And soon I had a drink in my hand and found myself being introduced to ‘my boss and co-conspirator. This is Matt.’ Something about Matt made me uneasy. Perhaps it was the slight flash of pain when he shook my hand just a little too hard. More likely it was the way he launched straight into very personal questions.
‘Do I detect a slight accent there? Where in the world do you come from, Alix?’ Although he was good-looking in a clean-cut, Bondi lifesaver sort of way, there was something about the unblinking stare from those piercingly blue eyes that was just a little bit creepy.
Compared with this, Dave looked even more ordinary than usual. Nondescript hair, mid-brown eyes, shorter and stockier in build, he looked like the lesser version, the sidekick to the Golden Boy. For no obvious reason, I felt uncomfortable in their presence and found myself backing away, trying to find a gap in the conversation so that I could leave, but somehow, somewhere along the line, with all their relentless questioning they found out that I was on three weeks’ holiday, and didn’t have anywhere to go for Easter.
Dave was delighted, bouncing like an excited puppy. ‘This is perfect, Alix. Matt’s having a house party for Easter. You’ve got to come. Can’t have you all on your little lonesome, can we?’ He turned to Matt and they exchanged a look that I couldn’t interpret. ‘How about that? Poor Alix doesn’t have any family or anything. She’s absolutely on her own.’
Matt took his time. I had the impression he was the kind of person who pauses before speaking to ensure that everyone is giving him their full attention. ‘I think you’re right. Alix could be perfect.’ I didn’t register at the time what an odd response that was.
‘I don’t think so. I’ve got things to do.’ That’s me. Ms Cautious. But not, in the end, cautious enough. ‘But thanks for the invitation.’
‘Oh, come on, Alix. You’d love the place. Very outdoorsy. Cliffs and beaches. Just your kind of thing.’
And Matt said, turning those unblinking ice-blue eyes on me, ‘And we’re a bit low on females, aren’t we, Dave?’ You’d think that would have alerted me, but no.
When I told Kathryn about this, what did I tell her? What did I know? I didn’t accept it at the time. In fact I didn’t think any more about it. But Dave called me up the next day to make arrangements. He found my phone number and tracked me down. Why didn’t I realise how sinister that was? I’m very careful about online security, and I’m not on social media. ‘How did you find me?’ I asked him, and he laughed.
‘You can find anyone if you know where to look. How many Verhoevens do you think there are in Melbourne?’ (Twelve. I checked. And I don’t know any of them.) He tracked me down and sweet-talked me. And here I am.
‘Matt has a house party every year . . . Cliffs and beaches.’ He didn’t mention the boat. Or the island. So the most Kathryn could possibly remember was that I was going to the beach with someone called Dave. That should narrow it down.
I run the afternoon’s events over and over in my mind, but can’t come up with anything new. And I’m so tired . . .
Dreams. Of Dave saying ‘I always knew I’d get you in the end.’ Of running, falling into a hole, and black creatures hovering over me, pressing closer and closer.
They press on my face and I begin to scream . . .
I wake with a cry to find light creeping in through the holes in the cave roof. For a moment relief floods me as my surroundings begin to take shape and form. Then new fears set in. What if my cry has been heard? I don’t think there’s much likelihood of their coming in the dark, but it means I cannot risk sleeping at all during the day. How am I going to fill twelve hours of daylight in a space where I can barely turn around? My bladder reminds me that sometime soon I am going to have to leave my shelter. The very thought terrifies me, but the alternative is too horrible to consider.
It would take them at least half an hour to get to this place from the cabin, so I estimate that I can allow twenty minutes to find a suitable toilet spot and stretch my stiff and aching legs. Torn between the longing to move and the knowledge that when I do the pain will be terrible, I remain in my cramped position. If it wasn’t for the urgent message from my bladder, I don’t think I’d be able to move at all, but somehow I force myself to crawl slowly to the entrance of the cave, where I try to stand up. My body is so knotted that for a moment I don’t think I’ll be able to do it, and then when I do the pain is so intense I almost pass out. Slowly, every muscle screaming at me to stop, I inch my way to the entrance. Shaking, heart pounding, I move aside the tree I set to block the entrance, and am temporarily blinded by the full force of the sunlight.
