Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (17 page)

‘How did it go?' Rankin was having difficulty concealing his eagerness—he did not wish to let it seem that he had been waiting all day for this moment.

‘Slow,' Crofts replied, busying himself with putting away the unused tools. ‘It's going to be slow.' He hoped Rankin would leave him alone. The station owner followed him round the truck, watching his every move.

‘That's right. There's no hurry, Robert.' He was being solicitous.

Crofts straightened up and looked at his boss. Rankin smiled. ‘It was a good idea to come home early. Why don't you go and have a swim?'

Crofts wondered if Gil had reported on him. What was the matter with Rankin? He wasn't being very convincing. This level of intrigue did not appeal to the stockman and he was tempted to tell the station owner at once that he had done no work on dismantling the fence. Rankin seemed to be waiting for him, as if he were expecting a statement from him; almost, indeed, as if they might have had something private to disclose to each other. The hiatus in the conversation was noticeable. It was puzzling and Crofts could think of nothing to say. They looked at each other. Neither said anything. Standing between the wall of the shed and the truck, with a half-smile on his face, Rankin blocked Crofts' exit. They stood and waited for each other. Hot engine fumes filled the shed.

‘Can I get past then?' Crofts asked at last.

‘Sorry.' Rankin stood aside. ‘Yes, go and have a swim,' he said, putting his hand on the bonnet of the truck. ‘I'll check her oil and water.' He watched Crofts go then called, ‘I might come out with you in the morning.'

Crofts paused in the doorway of the shed and frowned. ‘I'd rather just do the job in my own way,' he said.

Rankin was delighted. ‘Good.' He felt that normality had resumed its course. ‘All right,' he said. ‘Don't overdo it, will you. It's only a job.' They both laughed.

Everyone except the station owner was unusually quiet at dinner that evening, and
he
was unusually talkative, pressing everyone for details of how they had spent their day. For the most part he was answered in monosyllables but this did not seem to worry him. Gil elaborated a little on his futile search for wild pigs but did not mention his meeting with the stockman, for which Crofts was grateful. Gil gazed gloomily at Janet every now and then but she did not appear to notice his attention. It was she who fetched Crofts' trophy from the kitchen and without a word plonked it down on the table in front of him.

Earlier, when Ida had first come out onto the verandah, Crofts' courage had failed him. He had received an impression of her as she had entered from the kitchen, of her sharp freshness in contrast to the dull presence of the others, an impression in the one instant of her short-sleeved blouse open at her neck and her newly ironed khaki shorts, of her tanned arms and legs and her bright hair. She had sat opposite him and he had been unable to bring himself to look at her. To relieve the pressure he had glanced at Alistair who, he fancied, had been watching him in an unpleasantly intense way ever since they had sat down. Alistair looked quickly at his plate the instant Crofts' eyes met his. But when Janet fetched the china ashtray with the golden eagle on it and placed it on the cloth in front of the stockman, Ida laughed and Crofts looked up at her and met her eyes before he had time to doubt himself again. Her steady gaze confirmed their understanding.

Crofts picked up his boxing trophy. He began to experience a feeling of power in the situation. ‘It's not that bad, is it?' he said, holding it up for everyone to see, turning it this way and that, so that the ugliness of the object might be thoroughly appreciated by them. ‘It's almost beautiful really,' he said and handed it to Ida, making certain that he looked into her eyes again and that his fingers touched hers as he passed it to her.

He watched her examining it, and continued to watch her when she had passed it on to Alistair. She shot a warning look at him and involuntarily he glanced at the station owner who was watching him. From the other end of the table Rankin smiled and lifted his wine glass. He said, ‘Let's drink a toast to Robert's achievement.' They each picked up their glass and murmured without enthusiasm; they looked at the stockman and then at each other. ‘Well done,' Ward Rankin said quietly, something equivocal in his gesture, something held back.

