by Barbara Wood
He missed Joanna, and wished she had come home with him, or that he could have stayed with her. Had she found anything, he wondered, in the five weeks he had spent traveling? A telegram had been waiting for him when he'd arrived at Merinda, dated four-and-a-half weeks ago: HAVE CONTINUED ON TO KALAGANDRA. STAYING AT GOLDEN AGE HOTEL. LOVE YOU AND MISS YOU. JOANNA. There had been nothing since.
Hugh heard footsteps in the hall, and turned to see Sarah in the doorway.
"You're back!" she said.
They embraced. "How is Joanna?" Sarah asked. "Has she found anything?"
"Nothing yet, I'm afraid. At least, not when I left. I was hoping there would be more news waiting for me here."
"I'm sorry, there's nothing," Sarah said. "But if I know Joanna, whatever she is doing, she isn't idle! But there is something from Adam." She went to the desk and brought back an envelope. "It will take you an hour to read this, he's so happy at the university!"
Hugh looked at the familiar handwriting, and read the first words: "Dear Family, Greetings from your very brilliant and worldly son!"
Hugh smiled, and an image flashed into his mind of a little boy with a bandage on his head, his eyes full of confusion and fear.
"What about the sheep?" Sarah said. "Do you know what's wrong with them? I've heard people saying it's a new strain of blowfly."
"I think they're right. This time there are complications with mycotic dermatitis as well, which I've never seen in fly-strike before."
"What will you do?"
"First we'll crutch all the stock, and take as much wool off the withers as we can. Then I'm going to quarantine the in-lamb ewes—we have over two thousand of them. If they get fly-struck, then we stand to lose all the stock. And then we'll start dipping them, and see what works."
"Hugh," Sarah said. "If there is anything I can do to help—"
"Thank you, Sarah," he said. And then he thought: but first, a trip into Cameron Town for the unhappy task of sending a telegram to Joanna, telling her that he would not, after all, be joining her in Kalagandra right away.
Sarah couldn't sleep, she was restless. Perhaps, she thought, it had something to do with this new trouble afflicting the sheep station, and her worry for Hugh. Or did it have nothing at all to do with Merinda, was it rooted in events taking place over a thousand miles away, on the western coast of the continent?
Sarah pulled a shawl around her shoulders and slipped out of the house. It was midnight; the Western District slumbered beneath an uncertain autumn moon. As she went down to the river, where she had been tending a new crop of basil and mint, she wondered where Joanna was at that moment—what she and Beth were doing, what they had found. Sarah wished now she had gone to Western Australia with them. Joanna had said, "Mrs. Jackson will look after the garden," but Sarah had feared Mrs. Jackson would not give the garden the care it needed. And then, too, she had she wanted to be here if Adam came home. But he had written to say that he had made so many friends and had been invited to visit a number of them in Sydney, that he was going to stay there rather than make the journey back to Merinda.
I should have gone with Joanna, Sarah thought as she knelt to inspect the first tentative flowerheads on the new mint by the light of her lantern. And when, in the next instant, she thought again, more strongly this time, I should have gone with Joanna, she decided that this must be the cause of her strange restlessness. Was Joanna in some sort of trouble? Was she in need of help? Was Joanna, so far away in an alien land, wishing that Sarah were there with her?
Seeing that the mint and basil weren't as leafy as they should be, she very carefully trimmed off the flowers in order to stimulate leaf growth. And as she worked, surrounded by night sounds, watching shadows move through the woods as clouds brushed the face of the moon, Sarah tried to send herself out over the great distance that stood between her and Joanna, tried to sense what was happening in the Western Australian wasteland.
When she heard a sound behind her, she thought at first that it was an animal, pausing to assess the human intruder before hurrying on to its burrow. But then something else—a sudden knowing—brought Sarah to her feet. She peered through the trees. She held her breath.
And then she saw him, walking along the path that led from the main road to the house, a suitcase in his hand.
"Philip!" she cried, running to him.
"Sarah!" He dropped the case and ran to her; they flew into each other's arms, into a tight embrace. Philip's mouth found hers. They kissed for a long moment, then he said, "Sarah, Sarah."
"You're here! You're really here!"
