Alice McGorr’s Story
BONYSATat the feet of Alice McGorr. Within the frame of the arched entrance Night portrayed the distant camp fire and about it the stilled figures seemed to be waiting for the Dawn to free them. Within the heart of the Ancient Tree it was so dark that Bony could see nothing of the recumbent form of the woman and the child nestling against her. The child continued to sleep, but Alice, Bony suspected, was drugged.
Within himself, the tension which had been steadily mounting for several days was now being submerged in the warm glow of satisfaction that yet another assignment was about to be completed, that once again the ever-present menace of failure had been subdued by triumph.
Although unable to see the eastern sky, he knew when the Dawn stole softly over the earth. Young Wilmot added fuel to the fire, and the lubra brought water. Chief Wilmot stalked away to the buckboard, where he obtained the bridles and departed for the horses. The stout and prosperous-looking white man sat on a blanket for a cushion and waited expectantly for the billy to boil.
The Day fought Night and the picture for Bony was etched on rose-tinted steel until the sun flashed above the rim of the world and all the metallic hardness vanished. It was then that Alice opened her eyes, to close them swiftly for a little while longer. When again she opened her eyes, she gazed wonderingly at Bony, and then at the black roof of the cave. She was trying to answer Bony’s encouraging smile when the infant stirred, and the miasma vanished as she turned quickly to look down upon the babe.
That was a moment never to be erased from Bony’s memory.
Her caress woke the child. It kicked against the enfolding clothes and yawned, and Alice continued to gaze upon it in unbelieving amazement. Then the baby yelled for breakfast.
The group about the fire came to startled attention, beyond them Chief Wilmot roping the horses to the wheels of the buckboard in readiness to be harnessed. The white man hurried to the tree, the lubra behind him, and, stooping, peered into the cave… and into the muzzle of Bony’s automatic.
“Good morning!” Bonysaid, interrogation under the cheerful greeting. The white man jerked away, and Bony followed to confront him outside the tree. The lubra shouted, and theWilmots came running. The white man demanded:
“Who the hell are you?”
“Forgive me,” murmured Bony at his suavest. “I am Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte. And you?”
“I… What in… Where’s my wife? What’sall this mean?”
The stout man was well dressed, accustomed to being answered obsequiously, the city tycoon off balance in the vital Australia. Behind him, young Wilmot nudged his father and grasped the lubra by the arm. They retreated hastily.
“Step back a dozen paces,” ordered Bony. “This automatic is too temperamental even for my liking. That’s better. You are under arrest. Your accomplices, I observe, are deserting you.”
The white man turned to see his supporters swiftly harnessing the horses to the buckboard. Compared with them a fire-engine crew were sleepy dolts. Again turning to Bony, he saw Alice standing with him and the child in her arms.
“Where’s my wife?” he shouted. “Where’s my wife?”
“In hospital where she belongs, you baby-snatching swine,” replied Alice, her voice raised to straddle the yells of the infant. “I suppose you’ve got baby’s food in the car over there. Get it.”
The man waved his arms in the hopeless gesture of defeat, and proceeded to obey the order. At the car, he found Bony just behind him.
“The ignition keys first, please,” commanded Bony. In possession of the keys, he stepped away while the other man burrowed in the boot for a hamper, and the blacks climbed aboard their chariot. They began to shout at each other and the horses, and young Wilmot stood to wield the whip with greater vigour. The speed of their departure made Bony chuckle. The old man was pointing to the south, and Bony saw slipping down the distant rim of the plain the glitter of a speeding car.
Flushed with anger, the stranger carried the hamper to the camp fire, Bony hard on his heels. He dumped the hamper beside the tucker box, and was told to stand on the far side of the fire and remain there.
Alice McGorr placed the baby in Bony’s arms, and proceeded to mix milk. The child yelled its impatience, and the stranger said:
“Who did you say you are?”
“I am the Bridge built by a white man and a black woman to span the gulf dividing two races,” replied Bony, grandiloquently. “To all my friends I am Bony; to you I am Detective-Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte.”
