Chapter 8 - A Month in a Cage
As January reached its end Susan looked back on it as an endless month in a cage. It had three high spots when that great and good God, if such a being existed, decided to give some temporary respite.
It was funny how, for the month of December, when she was in this same place, but fully enveloped in a mental fog, both the passage of time and her surroundings had barely seemed to matter. Now that her mind was clearer time passed with excruciating slowness. A restless impatience ate at her; every day seemed so long.
Despite a clear mind she found it very hard to read or otherwise distract herself. An underlying inability to concentrate properly on anything had infected her mind. Since she had decided to plead guilty it seemed like she had lost all passion for anything along with her will to fight. She had not changed her mind about saying nothing but that was the only place where her mind had a clear focus and purpose.
She could no longer see Mark’s face clearly; he seemed to have vanished with the crocodile spirit’s departure from her mind. Without some sense of him she felt endlessly lonely.
Now that she had said goodbyes to her three lots of family and friend supporters, there was a vacuum about her. No one else seemed to have interest in her or wanted to see her. She had a premonition of the rest of her life, this place of total emptiness, just herself alone, no one else in this space; no one she cared for or who cared about her.
She cast her mind to her encounters of the month, those few days of visits, now concluded.
First came Anne; it was the day after New Year’s Day when she came in, looking fresh and blooming, her holiday had obviously agreed with her. Susan steered the conversation to how Anne was going and before long it became about David. She could tell Anne was trying to skirt around this subject but Susan was determined not to let that happen.
Susan burst the topic wide open by saying, “You know, Anne, it is time for me to bring my engagement to a formal end. There is no future for David and I as a couple. Before you say anything I know he is pretty keen on you and you on him. I don’t want this thing with me to have any bearing on what you and he do together.
“I don’t want to push you together out of loneliness and shared sympathy for me, but if there is something good between the two of you don’t let what happened between me and David to keep you apart.
“I should have been stronger and never let myself get involved with him, knowing how this event could follow me. But it is a part of my history that I can’t change. All I can say is, if something happens between you two, I hope it is really good. Don’t rush it; let it grow, if it will, in its own good time.”
She watched Anne closely as she spoke.
By the time she finished Anne had tears in her eyes. “Oh Suz, am I that obvious, yes I really like him and I think he feels the same, but it is all mixed up by what has happened to you and I don’t know if we can undo all those tangles.
”So thank you for your advice. I won’t see him now for at least a couple months. I think it is a good thing to put some distance between us and all this. It might be that when we meet again we have each moved on and it is no longer important. But thank you for your kindness; you have so many troubles of your own without worrying about me.”
With that they both put their arms around each other and hugged for a long time. No more words were required. The next three days Anne visited her all the time she could. She brought little treats, chocolates, lollies and the like, giving a big pile to the warders. The warders soon had a soft spot for Anne; she talked to them so politely, and charmed them with a smile. In return they bent the rules as far as they could in allowing her to extend her visits.
They talked very little about the case, more just about life and history of times past. One day Susan told of her decision to plead guilty; at first Anne was inclined to try and talk her round, to try and find some way out. But Susan was so clear in her mind about what she was going to do that in the end Anne let it be and concentrated on being the best friend she could. It did not seem right to abandon Susan to this fate. But she was as trapped as Susan was by her knowledge.
They were both very sad when the final day came and it was time for Anne to say goodbye, as she was flying back to London early next morning. So they held hand, talked and hugged for a long time.
The next week came visits by her Mum and Dad. Tim was already back to university in Reading. Her Mum and Dad had stayed an extra week in Sydney, having been invited up to visit David’s parents. Susan told them she really wanted them to go, saying that Anne would be here to see her every day, and she would prefer to spread out the visits to have more time with them all, rather than having them all come together.
Once again it had ended up being a nice but emotional time. She told her parents, at the outset, of her decision, to plead guilty. It had been hard to watch the shocked look on both their faces, both in response to her admission of what she had done, and in realising the consequences for their daughter, she expecting to spend a large part of her life in jail.
Their first question was, “But why?”
All Susan would say, and she said it over and over again was, “I am sorry, I cannot tell you.”
Her Mum had been in tears and her father not far away. But, as she explained it slowly and as rationally as she could, that she was facing the consequences of her actions, and please for them to not ask her why anymore, they slowly accepted this awful choice.
She told them, then, that when David returned next week, she would end her engagement to him. She said it was impossible that there be any relationship between them from here, and he must move on with his own life. She told them that she appreciated, so much, how good David and his family had been to her with all this, and she was glad that they and David’s parents had met and become friends. She would write a letter to David’s parents thanking them for all their support. She said she hoped that she and David could still remain friends, but that was all there was left for them.
Her Mum and Dad could see the good sense of all this and told her they thought she had made the right choice in the circumstances.
