A Thing of Blood

Chapter One

homeward bound

MY BODY WAS BRUISED
. My ego was bruised. I was feeling, generally, a bit on the sensitive side — which is why my impatience with my brother’s prurient questioning was beginning to show.

‘Brian,’ I said, my voice providing the thinnest of crusts against the emotional magma that threatened to break the surface. ‘Brian, I am grateful that you travelled all this way to render assistance, but I really don’t wish to discuss what happened in Maryborough any further.’

When I said these words, we were an hour into the train journey from Maryborough in Queensland to Melbourne, two thousand miles south. In 1942 this journey took four days, and the thought of going over and over the unpleasantness in which I had become embroiled was intolerable.

‘All I’m saying, Will,’ Brian said, characteristically indifferent to my mood, ‘all I’m saying is that, even though I was only up here for a few days, it does seem odd that every woman you were involved with ended up dead. It just doesn’t look good. I’d be reviewing my courtship strategies if I were you. This is all I’m saying.’

I leant forward. Between clenched teeth, and keeping my temper under admirable control, I told my smirking brother that we were now officially at the end of this conversation.

‘And you needn’t,’ I added, ‘think that I’m nursing a grieving or broken heart.’

‘Oh, I didn’t think for a minute that you were grieving or heartbroken,’ he said, and somehow conveyed in this assurance his dubiousness as to my having a heart to grieve or to break.

‘I’m going to find the dining car,’ I said, and my tone made it unambiguously clear that I didn’t want Brian to accompany me.

This first leg of our journey was to Brisbane, and as this was the night train the world outside sped by unseen. In any case the windows were shuttered against the unlikely event that the Japanese air force chose tonight to bomb the Queensland railway. The train was crowded, even though all civilians were required to obtain a permit before travel. We had had no difficulty getting a permit, and neither, apparently, had anybody else. I suppose any journey out of Maryborough would be looked upon as essential. We were travelling in what passed in these parts for style — a first-class sleeper — paid for by Brian who, in not making anything of this, subtly let me know that I was beholden to him. Is there anything more calculated than self-less generosity?

In the corridor of the second-class sit-up carriage I was told by a man — who smelled so strongly of horse that he must have been a stockman — that there was no dining car between Maryborough and Brisbane, but that one was attached for the Brisbane-to-Sydney leg.

‘Broken arm,’ he said, nodding in the direction of my ostentatiously slung left limb.

‘Yes,’ I said, in a manner that I hoped would discourage further conversation and indicate that I found his powers of observation unremarkable. He must have been brighter than he looked, or smelled, and didn’t attempt further intercourse. He shrugged, muttered something that may have been ‘arsehole’, and pushed past me.

There was little to detain me in any of the carriages, so I returned to our first- class compartment.

‘This train seems to be a special transport for the dull,’ I said.

‘So you won’t stick out like a sore thumb then,’ Brian said snippily.

‘A few days away from those children you teach obviously isn’t enough to rescue your wit.’

He folded his arms.

‘At least I’ve got a job, Will. What are you going to do when we get back to Melbourne?’

‘I’ll see what’s happening in the theatre, I suppose. That is my profession.’

‘There’s not much,’ he said. ‘A couple of plays. You might have to learn how to juggle. Get on the Tivoli circuit.’

‘I don’t do vaudeville, as you very well know.’

‘Wirth’s Circus is in town.’

‘Very funny.’

‘Well, it’s a branch of show business, isn’t it?’

‘I’m not in show business, Brian. I’m a professional actor. I might start a new company.’

‘They’re looking for munitions workers. There are ads in the paper every day.’

I didn’t dignify that with a response.

‘Oh, by the way,’ Brian said. ‘I forgot to give you this. It was left on the bar at the hotel some time this afternoon.’

He reached into the pocket of his trousers and withdrew a sealed envelope. The name ‘Power’ flowed across its front in beautiful copperplate.

‘It’s nice that you eventually got around to giving it to me,’ I said. I opened the envelope and pulled out a folded sheet of unlined paper. It smelled faintly of jasmine, as if it had come from a stationery box. In a script as elegantly and carefully formed as that used to write my name were the words, ‘It’s not over, you bastard. I’m on the train.’

I stared at it for a moment, willing it to make sense, and passed it to Brian.

‘Charming,’ he said. ‘Any idea who it might be from?’

‘Of course not,’ I said.

‘You know,’ Brian said, ‘it’s amazing how you manage to rub people up the wrong way. You have a gift for making enemies. Darlene says that there’s just something about you. You can’t help yourself.’

‘The thing about your wife, Brian, if you don’t mind my saying so, is that she is very stupid.’

‘The thing about my wife, Will, if you don’t mind my saying so, is that she simply doesn’t like you. That doesn’t make her stupid. It makes her pretty normal. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to use the dunny.’

He left the compartment and I didn’t feel the slightest regret at having accurately diagnosed Darlene’s stupidity. She was a harpy, with all the social graces of a wildebeest. Now pregnant, we would all be expected to bill and coo over her calf when it sensibly fought itself free from the mire of her womb.

When Brian returned we didn’t speak further, but took to our bunks in sullen silence. I slept badly that night. The bunk was hideously uncomfortable, and I discovered something I didn’t know about my brother — he babbled incomprehensibly in his sleep. Just after I’d managed to drift off I was awakened by Brian getting up to go to the lavatory. His bladder had always been the size of a peanut. He made no effort to minimise the noise he created. My irritation at his thoughtlessness prevented my return to Nod, but that irritation changed to puzzlement and then worry when he hadn’t returned after half an hour.

I descended from my bunk, pulled on my trousers and opened the door into the corridor. I saw him immediately, lying on his stomach a few feet from the toilet door. Perhaps reprehensibly, my initial thought was that his termagant of a wife would blame me for whatever had happened to him.

As I walked towards him he began to move, and by the time I’d reached him he was on all fours and groaning. A small stream of blood was making its way down his neck towards the edge of his singlet.

‘What happened?’ I asked as I helped him to his feet. He seemed dazed and didn’t immediately respond. ‘You seem to have hit your head.’

This simple observation provoked a flurry of anger from him.

‘I didn’t hit my head. Someone hit it for me. I was on my way back from the dunny and someone obviously thought that I was you.’