‘I’m going home,’ Lucy said to Rambo in exasperation. She looked around for the track up to the buildings, but no clear path presented itself, and Bear’s bark took on a new note of urgency. Lucy sighed again. Turning away from home, she began to push her way up the opposite bank through the clumps of prickly parkinsonia. Rambo didn’t attempt to follow. Lucy’s progress was slow as she pulled herself up on hands and knees, trying to avoid the straggly scratching branches of the shrub. It was clear that neither human nor animal had been this way recently. She was on the point of backing out again when the bushes opened out quite suddenly, flattened by a recent landslip. Weeds and clumps of grass had begun to sprout in the jagged rubble. Up above, Lucy finally spotted Bear, perched on a little ledge of land that had been held intact by the gnarled white roots of an ancient strangler fig. Seeing Lucy, he ceased his barking. She called to him to come down, but he only stood up and wagged his tail at her.
Lucy clambered up the incline, doing her best to find footholds among the loose stones. At last, sweaty and puffing, she pulled herself up onto the ledge beside Bear. The dog regarded her calmly, and Lucy looked around. The strangler fig’s host, a huge old gum, had died many decades ago. The gum wood was mostly decayed and had collapsed, leaving an almost perfect slanting hollow pillar several metres high, made by the interlacing limbs of the fig that had engulfed it. Lucy marvelled at it for a moment; the sight of this formation had been worth the climb.
She looked back at Bear. ‘What now?’ she demanded, but he only opened his mouth in a panting smile.
Looking up, Lucy spotted an opening in the side of the fig, high above her head, where the twisted arms of the plant had grown apart. She put out her hand and stroked the monstrous roots in front of her; ladder-like, they were just asking to be climbed. Impulsively, she began to pull herself up, using the roots as rungs. When she reached the opening she poked her head and shoulders inside and peered down into the slanting tunnel, seeing the greenish underside of the fig roots where they were untouched by the sun. The afternoon light filtered through the lacework. At the very base of the tunnel the ground looked quite dry, built up with leaves and other fibrous matter.
Then Lucy’s eye was caught by something not far below her, little more than an arm’s length away. Firmly wedged in a small triangular gap in the roots was a tiny leather lace-up boot. Lucy saw immediately that it was old-fashioned in style and most probably handmade, but here inside the tree, sheltered from the elements, it had remained quite well preserved. Lucy realised she was holding her breath; making herself exhale, she looked down again at the debris in the shadow at the bottom. Suddenly she had no desire to know what was concealed there.
Withdrawing her head, she slid back down the roots, breaking fingernails in her haste, and started immediately down the slope, slipping and sliding her way to the bottom, with several dislodged stones rolling along beside her. Bear followed, apparently content now to leave his post; after overtaking her in the creek bed, he led the way up a nearby pad towards the buildings.
It was a bedraggled and distraught Lucy who ran to meet the family on their return shortly afterwards. That night, she lay awake until just before dawn, the rosary beads her mother had given her clasped in her hands, trying not to picture a little curly-headed boy trapped in a dim prison of tangled roots.
The following week, a policeman from Ingham, Senior Constable Cox, drove out to Charlotte’s Creek to oversee the removal of the child’s remains from the base of the strangler-fig. Not wanting to destroy the tree, Ted climbed down inside and scooped all the loose matter into a bag. Senior Constable Cox took photographs and made notes, and a fortnight later, once the bones had been dated, it was decided that there was no need for further investigation. With the backhoe, Dennis dug a hole next to Lotte’s grave in the old Charlotte’s Creek graveyard, Noel paid for a tiny coffin and an unmarked marble cross, and the local minister drove out to Charlotte’s Creek for the burial. Unexpectedly, just as the minister was starting the short rite, Little John and old Mollie rattled over the grid in a ute.
‘It could have been anyone,’ Gwen insisted afterwards, trying to pacify Lucy as they stood gathered around the grave. ‘There’s been any number of Murri kids here over the years. And they’re always wandering off and climbing into things.’
‘Not with boots on, but,’ old Mollie observed quietly. ‘Them little buggers go toey.’
‘We still can’t assume it was Lotte’s child,’ Gwen said sternly, glaring at old Mollie.
