Out of Alice (26 page)

The sun was still behind the range when the Pajero, carrying the three of them, left the campground to travel the six kilometres to Kings Canyon. Sara was heavy-eyed; her mind had been too busy for further sleep. Jack had watched her as she came to the fire for breakfast.

‘Are you sure you want to go on with this? There's no real need after all.'

‘We've come this far.' She drew a long breath. ‘I may as well see it. Benny and I – we never got to the spring, you know.'

Paul, who was trying to pour from the billy, swore as it spilled, and jerked his head up. ‘You've remembered?'

‘Everything, yes. Well, so far as I know,' she admitted. ‘Which is another reason for going. I'll fill you in later. How did you sleep?'

‘What? Oh, fine. A few aches this morning. So your memory's come back, that's great!'

‘The memory of a six-year-old. It's not proof,' she said shortly, and was immediately sorry she had snapped at him. Relenting, she added, ‘I know why I reacted as I did at the beach though. I'll explain that too, once we're there.'

They parked where the track into the canyon ended, in a space where the wattle scrub had been cleared away for the purpose. As briefly as she could Sara spoke of what she'd learned. Paul listened carefully, his dark face thoughtful. When she had finished he nodded. ‘It covers all the points for me. It'll make a hell of a story but whether it's good enough for an arrest, or to convince your father, remains to be seen.'

Sara was stunned into silence and it was Jack who said roughly, ‘What the hell's that supposed to mean? Chris'sake, man! Why wouldn't he believe his own daughter?'

Paul flicked him a look. ‘Wake up, cowboy.' His tone was unfriendly. Either he hadn't forgiven the punch, or he didn't like being questioned about his own world. ‘Old JC is a multimillionaire and his history's well known. How many conmen do you think, through the years, have tried to sell him news of his daughter? Or even his actual daughter? You want my best guess? At least a dozen. It's why he's so hostile to the press. Only a DNA test will convince him. Give me the exclusive on this, Sara, and I'll do my damnedest to get my paper to pay for the test. They're not cheap. They take a while to process, too.'

Sara said, ‘I'm not baring my life again for anyone else.'

‘Good.' He hesitated. ‘We should get the test started, I think, before I contact JC.'

‘Whatever.' Until now Sara had not considered the reality of having a father. Not the actual man who had once underpinned her world. He would have changed, of course he would have, from the strong god-like figure she remembered, the one who had swung her up in his arms and ridden her on his shoulders. The one whose stern voice had let her and her twin know it when they had done something wrong. He had been the kingpin of their young worlds and if she'd had time since Jack had woken her last night to think beyond the events of childhood, she'd have assumed he would still be the same. It shocked her to think that he might doubt her, might demand proof of the legitimacy of her claim. Troubled, she put the thought from her mind and turned to Paul. ‘So, where were we camped back then, do you know?'

‘Not exactly, but probably somewhere close to here. The ground's pretty uneven further in. You don't —'

‘No.' She didn't wait for his question. ‘There was a little creek, like that one. That's all I'd be sure of.'

‘Let's follow it up, then,' Jack said.

This early the canyon was in shadow, only the tops of the western side touched to red by the sun. Compared with the surrounding flatness its walls looked incredibly high, the upper reaches formed from sheer slabs of rock that towered above the eucalyptus foliage like an island rising from a sea of green. Jack took the lead, tramping through scrubby wattle and then a band of silvery grey shrub that he identified as holly grevillea. Its leaves bore the spikes to prove its name. Sara recognised spinifex and the clumpy growth that Jack had said was kangaroo grass. The creek widened and shallowed; the pad they were following clung to the gradually rising near wall, which was fractured and worn by weather and time.

Sara, using her arms to fend off branches and steadying her steps against boulders and tree trunks, wondered if it ever rained out here. The low scrub-covered sand drifts in the creek bed and the depth of bark and debris littered along its bank showed that it was an infrequent occurrence. Some of the wattle was in bloom, lending its fragrance to the morning air, and it was cool enough still for the birds to be active. There were honeyeaters in the grevillea, the bold flashes of parrots among the gum tops and myriad other smaller birds she couldn't name. Above, in the brilliant sky, kites rode the updrafts on outspread wings.

Sara tried to reconcile it with her dream, but her recollections focused more on herself and Benny than the actual area. Besides, she had been smaller then. The scrub that now she could see through and sometimes over would have completely engulfed children. The boulders that were chest high must have been well above their heads. She looked in vain for the one they had climbed and slid down. There were so many possibilities and twenty years, even allowing for the slowness of desert growth, must have changed the look of the country.

