‘I thought you said he keeps himself to himself?’
‘And so he does. But he’s never harmed anyone. The Sullivans are a rum lot, but they’re good people. Never crossed on a deal or underpaid what land or stock was worth. And a Sullivan’s always the first to put his hand in his pocket when a man’s in trouble. They don’t mix, that’s all. Makes folks suspicious and that’s why the stories grew.’
He downed the remains of his beer and got up from the table. ‘You’ll have to excuse me now, have to be getting on home.’
Trevor Benson dusted his trousers down with his hat, then waved it towards the bar in a goodnight greeting to Sullivan.
‘Look young lady, people were always dying in those days. The mystery to me was how they survived at all. You just be careful, OK?’ And with that he turned and walked to the door.
I was conscious of being on my own again and of Connors still watching me, although I was determined not to look again. It was getting to be uncomfortable so I returned my glass to the other end of the bar. Maggie was still serving a steady stream of new arrivals and I waved to her as I headed for the door.
‘Hey, Regan,’ she called after me, ‘come back when I’m not so pushed. We’ll have a proper visit.’
Of course I dreamed that night.
My dreams were becoming as vivid as my waking life was becoming nebulous. It’s not real, we say, only a dream. But I can’t see how a dream is anything but real, or at least the subjective experience is. If you think about it, everything that ever happens to you happens inside your head. Sights, sounds, smells, they are all just scraps of information collected by our senses. It’s our brain that unscrambles the signals and translates them into a picture. Hopefully this has some resemblance to what’s going on outside in the physical world, because if it doesn’t they call you insane.
Dreams happen inside your head too, only they come from somewhere else. Sure, they come from your imagination mostly, or from your subconscious or whatever. But not always. In any case, wherever the images come from, they’re all events that you experience. Dreams and thoughts and feelings, they’re all real, but they relate to different levels of reality. So, is your experience of them any less valid because it isn’t happening in the physical world? The way I’d begun to dream seemed to be related to some kind of happening that wasn’t of my making. Dreams have different textures. Mostly it’s just stuff that’s going on inside my head, though that’s weird enough, but sometimes you get the feeling that it’s more than imagination. And isn’t imagination itself a kind of reality?
Sometimes when I dreamed at the cottage it was like there was another world pushing its way through into mine. And there were other times when what was happening was more real than anything I’d ever known. Certainly, what it was doing to me was real enough.
Anyway, that night I had another dream and I don’t think it was all my doing.
I am walking through the hills looking for Anne.
The night is very dark and windy. A heavy sky obscures any moon there may be, but occasionally stars show themselves through breaks in the clouds. The wind pushes and tugs at me, turning me this way and that, causing me to stumble and slide on stony paths. There are long sweeps of hillside where the trees grow in sparse clumps, leaving broad avenues where I scramble up one side and tumble down the other, mud-streaked and bruised.
Anne is there, somewhere up ahead. I know she has fallen from her horse, but it is still possible to save her if only I can reach her in time. She is moving away from me, not lying on the ground but walking slowly, ever so slowly. Though I cannot see her I know she is wearing a long dress and a cloak that drags over the grass as she moves, leaving a trail to mark her passing. She moves with a steady grace, unhurried and with no concern for the elements or the passing of time. Her loosened hair writhes and coils, twisting upward on the wind. But, no matter how hard I try to run, no matter how I scramble on all fours, slip and snatch at the long grasses, stumble to my feet only to falter again, I cannot catch up with her.
Somewhere in the distance a horse whinnies, its distress carried on the air. And I am certain I can hear a fiddle. Maybe he could help me find Anne? But I would have to find him first and there is no time. She is moving away from me, gaining ground, and I have only the trail of her cloak to show where she has passed.
The grass is crushed where she has walked, I can see that quite clearly even though the darkness is unrelenting. There is something shimmering in the swath of broken grasses as if her cloak, in the wake of its passing, has laid down a tracery of light for me to follow. And I try, I try so very hard to keep up, but I know I am losing her. In the end I fall to my knees, heaving lungfuls of air, my hands pressed into the trail she has left behind. And as I lift my palms they glisten with wetness. I now see what it is that lights the path.
Blood.
Anne’s own blood is washing the earth as she moves across the land.
I woke early, sunlight filtering through a misty haze, the grass heavy with dewfall, and wandered down to the lake. The surface was still and silent. There were wild flowers growing at the water’s edge, foxgloves and some sort of yellow daisy, and I picked a handful, shaking the dew from their petals. Suddenly I knew why they were there.
