An English Visitor

By Graham Wilson

A man is watching her, goddess like, as she stands by the beach. He will have her, he will charm her. She will come with him like others have before.

She is a beautiful, an English visitor. She sees no danger. This man has a wildness that intrigues and captivates her. She does not see dark shadows beneath.

She goes with him, surrendering to his charms. They travel to places where no other person goes.

But, little by little his secrets must out. She finds others have been there before and no one knows where they are now.

She discovers a hidden predator within. One with a love of those creatures which kill, huge and ancient crocodiles.

Now she cannot leave him. She is trapped.

This is a substantially revised version of the first book in the Crocodile Spirit Dreaming Series (previously titled 'Just Visiting"). This series tells the story of an English backpacker, Susan, who comes to Australia looking for an idyllic holiday but becomes trapped with the awful consequences of events she could never have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beyond Beyond Books
• Release date: Jan 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370780334

Graham Wilson

Graham Wilson lives in Sydney Australia. He has completed and published eleven separate books, and also a range of combined novel box sets. He is working on two new booksPublished books comprise two series,1.The Old Balmain House Series2.. The Crocodile Dreaming SeriesHe has also written a family memoir. Arnhem's Kaleidoscope ChildrenThe first series starts with a novel called Little Lost Girl, based on an old a weatherboard cottage in Sydney where the author lived. Here a photo was discovered of a small girl who lived and died about 100 years ago. The book imagines the story of her life and family, based in the real Balmain, an early inner Sydney suburb, with its locations and historical events providing part of the story background. The second novel in this series, Lizzie's Tale builds on the Old Balmain House setting, It is the story of a working class teenage girl who lives in this same house in the 1950s and 1960s, It tells of how, when she becomes pregnant she is determined not to surrender her baby for adoption, and of her struggle to survive in this unforgiving society. The third novel in this series, Devil's Choice, follows the next generation of the family in Lizzie's Tale. Lizzie's daughter is faced with the awful choice of whether to seek the help of one of her mother's rapists' in trying to save the life of her own daughter who is inflicted with an incurable disease.The Crocodile Dreaming Series comprises five novels based in Outback Australia. The first novel Just Visiting.is the story of an English backpacker, Susan, who visits the Northern Territory and becomes captivated and in great danger from a man who loves crocodiles. The second book in the series, The Diary, follows the consequences of the first book based around the discovery of this man's remains and his diary and Susan, being placed on trial for murder. The third book, The Empty Place, is about Susan's struggle to retain her sanity in jail while her family and friends desperately try to find out what really happened on that fateful day before it is too late. In Lost Girls Susan vanishes and it tells the story of the search for her and four other lost girls whose passports were found in the possession of the man she killed. The final book in the series, Sunlit Shadow Dance is the story of a girl who appears in a remote aboriginal community in North Queensland, without any memory except for a name. It tells how she rebuilds her life from an empty shell and how, as fragments of the past return, with them come dark shadows that threaten to overwhelm her. Graham has also just written a two part Prequel to this Series. It tells the story of the other main character, Mark, from his own point of view and of how he became the calculating killer of this series.The book, Arnhem's Kaleidoscope Children, is the story of the author's own life in the Northern Territory. It tells of his childhood in an aboriginal community in remote Arnhem Land, one of Australia’s last frontiers. It tells of the people, danger and beauty of this place, and of its transformation over the last half century with the coming of aboriginal rights and the discovery or uranium. It also tells of his surviving an attack by a large crocodile and of his work over two decades in the outback of the NT.Books are published as ebooks by Smashwords, Amazon, Kobo, iBooks and other major ebook publishers. Some books are available in print through Amazon Create Space and Ingram SparkGraham is currently writing a new novel, "Risk Free'. It is a story about corporate greed and how a company restructures to avoid responsibility for the things it did and the victims it leaves in its wake.Graham is in the early stages of a memoir about his family's connections with Ireland called Memories Only Remain. He is also compiling information for a book about the early NT cattle industry, its people and its stories.Graham writes for the creative pleasure it brings him. He is particularly gratified each time an unknown person chooses to download and read something he has written and write a review - good or bad, as this gives him an insight into what readers enjoy and helps him make ongoing improvements to his writing.In his non writing life Graham is a veterinarian who work in wildlife conservation and for rural landholders. He lived a large part of his life in the Northern Territory and his books reflect this experience.

