Lillipilly Hill (10 page)

The appearance of the Lillipilly Hill party caused a sudden lull in the general conversation.

‘I didn't think you'd be let come,' said Dinny. ‘Come over here by me.'

Harriet crossed the ring to join Dinny on her log, but Rose-Ann, pink with embarrassment at all the curious stares, chose to stay with Polly, who, as the only near-adult present, was being surveyed with some suspicion.

‘Don't fret about me,' said Polly. ‘I'm here to watch, same as you. Where are they?'

Knowing quite well to whom she referred, Charles answered: ‘Paddy's here, behind Bill. Aidan hasn't come yet.'

‘D'you reckon he
will
come?' asked Dinny of Harriet.

‘Of course he will,' said Harriet stoutly, although she was not at all sure that she really wanted Aidan to appear. The circle of expectant faces, the tense feeling in the air, the hefty, solid shape of Paddy, now emerging into the centre of the ring, all combined to make her wish with all her sinking heart that she had never asked Charles to arrange the affair. But when at last Aidan came along the path between the tall trees, looking—whatever he felt—calm and unruffled, she felt a glow of pride. A few of the onlookers clapped. Now that Aidan had shown himself willing to meet Paddy in fair fight, as they thought, most of the children were ready to take his side. A new leader, after Paddy's long rule, would not have been unwelcome.

Aidan glanced briefly at his sisters, nodded to Bill, and took off his jacket. Polly stepped forward to hold it.

‘You show 'im what you can do,' she whispered encouragingly. ‘We'll cheer for you.'

Aidan smiled at her. He was very pale, and, as Polly declared afterwards, ‘'e was shaking like a jelly, all over.'

There were no preliminaries. Bill simply motioned Aidan forward into the centre, and stood aside. Paddy,
frowning most ferociously, charged at Aidan like a bull at a gate. Aidan side-stepped, and even managed to land a light blow on Paddy's ear as Paddy rushed past. But as Aidan turned again, he tripped, and landed on his knees. At once Paddy was upon him, using his hammer-like fists, regardless of the angry yells of the onlookers.

Shielding himself as best he could, Aidan scrambled to his feet. He rubbed his hand over his face, and stood for a moment staring at the blood smearing his palm. Then he looked at Paddy. The other boy was ready to charge again, seeing that his opponent was temporarily dazed. Aidan put his head down and ran from the ring, past the startled Harriet, and disappeared into the darkening bush.

After a moment of astonished silence, everyone began to talk at once.

‘He's scared stiff! He's run away!'

‘What a fight! Anyone else want to try?'

‘Gee, one of the girls 'ud have done better!'

But Dinny stood up on top of her log, and made her voice heard above the clamour.

‘It wasn't fair! Paddy hit him when he was down! You should of stopped the fight, Bill.'

‘Dinny's right,' declared Charles. ‘Aidan didn't have a chance. So Paddy needn't think he was the winner.'

‘I won all right,' growled Paddy. ‘He ran away, didn't he?'

‘I expect he's used to people who fight fairly,' said Charles cuttingly. ‘I'd like to take you on myself, Paddy—want to try?'

Paddy pretended not to hear him, for Charles was the best fighter in the Barley Creek school.

‘Don't be silly, Charles,' said Harriet. ‘It was Aidan's fight, not yours. I'm sure he'll finish it some other time. Come on, Polly—we must go home.'

They filed up the hill through the bluegums and she-oaks and soldier-vines, following the thread of a track that Dinny had shown to Harriet. Polly would have dearly loved to discuss Aidan's behaviour, but Harriet and Rose-Ann refused to open the subject.

‘Oh, well, Dinny was quite right—it wasn't a bit fair,' Polly said at last, as they climbed through the fence beside the cowshed. ‘That nasty Paddy didn't win, and that's something to be thankful for.'

But Harriet did not break her glum silence. She knew that Polly's remark could never comfort Aidan, nor convince him that he was anything but a coward.

Neither Harriet nor Rose-Ann was surprised to learn at tea-time that Aidan had a headache and was lying down in his room. As soon as the meal was over, Harriet crept along the veranda to the dark little slit of a bedroom at the end. Her knock being unanswered, she pushed open the door.