Then she came to the last and, for her, the hardest thing. It was about the baby. She said that she knew she would not be able to keep her baby in jail and so she asked them to take and adopt the child when it was born, to give it the good life that she could not. She just wanted to choose the name, and she hoped that they would all come and visit at least once a year so that she could see her child and watch him grow, and he would know that his mother loved him.
Now Susan’s mother really was in tears, but it was agreed. After that was all said they spent their visits talking about other things and too soon they were also gone.
The final visitor was David; it ended up only being a day as she asked him not to come back after that, at least for a few weeks, as she needed time on her own. Not that she had other things to do, but it was too painful for now being with him, with her life in tatters, that was the way she put it.
She knew it needed time and separation to let the healing begin. First she told him about the decision to plead guilty. He seemed stunned, he had willed himself to believe that there was another explanation; that it was not really her; yes she had had an affair with this man, but she was not his killer.
When he tried to deny that it could be so, she looked straight at him, and told him directly, “David, it is true, I hit him on the head with a piece of wood and killed him. Then I tried to cover up what I had done. I cannot tell you why so please don’t ask. But I cannot and do not want to escape from the consequences of my actions, so I will plead guilty, that is it, it will not change so please spare me any more questions about it.
“Instead I want you to get on with your own life. I ask you now to agree that our engagement is over. I could just tell you but I want your agreement that it is so, a mutual decision which we both hold to. You must understand and believe that our relationship is over, you must move o
n or we will both be trapped by something that cannot be.”
She could feel him squirm and try to avoid facing up to the reality and admitting it. But she persisted and finally the words were said. “I agree.” She had thought she would talk with him of Anne but decided this was a step too far for this day.
For a minute, when all was said, they both tried to make polite conversation. But it was too hard. So, after about five minutes, she said. “I think I would like you to go now, it is just too hard; there is part of me that is really sad it has come to this. I just hope that in weeks or months to come we can be friends again. I want you to remember me as someone bright and happy, not someone whose life is in broken pieces, so please would you go now.”
They too hugged tightly for a minute and then he was gone.
She was pleased the talking was done but with it all finished she just felt so alone and empty.
A week passed. She was still alone. She had barely spoken ten words to the warders and had said not a word to anyone else. It had all become so dark and dreary. Part of her was tempted to put the crocodile stone aside to have something to fill her mind, even that awful crocodile spirit seemed preferable to nothingness; but for now she resisted.
She wrote out a letter to David’s parents and another to the Director of Public Prosecutions and asked the warder to send them. When that was done there was just silence again. It was an endless emptiness that went on and on and on.
Susan was half way through the second week of solitude, the days all muddled in her mind. Someone was calling her name, she looked up; the warder was seeking her attention.
“You have a visitor.”
Susan had no idea who it could be, neither Vic nor Charlie had ever returned, perhaps it was one of them, perhaps that policeman from the plane or a lawyer from the DPP. She heard a big booming voice come down the corridor; it sounded familiar, but from where?
“Now where is that girl, surely she can see me, I have driven for eight hours to visit, surely she can find some time.”
She opened the door to the visitor’s room. A burly stockman greeted her; there was totally genuine delight in his face to see her.
“Buck,” she cried in pleasure, almost flinging herself at him.
After hugging her he held her at arm’s length and looked at her critically. “What has happened to that lovely English bloom, getting a bit thin and pasty in this awful place. Sorry, I could not bring Firefly with me on a horse trailer, he would have really sparked you up.”
Now she was laughing and he was laughing too. It was the first proper laugh she’d had in longer than she could remember. Tears streamed down both their faces as the laughter eased, she was breathless.
“That’s better,” he said, “needed a little ray of sunshine. I am sorry it has taken me so long to come and see you. I only heard two days before Christmas, and then Vic was missing and there was the Cyclone with lots of flooding so it is only now I could get away.“
Susan looked at him perplexed, “What did you say, Vic is missing? Do you mean Vic the helicopter pilot?”
Buck looked at her, puzzled and anxious, “Yes that is Vic,” he replied. Then he smacked his hand to his forehead. “Oh Lordy, don’t suppose many papers come here, or radio or TV?
“I found out about Mark just before Christmas from Vic, and then on the day before New Year’s Eve, Vic and his chopper vanished, somewhere en route from Wyndham to Timber Creek. It is a month now and nobody holds out much hope anymore, though he is such a tough little bugger that if anyone can survive out in the middle of nowhere it will be him. So I am not prepared to fully write him off just yet, nobody has found a crash site or a body. But I have to admit it is looking real grim.”
Susan sat down on the chair and laid her head on the table. All her forced jollity had drained away. It felt like someone had put a pin in a balloon. It was as if, since giving him the diary, she had a thread of hope that he may help her find some way out of this. Now that bubble was popped too. But more, she grieved for the loss of the one person who seemed to genuinely care about what had happened to Mark.
