To the Islands (17 page)

The figure shivered, waking. Then the head turned and the eyes were open, looking out from under the broad forehead. He had a beard now, with spikes of grey in it, and his hair was tangled. ‘Good day, old man,’ he said, yawning.

‘Let’s go soon. Now. Please.’

‘Pretty soon we be going. You want tucker first.’

Heriot pushed away his blanket. ‘Come with me,’ he said, in his drained voice. His eyes were curiously empty, like those of the blind woman in the camp, and his mouth loose in the new beard. ‘Come with me.’

Justin stood up, sighing resignedly. ‘All right, old man. First I going to wash myself. You come down to pool.’ He stepped out of the rock shelter and went down to the water’s edge, Heriot slowly following like a stupid dog, and they stood in the pool and washed, while the birds woke in the leaves around them and the sun swelled red at the end of the valley.

They had come back and were dressed, and Justin was rolling the blankets, when he grew suddenly still and said in a voice of hopelessness: ‘Old man, they pinch our tucker-bag.’

‘Ah,’ murmured Heriot.

‘What we going to do now? We got no flour for damper and no tea and no sugar, old man. We going to starve.’ His voice shook a little with self-pity, since damper and tea were the basis of his diet. ‘Going to starve.’

The mad voice of Heriot broke into its wild keening.

‘If ever thou gavest meat or drink,

Every night and all,

The fire shall never make thee shrink;

And Christ receive thy soul.’

‘Don’t,’ Justin shouted. He picked up the rifle and turned away, walking with angry determination into the camp. Then the bushes hid him.

Heriot sat down on the blankets and wailed to the echoing valley:

‘If meat and drink thou ne’er gav’st nane,

Every night and all,

The fire will burn thee to the bare bane;

And Christ receive thy soul.’

Across the valley came sounds of argument, Justin’s voice raised in accusation, and Alunggu’s angry and protesting. Silence followed, then a dog barked and a woman burst into a flood of invective or denial. Later Justin reappeared, a few tins piled in the crook of his arm and a scowl on his face, the outraged voices pursuing him like wasps.

‘I get these tins,’ he said curtly. ‘That all they give me. Come on now. You carry them blanket, old man. I sick of carrying things all the time.’

They made their way back in silence along the valley, skirting the camp, Heriot stumbling a little on the rocks, for the rest of a day had worsened the stiffness in his body, though he was no longer as tired as he had been, filled instead with a restive and undirected energy. As he was dealing with the horses Justin let out a sudden shout and ran towards a cranny in the rock. When he returned he was grinning broadly, all his depression lost in the pride of a hunter. A long, yellow lizard with intricate brown marking hung limp from his raised hand, the red tongue curling out of the tapered snout.

‘Beautiful, heraldic beast,’ said Heriot, with deep sadness, reaching out to touch it.

They rode out of the valley and found a place where the horses could climb into the hills and pick their way clumsily and nervously over the rocks. Justin was now cheerful and talkative, with the sun lying clear but not yet burning on the surfaces of rocks and leaves, and the backward view of green plains and blue hills. ‘They say there ’nother white man in this country,’ he said. ‘Might be we meet him.’

But Heriot’s silence was unbreakable. They pushed on past the head of the valley and looked down on the bough-shelters of the natives, barely distinguishable from that height. And as they pulled up there to look for some sign of life, Justin said, weighing the rifle: ‘Old man, this my gun, eh?’

They were horse by horse, and Heriot put out his hand and tore the rifle from the dark man, and threw it. It should have gone over the cliff, but it landed far short of the edge and lay on a clump of spinifex.

Justin jumped down to retrieve it, and stood on the ground with it in his hands, and stared widely at the wooden face of the white man.

‘What for you do that, old man?’

‘I want nothing,’ Heriot said. ‘When we all have nothing, then we can be equal.’

Weary after long travelling over the rocky tableland, Justin and Heriot came in mid-afternoon on a watercourse flowing shallowly over solid rock, and followed it, with the roar of water growing in their ears, until they reached a deep fold where the widened creek became a cataract and crashed over strata of rock to feed a larger stream below. The place was a horseshoe of stone, with crannied walls on either side, but the head of it was a vast, blackened staircase, each step flat and separate, over which the white water tore down to a boulder-dammed pool below.