Jack had stopped to pluck a switch for the ever-present flies. He cocked a brow at her. ‘Are you getting anything from it?'

She shook her head in frustration. ‘I'm not looking at it from the same viewpoint, that's the trouble. They were half my height.' In her mind's eye she could see them trotting easily beneath the branches she was pushing her way through, the two bobbing heads with their billed hats and nape protectors, one red, one yellow. ‘It's like returning to your primary school years later – everything's so small and crowded, even the playground you used to think was enormous.'

‘It's quite a sight anyway.' Jack was gazing around. Paul was scribbling on a pad. ‘What're you doing?'

‘Getting down a sense of the place. Who would ever think a crime could be committed somewhere this wild and remote? Though I suppose,' he added thoughtfully, ‘that fact makes it the ideal venue.'

‘Not if the locals hadn't buggered the kids' chances from the outset,' Jack argued. ‘The droves of people that came in to help with the search put paid to any hope of ever finding anything useful. The cops should immediately have cordoned the place off and got a tracker in, but I suppose by the time they got out here it was already too late. Randall might've been a property owner but he wasn't desert-bred. Tracks last out here – sometimes for years, if there's no rain or five hundred volunteers tramping 'em to death. I'd lay odds that, given a clear field, a tracker would've known —'

‘Jack,' Sara said, an odd edge to her voice. They were deep in the gorge now and she was pointing ahead at a massive block of stone, the size of a room and so even that it almost looked square. ‘There! That's where she was, by that rock – Kitty. That's where she led us back from. Down to the creek first, then that way.' Sara was moving as she spoke, going up close enough to touch the red solidity of the huge stone, then following its edge to the creek side. ‘We went down here.' She trod unerringly as if in a trance through rocks and tangles of dead hop bush, angling across the shallow creek bed and, arrested by her sudden certainty, the men followed unquestioning.

Sara led them by degrees, stopping occasionally to turn aside where it was impossible to push through the scrub, but always veering back to her original line as if she could actually see the two little phantom figures before her. Her gaze was fixed ahead. Jack, exchanging a glance with Paul, wondered if there was some point on the canyon wall by which she unconsciously navigated. They were more than halfway back to the mouth of the canyon, the rock on the eastern side sinking so that the cliff became a steep buttress, when she abruptly stopped.

‘Here.' Sara was casting about her as if suddenly lost. ‘I think it was somewhere here that he was waiting, or perhaps coming to meet her.' The purpose seemed to leave her. ‘It's where – at least, I think – where we started to struggle. But she was dragging me then and I – he carried Benny. He screamed and hit him and kicked. His face was so red from temper and from being held upside down, I expect.'

She moved aimlessly around the rocks as if she had lost her way, then sank down onto one, without regard for its position in the sun. Markham, Jack saw, had his camera out again.

‘It was twenty years back,' Jack reminded her. ‘What is it that makes you think this is it?'

‘What?' Her thoughts had been far away. ‘Oh.' She blinked as if suddenly waking, the dazed look clearing from her green eyes. ‘I – I'm not sure. Did I say that? I'm sorry, Jack. Half the time it seems like yesterday and then there's a sort of gap and I hardly know who I am or how old I am. The double timelines are doing my head in.'

‘I'm not surprised.' He poured a drink from the water bottle. ‘Here, it's heating up and you're sitting in the sun. Come over into the shade. Have you had enough bush bashing, or do you want to go onto the spring? Could be a way off.' He swung the heavy water container onto a rock and waved the cup at the journalist. ‘You wanna drink?'

‘Thanks.' Paul took the container and Sara followed Jack into the shade. His quick eyes caught the movement of a small lizard that had been sunbaking on the stone as it whisked out of sight into a crack. ‘Keep an eye open for snakes,' he cautioned her, then bent suddenly to a patch of faded colour half-hidden by red gravel and the siftings of old grey leaf litter.

It was his stillness, Sara thought, that caused her to notice. ‘What is it?'

He turned to her then, dumbly proffering the object he'd found, faded and half rotted but still recognisable as a child's hat. The bill had peeled and the crown was missing but the red nape flap was still attached to the remnants, the once-bright colour faded now to an anaemic pink.

Sara took the rag in trembling fingers.

‘Oh, God. It's Benny's hat.' She looked wildly about, tears starting to her eyes. ‘I was right, then. This
is
where —' Overcome, she sank to the earth, cradling the pathetic relic to her breast, the tears rolling down her pale cheeks. ‘He didn't have a chance,' she cried. ‘They
murdered
him. He was a little child, Jack, younger even than Becky and they killed him.'

