Beat Not the Bones (9 page)

CHAPTER 9

Next morning Trevor Nyall entered his office ten minutes after Stella. He stopped only five minutes to collect some papers from his desk and put them in a brief-case. He patted Stella on the shoulder, enquired kindly after her health, said he would be back before twelve, and left. He did not mention Jobe.

But he did not return at twelve, nor during the afternoon, and Stella worked alone all day. There was only one interruption. At about five to twelve, as she was collecting her hat and bag to return for lunch at the mess, the door of the office opened and a man came in. He stood, standing in the doorway, with a brief-case in his hand, and said, ‘Mr Nyall not in?'

Stella smiled at him. There was something about him that instantly made her feel friendly. His bright eyes sparkled beneath thick, overhanging eyebrows. His face was florid and jovial. She could not remember having seen him before, but he reminded her vaguely of someone who had been kind to her.

‘No, he's out,' she said. ‘He's at a conference.'

‘Conference? Ha! Ha!' He rubbed his hands together and his eyes sparkled. ‘Always at a conference, these government fellows, eh? Wouldn't be happy without one. If they didn't talk they might have to work, eh?'

‘I don't know,' said Stella. ‘I've only just arrived.' It seemed to her that he was looking at her closely, though it was impossible to be sure, his eyes were so deeply set, like two small animals in ambush, behind his ragged, tobacco-coloured brows.

‘Well, well. Just arrived, eh? How do you like it here? Not a bad sort of place. Except for the natives,' he added. ‘Used to be all right. The beggars used to work in the old days. But the government's ruined them with this newfangled education. Place has gone to the pack. A pretty thing like you now … all alone, you want to be careful. Funny things go on up here.'

‘I'll be careful,' said Stella, smiling.

He walked across to Nyall's desk and put down his grey, felt hat, its black band soaked in sweat. Stella wondered why this hat, seen in thousands in Australian cities, should, in this country, give to its owner a disreputable air.

He looked quite worried. ‘You want to look out for the boys. Can't trust them. And don't you go walking around alone at night.'

‘I must go now,' said Stella, ‘or I'll miss my lunch. Will you wait for Mr Nyall? He said he'd be back, though it's so late I doubt if he will. I expect he'll go straight from the conference to his lunch.'

‘I reckon I'll stick around,' he said and settled himself into a chair. He held the tattered brief-case over his knees.

Stella was to have dinner that night with Trevor and Janet Nyall, and at 6.30 walked once more up the hill towards their house. The sunset was less brilliant that night than it had been two evenings before. The sky was overcast and the long, purple clouds were fired only on the edges. There was no wind and the air was heavy. The road turned ahead of her, and she saw, walking down the hill, a white man. He lifted his hand and waved. It was Trevor Nyall.

‘I thought you might be lost,' he said, as she drew near. ‘I suppose you don't know the way.'

They walked on together side by side. ‘Have you found out anything about Mr Jobe?' she asked.

He had taken her arm and patted her hand. She felt comforted by these gestures. ‘Well, not anything much, my dear. It takes time. He's not at the hotel, and he's not in the mess. Sometimes these strays sneak a bed there. My guess is he's left already. Now here's where we go up. It's quite a climb.'

They had left the road and faced the flight of steps that Stella had climbed two nights before. She looked up in surprise. The steps led straight ahead through the green, flat-topped trees.

‘It's a nice spot, isn't it?' said Nyall, putting a hand under her elbow. ‘In a few weeks, round about Christmas time, these flame trees will be a picture. There's nothing like a Marapai Christmas. You must spend it with us. The fun never stops. I believe someone came in to see me today when I was out. Who was it? What did he want?'

But he seemed more interested in the trees and before she had time to answer, he said, ‘There, look at that one, isn't it a beauty?'

‘It was a man. He didn't leave his name. He came at about five to twelve. Didn't you see him?'

‘No, I didn't finish until 3.30. One of the girls told me he had been in. Did he leave his name?'

‘No.'

‘Didn't say what he wanted?' He had turned to look at her.

‘No.'