Thus, when Essen and a constable arrived, trailing a tall cloud of rose-pink dust, they were confronted by a domestic tableau, the paramount figure being ‘The Bridge’ supporting an indignant baby.
“Wish I owned a machine like this,” Bony said when making Alice comfortable in the front seat of the tycoon’s car. He peeped at the baby lying on her lap. “Head better?”
“Much, thanks,” she replied and giggled. “Wish you did own a car like this. Wish you didn’t have a wife.”
Somewhat startled, Bony closed the door and firmly passed to the driver’s side, to slip behind the wheel and start the engine. Far away on the depression rose the dust from Essen’s car in which the constable sat with the white man who said his name was Marsh, and who had mislaid his wife.
“Envy is a corroding sin, Alice,” Bony ventured, when they reached the track to Mitford. “I knew a man who owned a Rolls-Royce, and he wished he were young again and driving a T-model Ford with boon companions and rich red wine. Now tell me how you came to be here.”
“Well, as you ordered, I went to theDelphs ’ house last night. I was a few yards off the front gate when I met the cook, dressed for an outing, and I walked back with her to Main Street while she told me she had been given the night off with a ticket for the pictures, and a box of chocolates as a present from Dr Nonning for looking after Mrs Delph. She told me that Mrs Nonning was running the house and nursing Mrs Delph, and that she was still very ill. Dr Delph had been out on his rounds, driving himself as the chauffeur-gardener had been sacked.”
“That chauffeur-gardener didn’t sleep at the house?”
“No. He’s married, and lives at his own place. Anyway, after leaving the cook, I hurried back to the house. It was then quite dark. Dr Delph’s car was parked on the opposite side of the boulevard, and Dr Nonning’s car was parked outside the front door. On the lawn side of the car was a flowering tree growing there just for me, and I could watch the front door and the hall through the car’s two windows. The hall light was on, but not the outside light.
“Nothing happened until half past nine, when Dr Nonning came out and took from the boot of his car a long flattish case. He put it on the hall table. At twenty to eleven Nonning and Delph came out, and Delph backed Nonning’s car to the street and drove away. Nonning went in again and opened the case on the hall table. He was fiddling with something there when Dicky, his wife, appeared and said something I couldn’t hear. I heard him say not to worry as it was going to be the last, and she’d better stay with Flo.
“At a quarter past eleven Delph came back in Nonning’s car, and right on his tail was another car. Delph drove past the entrance to allow the second car to stop at the front door.
“Beside the driver of this car was a woman, and she was on my side… The driver switched off his lights and got out, and was met by Nonning, who said: ‘Good trip?’ The driver said it had been okay, and Nonning then said: ‘You gave your wife the tablets?’ The driver said he had stopped at ten o’clock to give them. Nonning then came round to my side of the car and opened the door. The hall light was good enough for me to see the woman. She was wearing a light duster coat over, a brown dress, and she had a filmy silk scarf about her head. She didn’t speak, and from the way she was sitting and never moving I thought she must be doped.
“Anyway, Nonning said: ‘Well, Mrs Marsh, and how are you?’ The woman just mumbled. That was all it was, a mumble like she was very sleepy. I saw Nonning take her pulse. Then he turned back to Dr Delph: ‘She’s all right. I’ll give her a shot later on.’ Delph nodded, and they went back round the car to the driver and Nonning said: ‘The wife’s all right, Mr Marsh. Care for a bite and a drink?’ Marsh said he would, and that the long drive from town had knocked him. Then Nonning said: ‘You can relax from now on. Go in Delph’s car, and I’ll drive yours.’
“They all went inside, leaving the woman sitting upright and me under the garden tree. I went over to her, and I said: ‘Are you all right, Mrs Marsh?’ and she only mumbled again as though not wanting to wake up. I opened the door and found she’d been propped with cushions on each side, and try as I did I couldn’t see her face clearly enough to recognise her if I had to. And, to clinch everything, she was just my size and height, and I was wearing a brown dress, too.