Seeing this Heriot wakened a little from the dream which had enveloped him all day, and dismounted, and walked into the stream. Justin shouted: ‘Old man, where you going?’ but he did not answer. He took off his clothes and walked down the broad steps and lay under the white water, letting it beat and bludgeon his aching bones and drench his hair until in defence his strength came back and he grew hard under the assault. Reaching out, he could touch dry rock, and it was hot, but under the water he was cooled and renewed, and its sound and force shut out his aimless thoughts.

He did not hear Justin shout to him, and when at last he left the waterfall the man was gone. So he lay down on hot flat rock to dry and was half-asleep when Justin returned, wide-eyed with discovery.

‘Old man,’ he said urgently, ‘there ’nother white man there.’

‘He can’t stop us,’ said Heriot dreamily. ‘I won’t have it.’

‘He camping down there in the creek. He got three horse, old man. We going down there, eh?’

‘He can’t stop me,’ Heriot muttered defiantly. ‘How did he find me? I wanted to be alone now. Tell him to go back.’

‘You coming, old man?’

‘No. Send him away.’

‘I going,’ Justin said, with a flash of irritation. ‘You get you clothes on and come, too.’ He went back to his horse and mounted, knowing that he had only to act decisively and Heriot would follow like a child. Presently the old man pulled on boots and trousers and came after him.

From the edge of the fold they could see three horses beside the creek, and as their own horses crashed and rattled down the slope a man got up from the shadow of a baobab and stood watching. A short man whose red hair showed clearly in the afternoon light.

He did not move, and they came up to him without a greeting, and he stared, a man of about forty, weatherbeaten, with a tangled red beard and shy at the eyes.

When their silence was becoming absurd: ‘Didn’t expect to meet anyone here,’ he said diffidently to Heriot. ‘Where you heading?’

Heriot said nothing. ‘We going to coast,’ Justin offered at last.

‘Name’s Rusty,’ the man said, still to Heriot.

‘His name Mr Heriot.’

‘What’s up with him? He dumb or something?’

‘He sick in his head.’

‘Too old for this country,’ Rusty considered. ‘You camping here?’

‘You don’t mind, eh?’

‘No, go ahead. Better put your boss to bed, he looks buggered.’

‘He all right,’ Justin said, dismounting. ‘Get down now, old man. We stay here now.’

With the stranger’s eyes curiously and apprehensively on him Heriot slid off, still silent, his eyes, after a brief glance at the new face, returning to their state of far-sighted emptiness. Justin led him to the tree and sat him down there, and soon he turned on his side and went to sleep.

‘Christ,’ said the stranger, ‘that’s a queer boss you got, Jacky.’

He was quite a small man; wiry, hairy. And he was undisguisably furtive and uneasy in all his movements, even to the false casualness and muted tones of his voice, so that Justin was drawn into his mood and could think of no loyal denial to make. And they stood in silence, in a mutual retreat, and looked remotely down on the old man who lay fondling the earth in his wooden sleep.

The sun drifted behind rock hills, and the sky grew green. Later Justin lit a fire and cooked his goanna on it, filling the air with the stench of grilling fat.

‘You ain’t going to eat that,’ Rusty said.

‘He good, this.’

‘You going to give it to the old bloke?’

‘He like bush tucker,’ Justin said defensively. ‘You watch him.’

But when Heriot was wakened and a goanna leg thrust in his hand he could only take a few mouthfuls of it, then the fatty, faintly crablike taste disgusted him and he threw it away and lay down again and began softly to weep.

‘Ah, cut it out,’ said Rusty, shocked. ‘Have a bit of tinned dog.’ He pushed an open can into Heriot’s hand. ‘Jesus, don’t bawl about it.’

The old man picked out pieces of meat with his fingers and ate slowly. Then he pushed the tin away.

‘Where d’you come from?’ Rusty asked.

Heriot stared through the fingered baobab leaves at the sky, which was deepening from green to aquamarine. The rush of the waterfall came clearly down from the hills. ‘I come from Annalup,’ he said, ‘in the timber country.’

‘Jesus,’ said the man, startled.

The uncollected memories broke up in the old man’s mind, became separate, fell into place. Old pictures returned to him, clearer than photographs, superimposed on the wild country of his wanderings. He saw an attainable peace at his fingers’ end, reached for it, grief springing in him like a delicate green thing among the rocks.

‘My father was a doctor. We had a house near the town. One of those grey, wooden houses. And some land. There was a creek and the arum lilies grew wild in it. It had high banks near the house and a log in the middle and you could sit there and no one knew you were there. They told me to sit and watch for the trout, but there weren’t any trout. I was deceived,’ said Heriot bitterly.