The atmosphere around the table set into an awkward formality. Crofts smiled at Ward and said, ‘I couldn't have done it without your help.' He raised his glass and drank some iced lemon squash. They exchanged a look of tentative mutual regard, which for Crofts was all dissembling and disarming. But for Ward Rankin was honestly felt: a mingling of confusion and gratitude that was extremely pleasant, if a little painful, to experience.

•

The following day the stockman had no choice but to drive up to the old fence, but again he could not bring himself to do any work on it, and once more he returned early to the station. No opportunity presented itself for Crofts and Ida to see each other alone. By the following evening—Wednesday—the need to engineer such a moment had become an intense preoccupation for both of them.

It was not until he had at last reluctantly left the homestead after dinner that evening to go over to his quarters for the night that something happened which offered the stockman hope of spending some time alone with Ida. Crofts stepped out into the darkness and went down a couple of steps, then stopped. He stood in the sultry night two or three metres from the lighted kitchen windows, hoping that Ida would detect his presence and would join him, no matter how briefly.

He had been standing there for almost five minutes when he heard Rankin and Ida come into the kitchen. It was clear from the tone of their voices that they assumed he had gone to his quarters. Crofts realised he was eavesdropping and he felt guilty. He stayed, however, and was rewarded a moment later when he heard Rankin announce that as he had some business to do in Springtown, he and the children would see Gil to the train in the morning. Crofts held his breath and listened while the station owner, who was no more than a metre or two behind him, poured himself a glass of water and disclosed his plans for the following day to Ida. Rankin concluded by saying she could expect them home by the early afternoon.

There was silence in the kitchen and Crofts knew he must go at once. Rankin, he realised, was standing by the window gazing out into the darkness. Ida had almost certainly gone to her room. Very cautiously the stockman crept down the remaining steps to the ground, careful to place his feet at the extreme edges of the boards so that the old timber would not creak and betray his skulking presence to Rankin.

Crofts did not put on the light when he reached his quarters but stood by the open door and undressed in the faint radiance of the sheet lightning which flickered continuously about the ranges. He was excited and he considered how to arrange things in the morning. He would drive the truck partway up the valley, he decided, and wait there until he saw the car leave, then he would return to the homestead. He did not lie down at once but stood naked in his open doorway for some time, picturing his early return and his meeting with Ida.

•

Ida waved until the car was lost in its trailing plume of dust, then she waited, her hand still raised, relieved for the first time in her life that her younger brother's visit had come to an end.

Earlier she had begun to fear that something would prevent them from leaving, that they would never get themselves organised in time to set off for the train. Inexplicably—since he was usually inseparable from Gil—Alistair had made a stupid fuss at the last minute about not wanting to go. She gazed into the dust that hung over the horse paddock and listened to the fading sound of the car—how often had they gone as far as the first creek crossing, or further, before returning for some forgotten article?

She would wait a little longer. It was only a quarter past eight but the sun already burned with the peculiar intensity that always comes before summer storms in the Highlands; the heat was aggravating her impatience and making her temples throb. She backed away deeper into the shade of the machinery shed but still she kept watch. The turbulence caused by the car passing along the road had subsided and now the air was so motionless that the dust hung suspended in it as if it were fixed there. She had to concentrate to catch the intermittent hum of the distant car.

Crofts had driven off hours ago after saying goodbye to Gil. There had been no chance to let him know that she would be on her own all morning. She narrowed her eyes against the glare, listening, making herself wait, wanting to turn round and climb into the jeep, drive up the valley and see him. She would go, she decided, when she could no longer hear the car. She was disciplining herself, refusing to allow the situation to intimidate her. She couldn't begin to imagine what she and Crofts would say to each other when she turned up at his workplace in the jeep, but she refused to invent an idealised version of the meeting. She wanted the reality.

Suddenly she went rigid. She could hear the car again. She willed it not to be, but the steady throb of an approaching motor mocked her. With a painful mingling of disappointment and disbelief she said, ‘They're coming back.' She watched the road, and in a cold still voice she announced to herself, ‘He has decided not to risk getting caught in town by a storm.'

