“What’s going to happen to that dear child?”
They both looked down at the sleeping baby, and as if on cue she squirmed in the makeshift crib, screwing up her face the way babies do when they’re suffering with wind. Meg crouched to lay a flat palm upon the baby’s tum, rubbing gently until the pain eased. “She reminds me of our boys,” she said softly.
“All babies look alike.”
Meg didn’t answer and Percy experienced a surge of unexpected anger. “Meg,” he began, “you know she has to go back.”
“Where? To whom?” she said, in the same gentle tone she’d have used to soothe the baby. “Her family is gone.”
Percy’s blood chilled at that. There was something challenging in the way she said it. If not her tone, then in the words themselves. Because for all intents and purposes, it was true. Thomas Turner was in England and a man whose interests lay outside the paternal. It was hard to see what would become of the child now, what was the best thing for her.
The little one lifted her knees, squirming this way and that until the wrap was loose around her middle; her hands were balled into fists. Even in the lamplight Percy could see that her face was bright puce.
“There now.” Meg reached in to scoop her from the drawer. She stood, patting the baby’s bottom, swaying in that innate way of mothers everywhere. When she pressed her lips against the downy head, whispering sweet nothings, the soft consoling sounds he remembered from when the boys were young, Percy glimpsed how much trouble they were in.
“I’m going to go back inside the house,” he said, surprised by how normal he sounded. “Take a shower, wait for the boys.”
“Yes, all right,” she said, without looking up. “I’ll stay here with this little treasure. She needs someone to love her.” And then, to the baby, “Isn’t that right, dearest one?”
Some hours later, Percy stood out on the narrow back verandah that ran the length of the coach house, smoking the last of Esther Hughes’s cigarettes. The boys were both asleep in their rooms. His plan to speak with them had not gone as he’d hoped; he’d managed to gather his thoughts together, but neither lad had been in the mood for talking when they got back from the search. Never mind, there’d be time for that in the morning. He’d sat down and cleaned their boots instead.
The biggest challenge over the coming days was going to be keeping the presence of the baby from them. The less they knew, the better. Percy had been trying to remember everything he’d told the police about Meg. He’d said she knew Mrs. Turner, and that they’d made deliveries to the house for as long as the family had lived there; he’d also mentioned that Meg counted everyone in town a friend; that’s just the sort of person she was. Nothing in that, surely, would bring suspicion upon his wife?
Percy’s gaze alit upon the line of trees that grew along the main street of Tambilla. His life, he suddenly saw, had been like one of Meg’s precious Christmas ornaments, handblown glass globes, hanging inside on the tree: imperfect but integral. The perceived stability had been deceptive, though; it had all been far more fragile than he’d thought. He wanted to put that precious orb back together, contain everything important safely inside, make it all as it had been before.
But that was magical thinking and Percy didn’t have time for that. He wasn’t the mayor of Casterbridge or Jude the Obscure; this wasn’t a Victorian novel about a good man’s fatal flaw, his tragic fall from grace. He had a family to think about, and a baby, too.
The baby was asleep now, curled up on the bed next to Meg. His wife had been exhausted, crashing fast. Percy had sat on the side of the bed, listening as her breath slowed, as the baby shifted beneath the cotton sheet, sucking her fist, sighing and gasping as babies do. As he sat there, his back turned on the pair, a plan had started to form. They would wait a few days, until the police search cooled, and then he would find a way to take the baby somewhere she’d be found, a place he could leave her safely, without being observed.
The rain had got lighter as he paced the verandah. Percy could see it falling in the glow of the streetlamp on the far side of the street. He finished his cigarette. He still struggled to understand how any of this had happened. “I was out walking... I couldn’t just leave her” was all Meg would say when he’d asked her. But the thought didn’t sit easily.
He feared that the police knew more than they’d let on. His mindwas racing, trying to picture the scene, because something about it, he worried now, had made the sergeant from Adelaide suspicious. “You didn’t see any evidence that the picnic had been disturbed? Any sign that someone else had been there?”
