To the Islands (22 page)

‘That’s something animals don’t do,’ said Heriot.

‘Nothing ever turned out right. I never
done
nothing. And these days—’

‘You sit and rot,’ said Heriot, ‘like an old buggy in a shed.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Sam. ‘Anything?’

‘I did a little,’ Heriot said, ‘but what a little when you think what was to be done. Whatever you try to build they knock down with their wars and debates. Sometimes I wonder if there’ll ever be a revolt against picking up the pieces.’

Sam turned on his chair, his back to the fire, searching Heriot’s face. ‘Where you going?’ he asked quietly.

‘Nowhere,’ Heriot said, trying to see the old man’s eyes in the shadow. ‘Why, Sam?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Sam—?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Can I stay with you?’ Heriot asked, almost eagerly. ‘I could, couldn’t I? There’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. We could talk, Sam, and wait.’

‘Yeah, we could do that.’

‘Two old men—it’s fitting enough.’

‘Time goes slow,’ said Sam.

‘I want that.’

‘You get sick of it—waiting.’

‘But there are always new things to think of. Not new to the world, but new to us. Nothing’s true until you feel it. That’s why we have poets.’

‘I don’t know,’ Sam said. ‘Don’t know what to say.’ He stood up and shuffled across to his stove, his grasshopper-body black against the glow.

‘Say what you think,’ said Heriot. ‘Don’t deceive me.’

Sam bent and pushed more wood into the stove, and stood stooped in front of it.

‘Be honest, Sam.’

‘What would you be doing?’ asked Sam privately. And turning back from the fire said, in his cracked voice, ‘You’d be mad, mad as I am. What do you think I do here? What’s the good of my kind of living? Nothing to live for except eating, and nothing except eating to keep you from dying. And the food hard to come by at that. You’d need to be mad, I tell you.’

‘Yes,’ said Heriot softly, staring at the fragile body of the old man, the bird-claw hands. ‘Yes, you’re right.’

‘I ain’t mean,’ Sam insisted. ‘I don’t mind having you, I’m just thinking of you—’

‘I know,’ said Heriot gently. He leaned back in deep shadow, hiding his face from the anxious eyes. ‘We’ll go in the morning, Sam.’

*

‘I must go,’ Way said, ‘but I thought you two should know about the new men coming and everything. It’s cheering news.’

‘Yes,’ Helen said. ‘And you look cheered.’

‘More than that,’ Dixon said. ‘Joyful.’

Way smiled, flushing a little. ‘Why shouldn’t I? This is a happy day. More staff, more money. Nothing can hold us back now.’ He pushed open the screen door and shut himself out. ‘Good night,’ he called from the darkness. ‘God bless us all.’

‘Amen,’ Helen said. She turned back to Dixon, laughing. ‘He really is in a blissful mood. I’ve never seen him so happy.’

‘Well, aren’t you?’

‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I could make a speech. This is a great day, a new era is dawning—’

‘Scrub it,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to marry a politician. Do you reckon we should have told the padre while he was here?’

‘Told him what?’

‘About wanting to get hitched.’

‘That was the wrong answer,’ she said. ‘You should have said coyly: “About us.”’

‘Don’t talk smart,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to start beating you before we’re married.’

‘It’s the last chance you’ll have, Terry, because Mabel’s promised me her fighting stick. What’s more, Mabel and the whole village already know about us, and if you don’t marry me pretty soon there’s going to be some ugly talk.’

‘You’ve got no hope,’ he said, laughing, ‘of keeping a secret in this place. Arthur asked me this morning if I’d have him for my best man.’

‘Ruth wants to be my bridesmaid, too. I promised her.’

‘Have I got to marry you with one of those brass rings Father keeps for weddings?’

‘I won’t mind. Brass lasts well.’

He was looking at her, and held out his hand palm upwards on the table, and she put hers in it. ‘I feel funny about all this,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that’d happen to me, somehow.’

‘I feel a bit odd, too.’

‘Gee, eh, fancy me being married.’ He shook his head, looking into her clear eyes, and felt his foreignness leaving him. No need ever again to wander in Darwin, lost as if in a great city, or idle like a gangling waif in Perth or Adelaide. He had his home here, she was his home. Her hand was cool and dry.

She was smiling, intent on him. ‘What’s funny?’ he asked.

‘You look like a little boy sometimes,’ she said. ‘I’ll have a little boy like you, running round naked with the other children.’

