What Wilhelmina means is that there are no white girls who want to work. Joanna, whose own house is largely staffed by native women, says, ‘How kind of Minna to take all that food. And more than the food—she’s lent her husband, too.’

  Wilhelmina raises one graceful hand. ‘I was ready to send them on a wedding tour. I offered Europe, London, the waters of Karlsbad, but Minna won’t go if I don’t also. She has uncles all over Westfalen! But she is devoted to me. It seems now that it’s just as well, with her husband needed. He is, you know, a remarkably capable young man.’

  ‘My sons speak highly of him.’

  ‘Genau,’ says Wilhelmina, ‘exactly,’ as if that confirms it, as if Joanna accepts the opinion of no one but her sons.

  Joanna turns her head to clear her throat and sees, on a shining table, the bowl of Indian silver she gave to Otho years ago, to thank him for having steered Thalassa through the drought. She always finds it strange to see the bowl here at Wilhelmina’s, with its palm trees and its monkeys, crowned by candles that have never been lit. Henry gave it to her for her twenty-third birthday—one of many gifts. She reaches out with her good hand to give the bowl an affectionate stroke, but stops herself before Wilhelmina can fault her for smudging the silver. Besides, the bowl no longer responds to her. Joanna, rational in every other way, can’t help believing that objects, by changing hands, transfer their loyalties between owners.

  Wilhelmina, with disconcerting acuity, says, ‘I see that today you are without your beautiful blue shawl.’

  How like Wilhelmina to not only notice the absence of the blue shawl but draw attention to it. If Joanna had the loyalty of the possum fur cloak, she might have the courage to say: Willie, do your legs hurt you? Do you feel as if they’re still a part of you? Teach me, Willie, how to mourn a limb.

  Annie arrives with tea and says, ‘I’m that sorry, Mrs Baumann, but Miss Minna took every bit of food with her; Cook says we’ve nothing left,’ and Wilhelmina lifts her hands to her face—the opal in her ring startles with its rich red vein—and says, ‘That girl! Sie ein Herz aus Gold hat. And yet we starve! But not even any plum cake? You know we had two in tins.’

  Annie says, ‘Miss Minna took the plum cake and all.’

  Wilhelmina purses her lips. ‘You should, I suppose, say Mrs Manning now.’

  ‘I am more than satisfied with a cup of tea,’ insists Joanna.

  Annie continues to apologise with a slight wail in her voice, and Wilhelmina to scold while at the same time praising the kindness of her daughter, daring Joanna to object. The tea is poured and drunk, Annie goes back to rattle in the kitchen, the silver bowl shines in the heavy room, and Bear arrives with Bolingbroke to say that Beller is out after all, looking for Denny Wallace.

  Wilhelmina, sharply: ‘I could have told you that. They’ve all gone: the town is now deserted.’

  ‘Quite right,’ says Bear, flustered.

  Joanna, rising, says, ‘We’ll leave you in peace and join them.’

  Bolingbroke steps forwards, his ears folded in towards his eyebrows, and places his narrow head on Wilhelmina’s knee. Every rib shows through his mottled coat.

  ‘Oh,’ says Wilhelmina, and lays a hand behind his ears. ‘Oh, my darling.’

  How strange to hear Willie speak like this, with so much love. Her tenderness appears to fluster Bear further, and he says, ‘What a funny thing. He never gives me the time of day.’

  Wilhelmina looks at Bolingbroke, stroking his stylish head, and Bolingbroke looks back with his eyes rolled up beneath those quizzical brows. You, thinks Joanna, are in complete control of those eyebrows, aren’t you? Her devoted Bolingbroke, who has never once interacted with Willie in this way. They seem, Wilhelmina and the dog, to be conversing with one another, until Bolingbroke coughs. Then Wilhelmina laughs—a short, high, rapping laugh—which breaks the spell. Bolingbroke, that sage old viscount, turns away and trots to the door to await its opening. He looks more than ever like a miniature horse.

  ‘How charming,’ Wilhelmina says. She has withdrawn into herself again.

  Driving out of Fairly on the way to Undelcarra, Bear says, ‘She’s a funny old stick. Just think of Boley doing that. Like he loved her.’

  Joanna feels a sharp, possessive pain and tugs at her inadequate shawl. ‘If you hurry,’ she says, ‘we’ll catch Minna. She’s taken what’s left of her wedding feast out to Mrs Wallace.’

