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.
The phone where Dorrigo’s call waited was mounted on a wall opposite the duty officer’s front desk, past which flowed all those seeking to get outside on any pretext. Offsetting this insurmountable lack of privacy was a crazed cacophony of typewriter keys being pounded and typewriter carriages returning, phones ringing, men yelling and coughing, electric fans here and there droning as they hacked the unbearable heat into intolerable hot tufts.
Dorrigo picked up the Bakelite earpiece and, leaning down into the voice cone, coughed to make his arrival known. For a moment there was no sound, and then he heard her unmistakable voice utter two words.
He knows.
He felt himself falling through the cosmos, with nothing to stop him. Somewhere far below was his body, attached to an earpiece that was attached to a wire that ran through other wires all the way to where Amy Mulvaney stood in the King of Cornwall. He could see his body turn its back to the other men. He coughed again, this time inadvertently.
What? Dorrigo said. He cupped his hand around the end of the earpiece, both to better hear Amy and to ensure no one else could.