CHAPTER TWO
In an emergency situation, as a guide to prioritising and planning, bushcraft should take into account the ‘rule of three’, which states that a human being can survive:
• 3 minutes without air
• 3 hours without shelter in extreme circumstances
• 3 days without water
• 3 weeks without food
Atkinson’s Guide
FIELD DIARY – Saturday 14 April
* * *
It’s now almost three o’clock as I prepare for my second night in the cave. I have done everything that can reasonably be done to make this a better night than the previous one, but I’m not very hopeful. In some ways the day was worse than the night, and just as terrifying, but I’m confident I can survive, at least until the food runs out. Now that I’ve discovered the best and the worst about my shelter, I find myself longing for the kind of cave depicted in the children’s books left behind by the British missionaries. (These books were far more influential on me than the more formal texts used by my mother for improving our English. I was deeply disappointed when I first arrived in England to find that their jolly descriptions of ginger beer, crystal-clear mountain streams and friendly smiling people were cruelly false.)
The caves in those stories were always light and roomy and bedded with soft white sand. While sitting immobile in my not-so-perfect cave waiting for time to pass, I have visualised my own ideal cave in loving detail. It has a natural ledge for sitting on, a stone basin that collects cool, clean rainwater and a hidden spyhole from which to survey the surrounding terrain. The entrance is naturally concealed behind a clump of living bush and, this is the best bit, there is a secret tunnel to the beach, making it possible to steal out at dawn and wash myself and my clothes (not that the English children ever did this). Close to the cave are banks of heather that can be harvested to make a comfortable, fragrant, springy bed.
My cave is nothing like this. It is narrow and cramped, the floor is rocky, and the two natural ledges are too high or too low for seating. There is no water in the cave (although this is also one of its advantages), and no way to see out, or to reach the beach. I don’t know which I hanker after more, the possibility of being able to see what’s going on outside, or the possibility of having a wash. No, that’s not true. Of course my greatest wish is to be able to see what’s coming. But it is also this lack of viewpoint that makes the cave so secure, and although no trees naturally grow over the entrance, I uprooted one when I found the cave yesterday morning and stuffed it across the narrow slit in the cliff. Even if it dies, it should provide an effective screen if anyone comes, unless their search is exceptionally thorough. It wouldn’t fool a ranger or an experienced bushwhacker, but I don’t think Dave or Matt would know a dead tree from a live one, especially in this terrain.
My Australian friends would be panicking about the lack of bathroom facilities. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy a shower right now, but it’s not looming in my mind the way the food problem looms. Kathryn would be in trouble. When we leave to go anywhere, even just for a coffee, she walks right up close and whispers, ‘Sniff me, Alix. Do I smell?’ She has an almost pathological horror of what she calls ‘crotch-stink’, although any natural smell emanating from her body would be so totally masked by the heavy perfume she wears it would be quite unrecognisable. I wonder if she performs this sniff
ing ritual with men. It might explain why she has so much trouble finding a lasting partner.
Although I’m dreading another night, the day, apart from my fear of discovery, went slightly better than expected. In fact if it hadn’t been for the constant worrying it wouldn’t have been too bad at all. The early morning toilet run was far and away the worst part. By the time I’d unknotted my muscles enough to make a few shaky steps, it was already fully light. Hobbling out from the shelter of the cave into the blinding glare was the most terrifying moment. My sight didn’t clear for a good thirty seconds, and even when I could see, I could barely move. If Dave or Matt had been there I’d have had no chance.
