Tyringham Park (36 page)

“Come on. You’ll regret it later if you don’t. Here, give me your hand.” He stood, confidently smiling down at her. “No pressure. It’s just that I would hate
you to miss one of the wonders of the natural world.”

She pretended reluctance as she gave her hand, and nonchalance as his long fingers closed over hers, but the contact sent a charge through her that she couldn’t disregard or minimise, even
if she wanted to. For such a long time now, every touch of his had had a medical intent: taking her pulse, feeling her forehead, listening to her heart with his ear on her chest – joy that he
did that instead of using his stethoscope – and leaning over to shine a light in her eye, a position she welcomed as a near embrace.

“Well?” he continued to smile, tightening his hold on her hand.

For her, the anniversary was well celebrated in that moment.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I don’t know.”

“We could picnic over there by that tree if you like and give the waterfall a miss. How’s that for a compromise?”

She agreed and, holding on tightly, placed both feet on the running board and then stepped down, leaning heavily on him.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you.”

By the time they reached the tree she, surprised by how strong she felt, agreed to walk the extra four hundred yards following an animal track. She picked her way under a canopy of gum trees,
with peels of eucalyptus bark, logs and sticks crunching underfoot, all the time being supported by him, with the roar of water sounding closer with each footstep.

Before they reached the lookout spot, Lochlann put his hands over her eyes and guided her into a clearing. “Look left first,” he said, putting hands on either side of her head to
direct her.

The earth fell away so sharply and so deeply she couldn’t see the extent of the drop except in the distance. The mountains were so far away one couldn’t see where the furthest,
palest ones merged with the sky.

“How strange,” she said, wanting to fall to her knees in a paganlike worship of the beauty before her, but knowing the ungainliness of her action would cancel out the effect she
wished to portray. “The mountains are lower than we are, and yet they look so high.”

Straight ahead, across the deep gorge, trees one hundred feet high appeared to be less than an inch, riding on the top of a cliff that showed its geological history, with rock formations layered
from top to bottom, looking like a carelessly assembled cathedral put in place by an unrestrained stonemason.

She could see the white spume of the falls in her peripheral vision, despite Lochlann’s hands on the side of her face acting as blinkers, but when she caught his hand and finally turned to
look at the water directly she wasn’t prepared for their magnitude and burst into tears at the impact of their grandeur. She turned to Lochlann and saw that he was pleased by her response.
She remembered him saying, “That’s one thing we have in common at least,” while they enjoyed a thunderstorm together, and now here was a second one.

The expression on his face was one she hadn’t seen before and didn’t know what it signified. Their eyes locked for a few seconds before he broke the contact.

“I’m glad I came,” she said, as if no look had passed between them.

They both turned to worship the splendour of the falls, so profligate in their generosity, putting on this show at this moment for just the two of them and, after they left, no one, and to think
it had done this for millions of years, perhaps unseen even by the aborigines who might never have stood on this exact spot when they wandered free across the land during all that time before the
white man came and dispossessed them.

One could see by the rock formation that the falls were formed on two levels, but such was the volume of water after the rain, the drop of hundreds of feet looked like one solid mass. Charlotte
would love to be able to stand closer, to feel the spray on her face. Having no fear of heights, she made to step forward but Lochlann held her back.

“Don’t go too near the edge,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the din.

He was being over-cautious, she thought. They were at least ten feet from the edge, but he had his reasons. Earlier, he had told her about a boy walking his dog along the cliffs near Tramore in
Co Waterford, wanting to see the Metal Man up close, who fell to his death when the ground gave way. The sea had worn away the base of the cliff so the ground he stood on, so solid-looking to the
eye, was only six inches deep and couldn’t take his weight.

“Sit over there in the sun,” said Lochlann, “and I’ll go back for the basket. You must be exhausted.”

“Surprisingly enough I’m not. Just pleasantly tired,” she answered, but when he pulled over a large branch she was glad to sink down and rest her back against the warm bark of
the tree.

