I was feeling the relief of a kid who’s been told the maths homework had been cancelled. You knew you really should come to grips with surds, but oh the joy that you didn’t have to.

But what about all those terrific reasons why this book couldn’t be a novel? I was still sure that this subject matter had to be handled in the authoritative voice of non-fiction. It felt as though I’d come a very long way around to arrive at a dead end.

I sat scrolling up and down, reading bits and pieces. I corrected a few typos. I changed the font from Times New Roman to Georgia and made it 14 point instead of 12. I made it do a first-line indent. I did a word count. I wrote it at the end of the document—58,459—and sat staring at the blinking cursor telling me I’d come to the end.

I had no idea what to do with it now. It was time to abandon ship. Leave the desk, leave the house. Leave the words behind and revisit the place behind them.

21. THE LAND SPEAKING

21
The Land Speaking

The publican who put me up in Room 9 at the Wiseman’s Ferry Inn had been exasperated when I’d quizzed him about the ghost’s repertoire on the piano.

‘Look, love, I’ve only been here six months. You want to know about Wiseman, you’d be best off asking Patrick.’

‘Patrick?’

‘Local feller, been here donkey’s years.’

I whipped out my notebook and pen. ‘Got a number for him? Know where he lives?’

The publican frowned but before he could say anything the phone rang down in the bar, and like a man reprieved he shot away to answer it. Over his shoulder, halfway down the stairs, he called back, ‘In the bar, any time after four o’clock on a school day.’ He sketched a man-sized shape on the air.

‘Barefoot, blue singlet, big beard. Can’t miss him.’

Now I was winding down those familiar hairpin bends above Wiseman’s Ferry. What else was there to learn? I didn’t know. But I felt that Wiseman’s Ferry hadn’t finished with me yet.

I drove down to Laughtondale and looked at where the old mill had been. I took another photo of the headstone for Solomon and Jane Wiseman. I drove along the river as far as Spencer. Trees, cliffs, water. Water, trees, cliffs.

I took more notes, I stood by mistake on a nest of ants, I saw a long dark snake side-wind across the road. I stepped out under the branches in a patch of mangroves and got one of my shoes sucked off by the mud.

I wasn’t conscious of planning it, but at four o’clock I was back at the pub.

There was Patrick. Barefoot, blue singlet, big beard.