The Narrow Road to the Deep North(47)

And she wondered: was hers a great love that was no love at all? And why, when she felt that she had come to exist only through another person, did she feel such a terrible solitude?

For this much Amy did know: she was alone.

When they left the card evening, Amy found Keith uncharacteristically quiet. copyrightly he babbled, but of late he said less and less, and through the hands of five hundred he had said next to nothing. The sadness emanating from Keith seemed to empty the world. She tried to lose her thoughts in the Cabriolet’s rattling side windows, the road noise, the slight clatter of its motor. But all she was aware of was Keith’s deep turn into himself, and the rattle and the thrum and the clattering points remained just that.

The magic’s gone, he said.

The council will see the sense of what you’re arguing, Amy said, picking up on a conversation earlier in the evening.

The council? Keith said, looking at her as if he were a grocer and she a customer who had walked into his shop and inexplicably ordered a bag of common sense. The council has got nothing to do with it, he said, his gaze returning to the road.

And though she knew she shouldn’t, she said brightly, Who does then?

It was a lie of sorts. Everything was a greater or lesser lie now.

For a moment, Keith turned and looked at her. In the darkness she could make little out, but she could see he was staring at her not in rage, which would have been understandable, nor in accusation, which would have been helpful, but in a terrible judgement she could not escape for as long as he kept on looking at her—with pity, with horror, with a hurt that the blackness could not obscure and which she feared would stay with her forever after. She suddenly felt very frightened.

I didn’t know, you know? he said. Not really.

She could not love him, she told herself. She could not, must not, could never, ever love him.

He went on, never raising his voice: I hoped I had it all wrong. That you’d prove what a horrible, jealous old man I was thinking such awful things. That you’d make me feel ashamed thinking such things. But now. Well, now I do. Everything is . . . clear.

For some moments he seemed lost in thoughts, calculations, some calculus of betrayal. And then he said in a vague and slow way—

And when you tell me something, it’s, like . . . like . . .

He looked back to the road.

It’s like hearing the hammer click back on the rifle.

She wanted to hold him. But she didn’t and wouldn’t do any such thing.

Perhaps I should have done something, said something, Keith continued. But I felt, well, what is there to say? He’s her age, I told myself, more or less; I am an old, fat fool. I had—

He paused. Were his eyes moist? She knew he would not cry. He was braver than her, she thought. And better. But it was not virtue she wanted, but Dorrigo.

Had suspicions. Yes, Keith said, his tone as though he were speaking to Miss Beatrice on his lap. And I thought, well, Keith, old fellow, make yourself scarce when he comes around. They can be together, and it’ll burn out, and she’ll come back to you. It wasn’t my first mistake, though.

An army truck passed them, and in the brief dim slit of light it threw into the Cabriolet she stole a glimpse across. But his face, shadowed, intent, staring far away down that long straight Adelaide street, told her nothing.

I should have let you keep the baby, he said.

He dropped gear and the car floor shook beneath Amy’s feet. Its vibrations seemed to be shouting to her DORRY!—DORRY!—DORRY!

I had, I guess, Keith went on, ideas. That you, me . . . His tongue was stumbling. Each word was a universe, infinite and unknowable. Us, he continued.

She recognised within herself a deep feeling for him. But though she felt a great deal, what she felt was not love.

There’s nothing going on, Keith.

No, no, he said. Of course. Of course, there’s not.

What do you want me to do?

Do? Do? What can be done? he said. The magic’s gone.

Nothing has happened, she lied a second time.

We, he said, and turned to her. We? he asked. But he seemed unsure, lost, as defeated as France. We could. That we could be something. Yes, said Keith.

Yes, she said.

That we could. But we couldn’t. Could we, Amy? I killed the baby and that killed us.





26



ON MONDAY MORNING Dorrigo Evans was about to lead a route march into the Adelaide Hills when he was called to regimental administration to take an urgent call from his family. The office was a large corrugated-iron Nissen hut in which staff officers worked in temperatures unknown outside of bakeries and pottery kilns. The infernal heat was trapped and further stifled by the hut’s partition into unworkable offices delineated by single-sheet Masonite walls painted a grimy mustard. Out of frustration everyone seemed to smoke more, and the air had a haze about it that was only rivalled by its odour—compounded of tobacco smoke, sweat and the stale, ammoniacal scent of overcrowded animals—that left everyone coughing incessantly.