They walked no more that day and as the sun sank behind a saddle in the hills before them – the glow rising up as though a wondrous, golden city existed just beyond the next valley – pale yellow butterflies came and floated all around them, some dying in the water and floating away downstream, and then something – maybe a platypus – splashed and slipped under the surface of the pool, leaving nothing but long, gentle ripples to kiss each bank. It took a few minutes for the fact to dawn on Tom that the sun was setting in the west and they’d been walking all that day almost directly towards it – in the opposite direction to the one he’d intended. He was about to burst into tears when Flynn began to speak, very softly, beside him.
‘I’m hungry, Tom. I want to go home,’ he said. ‘I want to see Mum.’
‘You’ll see her.’
‘You promise?’
‘Already have.’
‘Swear?
‘Yeah.’
Tom licked his thumb, straightened Flynn’s fringe, then brushed dust off his cheeks.
‘You want to look good for Mum, don’t you?’
Flynn nodded.
‘We must be close to a house or something. A road. Tomorrow we’ll find it. Tomorrow we’ll get home. I swear we will.’
The sun lowered quickly then, and even though it was hard to see, Tom rubbed cool creek water onto the scratches on Flynn’s arms and legs and picked specks of dirt and gravel from a deep graze on his own knee. He found a fern and stripped it of its fronds and laid them on the rock and laid Flynn down on them and then curled up round him. He watched him fall asleep, watched his thumb go into his mouth, and then he too closed his eyes. Finches chattered in the bushes and from somewhere up in the hills came the soft, clear tolling of bellbirds.
Grace leant her head back against the seat and began to see the tricks the light was playing on her. She swung the door to and fro and small horses of reflected light galloped backwards and forwards across the road. It was nearly midday and the heat radiated down through the metal of the car like lightning down a rod but found nowhere to go. The sun burrowed into the car’s paint and cracked the colour apart, found a rainbow where you wouldn’t expect one, lifted it out for the boiling air to cushion, display like a dusty nugget, spin back out into the day. Everything on either side of the road seemed to be wilting. The road was empty, chalky. The rails running parallel to the road, behind the barbed wire, gleamed like chrome and appeared and disappeared in the heat haze. She looked over at the edge of the trees, where the timber started, where the shadows began, where it might have been just a little cooler. It almost seemed up to the country now, and the sun, to conjure up the boys, to have them step out from the shade and walk directly over to where she sat. They would be dusty, very hungry, and thin. They would probably have cuts on their legs and arms and torn clothes and she would bandage them up and then she and her father would drive them into town and they would sit quite still between them while Pop cracked jokes and she would put her arm across Tom’s shoulders and when they arrived in town everyone would come out and crowd around and chatter with excitement and amazement.
They’d been missing for more than a week now. Nearly two hundred men, including blacktrackers and men with dogs, had been brought in to search. It was in all the newspapers – even in Sydney – and on the television and radio stations. She hadn’t gone out with Pop again but she had sat by the two-way radio in the station listening to the talk and following the searchers’ progress on the big map pinned to the wall. She hadn’t even thought about Darcy until she hadn’t turned up to have her dress altered, and then she wondered whether her father was being even more strict with her than usual.
She squinted over at the trees again, then turned and perched on her knees to look out the back window, but there was nothing there either, just a red-sided steer plugging slowly across the paddock. Pop stirred from his nap with a loud snort. He opened one of his eyes and looked at her. She knew his mouth would be dry so she jumped out of the car, unhooked the waterbag from the front bumper and handed it in to him. He took a long drink.
‘Thanks, love.’
He looked at his watch.
‘Any sign of the train?’
‘No.’
‘Flamin’ thing is later than usual. Should’ve come past hours ago.’
‘Maybe it’s been derailed. Hit a cow or something.’
‘Yep. Maybe it has.’ Pop smiled and leant towards the dashboard. With a trickle of juice from the battery the radio cranked out a bit of music, then a horse race.
‘Who have we picked in this one?’ Pop reached for the paper, creased open at the form guide, and his glasses, positioning them on the end of his long nose.
‘I picked him. Twenty to one. Regular Rocket. But it’s the next race.’
‘Regular Rocket. We’ll see,’ he said, smiling wearily at his daughter. ‘Let’s find some shade. It’s more than regulation hot in here.’
‘We were in the shade before you fell asleep. The shade went that way,’ she said, pointing.
‘Didn’t mean to fall asleep. Must be more tired than I thought.’
Grace looked at him. He’d been out until well past dark for the last week, rising before the sun. She wasn’t surprised he was tired. They climbed from the car and sat where it was throwing a little shade onto the grass verge. They looked out across the river flats towards town, their backs against the warm steel bodywork. The storm over a week ago had done little to break the dry spell they were having. There hadn’t been any good rain in months and the usually green paddocks were looking tired and very thirsty. The cattlemen were complaining, the dairymen as well. Everyone else was doing their best to stay cool. There was nothing for it but to wait. The good rain would come – they were too close to the coast for it not to. At least one thing was certain, Pop thought: it would come, whether the boys were found, or whether they never were.
He was tired. He was bone tired. Waiting for the train, listening to the races, were welcome chances to empty his mind of all the worries, all the impossibilities, all the disappointments of the past few days. There in the stillness, with his eyes closed and the sun against them, was also the place where things sometimes began to make sense, where he often heard the first word of something new. Today, though, there was nothing.
The police radio crackled and there was an echoing squeal and then silence. Pop thought of the noise as a phantom copper, forever on rounds, radio in ghostly hand, maybe whistling softly to himself. In the last week the radio had been constantly alive with voices from dawn to dusk. He’d heard them change from energetic and keen to resigned and anguished. They’d tramped in long ragged lines through dense bush and bivouacked where they’d stood when the daylight failed. He’d had them comb the roads again, on foot and on horseback, and drag the river with hooks, but still nothing had been found. Henry Gunn, the poor bastard, unable to sleep, had lost his voice completely from calling the boys’ names. He’d never seen a man grimmer, a jaw as hard set. He was in some kind of twilight world, along with Ellie, where hope slipped away like time.