Bess had no objection to Adi Carlin, although they had little in common. But Bess wanted to work, and the Carlins knew everyone on the island, knew how summer was to proceed: when sheets were to be washed and bilberries picked before the mainland people got to them, the best place to catch crayfish, nights of music, days in the sun, Karl shirtless on a ladder, Bess pressed into service with a tin of white paint, the children living between houses, the alliances newly formed every morning, the exhaustion in the evening after swimming, calling, scolding, eating. Karl going out most nights to drink with Beppe, visiting new friends, saying, ‘Aren’t you coming?’, returning once with a wreath of flowers on his head and demanding that Bess smell them. Bess had been dreaming and the flowers smelled of nothing. It was five o’clock and already the day was fully light.

  Only Bess was obstinate enough to resist the charms of the season. She fumed as she helped to paint the Carlins’ house and herded their children; she fought for time to work but had barely anything to show for it—one small picture she was pleased with, a subdued seascape. She did make endless sketches of the Carlin children as they fussed and tumbled. Karl didn’t work at all and was brown and happy. This loose, warm summer suited him, and he began to talk about babies.

  ‘Why not a baby boy,’ he said, ‘who looks just like you, and a girl who looks just like me?’ Karl knew how Bess felt about babies. So many of the girls she studied with at the Slade had stopped painting when they had children.

  On the last day of that summer, while throwing white sheets over the furniture, sweeping, and packing trunks, Bess looked out of the window to see Karl and Adi Carlin sitting on the jetty, deep in conversation, and behind them the Carlins’ freshly white house. Bess went out to join them when all the other Carlins did. They ate thick slices of bilberry pie as a farewell. The pie was warm; Adi had baked it, apparently, but when? Adi wept when they said goodbye. She was obviously in love with Karl, but she seemed also to be in love with her husband and each of her children, with Bess and with the summer, so that Bess was moved by the farewell—didn’t cry, but might have.

  Walking back to their house, Karl laid out the plan he and Adi had made together on the jetty: Bess and Karl would live in the Carlins’ house, paying no rent, from the end of one summer until the beginning of the next. In the winter, they would eat vegetables and keep ducks inside for eggs; eventually they would build their own house next to the Carlins’, paying for the materials but not for the land; this way they could be alone together and working, safe from the distractions of the city. Wasn’t Bess always pointing out that Karl worked best without distractions? Winter would be for work, then summer would erupt and be glorious, as this one had been. They would go back to Stockholm now to arrange everything, but return in a few weeks and have the entire island to themselves. Bess said nothing and Karl became quieter too, asked her to think about it, then went to close and lock all the shutters. When he came back he said, ‘It’s a pity we can’t just buy this house.’

  They rowed across to the mainland for the last time and Karl said to her, ‘You don’t just identify obstacles—you invent them.’

  Back in Stockholm, in another set of dark rooms, he poured sand from the beach near the red house into a jar. He painted a picture, quite uncharacteristic, in which a tall young groom and his thick, pale bride escaped laughing through a cornfield from the solemnity of their own wedding procession. Above the couple, birds carried garlands of flowers. His friends and admirers came to see him, and he began to work again in earnest and more quickly than before. His days grew full. Bess was, as usual, both proud and jealous of his talent. Mostly proud. The wind became wet, cold; the blue creep of winter covered Stockholm. Karl was often sick that season, sometimes dangerously; he had a child’s fear of the dark and sleep, he needed reassurances of all kinds until he was well again; then he was grateful, adult, loving. The doctor, tapping at Karl’s chest, suggested a sea voyage and a warmer climate. Bess reminded Karl that her brothers were always writing from Australia about the heat. Karl refused to leave Sweden—what use, he said, is a Swedish artist in any other place? They didn’t speak about the red house.

