by Nevil Shute
“What’ll you do when your time at the camp is up?” she asked. “Where will you make your home?”
“I do not know that,” he said. “I think that it will be not very far from here.” They came to the road gate. “I have a strange idea in my head,” he said, “but I will not tell you now.”
“Oh, Carl! What is it?”
He laughed. “Perhaps I will tell you tomorrow. Are you sure that it will be all right if we go to the Howqua?”
“I’d love to, if you’re free. I’m not doing anything.”
“I will come here for you at about ten o’clock.”
“I’ll be ready, and I’ll have the lunch packed.”
He made a stiff little bow. “Till then. Good-night, Miss Jennifer.”
“If we’re going out tomorrow, Carl, cut out the Miss Jennifer. Everybody calls me Jenny here.”
“All right. Good-night, Jenny.”
“Good-night, Carl.”
On Sunday mornings the Dorman family slept late, but Jennifer was up by seven in the kitchen, with which she was now tolerably familiar. She was a fair cook in an unpractised way, capable of interpreting and following a recipe with a reasonable chance of an acceptable result. She made some pastry and cooked half a dozen sausages and made sausage rolls in the oven, and having the oven hot she made a few jam tarts. Surveying the results of her efforts, she came to the conclusion that it looked a bit light for a lumberman; in the larder she found cold mutton and some cold potatoes, and an onion, and so set to work again and made a couple of enormous Cornish pasties. There were plenty of bananas and grapes and passion fruit in the house so she took some of those, and then, because the basket still looked empty, she cut a pile of honey sandwiches.
Jack Dorman came out in his dressing-gown and found her pondering. “My word,” he said. “He’s not going home hungry.”
She said anxiously, “Do you think it’s enough?”
“He won’t starve if he gets outside that lot. What are you taking to drink?”
She smiled. “I was wondering if you could let us have some beer.” Beer was in short supply in that hot weather; the expanding population had beaten the expanding beer output, as it had beaten the output of everything else in Australia.
“I’ll let you have two bottles,” he grumbled. “I’m not going to give him any more.”
“That’s awfully sweet of you.” He fetched the bottles and put them on the table.
“How’s he getting down here from the camp?” he asked.
“He’ll get a lift down, probably,” she said. “He said he’d be here at ten o’clock.”
“He may not find it easy on a Sunday morning,” he said. “He’ll have to start off walking about nine or so. I’ll take a run up the road in the Chev after breakfast and pick him up, if you’ll get breakfast for me before then. Jane’s sleeping in.”
She glanced at the clock; it was about half-past eight. “I’ll have it on the table in a quarter of an hour.”
Breakfast was a running meal that day; she fed Jack Dorman and then Tim Archer and Mario, and finally Jane came out and sat down with a cup of tea. It was still on the table when Jack Dorman came back with Carl Zlinter, who he had picked up on the road half a mile outside the camp.
“Morning, Carl,” said Jennifer. “Have you had any breakfast?”
He said, “Thank you, I have had some coffee.”
“Coffee? Is that all you’ve had?”
He smiled. “In my country we do not eat a cooked breakfast.”
“But you eat a proper breakfast here, don’t you, before going out in the woods?”
Jane said, laughing, “Go on, Carl, sit down and let her cook you bacon and eggs. She wants to do it.”
He laughed with her. “All right.”
“That’s better,” said Jennifer, breaking a couple of eggs into the pan. “I wouldn’t like you to faint by the way, especially if you’re driving me in the Chev.”
“He’s been driving it this morning, down from the camp,” said Jack Dorman. “You have to keep on telling him which side to drive on.”
Carl Zlinter laughed. “It is the first time I have driven on the left side of the road, and with the steering so.”
In spite of that, he proved himself to be quite a reasonable driver when they started off in the utility half an hour later. It was still sunny and cloudless, with the promise of another hot day. Jennifer opened the last paddock gate on to the main road at Merrijig, let the Chev pass through, and closed it carefully behind. As she got back into the car she said, “Did you bring your rod?”
He shook his head. “I would not want to fish today. It would not be sociable.”
She laughed. “I’ve never seen anybody fly-fishing. I’d like to know how it’s done.”
“So?” he said. “It is very delicate, and always one is learning something new. That is why I like it, because never do you come to the end of learning some new thing. Also, it makes you go to beautiful, deserted country, and that also I like. I will show you how to do it one day, if you like. But now, the water is too warm; the fish will not take a fly until the water grows more cold, in March.”
He drove across the bridge over the Delatite and on up the road towards the lumber camp, till after a mile or so he turned off into a paddock, and they drove on a rough track across pastures for a time, heading for the hills. Their passage stirred a great flight of white cockatoos from the trees; they wheeled above the car, brilliant against the deep blue sky before settling in the next paddock.
Presently the track left the pastures and entered the woods, and began to wind up-hill through a forest of gum trees. It was quiet in the dim aisles of the woods, and scented; fantastic parrots with brilliant red bodies and equally brilliant blue wings flew before them up the track and vanished in the glades. “It’s amazing, the colours,” the girl from London said quietly. “Don’t birds have to camouflage themselves in this country?”
