CHAPTER 35
WHEN IT RAINS in Partageuse, the clouds hurl down water and soak the town to its very bones. Millennia of such deluges have brought forth the forests from the ancient loam. The sky darkens and the temperature plummets. Great gulleys are carved across dirt roads, and flash floods make them impassable by motor cars. The rivers quicken, finally scenting the ocean from which they have so long been parted. They will not be stopped in their urgency to get back to it – to get home.
The town goes quiet. The last few horses stand forlornly with their wagons as the rain drips off their blinkers, and bounces off the motor cars which far outnumber them these days. People stand under the wide verandahs of shops in the main street, arms folded, mouths turned down in grimaces of defeat. At the back of the schoolyard, a couple of tearaways stamp their feet in puddles. Women look in exasperation at washing not retrieved from lines, and cats slink through the nearest convenient doorway, meowing their disdain. The water rushes down the war memorial, where the gold lettering is faded now. It springs off the church roof and, through the mouth of a gargoyle, onto the new grave of Frank Roennfeldt. The rain transforms the living and the dead without preference.
‘Lucy won’t be frightened.’ The thought occurs in Tom’s mind, too. He recalls the feeling in his chest – that strange shiver of wonder for the little girl, when she would face down the lightning and laugh. ‘Make it go bang, Dadda!’ she would cry, and wait for the thunder to roll in.
‘Bugger it!’ exclaimed Vernon Knuckey. ‘We’ve sprung a bloody leak again.’ The run-off from the hill above the station was rather more than a ‘leak’. Water was pouring into the back of the building, set lower than the front. Within hours, Tom’s cell was six inches deep in water, entering from above and below. The house spider had abandoned its web for somewhere safer.
Knuckey appeared, keys in hand. ‘Your lucky day, Sherbourne.’
Tom did not understand.
‘Usually happens when it rains this much. The ceiling in this part tends to collapse. Perth’s always saying they’re going to fix it, but they just send some cove to put a bit of flour and water glue on it, as far as I can see. Still, they get a bit dark with us if the prisoners cark it before trial. You’d better come up the front for a while. Till the cell drains.’ He left the key unturned in the lock. ‘You’re not going to be stupid about this, are you?’
Tom looked at him squarely, and said nothing.
‘All right. Out you come.’
He followed Knuckey to the front office, where the sergeant put one handcuff on his wrist and another around an exposed pipe. ‘Not going to be flooded with customers as long as this holds out,’ he said to Harry Garstone. He chuckled to himself at his pun. ‘Ah, Mo McCackie, eat your heart out.’
There was no sound except the rain, thundering down, turning every surface into a drum or a cymbal. The wind had fled, and nothing outside moved except the water. Garstone set to with a mop and some towels, attempting to redeem the situation inside.
Tom sat looking through the window at the road, imagining the view from the gallery at Janus now: the keeper would feel like he was in a cloud, with the sudden air inversion. He watched the hands on the clock inch their way around the dial as if there were all the time in the world.
Something caught his attention. A small figure was making its way towards the station. No raincoat or umbrella, arms folded, and bent forward as though leaning on the rain. He recognised the outline instantly. Moments later, Isabel opened the door. She looked straight ahead as she made for the counter, where Harry Garstone had stripped to the waist and was busy trying to mop up a puddle.
‘I’ve …’ Isabel began.
Garstone turned to see who was speaking.
‘I’ve got to see Sergeant Knuckey …’
The flustered constable, half-naked and mop in hand, blushed. His eyes flicked towards Tom. Isabel followed his gaze, and gasped.
Tom jumped to his feet, but could not move from the wall. He reached a hand to her, as she searched his face, terrified.
‘Izzy! Izzy, love!’ He strained at the handcuffs, stretching his arm to the very fingertips. She stood, crippled by fear and regret and shame, not daring to move. Suddenly, her terror got the better of her, and she turned to dash out again.
It was as though Tom’s whole body had been brought back to life at the sight of her. The thought that she might vanish again was more than he could bear. He pulled again at the metal, this time with such force that he wrenched the pipe from the wall, sending water gushing high into the air.