Percy had replied that he had not. It was hard to know if Sergeant Duke was simply canvassing every possibility, or whether he’d already formed a theory.
“Did you notice any prints?” the sergeant had asked.
Percy had assumed he meant from dogs, but what if the police had found Meg’s footprints at the scene?
Percy needed to move. He’d finished his cigarette and now he needed to get free of this place. He went quietly through the house to collect his boots and then onward along the tight path that ran beside the shop toward the street. Once, he wouldn’t have been able to make his escape so easily; Buddy-dog would have been at his heel, eager to run alongside him. Percy dug his hands deep into his pockets. On a night marked by such extraordinary loss of life, too much to comprehend, thoughts of old Buddy were a tipping point. That had been his fault, too. He hadn’t been watching closely enough. He should have known that when the long hot days stretched on and on, and the blue-green algal blooms grew thick, there’d be pufferfish washed up on the beach. So much loss. Percy slipped along the lonely path and out into the dark night.
The first thing he noticed when he reached the water hole was how sodden the earth had become. It was a mess, where the Turners had been, even right up close to the tree’s trunk. Rain had washed away any prints, he realized, and for a split second he felt a flood of relief. Surveying the muddy ground, he pictured them all lying there, remembered the lack of breath on his fingers, the ants on Evie’s wrist, Matilda and her necklace; he recalled the way Sergeant Duke had made a note of his son’s name.
It started to rain again, and out there in dark, hidden places, dingoes sent their howls into the stormy night. Hearing them, Percy was overcome with a sudden deep and profound grief. Events of the day, but even more than that, at an elemental level. It could do that to you, this country. The sounds, the colors, the stories of make and break—there was something brutally stark about it all. It could cause you to feel hollow and lonely, just by virtue of its vastness, its scale, the stretch of earth that went on forever. Only—Percy had the realization suddenly—he wasn’t alone. He sensed it beneath his skin; he was being watched. The sky lit up silver and Percy felt himself exposed. When darkness returned and thunder shuddered around him, he started for home.
He didn’t travel fast, and by the time he reached the house, dawn was less than an hour away. Percy took his boots off on the landing and let himself in by the back door. He crept along the hallway toward the front room. His boots were muddy, and he couldn’t leave them until morning to clean. He didn’t want to risk anyone knowing he’d been out.
As quietly as he could, Percy took out the cloth rags from the wooden box in the cupboard. Just enough of a tidy up to remove the mud. He reached to pick one up and froze. His sons’ boots were set out in a line near the wall as they always were, where he’d left them earlier after cleaning, but one pair was as muddy as his. Fresh mud, wet and cold.
Percy pictured the stirred-up ground beneath the willow tree on the bank of the Turners’ water hole. He had a memory of the same spot earlier that afternoon, everyone moving about the site, the police officers, the photographer. Rain might have erased most signs of earlier activity, but the photographer had caught and preserved the scene on film.
Did you notice any prints?the sergeant from Adelaide had asked, and then he’d inquired as to whether Percy had gone over to the baby’s basket.A woven thing, hanging in the tree.Percy had told themno, but they’d taken a measurement of his boot, and that’s when the officer from Adelaide had mentioned Kurt. Not Meg, but Kurt.
And then, suddenly, Percy understood. They hadn’t found women’s footprints near the crib; they’d found prints the size and shape of a man’s boot. That’s why they’d taken his measurements. He grasped, too, Meg’s reluctance to give details of her afternoon. She hadn’t been obfuscating. She’d been vague because she was inventing.
Percy didn’t know for sure which one of his boys she was covering for, but he could guess, and at this point it hardly mattered either way. He realized, grimly, as he looked at the matching sets of boots on the ground, that he was going to have to amend his police statement.
Next morning, Percy called ahead and went into the station first thing. It was still raining, and Hugo Doyle’s uniform shirt was wet in patches.