“Shouldn’t be long,” said Lochlann, heading back the way they had come. She tried to follow his progress, but he was soon lost in the trees. When she leaned to the right she
could see the sun reflecting off the emblem on the bonnet of the car but couldn’t see him anywhere near it.

Becoming conscious that it was time Lochlann returned, Charlotte leaned over as far as she could in either direction but couldn’t locate him. Putting her arms on the tree
behind her, she was able to push herself into a standing position, then move closer to the edge where there were fewer trees and the view opened up. She saw him, surrounded by rocks, standing on
the lip of the gorge right beside the waterfall where the river first fell away from the land. He looked into the wall of the water, then looked back to where she was, but when she waved he
didn’t wave back and she realised he wasn’t looking at her but the cliff beneath her. He crouched, then leaned, then edged his way further out, and for some reason she stepped back so
that he wouldn’t see her if his gaze shifted. The rim of the gorge between them was in the shape of an arc, so that he would be able to see if the drop beside her was straight, or curving
inwards, or sloping outwards, just as she would be able to see how his cliff was formed if she went far enough out to look over the scrubby growth that blocked her view from where she stood.

Lochlann moved forward, stopping and checking every few yards. Even from this distance she could see the concentration in the tilt of his head and the stillness of his contemplation.

Distracted for a minute, she turned to watch an eagle riding the thermals over the gorge, and felt her spirit lift and join in union with it. She felt that something was about to happen. The
stupor of the last five months (five years?) was over, to be replaced by she knew not what. A resolution? Confrontation? Reality?

Would her wronged husband finally bring her to account in this isolated, beautiful, frightening place? Is that why he had brought her here?

Lochlann was back in the position she first saw him, staring at the wall of water at his feet.

She heard the spluttering of an engine. Lochlann was either too lost in thought or too close to the thunder of the water to hear it. After an interval the driver of the car came up behind the
doctor and waited at a distance, obviously not wishing to startle a person so close to the drop. Lochlann finally turned and saw him, registered surprise then walked towards him. They moved away,
talking, out of Charlotte’s view.

She didn’t realise how expectant she had been until she felt the disappointment of an action deferred with the arrival of the man. When she sat back down on the branch and leaned against
the warm trunk she felt as if she’d walked a mile, rather than just standing up and sitting down again.

Fifteen minutes later Lochlann returned with the basket and a square of tarpaulin. She searched his face for clues but he was his usual unreadable self.

“Just ran into Wombat Churchill. He came to look at the falls from the bottom up. Going to climb down.”

“How could he tell you all that when he can’t speak?”

“Easily enough.” Lochlann acted out the words in exaggerated sign language that would have made her laugh if she hadn’t been feeling so overwrought.

“Isn’t that a bit dangerous? After all that rain? On his own? What if he falls and breaks a leg down there? No one would ever know. Except you, but it’s only pure chance that
you are here.”

“No. He told them at the pub where he was going. They would send out a search party for him if he didn’t return. Funny man. Pity you took against him.”

After eating Mrs Parker’s specialities – rare roast beef and horseradish sandwiches, pork ribs baked in her secret sauce, and rhubarb crumble with cream, Lochlann stretched out in
the sun and fell asleep, giving Charlotte the opportunity to admire his features openly and avidly.

How young he looks, she thought. And how old I feel.

One look, exchanged in a corridor of the townhouse when she first saw him had altered her life’s course, and even now when she remembered that look it still sang in her consciousness and
made her wonder at its power. Thousands of glances later, she knew she would never see that open, trusting gaze directed at her again. It’s not that he had become furtive.
‘Impervious’ would describe it better. She had no hold over him stronger than any human being’s hold over another. This thought returned again and again to torment her. He was
tied to her by convention, not feeling. In his role as her doctor during her confinement, and even more so since its harrowing aftermath, she couldn’t fault his care and sympathy, but she had
never felt at any moment that it was personal.