‘Tom!’ Isabel sobbed as he caught her in his arms, ‘Oh Tom!’ her body shaking despite the strength of his hold. ‘I’ve got to tell them. I’ve got to—’
‘Shh, Izzy, shh, it’s all right, darl. It’s all right.’
Sergeant Knuckey appeared from his office. ‘Garstone, what in the name of Christ—’ He stopped at the sight of Isabel in Tom’s arms, the two of them soaking from the pipe’s downpour.
‘Mr Knuckey, it’s not true – none of it’s true!’ cried Isabel. ‘Frank Roennfeldt was dead when the boat washed up. It was my idea to keep Lucy. I stopped him reporting the boat. It’s my fault.’
Tom was holding her tight, kissing the top of her head. ‘Shh, Izzy. Just leave things be.’ He pulled away and held her shoulders as he bent his knees and looked straight into her eyes. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart. Don’t say any more.’
Knuckey shook his head slowly.
Garstone had hastily replaced his tunic and was smoothing his hair into some sort of order. ‘Shall I arrest her, sir?’
‘For once in your bloody life, show some sense, Constable. Get busy and fix the blinking pipe before we all drown!’ Knuckey turned to the others, who were staring intently at one another, their silence a language in itself. ‘And as for you two, you’d better come into my office.’
Shame. To her surprise, it was shame Hannah felt more than anger, when Sergeant Knuckey visited her with news of Isabel Sherbourne’s revelation. Her face burned as she thought back to her visit to Isabel just the previous day, and to the bargain she had struck.
‘When? When did she tell you this?’ she asked.
‘Yesterday.’
‘What time yesterday?’
Knuckey was surprised by the question. What bloody difference could it make? ‘About five o’clock.’
‘So it was after …’ Her voice died away.
‘After what?’
Hannah blushed even deeper, humiliated at the thought that Isabel had refused her sacrifice, and disgusted at having been lied to. ‘Nothing.’
‘I thought you’d want to know.’
‘Of course. Of course …’ She was concentrating not on the policeman, but on a windowpane. It needed cleaning. The whole house needed cleaning: she had hardly touched it for weeks. Her thoughts climbed this familiar trellis of housework, keeping her on safe territory, until she managed to haul them back. ‘So – where is she now?’
‘She’s on bail, at her parents’.’
Hannah picked at a hangnail on her thumb. ‘What will happen to her?’
‘She’ll face trial alongside her husband.’
‘She was lying, all that time … She made me believe …’ She shook her head, lost in another thought.
Knuckey took a breath. ‘All a pretty rum business. A decent sort, Isabel Graysmark was, before she went to Janus. Being out on that island didn’t do her any good at all. Not sure it does anyone any good. After all, Sherbourne only got the posting because Trimble Docherty did away with himself.’
Hannah wasn’t sure how to put her question. ‘How long will they go to prison for?’
Knuckey looked at her. ‘The rest of their lives.’
‘The rest of their lives?’
‘I’m not talking about the gaol time. Those two will never be free now. They’ll never get away from what’s happened.’
‘Neither will I, Sergeant.’
Knuckey sized her up, and decided to take a chance. ‘Look, you don’t get a Military Cross for being a coward. And you don’t get a Bar to go with it unless – well, unless you saved a lot of your side’s lives by risking your own. Tom Sherbourne’s a decent man, I reckon. I’d go so far as to say a good man, Mrs Roennfeldt. And Isabel’s a good girl. Three miscarriages she had out there, with no one to help her. You don’t go through the things those two have been through without being bent out of shape.’
Hannah looked at him, her hands still, waiting to see where he was going.
‘It’s a God-awful shame to see a fellow like that in the position he’s in. Not to mention his wife.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything that won’t occur to you in a few years’ time. But it’ll be too late by then.’
She turned her head a fraction, as if to understand him better.
‘I’m just asking, is it really what you want? A trial? Prison? You’ve got your daughter back. There might be some other way …’
‘Some other way?’