  Adi Carlin arrived at their door in April, very pregnant, announcing that she had run away from home, but only temporarily. She brimmed like spring itself. The baby wasn’t Karl’s—the dates didn’t work—yet Adi became part of their household for the final month of her pregnancy. Karl’s friends assumed a house of generous adultery, of a shared Karl, of a Bess willing to accept the tide of love Karl pulled after him like the moon. It made more sense of Bess: serious, English and not pretty, not at all Karl’s type; and, as it turned out, not even rich (there had been talk, Bess knew, of her father’s lost wealth). Adi was Karl’s big, bright type. Actually, Adi spent all her time with Bess. Karl tiptoed around the women, passing them in rooms and hallways with amplified politeness, and went out with friends at night. Bess didn’t ask Adi why she had left her family, but Adi offered explanations, different every day: the noise of her own house full of children, a dream she’d had, the need to be nearer doctors, Beppe’s reluctance to have another baby, the love she felt for Karl and Bess.

  The baby was born, a creamy boy, and within a week he died. Adi gave Bess her husband’s address, asked her to tell him where she was, and stayed in bed waiting for him to fetch her. She wouldn’t speak or eat or even sleep. Karl was made frantic by her implacable grief; he was used to being a consolation to unhappy people, who often smiled to please him. ‘What can we do? What can we do?’ he asked Bess.

  Bess told him, ‘Nothing.’

  He wouldn’t believe it. He sat by Adi’s bed, held her hands, kissed her, told stories, and made plans and promises. Bess had never seen him woo a woman the way he did Adi Carlin. If Adi had risen from the bed and told Karl, ‘To cure me you must never paint again’, he might have agreed to it. Adi didn’t rise from the bed. He painted her as she had looked in summer, and when Bess saw the picture she felt tremendous love and pity for both of them. She also knew the portrait would sell. Adi was quiet until her husband came; then she roared with grief and longing, and Beppe took her away.

  ‘What more could we have done?’ Karl asked, bewildered. He cried like a child and Bess calmed him. She had held the baby after it was dead and felt how Adi had made all of its parts and how they’d been taken from her. How do you console a mother for the loss of her baby? You return her baby to her. Bess knew of nothing else, and it couldn’t be done.

  ‘We’ll see her again in the summer,’ Karl said. ‘At the red house.’

  By the summer Bess had sold the red house and used the money to buy their passage to Melbourne.

  And here they are, though not currently in Melbourne—they’re in a mountain gorge far north of Adelaide. When Bess stirs from sleep and sees a boy crouching beside their campfire, it’s Adi Carlin’s baby she thinks of. This boy is much older, but his hair is bright in the darkness, the way Adi’s was. And Bess can see that he, like Adi’s baby, doesn’t belong to this place and will have to leave it soon. She’s also half asleep, so it may be that the boy is just another wallaby come down to drink at the waterhole. Of course he’s a wallaby. She wills the wallaby not to be afraid. She thinks: never fear, little one. Look—no gun. Tonight I’m harmless. Then she sleeps again.

  When she wakes a few hours later, not long before sunrise, Bess thinks she may have dreamed of a wallaby moving with cautious purpose among their things. But Karl is pacing by the waterhole and, seeing her sit up, says, ‘Look—a thief! Someone’s been here and taken all our apples.’

  VINDICATION OF THE RAMINDJERI TRACKER

  Port Augusta Dispatch, September 1883

  Open Column

  To the Editor

  SIR,– The news that a boy has strayed from home in the northern town of Fairly, and that the native tracker Jimmy Possum has been dispatched to this region to assist in the search, prompts me to draw the attention of readers to the fact that the matter I discussed in my letter of June 15, regarding the unpaid balance of Jimmy’s remuneration for previous work as a tracker, continues to go unresolved. For those of your readers who may have overlooked the abovementioned letter, I will, with your permission, Sir, explain its contents in as brief a space as possible.

  Before I go further, let me state that, although I write on Jimmy’s behalf, it is not at his request. Jimmy Possum is a simple man, and would never venture to make a complaint of this kind. It is for this very reason, is it not, that any white man ought to stir himself to be a champion for Aborigines of good character?

