Everyone On This Train Is A Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson

Author:Benjamin Stevenson
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2023-10-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 16

They made us stay on the train while they unloaded the body. I’d returned to the cabin sheepishly, where Juliette had appraised me, looked at her watch (you’ve been gone awhile) and said, ‘Had your fill?’

I’d nodded, patted her leg. Path of least resistance.

She might have even believed me had I been able to take my eyes off the paramedics, grunting as they carried McTavish’s ragdoll body, zipped into plastic, down the steps and onto the platform. It was so mundane, so practical, no more the handling of a celebrity corpse than it was hauling a washing machine up a flight of stairs. I’ve always thought I write things down to help remember them. But there is a part of me that writes to be remembered. Watching them wrestle with the body, I realised that it doesn’t matter how many names on how many spines of how many books you have, sometimes your legacy boils down to meat in a black plastic bag.

I was about as determined to enjoy myself in Alice Springs as Juliette was determined to distract me from thinking about McTavish. The writers’ panels were mercifully cancelled for the day, which meant that we had our choice of the activities provided to the regular guests or could simply wander the township on our own. Juliette and I elected for the latter (Majors told me where to get the best vanilla slice), and then Juliette insisted on joining the bus for a bushwalk to Simpsons Gap, a natural marvel where steep red-rock cliffs had been cleft by weather and time to leave a ravine. I had hoped to bail up Simone with a couple of questions, but I overestimated her proclivity for sightseeing; she’d elected to stay on the train (the bar, we were told, had reopened). In any case, I was quickly taken by the towering view and deep ochre of the rock against the crisp blue of the sky, and promptly forgot all ideas I had about questioning anyone.

I sat in the sand at a point where the ravine was half in sun and half shaded by the ridge, and Juliette put her head on my shoulder, her face half in light and half in shadow. The rocks in front of us had existed for millions of lifetimes. They would be here when our bones were dust and our books were mulch. We were blips. But two blips are bigger than one blip. I think you know you’re onto a good thing when you can apologise without talking.

It was nice enough that I only kept half an eye on what everyone else was doing.

Harriet and Jasper took selfies like they were on their honeymoon. Wolfgang chose a high-up flat piece of rock and meditated on it. The book club ladies delighted in spotting wallabies. SF Majors skipped rocks across a pool of water halfway down the ravine, where Brooke, intrepid with youth, hopscotched rock to rock as far along the water’s edge as she could.

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