‘Spragg’ll lose interest now that he’s had to drop his murder malarkey. As long as this is still a Partageuse matter, I’ve got some leeway. And maybe Captain Hasluck could be persuaded to put in a word for him with the Lights. If you were minded to speak up for him too. Ask for clemency …’
Hannah’s face reddened again, and without warning she jumped to her feet. Words that had been building up for weeks, for years, words Hannah didn’t know were there, burst from her. ‘I’m sick of this! I’m sick of being pushed around, of having my life ruined by the whims of other people. You have no idea what it’s like to be in my position, Sergeant Knuckey! How dare you come into my house and make such a suggestion? How bloody dare you!’
‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘Let me finish! I’ve had enough, do you understand me?’ Hannah was shouting now. ‘No one is ever going to tell me how to live my life again! First it’s my father telling me who I can marry, then it’s the whole bloody town turning on Frank like a mob of savages. Then Gwen tries to convince me to give Grace back to Isabel Graysmark, and I agree – I actually agree! Don’t look so shocked: you don’t know everything that goes on around here!
‘And it turns out the woman lied to my face! How dare you? How dare you presume to tell me, to even suggest to me, that I should, yet again, put someone else first!’ She pulled herself up straight. ‘Get out of my house! Now! Just go! Before I – ’ she picked up the thing nearest to hand, a cut glass vase, ‘throw this at you!’
Knuckey was too slow in getting to his feet and the vase caught him on the shoulder, ricocheting against the skirting board, where it smashed in a dazzle of shards.
Hannah stopped, not sure whether she was imagining what she had done. She stared at him, waiting for a clue.
He stood perfectly still. The curtain flapped with the breeze. A fat blowfly buzzed against the fly wire. A last fragment of glass gave a dull tinkle as it finally succumbed to gravity.
After a long silence, Knuckey said, ‘Make you feel better?’
Still Hannah’s mouth was open. She had never in her life hit anyone. She had rarely sworn. And she had definitely never done either to a police officer.
‘I’ve had a lot worse thrown at me.’
Hannah looked at the floor. ‘I apologise.’
The policeman bent to pick up some of the bigger pieces of glass, and put them on the table. ‘Don’t want the little one cutting her feet.’
‘She’s at the river with her grandfather,’ muttered Hannah. Gesturing vaguely towards the glass, she added, ‘I don’t usually …’ but the sentence trailed off.
‘You’ve had enough. I know. Just as well it was me you threw it at and not Sergeant Spragg.’ He allowed a trace of a smile at the thought.
‘I shouldn’t have spoken like that.’
‘People do, sometimes. People who’ve had less to contend with than you. We’re not always in full control of our actions. I’d be out of a job if we were.’ He picked up his hat. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. Let you think about things. But there isn’t a lot of time left. Once the magistrate gets here and sends them off to Albany, there’s nothing I can do about it.’
He walked through the door into the dazzle of daylight, where the sun was burning the last of the clouds away from the east.
Hannah fetched the dustpan and brush, her body moving without any apparent instruction. She swept up the shards of glass, checking carefully for any overlooked splinters. She took the dustpan into the kitchen and emptied it onto old newspaper, wrapping the glass safely and taking it outside to the rubbish bin. She thought of the story of Abraham and Isaac, how God tested Abraham right to the limit, to see whether he would surrender the thing dearest to him in the world. Only as the knife was poised above the child’s neck did God direct him to a lesser sacrifice. She still had her daughter.
She was about to go back inside when she caught sight of the Cape gooseberry bush, and remembered that terrible day after Grace’s return when her daughter had wedged herself behind it. As she sank to her knees on the grass and sobbed, the memory of a conversation with Frank floated into her awareness. ‘But how? How can you just get over these things, darling?’ she had asked him. ‘You’ve had so much strife but you’re always happy. How do you do it?’
‘I choose to,’ he said. ‘I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.’
‘But it’s not that easy.’