And beyond that she liked this man, really liked him, his humour, his vitality, his zest for life, his dark, handsome, wiry features. On that day, when he had jested that she pass Mark over in his favour and she had reposted that he had plenty already in the mile high club, a part of her subconscious had known that if she wasn’t with Mark she would have done the mile high thing with him too.
It was not that she had sought anything other than Mark, but she had recognised this man also had a primal attraction for her. But that was history. Like all that was good in her life he was gone too. She had thought her life felt empty before, now she understood what true emptiness was, that place when all future life hope ran into a dry well.
She realised after a minute that Buck was still standing there looking down at her with serious eyes. “What an idiot I am,” he muttered, “I assumed you would know if you knew Vic at all. It was a major land and sea search which was on top of the news every night for a week.”
She lifted tear glistened eyes and tried to conjure a smile. “No, it is not your fault. As you say, I barely knew him. I only met him the once, with Mark. Then he came to visit the day before Christmas. It is just that, of all the people I have met since I came here, he is the only one who really cared about what I had done and who cared about Mark. The others – for them it was just a story or a crime to be solved, it could have been anyone. Vic cared he had lost his brother, that’s what he called Mark. He was so angry with me for killing him.”
She saw surprise on Buck’s face at the open admission, “That’s right,” she said. “I did kill him, and I am going to plead guilty. I made a mistake; I can’t explain it more than that. But it is past time for pretending.”
Now Buck sat down on the seat opposite looking stunned too. He shook his head as if it was hard to think of anything useful to say after that. After a while he leaned back and folded his arms.
“I came here with a plan to help you, imagining that you wanted to get out of this place. But the more I look at it the more it seems that you have decided you like it best in here in this cage. So much so that you are determined to stay here, come what may.
“So, maybe I am a bit daft, but there is an elephant in the room and everyone is trying to pretend it is not there, even as it is trampling on us. There is plenty that I don’t know, but I have just spent an hour talking to Sergeant Alan Richards, and I am starting to put a few pieces together. It is far from a full story, but I am about to tell you what I know, what I don’t know and what I think.
“You can nod or shake your head, or look blank, or act dumb, as you choose. But the story I am going to tell you needs to be said and, like it or not, I am determined to make you stand up and fight, even if it is only to fight back at me.
“Mark was my friend too, as was Vic. One is definitely dead and the other may well be. So it seems to me that I am the only one left standing in your corner. And the person you have to thank for that, like it or not, is Mark. He appointed me. So here I am, because I know that is what Mark would have wanted.
“He would not have cared a fig what this story said about him but, as sure as I know my name, I know he would have wanted your freedom, not to mention to give freedom and the chance of a better life for his child that you carry.”
Susan could feel her resolve begin to crumble before this onslaught, the tears only a second away. She put her hands to her ears. “Please Buck, please, stop now. Don’t you see that is what this is about? If it was just about me, it would be simple, but it is about the future of our child. Others can think what they like, but I carry the responsibility.
“I cannot bear to have my child know the truth about his father. I know there was another Mark, a good Mark, but once the genie is out of the bottle it can never go back in. So I am imploring you. Don’t go there. It is not a good place to go. I would rather spend my life in jail and die wit
h the secret. So yes, there is a secret, a terrible secret and I cannot tell it, even to you. For a minute I entrusted it to Vic, despite my fear.
“But it is an omen, now he is gone too with the secret untold. So it will not come from me, I will help no one who tries to go there. I will kill myself after the child is born to keep the secret locked away if I must. So go now, please seek the truth no further. I will not help you and I will stop you if I can. For my sake, for Mark’s sake, for Vic’s sake, but most of all for our child’s sake, just let it be.”
Buck looked completely stunned. He turned to walk away. But before he did, he looked at her with great sadness and said. “If that is your wish I will respect it.
“But before I go there is something I must tell you. On the night at the station, when you stayed there, Mark came to see me. He asked me to witness his will. He named me as an executor of his estate, he named you the sole beneficiary, and in doing so he placed on me the responsibility to help you anyway I can.
“I know he would not have wanted it this way, he named you because he loved you. So from here, whatever I do, it will be a betrayal either of him or of you. I only do what you ask because I think he would have me abide by your wishes, even if they are wrong.”
Susan looked at this strong man she had bent to her will and felt ashamed. Why were there no good choices and why did it always have to be so hard.
She walked over and put her hand on his arm. She said, “Thank you Buck, it is hard for me and even harder for you. Mark would know he could not have asked for a better friend. I know about his will and I know about his love, and I wish, with all my soul, I could bring him back. But I cannot, so now I must live without him in an empty place.”
Buck replied, “Wrong though I know you are, even Mark would have been impressed by your courage. God Damn, you are surely one obstinate woman.” He gave her a half smile.
Suddenly she refused to be bowed. She smiled brightly and looked up at him saying. “Thank you so much for coming and visiting me. It was good to laugh and remember happy times. Please stay my friend and come to see me when you can. It would mean much to me.”