‘Not knowing doesn’t make it any less sad,’ Lucy sobbed. ‘That poor baby, whoever he was, dying in there like that.’
‘Ask the Grey Lady if it was her lost baby, Molly,’ Billie suggested without even the hint of a sneer.
‘I can’t,’ the little girl said sadly. Looking up at the old Aboriginal woman, she added, ‘She’s gone.’
Old Mollie, her face showing no surprise, nodded in affirmation.
Chapter 31
The build-up to the wet season was always a trying and sticky time for the inhabitants of Charlotte’s Creek, but it wasn’t just the weather that was putting everyone on edge as November approached. Dennis and Noel, who’d seemed on better terms for a while after the birth of Henry, were now at loggerheads again, and with the added pressure of the colicky baby to the household, tensions were running high. Even though it hadn’t yet stormed, the clouds had threatened for several afternoons running, and summer appeared intent on hustling the end of spring along before time.
Even with the door and windows wide open, the schoolroom felt stuffy and airless. Cooper’s pen was running out of ink, and Billie couldn’t be bothered with capital letters and full stops at this time of the day. The twins, too, were feeling the strain. Molly was crying and didn’t know why. Wade was wasting glue and coloured paper, but everyone was too fed up to bother stopping him. It had been a long week. Lucy’s pups had come of age, and she’d felt the heartbreak more acutely than Alpha as each one was flung into a cardboard box or ute cab and sent off into the real, unforgiving world to begin life as a working dog. Not even Ted was sympathetic, and it seemed to Lucy that following the affection he’d shown her around the time of Henry’s birth, he’d become once again intent on avoiding her and maintaining the distance between them.
So it was, that the sound of a distant helicopter was more welcome to Lucy than it might otherwise have been; right now, and it was not so much the prospect of seeing Adam, but the thought of jumping in and flying away from Charlotte’s Creek that Lucy found so appealing. She went to the window to watch the helicopter approach, and was distracted just long enough for the four children to abscond behind her back.
The chopper landed in the open space between the home buildings. Lucy felt like dropping everything and running to meet it, just as the children had done, but she restrained herself and decided that a little more decorum and less eagerness would be wise in this case. By the time she wandered over to the aircraft, quite a crowd had gathered. The children were jumping up and down and appealing to Adam for a ride, the twins tugging on the bottom of his shirt, but he was ignoring them and talking to Ted, who’d tramped over from the shed.
As Lucy approached the group near the chopper, the young pilot withdrew his attention from Ted and the kids. ‘Here she is.’ His face glowed with pleasure. Without taking his eyes off Lucy, he addressed Ted again. ‘You’ll have to do the weaners yourself this arvo, Goldy. Your little helper’s going to be otherwise engaged. At least, I hope so.’ He gave her his most winning smile. ‘Mamma mia! I thought I’d need to wait around for you to get changed, but look at you!’
Lucy glanced down at her old purple t-shirt and jeans, then looked quizzically back at Adam.
‘Righto,’ he laughed, ‘so if it’s not what you’re wearing, it must be how you’re wearing it. It’s what’s inside that counts, eh, Goldy?’ He chuckled at his own joke and ruffled the twins’ curls. They released him immediately.
‘So, you up for a nig
ht out, Lucy?’ Adam asked, his green eyes sparkling. ‘Thought I’d spring it on you this time. Even you proper ladies like a surprise now and then.’
‘I guess so . . .’ Lucy made a quick, stealthy examination of Ted’s face for any trace of jealousy, but could detect none. He was standing, straight and tall, his hands in his pockets, studying Adam with, what looked to Lucy, like mild amusement.
‘You’re not already booked up, I hope?’ Adam looked from Lucy to Ted and back again with mock alarm. ‘Assuming you’d be free on a Friday night was a bit rich, I suppose.’
At this, Ted turned and started for the shed. ‘We’d take you too, Goldy,’ Adam called after him, ‘but there’s not much leg room in this beast!’
Ted, his back towards them, half raised one arm and gave a lazy wave before disappearing from view.