"Didn't you get my letter? Oh Sarah, my God, my lovely Sarah." He kissed her again, driving his hands into her hair. She held on to him, unbelieving, giddy with the feel of him, the warmth, the smell of him.
"Sarah, my God I've missed you," he said, taking her face between his hands. "But Sarah, I wrote to you—I'm still married—"
She kissed him again. Then she pressed her face into his neck and said, "You're here. Philip, you're here."
"I have to explain, tell you. I had to come back. I've traveled all over, Sarah, and wherever I went, you were there with me. I tried to live with Alice, in one place, in the way she wanted. But I couldn't. I don't belong anywhere else. I felt my spirit wasting away. All I could think of was you, and Australia, how at peace I am when I am here with you, how belonging I feel. I asked her to give me my freedom. She said I could go. We aren't the same kind of people. She has her family, Daniel, her home in England. She doesn't need me. But she said she couldn't give me a divorce, not yet. Sarah, my love," he said, "I just want to be with you."
"Yes, Philip," she said, suddenly understanding the restlessness that had invaded her soul, and feeling it suddenly gone. She looked at his mouth—the mouth she had so often wondered about, dreamed about. She touched his lips; she kissed him again, lightly. And then passionately.
"Whatever we face, Philip," she said, "we face together. We'll work it out somehow."
He drew her down into the damp grass, into the privacy of the tall eucalyptus trees, the shrubs and the vines. She saw the Southern Cross glitter in the branches overhead as he covered her with his hard body, and felt the woods swirl around her as he murmured, "I should never have left you ..." And then no more words were needed.
TWENTY-EIGHT
E
VEN BEFORE CAPTAIN FIELDING CAME BACK TO HER AFTER conferring with Sammy, the black tracker they had hired in Kalagandra, Joanna knew that something was wrong.
She and her party were in a semi-arid wilderness called the mallee, an expanse of scrubby wasteland that lay on the edge of the Great Victoria Desert. They had left Kalagandra four weeks ago, traveling by camel through the desert wilderness, and they had been following this particular track for the last nine days. But so far they had found no Aborigines, no traces of camps, nothing that could be taken for Karra Karra. Joanna, sitting atop her camel, looked around at the desert that seemed to stretch into infinity, a monotony broken only by gray-green mulga, stunted eucalyptus, and desert oaks with peculiar, needle-like leaves.
She had a clearer understanding, now, of the harsh, stark face of Australia. Maps showed a thin coastal strip encircling the continent, where towns and cities grew, lush forests and grassy plains. But inside that rim sprawled the great dusty heart of Australia, which was why camels had been imported for use there for some time. Joanna and her party had traveled among twisted trees that grew amid sand-plains and miniature salt lakes, where lizards and flies and snakes were numerous; occasionally they saw a wallaby or an emu, but these were infrequent. And there was not a single human habitation in sight; no sign of civilization for miles.
The June day was hot, and ominous black clouds floated on the distant horizon.
Joanna thought of the thousands of years that had gone into sculpting the sandy ridges that were held together by spinifex and scrub, and of what an uninviting place it was. It seemed impossible that a young Aboriginal woman and a little girl cou
ld have come across this, alone, on foot. She herself was accompanied by four men, eight camels, water and food rations, guns, tents, a medical kit, and a compass—and still it was very hard going. Joanna wondered if perhaps the Aboriginal woman and child had had some kind of help.
Joanna saw Sammy, the tracker, go off with a rifle and a boomerang, and then Fielding came up on his camel, his face shaded by the wide-brimmed hat he had exchanged for his seaman's cap. "I've sent him off to look for water. Our supply is getting low," he said.
"There's something else bothering you, Captain. What is it?"
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Westbrook. But I'm afraid it appears that we are lost."
"Lost? But how can that be?"
He handed her his compass and said, "Watch what this does."
Joanna held the instrument in the flat of her palm. The needle quivered on "north," and then suddenly snapped down to "south."
"It's been doing that for days," Fielding said. "It wasn't so bad at first. Sammy and I thought we could make our own adjustments. But it's been getting worse. And now I'm afraid the compass is useless."
"What is causing it?" Joanna asked, watching in amazement as the needle suddenly snapped to north again.
