CHAPTER 23
IT WAS ONE of the mysteries of the Great Southern District, the riddle of what happened to baby Grace Roennfeldt and her father. Some people said it just proved you still couldn’t trust a Hun: he was a spy and had finally been called back to Germany after the war. Made no difference that he was Austrian. Others, familiar with the oceans, didn’t bat an eyelid at his disappearance: ‘Well, what was he thinking, setting off into these waters? Must have had kangaroos in his top paddock. Wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.’ There was a general sense that somehow it was God expressing disapproval for Hannah’s choice of spouse. Forgiveness is all very well, but look at the sorts of things his lot had done …
Old Man Potts’s reward took on mythic status. Over the years, it lured people from the Goldfields, from up north, from Adelaide even, who saw a chance to make their fortune by coming up with a piece of splintered driftwood and a theory. In the early months, Hannah listened keenly to every tale that was spun of a sighting, every memory of a baby’s cry heard from the shore on the fateful night.
With time, even her eager heart could not fail to see the holes in the stories. When she would suggest that a baby’s dress which had been ‘discovered’ on the shore did not match the one Grace had been wearing, the reward prospector would urge her, ‘Think! You’re overcome with grief. How could you be expected to remember what the poor child was dressed in?’ Or, ‘You know you’d sleep more easily if you just accepted the evidence, Mrs Roennfeldt.’ Then they would make some sour remark as they were ushered from the parlour by Gwen, who thanked them for their trouble and gave them a few shillings for the journey home.
That January, the stephanotis was in bloom again, the same voluptuous scent heavy in the air, but it was an ever more gaunt Hannah Roennfeldt who continued her ritual journey – though less often now – to the police station, the beach, the church. ‘Completely off her rocker,’ Constable Garstone muttered as she wandered out. Even Reverend Norkells urged her to spend less time in the stony darkness of the church and to ‘look for Christ in the life around her’.
Two nights after the lighthouse celebrations, as Hannah lay awake, she heard the groan of the hinges on the letterbox. She looked at the clock, whose eerie numerals signalled three a.m. A possum, perhaps? She crept out of bed and peered from the corner of the curtain, but saw nothing. The moon had hardly risen: no light anywhere save for the faint glow of the stars which dusted the sky. Again, she heard the iron clang of the box, this time caught by the breeze.
She lit a storm-lantern and ventured through the front door, careful not to wake her sister, only vaguely wary of disturbing any snakes which might be taking advantage of the inky blackness to hunt for mice or frogs. Her pale feet made no sound on the path.
The door to the letterbox swung gently back and forward, giving glimpses of a shape inside. As she held the lantern closer, the outline of a small oblong emerged – a parcel. She pulled it out. Not much bigger than her hand, it was wrapped in brown paper. She looked about for any hint of how it had got there, but the darkness curled around her lamp like a closing fist. She hurried back to her bedroom, fetching her sewing scissors to cut the string. The package was addressed to her, in the same neat hand as before. She opened it.
As she pulled out layer upon layer of newspaper, something made a noise with each movement. As the last of the packing was removed, there, returning the soft glimmer of the lantern, was the silver rattle her father had commissioned in Perth for his granddaughter. There was no mistaking the embossed cherubs on the handle. Beneath the rattle was a note.
She is safe. She is loved and cared for. Please pray for me.
Nothing more. No date, no initial, no sign.
‘Gwen! Gwen, quick!’ She hammered on her sister’s door. ‘Look at this! She’s alive! Grace is alive. I knew it!’
Gwen stumbled from her bed, ready to hear yet another outlandish idea. But confronted by the rattle, she became instantly alert, for she had sat with her father at the counter in Caris Brothers up in Perth as he discussed the design with the silversmith. She touched it warily, as though it were an egg that might hatch a monster.
Hannah was weeping and smiling, laughing at the ceiling, at the floor. ‘I told you, didn’t I? Oh, my darling Grace! She’s alive!’
Gwen laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s not get carried away, Hannah. We’ll go and see Dad in the morning and get him to come with us to the police. They’ll know what to do. Now, go back to sleep. You’ll need a clear head tomorrow.’
Sleep was out of the question. Hannah was terrified that if she closed her eyes she might wake up. She went out to the back yard and sat in the swinging seat where once she had sat with Frank and Grace, and looked at the thousands of stars that dotted the hemisphere; they soothed her with their steadiness, like pinpricks of hope in the night. Little lives could barely be heard or felt on a canvas this vast. Yet she had the rattle, and the rattle brought her hope. This was no hoax. This was a talisman of love – a symbol of her father’s forgiveness; a thing touched by her child and those who treasured her. She thought back to her Classics studies, and the tale of Demeter and Persephone. Suddenly this ancient story was alive for her, as she contemplated her daughter’s return from wherever she had been held captive.
