by Kim Kelly
HILL END 34 MILES
TAMBAROORA 36 MILES
HARGRAVES 57 MILES
MUDGEE 90 MILES
And Greta pointing out beyond it: ‘Oh look, a fire’s been through.’ She sighs across the blackened trunks that lie along both sides of the road here as it winds away through the thickening forest. Fresh scars; I can smell the charcoal. She says: ‘I love the way the new leaves sprout straight out of the scorched bark after a fire – see?’ I do see it: bright green fuzzing around the sides of the black. ‘Life defying death and it happens so quickly. The leaves laugh at the fire, don’t you think, Ryl?’
‘Hm. Yes,’ I reply but I am still inside my dream road, the streaks of burnt bark blackening and caging my mind as I remember further and further behind us: Aunt Libby waiting for us outside the town hall, standing at the corner waving, with Mr Alec Howell, her new husband, by her side. I always imagine Mother didn’t like him, sensed some corruption in him even then. I imagine her pressing her lips together disdainfully as we were introduced. But I can’t be sure she ever did any such thing. She was so pleased that Libby had finally married, and married well, after nursing Grandpa for so long. Married a surgeon no less, a successful and handsome man. I suppose Mother was relieved, more than anything, that Libby wouldn’t be alone. She was almost thirty-two years old; Mother was thirty-seven and so long and contentedly wed. More than anything, I remember Mother sighing as she kissed me goodbye that evening. She didn’t want to leave us. But she had to. She and Papa had to go straight back to the mountains then, to Katoomba, by the train, to see to some business with the partners at Hartley Shale. A party to host, at Echo Point … They were to come back to Bathurst for a proper long holiday, for Christmas. Only a few days, she sighed. We never saw them again.
Phantoms, they seem, lost in the bush. Here and then gone. The engine brakes scream. The carriage falls from rails and into the gorge. Bush smoke.
‘But you know, you won’t make Mr Wilberry go away by refusing to look at him,’ Greta says now, snapping me back into the present.
‘What?’ I look at her, unsure what she’s referring to but reflexively defensive anyway. ‘I wasn’t looking anywhere.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘I don’t mean just now. I mean you keep looking away from him whenever we are near. It’s not very polite.’
She looks up the road to the riders ahead, Mr Wilberry and Mr Thompson, quite a distance from us now and disappearing around another sharp bend, and I am sharp with it, too: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes you do, Ryl.’ She bumps her shoulder into mine, and her eyes are laughing at me. ‘It won’t do to be rude to him – he’ll see through you eventually.’
‘Gret – stop it. Please.’
‘It’s got nothing to do with me.’ Her smile curls with some secret laughter; she looks ahead again. We can’t see them any more at all, only the traces of their dust as the road begins to rise around a hillside.
And Greta shouts, ‘Oh!’ with the first of the bumps in the rougher road, a jounce that almost sends me flying out of the buggy. ‘Oh what fun!’ She laughs and laughs as we’re flung this way and that over ruts carved into the clay beneath us. The Track is a floodwater torrent set in stone.
‘Oh God.’ I hang on to the side rail for my life.
While Gret is instantaneously returned to the girl I have longed to see, the one who was always daring me, Come along, Ryldy. She’s now shrieking at me as we hit another wave of solid clay: ‘Isn’t this terrific!’
No, not at all. Please let it not be like this the whole way up.
‘Yay! Ho!’ Gret squeals and my elbow almost breaks through the side timbers of the buggy with the force of the next jolt.
‘Oh God!’ God, why did I choose this way to come and not the way through Turondale, the way that has an actual road included in the journey? Because Greta is having such a wonderful time defying death and laughing at me along the scenic route, isn’t she.
‘Yous all right back there?’ Buckley turns in his seat, chuckling. ‘The higher road’ll be easier,’ he says to me and winks at Greta, enjoying her excitement. ‘Soon as we see the river again, she’ll even out,’ he assures. ‘Couple of miles.’
Couple of miles? He’s right enough, though. Within another hour, just before my bum is flattened and smashed to the bone, the Track climbs a little more and the Macquarie appears again, to our left.
