The Refuge Read Free

State Police, and all I had to do was to lift the receiver and say ‘C.I.B., please,’ and the girl would say ‘Yes, Mr. Fitzherbert,’ and put me through. Or—though it was less desirable—I could use my own direct line, which I prefer to keep clear for incoming calls, for it is the one the police themselves use, ringing me personally instead of the office switchboard. The digits of my home number are the same—1939—and thus, if I am not on duty, they have merely to use the other call-symbol; the number is, of course, unforgettable.
    The general reporters’ room was fairly busy still, though the country edition must have been just going to bed, for it was eleven o’clock. The tide in the harbour would be flooding westwards towards the bridge under a lowering sky. I had waited for that hour, with, as I thought, no feelings whatever. The management had not yet given me a private room and an assistant for full-time duty, and my table was in the big room with eighteen others; I walked about, sometimes, between nine and eleven, talking to one man or another, and sometimes sat at my table thinking, hoping that perhaps my own telephone would ring first. But they never bothered me about suicides unless there were peculiar circumstances, or unless it were very late, when they would ring me at home and I would get into touch with the office from there if there were a chance of catching the final or the city edition. If it was not late, they knew I would ring them as usual, at eleven o’clock.
    I am certainly not a nervous man. What I had done I had done without fear or fumbling, cleanly, knowing the way—though it was not easy—and the most probable picture it would all make to the police mind, which is as a rule impatient of suicide. Now, however, I found that my hands were sweating profusely, my throat was dry, and in the lower part of my abdomen there was a trembling, jumping sensation; and I felt again the terrible emotion of triumph mixed with and outweighed by black and utter despair, guiltless yet horrified. I forced myself to think of Alan, to remember that what I had done was done for his salvation, not my own, and that I had him to live for; that now he was safe, that dear and beautiful boy.
    It was after eleven. If you knew the office sounds in that vast building, you could hear from deep underground, far below street level, the presses running off the country edition, well away by now. At the airfield, the
Gazette
aeroplanes, two of them now, would be warming up out on the runway in the silvery blaze of light. One suicide more or less must mean nothing at all to the men and women of the Australian countryside, who are familiar with death in many forms by the violence of fire and water and the blind malice of accident . . .
    By water. The perspiration tickled the roots of my hair and beard. I took up the house telephone receiver, and said to the girl on the switchboard in my usual voice, ‘C.I.B., please, Molly.’
    ‘Yes, Mr. Fitzherbert.’
    At this, I felt the excitement and sickness leave me. It was a strong physical sensation, like that of an urgent bodily function timely performed. I sat on the edge of my table swinging one foot and watching the reflection of the ceiling light overhead come and go on the polished toe of that shoe. Often enough I had waited like this for Hubble or one of his men to answer my routine night call, and had been content to wait, assured and at ease. Tonight, it seemed that a long time passed before the harsh click at the other end of the line was followed by the sound of a typewriter working at speed under heavy hands, then by a familiar voice.
    ‘C.I.B.’
    ‘Fitzherbert here, Sergeant. Anything doing?’
    That question was the climax of the whole business, and—as happens with so many climaxes—I had not realized it was upon me until I spoke. The sweat ran a little way down my wrist even before the sergeant answered; on my shoe the light was still, and the voices and