Book preview

An English Visitor

Book 1- Crocodile Dreaming Series

Novel by

Graham Wilson

Copyright

An English Visitor

Graham Wilson

Copyright Graham Wilson 2017

Published by Smashwords

BeyondBeyond Books Imprint

Crocodile Dreaming Series

ISBN: 9781370780334

Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without prior approval of the author. For permission to use contact Graham Wilson by email at [e-mail]

Author’s Note

This is a novel set in Australia’s Northern Territory, a place where I lived and worked for four decades; including in small towns, aboriginal communities, cattle stations and among remote, rugged and beautiful natural places for which it is famous, places with names like Uluru and Kakadu. These provide the background to this story.

This novel is a work of fiction. The characters are not real people. However, elements of stories have a real basis, as experienced by myself, or as stories of the bush, told around campfires or over bars, somewhere in the Australian Outback. While the general locations described around the Northern Territory exist, many finer details are not accurate; they are created as a canvass on which to paint the story.

Backpackers are part of outback Australia. Occasional horror stories occur and get wide coverage. Some, like the Joanna Lees story, or the awful deeds of Ivan Milat contributed ideas to this novel. However these are rare events, as likely to happen in cities or other countries. They do not typify most people’s experiences of these places.

The setting of this novel is an external frame for the story. It tells of a journey of two people through places and within themselves. In bad situations they do awful things, despite desiring goodness. This reflects human experience. We all have the ability to make terrible choices and do great evil if we cease to value life, but even the worst of people may have parts that are good and decent. This book also tells impossible love story, where love is destined for destructive failure.

Alongside this story of two people this book seeks to capture the essence of a place called the Northern Territory of Australia, the centre and north of the Australian continent. This land remains alive in my imagination from when I lived and worked in it. Despite the coming of modern civilisation; with roads, air transport, communication and comfort; the intrinsic character of this place, the ‘Territory’, remains little altered. It is what Ernestine Hill called, in her famous book of that name, ‘a land too vast for human imagination.’ Wildlife remains abundant. Stations still muster cattle and buffalo for a living. Aboriginal people live off the land, as they have done for millennia past. Stockmen tell tales around campfires, gazing in awe at immense star filled skies. This is a place where life moves slowly, as befits a land where time is driven by nature. Brilliant desert colours, huge tropical storms and endless emptiness live on.

My thanks to innumerable real characters of the Northern Territory who contributed to the making of this story, by lighting creative fires in my imagination through sharing their own stories and memories.

This is a substantially revised version of the novel, previously titled ‘Just Visiting’. It forms part of the Crocodile Dreaming Series of 5 novels published by this author. Books in this series which follow are:

Book 2 – Crocodile Man

Book 3 – Girl in an Empty Cage

Book 4 – Lost Girl Diary

Book 5 – Dance of Shadows

Reader Reviews

Book Reviews

Just Visiting Excellent !!!!!!

So good! So impressed with this this story, can’t wait to read the whole series. This book has it all, romance, suspense, danger, secrets beauty culture, family, travel and so much more! The description of the country of Australia is wonderful, so many times writers get carried away with too much description of scenery etc. I found this author made the reader visualise the whole picture which is very important to this particular book. I hope everyone who comes across this book will read it, you won’t be disappointed. Highly recommend!!!!

An English Visitor

Really liked this book and want to read the series. Eerie story from Australia about a young English girl off on an adventure to Australia. She meets up with a young Australian man and they take off together so he can show her the outback. She starts noticing things a bit off with him and the story unfolds involving crocodiles, aborigines etc. Don’t read this story before going to sleep!

Series Reviews

I highly recommend this series; if you enjoy suspense novels or reading about Australia and especially both, you'll be happy you got a hold of this.

You must read this series ….. the content is excellent

It's superb... So sorry to finish it!

I read this series one volume at a time, over the last two years. It's very entertaining, well-written and really makes you feel like you're there with the characters. I can't praise it highly enough!

What a good series, so many stories, so many lives, growing darker with a thread of hope

A compelling story, told with sincerity. It would make a good plot for a television mini-series!

I thoroughly enjoyed this combined series. It is a nicely composed, thrilling script with essentially a fairy tale goodness. With this book I had my virtual tour through Australia.

Chapter 1 – Prologue – The Watcher

He stands apart, part hidden by the foliage of a tree. He watches her!

He returned to Cairns, landing early this morning, after tracking down a man and taking him far into the Arabian desert. This was a man whose end came there, a fitting end. What little remains of him now, after the birds and jackals have finished their pickings, will be bleached into a white colour, a matching shade with the white sands, soon to be covered and hidden from sight within the ever shifting dunes.

He feels no remorse, only satisfaction at what he has done.