Lucy suddenly felt a little vulnerable. ‘So where are we going to—’
‘All aboard!’ Adam interrupted. Taking her arm, he held his other hand out in front to fend off the children, who were clamouring and gambolling between them and the waiting helicopter. ‘Make way, troops!’
Lucy hung back. ‘I’d better just nip in and tell Mel—’
‘No need!’ Adam assured her. ‘She’s watching from the window.’ Bending down and lifting Lucy’s hair, he added in her ear, ‘Probably wanting to cut your throat!’
Lucy pulled away. ‘I’ll be back in a minute, Adam.’
After grabbing a jacket and her wallet from the cottage, she ran up the steps onto the veranda of the main house and poked her head around the kitchen door. ‘Mel, is it okay if I go—’
‘Don’t give a stuff what you do, darl, or who you do it with,’ Mel snapped, her eyes fixed on Henry who was feeding. ‘You’re a big girl. I don’t need to know about it.’
‘Okay . . . thanks, Mel. See you!’ Lucy turned and started for the stairs.
‘Oi, Lucy!’
Lucy ducked her head back into the kitchen.
‘He’s not called Hoodlum for nothing, eh.’ This time, Mel was looking her earnestly in the eye.
‘Oh . . . right. Thanks, Mel. Bye.’ Lucy was grateful for Mel’s warning, but even without the impediment of her feelings for Ted, she would have never considered getting involved with Adam. She was pretty certain she had him well worked out.
As they lifted off, Lucy looked out into the distance, avoiding the sight of the buildings below, most particularly the shed to which Ted had retreated. She wondered how he felt about her going off with Adam. Would it bother him? She was disturbed to realise that she was hoping it would. She’d never thought of herself as the type to play one man off against another, but she was becoming increasingly doubtful that she would ever truly get to know the real person behind that hardened exterior. And so tonight, she decided, she would allow herself to be flattered by Adam, a man who had no inhibitions about letting her know that he liked her.
They turned inland and flew over the afternoon gold of the landscape, its contours reminding Lucy of the hide of a giant wrinkled dinosaur. After a while the undulations disappeared and the terrain flattened out, becoming more sparsely vegetated.
‘Where are we going?’ Lucy asked again, but Adam only turned to her and grinned.
‘Wait and see.’
Lucy gazed down through the open hatch at a gully, dark with bushes, winding its way across the expanse below. Veins of black rock flowed alongside the dry creek, parallel to all its meanders.
‘Australia is so beautiful,’ Lucy murmured into her mouthpiece. ‘There’s always something new and surprising to see.’
‘Too true,’ Adam agreed. ‘Just when I start to think I’ve seen it all, I spot something new from the air . . . like a goddess floating in a tank.’
Lucy stared ahead, annoyed at herself for blushing.
Adam looked at her face and laughed. ‘Don’t be shy about it, Lucy. It was a genuine accident that day.’ When she glanced across, his eyes were full of affection. ‘I spotted Westy’s ute parked there at the mill and came over to hassle him—got the best surprise of my life. Bloody breathtaking.’
‘Adam, please stop now.’
‘Righto, Lady Lucy, I swear I won’t mention it again. Just so long as you know that was the most stunning sight I’ve ever seen. Like an arrow through the heart.’ Adam clutched at his chest melodramatically. ‘And I’ve been stuck on you ever since.’
Not taking him seriously for an instant, Lucy laughed at Adam’s exuberance, and her embarrassment eased.
The landscape below was now monotonously flat and bare, and Lucy could see no signs of life in any direction. Adam talked incessantly, keeping her entertained with lively stories and witty observations about various local characters. Lucy found herself laughing and relaxing further. After a while Adam took them down lower, where the view afforded more variety. The hard-baked soil glowed with ruddy brilliance, hosting a scattering of stunted trees twisted by the trials of the climate, destined to remain sapling size for eternity.