‘It's only me, Harriet,' she ventured, peering through the gloom towards the bed in the corner.

‘I don't want to see anyone,' came the ungracious reply.

‘Wouldn't you like to hear what the others said?' asked Harriet. ‘Everyone thought it wasn't fair, and—'

Aidan sat up, angry and dishevelled.

‘What does it matter what they said? It's what I
did
that counts. I ran away—you saw me.'

Harriet, in her desire to comfort him, went too far.

‘It seemed such a good idea, this fight. It might have made such a difference.'

‘A difference to what?' demanded Aidan, staring at his sister with a sudden understanding. ‘You mean you arranged it all, so I would beat Paddy? That's what you were trying to tell me this morning, wasn't it?'

He leapt off the bed with such a threatening air that Harriet backed towards the door.

‘You'll meddle in other people's affairs once too often, Harriet! It was a rotten idea, and even if I'd won I would never have come to like this place, or that wretched school, or anyone in it. Now please go away!'

Harriet could do nothing but obey. It was a new experience to be frightened of one's own brother,
especially for Harriet, who was so rarely frightened. She fled to the shelter of the sitting-room, where she remained until bedtime, looking so meek and quiet that her mother inquired anxiously after her health.

Despite her unhappiness, and her despondent feeling that she had made matters very much worse for Aidan instead of better, she slept with her usual soundness. It was with some alarm and astonishment that she awoke before sunrise, roused by a loud knocking on the french window.

‘Harriet! Get up!' Polly's voice called with a strange urgency. ‘Come quick!'

Barefoot, tousle-headed, and certain that she must still be dreaming, Harriet crossed the room and opened the shutters.

‘Whatever is it, Polly? It's too early to get up.'

‘It's Aidan—his bed ain't hardly been slept in, and we can't find him anywhere. Your father wants to see you—he's in the dining-room. Here—I'll help you dress.'

With Polly's aid, the usually slow process took only a few moments, during which Polly kept up a lively flow of talk.

‘Such a turn it gave me! I went in to see if he wanted a cuppa tea, after his headache and all, and there was his bed all empty and him nowhere around.
Nothing much gone, either—only his jacket and cap, and a couple of books. Dunno if he even took any money. Wherever do you suppose he's gone off to? It's real good country here to get lost in, and he don't know his way, any more than a baby would.'

Harriet was too bewildered to reply. Only too thoroughly awake now, she followed Polly round the veranda to the hall and the little dining-room, which was also her father's study. Mr Wilmot sat at his heavy mahogany desk, staring at what Harriet later discovered was a rough map of the Blackhill district.

‘Tell Boz to harness the horse immediately,' he said to Polly. ‘And then you can go down to the Rectory with a message. I'll write it out for you. Now, Harriet—perhaps you can help me.'

‘I don't know where Aidan has gone,' said Harriet. ‘I wish I did.'

‘If you could tell me
why
he's disappeared, that might help,' said her father. ‘I've had a rather muddled version from Polly—something about a fight.'

There was nothing for it but to tell the whole story. Well aware that her own part in it did not sound too noble, Harriet gave the account as rapidly as she could, and then stood gazing at the first, mellow rays of sunlight gilding the tip of the willow tree.

‘I see,' said Mr Wilmot. ‘So you thought it best to arrange Aidan's affairs for him. I've no doubt your intentions were good, Harriet, but I do wish you would think more and learn to leave well alone. Aidan must have felt too miserable last night to face up to school again this morning. And we have no notion of where he has gone. Did he have any close friends at school at all?'

‘No,' said Harriet. ‘He didn't talk to anyone, except Mr Burnie.'

‘Burnie might be able to help,' reflected Mr Wilmot, speaking to himself rather than to Harriet, who stood before him feeling singularly useless and despondent. She blamed herself entirely for Aidan's disappearance, and would have gladly offered to run straight off into the bush to search for him.

‘And please, Harriet,' said her father, as if reading her mind, ‘do not try to find your brother. This is work for men, not for little girls. The best thing for you to do is to go and sit with your poor mother.'

