A Cry from the Dark by Robert Barnard Read Free Book Online

wanted to make the England trip, but never felt like doing it on her own. And the upshot is, she’s coming with me. Mark hasn’t known about this. I’ve only just told him.”
    â€œI see. This does rather change things, Ollie.”
    â€œYes. I can see that it does.”
    Her voice took on a protesting tone. “It’s not that I don’t want to meet her, have her with us when we do the theaters”—though, I don’t, she thought—“but staying here in the flat, that’s a bit different.”
    â€œYes, I thought it mightn’t be a good idea,” said Oliver. “After everything.”
    After nothing would describe it better, Bettina thought.
    â€œBut perhaps I’d better have time to think about it,” she said.
    â€œNo—look, I feel I’ve rather landed you in it. Last thing we would be happy with is a fraught situation. We’ll be perfectly all right at Mark’s. He’s got a mate on the floor above with a spare bedroom. I can sleep there.”
    â€œAnd Sylvia will sleep in Mark’s spare room?”
    â€œYou should hear your voice, Betty! Sylvia’s not a young woman, you know. And Mark’s perfectly safe with women. Doesn’t have a lot of luck with them, if the truth be known.”
    Not entirely sure what he meant, Bettina put the matter of Mark and Sylvia out of her mind. What she felt in the hour between the call and her bedtime was a sinking sensation of chickens coming home to roost.

Chapter 4
New Horizons
    The approaching arrival in London of her brother Oliver and the unknown woman to whom she had given birth long ago had the odd effect of seeming to spur Bettina on to greater, more concentrated work on the book of memoirs that was not her autobiography. She could not pinpoint exactly where this stimulus came from, since it would surely have been more logical to suspend work and see what the new Australian impulses likely to result—congenial impulses, at least as far as her brother was concerned—would do for the book. Then one day, over the large breakfast mug of tea with which she invariably started her day, she realized why it was: she wanted to get her memories of Bundaroo, her notion of what it was like, down on paper before her life was invaded by the Australia of today. She had no reason to think that Oliver was haunted by memories of the town in which he had spent his earliest years. The other visitor had never been there so far as she knew, nor lived in any comparable outback small town. She was aware that the changes to Australia since her youth had been enormous. What she had to capture was the outback of 1938—the heat, the smells, the poverty, above all the attitudes of mind. She had to get down the tiny details of what she could remember. Later on she could dust them off, like an archaeologist with his fragments of pottery, winkle out the dirt from the patterned surfaces, and display their purpose and significance.
    Â 
    The day Betty went out to visit Hughie at Wilgandra was a red-letter day for her. Any visit to Wilgandra would have been something to remember, for she had been taken there perhaps three or four times in her life, or since she had begun having memories. She had not been for three years, not since Mrs. Cheveley became something of an invalid. The day had been arranged by Hughie on their walks to school: Mr. Naismyth would borrow the Holden and come and get her on the next Saturday. She would spend the afternoon at the manager’s house, have her tea there, and then he’d drive her home.
    Betty had not relished the thought of two twenty-mile drives with Mr. Naismyth, whom she had not taken to, and she had exacted a promise from Hughie that he would come too.
    â€œYou needn’t worry about my dad,” said Hughie. “He’s harmless.”
    â€œI’m not worried,” she said, not entirely truthfully. “I’d just rather talk to