Read Online A Victim of the Aurora by Thomas Keneally - Free Book Online Page A

Peter Sullivan developed copies of last night’s photograph in the darkroom. Quincy sat in a hard chair by his bunk, the bunk he had shared with Henneker. We presumed he was praying or mourning meditatively, in the manner of a clergyman, but he was the sort of man who would have thought it in bad taste to do it on his knees around people who were working.
    I was still too bemused to be any use with a brush. When Waldo woke at eight I took him to the table and fed him tea and the last of Walter O’Reilly’s bread for that day. I was in a state of mind that made me wonder if there would be bread tomorrow. It was clear to me that Victor Henneker had been treated violently and not survived the treatment. Therefore all the bonds and shared duties that made our life possible were under question, if not ruptured. It mightn’t be long before everyone in the hut understood that, before things fell apart, the stove went out, the blankets iced, the drinking water froze over.
    â€˜Waldo,’ I said, ‘Something happened while you were asleep.’
    â€˜A blizzard came up,’ he said. He was embarrassed about that. That the weather should change radically while he was unconscious. ‘Poor John Troy. All that extra work.’
    â€˜It wasn’t just the blizzard. This afternoon Victor Henneker went out without telling anyone. We can’t ask him why. But he fell and hit his head and, I’m afraid, he’d died of exposure before he could be found.’
    Waldo looked at his hands, clenching the fingers as if he could read in the arrangement of the knuckles a clearer account of the death. He said at last, ‘You say, of exposure ?’
    â€˜Or of the head injury, or of both.’ I had seen it all and his incredulity annoyed me. ‘Does it matter, Waldo?’
    Waldo did not say. He still wore the contrite look that he always had following his fits.
    â€˜He … he wasn’t reading the weather screens?’
    â€˜No. No, he did the two o’clock reading but came back safe from it. John Troy and PO Mulroy are doing the eight o’clock now. But it was late this afternoon Victor went out again, nothing to do with readings, nothing to do with anything. As I say, we can’t ask him.’
    After a while, Waldo said, ‘Death by a freak. Poor Victor. You’d think in a great … enterprise like this, you wouldn’t die in that way. A bump on the head. Thanks for telling me, Tony.’ He stood up, wavering a little. ‘I think I’d better go and see what’s happened in my office today. While I was … while I was sick.’
    He was usually a wry young man who made jokes quietly, out of the corner of his mouth. But guilt over his fits left him wooden.
    At the end of the table the two geologists, Fields and Goodman, had been playing a dispirited game of chess. Usually they contested noisily, making speeches about their strategies, calling in other men to watch them make crucial moves. ‘See what I’m doing to this colonial Gentile,’ Goodman would say in invitation. ‘Look at this, I’ve got his bishop and check,’ Fields would announce. ‘Sheep farmer,’ Goodman would say. ‘ Gefilte merchant,’ Fields would reply. They were the only two who mentioned Goodman’s jewishness openly. They did it without any awkwardness. Tonight, though, there were no rantings or exclamations over the chessboard. Goodman beat Fields easily but seemed to get little joy from the triumph. Barry murmured his congratulations and drifted down the table to the place where Waldo had left me.
    â€˜You’re shocked,’ he suggested gently. ‘I can tell.’
    â€˜I suppose so.’
    â€˜Do you mind talking? About finding him and so on?’
    â€˜Well …’ Alec Dryden had asked me not to. To pretend shock and reluctance even if I didn’t feel it. Of course I felt it.
    Barry blinked, staring directly at my