Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (11 page)

By now she felt mildly disgusted that the stockman should continue to fiddle with the slightly injured soles of his feet. She kept staring at him nevertheless.

He looked at her, hesitating. ‘I was thinking about being an eagle.' He searched her face, anxious for her reaction.

She took a breath and just managed to stop herself from repeating aloud what he had said.

He observed her uncertainty and quickly sought to explain himself. ‘Just daydreaming, eh?'

‘To
be
one or
win
one?' she asked, but he looked totally lost. ‘It's just that they award stupid looking china ashtrays with golden eagles perched on them to the winners at the boxing tournament, and I thought you . . .' she trailed off. ‘I shouldn't have mentioned it.' She was conscious that she was confirming her ‘Mrs Rankin' status. He looked as though he wished he had kept his thought to himself.

‘It wasn't anything,' he said, poking at his feet again. ‘One sailed over, that's all.' They were both silent. There was just the rushing of the water. He made an effort to look at her properly and their eyes met for an instant. ‘I'd better be getting back,' he said. ‘Gil wants to have a shooting match.'

‘They fly down from the ranges,' she went on, ignoring his last remark, ‘especially when it's dry.' When he looked at her she was conscious of her slight squint. Was that why his eyes darted at her then flicked away quickly to the rocks, to the water, to the sky then back to the rocks? ‘There are lots of them about.'

‘I've seen heaps.'

‘You've explored a bit.' She could tell that he would not attempt to look directly at her again. She willed him to all the same.

‘There's lots of places I haven't been yet.'

‘The ranges have never been fully explored by anyone.' He appeared to be intrigued by this piece of information and stood there considering it. She wanted to ask him straight out, Well, do you think I'm middle-aged or not?

Her gaze was becoming fixed. Being reminded of her eye problem made her conscious of how living their lives out here, away from the reactions of strangers, they had grown to be scarcely aware of their own peculiarities. Their eccentricities had gone unnoticed. Even in Springtown they were shielded from the responses of strangers by their sense of belonging to an old community. And the strangers themselves brought with them their own distinctive oddities of style.

She wondered what impulse had brought
him
here, from the other side of the world, to stand on this ledge of sandstone with her now and to wonder at the half-explored ranges of Salvator Rosa and Ka Ka Mundi? Had he known that such wild and uninhabited places existed and were within his reach? But she would not ask him
why
he had come. Not yet. Not now. She sensed that the answer would probably prove too difficult for this moment. But that was no excuse; their difficulties would have been the same if they had been in the heart of a city.

She understood now that if she were to get any answers from him at all, it was up to her to take the initiative. Clearly things were not quite as she had imagined them, and perhaps in reality they were rather less intriguing. There
was
something—something other than his beautiful body—however, and she knew she could never be content if she just let things stay the way they were.

‘This is the way in here, not down that chute,' she said and she turned away without waiting to see his reaction, and climbed up the near-vertical rockface. Her familiarity with the holds made it appear an almost casual thing to do.

From the top she looked down at his foreshortened figure gazing up at her. She stood balanced on the very edge, curling her toes against the warm rock, and she smiled at him. ‘Come up. I'll show you something.'

And what if he falls? she thought. And immediately she saw in her imagination his body arching backwards into space, suspended there, his eyes seeking contact with her own; and she wondered with a slight feeling of unease what it was about him that made her think such thoughts. She was convinced now of her intuition that with this man, at any given moment, the normal limits of things might be suddenly and violently exceeded.

She watched him climbing easily towards her, reaching carefully from hold to hold, his deeply tanned shoulder muscles alternately tensing and relaxing as he drew himself up the face of the rock. He stood next to her at last, breathing heavily. He seemed bemused. Did he realise she was challenging him? She could see that at least he was now more than simply curious; he was on his guard waiting for her next move. She was pleased. Stepping away from the edge, she said, ‘Follow me and keep quiet.'