‘Ah,’ he said, embarrassed, ‘have as many as you like.’

‘Everyone’s so happy now,’ she said. ‘Not only us. If only Bob and Rex and Stephen were back—’

He dropped his eyes, his hand slackening. ‘Listen—’ he said. ‘What about Bob?’

‘Bob doesn’t want anyone,’ she said gently. ‘Not yet. He’s a lonely man, like Mr Heriot. Don’t think about Bob, Terry. You’d be wrong.’

‘Would I?’ he said, looking up again. ‘That’s good. I wanted to be honest...’

He put out his other hand and she took it. ‘You are honest,’ she said, and because he was poor in words they sat silent, and looked at one another across the table.

In the early morning they crossed the little plain and came once again into the hills. Pigeons with delicate antennae scattered from the rocks, but Heriot no longer noticed such things, deeply weary as he was, and sick, and full of valedictions. The country before him was an endless recurrence of rock and grass and tree; all that could be seen had been seen, all that could be learned would never be learned, never now. He sat like wood in the saddle and loved nothing but the constant sky.

Before nightfall they crossed and camped at a small freshwater river in a valley filled with tall gumtrees and cadjiputs, and dense ferns and pandanus and tropic shrubs draped with wild passion-fruit vines and the laced and furred white flowers of the wild cucumber. Clear water ran shallowly over the stones and in the broad pools appeared the fleeting shadows of fish. It was a calm and gentle place, yet Heriot slept brokenly, and woke in the morning surprised by the sun. For death was his one thought and destination, and he saw himself now as a minute lizard in the grass, over which death hovered and hung like a hawk, delaying the strike out of delight in its own power.

Climbing the hills again in the morning he shivered, and cried out to Justin for reassurance. ‘We’re very small,’ he said.

‘You big bloke, brother,’ Justin said kindly.

‘No, no, you don’t understand. Think of it. This world. A little molten pebble spinning in air. This rock we walk on, a thin skin, changing every second. And the trees, what are they?’

‘They just trees, brother.’

‘A little fur, less than the bloom on a peach. But we creep under them. And in the split seconds between the heaving of the earth millions of generations of us are born and grow and die.’

‘Might be, brother,’ Justin allowed.

‘I’m a philosopher,’ said Heriot, in self-derision. ‘I’ll be silent now.’

And indeed he was silent almost all that day, and though they camped once again without water, and nausea welled up in him as he chewed the chunks of cold, cooked goat that Sam had given them, he had no complaint or comment. But he slept uneasily, tormented by the cries of dingoes, and on the next day he was weaker, and more tremulous of the hands.

‘I’ll walk now,’ he said. ‘I’ve had enough riding.’

‘No,’ said Justin, ‘you stay on horse, brother. You tired.’

‘I’ll walk,’ said Heriot firmly.

But at midday, in the full heat of the sun, he stumbled among the rocks, and fell, and was unable to rise.

Justin, kneeling over him, sweating into his beard, pleaded: ‘Brother, brother, don’t you lie there. Get up now, brother.’

‘I can’t,’ Heriot said. ‘Not again. No, Justin, leave me here.’

‘You got to get up. There no water here, nothing. Come away, brother.’

‘There’s no help for it,’ said Heriot. ‘Leave me.’ The rocks burned him through his clothes and he closed his eyes. The sun glowed and then darkened through his lids, and he felt sleep coming.

But Justin, stooping, lifted the old man in his arms, and set him on his feet and supported him. There was not now any urgency in Justin, only a hopeless calm. ‘We go on,’ he said flatly. ‘I get you up on the horse and you sit there and I look after you.’

‘No,’ said Heriot feebly. ‘No.’

But he was bundled, unresisting, into the saddle, and sat limp and tired while the world passed in a blur of sunlight, and the sweat streamed from his back, and his tongue grew dry as canegrass with thirst, making it hard to speak. Yet he muttered to himself from time to time. ‘Why try to save me?’ he demanded. ‘Who cares? This world—this world’s a grain of salt. A grain of salt in an ocean. No microscope is strong enough to see me. No camera is fast enough to catch me between birth and dying.’

He looked down at the tangled hair of Justin and felt pity for him. ‘This earth hates us,’ he said gently. ‘It heaves and strains under our feet. Go home, Justin. You haven’t had your share of time.’

‘No,’ said Justin. ‘I not leaving you.’

‘The world wants us to prey. But I won’t prey on you, no, I’ll go against the world. Soon I won’t prey on anything. Not even the insects this horse crushes carrying me.’

