Out of Alice (25 page)

Sara unrolled the familiar swag and pulled off her footwear. She wriggled her toes and lay back, facing the stars and the white curve of the moon. The evenings at Redhill had been hot, for the day's accumulated heat had clung to the building and necessitated fans, but here, under the bare sky, the heat vanished with the sun. Frank's swag was comfortable. A thin foam mattress and several blankets softened the ground and she had a pillow as well. After the long hours of travel with muscles tensed against the lurches and bumps of the vehicle it was bliss to stretch out and relax.

She thought of Paul with his single, borrowed blanket. Unless Jack relented towards him and gave him the tarp to sleep on, he was in for an uncomfortable night. He would be disappointed too that she hadn't remembered more.
She
certainly was. Sara had believed that seeing a picture of her parents would bring their faces back to her, but the sight had woken nothing in her mind. Perhaps she would never remember.

Jack with his endless optimism would encourage her to think otherwise, of course. He had hope enough for three men, and spent it unstintingly on others. He'd lavished it on her and the thought of his goodness, mixed in with her own uncertainty and despair, made her eyes suddenly well and tears roll down her cheeks. Sniffing, Sara wiped them away. Even if she couldn't recognise her mother, the woman was dead and had been for twenty years, as was her twin. Instead of feeling sorry for herself she should be thankful that her father still lived.

The moon blurred in her vision and she heard a curlew call, the sudden sound startling, emphasising the emptiness of the silent land. Sara tried to imagine how she and her father would meet, what they would say to each other. He'd had her image to remember through the years, whereas she had never guessed at his existence. It was like looking across a gulf so vast she couldn't guess where it ended. Would he welcome her return from the dead? Or had his life moved on and did he no longer care? How could she love somebody she didn't even remember? Jack would tell her . . . Jack . . .

Sara slept, her brow twitching in a little frown and a sigh escaping her parted lips. She dreamed vividly.

The tent ropes were fluttering and the papers they'd been colouring in slid from the little wooden table at which she and Ben ate. They did their lessons there, too.

Lana scolded them, bossing them into tidying up. She was plump, with untidy yellow hair and a big pimple on her chin.
Fat Lana,
Benny yelled and she went red.
I'll tell your dad,
she threatened, and Benny scowled. They weren't supposed to be cheeky to the governess.
Fat Lana,
he mouthed at Christine the moment the governess turned her back, and she grinned and waggled her little finger, their secret signal of accord.

Outside the birds were calling, and the gum leaves tapped against the taut canvas of the tent. Dad had rolled up two sides of it to let the breeze through and the twins could see the other tent where their parents slept at night, and hear the clear voices of the big kids in the next camp. They were too old to be interesting to them, but Lana kept walking to the tent opening and looking across. She gave them both ruled pages to practise their letters on and shook a minatory finger.
Mind now, I'll just be a minute so you had better not muck up while I'm gone.

Fat Lana
, Benny chanted softly, watching her plump legs hurry away from them. She wore shorts that stretched tightly over her bottom. They saw her stop near a sprawl of conkaberry to smooth her hair. She glanced back once, then hurried on, and soon the sound of her shrill giggle joined the deeper tones of the big boy that she seemed to like so much. Neither twin could work out why – after all, they had only met the previous day.

They sneaked out the front of the tent, jumped down into the dry creek bed and ran.

‘Where are we going?' Chrissy panted.

‘We'll just look. No –' he'd decided – ‘Dad says there's a spring. We'll find it. She'll be mad when she gets back,' Benny predicted. ‘Maybe so mad she'll squeeze her pimple!'

The idea was delicious. ‘Fat Lana's got a pimple,' Chrissy yelled, but her voice was swallowed by the rising stone around them. Then her elation was tempered by caution. ‘Will she be really mad, Benny?' Lana could be unpleasant; she grabbed their arms sometimes and twisted them in Chinese burns, then pretended she'd only been holding them. ‘What if she tells Dad?'

‘She won't. 'Cause we'll
say we'll tell on her for leaving us. She won't dare,' he said complacently.

Chrissy laughed happily. It was true. Benny always knew what to do.

It was very still in the gorge. The sun beat down out of the relentless blue of the sky, striking blinding colours from the high rock walls. The twins barely noticed the heat. Lost in their own world and a rising wonder for the sheer magnitude of their surroundings, they wandered and stared: at the rock-strewn creek bed they were following, at the gnarled, familiar trunks of gums, and at the slabs of stone that in ages past had crashed to the floor of the canyon. They detoured on their search for the spring to climb a couple of slabs and stare around from the top. ‘Where's the camp?' Chrissy asked.

