Read Online Lessons from the Heart by John Clanchy - Free Book Online Page B

we’re going to go through the whole trip like this, stopping to discuss what happened every night, when the only things that happened, happened at Ayers Rock. It’s already been thirty minutes and if it goes on like this it’ll take an hour or more, and poor Toni will be wondering what’s happening and if she’s in real trouble and will have been to the toilet twelve times already.
    â€˜At any time during your stay at Cobar, did you ever observe Mr Prescott and Miss Darling alone?’
    â€˜No, Mr Jackson,’ I say. After I’ve thought about it.
    â€˜Why did you hesitate?’
    â€˜I wanted to be sure I was right.’
    â€˜Let me ask you again,’ he says. And he speaks very slowly, and his voice is warning me to make sure I’m telling the truth. ‘Did you ever – on any occasion – during your stay at Cobar observe Miss Darling and Mr Prescott alone together?’
    â€˜No, Mr Jackson,’ I say. And, as I say it, I’m aware of Mr Murchison watching me. Not saying anything, just watching. And thinking.

7
    When I wake, it’s still not light, and something has disturbed me. A sound. And yet when I listen, I can’t hear anything. The campsite is quiet and there’s not even a bird yet, or any traffic. And yet there’s this sound – or the memory of it. And then I know what it is, or was – a tiny alarm, one of those small personal ones that you can barely hear, especially if you have it under your pillow or inside your sleeping bag. But when did it go off? It wasn’t just now, something tells me. I look across at Toni’s bed and there’s a deep black shadow rucked up against the tent wall, and I wonder for a moment if Toni’s sitting up and if she can’t sleep or she’s upset, and I even whisper:
    â€˜Toni?’
    But she doesn’t reply, and then I realize it’s not her but the hood and top of her sleeping bag which have been peeled away and pushed up, and she’s not in her bed at all. And I lie and think about this and wonder if it’s cold outside and should I get up and go and see if she’s sick or something – the toilets aren’t that far -and I know I should but the sleeping bag’s so warm and I’m drifting asleep again when I remember the sound and ask myself why would Toni set an alarm to get up and be sick. And then I know the alarm went off a while ago, maybe an hour or more, and I’ve been fighting the echo of it all that time. And it’s amazing what you know or can do when you’re asleep.
    When I unzip my bag it’s not even cold, or not in the tent at least, and I don’t turn on the lamp but just feel around for my tracksuit and pull it on over my T-shirt and pants and crawl out of the tent – and it’s beautiful. Like a late summer evening. There’s just the softest breeze on my cheek, and in front of me, in the flattest line across the park and the rugby field beside it – flat as you’d never, never see in Sydney – there’s a line of light that’s grey and green together, and I stand watching it while it’s still unmov-ing, and then it grows until suddenly it’s become a real crack in the world.
    Toni’s not in the toilets, no one is. And everything is totally silent, though back towards the highway I hear a truck roaring by and then fading and vanishing. And then the first bird, a kookaburra out towards the rugby field, and that’s the direction I go. I’m halfway across the park to the field when I hear another sound, only this time it’s a person, and then another, a man and a woman, and the man’s voice goes again and then the woman’s laugh, and it’s Toni’s.
    And finally I see them, two heads, the same height, moving slowly across the line of light, which is changing itself now and has the first grey and then pink in it, and it catches the top of one of the heads