If he was listening to the wind that wailed in the eaves, crashed around the sheds, and shook whatever it could get to grips with, he wasn’t showing it. ‘Biggest blow we’ve had in a long time.’ Farren tried to sound casual. ‘Glad we’re in ’ere, eh? Bet she’ll start bloody pourin’ soon.’ He tried not to think of the storm that had taken their father and Luther but failed; an image of his dad appearing to him, a white face in a wild sea, swimming in the dark with no hope of ever reaching shore. ‘Yep. Reckon.’ Danny held his hands unevenly out to the heat. ‘She’s a bit furious, all right.’ Farren knew this was an automatic response. Danny wasn’t hearing the storm, and as much as Farren might want him to talk about the wind, and so break down its power, he knew he wouldn’t. Silence was now something Danny sheltered in. And often when Farren saw his brother looking across the estuary, or up into the hills, it was without expectation, as if what he hoped to see would never be there, or what he’d seen in Gallipoli overshadowed everything else in the whole world.