She felt – no, she knew – she was coming to the end of a dreadful journey. Once Grace was back with her, life would begin again – together they would harvest the happiness so long denied them both. She found herself laughing at funny memories: Frank struggling to change a nappy; her father’s attempt at composure when his granddaughter brought up her recent feed onto the shoulder of his best suit. For the first time in years, her belly was tight with excitement. If she could just make it to the morning.
When a glimmer of doubt crept into her thoughts, she turned her mind to the specific: the way Grace’s hair was slightly thinner at the back from rubbing against her sheet; the way her fingernails had little half moons at their base. She would anchor her child in memory and draw her home by sheer will – by ensuring that in one place on this earth there was the knowing of every aspect of her. She would love her home to safety.
The town was full of talk. It was a dummy had been found. No, a teething ring. It was something that proved the baby was dead; it was something that proved she was alive. The father had killed her; the father had been murdered. From the butcher’s to the greengrocer’s, from the farrier’s to the church hall, the story acquired and shed facts and frills as it passed from mouth to ear, always with a ‘tut’ or a pursing of lips to disguise the thrill of each teller.
‘Mr Potts, we’re not for a minute doubting you can recognise your own purchases. But I’m sure you’ll appreciate that it doesn’t prove the child’s alive.’ Sergeant Knuckey was trying to calm the now ruddy-faced Septimus, who stood before him, chin up, chest out, like a prize-fighter.
‘You’ve got to investigate it! Why would someone have waited until now to hand it in? In the middle of the night? Not tried to claim the reward?’ His whiskers seemed even whiter as his face grew more puce.
‘All due respect, but how the bloody hell would I know?’
‘That’s enough of that language, thank you very much! There are ladies present!’
‘I apologise.’ Knuckey pursed his lips. ‘We will be investigating, I can assure you.’
‘How, exactly?’ demanded Septimus.
‘We … I … You have my word that I will.’
Hannah’s heart sank. It would be the same as before. Still, she took to staying up late into the night, watching the letterbox, waiting for a sign.
‘Right, I’ll need a picture of this, Bernie,’ announced Constable Lynch. Standing at the counter of Gutcher’s studio, he produced the silver rattle from a felt bag.
Bernie Gutcher looked askance. ‘Since when have you been interested in babies?’
‘Since it was about evidence!’ the policeman replied.
It took time for the photographer to set up his equipment, and as he did, Lynch looked around the walls at the portraits illustrating choices of style and frame. His gaze passed evenly over an array of examples that included the local football team, Harry Garstone and his mother, and Bill and Violet Graysmark with their daughter and granddaughter.
A few days later, a photograph was duly pinned to the notice-board outside the police station, showing the rattle next to a ruler for scale, and asking for anyone who recognised it to come forward. Beside it was a notice from Septimus Potts, Esquire, announcing that the reward for information leading to the safe return of his granddaughter Grace Ellen Roennfeldt now stood at three thousand guineas, and that all approaches would be treated in the strictest confidence.
Down Partageuse way, a thousand guineas could buy you a farm. Three thousand – well, with three thousand guineas there was no telling what you could do.
‘Are you sure?’ Bluey’s mother asked again as she paced the kitchen, her hair still in the rag curlers in which she had slept. ‘Think, boy, for God’s sake!’
‘No. I can’t be sure – not completely sure – it was so long ago. But I’d never seen anything that flash before, and in a baby’s cot!’ His hands shook as he rolled a cigarette, and he fumbled the match as he lit it. ‘Ma, what am I going to do?’ Beads of sweat were forming on his forehead beneath his red curls. ‘I mean, maybe there’s some reason for it. Or maybe I was just dreaming.’ He drew fiercely on his cigarette, and exhaled a thought. ‘P’raps I should wait until the next trip out to Janus and ask him then, man to man.’
‘Man to monkey, more like! You’re more lame-brained than I thought if that’s your idea of what to do. Three thousand guineas!’ She waved three fingers in his face. ‘Three thousand guineas is more than you’d make on that godforsaken boat in a hundred years!’
‘But it’s Tom we’re talking about. And Isabel. As if they’d do anything wrong. And even if it is the same rattle – it could have just washed up and they found it. You should see some of the stuff that ends up on Janus. He found a musket once! And a rocking horse.’
‘No wonder Kitty Kelly sent you packing. Not an ounce of ambition. Not an ounce of common sense.’
‘Ma!’ Bluey was stung by his mother’s jibe.
‘Put a fresh shirt on. We’re going to the station.’
‘But it’s Tom! It’s a mate, Mum!’
‘It’s three blessed thousand guineas! And if you don’t get in first, old Ralph Addicott might be down there spinning them the same story.’ She added, ‘Kitty Kelly’s not going to look down her nose at a man with that much money, is she? Now brush your hair. And put that wretched cigarette out.’