Now he is back in his home, this vast empty sweep of his own, familiar land. It is mostly a harsh land, but with its odd fingers of civilisation like that here, a tourist mecca on the beach. It is a place of visitors, so very many visitors, many beautiful. He has known and sampled others alike to this one. Some have gone on their way; some have never left this land but become a permanent part of it, for some it was due to his actions.

He feels some regret at their passing, but it now feels separated from him by layers of far distance, the distances of time and loss and, moving beyond that, the distance of new experience.

And now he desires another. He has just seen her, right now, standing on the beach. She appears like some he has known before, breathtaking in her beauty and naivety. He senses a wanton abandon in her as he gazes, distant through the tree. He sees her dipping toes in wavelets, dark hair flowing back over and behind her arched body, like a Greek goddess. He senses she is ripe for the taking; that she will come willingly with him if he but asks, hungry for other experiences and adventure.

He must be more careful this time, lest some new bad thing happens to this one. He feels she is precious and breakable.

Chapter 2 -Safe Home – Day 31

Susan woke up with jolt, feeling she had been wrenched back into consciousness. Her head had slumped into an uncomfortable position and her neck ached. The large woman squashed into the seat next to her seemed to have given her a nudge to stop Susan falling onto her; not exactly friendly. But then she had barely spoken to this lady in the last fourteen hours, during which time they had sat side by side on the aeroplane.

Since Susan had come back onto the plane in Singapore, their one stopover after Darwin, it was like she had retreated into a cocoon. She had done little more than sleep the hours away, with occasional brief interludes for loo breaks and food, before retreating back to a respite of slumber.

She felt totally disorientated. Here she was, on a plane approaching London, and a month of her life had vanished into nothingness. Gradually her mind pulled her back to fragments of those last awful days; a memory of a smiling man’s almost handsome face, but devoid of normal emotion, memories of crocodiles, blood and torn body parts, memories of a large white four wheel drive with a built in cooler on the back. She suppressed them with a shudder.

She looked around. It could not be far now; people were waking up and making preparations for a scheduled 6 am touch down at Heathrow. Some had raised their slide windows; and early morning grey daylight squeezed in through the gaps.

Breakfast was now being served. She felt ravenous. A few minutes later, when the croissant and scrambled egg breakfast was served, she ate with relish.

There was urgency as stewards quickly removed breakfast trays.

Now the plane was in final descent. She raised her own plastic slide. It was mostly grey outside. They were flying under a blanket of cloud, but with lighter sky to her left and behind her; she supposed this was southeast England, somewhere over Kent. They were scooting over farmlands, roads and villages, lush green in the grey light. Further away were glimpses of busy roads and large towns. The grey matched an unquiet anxiety within her. Was it really over and was she was safe home? Or would police be waiting for her at the arrival gate?

Suddenly a shaft of sunlight pierced through. It lit up the countryside with glowing gold light. Her mood soared with the light. It was as if a connection with the horror was broken by light. She could feel herself smiling all over. She could not suppress the joy she felt. She was alive, and her life would be good again.

How great it would be to see her family and friends again. None of them need ever know. She had made a visit to Australia, travelled around, seen interesting and beautiful places; that was her story. If asked whether she would like to go back, or where to next, she would say, It is good to have done the trip, but the travel bug is gone. Now I am happy back home.

Her fellow traveller alongside her must have caught something of her musing smile. Susan looked at her and the lady smiled. Susan smiled back; joy is an infectious thing.

The lady, Annabel—she now remembered that was her name—seemed friendly. Susan knew that it was she, herself, not this lady, whose demeanour had changed. She let herself be drawn into a conversation about trips and travel. She explained that she had been exhausted from her trip, but now she felt much better, after that long, long sleep.

Soon they were making a final approach. There was a slight jolt and body push as the airliner braked on the black tarmac.

She felt amazingly refreshed and confident. It was like a bad dream had ended with the morning sunshine—those anxieties belonged to another time and place.

She gathered her minimal possessions—an overnight bag, book, cardigan, purse—and followed the slow procession of departing passengers down the aisle and out to the concourse. She wondered who would be here to meet her, Mum and Dad of course, perhaps Tim, her gawky brother, maybe Gran Elizabeth.

Suddenly there they all were; all her family members as expected. She rushed into an overwhelming group hug.

How brown you are!

How’s my girl?

Hi Sis, no new Aussie boyfriends in tow?

You look at bit drawn around the eyes dear, must be all the bright sun and late nights.

A bit of surprise arose with no big bags of luggage. But she had this story worked out.

It went missing on the last leg of my trip. I only noticed getting off the bus, arriving in Darwin. Didn’t have time to try and find it before my plane left. I’ll make some calls as soon as I get the chance!