‘Oh!’ And Greta’s deeper thrill now seems worth every juddering moment; this is why we have come here, along this old byway. ‘So very … Oh … is it really? Can it be?’ This vision of willows trailing limbs along the water’s edge, slender gums reaching high into the sky above; she says: ‘A sanctuary for every green that ever was. This is where they gather.’
She is painting it all in her heart right now, onto her very heart, and at last I feel my nerves begin to relax, too. The sun is warm across my shoulders and I follow its light through my sister’s hair, picking out threads of chestnut amidst the black plaits coiled beneath her hat as she leans out towards the river, and then she is turning to me again, reaching for my hand again: ‘Thank you, Ryldy.’
I smile into hers, with the promise: soon, very soon, you will have this one small freedom – this right of being – to find beauty wherever and whenever you want. There will be no one to keep you from this simple love.
‘And here they are …’ She is pointing up along a cutting that ranges above us now. ‘Oh my goodness, look at them – our poppies.’ Poppies. Yes, here they are. Sprung out of the rock face – two of them – burgundy purple petals fanned wide open against the rust-coloured rocks, black centres drinking in the sun. ‘It’s Mother and Papa, don’t you think, telling us they are here?’
‘Telling me you are a terrible romantic,’ I tease her, even as I am squeezing her hand with that same yearning: yes, they are Mother and Papa, they are here, if only within us. They remain.
And there’s a whole riverbank strewn with them now as we look towards the water again. Poppies everywhere. My whole face is a smile. It feels like the first time I have smiled so fully and so freely since leaving Flo in Sydney. Because I’m sure it is.
‘Whoa!’ And Buckley is pulling Sally up and through a dappled glade where the poppies lie thickest, right on the river. Poppies trampled under hoof and wheel now, and Buckley deciding, ‘Good spot for smoko, you reckon?’ But I can barely reply because I am laughing out loud without knowing exactly what I am laughing at, and Greta is already scrambling out of the buggy, sketchbook in one hand and my hand still in the other. We skitter over each other onto the grass; silly, hilarious girls. A glimpse of a wonder if this is all that freedom truly is: these glancing moments of unchained, unhooked joy. Tripping amongst poppies, burst from fields to wander wild. Between everything else, every dark and confining compromise we are otherwise forced to make.
It is inside this thought that I see Mr Wilberry here; again. And I don’t look away. I can’t. He is walking up the pebbled strand, intent upon something; searching the reeds. Tucking his too-long sun-soaked mane behind his ears, seemingly ignorant of the fact that he is near ankle deep in the water. Mr Thompson lies further up the bank: a pair of legs crossed above the long grass beneath a tree; a puff of pipe smoke on the breeze. Jack and Rebel are resting a few yards further on, muscles quivering with the sweetness of this grass. Except for the summer songs of beetles and birds, we might be the only living beings in the world.
‘I’ll get a billy on, miss?’ Buckley is asking me if we’d like a cup tea, and Greta calls up from the bank where she’s already settling herself and her sketchbook: ‘I’d love one, please!’ And goading me once more: ‘Do you think Mr Wilberry and Mr Thompson might like one too, Ryl?’
But I don’t need goading, not this time. I don’t care if Mr Wilberry wishes for tea or half a cup of river mud; I am compelled towards him. I have been unplea
sant, Greta is right, and I would like to show him that I am not that unpleasant person. He and Mr Thompson have done us an enormous favour by being here with us; I can’t be rude to him, any more than I might entertain any other thought of him, or he me. And yet I am somehow as easily entranced by him as I draw near to him, watching him. An ibis watches him, too, from the shade of the bank opposite. What is Mr Wilberry searching for? Bent over the reeds now, poised, stalking up towards the bank now like the white shadow of some primordial hunter. In fact, as I come closer again, I see he’s holding a knife. A small pocket knife.
He reaches into the reeds, to the back of the strand where the bank is steeply cut. Pulls out a reedy sort of thing, topped with a cluster of violet flowers, though I know they are not violets, I know that much about flowers. These are small, droopy and somewhat untidy star-shaped things, crumpled around their edges. He is turning the stem around in his hand, utterly unaware of my approach along the top of the bank.
I ask him: ‘What have you got there?’