‘I know.' His hand, warm and solid, patted her shoulder. Sara didn't see his face twist in pain for her own suffering or the inimical look he cast at the journalist, as if fearing the man would breach her privacy by choosing to photograph the moment.

There was no further talk of finding the spring. Returned again to the campsite, Paul looked at Jack. ‘I've got all I need. So we'll head straight back to Alice?'

‘The old mission for starters. Then we'll see how we're travelling. We've used up a fair bit of the day and I'm not driving that road in the dark.'

‘It'd be cooler,' Paul protested. ‘And the track's plain enough if you're worried about losing it. We could be in town by midnight.'

‘We could do an axle too,' Jack retorted. ‘This is the desert; you don't take chances with it. You're free to suit yourself of course but if it comes to it, we'll be camping.'

Sara left them talking and packing up and got into the Toyota. She had said little since her display of grief. She placed the hat she was still clutching in the glove box. Her father might want it, either as proof of her story or as the last tangible link with his son. It was odd to think that she couldn't guess how he would feel about it – about her. Did he still grieve for his twins or was his memory of them no more than an old regret? She hadn't even thought to ask Paul if he had remarried. It seemed highly likely. It was more than twenty years since Mary Randall had killed herself. Which meant that Sara probably had half-brothers or -sisters. How would they feel to suddenly find themselves with an older sibling, supposedly long dead, who'd come miraculously back to life?

Muttering something uncomplimentary under his breath about the journalist, Jack slammed his door shut and glanced across at her.

‘You okay?'

‘I'm fine,' Sara said and realised that it was true. Yes, she was exhausted and sad, bereft in a way that she suspected only another twin would understand, but the storm of tears seemed to have drained a weight from her chest, as if a bladder of hurt somewhere inside her had burst, leaving her freer and lighter. ‘Jack, I was just wondering, do you happen to know if JC Randall is married?' It seemed too strange as yet to call him
my father.

He started the motor and thought about it. ‘I dunno. Maybe. All I know about the man is that he owns a trucking company and he's a venture capitalist – whatever the hell that is. I've never paid any attention, and any road it's the sort of wealthy blokes that have racehorses and buy football teams, or go in for politics that make the news. He doesn't. Markham would know though.'

‘I'll ask him.'

She settled into her seat, tucking her hands under her hat as he swung away from the campground, the red dust the vehicle raised visible for miles across the flat stretch of desert that ran from the range to the far horizon.

The Pajero suffered a puncture just short of Hermannsburg and the vehicle proved to have neither jack nor wheel brace included with its spare. Jack spoke his mind pithily on the subject while providing the missing equipment, but the delay meant they had no hope of completing the journey in daylight. They camped near a stock bore where cattle trickled in as the sun set across a flat shadowed plain, and Sara woke in the night to the drumming of shoeless hooves. The loud snorts of the brumby stallions approaching the trough seemed to tear the night apart. Sitting up in her swag, she watched them, black silhouettes in the moonlight, until some sound or scent alarmed them and they were off in a rush of tossing heads and lifted tails, the thunder of their going drifting back to her on the breeze. Sara lay down again, breathing the scent of dust and distance, oddly comforted as the silence closed round her again, and slept until dawn.

It was good to be back at Frank and Helen's neat suburban home. Showered and shampooed, with her wet curls tamed into a knot on top of her head – she still hadn't found time for a hairdresser – Sara shared a pot of tea at the kitchen table with Jack and his father.

Paul Markham had returned to his motel. ‘Are you going to contact my father, tell him about me?' she had asked on the return journey.

‘Not yet.' Paul had been definite. ‘Tried that. He won't listen. We need the DNA results first. He's a pretty formidable bloke, Randall. I tried to meet with him, I flew to Sydney especially for that purpose right after I'd spoken to Blake's cellmate. I couldn't get near him. Tried the phone, with the same result. That's when I learned from that toffee-voiced woman that guards his door about all the other guys who'd tried it on over the years. Saying they'd found you or had information to sell. The only way it's gonna work is to mail the test results,
then
contact him.'

‘I see.'

Thinking about Paul's words later, Sara supposed that she couldn't blame her father, however cold his behaviour seemed. Wealthy men were the targets of the unscrupulous and he believed her dead. Her name on the memorial out on Dare's Plain proved that. She found that she wanted him to have gone on hoping, vain though the years had shown that to be. Perhaps if her mother had lived – weren't women supposed to be more constant in their devotion? Sara brought herself back to the present, to the cheerful room with its bright curtains and scarlet kettle.

‘So what now? You heading for Redhill?' Frank asked Jack.

‘Maybe tomorrow. I'll give Len a ring first, see if they need anything picked up. And Markham's finding out where Sara can get her mouth swabbed for these tests. It's got to be done with proper supervision so it can't be doubted. What about you, Dad? You seen this quack of yours yet?'

