was givin’ me the heebie-jeebies. Blokes screamin’ all night.’

Farren shut the firebox, shifted the kettle over the flames, and
sat. He could sense the War around Danny, as if every moment that he wasn’t talking, he was thinking about it.

‘I bet,’ Farren said. ‘It stank.’ He realised he was remembering the smell of the hospital that Isla was in, not the one Danny had been in. Now, urgently, he wanted to tell Danny what he and Robbie had done, but he knew the story would have to wait.

Danny’s gaze rested momentarily on the picture of the child and a kitten. Farren knew their mother had cut it out of a paper and their father had framed it. It was an advertisement for Pears soap. Then Danny stopped looking at it and folded his hands in his lap, in a way Farren had never seen him do before, like a lazy bloke or an old bloke.

‘And,’ Danny said, ‘I forgot to buy a ticket for the train. And by cripes, it did take me a fair while to get me bloody bearings when I got ’ere.’ He produced his grin of uneven halves. ‘In the end I ’ad to steer by the Southern Cross, but by the grace of God and Allah, here I am. Safe and relatively sound.’

‘What’ll you do now?’ Farren asked, getting up, knocking scraps of bark off his pants. ‘You seem real good.’

Danny smiled slowly, Farren recognising that the smile contained a lot of information he didn’t understand.

‘Oh, well, I’m not quite as bright as a button, mate.’ Danny touched a shirt button. ‘But I am breathin’ and that’s a bonus. And from now on, I’m just gunna maybe go out for a few quiet strolls and generally take it pretty easy for a while. Somethin’ll turn up for me, though, I guess. One day.’

Farren remembered what Maggie had said on the train coming back from the hospital.

‘Yeah, somethin’
will
turn up, Danny,’ he said. ‘Because you
are
good at findin’ things.’ Farren saw a glistening trail of moisture under Danny’s left eye and wished that he would wipe it. ‘You’ll be right in the long run. You mark my words.’ This was the first time Farren had ever said that.

Danny studied Farren, his eyes like dark tunnels drilled into black rock, the uneven lines beside his mouth like vertical scars. Then, like a spider on a thread, he carefully lowered his left hand onto the white handkerchief on his knee and closed his fingers around it.

‘This ain’t the white flag, Foxy,’ he said. ‘And I ain’t bloody wavin’ it.’ He winked. ‘The boys would expect nothin’ less.’

Farren understood. Danny was not giving in. He was just gathering his strength. Farren noticed that the kettle was boiling.

‘Let’s have a cuppa tea. I’ll make it.’ He went to the stove, seeing that Danny now sat with his eyes shut, as if he was dozing. So instead he told him that maybe it was bedtime.

Danny lifted his head, as if it was heavy, full of thoughts and pain.

‘Yep, maybe it is.’ He sat with his cramped-looking left hand entrusted to the care of his right. ‘And up in them steep old Turkish hills, and in them bloody brambly bloody gullies, many of the boys are certainly sleeping.’

In the morning, Farren went quietly out into the parlour. Danny was already up, sitting without a shirt in his chair, his body whippet-thin, all muscle and bone, like a lightweight boxer. Slowly he was bending and straightening his left arm, the elbow joint as knobbly as a rock off a road, coloured orange and purple, Farren thought, like a rotten peach. It looked terrible. There were other scars on Danny’s body, long, thick, and livid, with stitch marks like twin rows of pale stars.

‘Mornin’,’ Danny said. ‘Just tryin’ to get things back into workin’ order. Might take a day or two.’

Shock forced Farren to sit down. In a way he was glad his mum and dad weren’t here to see Danny like this, his whole body like a hard, bare brown paddock after a ripper had started on it, all torn up.

‘Boy, you sure got hurt,’ Farren said. ‘A lot of times. Boy, I wish you didn’t have to go there.’

Danny’s smile seemed slowly to be searching the different, damaged places on his face where it might show itself.

‘I wished I didn’t have to, too, mate.’ The smile seemed now to have found refuge under his eyes, like seed in soft, sad ground. ‘But eh, it ain’t so bad. You should’a seen the other bloke. He’s in bloody pieces. I think I came outta there with a pretty fair scorecard.’

Farren did wonder about the damage Danny’d done to the other blokes, because in any fights so far, Danny had always given more than he got.

‘D’you wanna come up into town with me, Dan?’ Farren asked. ‘I’m s’posed to go to work and that. And I’ll have to see Maggie to find out about Isla, the girl me an’ Pricey took to hospital. But there’s lots’a people’d like to see you, Danny, I know they would. And I can show yer the
Camille
on the way. She’s good as new.’