My body was screaming at me to take things slowly, but I knew I had no time to spare. The branches I’d used to cover my footprints on the journey to the cave were still where I’d left them in the undergrowth, and I took a couple of branches with me as I searched for a suitable spot to relieve myself. About thirty metres from the cave entrance I found a circle of dense shrubs with a shallow dip in the middle and a thick ground covering of leaf litter. There were some old animal scats, mammalian by the look of them, which worried me a little, but I couldn’t imagine anything that could pose a danger to me. Having decided that this would be the place for my toilet, I then had to find a way to do the deed. At such moments I would give anything for a penis, although I don’t think this is quite the kind of envy Freud had in mind.
I had carried a weapon in each hand (knife and rock), so I carefully placed them out of range on the ground, and cleared a wide circle in the leaf litter. With some considerable pain because of the stiffness in my arms, I pulled down my jeans and underpants, and tried to squat down, straddling my legs at the same time. Any woman who has ever been in this predicament, fully dressed in jeans and boots, will know what a challenge it presents. The pain in my legs was a great deal more acute than in my arms, and I was afraid they wouldn’t hold out. I didn’t want to fall flat on my face before I’d even finished. It was no use wishing for toilet paper, because apart from being an environmental hazard, it’s also a stark giveaway of human presence. It was all I could do to pull everything up and then stand up myself. Next time it would make sense to choose a spot closer to a tree, and use the trunk as a pulley. The urge to wash my hands was ridiculously strong, even though I hadn’t touched anything beyond waistbands. It’s all in your mind, Alix.
Once I’d buried the evidence and also covered any tracks that led to the spot I allowed myself a few minutes to stretch my legs and explore a bit. A little to the right of my original track there was a small hollow wooded with what looked like boobialla and coast banksia. I didn’t have time to check it out at that moment but I decided to make it my goal for the following morning. The area I knew nothing at all about was the cliff beyond the cave. It was also out of sight of the approach and I would hear anyone coming before they saw me. Or so I hoped.
Ten nervous but productive minutes later I had a very much clearer picture of my environment. The cave is at the far north-west of the island, which reaches a low rocky peak of which the cave forms part of the base. Seen from this direction it was, as I had suspected, not a true cave at all, but a gap formed by the slippage of several large granite rocks one against the other, probably the result of a fairly major landslide, and then gouged out further by the tides. I didn’t have time to climb to the clifftop, and anyway it would be too risky without ropes. I couldn’t afford to fall. Not that there seemed to be much up there, but I’d have liked to check out the provenance of the roof holes.
Instead I walked carefully (trying to step on rock where possible) to the end of a flat natural path that led to a conglomeration of boulders. When I reached the end of it I found, to my great excitement, that a kind of rough rocky staircase led down to a tiny sand and pebble beach, at the edge of which I could see a scatter of green and pinky-red. Karkalla. No time to explore further, but it raised my spirits. I calmed down enough though to erase any footprints with my leafy branch, which I took back into the cave with me, pulling the tree carefully across to cover the entrance as thoroughly as possible.
One other thing I noticed on my expedition was a flat weathered rock a little to the north-east of the rocky path to the sea, through which I thought I could see daylight. I made a mental note to check it out and see if it might not make a better toilet than the one in the bushes, which will quickly become uninhabitable. It’s also closer, which would enable me to nick out and back in a minute or so if necessary. At least the lack of food has brought an accompanying constipation, but I’m a bit worried about the sultanas that will be making up half my diet from now on. One thing my line of work is good for is training the bladder, so I was able to last the whole day without discomfort, but I will have to go out night and morning.
As soon as I came back in, before sorting out the food, I made out a Day Survival Plan. (If I can think of any way of making a Night Survival Plan, I’ll do that as well, but I don’t think there’s a lot of scope there.) I followed my plan religiously today, and found that it helped to break up the time. There were plenty of stretches of monotony, when I began to feel I couldn’t stand it any longer, but just knowing there was an activity to come helped to a surprising extent. The plan also includes regular changes of position, plus the small number of exercises that are possible in this restricted space, and certainly I was not as uncomfortable at the end of today as I was after last night. This is how the plan went today.
