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

you.”
    It was a fine day, the September sun glowing rather than beating on the dusty landscape.
    When the Holden arrived soon after one, Mr. Naismyth raised his hand to Bettina’s father on the other side of one of the near paddocks as if he were an old friend and nodded to her mother when she opened the door to them. It was Hughie’s first time in Bettina’s home, but he couldn’t find much to say about it. On the drive to Wilgandra they chatted about their English homework (a short appreciation of “Oh, to Be in England,” for which Hughie had a definite advantage, Bettina felt), and about the forthcoming Bulletin competition for budding journalists.
    â€œThey wouldn’t pick someone who’s only been in the country for under a year,” said Hughie. “What could I write about? Though I would quite like to write about Australian art, if we can choose our own topic.”
    â€œWhat do you know about Australian art?” asked Betty.
    â€œI saw a bit in Melbourne, after we landed. Most of it was on a level with Mr. Blackfeller’s pictures—the ones he paints for the city shops—but there was some interesting stuff too.”
    â€œWe should do more Australian stuff at school,” said Bettina, who decades later was to greet the news that her novels were now set for the Leaving Certificate with a distinctly mixed reaction. “Just do the English stuff for a sort of background study.”
    â€œYes, we should,” said Hughie, as if he belonged there.
    â€œWell, you have been setting the world to rights,” said Mr. Naismyth when they arrived at the manager’s house, half a mile from Wilgandra itself. “I haven’t heard Eugene talk so much since we left the Old Country.”
    Clearly he hadn’t been listening to them, only registering that they were talking.
    In the kitchen Mrs. Naismyth welcomed them, but said she couldn’t shake hands because hers were all eggy.
    â€œI’m making some custard tarts for poor Mrs. Cheveley—doing them in the English way. She said she’d have loved to see you, dear, but she doesn’t feel up to talking at the moment.”
    That was all to the good. She was friendly enough, but a bit too ladylike for Bettina. She and Hughie retreated to the main room of the house, where Hughie had already wound up the gramophone and had the records of Beethoven’s Seventh piled up beside it.
    â€œIt’s rather dark and mysterious at first,” he said, with a touch of condescension, “then it becomes a sort of whirling dance.”
    His words had the ring of something he’d read. The Naismyths must own books on music, Betty thought. She could hardly get her brain around the idea of books on music. They certainly didn’t have any such thing in the Bundaroo library. In fact that tiny collection had so few books on anything that it only opened for two hours on Saturdays.
    Hughie put the first of the records on the turntable and lifted the arm. When the music started Betty found it not really mysterious at all (she later found he’d confused it with something he’d read in the same book about Beethoven’s Fourth). It was more sort of mathematical, she thought, as if getting ready for something. Only when that something started did she become gripped, and standing there in the middle of the floor she had the first of several visions of a dance, sparked off by Hughie’s words, with powerful bodies first in joyful motion which gradually took on a feeling of controlled frenzy. She hardly noticed when Hughie changed the record or announced a new movement. The dance became full of slow-paced menace in the second movement, then gradually increased in Bac-chic fire for the last two. The bodies in her vision, now all but unclothed, were leaping and writhing and expressing a terrible, unnerving sort of rapture. When the music ended, Betty took a minute or two to recover her