‘Oh?’ He startles, surprised as he looks up to find me looking down at him, but there is some triumph in his smile as he holds the flower out to show me: ‘Pudding lily. At least, that’s what they’re known as where I come from. Arthropodium strictum, they are properly called.’
‘Yes?’ Not particularly fascinating to me. The blooms look like crushed voile; doubtless a native. Yet I see something of its delicacy now, held as it is in such large hands … It seems impossible that these great, broad farmer’s hands should hold such a fine stem.
‘Yes,’ he says; somehow unchained, unhooked himself here in what is obviously his preferred world. ‘The scent of it – smells like vanilla custard. Do you think so?’ He holds it up to me; somehow a different man, as if he’s slaked off a burden, forgotten to be nervous.
The flower smells like something sugary rolled in dirt to me, and I’m sure the face I make says precisely that.
And his chuckle is the warmest sound I’ve ever heard. ‘It’s quite edible, too, the tubers at least.’ His eyes are blue flecked through with brown, not unlike mine. ‘Though I wouldn’t recommend it. Pretty bitter really.’
‘Well, we shan’t have any for luncheon, then, shall we?’ I do like this man; a sadness drags, willow-like, through me.
‘No, I should think not.’ He smiles again, our smiles meeting, just for a moment, before he steps effortlessly up the high bank, unbuckles his haversack lying there and pulls out a little press, unbuckling that too. So deftly he cuts and places the flower stem in the press and snaps it shut, an action he’s performed a thousand times.
‘Why do you press that one?’ I ask him as he buckles it up again. ‘How is it of interest to you?’
‘Oh?’ Now he is surprised by my interest; how sweet he looks in that surprise. ‘The pollen is very deep in colour,’ he explains, ‘unusually dark yellow, almost cinnamon, I suppose – ha? I must make a note of it – unlikely the colour will preserve well, you know, it’ll leach out by the time it eventually finds its way back to Melbourne …’
No, I don’t know. I’ve never pressed a flower in my life; never likely to.
He takes a notebook out of the front pocket of his haversack. ‘I could store it in my sand jar, attempt to keep the colour fast, but I’d rather save that in case something of greater interest …’ he trails off, absorbed in his note.
I continue to watch him, quick sharp scratches on the page, and although I cannot know what these next few days will bring, success or failure, freedom or worse entrapment, I know I shall never forget this man. I hear myself ask him absently: ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Somewhere off up the river.
‘Tea? Oh, all right, why not,’ he says, looking up from his notebook, before appearing to wince, perhaps at some self-admonishment, suddenly uncomfortable with himself again: ‘Ah, I mean to say. Thank you … yes?’
Yes? No? I don’t know. For this moment time has stopped in the blush of his abashment, the sunburst of his lashes, looking down upon me and yet not. This warmth all over my skin. One lovely and impossible moment before I say: ‘Right. Good. But we can’t stop here long.’ And I am rude once more, each word serrated. ‘We must keep tight to our schedule if we’re to make it to Hill End before sunset.’
As if I travel this road regularly. As if Mr Wilberry has done anything to earn my rebuke.
But he only nods now, and smiles that gentle, questing smile as if in fact he does seek to see through me and my strangeness. He picks up his haversack and walks away towards his friend, and I watch him. He turns back to me after a few steps and he says: ‘The poppies are beautiful, by the way.’ Trailing sunlight over his shoulder: ‘Exotics, though. You know. My interest is in the indigenous …’ He leaves the thought trailing, too, and my interest remains in the loping strides: the world is his, surely. Any world. He taps his friend on the end of his boot to rouse him. The boot kicks out playfully, and Mr Wilberry grasps the toe, pretending to wrestle it. Then he walks on to the stallions, stroking Jack along the jaw, before hanging his haversack back on the saddle.
Such a good man. A man of quiet passion. I see my hand upon his arm at dawn this morning, my fists against the broad back of his dinner jacket last night, and I could touch him again now too. But I shan’t. I won’t. I do not know what that touch might do.
Ben
‘Aw, it’ll take as long as it takes, Miss Berylda,’ Buckley is telling her over our tea, how long it might be before we break again for lunch. ‘The road can get a bit tricky from here.’ He glances at me to remind me of that, too, of my primary purpose here: to ride ahead.