Benny pointed. ‘Back there. Nobody can see us now. Watch this! I bet I can slide all the way to the bottom.' He did so, ripping the cuff of his jeans and putting a rock smear all down the back of them. He bounced happily to his feet. ‘Now you.'

Chrissy shot down the same path with a shriek composed equally of fear and delight and they went on until suddenly the lady was there at the base of the largest rock yet, a vast square of stone as big as their tent. The moment she saw them she put a finger to her lips and beckoned them closer. It was impossible not to obey. The twins crept near, wild speculation in their hearts.

‘Do you want to see?' the lady whispered. ‘They're down through there, the sweetest little babies! Only you have to be very quiet or we won't get close enough. Can you walk very quickly and very quietly?'

They nodded, eyes alight. ‘What is it?' Chrissy breathed, but the lady's finger was back at her lips.

‘You'll see. Quick. Come with me.'

Their guide turned back, not on the path they had taken but at right angles to it. She was thin and athletic with dark hair pulled back on a sunburned neck. There was no collar on her shirt. She wore pants and sneakers and a cloth hat with a chin tie, and kept turning her head to smile at them, the tension in her eyes inviting them to hurry before they missed their chance. When Chrissy stumbled over a root because she was trying to peer ahead, the lady took her hand. ‘Come, I'll help you.' And after a while all three of them were hustling through the low bushes, Ben on the other side of the woman, his hand also in hers. Then the bad man stepped into their path from where he'd been waiting behind a jumble of boulders. He blocked their passage, menacing in his bigness, and the children unconsciously shrank closer to the lady.

‘How'd you find 'em?' he asked.

‘They just walked up to me.' A shrug. ‘Seemed too good a chance to pass up.'

‘The parents?'

She shrugged. ‘No sign of them. The kids were on their own.'

‘Bewdy! Let's get outta here.' He grabbed Benny round the waist, like an awkward parcel, and as the boy yelled in protest, lifted him and clapped his free hand over his mouth. Chrissy's heart lurched in fright as the happy day dissolved around her. She yelled, ‘No!' and pulled back, but the lady's grip was suddenly like steel and she clouted the girl hard enough to make her ears ring. ‘Shut it!' she hissed and now she looked like a witch, dark eyes daggering at her, the mouth hard and thin.

In her swag Sara moaned and thrashed weakly as the dream children struggled. She was Ben, kicking furiously, arching his body, helpless in the man's grip; and she was Chrissy too, with a heavy fore-weight of knowledge and the blind terror of a little girl whose world has suddenly turned against her.

She bit the hand clamped over her mouth and received a stinging slap in return; she kicked frantically at the legs braced to hold her and her captor coolly punched her in the stomach. The breath and the fight went out of her and the man grinned.

‘Good one, Kitty.' He punched his own struggling captive with the same result. Ben collapsed, whooping, and in a daze of tears and terror the two were carried off.

It was dark under the blanket and hot, stiflingly so. The twins held hands, feeling each other's tears leak onto them. The lady's feet were pressed into their backs as they lay on the floor that sped and bumped beneath them. The man was driving fast and had been for a long time. Chrissy was thirsty, but she badly wanted to wee too. And she wanted her mum. She knew that Benny felt the same, and she was sorry, so sorry, that they had been bad and run off from Lana. ‘Oh, I wish we never —' she whispered, and Benny's teary voice answered like the echo it always was, ‘I wish we never too.' He sniffed, getting some fight back, and she knew without needing to see that he was scowling. Benny hated giving up even when it was sensible to do so. He moved so his mouth was against her ear, his breath making the words hard to understand. He had lost his hat somewhere and his curls tickled her eye. ‘We gotta get out, Chrissy. I'm gonna be sick. When they let us out, we'll run. Run real hard, an' don't stop.' His little finger moved against her hand, and she understood and moved her own back. Then he heaved his back against the restraining feet holding him down and began to retch.

Benny could make himself sick whenever he wanted to. He didn't seem to mind the horrid rush of it the way Chrissy did. Vomiting made her cry but Benny could pretend so well that even when he didn't sick up, everyone thought he was going to. It worked with the lady. The moment he started she snatched her feet away and yelled, ‘Stop, Vic! Stop!'

‘What the hell?'

‘The little bugger's gonna spew. I'm not riding in a car stinking of vomit. Let 'em out. We've come far enough now.'

Sara moaned in her sleep, knowing what was coming. Her heart pounded as if it would tear itself loose. ‘Don't,' she tried to shout. ‘Don't, Benny, don't!' But the words fell weakly from her lips, indistinguishable, no more than a sigh.