Briefly returning to the cottage to collect a jar and fill it with water, I took the road back around the lake and up through the trees to the clearing. The name on Anne’s gravestone stood out sharply where I had cleaned it a few days before. It took only a moment to clear away the weeds and grasses and arrange the flowers. The makeshift vase looked clumsy, but it would do until I found something more fitting. Any trace of a mound in the earth had vanished decades ago but a few smooth pebbles gathered and laid around the stone would mark out her territory.
It wasn’t much to do for her, perhaps, but it was something.
T
HE
next few days at the cottage were clearly divided into separate compartments. After that my memory seems to run together like wet paint streaking down a canvas. There was the work, which, at first, was all encompassing. Hours of intense concentration when I forgot to eat or drink and only the sinking of the sun reminded me that I had other needs.
Between bouts of working I needed to maintain constant contact with my source material. I’d spend hours wandering through the bush and the pines, adrift on the tides of the life force as it flowed through the living land. I came to know the trees. Their voices were constant, their leaves and branches never still, their mood changing with the shifting of the wind. And always there was a presence, something else that made me feel I was not alone.
Then there were dreams, dreams of walking, going to meet someone, perhaps the same someone who was watching me. But I never arrived. I always woke up, and often I’d find myself in front of the mirror. I put it all down to being stressed out. When I was more rested, things would get back to normal. That’s what I told myself.
Bramble was my friend, though a fickle one. She took to
spending the nights sleeping on my sofa and the afternoons sunbathing on the cottage deck. She walked with me through the bush, though occasionally she would take off as if something had startled her. Usually I’d find her back at the cottage. Some days she needed my undivided attention, other times they’d run out on me, she and Badger, on some secret mission that took them away for hours. She always turned up eventually.
Badger had responsibilities. He spent a lot of time with Liam Connors, riding around in the little tractor, guarding the toolbox, barking at the cows—men’s work. Sullivan didn’t seem to mind both his dogs defecting, or if he did he never said anything, but they always seemed to know when he was going rabbit shooting.
I don’t know how long I’d been there when the accident happened. That particular day the work had been progressing well. I had left a lot of the original block in its raw state, allowing whatever lived within it to appear as if emerging from its natural element. Something was growing from the wood; something that at first startled me, then left me amazed. I was now working on the finer details, sensing the soul of the thing that was coming to life, and allowing it to find its independence.
The phase of the heavier tools was long over and I had been using small gouges and chisels, the heel of my hand acting as mallet for such sensitive stokes. Some areas needed refining. I prefer to use an edge of broken glass for this, even though it means wearing goggles. Restraint was the key: now the end was so near it would be disastrous to rush. So I worked the glass as if it were a feather and scraped away layers as fine as whispers.
I had worked longer than I had intended, straining my eyes to labour until the last fire of the sun had brushed the lake with molten copper. I was aware of gunshots in the distance and forced myself not to wince each time they sounded. I know I don’t eat animals but I’m not some New Age freak. Bugs Bunny
and his extended family had caused enough damage around the place to justify a cull.
Eventually I realised it was too dark to work and I was too tired to eat. I dusted the wood shavings from my clothes, shut the door against the fast approaching night and poured a glass of wine. A hot bath, that’s what I needed; a hot bath laced with something rich and creamy and smelling of exotic flowers. And another glass of wine. I drained the first and forced myself out of the sofa before I got so comfortable I missed the bath altogether.
As I got to my feet something threw itself against the door. There was a wild scratching and the latch rattled and jumped as if it were about to fly open.
‘Who’s there? What do you want?’ As if some thug in a black ski mask was going to push a copy of his CV under the door. I looked around for something heavy, but anything resembling a weapon was outside on the deck with the intruder. Now wasn’t that a sensible arrangement? I could see the headlines, ‘Famous artist stabbed with her own chisel’.
Another blow at the door and more scratching. Demon claws, tearing at the woodwork. And then a familiar whining.
‘Is that you Bramble?’ A bark, then the scratching redoubled. ‘OK, OK. I’ll let you in. There’s no need…’
But she would not come in. Instead she leapt back, paws splayed out in front and her back end bouncing as if she would bound away.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ I tried to say, ‘I can’t play now, I’m going to bed.’ But my voice was drowned in a volley of barking, culminating in a growl. Then she collapsed in a heap at my feet and whimpered.
