The night Catherine Fletcher died, Capricornus was high in the northern sky. I know because I’m listening to Father talk about it on the telephone. He’s standing in the hall, speaking in his quiet voice. His hand is cupped over his mouth but from where I am, crouched on the stairs, I can hear most of what he’s saying. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about men like Father, it’s that they can’t, for the life of them, speak quietly on the telephone. I can see the grey hairs mixed into the black of his beard, lit by the faint glow of the kerosene lamp.
They found Catherine in a mine tunnel in Gemini. Out near mountain country, underneath the bright stars of the Southern Cross, more than halfway along the road to New South Wales and some miles south of that. A long way from Melbourne, from our house in Hawthorn. I’ve seen Gemini marked on a map in Father’s library. A little dot on paper, wrapped by tight, curved lines. It’s a small coal town in a valley between hills, barely eight hundred people to call it home. That’s all Father has said about it, in the few times he’s talked about the town. It’s where he grew up, where his whole family is from, but he hasn’t been back in a long time. Something happened, something Father won’t talk about, and the town and everyone in it is off-limits for us.
Catherine’s body was lying in Long Tunnel East, down along the sloping, narrow rail tracks they use to cart coal up from the depths. She was a few feet past the tunnel entrance, before you get to the locked gate. She had some clothes on but not many, less than a young woman would wear outside her home. There were dark marks around her neck, marks that shouldn’t have been there. She had two wounds in her back. Stabbed from behind, Father repeated through the telephone. Stabbed while she was walking away. She was on her back in the tunnel when they found her. No blood around, nothing soaked into the dirt. It was as if her blood had been drawn from her body and carried to the heavens. Her face was covered by long brown hair, laid down like a shroud. That’s the word Father used. I repeat the word in my head. A shroud, a shroud, a shroud. I try to see her in my mind’s eye. It makes me sick and sad at the same time…
Leave a Reply