A Mortal Sin Read Free Page A

didn’t at least try to find out about her.
    His father had refused point blank to tell him anything about Allison. He winced when he recalled the vicious words they’d flung at each other and his own ultimatum. Let him go to Australia to represent the business and try to track down Allison, or he would travel to Australia under his own steam and disappear. Rather than risk losing his only son completely, the man had finally, reluctantly, arranged for Paul to visit Australia as a representative of the company.
    Now he passed miles of remarkably similar country, tall eucalypts and other scrubby plants, even a kangaroo or two flashed by. Birds in a multitude of gaudy colors flew about, not in the least worried by the dust rising from the wheels of his yellow Buick.
    On arrival in a town called Euroa, he found a hotel that offered a lunch menu. It was a single storied red brick place surrounded by a wide verandah. The roast lamb tasted good even on such a hot day, but the cold beer proved a lifesaver he thought, licking the froth from his lips.
    “Bloody stupid pommies.”
    His hackles rose, at the insult to his fellow Englishmen. He clenched his fist under the table to stop himself from getting up and punching this uncouth slob in the mouth.
    “They’re issuing everyone with bloody gas masks.” The man chortled. “Much good that will do if Herr Hitler bombs the place.”
    Paul swallowed the last of his beer in one angry gulp and slammed out of the place.
     
    * * *
     
    Mid-afternoon, he arrived at the small settlement of Dixon’s Siding. One winding main street with a few empty, verandah covered shops. It had the appearance of a ghost town, run down, deserted, somehow sad. An old dog, resting outside the dusty general store, eyed him with indifference as he hesitated in the doorway.
    If Allison refused to acknowledge him, could he take rejection from her yet again? Worse still, what if he didn’t like her? What if she turned out to be low and coarse? His hands started sweating and his heart pounded with a fearful anticipation. He could still leave, and no one would ever be the wiser. I’ve come all this way he thought, steeling himself, and I won’t take the cowardly option of running away. Taking a deep breath he pushed the door open and strode to where an old man waited behind the counter.
    “Excuse me.”
    “Yes?” Faded eyes in a wrinkled-up face, peered from behind gold-rimmed spectacles.
    “I’m looking for a girl named Allison who lived here in 1916.”
    “Don’t know anyone of that name. Hang on, there was little Allison Waverley who married the Calvert boy. He got killed in the war. Her brother did too, I think. My memory’s not so good now.”
    “Do you know where she lives?” Paul clenched his hand in his pocket. The search was already over and it had been surprisingly easy.
    “No, left town kind of sudden years ago.”
    “You remember the little boy?”
    “Yes, a fine little fellow. Very close those two. Without fail he always got a penny worth of boiled sweets, even though she could scarcely afford it most times. Governments don’t worry much about soldiers or their widows once a war is finished.”
    “What happened to them?” Paul asked, trying to quell his excitement.
    “I think she went to Melbourne. Never saw the boy again, but she came back with the girl baby…”
    He cut the old man’s flow of words off with an imperious wave of his hand. He wasn’t interested in this other baby; it only confirmed his worst suspicions.
    Her husband was dead, yet she had another baby. He felt somehow cheated, because he had started building Allison Calvert up as some innocent young girl seduced by an experienced older man.
    “Would anyone else know their whereabouts?”
    “No, I’m the last of the originals left now. A fire went through here in the twenties and just about wiped everything out.”
    “Can you tell me where they used to live?”
    The man gave him directions, and Paul returned to