Dismissed, Harriet crept away to her mother's room. From the front window she watched Boz and her father drive past the garden and down the track towards the ford. Apparently they were going to search along the Blackhill road—that would be the obvious route for Aidan to choose. But he might already have
been gone for some hours, and could have branched off the road in any direction. Harriet gazed across the garden at the stubby, crouching hills beyond the creek, hills that for mile upon mile looked exactly like one another, and had a very poor and scanty welcome to offer to any traveller. Aidan would soon be lost among them.

‘Oh, why did we ever come to this horrible place?' cried her mother. ‘As soon as Aidan is found, we shall all go back to England immediately.'

Harriet seemed to be defeated at last. She could not fight the entire family, if they decided to leave Lillipilly Hill once Aidan returned to their midst. And if Aidan did not return—but Harriet went on staring at the hills, refusing to follow that train of thought.

7

Aidan meets a Bunyip

Aidan had wakened suddenly at midnight, to find that his headache was worse. At first he stayed in his bed, turning from side to side in a vain effort to recover the lost comfort of sleep. Finally he rose and went to the one small window, which overlooked the eastern garden.

As he stood there, gratefully feeling the fresh, night air on his hot face, the moon swung up over the orchard hill, and shone into his eyes. It was a rather elderly moon, a little lop-sided, but still radiant enough to give life and shape to every bush and tree in the tangled garden. Aidan looked and listened, and could hear tiny sounds—the rustle of grass as a bandicoot
padded by, the chirp of crickets, the thud of a possum dropping on to the cowshed roof, and, loneliest of all night noises, the baying of a dog far away down the gully.

He was never quite sure what made him turn back into his room and put on his everyday clothes. Perhaps it was the realization that there was another world beyond the one he knew here—the hated world of school and Paddy Tolly, and the fight that wasn't a fight. By the time he had collected two of his favourite books, and put on his cap, his decision was made. He would leave this unsatisfactory world behind him, and find another.

‘If I follow the creek,' he reflected, ‘I must reach Blackhill Bay in the end. And the packets go from there to Sydney. I shall have just enough money for my passage. In Sydney I shall surely find some sort of work.'

All the money he had was a half-crown, which he had been keeping in the hope of buying a new book during his next visit to Sydney. Whether it would pay for his journey on the packet he did not know, but in his new and unusual mood of recklessness he did not wait to think about it. He set off hurriedly and silently along the path to the orchard, suddenly vastly exhilarated, and already beginning to forget the bitter experiences of the afternoon.

Aidan's knowledge of local geography was of the scantiest. He had once studied his father's map of the district, and the one fact that he clearly recalled was that Barley Creek flowed into Blackhill Bay. On the map, the distance between Barley Creek township and the bay had not seemed great, but Aidan had to admit that the map was far from accurate. Nor could he remember if any sort of road was marked along the course of the creek.

‘It doesn't matter, anyway,' he told himself, as he took a diagonal path across the orchard towards the creek. ‘All I need to do is keep to the bank.'

At first it was fairly simple. East of the ford, the creek was quite broad, and the moonlight gleaming on the water gave Aidan enough guidance for him to see and follow a ragged track along the bank. He looked back once, and saw above the orchard the iron roofs of Lillipilly Hill, washed over with silver. Then a line of tall gums hid the house from view, and Aidan was alone with his thoughts, his determination, and his ambition to be as far away as possible before sunrise.

For two or three miles he plodded on, resolutely ignoring the calls of unknown night-birds, and the mysterious crackling of twigs in the scrub, or the occasional splashes in the shadows at the edge of the creek. It occurred to him that if Harriet had been there,
she would have been delighted with all these noises, and would have investigated them all. But Aidan's curiosity was not sufficient to outweigh his new resolve, and he kept up his steady pace, hands thrust into his pockets, his books buttoned inside his jacket, his head bent to watch the track, which was becoming more and more overgrown. Soldier-vine and lantana pressed close to the bank, and at times forced Aidan to pick his way gingerly across the stones jutting from the margin of the creek.

He had in his pocket the sturdy, gun-metal watch which his father had given to him on his birthday. He pulled it out and studied it when he at last reached an open space.