“You telling me in your letter that you thought this Nonning business had to do with the baby, and that I had to tail these visitors, backed up the feeling I got that this Mrs Marsh was to be given the baby you’d found. I thought I’d hide in the back of the car, you know, down behind the front seat, and then I thought it was just likely they might change their plans and Dr Delph and the Marsh couple go off in Marsh’s car. That led to deciding to take the woman’s place.
“I heaved her out on to the lawn and under the tree, and I was taking off her coat when suddenly Essen was behind me and asking what went. I told him to lend a hand, and explained what I was doing while he helped me with the coat and scarf, and fixed the cushions. He wanted to dump the woman in the shrubbery, but I didn’t like that because she was so wonky, and so he carried her out to where he had his car parked, and took her to the hospital. I told him if he was quick enough he could get back in time to tail the cars.
“It seemed a long time I waited before the men came out again. Marsh and Delph went down the drive to Delph’s car in the street. Nonning came to my side of Marsh’s car, opened the door and said: ‘Can you hear me, Mrs Marsh?’ Like she’d done, I mumbled. He said: ‘Now we’re off to see Altjerra the Giver. As I’ve so often told you, Altjerra the Giver can make dreams come true, so you are going to sleep in a tree and wake up with your own baby in your arms. And you will be happy then, very happy.’
“With that, he closed the door and got behind the wheel and backed the car out. The other car was waiting and we followed it. We left made roads and followed an ordinary track, and after a little of that we came to a junction. We still followed Delph’s car, and soon after that the lights of the first car went out, excepting the tail light, and Dr Nonning switched off our headlights and drove slowly only by a parking light. How he managed, I don’t know.
“A long time after, I saw the glow of a fire ahead, and when we got opposite this fire Dr Nonning drove off the track to it, and another fire lit up and showed the big tree, and I remembered you and I had been there before.
“When we stopped beside Dr Delph’s car and another one, Dr Nonning got something from the back, pushed up my sleeve and gave me a shot. He didn’t say anything until he’d put the needle back inthe whatever it was on the rear seat, and then began to say soothingly over and over: ‘Mrs Marsh! Mrs Marsh! You are going to see Altjerra the Giver. You are going to see his spirit babies run to that big tree… and wait. Wait, Mrs Marsh, for women like you. Other women have come here, hoping, made happy ever after. Now you have come hoping… Mrs Marsh. You are going to fall asleep inside that tree, and when you wake you will have your very own baby in your arms. You will remember all you see, Mrs Marsh, but you will not remember my voice or what I’ve said. Remember, always remember that the truth is what you see before you fall asleep.’
“And so on over and over again, and the dope working in me so that I felt like I was floating along on air, and wanting withall my mind to stay awake. I still knew I was Alice McGorr and not this Mrs Marsh. I wanted to shout questions at the Voice going on and on about Altjerra the Giver. But I couldn’t move, and really I didn’t want to. I wanted you there to find out what it was all about, and somehow I knew that this auto-suggestion job, or whatever Nonning was doing to me, wouldn’t work because I hadn’t been given those tablets Marsh had doped his wife with before they arrived at Mitford.
“Nonning told me to forget his voice, but I didn’t and haven’t. I just waited and a fire grew bright to light up the tree, and then I saw the half-bird man thing carrying the huge sack and going to the tree and dropping things. I saw them run and hide inside the tree, little things no bigger than butterflies. I watched the aboriginal woman go there and lie down, and I wanted to tell Nonning she mustn’t do that, that this was my night to sleep in the tree, and all the while knowing I was Alice McGorr, your offsider… I was lifted and carried from the car. I was walking to the tree but I couldn’t feel the ground under me. Inside the tree it was dark, soft, warm, sleepy darkness, and somewhere I heard Nonning saying: ‘Sleep, Mrs Marsh, sleep.’ ”
Alice fell silent, and Bony made no attempt to disturb the stream of memories. They were passing through the green belt to the town when she said:
“I expected to find, I don’t know what, but it was heaven, Bony. Please tell me what it all means.”