Using a twig to flick off the ants that found their way on the tarpaulin, and her hand to keep away the flies from Lochlann’s face, Charlotte enjoyed the luxury of sitting close to her
husband, and feeling the warmth of his forearm through her skirt against her thigh.

She must have been over-stimulated. Conjuring up fantasies. A man with a face as wonderful as that, and an expression as innocent as that could not have entertained what she, in her madness, had
thought he might be considering – murder or suicide, guiding her on to an overhang, and like the boy in Tramore, have the earth give way beneath her weight – or worse, jump himself,
leaving her the victor, free to tell whatever story she chose.

Had Wombat Churchill, the man she treated so badly, been her unwitting saviour?

She must keep a tight rein on herself so she wouldn’t end up like other women she’d heard of who lost their minds after the death of a child.

Lochlann woke, blinking and disorientated, and for a second looked at her with pleasure and smiled, and then the smile faded. It wasn’t of her he was dreaming – the fading smile said
it more clearly than words.

Lochlann kept his grieving face lowered as he gathered up and repacked the picnic basket, taking his time, folding the tarpaulin exactly. He stood for one last look into the chasm where the
evening shadows were making patterns on the rocky mass on the far side and leaving all but the top of the falls in shade.

Charlotte was the first to break the silence on the way home. “I know what you mean about this place taking you out of yourself. It’s done me the world of good.
I’m feeling a lot better. Less gloomy. More energetic.”

“Good. I’m glad.” Lochlann’s voice was dull and flat. “Because I want to talk about going back home as soon as you’re well enough to travel.”

She was unprepared. “I don’t think I’m as well as that,” she flustered. “It could be a long time before I could face that long trip.”

“You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll rally now that you’ve made the first steps. We’ve stayed away long enough to save your mother’s reputation. That
was the agreement, remember? Besides, I want to enlist.”

“But you can’t. Ireland’s neutral,” was the first objection that came to mind.

“Thousands of Irish have joined up. Haven’t you been reading Harcourt’s letters?”

She had, but she always skipped the war bits, searching instead for any hidden messages from Niamh being relayed through Harcourt to Lochlann.

Did he consider her wifely claim on him now null and void, seeing there was no shared responsibility of a baby? Did he consider his vows to love, honour and obey until death were made under
duress and were never morally binding? Did he dislike her? Or even hate her?

She must pull herself together. All that staring and concentration he had engaged in at the falls – it was evolution he was thinking of, not hatred and death. He was looking at the rock
formations exposed in the gorge, that’s all. His probing into evolutionary theories and his projections about how white Europeans would live in this mostly unsuitable hot dry land, apart from
their intrinsic interest, saved him from having to talk about anything personal to her.

A wallaby hopped across the road in front of them. Lochlann braked and the engine cut out while he waited for the mate to follow.

“I must have another baby,” Charlotte found the courage to say while they were distracted watching the marsupials crossing. “Or else it was all for nothing.”

Lochlann swung out of the driver’s seat and cranked the car with unnecessary force, before returning to take his seat beside Charlotte. Sneaking a look at his bleak expression, she wished
she hadn’t blurted out what must have sounded to him like an ultimatum, ruining what on the surface had been a perfect day. Why didn’t she have the sense to wait for a more opportune
moment? After he’d had a few drinks, for example, when he’d lowered his defences?

He turned to look at her. Her plea for understanding remained unspoken when she confronted the calm hostility in his gaze.

“It
was
all for nothing,” he said. “There’s no other way of looking at it, but that’s no excuse for continuing to make things worse.”

That afternoon nine-year-old Sandy Turner, camping with his father, an itinerant rabbit trapper, was bitten by a tiger snake when he put down his hand to collect wood for the
campfire and didn’t see the snake camouflaged amongst the sticks and grass. The father made a tourniquet for the boy’s upper arm from the rope he used as a belt, the first thing he
could lay his hands on. He hobbled his son’s horse and left it at the camp, then put the boy in front of him on his own mount and held him tightly for the fifteen-mile ride to the town in the
dark.