‘Beautiful trees.' He smiled around him. ‘The Grafton people boast about their jacarandas, but there's nothing like the flame tree.'

They had nearly reached the top of the steps. ‘Mr Nyall,' said Stella, ‘I feel somehow that he isn't the whole answer any more – Jobe, I mean. There's more to it. I've found out that Sereva is dead.'

‘Sereva?' he said vaguely. He took a long pace forward, and she had to spring up to keep level with him.

‘David's assistant. They were the only two who went into Eola, and Sereva died before they got back to the station. Something happened out there that we will never find out from Jobe, and I think that's where I must go. I will never find out what happened to David unless …'

They had reached the top of the verandah steps. She had been talking so earnestly that she had hardly noticed that they were approaching the same house that she had been turned away from two nights before.

‘We'll find Jobe,' he said, pushing her up the steps ahead of him. ‘Don't worry.'

But Jobe had now become only a secondary goal. ‘I know we will,' she said confidently. ‘But I must go to Eola, Mr Nyall.'

The steps were narrow and she walked just ahead of him. She turned to look at him earnestly. His head was just below her shoulder. His eyes lifted, and looked for a moment fully into her own. Then she was forced to turn around again to watch where she was going. She had, now that the moment of contact was over, a peculiar impression of having looked into nothing, of having turned her gaze, not upon a man's face, not upon eyes and lips, but upon a kind of void.

‘Eola,' he repeated, speaking behind her. ‘Now you must go in and meet my wife.'

His hand between her shoulder blades pressed her forward, and she entered again the bright, golden room with its drifting draperies, bamboo furniture and enchanting air of not being a room but an extension of a garden. The same soft breeze fluttered the hangings in the doorways and stirred the green, shiny leaves that reached in from the shrubs outside.

Then she forgot the room and could only look at the woman who came to meet her. She hesitated, afraid of committing a social blunder. What was she doing here? She
could
not be Trevor Nyall's wife. But the woman was coming forward with a hand outstretched and Trevor was saying, ‘Janet, this is Stella.'

She looked some ten years older than Trevor, in spite of her hair, which was cut into a mass of short, frothy golden curls. Beneath this fantastic aureole her small pinched face looked shrunken and wizened. She was small and painfully thin, with tiny, white arms that reached out from the sleeves of her dress like the arms of a starved child. Her dress was made of some fine, transparent beige material patterned in green, and fashioned in a wispy style reminiscent of the 1920s. It fluttered like rags against her bony limbs. Stella felt that she had not walked forward but had been picked up by the breeze and wafted across the room like a withered leaf.

Her eyes were large and wide-set. They must at one time have been beautiful, but beauty was now entirely submerged in nervous evasion. Her eyes disturbed Stella profoundly, though she did not know why. The woman did not speak, but pressed Stella's fingers and then drew her hand quickly away, stepping back with a look of uncertainty about whether she should ever have stepped forward. Then she threw a glance at her husband and waited like a servant expecting an order.

Stella was no more certain how to behave. Janet Nyall did not look actually deranged, but Stella sensed that she had a grip on life so limp that she might at any time drop her hold altogether. The woman moved back across the room, hovering uncertainly from chair to chair. She appeared to have a profound distrust of everything around her. For no apparent reason she put out a hand and touched a table, like a blind woman reassuring herself that she was on the right path. Then a man came forward from the back of the room, took her hand and led her to a chair. Stella, her gaze turned on Janet Nyall, had not seen him before.

‘And this,' said Trevor, ‘is my brother, Tony.'

He bowed slightly. ‘
You!
' said Stella. ‘You are Mr Nyall's brother?'

She could see now how like he was to Trevor Nyall, and why Trevor when she met him had seemed familiar, like someone known years ago and met again, older and changed. Even though Anthony would be a younger brother, in many ways he did not look younger. Experience, suffering, frustration or disappointment had marked his face and left his brother's smooth and clean. Sickness, too, had possibly attacked him and passed his brother by. But there was more that made him seem a shadow of the older man. All that was strongest, richest and happiest in the parents who had produced these men had gone into the making of Trevor Nyall. The younger brother looked to be battling against the liability of being the last, of being born when the best of life's gifts, talents and powers had been bestowed elsewhere. And he wore these liabilities in his face with bitter resignation.