‘Yesterday. He says I'm fine. I'll give you a day's start then before I head on up the bitumen and pick up your mum.' He glanced through the window at the patchy lawn. ‘I've had the sprays on but the grass has suffered a bit while we were gone. Might get it cut tomorrow.' He wagged his head at Sara. ‘Damn woman sets quite a store by her garden but at least while she's fussing with it she's not pestering me.'

‘Oh, yes?' Sara said. ‘You know you'd miss it if she wasn't, Frank.'

‘Yeah,' he agreed dolefully. ‘Just shows what habit reduces a man to.'

‘You're a pathetic old faker.' Sara smiled at him and rose to clear the table.

The following morning, her hair still uncut – she'd bought two big plastic grips instead – Sara and Jack left for Arkeela. It would add roughly three hours to the overall trip, Jack told her. The track into the station was, luckily for him, one of the better roads, as it served as a main link into Queensland. ‘One of these days we'll get it bituminised,' he said optimistically. ‘Tourism's a growing force in the Territory.'

‘I get that.' Sara gazed out at the country slipping past. The gravel under their wheels kept the dust down and there was actual grass along the table drains, which spread to the red, lightly forested flats. White-trunked gum trees grew in abundance and together with the distant purple ranges they gave the scene the slightly unreal look of a Namatjira painting. ‘It's beautiful. Not as hard-looking as the country around Charlotte Creek.'

‘It's the feed makes you think so. Like I said, we had a band of storms. They fell in a narrow strip but it's made a world of difference. And don't be fooled, Sara – this country's pretty but it's unforgiving of mistakes. All desert country is.'

She glanced across at him. He'd wedged his hat in the gap between the seats, and she could see the clean curve of his skull beneath the newly shortened dark hair – he at least had found time for a barber – and the flush of sunlight on the tanned skin of his cheek. ‘You sound like you're warning me off.'

His eyes crinkled. ‘Nope, a reminder, that's all. What was the likeliest outcome for Markham's flat tyre if he'd been travelling alone? Carelessness costs out here. We met nobody, coming or going, so he'd have been on his own. That's why you travel with a full complement of gear, and check it before you leave.'

‘Mmm.' Sara eased one of the new grips that was pulling on her scalp as they rattled over a cattle grid. ‘The kids said you had the Redhill horses on Arkeela. How did you bring them down?'

‘Len trucked 'em. Took a while. I was holding the gate, as it were, for a week. He had to wait on a single decker, you can't use doubles for horses. Come to think of it, it was a Randall truck. Well, Randall-James, which is one of your father's companies. They're not just interstate hauliers. They run stock transports too. You see 'em all over.'

‘I hadn't realised —' Sara halted the thought and stared out at a patch of feeding galahs that were exploding from the grass in a cloud of pink and silver. ‘It's strange enough to suddenly have a father, let alone a wealthy one. I wonder what he'll be like.' Panic touched her. ‘It sounds crazy, Jack, but I'm almost scared of meeting him. He's my dad but he's a complete stranger.'

‘It'll be okay. You forget. By the time he learns about you, he'll know you really are his daughter. And that's got to matter to him.'

‘After so long? He has another family now.' Paul had confirmed that. She had a stepmother and three half-siblings – a brother and two younger sisters. The boy was seventeen. If he had been ten or even fourteen it would be different, Sara told herself. Her father, it seemed, had scarcely paused after Benny's and his wife's death before marrying again. She tried to recall the remembered warmth of his presence, the strength of his arm, the solidity of his broad shoulders, but all she could conjure was a faceless seventeen-year-old boy who signalled to her how quickly her father had moved on. If his first family had meant so little to him, why, after believing her dead for so long, would he wish to have her back?

Arkeela homestead was tucked into a small flat between two ridges covered with spinifex and low scrub. The complex was surrounded by a horse paddock boasting a blue gate. There was a mill and tank, a stockyard at the foot of the furthest ridge and a scatter of outbuildings.
Arkeela
was painted across the roof of the largest shed, and a fenced garden edged with shade trees enclosed the house. The garden growth was lush, the lawn vividly green, the whole dominated by an exuberant burst of colour from a magenta bougainvillea growing in one corner.

‘It's beautiful,' Sara exclaimed, feasting her eyes on the green. ‘All Helen's work?'

‘Yep. She's got two green thumbs. Well, you'll have seen that in town. Stuff'll grow here if you've got the water and are willing to put in the work. Wonder where old Eddie is? He's been caretaking the agisted stock. Camps in the quarters but he uses the kitchen. Might be out checking the waters, I suppose. Ready for a cuppa?'