It was happening. Benny had made them stop. The lady whipped the blanket off them, one rough corner catching Chrissy painfully in the eye. Her hands were hard and strong as she thrust them out the opened door onto hard red dirt.
They scrambled to their feet, Chrissy all but blinded by the blaze of light and the hurt in her eye. ‘Run!' Benny shrilled and was off like a rabbit, but his twin was behind him and took a fraction longer to start, and with a wild roar the man leapt from his seat and took after her. Her legs plaited and he caught her as she went down, his hand like a cruel claw digging into her shoulder. He whirled her about, backhanding her twice across the face and she fell, losing her hat. Nobody before today had ever hit her, nor had anybody ever shouted such bad words at her. Sobs choked her and Chrissy cowered in the dirt, screaming hysterically as he reached for her again.

‘Right, I've got her.' The lady's hand was gripped about her wrist as she bent to retrieve the fallen hat. ‘You gonna get after the other brat?'

‘Ah, stuff him. Get the little bitch into the car. All said and done, one's as good as two.' The man wiped sweat from his face and spat. ‘Christ, what a country! No worries, he won't last the day out. Let's get going.'

She hesitated, squinting in the cruel light. ‘If somebody picks him up, what then?'

He laughed harshly. ‘It ain't exactly Rundle Street, Kitty. Leave the planning to me.'

For a few blessed moments Chrissy didn't know what was happening. The woman dragged her into the vehicle but not under the blanket. This time the lady sat beside her holding her wrist, but every movement Chrissy made was punished by a vicious yank that bruised her flesh. It wasn't until the engine fired that she realised they were leaving Benny behind. Her body jerked as she jacked her legs into the back of the driver's seat and flung back her head, screaming in terror and outrage. ‘No, no – I want Benny! You can't leave him! Benny . . .'

The cry, thin and distant, woke Jack, who bolted up in his swag, head cocked to isolate and identify the sound. The night wind brushed his face then he heard it – not another scream, but the desolate sound of weeping coming from Sara's swag. Instantly he sprang to his feet.

She slept, her body hiccupping with sobs, the moonlight making tracks of the tears on her cheeks. He shook her gently.

‘Sara, wake up. It's okay, it's just a dream.'

Her body stiffened and her eyes jerked open. Her face was full of loss and terror and the tears continued to flow. ‘Oh, Jack.' Her hand clutched his arm. ‘It was – I was – and Benny.'

‘Hush,' he said. ‘It was a dream, Sara.' He took her in his arms, one hand cradling her head as he smoothed the unruly curls. ‘Just a bad dream, dear heart. None of it's real.'

‘But it is! It was,' she choked out as the tears poured forth to soak the skin of his neck. ‘It's a nightmare – the real one. Because I know now how they killed him. They left him to perish. He was only six, Jack, and he died out there all alone.'

‘I know,' he soothed. ‘I'm sorry. He's gone, but not really, you know, because now you remember him and he'll always be with you.'

In the midst of her wild grief, it was an oddly comforting thought.

Jack rocked her against him and let her weep. He kissed her hair, murmuring soothing nothings until she quieted and when she separated herself from him, he rose wordlessly and led her to the fire to stir the fading embers to life and make a billy of coffee. The moon had moved, Sara saw. The night looked late, past midnight. The only sound was the tiny whisper of the flames and the muted snores coming from inside the Pajero. Paul, despite his lack of bedding, slept. The thought reminded her and she looked at Jack, who had not yet asked about her dream.

‘I've worked out why he frightened me. At least I think so.' She told him how that day at the beach their relative positions – herself on the ground, his shadow falling across her – had mimicked the moments before Vic Blake had thrown her six-year-old self into the car and driven off, leaving her twin to die. Then, holding the enamelled mug close for comfort, she recounted the rest.

‘He called her Kitty,' she said. ‘She was different, younger of course, but even then she had this mean way of looking at me – I'd know her at any age. I wonder if Stella was even her real name?'

‘The police will find out,' Jack said. ‘If Paul could locate her then so can they.' It was the first time he'd used the journalist's Christian name.

‘But would they consider a recovered amnesiac who was six years old when the crime was committed a credible witness? I can just imagine the response you'd get from a judge if you tried presenting a dream as evidence.'

‘A dream that answers many puzzling questions,' Jack reminded her. ‘A grown man couldn't have walked to Dare's Plain from the canyon, let alone a child, not in November. So, dead or alive, Ben had to have been taken there. Which immediately proves the crime, if there was any doubt of it. That's a start. What about after, do you remember where they took you, or – shit, how stupid am I? That's when it happened, that's when you lost your memory, wasn't it?