  Bear does nothing to change the horse’s pace. ‘This is decent road out here,’ he says. ‘You’d expect more ruts, wouldn’t you, from the cartwheels? I forget how flat this country is. Level as a cricket ground.’ Dust rises from the road and settles as they pass. Then Bear says, as if he isn’t sure, ‘That was kind-hearted of Minna, wasn’t it? To take food out to the Wallaces?’

  ‘If you have to ask,’ Joanna says, ‘I haven’t raised you well.’

  Bolingbroke sleeps with his head on Joanna’s lap. She doesn’t swat the flies from around his face, but none of them disturb him.

  Cissy is irritated with Miss McNeil’s horse. She’s trying to keep up with Sergeant Foster and Constable Manning (now that she’s in love with him, she calls him Robert to herself; out loud she avoids calling him anything at all), but June isn’t used to country like this. She was fine on the road yesterday and set out with confidence this morning, but now she’s making daft decisions, becoming skittish, and at the same time showing off. Cissy, embarrassed by this nervy prancing, has mentioned at least four times that June isn’t her horse. Foster and Manning pay her no attention, except that once Robert nods at June and says, ‘She’s certainly on her toes.’

  There are six in their group: Foster, Robert, Cissy, the tracker with the fur cloak and two men from town, one of whom looks permanently surprised and the other as if nothing in the world could startle him. They’re riding out to the place where the perpetually surprised man claims to have seen, plain as the nose on his face, a set of child’s footprints that lead to the base of a large flat rock, then vanish. The man saw the footprints late yesterday afternoon and told Robert about them this morning. There seems to be some disapproval associated with the fact that Robert went home last night rather than staying out at Undelcarra: the surprised man has said, at least three times, ‘I would’ve told right off, if the constable had been about.’ Apparently Foster has chosen to keep news of the footprints quiet so as to produce neither excessive hope nor alarm.

  Robert says, ‘It’s not much to go on.’

  And Foster says, ‘If it’s enough, it’s enough.’

  June throws her head about and Cissy resists the impulse to disown her again. Cissy had been so bold back at Undelcarra, armed with June and approaching Foster and Robert, insisting that she be allowed to come along with their party, but neither Foster nor Robert nor anyone else seemed to care one way or another. Finding insistence unnecessary, she grew shy. No one seems worried about causing her needless alarm with this story of footprints, and actually she isn’t alarmed, because children don’t climb up onto rocks and vanish from them—that simply isn’t something a child can do.

  It’s begun to occur to Cissy, however, that she may not know what Denny can do. She didn’t know, for example, that he dragged his leg when tired. It makes him seem like someone else’s brother. But he’s her brother, and she knows him: he’s the Sensitive One, just as Joy’s the Lazy One, Ada’s the Maternal One, Noella’s the Greedy One and Lotta’s the Little One. Cissy knows herself to be the Bossy One. Beyond these distinguishing characteristics, which are necessary in a large household, Cissy proceeds on the understanding that she and her family are all more or less the same person. Surely they all feel as she does, think as she does, and are only prevented from acting as she does by politeness, or weakness, or fear. If Joy were to come to Cissy and say, ‘Denny is frightened of the red hill,’ Cissy would think, What rubbish, it’s just a hill. If her mother were to say, ‘Living is a mystery to me, I was raised for death,’ Cissy would think, How can living be mysterious when it’s all we do?

  Just ahead of Cissy, Robert is happy. She can see it in the way he rides. He and his horse know this pocked, scrubby country and jog over it with ease. He’s big and red in the saddle, and his buttons and shoulders and sword turn the sunlight silver. He’s full of one idea: his idea is Minna. This idea will, eventually, burn itself down until it becomes one of many. Cissy knows this because she has a low opinion of other people’s capacity to love with steadfast devotion. A man is probably not capable of it. At Robert’s side, Sergeant Foster has one idea: himself. This is acceptable to Cissy, because his idea requires him to find Denny, and so he will. The surprised man is eager with the idea of the rock and the footprints, the glory of discovery; he’s saying, ‘It’s close, it’s just ahead.’ The unsurprised man leans back in the saddle as he rides, holds the reins with one loose hand, and yawns at the prospect of finding the rock. If an idea presented itself to this man, he would swat it away.

