Free Tim by Colleen McCullough Page A

folds of the eiderdown, mouth open. The sleeping face was so much at peace, the crystal lashes fanned down across the lean planes of his cheeks, the wonderful golden mass of his hair curling around his perfectly shaped skull. His lips were slightly turned up, the sad little crease to their left side lending the smile a Pierrot quality, and his chest rose and fell so quickly that for a moment she fancied him dead.
    How long she remained staring down at him she never knew, but at length she shivered and drew away, unfolding the eiderdown. She did not attempt to pull the blankets up around him, contenting herself with straightening them on the bed and tucking them in, then dropping the eiderdown over his shoulders and twitching it into place. He sighed and moved, nuzzling into the warmth, but in a moment he had slipped back again into the world of his dreams. What did a mentally retarded young man dream about, she wondered: did he venture forth as limited in his nocturnal wanderings as he was during his waking life, or did the miracle happen which freed him from all his chains? There was no way to know.
    After she left his room Mary found the house unbearable. Shutting the glass doors silently, she crossed the veranda and descended the steps to the path which led down to the beach. The trees were tossing restlessly in the grip of the wind, a mopoke was calling, "more pork! more pork!," sitting with his round owl's eyes blinking from the blurred darkness of a low branch that drooped over the path. Mary glanced at the bird without really seeing him, and the next moment ran into something soft and clinging. As it stuck to her face she gasped in fright, then realized it was a spider's web. She felt all over herself cautiously, dreading the thought that the web's owner might be roaming on her somewhere, but her hand encountered nothing more than her dress.
    The beach fringes were littered with dead branches; Mary gathered them in her arms until she had enough to build a fire, then she stacked them in the middle of the sand near a convenient rock and put a match to the twigs at their base. The cold sea breeze at night was the East Coast's saving grace, but it was hard on the human body, sweltering all day and then chilling to the bone at night. She could have gone back to the house for a sweater, but there was something very friendly about a fire, and Mary needed comfort desperately. When the flames were spitting and spurting she sat herself on the rock and spread her hands out to warm.
    Rocking leisurely back and forth upside down by its tail from a nearby tree, a possum stared at her intently from wise round eyes, its sweet face apprehensive. What an odd creature she was, squatting before the glaring thing he knew only as a danger, with the light throwing bizarre shadows in ever-changing patterns across her. Then he yawned, plucked a loquat from the branch above him and munched it loudly. She was nothing to fear, just a hunched-up woman with a face drawn in pain, not young or pretty or enticing.
    It had been a long time since pain had been a part of her life, Mary reflected, chin in' hand; she had to go all the way back to a little girl in an orphanage dormitory, sniffling herself to sleep. How long it had been then, so lonely there had been times when she had wished for the friendly ignorance of death. People said a child's mind could not comprehend or long for death, but Mary Horton knew differently. There was no memory of a home, of loving arms, of being wanted; her desolation had been one of pure, unrecognized loss, for she could not hunger after something she did not know existed. She had thought her unhap-piness was rooted in her unattractiveness, the hurt that came when her adored Sister Thomas passed her by, as usual, for a child who was prettier and more appealing.
    But if her genes had not endowed her with personal allure, they had carried the codes of strength; Mary had disciplined herself as she grew up, until by the time