‘Well, what do we do now?’ Kennie asked.
‘Wait till she gets back,’ I said. There was nothing else we could do, and I told him to see if he could work the petrol pump. ‘If you can, then fill the Land-Rover’s tank, the jerri-cans, too, and we’ll need spare cans for water. Then get some sleep.’
‘And you?’
I told him what I was going to do. ‘And if I find what I’m looking for, and Janet doesn’t bring him back, then we’ll have a lot of driving ahead of us, so get some sleep.’
I went outside then, round the house to the window of his den. There was no glass, only the flyscreen, and that was easily dealt with by slipping the blade of the knife up the edge of it to release the catch. I had brought candles with me and, once inside, I lit one, the soft glow showing the room much as it had been when I was last there, an untidy litter of files and papers. The only difference was that the desk top had been cleared except for a sealed envelope marked Will and beside it a brief note written in a rather shaky hand:
My darling Jan,
This may be goodbye — in which case do not grieve. It will be a merciful release. I am going on a long journey now and I have little hope that it will prove successful. If it does, then maybe we can find some happiness. But I am very tired now, too tired to face any longer the hopeless struggle to keep Jarra Jarra.
And you, though you love the place as I do, must be tired of the struggle too. Little of happiness I have been able to give you and to say that it was not all my fault is no answer.
God bless you, my child, and do not fret. Tom will see me to the end, and after that I pray you will make a new and better life for yourself. Your loving father, He had signed it simply ‘Ed’, and standing there in the candlelight, reading it through again, I felt a lump in my throat. It was such a desperate, sad letter. I put it back on the desk beside the will, wondering whether Janet had read it before she left.
I moved the candle from the desk and began going through the piles of papers, the silence of the house reminding me of Drym, a waiting stillness. And as the candle burned lower and the past, with its deeds, its birth and death and marriage certificates, its accounts and correspondence, filled the silence with the hopes and fears of those that had peopled the house for more than half a century, a feeling of depression settled over me, my eyes growing tired with peering at dusty papers faded with age. And reading what I had no right to read, I began to realize how hard a struggle Ed Garrety had had, the debts he had paid, the effort he had made to restore the land, the constant battle to rebuild from nothing. Above all, the loneliness of the man, and all the time the sense of hopelessness growing.
In the end I sat down at the desk exhausted. No sign of the missing pages of the Journal. I added a fresh candle to die old, not caring any more. Somewhere to the east of Lake Disappointment, deep in the Gibson Desert…. If Janet didn’t find him, then that’s where I would have to look. But should I? What was the point of bringing him back? He had fought his battle and now he was finished. To bring him back would be like resuscitating somebody who had deliberately thrown himself into a river. I must have fallen asleep there at his desk for the next thing I knew the candle was guttering with the draught from the open door and Janet was standing there, the pale first light of dawn showing through the empty window, her face white with exhaustion. ‘You didn’t find him.’
‘No. The Andersons hadn’t seen him.’ She came a few steps into the room, her eyes on the letter. ‘You’ve read it?’
‘Yes. I shouldn’t have, but I did.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She was surprisingly calm. In the long drive to Lynn Peak and back she seemed to have come to terms with the situation. But accepting it had meant putting her emotions in cold storage, so that there was an almost frozen quality about her calmness. She had guessed where he was headed. ‘I thought he’d take the track east from Ethel Creek. That’s twenty miles south from where our backtrack joins the Highway. But they hadn’t seen him either and there wasn’t a sign of any tyre tracks. Anyway, I had Yla with me and I think she’d have known.’
‘Could he make it across country?’ I asked.
But she didn’t think so. ‘In the Gibson, maybe, but between the Highway and the desert it’s hill country and I’m sure he’d go for one of the tracks.’
I turned to the world aeronautical chart on the wall. It was the Hamersley Range chart, No. 3229, and though the Highway was almost on the edge of it, it did indicate the start of another track running east from Mundiwindi. But that was nearly a hundred miles south of Ethel; a hundred miles of ribbed gravel, dried-up creek beds and bulldust. It would have taken her half a day at least.
She came and stood beside me as I tried to project it on to the big tourist map. It certainly looked the most direct route to Lake Disappointment, through Mt Newman, then south from the Sylvania homestead and east from Mundiwindi. But when I pointed it out to her, she shook her head. ‘That track only goes as far as the old rabbit fence. That’s what I’ve been told anyway. It stops at Savory Creek. After that it’s just desert.’ She pointed to a second track running almost east from Sylvania. ‘I think he’d more likely take that. It isn’t shown on this map, but it continues across the Highway to the Murramunda homestead and on to Jiggalong Mission, again on the line of the rabbit fence. Daddy knows it. He’s been to the Mission. And there’s another track goes from Murramunda up to Walgun. He might have taken either.’
I asked her when he had left, but she didn’t know. She had been over beyond the Windbreaks with one of the boys most of the day.
I went back to the desk and flopped into the chair again. He already had at least half a day’s start. Not much hope of catching up with him and none of finding him once he was into the Gibson. ‘I was looking for the rest of the Journal,’ I said.
‘Yes, I guessed that’s what you were doing.’
‘If we had that, we might know the location he’s headed for.’ I leaned back, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, staring round the room. ‘You got any ideas?’
‘You’ve been through all the papers?’
I nodded. ‘Most of them.’
She sighed. ‘Well, I’ll go and make some tea. I need something to wake me up.’
Dawn broke as we sat there drinking it in that untidy office, both of us certain he was heading for the Gibson, but neither of us knowing quite why or what to do about it. ‘Janet.’ I was staring down at my empty cup, feeling unsure of myself and not at all happy about what I was going to say. ‘Your father was right, wasn’t he, when he said McIlroy disappeared in the desert?’
‘You’ve heard then.’ Her voice was a whisper, barely audible. ‘What they’re saying — this rumour. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?’
I looked at her, her face frozen and pale. ‘Yes. Are you quite sure in your own mind that McIlroy didn’t die here at Jarra Jarra?’
‘You’re suggesting my grandfather killed him?’
‘No. No, I’m not suggesting anything. I wouldn’t know. But you, living here, growing up here … I just want to know what you think really happened.’
She looked away towards the window, the colours flushing with the dawn. ‘I don’t know,’ she said after a while. ‘I’ve thought about it a lot these last few days, ever since the inquest.’ The tears suddenly started to her eyes. ‘Oh God!’ she breathed. ‘It’s horrible — horrible. All these years. Why can’t they let it rest?’ And she bowed her head slowly, her hair all limp and dusty and falling across her face. ‘If they’d only forget it. That wretched man still haunts the place. Her hands clenched. ‘I hope he’s rotting in hell, the bastard!’