Perhaps a month had gone by since Jack died. I carried out my usual tasks, but time had lost all meaning for me. Mr Wisdom called me into his office.
‘Sit down, Clara.’ He indicated the same chair that I had sat in when Warden Finnerty told me about Jack. It was as if the clock had turned back, but not far enough. At the moment when I last sat in this chair Jack was already dead, although I didn’t know it then. If only I could make time go back further. To the dance, to Jack holding me in his arms, smiling at me and making jokes. If I could go back to that night I would never leave him. I would sleep in his tent, scare off the dingo, poison it with cyanide from the mine. Jack would never borrow that rifle. Together we would think of something else, find another way to keep everything safe. It was only when Mr Wisdom handed me his handkerchief that I noticed the tears running down my cheeks.
‘I was wondering if you would like to work in the bar,’ he said. ‘Just for a couple of hours in the afternoons, when most of the men are out working. If you could do that for me, I could get my ordering done.’ I looked blankly at him, not knowing what to say. ‘It might cheer you up a bit. You have become very quiet, Clara. You don’t smile anymore.’
I agreed to try the job in the bar and found it was good to be with people again. The shiftworkers who came in the afternoons were funny, lively, loud and full of outrageous stories. For the whole of my two hours each day my mind and my body were fully occupied. There was always someone telling a joke, or reciting a poem from the Bulletin. I was making a collection of poems from the literary section of the paper, cutting them out and pasting them into my exercise book. They were definitely not Shakespeare, but the ballads were told with such dry wit, and a rough, earthy humour that made me laugh.
I especially loved the sad poems. They spoke to the sadness in me and I felt that at least there were others in the world who understood the heaviness I carried in my heart.
The evenings were the hardest. Sometimes I caught myself hurrying through the last of my chores, thinking ‘Jack will be waiting’, or stepped out onto the verandah expecting to see him leaning against the wall. The disappointment of finding he was not there would hit me like a physical blow. I had to rush into my room, shut out the world and climb into bed.
I took to writing in my exercise book again. I mostly wrote about Jack, about our time together, sometimes laughing at his funny ways as I scribbled on the page; at other times dropping tears onto the paper, making it crinkle as the sea had once done.
I know that a part of me will always be missing. Jack took it with him and I want him to keep it, I wrote.