Bereft by Chris Womersley Page A

this year. Must eat more carrots. Mary laughing and gathering the other two squealing children to her, patting their hair in place with a wetted palm.
    His father’s crooked scrawl was now almost illegible. Quinn bent down and ran his fingertips across the words. Within the simple William 1900 12yrs or Sarah 1905 8yrs there nestled entire sagas of bruised knees and the time William nearly cut off his hand while chopping wood. How Sarah was always short for her age on account of having to spend a winter in bed with fever. She also missed a year when she decided she was too old for that sort of thing. Of William, who spent a night beside Sutton Creek to wait for the bunyip Sarah said she had spied there one day, describing the awful creature in such detail that Quinn—who knew the tale to be fabricated—found himself avoiding the area for some weeks. And his sister, poor Sarah, whose measurement for her twelfth birthday was the final entry for any of them.

    When Quinn entered his mother’s room, she was asleep but woke with a start after several minutes. Her bony hand wandered out to him. Her tongue clacked in her dry mouth.
    â€œQuinn?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIs that really you? Here in this room? I thought I dreamed you before—I mean I have dreamed of you. Many times. What are you doing here?” Her disbelief was heartbreaking. “I told people all sorts of things. Stories. We thought you were dead. I assumed you were dead. Everything so sudden and fast. I have mourned you, Quinn. For you and your sister both.” She fumbled at a sheaf of papers by her side until she located what she sought, and pressed on him a crumpled piece of paper.
    â€œWhat’s this?”
    â€œIt’s the telegram they sent. From the Army.”
    Quinn handled the telegram with distaste. Her eagerness to show him news of his own death was disconcerting. He hesitated before opening it. The words were faded. He skimmed and made out Regret , then Sergeant Walker. Died painlessly. Pozières. Gallant. His country. He refolded the telegram and handed it back to her.
    Again she stared at him until, with a vague wave, she indicated her own face. “Your injury. You have changed so much. Surely only I would recognise you.”
    â€œYou have changed, too.”
    She nodded as she drank from a glass of water, handed the glass back to him. “Well, a lot has happened. Besides, I suspect I am dying. The doctor refuses to say a word about it and your father thinks there will be a miracle cure any day now, you know how he is. He pores over journals and talks to anyone he thinks might know something.” She paused to catch her breath. “I have lost almost everyone, you know. All my children. Sarah, of course. You. Your brother moved to Queensland. My parents. Dear Robert comes by sometimes, but he is busy with his job. So many good people died in the war. Your father has gone wild. He took up drink and gets into fights at Sully’s. He will kill you if he finds you. He has told me a hundred times. Robert, too. They will not be swayed. Your father became someone different from the man I married—I mean, he was always of his own mind but he never goes to church since it happened, and I am here lying in bed, dying. They call it a flu, but it is surely something more serious than that. There is talk of other, worse things. Some say it is the plague. Here, in the twentieth century, can you imagine, Quinn?”
    The heat of the room was mammalian, oppressive. Quinn stepped over to the curtain and parted it a fraction to peer outside. A slice of daylight keened into the dim room.
    â€œDo you remember how Apollo inflicted a plague on the Greeks for kidnapping Chryseis? Do you remember how I read that to you, Quinn? The Iliad ? When you were a boy? Those stories I read to you and … the others?”
    She licked her lips. “When my parents died I inherited my father’s library, as you know.