‘No.' Her face looked blank in the soft light of the moon and the dying flames, the green eyes shadowed. ‘The details are there now, how we drove and drove . . .' She had cried until her eyes were swollen almost shut and her throat too sore to speak, and had then fallen asleep exhausted.

It had been only the start of the road trip, the rest a jumbled memory of strange rooms, odd meals and lukewarm water taken from a big blue barrel in the back of the station wagon in which they had travelled. She had wet herself once and Stella had slapped her again and called her dirty. She had made her wear the pants all day because she had no clothes to change into. Stella never left her side except to shop for food. When that happened Chrissie had stayed in the car with the man, but she had been so scared of him that she'd always scrooched back into the seat against the door, as far from him as she could get.

‘Bastard,' Jack muttered at this point of the telling. ‘I'd like to break his neck.' There was a grim line to his jaw and his shoulders were tense. It wasn't hard to imagine that it was Becky he saw in her place, hopeless and lost, all the bounce and shining innocence torn from her. Sara had paid a high cost for a moment's disobedience.

So they had arrived at last, Chrissy didn't know how many days later, at the ugly little clapboard house with its neglected yard. Most of the adults' conversations had gone over her head but one bit of it had stuck.

‘When do we call her father?' Stella had asked.

‘We'll give it a week,' the man said. ‘Let him sweat for a few days. The more he worries about his brats, the readier he'll be to pay to get 'em back.'

‘
Just don't wait too long,' the woman snapped. ‘I'm not a bleeding nursemaid.'

All Chrissy took from this was that they were going to tell her dad where she was, and the horrid lady didn't want her to stay. Benny had been right when he'd tried to get away from them, but he wasn't there to help so this time she would have to go by herself. The immensity of the city and the sheer number of houses she had seen as they drove in daunted her, but she had faith in her father. If she just got away from the bad people, he would come and find her.

They had locked her up in a room bare of anything but a bed with an iron frame and an empty wardrobe. The floor was covered in sticky vinyl, and there was a window that wouldn't open overlooking a street full of other houses. The window was set quite high from the ground, because there had been steps where they came in. The bed had a thin mattress, a blanket and only one sheet. And there was a ratty pillow without any cover, and it smelled. The lack of a second sheet bothered Chrissy most because she hated the touch of the scratchy blanket against her skin when it got cold towards morning. Stella gave her a grown-up's shirt to wear in bed, and once she had to wear it all day too when her clothes were taken away. That was the only time they were washed. She initially had to bang on the door when she needed the toilet but on the second day the woman brought a big china bowl, like a giant potty, and told her to use that. It was probably the day following that that Chrissy took the knife from the tray and hid it under the mattress. She didn't usually get cutlery, but Stella had been distracted. It wasn't a proper lunch, just dry biscuits and some peanut butter that was lumpy and hard to spread. It scared her, taking the knife, and she nearly wet herself again when Stella came back, but she was in a hurry and had just grabbed the tray and walked out, leaving a bottle of water behind.

‘You were a game little kid,' Jack said. ‘Six years old, for Christ's sake! What were you going to do with a knife?'

‘I needed it for the window.' A smile trembled briefly on Sara's lips. ‘We were naughty little brats, my twin and I. We used to climb and dig and get into all sorts of stuff. We were always in trouble. I suppose you would say that, young as he was, Benny had a very analytical mind. He could take things apart and I guess I learned from him. I had nothing to break glass with but the window had a catch on the sill. I wasn't strong enough to shift it but I thought I could prise it open. And I did.'

She had kept her head, waiting until she saw the bad man drive off in the car that had brought her there. It had taken a long time to move the catch because of her height in relation to the sill: she had to stand on tiptoes to reach, which quickly made her arms tired. Luckily the chamber pot got emptied when her breakfast came and she hadn't used it again yet, so she'd turned it upside down and stood on it. It helped a lot but the catch was very stiff and had, besides, been painted over. Every time she heard footsteps pass her door she had to stop and retreat to the bed in case Stella came in. But in the end the knife had done its job.

When the last bit of paint was chipped off, she had been able to wedge the tip of the blade in the catch and exert her strength against it. It took three goes and when she finally felt it move Sara could hardly believe she had done it, but there was no time to waste. She pushed the window pane up, then only a thin screen remained between her and freedom. Benny, she knew, would punch it out, so she would too. Balanced on the sill, she butted it with her head and it tore like tissue paper, so that she had to grab the window frame with both hands to stop herself falling. Only that was silly because she wanted to jump. So she had let herself go, tumbling into a drop twice her own height just as Vic Blake's vehicle had swept in off the street onto the short, weed-grown drive.