  This leaves the Aboriginal tracker. He rides a little way behind Cissy and she gets the sense that he’s staying back to watch over her, that he’s concerned about her horse. She turns to look at him and he dips his head in a way that might be a nod. His fur cloak looks hot. It looks like it would smell. There are flies at all their faces but it seems to Cissy that there are more at his. She can’t begin to imagine what idea he might have and, finding this disconcerting, prefers not to think about it.

  When they reach the rock, dismounting and approaching it on foot, it looks completely ordinary: just a low, flat rock about ten yards from Marsden’s Creek. But apparently there really are footprints. The tracker says so, Foster agrees, and the tracks are right for a boy in boots, though not necessarily one who drags his leg when tired. The surprised man swaggers about as if no one had believed him, and the unsurprised man chews at his cheek, still bored. Foster and the tracker cross the dry creek and walk out to a bluff beyond it, where they talk and gesture. Out here, the plain begins to rise into the hills. Robert shifts on his horse and Cissy feels keenly that he’s been outranked. When he looks at her, she turns her head away too quickly.

  Now Foster is walking back, but the tracker stays by the cliff. ‘There are some indications,’ Foster says. ‘I’d say he’s headed north-east, probably into those hills.’

  ‘The Druid Range,’ says Robert.

  Cissy feels that she should be elated by this news, but isn’t. It seems unlikely that Denny was ever here, was ever headed for the Druid Range. It must seem unlikely to the surprised man, too, who says, ‘I never saw footprints leading off.’ It suits him, actually, this genuine surprise, and Cissy likes him better. But she can’t believe that Denny was here, standing on this lifeless rock. Why would he travel this way, to this unremarkable spot? This was sheep country before the government broke it up; it’s been set aside for wheat but no one’s farmed it yet. The acacia are Denny-sized. The ants are busy in the saltbush. The Druid Range is currently in shadow, and it crouches under the sky like a long, mauve beast.

  ‘But why?’ says Cissy, and when all the men look at her she feels that she and the horse are the one same trivial being, they are clumsy steppers on the plain of consequence, and for this reason Cissy speaks louder, raises her chin, throws the fact of herself out, and asks, ‘Why would Denny go to the hills when he knows our place is on the flat?’

  ‘Higher ground?’ offers Robert. ‘A vantage point, to see the lie of the land?’

  Foster mounts his horse. He says, ‘This is a boy of five years.’

  ‘Six,’ says Cissy.

  ‘There is no value in assuming he will make any kind of useful deduction, any kind of concerted plan. A child in his situation will behave erratically.’

  ‘I thought they always walked in a straight line,’ says Cissy. ‘And my mother said he was going north-west.’

  ‘He’ll have got turned about in the storm,’ says Robert. ‘Happens to the best of us.’

  Foster draws himself up in his saddle. He seems to wear a crown of flies. ‘There are tracks,’ he says, ‘leading towards and away from this rock. There are scuff marks on the rock to suggest he spent some time here, possibly slept the night. My tracker and I will follow the trail and you, sir, and you’—he nods at the men from town—‘will come with us in order to relay messages. Manning, you’ll go back to the farm and call the other parties in—the complexion of the search will alter now. Keep on the men you think particularly competent. I need my other tracker out here, and Wooding, who I believe went due east with three men. There will be someone waiting at this spot an hour past sunrise tomorrow—unless, as is entirely possible, we have found the boy already. Assuming’—and now he turns to Cissy—‘this is acceptable to all present.’

  June steps sideways, stupidly. Cissy says, ‘My father should be told.’

  ‘He will be,’ replies Foster, ‘when he decides to make an appearance.’

  Robert adjusts his cap. ‘I daresay he’ll be in tonight, when he’s found no sign of Denny.’

  ‘Somebody should go to him right away,’ Cissy says. ‘He went north-west. I’ll go to him.’

  Foster looks at her, then says, ‘See to it, Manning, that there are no more children lost out here by end of day, or I’ll hold you personally responsible. And help her manage that horse.’ He and the other men move off.

  Cissy, mortified, feels that her eyes are growing wet. She tilts her head back to conceal any tears and, as her weight shifts, June sets off in a jog. This might be useful of her, except that it’s in the wrong direction. Cissy, yet again, attempts to correct her, but what has Cissy ever ridden, really, but old mares and every now and then a pony? Robert follows and takes June by the reins; he makes this seem easy, but Cissy sees the flex of muscle beneath his uniform. His horse stays steady and ignores June’s nips.