She led him through the tumbled labyrinth of giant blocks, making her way towards the far bank of the creek. She didn't look back to see how he was getting on, or offer him assistance at the awkward bits; the sound of his breathing and the occasional clink of a loose stone told her that he was close behind. Until today, she had only ever done this sort of thing on her own and she couldn't help smiling to herself now at the novel image she had of Crofts behind her, observing her movements and measuring his pace with hers. She thought of them as paired hunting animals travelling together through the intricate wilderness, their bodies moving in silent coordination, as if this had been their way for a lifetime. He was as much at home in this place as she was herself, she was sure of that.

They emerged at last onto the creek bank, and she knew that if she had looked back now she would have glimpsed the crescent sweep of the yellow beach and the high black cliff of Toby's Hole. But she did not look back. And while she assured herself that she had no reason to be secretive, she hoped that she and Crofts had not been observed by the others.

Away from the creek the bush was dryer and the heat was fierce. The slight ground-cover pricked their bare feet. She went ahead of him across a neck of level country and down again without warning into a concealed side-gorge that branched off the main channel—there was no sign of it from the level plain until they reached the lip of the gorge itself.

As they descended into this sheltered cleft in the baking earth they encountered a still bank of humid air. The gorge was narrow, no more than five metres across, and its flaking sandstone walls were a mottled grey and blue-green colour covered by a growth of lichen that was eating into the crumbling face of the soft stone. It was as if the stone itself was gradually being transformed into lichen.

As they penetrated further they saw communities of yellow and green king orchids clustered at fissures on the walls. Other plants with names she did not know hung in the stillness from aerial roots and vines. There were thick, purply-black, waxen leaves that looked like fruit which does not need the sun to ripen, that drooped at regular, seemingly calculated, intervals along sinuous stems. Before they reached the bottom of the gorge Ida and the stockman passed beneath the outspread fronds of giant tree-ferns which formed an unbroken, translucent canopy and maintained a perpetual twilight. The relief from the dancing heat of the surface was immediate.

When they reached the debris on the floor of the gorge Ida stopped and motioned the stockman to be still. Around them lay a profusion of fallen rocks and plant rubbish. Here and there small pools of fresh water gleamed and the only sound was the tinkling of seepage emerging between the layers of basalt and sandstone deep within overgrown clefts. They stayed still. This place seemed to have been undisturbed for ever. There was an indefinable accumulation of smells in the air, an elusive blending of herb essences, a distillation of vegetative goodness.

Almost holding her breath she said quietly, ‘If you rush in and disturb the air that wonderful smell dissipates immediately. But if you stand still . . .' There was no need for her to finish the sentence, and he said nothing. She was struck again by the overpowering sense of absence here, of an archaic silence that would never be broken no matter how much noise was made. She wondered if he felt it. She wanted to look at him, to see what he
was
feeling. He had not moved.

They had been standing there together in silence for several minutes when, without considering the difficulties of such a venture she said, ‘We ought to go to Mt Mooloolong together one day.'

She knew now that, despite her uncertainties, she must put in front of this man all the passion she felt for this landscape, her landscape. Something told her that she had to share this passion for the first time now, or else forfeit a part of herself forever. Her proposition had been completely spontaneous, and she realised only after she had said it that in offering Mt Mooloolong she was offering herself. How could it be otherwise?

Her words remained waiting in the stillness, unanswered.

She had stepped across a threshold. She had done it before without threatening her peace of mind; on the contrary, she had eagerly sought this retreat into a more private, varied and optimistic world than the one she shared with Ward Rankin. It was a freer world, uncluttered by the difficulties of his failure and his frustration. But so far it was a world that had had its existence only in her imagination. That was what frightened her; it was more a dream than a reality.

She waited.

The flattened, distant concussions from several high-powered rifle shots followed one after another at one-second intervals. The individual detonations penetrated the gorge as if from another world. Compulsively she counted them . . . six.

