A Cry from the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

remembered—because, after all, if you didn’t care much about money while you were alive you couldn’t get hot under the collar about what happened to it after you were dead. It was the conversation about Hughie that stayed in her mind, and how she felt she had acted as his interpreter to the world, or had somehow stood guard between him and it, that she remembered. She stood at the window thinking about this, looking over the darkened expanse of Holland Park. Then, when she had sentences firmly in her mind, she went into her study and switched on the tape recorder.
    Â 
    Betty walked home that afternoon with Hughie and her best friend, Alice, and when Alice went into her slightly run-down home on the outskirts of Bundaroo she walked on with Hughie alone. They talked about the day, the English class, the teachers, the other kids at the school. Somehow or other they got on to music, and Hughie told her that they had records of Beethoven’s Seventh at home, conducted by Toscanini. Betty very much wanted to hear them, wanted to play them over and over so that the music was imprinted on her soul (she thought like that in those days). Hughie said he’d ask her over when the family was properly settled in. But when his way parted from hers and he waited for the bus beside the dry, rutted track that led to Wilgandra she shouted after him, “I shouldn’t mention the Beethoven records at school.”
    The burden of her morning walk weighed down on her again as she walked the last half mile to home, and she decided to slip quietly to her tiny bedroom (though in that house all noises could be heard everywhere, even silences). However, as she went through the front door she heard the familiar voices, talking normally.
    â€œWe’ve been married a while now, Dot. We’ve seen a lot of dry gullies. And we’ve always come through.”
    â€œI’ve always supported you, Jack. You’ve got to admit that.”
    â€œYou have, Dot. I’d be the first to say it.”
    â€œAnd I’ve done it because I trust you.”
    â€œI just feel that if hard times come—”
    â€œ Harder times.”
    â€œOK. Things haven’t been easy—too right they haven’t! But if things get tougher, you need mates about you. In the city no one has mates. They have acquaintances, neighbors, even family, but they don’t have mates. We’d be alone. We could become dolers, sundowners. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
    â€œI suppose you’re right, but—”
    The reluctance in her mother’s tone was palpable. Betty thought it was time to burst in on them all sunny and smiling, to show her gratitude for the end of the row.
    â€œHello, Mum. Hello, Dad!”
    â€œWell, look at the time!” said her mother. “I haven’t even thought of tea. Have a good day at school, dear?”
    â€œNot bad…There was a new boy there.”
    â€œWho was that?” It was her father who spoke. He was always half-jealous when she spoke of boys.
    â€œHis name is Naismyth. His father’s the new manager at Wilgandra.”
    â€œOh yes?”
    Her father’s tone spoke volumes. Betty knew as well as if he had spelled it out in flowing sentences that Hughie’s father had not made a good start as Bill Cheveley’s manager, and probably that the family as a whole was not liked out at Wilgandra. His sense of fairness would not allow him to say any more, but he couldn’t keep the truth out of his tone.
    Soon all of Bundaroo would know it. And Hughie would have one more black mark against him, to add to his accent, his Englishness, his devotion to “culture,” and his total foreignness to outback customs and ways of looking at the world.

Chapter 3
Ghosts
    â€œHello, Auntie Bet? You OK?”
    The voice was male, young, and broad Australian.
    â€œHello, Mark.”
    She tried to inject some enthusiasm into her voice, though he