  February last, a spate of fires menaced the township of Willoughby. My own cowshed was among the structures that burned. Suspecting arson, our Constable sent to Port Augusta to procure the services of a native tracker. Arriving soon afterwards, Jimmy Possum made efficient work of the tracks available, and, uncovering a number of deposits of redheaded matches placed on glass and covered with dry grass, led the Constable to the camp of the troublemaker, one George Pellow. For this excellent service, which saved a great deal of property and very likely many lives, Jimmy was promised a reward—over and above his regular payment—of £1/2/6, gathered by subscription from the grateful residents of Willoughby. This sum was forwarded, with instructions, to the Police Station at Port Augusta. We later learned that the sum had been withheld from Jimmy, although he was provided with tobacco valued at 2/6, in our name.

  I can say without fear of contradiction that not one of the Willoughby men who subscribed to Jimmy’s reward had any notion of his being paid in goods. There also remains the unpaid balance of the sum, which, we are assured, is being held in trust for Jimmy until such a time as he should need it. Despite requests, we have seen no evidence of the truth of this statement, nor do we believe Jimmy has ever been informed of his nest egg. I do not lay all responsibility for this outrage at the door of the Port Augusta Police. Indeed, petitions to the Sub-Protector of Aborigines were stalled until the close of the financial year (viz. June last), and requests sent since June have gone unacknowledged.

  Aborigines of good character should be able to trust that in the white man they have both a champion and a sympathiser. The white man, in turn, must keep any promise he has made to the Aborigine. It is our solemn duty to protect these people while they remain under our care, regardless of their probable extinction. Any man of correct opinion would agree that this miscarriage of justice is a disgrace to a civilised society.

  Apologies for trespassing on your valuable space.

  I am, &c.,

  P.R. Thompson

  Eureka Hotel, Willoughby

  FOURTH DAY

  The sun rises at half past six; by seven o’clock, the day promises to be warm. People tend to rise early on the Willochra Plain, whether or not a boy is missing. Already, Mary is stirring porridge clockwise with her right arm and wondering what has become of her telegrams.

  Mathew, Cissy and Robert are climbing a limestone spur that rests against the broad red wall of the Axam Range, heading for the ridge where Mathew saw the fire last night. Both of Mathew’s eyes are black.

  Karl, whose head is full of his sunset painting, explores the area above the gorge in search of the apple thief while Bess prepares breakfast.

  Billy stands beside the flat rock west of Ewart’s Bluff, waiting for Foster’s rendezvous; the only tracks he sees belong to Foster and his men.

  The news that Joy Wallace found a bloodied handkerchief in her father’s wheat has reached Fairly, prompting fresh speculations: murder, abduction, accidental death. Until now, the town has felt nothing but sympathy for the Wallaces, but that sympathy is curdled, slightly, by the possibility that Mathew and Mary may have been careless, secretive or dishonest; broken one of many unspoken rules; loved their children too much, or too little; had too many of them (the excessive number of daughters is noted), or too few; in a word, that they may have made some fatal error, for which they expect other people to pay. It could be that the Wallaces know exactly where Denny is—or what remains of him—and are sending searchers out to cover their own tracks; are, essentially, wasting the time of good men, who have their own children to worry about. After all, the boy’s been gone three days—or is it four? How far could he have got, a boy of six, all on his own?

  Others, more generous, are convinced that if a third party is involved in the boy’s disappearance, that party will turn out to be an Afghan (either a cameleer or a hawker), or a Chinese (but not, they all agree, their own Chinaman, Sammy So, who has had years to prove that he’s no murderer), or a native (not the local natives, mind, who are tolerably well behaved—the culprit, they believe, will be one of those northern natives who come down sometimes from the salt lakes or the central deserts, looking for trouble). But the handkerchief, which rumour says is of the finest linen, suggests otherwise.

  Bear, who knows two useful facts—first, that the handkerchief belongs to him, and second, that the men of other Aboriginal nations only come into this part of the ranges to trade for ochre at Parachilna and would be very unlikely to enter the Willochra without honouring complex local protocols—hasn’t heard the news about the handkerchief. Even if he had, he’d be unlikely to surrender these facts, despite his love of gossip, since neither would be popular. But Bear doesn’t hear about the handkerchief and neither does George, because they’re both out on the pastures of Thalassa, choosing which sheep should be sheared and which fattened for market: the shearers arrive tomorrow and shearing begins the day after.