He smiled that Frank smile. ‘Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.’ He laughed, pretending to wipe sweat from his brow. ‘I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a very proper job of hating, too: very Teutonic! No,’ his voice became sober, ‘we always have a choice. All of us.’
Now, she lay down on her belly in the grass, feeling the strength of the sun sap hers. Exhausted, half aware of the bees and the scent of dandelions beside her, half aware of the sour sops under her fingers where the grass was overgrown, finally she slept.
Tom still feels the touch of Isabel’s wet skin, even though the cell is now drained, his clothes dry, and his reunion with her yesterday evening just a memory. He wants it both to be real, and to be an illusion. If it’s real, his Izzy has come back to him, as he prayed she would. If it’s an illusion, she’s still safe from the prospect of prison. Relief and dread mix in his gut, and he wonders if he will ever feel her touch again.
In her bedroom, Violet Graysmark is weeping. ‘Oh, Bill. I just don’t know what to think, what to do. Our little girl could go to gaol. The pity of it.’
‘We’ll get through it, dear. She’ll get through it, too, somehow.’ He does not mention his conversation with Vernon Knuckey. Doesn’t want to get her hopes up. But there might be the shadow of a chance.
Isabel sits alone under the jacaranda. Her grief for Lucy is as strong as ever: a pain that has no location and no cure. Putting down the burden of the lie has meant giving up the freedom of the dream. The pain on her mother’s face, the hurt in her father’s eyes, Lucy’s distress, the memory of Tom, handcuffed: she tries to fend off the army of images, and imagines what prison will be like. Finally, she has no more strength. No more fight in her. Her life is just fragments, that she will never be able to reunite. Her mind collapses under the weight of it, and her thoughts descend into a deep, black well, where shame and loss and fear begin to drown her.
Septimus and his granddaughter are by the river, watching the boats. ‘Tell you who used to be a good sailor: my Hannah. When she was little. She was good at everything as a little one. Bright as a button. Always kept me on my toes, just like you.’ He tousled her hair. ‘My saving Grace, you are!’
‘No, I’m Lucy!’ she insists.
‘You were called Grace the day you were born.’
‘But I want to be Lucy.’
He eyes her up, taking the measure of her. ‘Tell you what, let’s do a business deal. We’ll split the difference, and I’ll call you Lucy-Grace. Shake hands on it?’
Hannah was awoken from her sleep on the grass by a shadow over her face. She opened her eyes to find Grace standing a few feet away, staring. Hannah sat up and smoothed her hair, disoriented.
‘Told you that’d get her attention,’ laughed Septimus. Grace gave a faint smile.
Hannah began to stand but Septimus said, ‘No, stay there. Now, Princess, why don’t you sit on the grass and tell Hannah all about the boats. How many did you see?’
The little girl hesitated.
‘Go on, remember how you counted them on your fingers?’
She held up her hands. ‘Six,’ she said, showing five fingers on one hand, and three on the other, before folding two of them down again.
Septimus said, ‘I’ll go and have a rummage in the kitchen and get us some cordial. You stay and tell her about the greedy seagull you saw with that big fish.’
Grace sat on the grass, a few feet from Hannah. Her blonde hair shone in the sun. Hannah was caught: she wanted to tell her father about Sergeant Knuckey’s visit, ask his advice. But she had never seen Grace this ready to talk, to play, and couldn’t bear to ruin the moment. Out of habit, she compared the child with her memory of her baby, trying to recapture her lost daughter. She stopped. ‘We always have a choice.’ The words ran through her mind.
‘Shall we make a daisy chain?’ she asked.
‘What’s a daisy train?’
Hannah smiled. ‘Chain. Here, we’ll make you a crown,’ she said, and started to pick the dandelions beside her.
As she showed Grace how to pierce a stem with her thumbnail and thread the next stem through it, she watched her daughter’s hands, the way they moved. They were not the hands of her baby. They were the hands of a little girl she would have to get to know all over again. And who would have to get to know her, too. ‘We always have a choice.’ A lightness fills her chest, as if a great breath has rushed through her.