Peter Corris - The Other Side of Sorrow

I pointed to the roaring channel. ‘He fell in. Drowned.’

Geoff took my knife from his jacket pocket and handed it to me. ‘I didn’t think it was a good idea to disable it. I thought we might need it.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘But we don’t.’

I had the flask with a last inch in it in my pocket. I moved closer to the van for shelter, took out the flask and drained it.

‘I saw you and… your mother one day,’ Megan said. ‘What’s wrong with her?’

‘Cancer,’ Geoff said. ‘She’s dying. She might be dead now. She wanted to meet you before she died.’

‘Why?’

‘Unfinished business,’ I said. ‘Come on, we’d better get going.’

We got the Falcon unbogged and started, more due to Geoff’s skill than mine. I dug and pushed, he fiddled. The rain got heavier and all signs that we’d been there were rapidly washing away as we inched down the track or what was left of it. I let Geoff drive and he did it well, taking the bends slowly and keeping the revs up when we had to negotiate hub-high water. Megan sat quietly in the back with her bag and I had to stop myself from turning around to look at her. I wasn’t | sure why I wanted to look at her. Was I afraid she was going to jump out, or was I still asking myself that question? I did sneak one quick look. She was staring out the window. Her expression was blank and with her short hair and rain-washed face she looked young but not afraid.

Surprisingly, the coast road was still open and we drove to Thirroul where Geoff got batteries for his mobile and a mechanic complimented him on the job he’d done on the car and added a few touches of his own. It was still early and, as the rain eased, a few more vehicles appeared and people in slickers carrying umbrellas came onto the streets. Wet and muddy though we and the car were, it was nothing remarkable. I bought three coffees and cups of hot chips and we sat in the car and let the windows steam up.

‘Tell me how it happened,’ Geoff said.

I told him.

Megan said, ‘He wouldn’t have hurt me. He was scared. You heavied him. It’s your fault he’s dead.’

The rain had washed the blood from the cut on her neck and she’d tied the handkerchief over it, but blood was still slightly oozing. ‘He cut you,’ I said.

She fingered the wound and winced a little. She hadn’t been aware of the pain until then. She said again, but with less conviction, ‘He was scared.’

‘We were all scared. It was a bad situation.’

She’d eaten her chips and drunk most of the coffee. She looked at the containers as if wondering where the contents had gone. Then she looked at me. ‘Why were you scared? You had a gun.’

‘I was afraid for you.’

‘Why?’

I didn’t answer. I finished the coffee and wished I hadn’t finished the whisky. Geoff was outside, leaning on the car and smoking. I rapped on the window. He dropped the butt, stood on it, got back in and started the engine.

‘Where’re we going?’ Megan said.

‘To the hospital. To see your mother. Geoff, what’re they saying at the hospital?’

I knew he’d phoned while I was getting the food and drink. ‘Annie says to come straight away. She’s pissed off at me for not being closer. She says it won’t be long.’

We got on the road and a new set of questions began to nag at me. Should I have got the police in on it? Was I a bit drunk after most of a pint of whisky and not much to eat when I’d gone into the house? Could I have handled it better? Should I have shot Talbot in the leg straight away? What about his knife? What had happened to it? I wrestled with these things as Geoff drove, his face set like stone, back through the rain to Sydney.

We got to the hospital by early afternoon and went straight up to Cyn’s room, Geoff and I drawing some looks for our muddy boots and clothes, tangled hair and unshaven faces. Anne was sitting close beside the bed holding her mother’s hand. She looked up at us and her eyes widened when she saw Megan. But she was too involved in what was happening in the here and now to care about the past or the future.

Geoff whispered, ‘I’m sorry, Annie. I…’

Anne, who looked a lot less glossy than when I’d first seen her, older and stronger, too, shook her head. ‘It’s all right, Geoffrey. You’re here. She’s almost gone. She can’t really see or hear much.’

I heard Geoff draw in a deep breath and then he moved up behind his sister and rested his hand on her shoulder. Megan stood beside me. She was breathing heavily and her right hand was up, probing at the cloth around her neck. I wondered how she was going to cope with this after all she’d been through in the last few days. I wanted to offer her some comfort, physical support, but I knew better. She gripped the rail at the end of the bed.

Cyn’s face was as white as the sheets and drawn in as if the bones had crumpled. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was just partly open. There was a slight rise and fall in the sheet over her body. Very slight. We stood there for what seemed like half an hour but was probably only a few minutes.

It was their moment and I felt I didn’t belong. I was about to go out when Cyn’s eyes opened wide. She looked at her daughter, at her son, and then made an effort to see more. Anne, best equipped now to know what was happening, beckoned Megan forward. She moved like an automaton but got close enough for Cyn to see her. I looked down at the face of the woman I’d once loved so much and then fought with and hurt and was glad that at least in the end I hadn’t failed her. Her sunken eyes fixed on Megan and then her head moved towards me a fraction and her pale lips, thinned out to nothing, formed in the shadow of a smile.

Somehow, I found the ability to speak. ‘This is Megan, Cyn.’

I don’t know if she heard me or saw me or understood, because she turned her head slightly to the side again and looked at Geoff and Anne.

There was some movement of the two hands on the cover, but whether it came from Cyn or Anne I couldn’t tell. I backed away but not so far I couldn’t hear the soft hiss of her last breath.

*

I learned from Smith of Millennium Security that they found Damien Talbot’s van the next day and his body a day later. It was a couple of hundred metres from where he’d gone into the water and was battered almost beyond recognition. Almost.

Unlikely as it seemed, Anne Samuels took Megan French under her wing. Accompanied by a lawyer, they went to the police and Megan told them basically what she’d told me – that she hadn’t been present when the guard was killed and had gone with Talbot under duress. She showed them the wound in her neck and claimed it had been inflicted some time before it actually was and that she’d got away from Talbot after that. The police closed the books on Talbot, putting his death down to suicide or accident.

I learned this from Geoff. His computer duly turned up and he came to collect it. ‘Annie drilled her in what to say,’ Geoff said. ‘And it worked. No charges or anything. She’s a strange one, that Megan.’

‘Has she said why she ran off the rails? Why she took up with Talbot and why she stayed with him?’

We were in my ratty back courtyard on a mild dry day with the leaves blowing around the bricks and catching in the sprouting weeds. I had a glass of wine and Geoff had a joint.

‘It’s weird,’ he said. ‘Annie’s not married and the bloke who’s the father of her baby isn’t in the picture. Would you believe it? She’s hired Megan as a sort of live-in nanny for when the baby comes. They get along fine apparently.’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘Annie says Megan has told her but she says I wouldn’t understand.’