  Tal, hearing about the handkerchief, checks for his own kerchief—which he wears knotted around his neck, sailor-style—to reassure himself that it’s still there, and can’t be used against him. Nancy mentions the handkerchief to Joanna who, fussing over Bolingbroke, doesn’t make any connection between the handkerchief and Bear out in the wheat with Minna Baumann (no one, not even Robert, seems able to think of her as Minna Manning). Minna herself lies in bed, missing Robert and in such a rage of longing that she thinks she may be going mad.

  No one knows where Mr Daniels, the vicar, is; he hasn’t been seen for days. But that isn’t unusual—he will have gone out to Wilson, Cradock or Wilpena on his rounds, like a devout doctor.

  A number of the town’s men are still out searching for Denny, but life in Fairly continues all the same. Inge Schmidt, the German prostitute, takes her donkey to the farrier to have its hoofs trimmed. Miss McNeil hums as she sweeps the schoolroom, preparing to receive her pupils. A reporter, hungover, stirs in one of the bedrooms of the Transcontinental Hotel. He’s come north from Port Augusta to write about the missing boy and is delighted by the information he picked up in the bar last night: blood-stained handkerchief, native trackers, blondness of the boy. Soon he’ll go to the post office to file a report, in which he’ll give Denny’s name as Dennis Wallace, a mistake that will be repeated in every successive article. At the post office, the reporter will encounter Mr Blake with his green visor, who wonders if each telegram coming through might be a reply to one of Mary Wallace’s messages, but is always disappointed.

  In Goolwa, Mary’s father is at his devotions. He reads and reflects on Isaiah—‘Arise, shine, for thy light is come’—and he prays for his daughter, for each of her seven children, and particularly for Deniston, who is named for him and who, for this reason, the Southern Shepherd imagines as having hair as white as his own. Samuel Deniston is a long time at his prayers. He adores and implores and praises; he casts himself upon the mercy of God until sweat stands in droplets above his lavish eyebrows. He doesn’t yet know that his wife Muriel, having interpreted Mary’s telegram as a plea to have a parent by her side, left Goolwa early this morning in a hired conveyance; that this carriage took her to Strathalbyn; that she is now a passenger on the public coach to Adelaide; and that she should, if all goes well, reach the capital, where she intends to put up at a temperance hotel, late this afternoon. From Adelaide, she can take the Port Augusta train. Today is Tuesday. If the trains behave as she expects them to—and she has studied her husband’s timetables—she will arrive in Fairly on Thursday. Mary’s stepmother, rattling in the coach over the forty miles to Adelaide, retreats into the composure with which she endures each day. She is only faintly affronted, therefore, by the serial farts of the coach’s other passenger, a man in a buff coat. Muriel Deniston takes comfort in the knowledge that she is in the hands of the Lord.

  Karl discovers the apple thief sleeping in the sun by a large rock. He’s not sure what, or who, he expected to find, but it wasn’t a filthy, sunburned boy with bloodied feet. The boy is skinny and fair—his hair would be a thin wash of raw sienna, and rose madder for the paler flesh, with a dab of cadmium yellow. He has one hand in the pocket of his short trousers and the other flung, palm up, over his forehead. The apples have all been eaten deep into their cores, and what’s left of them sits in a neat brown pile at the boy’s feet. Well, Karl thinks, looking down at the sleeping boy, so much for rushing to Wilpena Pound today. It’s typical, isn’t it? You make plans, you promise to resist all distractions, and something undeniable happens: summer, for example. A newborn dies in your house. Pneumonia, resulting in exile to the Southern Hemisphere. A child appears in need of help. The world, as usual, has its ways of stepping in to keep you from your work, and Karl ignores the relief he feels at this salvation. Listen, he says to the sky, it’s only a temporary delay.

  Karl stands between the boy and the sun, expecting the sudden shade to wake him. It does—the boy opens his eyes and Karl thinks, oh, he’s me. The boy looks the way Karl remembers looking as a child: the same thinness of hair and body, the same expression of hunger, fear and wonder. But it’s more than that. There’s something unhoused about the boy, as if he belongs in a shell from which he’s been prematurely shucked. The boy licks his lips and rubs a wrist against his chin and is Karl, somehow, in all his grubby thinness.