‘Always,' Sara assured him.

‘Right. I'll show you where stuff is, then have a quick check around. We can't take long though. I was hoping he'd be here to tell me about the paddocks.'

The house, which faced south, was set on low stumps. It was a solidly built steel construction with ventilation spaces between ceiling and walls, and banks of louvres that started at floor level. A verandah ran across the front with some sort of scented climber growing over the lattice at one end. Inhaling its sweetness, Sara saw the table and chairs it sheltered and knew it would be the perfect place for summer smokos. She wondered if it was Helen or Marilyn who had placed the furniture there. The kitchen was airy and modern with a gas stove, a fridge and a huge walk-in coldroom. The cupboards were pine with bronzed knobs and the benchtops ochre. A heavily marked calendar, with progressive days crossed off, hung beside the sink where a dish mop and soap saver were upended in a drinking glass. Jack ran water into the kettle, started the gas and rummaged in the cupboard for tea and sugar.

‘Can I leave you with it?' He looked around. ‘There could be a bit of cake somewhere. Try the coldroom.'

‘You go on. I'll find it.' Sara set her hat on the table and rinsed her hands, looking around as she did so. The missing Eddie was a tidy man; everything in the room was spotless and even the tea towel was folded. He cooked too. She found a tin of rock cakes in the fridge, next to the remains of a rice pudding and a plate of cold potatoes, tidily covered with cling film. Sara set out the mugs and the milk next to the cakes and, as the kettle boiled, went to explore the house.

A light film of dust shrouded the living room and in the tiled bathroom dead insects had fallen into the unused bath. Eddie plainly didn't intrude beyond the kitchen. Sara fingered a shelf of books, peered into the laundry, opened the door of the office, and examined a large framed photograph of the Ketch family taken when Beth and Jack had been teenagers. She looked quickly through the bedrooms. There were three of them, and a long sleep-out, screened and louvred, which ran across the back of the house. One end was taken up with storage and a ping-pong table. Two bunk beds and a wardrobe filled the remaining space at the opposite end.

The main bedroom contained a king-sized bed, wardrobe and a dresser, the last heavily filmed with dust that lay over a clutter of leather straps, ripped packaging, a holed sock and bits of metal that could have been engine parts. Pushed to the back was a photograph face down in an elaborate silver frame. Feeling like a voyeur, Sara picked it up. It showed Jack and his bride, their heads together, laughing into the lens. Marilyn had perfect teeth and beautiful skin. She was really very pretty, with pearls and flowers caught up into her dark hair. She wasn't tall. Her head was on a level with Jack's shoulder. That was sprinkled with confetti and he looked almost fatuously happy, his face relaxed into a beaming smile, his dark hair tidier than Sara had ever seen it.

The kettle shrilled, dragging Sara back into the moment. She replaced the photo as she'd found it and hurried to the kitchen. Sipping her tea as she waited for Jack to return, she wondered how much of the house had been changed for, or by, Marilyn. If the woman had been set upon selling from the get-go, as Frank had said, surely she wouldn't have bothered changing anything? It was none of Sara's business, of course, but looking around at the relaxed and colourful kitchen she couldn't help but feel glad that her conclusion was probably right.

Eddie not having returned, Jack scribbled a note to him and left it propped against the teapot. On their way out, Jack collected a handful of mail from the kitchen bench, most of which he then dropped unopened into a bin by the back step. He detoured to tug at the lock on the petrol pump.

‘We're a bit close to the Plenty Highway,' he explained. ‘Tourists are always looking for fuel – and some of 'em aren't above helping themselves.'

‘It's lovely,' Sara said, looking back at the receding homestead as they drove off. ‘It must've been hard for Helen to leave. The house is perfect and that garden! When I think of the couple of tubs I used to have at my flat! I'd like to have a proper garden some day, though when you're working . . .' Her voice trailed off. ‘Helen was though, wasn't she? She raised a family, cooked for a property, taught school. How could I think she wasn't working? And she still grew that.'

‘Nature helps,' Jack said, ‘and time. As for what you'd like, I expect you can have pretty much anything now, your old man being who he is. So work shouldn't come into it.'

Sara's immediate response to this was dismay. ‘Of course I'll work,' she said. ‘And I never for a moment thought otherwise! I want – no, I hope to find my father. I mean, I know he's
found
but it's not who he is, we already know that. It's the man I remember him being that I want. The money is nothing, it won't make any difference to me.'

Jack flicked the gearstick and slowed for the horse-paddock gate, ignoring her protestations. ‘It will,' he said quietly, ‘and you're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.'