He said, “I do not think that there are any beasts of prey to worry them, such as leopards or wild cats. I do not think that birds or koala bears have many enemies in this country.”
She said, “I never thought I’d see such lovely birds flying about wild …”
He smiled. “There are many lovely things in this country that one would not see in any other place.”
The track wound up through the forest, utterly deserted. Once or twice a wallaby started at their approach and went bounding away among the trees, and once a red English fox with a great bushy tail crossed the track in front of them and vanished in the undergrowth, perhaps hunting the occasional rabbit that appeared, and looked at them, and scuttled away with flashing scut. And once Carl Zlinter said, “You have seen a koala bear?”
“Never,” she said. “They’re little creatures, aren’t they?”
He did not answer, but drove on for a few yards, stopped the car and got out quickly, and ran into the bush. He was in time to catch the koala under the armpits as it clambered unhurried up a tree to get away from him; he disengaged it gently and carried it to her on the track, a tubby little brown animal with tattered fur that struggled feebly but did not seem particularly distressed by capture.
“Oh, Carl!” she said, “what a lovely little beast. He’s just like a teddy bear.”
He did not understand the allusion. “I think he is a very old bear, this,” he said. “His fur is bad. You can stroke him if you like; he will not hurt you. But do not let him scratch you, because his claws will be dirty and poisonous, and a small wound may go bad.”
He held the bear from behind, gently controlling it while she stroked it. “It’s a wild one, isn’t it?” she asked, puzzled.
“He is a wild bear,” he told her. “He lives here in the forest.”
“But he seems so tame. He doesn’t mind being handled or stroked bit!”
“He has no enemies in the woods,” he said. “No animal hunts koala bears to kill them, only men, and now that is forbidden, very strongly. Because he has no enem
ies, he has no fear.”
“What will happen if you let him go, Carl? Let him go, and see.”
He released the bear, and they crouched beside him; he looked from one to the other, looked around, then walked deliberately to a tree and began to climb up it, holding on with the great claws upon each foot. Jennifer walked after him and stroked him as he went till he was out of reach; he paid no attention to her. They stood watching him as he slowly made his way up the trunk above their heads.
“He is going up there for his dinner,” Carl said. “He eats only the fresh shoots of the gum trees, and he needs several different sorts of gum tree for good health. That is why you cannot keep them in a cage as captives.”
“How did you get to know all that, Carl? Have you handled them before?”
“Many times,” he told her. “In the woods, felling the timber, we come on them many times, sometimes one in each day, or more. It is forbidden to kill them, and they are so harmless nobody would kill them if he could help it. Sometimes as we fell the timber we find a tree with a bear in it, and that we leave, if possible, till the next day when he has gone away. Sometimes it is necessary to fell that tree with the bear in it, and usually he is only shaken and frightened a little, so then we pick him up and put him in a smaller tree, that we shall not fell, in a part where we have been to and we shall not come again. It is easy to handle them, but you must not let them scratch.”
They got back into the utility and went on up the track, winding around the contours of the hills between the trees; a rough, rutted track, more of a watercourse than a road. Presently they came out on top of the ridge; there was a cleared pasture here, or perhaps a natural clearing due to some geological formation that checked the growth of trees. Zlinter drove into it and stopped the car. “This is Jock McDougall’s paddock,” he said. “Here we must leave the car and walk for the rest of the way, down to the Howqua.”
The paddock stood upon the summit of the ridge, with a wide view across the wooded, mountainous country to the south. In the brilliant sunlight line after line of blue hills stretched to the horizon, with here and there a thin wisp of smoke showing a fire. “Oh Carl,” she said, “what a marvellous place. Are there farms and people living in this country?”
He shook his head. “Here is nobody,” he said. “Nobody at all.” He thought for a minute. “There, where you see the smoke, there is a forest fire, a little one, and there there may be men trying to control it and to put it out. It could be also that somewhere in this country there would be another lumber camp, as at Lamirra, where there would be men. But, except those, there would only be the forest rangers; there would not be more than three or five people in the whole of the country that you see.”
She stared entranced. “How far does it go?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “The sun is behind us; we are looking to the south. Seventy or eighty miles, perhaps, the forest goes; not more. Then comes the coastal plain, I think, of farms and pastures that they call Gippsland, and then the sea.”
He stood looking over the wide, blue expanse of forest with her. “This is another reason why I love this country,” he said quietly. “It is a little like my own home, in Bohemia.”
She turned to him. “Do you get homesick, Carl?”
He shook his head. “Not now. I would not ever want to go back there to live. So much is changed, and I have changed so much myself, also. But I remember how it was at home when I was a schoolboy, and this is like the forests are at home a little, and so I am happy to be here.”
He glanced down at her. “Do you have big forests such as this in England? You do not have them, do you?”
She shook her head. “Not now. It might have been like this in England two hundred years ago, but it’s not now. If this was England it would all be cut up into farms, with roads and filling-stations and villages and towns, and people everywhere. There’s nothing like this at home.”
“Is it too big for you?” he asked. “Does it frighten you?”