"We have no idea. I've never seen a compass do that before."
"Could it be broken?"
"Well, I wondered that myself. But a good mariner never goes to sea with only one compass." He dug into his saddlebag and brought out a sphere the size of a large orange; the bottom half was metal and the top was glass. In it, a compass floated. "We use these on ships," he said. "The needle floats in the alcohol, see? It's more reliable than the handheld variety. Now watch what it does."
Joanna stared at the needle floating in the sphere. It sailed over the "north" reading, and then slowly swam down to the "south" point.
"If you ask me," Fielding said, looking at the desolation surrounding them, "there are strange forces at work out here."
"Is there no way of telling where we are?"
"Mrs. Westbrook, we don't even have any way of determining what direction we're facing. Usually a watch can tell you—" He took out his pocket watch and showed it to her. "Normally, all you have to do is point twelve o'clock toward the sun, and the north-south line runs halfway between twelve and the hour hand. But I haven't been able to get a fix on the sun."
Joanna squinted up at the flat, white plate of sky. High clouds were stretched over the earth, like cheesecloth over the mouth of a jar. There was no single source of sunlight; it seemed to come from everywhere at once. The only break in the strange whiteness was the black clouds that hung on the horizon and that they had been watching for days. Fielding had said that it was storming where those clouds were, but it was impossible to tell if the storm was to the north, south, east or west, or how many miles away it was.
"What about Sammy? Can't he lead us out of here?"
"Sammy's a Pilbara Aborigine, Mrs. Westbrook. This area is not his ancestral home. He says he can't read the songlines here."
Beth came up on her camel. After a few lessons in Kalagandra on how to ride one, she had become quite good at it. Like her companions, she wore a scarf over her nose and mouth to prevent the dust from getting into her lungs, and a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off. Her long divided skirt was tucked into the tops of her boots. "What's wrong, Mother?" she asked.
When Joanna explained about the compass, Beth said, "Are we going to turn back?"
Joanna thought of Hugh, who she felt certain was on his way to Western Australia at that moment. When he had left for Merinda six weeks ago, he had promised that it would take him a week at the most to contain the fly-strike, and then he would return at once to Western Australia. Which meant he would be back at Kalagandra in the next two weeks or so. Joanna had left him a letter at the Golden Age Hotel, explaining what she had done and why, and in which direction her small party had headed. She had also told him she would be back at Kalagandra by the middle of June, which was only a few days away.
She turned to Captain Fielding. "Can we find our way back?" she said.
"First we have to determine in what direction the town is, Mrs. Westbrook. If we make a mistake and go in the wrong direction, we'll end up in the Great Victoria Desert and then we will most surely perish."
Beth said, "What is in the Great Victoria Desert, Captain?"
"No one knows. It hasn't been explored. Men go in, they don't come out. But I imagine it must be a lot worse than what we have been traveling through in the past four weeks. We don't want to end up in there, I can tell you that."
Eric Graham got down from his camel and rubbed his sore back, muttering something about "bloody insane way to get about."
Sammy appeared then, grinning broadly beneath his battered hat. "She plenty water over there, Captain," he said, pointing.
"Is it a large waterhole?" Joanna said.
"She plenty big, missus," the Aborigine said, holding his arms far apart.
Thank God, Joanna thought as she looked at her companions. It had been six days since their last visit to a waterhole; their clothes were dirty and sweaty, their faces matted with grime. And the dishes they had been eating from had been cleaned only with sand. Joanna looked forward to giving everything a good washing.
"I suggest we stop here, Captain," she said. She was thinking that, if her party was indeed lost and they did not return to Kalagandra in a week, Hugh would surely set out to look for them.
"Aye, I agree with you," he said, bringing his camel to its knees, and sliding stiffly to the ground.
"Captain Fielding," Beth said, "how far do you suppose Kalagandra is from here?"
"I couldn't say, lassie. I think we've been traveling in circles for the past week. In fact, I recommend we stay at this camp until we can get directional bearings. The sky might clear up in a day or two. To keep going would be dangerous."