Then all at once they were following a small railway line towards a row of round hills that protruded incongruously through the surrounding flatness. Flying closer, they came upon a deep gorge with a silver trickle at its base, lined with weeping paperbark and casuarina. Sharp black stony outcrops contrasted starkly with the clean white drifts of sand in the riverbed. Spanning the gorge was a tall railway bridge, and a tiny settlement could be seen on the bank, making an odd blot on the landscape. The twenty or so houses, arranged in a neat square created by four streets, looked ironically ordered in the midst of the sprawling wilderness. To one side of the town there was a cemetery, on the other was an open grassed area, some stockyards, and what appeared to be a racecourse. But in pride of place, overlooking the gorge and facing the mountains, was a large timber two-storey building with an iron roof, louvred windows, and purple and crimson railings on the upstairs veranda. Rustic, ramshackle and oozing character, it was clearly a pub.
‘Welcome to Einasleigh,’ Adam announced. ‘How about a drink for the lady?’
They alighted in the middle of the road, landing perfectly on a white circle painted on the bitumen in front of the pub. ‘My parking spot.’ Adam grinned.
Lucy unbuckled her harness and allowed Adam to help her out of the chopper. She regarded the old building with interest. The whole structure seemed to be on a slight lean, and it reminded her of a scratchy sketch in the waiting room of her father’s surgery, depicting a pub in a dusty street in some old outback town. However, in that picture there were sleepy horses tied to the rails and a carriage was pulled up out the front, not lairy striped utes fitted out for the mines.
As the rotation of the chopper blades slowed, Lucy could hear raucous laughter floating out through the open doors of the pub. Adam took her arm. As they walked towards the sound, Lucy raised her eyes to the rickety-looking upstairs veranda and the sign painted underneath; beside the large red letters spelling ‘Einasleigh Hotel’ was a cartoonish drawing of a little man holding his glass high, and the words ‘Gulp Country’.
Inside they were met with a chorus of greetings. Lucy looked around a little nervously at the small crowd of drinkers, which consisted of a few grey-haired local men and fluorescent-shirted miners; she also recognised the regular gang of mustering contractors from Charlotte’s Creek, including Bri and Tash, who were sitting at a little table in the far corner of the room, well removed from the men around the bar.
Feeling everyone’s eyes on her, Lucy sat on the stool Adam found for her. Ducking behind the bar as though he owned the place, he pulled two beers, already deep in a jocular exchange with Bevan and Mickey.
Once Lucy was settled on the tall stool, the publican came over. He introduced himself as Piers, and talked quietly to her over the bar for a while. As she examined his gentle face, long white hair and guarded, distant grey eyes, Lucy was curious about his past. With his smooth, shapely hands resting on the dark wood of the bar—the hands of an artist, Lucy thought—he seemed strangely out
of place in his own dusty establishment.
Meanwhile, Adam was keeping all the patrons entertained with his stories and jokes, to the point where Lucy wondered how they’d been amusing themselves before he’d arrived. However, although the centre of attention, he didn’t forget Lucy, drawing her into the conversation and bringing her out of herself with great skill. He persuaded her to drink a second beer, and she found she was laughing along with the others. She even returned his teasing with some tentative wit of her own, and was rewarded with appreciative cheers from the drink-sipping men.
At last there was a lull in conversation. Catching Lucy’s eye, Piers beckoned to her before sidling to the doorway leading into the old central hallway of the pub, shy enthusiasm animating his face.
‘Look out, Lucy,’ said Adam, smirking. ‘You’re getting the summons!’
Intrigued, Lucy ignored Adam, slipped off her stool and followed Piers from the room. He led the way across the dim hall and opened a heavy wooden door into a charming old dining room, set with solid timber furniture. Lucy looked around with pleasure; the room had a regal air completely at odds with the rest of the building. Then her eyes fell on a row of glass casements along one wall. She drew nearer, and gasped with amazement. Each casement held a fully furnished miniature room, each from a different era; they were perfect in every detail, from the clothing of the pint-sized people and the books on the shelves down to a microscopic, fully functioning mousetrap, less than the size of Lucy’s smallest fingernail. Lucy thought the display would have befitted a European gallery or classy art house, but here it was, housed in a remote desert hotel that had definitely seen better days.
No longer subdued, Piers talked her through each of the encased rooms, describing the different elements he’d created. His eyes shone as he spoke, and it was clear to Lucy that he revelled in the total control he possessed over his miniature kingdoms; they were safely static and perfect behind the glass, protected from the dust and chaos outside.
Charlotte's Creek Page 27