‘That right, brother.’

Heriot shook his head, gasping in his dry throat. ‘Why do we have thirst? Because the world hates us.’

‘Might be.’

‘And hunger? Oh, God. Suppose you had an open wound. The maggots would be in it now, eating you up. That’s hunger.’

‘Yes,’ said Justin. ‘Yes.’

‘There’s some wasp that lays its eggs inside caterpillars. The grubs eat the caterpillar, but it doesn’t die. No, they keep it alive so that they can eat it longer.’

‘Yes,’ said Justin.

‘They keep it alive until it makes its cocoon. Then they finish eating it, they use the cocoon themselves. That’s hunger,’ said Heriot, ‘that’s what I mean by preying.’

‘Yes, brother.’

‘But I’ll escape it,’ Heriot vowed. ‘I won’t be party to it. No. Now I’m only the prey.’

And then he was silent again, choked by thirst, and sat and swayed in the saddle as brown man and brown horse plodded on over the hot rock. His smallness and his futility could not hurt him now, for he had no pride, had nothing, only his feeble body, and his thirst.

He was almost asleep when they came, after hours, to the country of caves, where bluffs and cliffs of rock were split with dark holes, and where, green and luxuriant, a
gle
tree reached out from among the boulders.

‘There water there,’ Justin said, on a long sigh. ‘Water, brother.’

‘Ah,
benigna natura,
’ said Heriot wryly.

They paused for a moment to rest their eyes on the dark foliage, so fresh among so much rock; and as they stood there, a small sound came from among the leaves, and Justin, stepping back, reached for the rifle, and loaded stealthily, and began to creep forward.

On a shelf of rock a wallaby sat, so soft in its grey fur that it might have been a toy, so innocent, with its big foolish ears and dark eyes, that nothing in all its life could have threatened it, thought Heriot, feeling with his eyes the tranquil heart beating in the side and the claws gripping stone. ‘Oh, my beauty,’ he said softly, ‘my handsome one.’ And the wallaby, turning its head towards him, started. And Justin fired. The perfect creature leaped and fell back, and died quivering on the flat rock.

Heriot closed his eyes.

‘Come here, brother,’ Justin shouted. But he shook his head and said nothing.

‘Water,’ Justin said. ‘Plenty here. Quick, brother.’

He moved wearily in the saddle, stirring the horse forward and allowing it to carry him on to the little rock pond beneath the wild fig tree. There was grass growing in the water, and a continual slow drip from the overhanging cliff far above. A drop fell stingingly on the back of his neck as he lay down over the rocks to drink.

Long afterwards he got to his feet again and walked towards the mouth of the cave close by the pond. And under hanging rock he saw the first of the paintings, the crude figure of a man without a mouth, his head outlined with a horseshoe shape like that of the rainbow serpent.

‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You are Wolaro. God. What does it matter what you’re named?’

He called to Justin: ‘Look, here is God.’ But when he turned towards Justin, the man’s eyes were wide and frightened, his lips were dry and he licked them.

‘Why,’ said Heriot, ‘you’re not afraid? Justin—’

Justin said hoarsely: ‘Brother—brother, don’t you go in there. Come back, brother.’

‘This is my house now,’ said Heriot. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

He stepped into the cave, and from all the walls the mouthless god looked down on him.

‘Hail,’ he said. ‘
Ali
.’

He moved, and something rolled from his feet. It was a skull. The floor of the cave was littered with human bones.

He was very tired. He lay down against the cave-wall and closed his eyes, quiet and cool. ‘I have come home now,’ he said. ‘This is home.’

Long afterwards Justin overcame his fear a little and came into the cave. But there was terror still in his eyes, and he, who more than any of his people had denied the old beliefs, had at last to acknowledge the powers of the dark upon his blood, and the strength of the dead.

The light of their fire washed the rough walls, illuminating the staring god, dancing in the sockets of the staring skulls. They could feel no hunger there, though the meat of the wallaby burned sweetly on the coals. Crouching close by Heriot, Justin piled on the fire more of the wood he had dragged in to keep back the darkness; and all night lay sleepless and afraid, the spirits haunting in and out of his brain.

‘What will become of me?’ asked Heriot, deeply and softly in shadow. ‘Where will I go, Justin?’

The brown man stirred beside him. ‘How you mean, brother?’

‘This is the end. You know that. And when I’m dead, what then?’

‘Don’t say that.’