They set up camp the way they had done every night for the past four weeks, with Sammy going off in search of food, Graham and Fielding putting up the tents and Beth collecting firewood. Joanna retired to her tent to freshen up before joining the others for dinner.
She lit the lantern and pulled the pins out of her hair. She brushed it vigorously and put it up with care, being meticulous with the placement of the pins. She washed her hands and face with the water Sammy had provided, and applied a little lavender cologne. And, since there was a waterhole nearby, she changed into her last clean blouse. Tomorrow, she told herself, would be laundry day.
Outside, she found the table and chairs in place, and the dishes ready.
Sammy was the cook, but Joanna always inspected the food before they ate it. Tonight he was making a stew of a wallaby he had trapped. "Be sure it is well cooked, Sammy," she said. Then she pulled the flour-and-water loaves the Australians called "damper" out of the coals, brushed them off, and put them on a plate.
By choice, Sammy sat by the fire, eating with his fingers, but Joanna and her companions sat on chairs and ate with knives and forks. "Captain Fielding," she said, "those black clouds we've been watching for days, would they be over the Great Victoria Desert? I mean, would it rain there?"
"Aye, it rains in the desert, Mrs. Westbrook," Fielding said, dispensing rum from a bottle he had brought along. He gave the nearly empty bottle a morose look, and added, "But since it rains only rarely there, when it does it's torrential. We want to be sure to keep a distance between us and those clouds."
"What I was wondering is, if the storm is in the desert, then mightn't we determine from that that Kalagandra lies in the other direction?"
"Not necessarily. It could be raining in Kalagandra, in which case the desert is that way," he said, and he pointed over his shoulder.
"What I don't understand," Eric Graham said, "is how the Aborigines manage to survive out here. How do they get around on days when you can't see the sun? They don't have compasses."
"They have a system of roads, Mr. Graham," Joanna said. "Not roads such as we know, but invisible tracks t
hat crisscross the continent. The Aborigines travel along them the same way we would follow a city street or a country lane."
"But if the tracks are invisible, how do they know where they are?"
"By memorizing landmarks," Captain Fielding said. "They might look at that tree over there and think, Here's where we turn to the right. Or a pile of rocks might remind them that they're halfway to a water-hole. We could be sitting smack in the middle of a major highway, and not know it!"
Graham looked around in the darkness, skepticism in his eyes. "So you're saying, then, that if we could identify one of these invisible roads, we might be able to find our way back to town?"
"If we could identify the proper songline," Joanna said, "we could follow it directly to Karra Karra instead of roaming around the wilderness hoping to stumble upon something." Recalling how Sarah had once pointed out the songline of the Kangaroo Ancestor that ran through Merinda, Joanna wondered if she might try the same thing here. Sarah had looked at a pile of stones, a grouping of trees, and she had been able to read the signposts in them.
After dinner, while Sammy washed the dishes, the others gathered around the campfire for tea. Although it was boiled in a billycan, Joanna had brought along a ceramic sugar bowl, teacups and saucers and small spoons. Eric Graham took out his notebook and began writing in it, as he did every night, while Captain Fielding produced a pipe and filled it. Beth settled down to read.
Joanna studied her companions' faces. Eric Graham seemed to be doing fairly well, she thought, despite a problem with insects. She had had to treat him several times for bites and stings that didn't seem to be afflicting the others. And Beth, too, seemed to be fine. Her biggest concern, however, was for Captain Fielding. Joanna wondered if he should be subjecting himself to such harsh conditions at his age. He did not complain, but she saw the fatigue in his posture, and the grayness that had invaded his cheeks.
She was beginning to wonder if perhaps she should have heeded Commissioner Fox's warning against going into the desert. "Wait for your husband, Mrs. Westbrook," Fox had said. "Take more men and provisions with you." But Joanna had felt desperate about time passing quickly; and Sister Veronica had said that Emily Makepeace had come this way, which meant that Karra Karra must be somewhere near here, and possibly remnants of Djoogal's clan. As it was, it had taken two weeks in Kalagandra just to get their small expedition together, because the camels had had to be brought up from Albany, and a trustworthy native tracker had had to be found. Joanna had been unable to wait any longer—she had come such a long way, it had taken so much time and now she was so close ... she bad to find her answer.