‘I give in. You’ve got my full attention. You want me to go somewhere, right? Just wait a minute, let me find the torch.’
Moments later I was scrambling through undergrowth trying to keep up with a dog who was in too much hurry to bother with pathways. She would crash on ahead for a few metres, then
come back to check I was still following. The yellow beam would catch her panting mouth and heaving flanks. Then she’d be off again. My hands were lashed by springing branches and I could feel a long scratch on my leg starting to bleed. When I finally caught up with Bramble she was in a small clearing, standing over something. I crawled through the last of the trees and stood upright, fighting for breath. All I could see was a hump of something black, almost lost against the shadowed earth.
‘What’s is it? What have you found?’ Bending down I played the light on the black mass, and then reached out my hand. It was warm and soft and, thank God, it was still breathing. Bramble came forward and nuzzled the small body.
‘Badger? Is that you, Badger?’ I found his head and stroked his ears and neck. As I moved down his shoulder he yelped and I snatched my hand away. My fingers felt wet and sticky and there was a metallic smell as I wiped the smears down my shirt. I was scared. What was I supposed to do? Bramble had come to me for help and all I could do was be scared.
‘Listen, you stay there. Stay with Badger. I’ll go get someone. No, you stay, there’s a good girl.’
I stumbled back towards the cottage, though what I was going to do there I had no idea. Perhaps the phone. But who would I call? Thankfully I’d left the light on so at least I could find the way. But everything had slowed down and my legs were weighted with lead. Then I could see another light beyond the cottage. Of course, the woolshed.
‘Help! We need help here!’ I had to stop and fight for breath before I could shout again. ‘Connors! Liam!—please help me.’ Before I had taken another half-dozen steps there was a second light bobbing towards me through the trees.
‘I’m here, I’m here. What going on?’ His shirt was flapping open and he was clutching one shoe.
‘It’s Badger. He’s badly hurt. She scratched at the door and he was lying there and there’s blood all over my hands.’
‘All right, all right, now calm down.’ He balanced on one leg, doing acrobatics with his spare shoe. ‘Now, where is he?’
‘I don’t know. Back there in the bush somewhere. I didn’t know what to do so I left Bramble with him and came to get help.’
‘Then call her, she’ll answer to you.’
I turned back to the trees and yelled her name. A moment’s silence, then a trio of sharp yaps, not too far away.
‘Good girl!’ Liam called. ‘You stay there, you hear me. Stay girl, just keep talking to us.’ Then he was leading the way and we were thrashing through the tangled palms toward Bramble’s whimpering. It could only have been a few metres before she was nuzzling my hand. Liam dropped to the ground, setting down his own torch, his hands moving over the hump of damp, black fur.
‘Now hold the light steady. Let me see the damage. Gently now, there’s a good boy.’
Badger let out a yelp. I flinched and bit my lip.
‘I said hold the light steady. Here, bring it nearer, onto the front shoulder.’ I focused the spotlight on a mess of fur matted with red. There was something white and jagged sticking up out of it.
‘What in Jesus’ name have you done to yourself, lad? This is bad. We can’t deal with it here.’ Liam rose to his feet, wiping stained hands down his trousers. ‘How far are we from the roadway?’
I swung the beam around the clearing. ‘The track’s over there.’
‘Right, go fetch your truck round.’ I blundered off to find the lakeside path, Liam calling after me, ‘And bring a blanket or something we can lift him on.’
I pounded along the track. It was only a short way to the cottage but the light from the doorway seemed to be retreating as fast as I was running towards it. Eventually I made it to the door but panicked when I thought I couldn’t find the car keys. Of course they were still in the middle of the table where I’d
left them. Then I nearly forgot the blanket and had to run back inside to snatch the rug from the sofa. The truck started first time, even though I dropped the keys twice. I’d forgotten how to find reverse, then the headlights wouldn’t work and the windscreen wipers kept coming on instead. Somehow I managed to manoeuvre the vehicle round to where I could still see Liam’s flashlight and scooted under the branches with the blanket.
‘Now, we’re going to have to move him into the truck. And we’re going to have to be very quick and very gentle.’
Using the blanket as a stretcher we shifted him onto the back seat of the car. Badger yelped with every jolt and I could feel the pain shoot through him.
‘I can’t do this. We’re making it worse. Can’t we leave him here? I’ll get some water and stuff, clean it up.’