“It’s strange,” she said. “It’s very, very lovely, but it’s strange. If I lived here I should have to get to know what you do in a big forest, if you should be lost. Once I knew that, I don’t think I’d be afraid of it.” She paused. “It’s not as if it was full of lions and tigers.”
He smiled. “Only flies and mosquitoes, very many of those, and a few snakes. But you are right; in these forests there is nothing much to fear but your own ignorance.”
He turned back with her to the utility to take her basket, and she saw that he had put a flabby newspaper parcel on top of her basket of food, and that he had brought a grill with him. “What’s that?” she asked. “Meat?”
He said, “I brought some steaks with me, to make a fire and grill them in the way of this country. Have you done that? They are very good.”
She said, “I’ve never done that, Carl. But we’re going to have far too much food.”
He smiled. “If there is too much, we can take it home, or give it to Billy Slim.”
“Can we make a fire in the forest, Carl, without setting everything alight, at this time of year?”
“It is necessary to be very careful,” he said. “At the Howqua, by the river, there are stones built up to make a fireplace, and there Billy Slim allows a fire to be made. The fishermen cook steaks there sometimes; I have done that myself.”
He would not let her carry anything, and they set off down the track through the woods into the valley. As they went he told her Billy Slim’s story of the match that had burned blue down in the open paddock in the valley, and the fire that jumped. “I have not seen that in the two summers I have been here,” he said. “One might work in the woods for fifty years, and never see that thing. Yet, I think that it is true.”
“That was the fire that burned the town that was here?” she asked.
He nodded. “One of them. I will show you where the town was.”
Presently through the green aisles ahead of them, and below, they saw a turn of the river, and then another. They dropped down into the valley flat and came out on an open sward beside the river where no trees were growing, a meadow of perhaps five acres along the river bank. On the other side of the river, in among the trees, there was the iron roof of a weatherboard house. “That is where Billy Slim lives,” he told her, “the forest ranger.”
He put the basket and the grill down under a tree that stood alone in the meadow, not far from the river. “This is where the town was,” he said.
She looked round, startled. “Where? Here?”
“Here where we are standing, in this flat,” he said. “There were many houses here fifty years ago, and in the trees up the hill, where we have come.”
There was absolutely nothing to distinguish the place from any other natural glade in the forest, no sign of any habitation but the forest ranger’s house. “It seems incredible that it has gone so completely,” she said, “and so soon. How many houses were there here?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “A hundred—perhaps more. There were three hotels.” He moved a little way from the tree. “Can you see the line here, the rectangle? And here, another room, and here, these bricks? This was the Buller Arms Hotel, that Billy Slim’s father kept. Here came the girls to serve as barmaids to the miners, the naughty girls, if that old Irishman was right.” He paused. “Only fifty years ago, and now all is gone.”
She had great difficulty in believing it. She said, “Carl, how have the trees recovered so quickly? These trees are very big, some of them. Have they all grown up since the last fire?”
“Fire does not kill the gum trees,” he told her. “All other trees die in the forest fire, but not the eucalypts. After the fire when everything is burned to blackened stumps, you think the forest will be spoiled for ever. But next spring the gum trees shoot again, and in a very few years all is as it was before.” He turned and showed her the blackened streaks upon the bark of the tree they stood under. “You can see—this one has lived through the fire. Only the gu
m tree can live through the fire like that; all other trees are killed. I think that that is why these forests are all eucalypts.”
“Where is the cemetery?” she asked.
“It is a mile down the river, perhaps a mile and a half,” he said. “There is a path that leads to it, but it is very overgrown. Also, it crosses the river three or four times, and it is necessary to walk through the water. Would you like for me to ask Billy Slim if he can lend a horse for you? It will be easier for you so.”
She laughed. “I’d fall off a horse, Carl. I can’t ride. How deep is the water that we’ve got to walk through?”
“I do not think it will be deeper than your knees.”
“Well, that’s all right. I don’t mind getting these shoes wet. It’ll be rather nice to paddle on a day like this.” The sun blazed down upon them as they stood; it was unthinkable that wading in the river could be anything but pleasant.
They left the basket of food hung up on a branch of the tree, and started off along the meadow by the river, a clear trout stream running rippling over water-worn stones with alternate runs and pools. Presently the path led them down to the water, and was seen emerging from the river on the far side, among the bushes. “Here is the ford,” Zlinter said. “I will go first; I do not think it will be deep.”
He walked into the water and turned to look back at her; she followed him gingerly. The water was cool and refreshing about her ankles, plucking at her slacks; she stooped and rolled them up above the knee. Her blouse sagged open and he saw the soft curve of her breasts, because in that hot weather she had little on; he let his eyes rest for a moment in enjoyment, and then quickly averted them in case she should see him looking. She finished with her slacks and stood erect, and found him studiously looking up the river, betraying himself; she knew what he had seen and coloured slightly, but she did not mind; her own eyes had rested once or twice on his brown chest and arms with secret pleasure. She followed him across the river; as it grew deep she reached out and took his hand, and he guided her across. In the thicket on the other side he said, “It would be better to put down your trousers now, or you will get your legs scratched,” and she did so, slightly turned away from him.