Sara drew a breath and picking up a piece of charred mulga stick poked the dying embers. ‘There never was a car accident,' she said, ‘just me falling. I must've landed on my head and knocked myself out. I was unconscious anyway – that's when my memory went. Stella must have realised and I suppose gave me the name Sara and told me that they were my parents. And the rest all grew from that.'

Jack nodded. ‘They saw the opportunity and grabbed it. How much simpler to keep a stolen kid that didn't know she
was
stolen? And I suppose they waited a bit before sending the ransom demand, to inch up the asking price and perhaps see if your memory came back – and while they were waiting the cops arrested Vic for the bank robbery. So your real father never learned you still lived and Stella was stuck with you.'

‘Some of it's very plain.' Sara's face twisted. ‘I
believed
, I really did, that Stella was my mother. Inside I must have known that something was amiss. At first, I mean, because I used to run to her for hugs and I never got them. After a while I stopped, but it always seemed unfair – as if some part of me knew that I should blindly expect to find comfort with my mother. The rest is a bit blurred. We moved from that house, but I don't remember if it was before or after Christmas. I don't remember having Christmas, but I do remember starting school. It was all new to me and I hated it. Everyone else had friends and the kids teased me about my hair.' She sighed. ‘It didn't get any better. I'm sorry, I sound like a real wimp but children can be quite cruel. Later on in high school it wasn't just being a redhead, it was the wrong clothes and not fitting in. I was a late bloomer so my hair always got me teased —'

‘I think your hair is beautiful,' Jack said. ‘The boys in your high school must've been blind.'

‘That's nice, Jack, but honestly it didn't look so great with a pimply chin under it and a daggy dress from St Vinnies. Stella kept shifting us around the city, which didn't help me make friends. Of course initially she must've been waiting for Vic to serve out his sentence. I expect they saw me as an ace up their sleeve – like a bank draft waiting to be cashed.'

‘She'd have been pretty pissed off when he died, then,' Jack agreed. ‘No money and suddenly, should your memory ever return, you're a real liability to her and her only. But it was a bit difficult to get shot of a daughter everybody knows you've got. And she already had your brother on her conscience.'

Sara's expression darkened. ‘I really hope so. He didn't even have a hat, I remember that clearly. It was lost in the canyon when the man took us.' She could see it now, a billed cap with the cotton neck guard their mother had stitched across the back. Red for him, yellow for her – to make them more visible, she now supposed.

As if divining her thought, Jack asked, ‘Your parents – how's your memory of them?'

‘Sort of patchy,' she admitted. ‘I can't see their faces. Maybe kids don't look at actual faces so much? I don't know. It's more aspects of them. Like he's big with gold hairs on his arms and he whistled a lot. And Mum was – she was cuddly and smelled of cigarettes and talc. And at night when she was going out our bedroom door she'd look back and blow kisses to us. Paul said her hair was red too, but I don't remember that.' She fell silent. The fire had died to white ash and the moon lay far over to the west, thin and white in the sky. She heard Jack yawn, the hinge of his jaw cracking, and she straightened. ‘I'm sorry. I must've been talking for hours. What time is it?'

‘Pretty late. After four, by the stars. There's Venus rising now. We should sleep for a bit.'

‘Yes.' She stood and he rose beside her. ‘Thanks for being here for me, Jack, and for listening. It's been a – well, a strange journey. I'm glad I wasn't alone on it.'

His arm slipped round her shoulder and he gave her a deep hug. For a breathless moment she thought he might kiss her and her heart quickened. It seemed an age that she waited, feeling the rise of sexual tension between them, but he did nothing. His arm slipped back to his side. ‘You're never alone, kiddo,' he said. ‘That's the thing to remember. Get your head down. We'll be up again in an hour.'

Sara was hurt by his rejection then mortified by her own expectations. Well, scarcely expectations. Yes, she had fallen for him; she had known weeks ago that her body desired him though her heart warred with her head about her feelings. It was one thing for her to love him, quite another for him to reciprocate, already entangled as he was with one city woman. Why would he even look at another? His hug had been the sort of embrace he would have given Beth along with the same words of assurance. He was just being kind and – what did they call it in the mulga? – riding for the brand. She was his sister's governess, part of the station to which he temporarily belonged. Flushing, thankful that he couldn't see her face, she slipped away to bed.