Daybreak: Go outside for exercise and toilet. Maximum twenty minutes from first light.
Nothing to add here really, except that I didn’t realise how terrified I’d been until I was back inside and it took another twenty minutes for my heart rate and pulse to subside.
6.00–8.00 a.m.: Housekeeping. Organise food and supplies. Change clothes if necessary.
This was the busiest time. I worked out the clothing situation first, taking off my dirty T-shirt and putting it in the back pocket of my backpack, away from the clean clothes. I’ve decided to wear my knickers until they become uncomfortable and then hang them up to air near the roof of the cave. With two spare pairs, they should last about nine days, nearly as long as the food. I’ve got three pairs of socks in total so plan to change them also every few days. That will definitely give me something to look forward to.
Organising the food took a satisfyingly long time. I had to work out some way of decanting the contents of the food bags so I could count the nuts and sultanas out into smaller rations. I had thought I’d use my anorak as a tray but it was too dusty, so I tried a plastic bag, but they rolled around too much and I was afraid of losing some. I ended up having to retrieve the dirty T-shirt I’d just taken off, and it was fortunate I didn’t use a clean one because it was even dirtier when I’d finished. The nuts left a patina of grease on the cotton surface, and then the sultanas, when I followed the same procedure with them, turned the grease into a sticky mess. I can’t imagine when I’ll be able to wash the shirt, so please God I won’t need to wear it. I fervently hope it won’t attract ants, and with this in mind have shoved it into a kitchen tidy bag and hung it from the tree root.
It’s amazing how much you can spin out a job when you know there is absolutely nothing else to do. There were 196 peanuts in the 100 gram bag. My plan was to allow rations for ten days, an optimistic plan in some ways (thinking I’d survive for ten days) and a pessimistic one in others (thinking I’d have to). This meant I’d have twenty nuts a day for nine days, and sixteen for the tenth day. Sultanas must be a bit smaller because there were 220 in the 100 gram bag, dividing neatly into twenty-two per day. By the time I had very carefully counted out twenty nuts at a time, bagged them into specimen bags and sealed them with a rubber band, leaving the final sixteen in the original bag, and then done the same with the sultanas, it was 7.30 a.m. already. The two cough lozenges I bagged and put away for the future. I’m worried that they might make me thirsty, so I’ll keep them as emergency rations. Thirst is becoming a problem and
I could barely wait for food time, when I could finally have a drink. I must stick to the plan though, because once my water supply has gone I’m going to be in trouble. I haven’t seen a sign of any other source of fresh water, and the bush methods of water-gathering I’ve been able to remember would be dangerously visible, putting them out of the question.
The karkalla plants were a welcome distraction from dreams of water and I took them from their bag and examined them carefully. The nine fruits I counted last night were all still clinging to the stem, but clearly would not keep for much longer, so I decided to have five of them as a snack in the middle of the day, and keep the other four for tomorrow. I think they’ll make it that far. I spent the remaining time devising plans for getting down to the little rocky beach to harvest some more.
8.00–9.00 a.m.: First meal. Ration of nuts and sultanas. Small cup of water.
At eight o’clock precisely I poured a small cup of water and very slowly sipped until it was half gone. I’ll have the rest just before nine. I managed to extend this time by counting to thirty after each sip, a trick I learned from a field hand when I was working out at Norseman, but I still finished far too quickly. I was worried that the food would make me thirsty again, and very glad the nuts were not salted. By then I was desperately hungry, and I counted out ten from the twenty in the bag and crammed a handful recklessly into my mouth. The remaining ten I managed to eat in two lots, but it didn’t make much difference. With the sultanas, I was able to show enough restraint to pick them out one at a time and savour each one. I don’t normally like sultanas, which is why I pack them as emergency food. Nuts always seem to burn a hole in my pack and I tend to declare a state of emergency on any kind of pretext and eat handfuls of them until they’re gone, but sultanas often remain to take the journey home with me.
Beware of Dogs Page 2