The stockman shifted, rustling with his feet a fallen branch of fern. He gazed around at the surrounding walls of the gorge and at last forced himself to look at her. ‘What's Mooloolong?' he asked, taking a deep breath and letting the air out slowly so that his voice wouldn't sound shaky to her and betray his feelings. If she were ever to suspect him she would laugh at him or be insulted.

She turned to answer him, sensing his tension, when something beyond them caught her eye. She whispered, ‘Look! He's been watching us all this time.'

Her words sent a sharp chill into the stockman's stomach. He swivelled round and into his mind leapt an image of Alistair's sinisterly amused gaze fixed on him under the water. Then, between the rock wall and a fallen tree trunk, he saw the still form of a yellow and black goanna. The ancient reptile watched them, motionless as the stone on which it rested.

•

Ward Rankin lay listening to the silence after the echoes of the sixth shot had died away. There was something about the shots that disturbed him but he did not try to decide what it might be. He had been re-living the time when he was lifted naked from the mud and carried in the arms of Robert Crofts through the blinding sunlight. It had occurred to him a number of times that he might have resisted. He had permitted the stockman to carry him all the way to the shade of the truck and he had made no attempt to resist. He closed his eyes again now and was lifted from the mud and carried through the blazing sunlight once more. He could not decide if Crofts had also been naked. It was unclear. He did not pursue this question. He had relinquished himself when he might have resisted,
that
was all that mattered.

A smile played around his mouth as he lay there at the swimming camp in the late afternoon heat, resting on his yellow and white plastic banana lounge, his thin white legs primly together, his hands clasped across his wrinkled belly.

After less than a minute he opened his eyes again, his expression forming into a frown. They were not rifle shots at all. Someone was using his revolver! He sat up and looked down the beach. He realised then that he was alone. The place was deserted. Ida's magazine, her towel and her straw hat lay on the other lounge a few yards over to his left. It was getting on towards evening. The air was still and very hot, humid and oppressive. He was assessing more or less unconsciously the distant rumbling thunder from the ranges, a lifetime habit of calculating the likelihood of rain.

Were they having their shooting match or not? The six revolver shots were the only shots he had heard. After a minute he got up and walked down to the water's edge. He looked first up the creek towards the cliff then downstream towards the white sandstone blocks which were taking on a honey tone as the sun dipped further behind the storm clouds. There was no sign of any of the swimming party. He was half tempted to call out but was afraid of appearing foolish. He was not alarmed. The revolver shots themselves were not important. It was the realisation that someone must have gone back to the house and rummaged around in his room to find the gun that disturbed him. It did not seem the sort of thing Gil would do. He began walking back up the beach, and decided it was the sort of thing that someone else might be prompted to do when Gil was around. He stopped suddenly. Surely it wouldn't have been Crofts? He took a deep breath and looked about him once more. There was still that doubt over the shooting of his mare, Julia—there just might have been something wilful in it. He did not like the way his thoughts were heading. He sat on the edge of the banana lounge and smoked a cigarette. The idea of Crofts actually searching his room in the unoccupied house appalled him. He decided it was not possible and did his best to dismiss the thought. He sat there and smoked and puzzled over the problem for some time.

four

Ida and the two children stopped off at Ida's cousin's house, where all the relations would be gathering later for a family lunch. It was only a couple of short blocks from there to the main street but Ward Rankin did not consider walking the distance. With Gil and the stockman in the back seat of the Ford he drove on and parked outside the Commercial Hotel.

The main street was decked-out with braids of bunting strung along the shop-front awnings. As they got out of the car they saw at the end of the street, in the open space beside the hall, a large black and red striped tent and a few rides.

It was early yet but the long front bar of the hotel was already crowded with locals and strangers in town for the carnival. Walking in from the dazzling brightness of the morning, with Gil and Crofts close behind him, the station owner paused in the doorway, waiting for his vision to adjust to the dimness.