  ‘I’ve a bit that would do her good,’ Robert says, when June is under control.

  Cissy feels this as the kindest thing ever said. ‘Well,’ she says, and gestures north-west, ‘I’ll start this way.’

  ‘Oh, now,’ says Robert. He’s still holding June’s reins. ‘Don’t you want to go back and tell your ma about the tracks?’

  ‘What can she do about it? My father needs to know.’

  ‘I wager he’ll be in tonight and you can tell him all there is.’

  Cissy sits higher in the saddle. It’s one thing to have decided to be in love with Robert Manning, and quite another to listen to what he has to say.

  ‘It can’t wait,’ she says. ‘I’ll go to him directly.’

  Robert lifts his cap and scratches at his head. ‘How old are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Fifteen.’ What has that to do with anything? I am a true Australian, Cissy thinks. I’m smart enough to be a teacher.

  Robert settles his cap again. ‘Wish I’d worn a hat,’ he says. ‘Today’s a roaster. Listen, how’s this? You come with me to your ma, and after that I’ll go out looking for your dad myself.’

  ‘You don’t know where he is,’ says Cissy.

  ‘No more do you.’

  ‘I know they’re headed north-west. And they’ll want to keep close to water.’

  ‘For all we know,’ says Robert, ‘he’s at your place already. And wouldn’t you like to give your ma the news they’ve found a trail? Won’t she be glad?’

  Cissy concedes that Mam will be glad. But Cissy isn’t interested, right now, in Mam’s gladness, which will make no difference to Denny. Telling Dad that he’s looking in the wrong place feels much more urgent. The only thing worse than not doing is doing incorrectly. But Cissy’s reluctant—she would never admit this to Robert, or anyone else—the truth is, she’s reluctant to set out alone on a skittish horse to find her father. She wants more water with her, and more food. She wants Constable Robert Manning with her.

  ‘So,’ he says, ‘we’ll go back to your place, you’ll see your ma, and I’ll head straight off to find your father.’

  Cissy says, ‘I’m coming with you.’

  Robert laughs. ‘All right then, we’ll go together.’

  Cissy makes him promise, though she can see he doesn’t mean it. Then she takes June’s reins back, and they set out for Undelcarra.

  Bear Axam is a gossip. His mother recognised this early and tried to train him out of his instinct for discussing the lives of his friends and neighbours, which comes from his desire to be liked and his fear that he won’t be; ‘nobody likes a telltale,’ Joanna would say, from her great height, to little round Bear. Nevertheless, the adult Bear often finds himself caught in corners, pressed for tidbits, and asked for opinions on the behaviour of others. And he is liked. He’s widely considered good-natured—if being affable and well intentioned is to be good-natured. Bear has been blessed by the gift of contentment. As he goes about Thalassa in dusty boots, he doesn’t long for Adelaide and its clubs; as he plays cards in Adelaide, he doesn’t dream of Thalassa and its freedoms. Since his marriage, he’s only visited Fairly’s German prostitute, Inge Schmidt, three times. He brings treats for her donkey.

  So the consultation with Beller was a disguise for his actual desire, which is to be at the Wallace house and see everything for himself: he has a true gossip’s need to be eyewitness. He believes that if it weren’t for the shearing, he’d be searching for the boy; driving towards Undelcarra, he imagined several versions of a triumphant scene in which he arrived at the Wallace farm carrying the rescued child, much to Minna’s admiration. Now he and his mother are sitting at a table on the verandah of the Wallace cottage, which huddles against the ground in the tended, inevitable manner of a vegetable. The house is full of women, all of whom have greeted, and then hidden from, his mother. Minna sits across the table from him, smiling from her shaded seat, radiant with the virtue of having donated the remains of her wedding feast. A girl pours tea—a Wallace daughter, presumably. Bear presses his whip against his foot. The trouble with a crisis is that ordinary conversation seems inadequate, possibly even insulting, and Bear has no other kind. His mother knows what to say and is saying it to Mrs Wallace, who looks as if someone has tied her down to her narrow chair. Despite her height, she gives the impression of someone whose feet don’t reach the floor. The Wallaces’ dog sniffs experimentally at Bolingbroke’s arse, and Bolingbroke ignores it.