‘Oh?’ She laughs, but it’s a thin sound; nervous. ‘Hasn’t it been tricky enough so far?’
Ah – she doesn’t like the travelling. I could say something about that – I could reassure her, couldn’t I? I look into the tea leaves in the bottom of my cup for the words, but my entire mind falls around the sound umm.
And she has turned away again; only slightly, but definitely away. She seems to have spent this whole cup of tea at this slight turning away, so that we have edged around one hundred and eighty degrees from fireside to river.
Have I said something wrong? Did I talk too much about plants earlier? How might I know? I thought I was conversing quite well for a second there but … I spoke only of plants, didn’t I. Pudding lilies. Bloody hell, I don’t know how to do this. I should give up.
Don’t you dare, Mama warns.
I look behind me to Cos, as though that will help me; he’s still lying there where I left him, wrecked and semiconscious, in the shade.
‘Mr Wilberry?’
Yes, at last. She speaks to me. I turn back to the river. But it’s the sister, Greta, stepping up towards the fire here from where she has been drawing in her book down by the water, waving at me.
‘Mr Wilberry,’ the sisters say it now at once: Berylda taking my cup from me and stepping away as Greta nears, holding out her book. ‘Tell me, please, what do you think of my tree?’
‘Tree?’ What do I know about trees? Just don’t go on too much about them, Mr Wilberry. I take the book from her and find good reason to be speechless anyway. God, she’s good. I don’t know enough about art to say exactly what it is – a movement, an emotion perhaps, in what she has sketched out across the page. It’s a willow tree, but it’s not merely a tree; it’s two women: wood sprites, one wrapped around the trunk, twisted through the deep-fissured bark, tormented somehow as though caught by the tree, or inside it; while the other looks down at her from the branches above, reaching for her, trying to gain her attention, perhaps to pull her up. And then, in what appears to be the reflection of the tree in the river, I see yet another sprite: looking up from under the water, as though begging the one in the trunk to go. It’s a haunting image.
‘That’s quite extraordinary, Miss Jones,’ I finally manage to say, still looking into it. ‘Extraordinarily good.�
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‘Greta, please. Just Greta for friends,’ she corrects me, taking her book back, quickly, closing it, hiding it behind her back. ‘Do you really think it’s good?’
‘Er … yes. I very much do. You are –’
‘We must get cracking, I’m afraid,’ Berylda calls up from the river’s edge, shaking out the cups she has washed there; and now she is walking away altogether, returning to the buggy.
‘Oh Ryldy, there’s no great hurry, is there?’ Greta calls back.
‘You won’t be saying that if we get caught out here in the dark later on,’ Berylda replies to the air, charging on.
‘I might.’ Greta laughs. ‘Scaredy-cat!’
She shakes her head, and then smiles up at me in some sort of affectionate apology: ‘My sister.’ Before following her. I watch them both, dainty boots marching through the clover there, skirts brushing across the poppies.
‘Kick out the fire and we’ll get off then, aye?’ the old man Buckley says beside me now.
And I say: ‘Yep.’
We stamp out the fire and I get the feeling that he’s enjoying a laugh at me, under his hat. I’m sure he thinks I’m all tangled up over a couple of pretty girls. And that’s true. But there is much more going on here: some kind of maze of distraction. I’m looking down at the pit of smouldering, half-burnt bits of branches and the image of the willow sprites swims through me, more a feeling than a picture. Really, extraordinary. What a talent. One I don’t have. I can’t draw a convincing stick man.
But I had better rouse Cos.
‘What!’ He rattles awake when I kick the toe of his boot, and his little book of Zarathustra, open on his face, flies off onto the grass, pages rustling.
‘Giddy up,’ I say. ‘Time to get back on the donkey.’
‘No,’ he protests, and then remembers he has no choice; holding out a hand for me to help him up. ‘I have to piss.’
‘Of course you do.’ Because you’re not my best friend, you’re my infant. I glance over to Berylda, sitting in the buggy with her sister, golden everlasting heads bowed over something again; perhaps the drawing book. Waiting to be off. Waiting for me and Cos.