She loathed them. Her disappointment was so intense she wanted to deny her family their existence. They were an impediment to her ability to take even one free step in her own chosen direction! She saw them in her mind's eye now, bunched and silent in the car, staring ahead. She had not imagined that she could bear such hatred towards them.

At that moment the sound of the approaching motor became more focused: she realised it was coming not from the road at all but from behind her. She turned and looked up the valley—the bright red cabin of the International was a tiny shimmering spot moving out slowly across the dark face of the scrub and onto the silvery plain. She held back her relief, watching the truck until she was certain there could be no mistake—the stockman really was returning to the homestead.

She turned and went up the steps into the house. She walked straight through to her bedroom. She stood in front of the mirror and gazed at her reflection. An unnatural calm had overtaken her. She decided she looked red in the face, blotchy. She noted the sharp hard lines of tension under her eyes. Her bare arms and legs, it seemed to her, stuck out woodenly from the old cotton dress, like clumsy robot limbs. She felt detached, however, from her appearance, as if she were appraising some less fortunate person's shortcomings. She had never looked quite so old or quite so ugly, she fancied, as she did at this moment—she was convinced of her ability to make astute assessments in this matter. She heard the truck change down and drive the last hundred metres. A tiny thought that perhaps this was all a dreadful mistake whipped across the cold surface of her observing mind, leaving a distracting trace of its lightning passage.

She turned away from the mirror and went out of her room.

She stood by the back door and looked down through the flywire towards the gate just beyond the steps; the oleander hedge and the corner of the lighting-plant shed obscured any further view of the direction from which he must come. The feeling of remoteness, of possessing no ability to influence the course of events, persisted. She waited, as if she knew very little about herself, as if she were waiting inside the persona of a stranger whose responses she could not predict.

The sounds of the truck's motor died and there was a silence. She realised she was trying to rehearse what she would say to him. If she had driven the jeep up to the old fence to see him, she knew it would have been with a single purpose in mind. But was he coming to her now like that? Had he guessed, before leaving this morning, that he would find her at home alone? Or had he come back for some other reason? She entertained all these trivial doubts and uncertainties because behind them she knew she was steady—scared, but steady. It was the summit of Mt Mooloolong all over again, she was quite clear about that. There was only one real option and she was going to take it. She smiled tightly to herself as she thought, ‘This is my jumping-off point.'

She saw him come round the corner of the oleanders at that moment. As he pushed open the gate, he looked up at her. A sharp stab of excitement in her chest made her catch her breath—he was obviously as keyed-up and determined as she was herself. She wanted to tell him at once that the others would be back soon after midday, but she couldn't trust herself to speak.

She held open the flywire door for him and he came into the verandah. They stood facing each other. He was out of breath and was blushing deeply. A thick artery in his neck, just below the hard bone line of his jaw, pulsed heavily. She forced herself to look directly into his eyes. Without saying anything they reached out and held hands. A delicious wave of dizziness swept upwards through her body and she gripped his hand tighter.

•

The sounds of the approaching storm entered her dreams before they woke her, creating in her mind a vivid picture of a huge silver aeroplane breaking up, chunks of shining metal and small black bodies falling, turning over and over through an endless clear blue sky. She opened her eyes. In the tilted mirror she saw the greenish hue of the sky. The hills were blotted out by rain. Where her body and Crofts' touched they were wet with sweat. His arm was across her, his open hand possessively enclosing her breast. Quietly, but with a hint of tension in his voice, he said, ‘It's late isn't it?' And she felt him move, as if he might sit up.

‘It can't be,' she said, putting her hand over the top of his to calm him. The tin of the roof suddenly creaked loudly as the cool breeze and large drops of rain struck it.

‘You were asleep,' he said, almost whispering. ‘I've been watching you.' He was silent and she felt him watching her now, his head close to hers on the pillow. He said nothing for a long time, then, ‘I suppose I'd better get dressed.'