‘Oh, Christ, Freddie.’
‘What do you want me to tell you? It was ordinary. Just a fumble. We were drunk, we went too far. Ordinary. Sorry if that’s not what you want to hear.’ He leaned closer, and Joshua could smell the cigarette smoke on his breath. ‘And I know it was illegal, but I never forced her. OK? I was stupid, not bad.’
‘So she got pregnant.’
‘Caught first time. Just our luck.’
‘And you ran out?’
Freddie spread his hands. ‘What would you have had me do? I couldn’t support her, let alone a kid. Even if it had been legal. I was a kid myself. Yeah, I ran. I figured those nuns would look after her better than I ever could.’
‘Not well enough,’ Joshua said grimly.
Freddie looked at him. ‘So that’s it. That’s the story, the top and bottom. I was just a kid, and I lived a whole life since then. If you want me to tell you I never loved again, I’d be lying. But I never forgot her, Joshua. Hurt me years later when the Fund told me she’d died.’
‘You never came to find me, did you?’
He laughed sourly. ‘Yeah. That would have gone down well. So now you found me. Now what?’
Joshua thought that over for a long moment. Then he stood. ‘I guess our business is done.’
‘Oh, is it? You think you got “closure” now?’ He made quote marks in the air with his fingers, to Joshua a very old-fashioned gesture highlighting an old-fashioned word. ‘Hey, where you going? Will you come see me again?’
Joshua considered that. ‘Maybe.’
‘Listen,’ Freddie called after him. ‘I know you’re disappointed. Whatever you expected of me, good or bad, I’ve always been that, at heart. Disappointing. But I’ll tell you something, Joshua. You never knew about me, but I knew about you. Followed you in the papers, and online. How could I not? After Step Day and all. Maybe I never came to see you. But I never asked you for money, did I, Joshua? And I’ll tell you something else. I never went back to the families for the money they owed. I mean, for fulfilling the contract, for knocking Maria up. That was the point of it all, wasn’t it? I never asked for that money, Joshua. Even though I was owed. That’s got to count for something, hasn’t it? Even though I was owed!’
Sally said, ‘And that was it?’
‘That was it.’
‘Have you been to see him again?’
Joshua shrugged. ‘I guess I will, when this latest Lobsang business has blown over.’
‘Just an ordinary guy, huh.’
‘Yeah. Not some demonic seducer. And not much older than me, though he looked it. That was the strangest thing. Didn’t feel like he was a father at all. We were just two old men together. Well, I got that monkey off my back, I guess.’
‘You atoned with your father, Joshua. Important step on your spiritual journey as a mythic hero.’
He squinted up at her. ‘You laughing at me?’
‘Me? Never. And I guess that whatever you say about Hackett and his cronies, they achieved what they set out to achieve. They changed the genetic composition of mankind. They changed the world, the whole future.’
‘And screwed up our lives in the process.’
‘True,’ she said. ‘So what now?’
‘So now we eat, sleep – or at least I do – and in the morning I go call the cops. And then we go find Grandpa Lobsang.’ He studied her. ‘Deal?’
She closed her eyes, cradling her rifle. Then she said, ‘Deal.’
38
NEW SPRINGFIELD COMMUNITY meetings were generally well attended. In a place where you had to make your own entertainment, people turned up, even if just in hope of seeing some fireworks. People would come drifting in from their stepwise lodges, the population slowly gathering. But this particular meeting was going to be fractious. Agnes knew it.
It was taking place outside the Irwins’ principal home, a sprawl of tepees and tents, just over the Soulsby Creek ford from Manning Hill. Everybody was here, sitting on the grass or on chairs hauled over. Oliver Irwin was standing there like he was chairing the meeting – well, in a way, so he was – with Marina sitting at his feet, and Lydia curled up against her, and Nikos with the elderly Rio a huge sleepy lump at his side. There were Angie and Nell Clayton, and the elegant, elderly Bells with the grandchildren they cared for, and the cheerful Bambers, who always looked like they’d just crawled out of the swamp they made their living from. Lobsang and Agnes and seven-year-old Ben sat quietly to one side on a log, keeping a low profile, and Agnes hoped fervently they would continue to do so.
All around them the blustery wind blew, and there was the usual stink of sulphur in the air, commonplace now, and somewhere sheep bleated miserably. Even the trees of the endless native forest were dying back. It wasn’t a happy day, it didn’t feel right. But then, Agnes reflected sadly, it hadn’t felt right here for months, if not years.