A Darker Music Read Free Page A

Gayleen?’
    Light dawned. ‘Yes.’
    ‘Good. What else?’
    ‘I’ll need to stock up on cleaning things. You seem to be well-off for food.’
    ‘There should be a bit of beef left in the freezer, as well as the mutton. You find the meat room?’ He nodded towards the pantry, and Mary made a mental note to look further. ‘We don’t keep pigs, so if you want ham or bacon, get it from town.’ He pushed his plate away. ‘I don’t mind a roast of pork.’ He looked up at her again. ‘We have dinner in the middle of the day — meat and veg, pudding, maybe soup, seeing it’s winter. A cooked breakfast at eight, dinner around twelve-thirty, tea around six. We generally finish tea with bread and jam, or any pudding that’s left over from dinner. Okay?’
    Mary got up and went to find bread, jam, butter, plates and cutlery. ‘As long as I know,’ she said, trying to remember where she’d seen the jam.
    When they’d finished eating, Mary cleared their dishes away and sat down to her own meal. She wasn’t hungry but knew she must eat. They hadn’t invited her to watch television with them or made any suggestions about how she might spend her evenings — and sitting with two silent men wasn’t a compelling option.
    There was still no sign of Mrs Hazlitt. Should she ask? Or would it seem nosy? Tomorrow, if the woman hadn’t materialised by lunchtime, she’d ask Paul. But for now, she’d done enough for one day.
    The wind had dropped and the night was absolutely still. Looking out through the louvres in her sleepout Mary could see nothing, not even a pinpoint of light in the ocean of darkness; just the reflection in the dusty glass of her own face and the room’s bright interior. Her breath condensed on the cold glass and she wiped it away. Her fingers made tracks in the moisture and dust and she wrote there a big M for Mary, her mark.

3
    M ARY FINISHED WITH BREAKFAST , thought about dinner — she’d have to get used to thinking of the midday meal as dinner — and scrubbed down the table and benchtops. In her own room, she swept away the dust and grit and cobwebs of ages. She found a vacuum cleaner in the linen cupboard and worked her way along the strip of carpet that ran the length of the central passage. The boards showing on either side looked like jarrah; if they were, they’d polish to a rich plum burgundy. All the joinery was jarrah, too, doors and architraves and skirting boards, all dull with dust and neglect. At the far end of the passage was a pair of doors ornamented with leadlight in amethyst, pink and amber, with a matching panel set above the transom and narrow panes each side.
    All the doors lining the passage were shut. She counted them: there were six. The one nearest the kitchen would be the office, if Paul’s signal last night had been any indication. A front parlour? The house would probably have a formal lounge. She propped the wand of the vacuum cleaner against the wall and tugged at the front door. Outside, dry leaves were woven in a mesh of spider webs.
    She went to the edge of the verandah and looked out. In the middle distance a ragged line of pine trees loomed dark against a pale blue sky. Had there been a road here once? The tiled front steps had a classical urn set on either side, crowned with withered foliage. A path headed for a timber arch that was almost hidden under a thatch of vegetation. Beyond the archway, apart from the pines, there was nothing but acres of green grass. The cold air carried the bleating of distant sheep, and their smell, too, but she couldn’t actually see any. Shivering, she went back inside.
    The doors along the passage were decorated with touch plates in art nouveau style with the profile of a maiden with flowing hair. She was admiring these, guessing that they were made of copper and thinking that with a polish they’d look stunning against the dark wood, when the door in front of her swung open.
    She stepped back, stumbling over the vacuum cleaner