‘It’s a surgeon he needs. And a surgery. Now, there’s a vet not too far away and we’ll take him there. That’s the best we can do for him.’
‘Shouldn’t we phone, get the vet here?’
‘It’s only a few minutes away. Be quicker to take him.’
‘But we’re hurting him.’
‘Trying to save his life is what we’re doing. I’ll sit in the back and try to hold him steady. Now, let’s get out of here.’
Bramble leapt in after me and jumped over to the passenger seat. There was no time to argue with her so I let her stay and swung the truck out onto the road and round the lakeside.
‘Steady there,’ Liam shouted from the back. ‘You’re throwing us all over the seat. There’ll be time to put your foot down when we reach the main highway.’
After all that bungling the journey took no time at all. It was only a short drive past the pub and the store when he told me to turn right.
‘It’s along here a’ ways, through that gate. You can see the house from here.’
As I turned in at the gateway I slammed my hand down on the horn and left it there. It must have woken everyone in the district. Lights flicked on all through the house, and as we pulled up the door was flung wide and a man came running out. He was short and round and was wearing only pyjamas. Blue and white striped they were, and I thought of Christopher Robin and wanted to giggle. Then I wanted to slap myself for being so stupid and then I wanted to scream at him because Badger was hurt. But it was all right because Liam was already out of the truck and talking with the vet, who crawled into the back seat. Both the dogs were quiet now. Animals do that, don’t they, when they know it’s a vet? He seemed to know them, anyway.
‘Well Badger,’ he said, ‘what have you been doing to yourself? Oh, I see. Oh, you poor fellow. Right, we’d better get him inside and take a proper look. I’ll fetch a trolley. It’ll be easier to move him.’
Bramble and I jumped down from the truck and joined Liam.
‘Name’s Harry Warner. I’ve had him out to the sheep a few times. Seems to know what he’s doing. Perhaps it would be better if you and Bramble stayed here.’
Like hell we would, I thought, but there was no time to dispute the matter as Harry was already coming back and the two men lifted Badger out of the back seat. This time Badger made no sound and I began to think we were too late. I trailed after them, with Bramble at my heels, through the waiting room to the surgery door. Liam turned as I was about to enter.
‘There’s no need for you to come in. Wait here.’
‘But I want to see—’
‘Sit down will you, woman!’
And I did. And so did Bramble. We sat side by side on a rough wooden bench and waited for what seemed a century but could not have been more than five minutes. She kept looking up at
me as if I was going to make it all right. The weight of her trust was unbearable.
Then the door opened and Liam came out. Up to then he had been calm and in control. Now there was a change, perhaps a shift in his stance or something about his eyes. I don’t know. But somewhere, beneath all that hair, he looked shaken. Of course I thought the worst had happened.
‘Harry’s going to operate straight away.’
‘Badger’s still alive then?’
‘Yes, but it’s not good. It’s his upper leg bone, where it joins the shoulder, it’s fractured.’
‘But how—?’
‘It seems he’s been shot.’
The word reverberated around the room and I heard it but could make no sense of the sound. Shot. What did that mean? How could he get shot? There were guns, yes. Rabbits, they were shooting rabbits. Not
they. He. He
was shooting rabbits. Sullivan.
‘Sullivan shot him?’
‘We don’t know that. Even so, it must have been an accident. Harry needs me to give him a hand. You’d best be getting back now and I’ll let you know.’
‘We’re staying right here, aren’t we?’ I looked to Bramble for support but she was sniffing around the corners of the room. So I, alone, stared at him in fierce defiance. He stared back. There would have been no giving way had Harry not called from the inner room; Liam answered by turning his back and closing the door in my face. I sat down again, preparing for a long wait.
It was a bleak room in which to spend a night. I studied the poster explaining all the breeds of dogs and cats, and found out all about feline enteritis, kennel fever and the most up-to-date methods of controlling fleas and intestinal parasites, to say nothing of ear mites.
Bramble gave up waiting and went to sleep on the floor. It
could easily have been her. Shot. Just saying the word brought pain: it was like being punched in the stomach. How could you shoot a dog and not know? The animal must have howled in pain. Didn’t he hear it? Didn’t he even notice they were missing? The night just went on and on. I didn’t have a watch or clock to measure it by. There were sounds beyond the closed door—the hollow hum of half-heard voices, barely audible thumps and the clanking of metal—all of which told me nothing.