‘Stiff,’ said Rusty.

‘You could go walking through the forests, through the karri. Huge trees, miles high, smooth, pale, no branches except at the top. When they cut them down, they tore the branches off other trees falling. When they hit the ground it jolted up through your shoes. It made a noise like a cannon.’

‘Never seen that sort of country myself,’ Rusty said.

‘There were gullies full of ferns and blackberries.’

‘I heard about blackberries,’ the man said. ‘Real weed, they say.’

‘We’d go to the sea sometimes. It’s green, then it’s blue. In summer clouds pile up on the horizon and stay there. I said to my father: “What is that country?” and he said: “That is Antarctica.” I was deceived.’

‘They do that to kids.’

He saw rising out of the sea the white mountains, the crags, the fires.

‘“Oh whaten a mountain is yon,” she said,

“Sae dreary wi’ frost and snae?”

“O yon is the mountain o’ Hell,” he said,

“Where you and I will gae.”’

‘You know a bit of poetry,’ Rusty said, with distrust.

‘I was a clever man,’ said Heriot strongly. ‘I knew a good deal. But I lost it all, looking after my huts and houses. And now they’ve ruined me. Ah,’ said Heriot, laughing, ‘
to fei giubetto a me delle mie case
.’

‘What’s the joke, mate?’

‘My wit,’ said Heriot weakly. ‘My erudition. I knew French, too.
De nostre mal personne ne s’en rie, Mais priez Dieu que tous nous veuille absouldre
.’

‘Go on.’

‘I knew Spanish,’ Heriot boasted, ‘
y se yo bien que muero por solo aquello que morir espero
.’

‘You knew a lot,’ the stranger granted.

‘I knew German.
Owe war sint verswunden alliu miniu jar! Ist mir min leben getroumet, oder ist ez war?
’

Rusty shook his head, baffled.

‘
Quod nunc es fueram, famosus in orbe, viator, et quod nunc ego sum, tuque futuris eris
. That’s Latin,’ explained Heriot, laughing feebly. ‘I’ve forgotten my Greek.
Thalassa! Thalassa!
That will be useful soon.’

‘What d’you do?’ Rusty asked curiously. ‘Schoolteacher?’

‘Missionary.’

‘Jesus, why?’

‘I don’t know. I had nothing to do and I was restless.’

‘Funny sort of life for a man.’

‘Once I was sick in hospital, one summer, and there was a sunset, one of those gaudy southern sunsets, and I looked out and saw a nun watching it, quite still, with a bedpan in her hand. I thought if I were a nun I’d feel like that, as if I’d earned the sunsets for myself.’

‘You need a shave,’ Rusty said, ‘if you’re going to be a nun.’

‘Then I met a woman who had—that goodness. And I married her.’

‘Happy ending, eh?’

‘We weren’t young. No. And she died after a few years. That was twenty-one years ago. But,’ said Heriot with surprise, ‘she was young, young to die.’

‘You have stiff luck,’ Rusty said.

‘No,’ Heriot protested. ‘I didn’t say that. I’m not sorry for myself, not now.’ He fixed his awakened eyes on the man. ‘You’re wrong.’

‘Okay, okay,’ said the stranger irritably. ‘I wasn’t getting at you, mate.’

‘No. No, I’m sorry,’ said Heriot with remorse, ‘forgive me.’

‘She’s right,’ Rusty said. He had rolled a cigarette and lighted it from the fire, puffing smoke towards the old man, whose craving for tobacco woke at the smell. In the last days his miseries had lain on him like a heavy cloud, but now they began to separate out into fatigue and stiffness and homesickness, and hunger for such things as tea and tobacco. He held out his hand and asked humbly: ‘Please, would you—would you give me some of your makings?’

‘Go ahead,’ Rusty invited, handing the tin. And as he watched the old man’s fingers fumbling with the paper his thick mouth was touched with compassion. ‘Tell us,’ he said, ‘where you’re really going. Dinkum, now. What’s the idea?’

But Heriot could not remember where he was going. He lit his cigarette and left it hanging from his mouth while he ran his fingers slowly through the tangle of white hair. It came back to him then, smokily.

‘I’m exploring,’ he said.

‘What d’you want to explore this country for?’

‘Not the country. No, not the country. I’ve found out—too much,’ said Heriot sadly. ‘Too much.’

‘You got a real queer way of talking, mate.’