Stella did not acknowledge his nod but stared at him coldly, her body rigid with aversion. The words that she had tried to cleanse from her mind over the past forty-eight hours spoke again. ‘You didn't love him … you didn't know him …'

‘So you've met before?' said Trevor, looking at her with surprise.

‘Yes. I met him in the Department of Cultural Develop­ment yesterday afternoon. I knew he worked with David, but I didn't know you were brothers.'

This discovery struck her as being enormously significant. She had come here for comfort and peace, to be helped by her husband's friend, to be looked after, to be guided and directed as she had always been, but the house was stirring uneasily with its own currents, and the origin of this strangeness was Anthony Nyall. She felt apprehensive and bewildered, as if she were on the brink of some sinister discovery. Remembering something that Sylvia had said, she looked around at the walls, the corners, the ceiling, and saw that in this beautiful room that had so charmed her, something of great importance was missing.

Trevor laughed and thumped a hand twice on his brother's shoulders. ‘That was the only reason he would put up with you, eh? Lounging around all day getting under everyone's feet. We are a united family, aren't we Tony? We stick together at all costs.'

Anthony Nyall's reply was a faint smile. Stella had never seen him smile before. She preferred him serious.

‘You won't find in the whole of Australia, Stella, a more loyal family group than this.' Trevor looked from his brother to his wife. The smile died from his face, and he turned away and went to a table set with glasses and drinks. Janet, who had been gazing up into his face, followed him with her eyes. She half rose to her feet and her wispy hand extended in a vague, unrealised gesture.

‘I'm pouring you a pink gin, Stella, is that all right?' Trevor said from the table. He shook the bitters into the bottom of a glass. ‘You must excuse Janet, she's been sick. Can't take the climate. You've got to be husky in this place. It all looks pretty harmless, but it can be deadly.'

He stood with his feet slightly apart, his broad shoulders thrown back; his firm, deep voice rang out loudly. His white teeth and brilliant eyes flashed in the dusky light. He dominated the room, and his bitter-faced brother and faded wife looked insignificant beside him. ‘You wouldn't believe what the tropics can do to people. Take Janet here' – he pointed a hand at his wife, who sat with a fixed, bright smile – ‘you wouldn't believe it, but six years ago she was a beauty, the loveliest woman in Marapai. She's only forty-two. Ten years younger than me. You wouldn't think it, would you?'

‘You wouldn't think it, would you?' said Janet, looking up at Stella with the same fixed smile. ‘It's just as Trevor says, the tropics don't agree with me at all.'

‘So you see, you'll have to be careful,' said Trevor. ‘You fair-skinned, delicate girls don't wear well in the tropics.' He threw back his shoulders, conscious of being one of those who had worn well.

‘I think on the whole that women look exceedingly youthful here,' Anthony Nyall said quietly.

‘No, Tony,' said Janet, ‘you can lose your looks in a day. You heard what Trevor said.'

Tony looked down at Janet and smiled. It was, this time, a very different smile.

Stella had been waiting for the right, dramatic moment to bring out her accusation. Your brother tried to stop me from seeing you, he lied to me, he drove me away. She had been savouring this delicious moment of retaliation. But in the meantime Tony had smiled and she knew she could not speak. She did not know what to think of him. In the moment of pinning him down, he had eluded her. This glance, cast towards a sick woman, had thrown dust in her eyes. She saw that an enemy could be tender and she could not battle with tenderness.

‘Where's that boy?' said Trevor suddenly. His voice rang with displeasure. ‘
Where's
that boy? We want ice.' He moved to a door and shouted, ‘Where the hell are you.
Bring some ice!
'

Janet immediately began to flutter her hands. Her eyes were turned to her husband's back. She half stood and sat down again. ‘I don't know. I expect he's in the boyhouse.'

‘Well, he ought to be
here
,' said Trevor crisply. ‘Kora! Kora!' He raised his voice. ‘He ought to be in the kitchen from
six o'clock
,' he said, addressing his wife.