of this to the novelist, who congratulated him, saying, ‘My other students either have nothing to say or never realise that they haven’t got a voice, so count yourself lucky.’
Challis had smiled tiredly. ‘You mean, you count yourself lucky you’re not stuck with one more bad writer.’
The novelist laughed and invited him to the pub to say goodbye.
But one thing stuck in Challis’s mind-a quote from a writers’ handbook. Georges Simenon, author of the Maigret novels, had said: ‘I would like to carve my novels in a piece of wood’. Challis felt like that now. As he drove away from the Waterloo police station at six o’clock that evening, he thought that he’d like to be able to stand back from this case, his life, and gauge where the shape was pleasing and where it was all wrong.
He turned right at the sign for the aerodrome and splashed the Triumph into a parking bay at the rear of the main hangar. He went in. One end had been partitioned off, and here Challis pulled on a pair of overalls, tuned in to Radio National, and went to work.
When he’d first moved to the Peninsula, he’d joined the Aero Club and learned of a Dragon Rapide lying in pieces in a barn north of Toowoomba. He’d paid ten thousand dollars to buy the wreck and a further fifteen hundred to have it trucked down to Victoria. There was a serial number, A33-8, as well as an old VH registration, but Challis knew nothing else of the particular history of his aeroplane. He knew that in 1934 de Havilland had flown the prototype at Stag Lane, in the UK, as a faster and more comfortable version of the DH84 Dragon, with Gipsy Queen 6 motors instead of the Gipsy Major 4s, but who had imported his Rapide, and what had she been used for?
He turned on a lathe. Several pieces of the airframe had been damaged, sections of the plywood fuselage casing were lifting away, the six passenger seats had rotted through, and both motors would need to be rebuilt. He was also attempting to find new tyres, and had asked a machinist to manufacture a number of metal parts to replace those too rusty to be restored. It could all take years. Challis was in no hurry.
A woman came in, smiling a greeting. ‘The dragon man.’
‘Kitty.’
Challis knew that Kitty wasn’t her real name, but derived from Kittyhawk. They exchanged pleasantries, then Kitty fetched overalls from a hook on the wall and went to the other end of the partitioned space, where the fuselage of a 1943 Kittyhawk fighter sat on the concrete floor, next to an engine block. The only other restoration project in the room was a 1930 Desoutter, which was close to completion.
Challis returned to his lathe work. Behind him, Kitty began to remove the sludge from the engine block. It was companionable working with her. Challis felt some of the blackness lift away. He didn’t have to account for himself here. He didn’t have to apologise for, or hide, his obsession with the Dragon. Here it was as if he didn’t carry his whiff of people who had died terribly or committed terrible things. He was simply Hal Challis, who liked to fly aeroplanes and was restoring a 1930s Rapide.
The moon was out when he finally drove home. The eyes of small animals gleamed in his headlights. The telephone was ringing in his hallway.
‘Yes.’ He never said his name.
‘Hal?’
His sense of calm left him. Some of the day’s badness came leaking in to take its place. He dropped onto the little stool beside the phone. ‘Hello, Ange.’
She didn’t speak for a while. ‘An early Merry Christmas, Hal.’
‘You, too.’
‘I thought, I might not get an opportunity to ring you next week. Everyone here will be hogging the phones on Christmas Day, so I thought, why not call you tonight, get in early.’
‘Good thinking,’ Challis said. He wished he had a drink. ‘Look, Ange, I’ll take this in the kitchen, okay?’
‘If this is a bad time I’ll-’
‘No, now’s fine, just wait a moment while I go to the kitchen.’
He poured Scotch into a glass, stood the glass on the bench top, stared a moment at the wall phone next to the fridge, then let out his breath.
‘I’m back, Ange.’
‘I’m trying to picture your house.’
‘It’s just a house.’
A catch in her voice. ‘Not that I’ll ever see the inside of it.’
‘Ange, I-’
‘I imagine somewhere peaceful and quiet. I miss that.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m not a bad person, Hal. Not deep down inside.’
‘I know you’re not.’
‘Temporary madness.’
‘Yes.’
‘I can’t really believe it all happened like that. Like a bad dream.’
‘Yes.’
‘You do forgive me, don’t you?’
‘I forgive you.’
The answers came automatically. He’d been giving them for years.
She said, in a wondering voice: ‘You’re an unusual man, Hal. Other husbands wouldn’t forgive their wives, not for something like that.’
Challis swallowed his drink. ‘So, Ange, will your mum and dad come on Christmas Day?’
‘Change the subject, why don’t you? Mum will, Dad won’t. He doesn’t want to know me.’ She broke down. ‘God, seven years, and he hasn’t been once to see me.’
Challis let her cry herself out.
‘You still there, Hal?’
‘I’m here.’
The night was still and dark. The house was like an echoing shell around him.
‘You don’t say much.’
‘Ange-’
‘It’s okay, Hal, I have to go anyway. My phonecard’s almost used up.’
‘Take it easy, Ange.’
‘I shouldn’t be here, Hal. I don’t belong, not really.’
Challis said gently, ‘I know.’
‘It’s not as if I did anything. Conspiracy to murder, God, how did I know he’d try it?’
‘Ange-’
She sighed. ‘Spilt milk, eh?’
‘Spilt milk.’
‘Get on with my life.’
‘That’s the spirit.’
‘I can’t believe I wanted him instead of you.’
Challis drained his glass. He said, ‘Ange, I have to go now. Take it easy, okay? Keep your spirits up.’
‘You’re my lifeline,’ his wife said.
Three
That same night, a woman on Quarterhorse Lane jerked back her curtain and saw that her mailbox was burning. Now the pine tree was alight, streaming sparks into the night. God, was this it, some twisted way of telling her that she’d been tracked down?
She’d been briefed carefully, eighteen months ago. Never draw attention to yourself. Keep your head down. Don’t break the law-not even drink driving or speeding, and especially nothing that will mean you’re ever