They drove home, to Reading, through the increasingly lumpy early morning traffic.

Her room was just as she had left it—was it really only four weeks ago?

Her Dad had bacon and eggs sizzling away, they sat around over coffee and chatted. She told stories of her first two weeks—the reef, Sydney, Melbourne, but not much about the trip through the outback. It did not matter, plenty to tell before then.

Then it was time for Tim to head off to Uni. Mum and Dad both needed to get to their work, just a bit late. Dad said he would drop off Gran to her own house on the way, as Susan would want to sleep off her jetlag.

As she watched the last car turn out of the drive onto the suburban road, Susan felt her forced gaiety draining away. She went to her room, sat on her bed and picked up her favourite childhood teddy; so soft, so same, so stable.

Her body shook as a creeping horror and numbness washed over her. Then came tears streaming silently down her face. Soon her whole body was convulsing in wracking sobs. She hugged her teddy and sat there. After ten minutes the emotion subsided.

She went to the bathroom and ran a hot shower, shampooed her hair and washed herself all over, then did it a second time for good measure. She dried her hair standing in a bathrobe, made up her face and found her sassiest outfit: tight jeans and a sparkling top.

She opened the overnight bag that had accompanied her back from Australia. She removed a book, wrapped in a hankie, and a heavy small cloth pouch which clinked. She placed these under her jumpers in the bottom drawer of her dresser.

Susan looked at her underwater camera, the only item she still cared about that remained in the bag. It held a handful of photos on the memory card from her trip, as well as others from other trips and dives. She felt that she should throw it out, but then this camera held a big chunk of her past life and she loved it. So she decided to keep the camera but ditch the memory card. She took the memory card out and put the camera back in its normal place in her drawers. She slipped the memory card into her purse; she must copy any photos she wanted before she threw it away.

Then she found a large empty rubbish bag. Susan placed the overnight bag, with all its contents, inside and tied the top shut. She went to the garage, where her Ford Fiesta was parked, and put this rubbish bag in the boot. Tomorrow, it would go into an industrial bin at her work, the place where the lab samples went for incineration. This would bring an end to those last fragments linking her to that last month of her life on the other side of the world.

She was OK; today was a glorious English summer day and she was going out into it. She would enjoy the first day of the rest of her life. The other was a past and finished visit to another place.

She had closed that book. Now she would put it away, behind all the other stories of her life, at the back of the very highest shelf, unseen and forgotten. She intended to leave it there, never to be taken out or opened again.

Chapter 3 – Susan -Holiday Alone – Day 1

She pushed back into her airline seat and stretched. There was something delightful in finally being airborne and on her way. She felt like a kitten, unwinding her body into the warm sunshine, after having drunk a bowl of warm milk. The gin and tonics in the departure lounge were also helping to create this euphoric feeling.

Now she felt like she was really on a holiday and going to a fantastic, exciting, unknown new place—all by herself. There was something about doing it all on her own that was especially important to Susan. It was like a growing up ritual. But why was she thinking about growing up? She was twenty-four and had not lived at home, until recently, in more than two years.

Anne, Susan’s best friend, had offered to juggle her own holidays and come along too, but she knew that Anne already had her heart set on going to Greece with her boyfriend, James. Susan had insisted that Anne not change her plans. She wanted to do this trip by herself.

For four years it was as if Susan’s life had been taken over by Edward, her former boyfriend. They’d met in first year university; they had done history and archaeology together. They had just clicked; he the languid, tousled blond man with the slightly posh accent—as if he had gone to Eton; and she, the well read and exuberant daughter of professional working parents.

Edward’s father was a stockbroker in financial London and he had followed his family’s business flair with an Arts-Commerce Degree, focused on Commerce, with some psychology, history and archaeology thrown in.

Susan had studied Science, focusing on medical technology, but with an Arts anthropology and archaeology sideline. It was something to do with her fascination with early human history and civilisations and the way these societies had adapted to diseases and environmental catastrophes. She remembered, as a child, being fascinated by the Attenborough-Leakey stories of ‘Out of Africa’ and how the early humans moved across and colonised the world.

Really, she would have loved to go to Africa, perhaps Kenya or South Africa. But she had decided, with the stories of crime and violence, this was a step too far for a single woman’s first solo trip abroad. She didn’t want to give her Mum and Dad that sort of worry.

So Susan had turned to Australia, a country that held an almost equal fascination for her. The strange animals, the 50,000 years of aboriginal history, plus the Barrier Reef, diving, rainforests, and all those fabulous New Years pictures of Sydney Harbour Bridge, alive with fireworks.

And she knew it was a safe place to go. The people all spoke English—they had mostly come from her home country—and she liked the laid back laconic humour of the Aussies who frequented London pubs. It felt right. Sure there was the occasional story of backpacker murders and things like that. But she knew she was too smart for getting suckered like that.

Susan let her mind drift back to the last few months: she and Edward, living together, in their small north London flat, half an hour from her work. After university it seemed like the right thing to do, so they just did it. While they never really talked about it, it seemed like their life would go on linked together—in due course marriage, children and a settled life.

She had thought she loved that image, but then, deep inside, there had always been a slight restless streak in her. Perhaps it was that Edward was a bit of a snob. He didn’t like it when friends called him Ted or Eddie. Also, while he was very attractive, she did not think he was very manly. Edward was quick-witted with clever words. He was smart around money, with impeccable taste. But he was not very adventurous, not wanting to experience life beyond the normal bounds. At first it really did feel good together; nights in pubs, dinners with good wine and food, talk of success in their investments, trips to Europe and enjoying the good things of London. And their sex life had been great for the first year they lived together, lots of it and wild.

But then, as they each started to forge their careers—she as a medical technologist in a large hospital and then in a commercial testing lab; and he as a rising business man who looked likely to follow his father’s stockbroking career—they seemed to drift apart. They were often both working late, and while there was still sex, plenty of it, there was less real tender lovemaking. And there were the growing niggles that came from friends and families with different interests. However, she hadn’t thought there was a major problem.

One day Susan noticed a slip of paper lying on the bedroom floor. It seemed to have fallen out of his wallet. On it was written Eva and a mobile phone number. It was not a name he had ever mentioned before. It seemed a bit odd. There were also times when there seemed to be a strange perfume smell about him. But he worked in an office with lots of women, so she supposed that was to be expected.

What really pissed her off though was that he was such a good liar. She had asked him the next day who Eva was. Without batting an eyelid he told her a story about a girl in another group who he had worked with on a couple business deals, how he had needed her number to hand in their final stage negotiations. It all sounded totally innocent.

But then Susan met the real Eva. She was lying on her back, in their double bed, with Edward’s naked body on top of her, moaning as Edward said her name in passionate grunts.

Susan had stood, open mouthed, too stunned to say anything. Then, finally, Eva’s eyes turned her way and she gave a little scream. There were no introductions but the identity was obvious.

Edward had climbed off her, silent, looking almost proud of his erect member. Eva at least had the good grace to look embarrassed, trying to cover her blond bimbo dolly face and small, full-breasted body. After a few seconds of stunned silence, Susan turned, closed the door and walked out of the flat.

That was the last time she had seen him. The next day, when Susan knew he was at work, she went to the flat and collected all her things. She left a one-line note on the table, Don’t ever come near me again.

Then she went to the bank, closed their joint account and cancelled their combined credit cards. She bought a new mobile phone, with a new number, and changed all her web logins and passwords. That was that; life together finished.

Susan hadn’t gone into details with her parents; she’d just said that they’d split up. Her parents accepted her back with a minimum of fuss. She took her old room, which was now the spare. She found all her old soft toys in the cupboard and re-installed them in their favourite places—best of all was her big soft teddy who, from her earliest memory, sat on her pillow. When Susan had left home she’d forgotten and neglected him; now he seemed to give her a genuine welcome home each day.

Mum and Dad were busy with their own lives. Mum was a senior lecturer in the medical school at Reading University, where her brother, Tim, was a student. Her Dad was a top level public servant to the government, in No 10, with a daily city trip on the fast train to Paddington, or sometimes, for big occasions, a chauffeur. However, despite his high role, he preferred ordinary things: a train to work, a beer at the pub, and the great outdoors.

Some of her best childhood memories were going hunting or fishing with him in Scotland where her cousins lived on a farm in the Highlands. They would make a summer trip for a couple weeks, as well as going at other odd times throughout the year.

Her father particularly loved to take her with him in the autumn, when the leaves were golden. They would head off, his gun in hand, hunting pheasants, grouse, rabbits and sometimes deer.

They would walk for miles across the high heather, plunging into glens, dark and mysterious. Sometimes they made a big fire out of turf and almost-dry branches, which smoked then burned brightly, while they roasted rabbit and ate it with their hands.

These were warm memories. Now he was like a rock; he didn’t say much, but was in her corner. With Mum and Tim she would talk about ordinary life, but Dad was just there.

Edward made a few attempts to contact her, but Susan told her parents she wouldn’t take his calls and that she