Under the Southern Cross

by Claire McNab

  Okay, Alex, let's see you get out of this.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was to be a very early start the next morning, so my alarm jarred me awake when birds were greeting the sun with almost indecent enthusiasm. The day's program included a helicopter ride to Port Douglas, a sumptuous tropical breakfast at a luxurious hotel, a flight over the Reef which ran closest to the mainland at that point, and then sightseeing in the Cape Tribulation World Heritage Rainforest. I lay staring at the ceiling, reluctant to make the first move in what promised to be, at the very least, a trying day — Lee was to be one of the four who were my responsibility.

  I was light-headed with fatigue. When I'd at last dozed off, my sleep had been broken by restless dreams and half-awake imaginings as I played the scene over and over. What would the consequences be? What would Lee do? What should J do?

  Of one thing I was sure: if I was to have any hope of salvaging my self-respect and putting our relationship back on a professional footing, I'd have to speak to Lee immediately, not let the situation slide into mutual awkwardness.

  Shocked fully awake by a cold shower, I dressed with care in crisp lemon pants and a top edged with a slightly deeper yellow pattern. Surveying the results in a full-length mirror, I thought ruefully that the yellow was not only a pleasing foil for my dark hair, but it also effectively emphasized the blue-black circles under my eyes.

  Gathering my resolution, I took one last look at my self-possessed expression, and walked quickly over to Lee's cabana. Not allowing myself to hesitate, I knocked sharply.

  She opened the door immediately. She looked rested, secure. There was a moment's pause before she said casually, "Hi. I'm almost ready."

  "I'd like to say something..."

  She smiled slightly, made an open-handed gesture. "There's no need."

  I took a deep breath. "There is. Last night... I was stupid, out of line. I want you to know it won't happen again."

  "That would be a pity."

  Her light tone generated instant anger. "Don't play with me! I'm embarrassed enough as it is, without you taking cheap shots."

  Lee, obviously surprised at my vehemence, said, "Alex, I'm sorry. I didn't mean you to take it that way."

  In control again, I managed to sound almost offhand as I offered, "I'd like to forget it. Never mention it again. Okay?"

  She regarded me thoughtfully. "If that's what you want, of course. As far as I'm concerned it never happened."

  The helicopter flight to Port Douglas and the elaborate tropical breakfast laid out at the luxury hotel passed in a haze of disconnected images, although I must have behaved appropriately, as no one gazed at me in consternation or amusement. Otto, whom I was beginning to regard affectionately as "my German" asked his usual involved questions and then listened to my answers as though studying for an examination; Mr. Moto, a rather chubby, reticent Japanese gentleman, recorded everything on his complicated video camera; Hilary Ferguson, her wide blue eyes hidden by outsize dark glasses, said little but looked fetchingly demure in pale pink; and Lee — Lee laughed, moved, spoke with brash energy, as though nothing had occurred between us.

  Several strong cups of coffee during breakfast had nudged me back into some semblance of normality and as our helicopter pilot checked the instruments, I withdrew from the general conversation to consider the situation. I was relieved by Lee's assurances that she'd forget anything had happened. And, after all, what was it but a slip of judgment that led to one too-intimate moment? It wasn't as if we'd made love...

  She had taken the seat beside the pilot and was in the middle of an animated conversation about the range of tourist flights offered in Northern Queensland. Dismayingly, not only could I recreate with tantalizing vividness the taste of her mouth and my body's responses, but my unruly thoughts went further, leaping to richer, wilder imaginings.

  Oh, great. A touch of overwhelming lust is just what's needed when you have to spend the next two weeks with the woman.

  The helicopter lifted off with insect-like facility and banked over Port Douglas, the once sleepy coastal town that had exploded in tourist development as it capitalized on its proximity to unspoiled beaches, the Great Barrier Reef and almost untouched tropical rainforest.

  As we swooped over a pattern of reefs close to the coastline, I viewed them with delight. Although from the air their huge dark shadows didn't suggest any of the beauty that underwater exploration revealed, their extent overwhelmed me. It had taken millions of years to create these gigantic fortifications against the Pacific Ocean. Feeling impelled to share some of the wonder I felt, I raised my voice above the helicopter's metallic hum. "There are two and a half thousand individual reefs and islands, stretching two thousand kilometers along the Queensland coast." I remembered to add an American perspective. "And they cover an area about half the size of Texas."

  Lee grinned. "I find that downright impressive."

  The helicopter banked, turning towards the beckoning green of the lush coastal vegetation. As we flew over the deeper, darker green of the rainforest canopy, it seemed to me that we were crass intruders whose tenure was brief when measured against time and the patient persistence of nature.

  Our four-wheel drive vehicle was waiting, a glistening red Toyota with an incongruous showroom shine. I'd met Vince, our driver, before. "Alex!" he exclaimed, as though I were a long-lost relative. He was middle-aged and leathery, a garrulous no-nonsense bushie who had a cheerful scorn for the city and an undisguised love of the land. As clean and tidy as his vehicle, he wore a neatly pressed khaki shirt and shorts, heavy brown boots polished to a rich shine, and a brown Akubra hat tilted jauntily forward so his grinning face peered out from beneath its brim. He was the genuine article, and I thought how pseudo Steve Monahan would look beside him.

  He introduced himself to everyone in turn, pumping each hand. "What's your name, mate? Otto? G'day, Otto! And? Hilary! ...Lee!"

  Mr. Moto looked alarmed when his hand was seized, but eventually whispered his name. Vince seemed to see this as a victory. "So, Toshi, is it? Eh? No point in being shy, mate."

  After obligingly posing with the four-wheel drive for Mr. Moto's videotape camera, Vince loaded us into the vehicle. "Okay, Alex, you've seen this all before, so in the back, eh? And Toshi, you'll want to film, so you get a window seat." He beamed at Hilary and Lee. "I'll take you ladies up the front with me, so Otto goes in the back, too."

  As we bumped along the road, Vince gestured at the overhanging vegetation. "Ever wonder why it's called a rainforest? Give you a clue. Sometimes it rains thirty-two inches in twenty-four hours." He turned to survey those of us seated behind him and I repressed the impulse to lean over and grab the steering wheel. "Four meters — say thirteen feet of rain a year... that's why it's called a rainforest." He turned back to the road, jerking the wheel as we veered towards the edge. "When we get to the Daintree River, I'm going to ask you not to swim — we're particular here about what the crocs eat."

  I hid my smile. The dry bush humor didn't always translate into other cultures. Mr. Moto, for example, was clearly puzzled. "Crocs? he said.

  "There are crocodiles in the water," I explained.

  "Big ones," said Vince, letting go the wheel to stretch his arms out wide. "Twenty, thirty feet!"

  Hilary looked suitably startled. "Heavens, Vince, are they maneaters?"

  Vince grinned wickedly. "Have your leg off in half a minute — less, even." He paused for effect. "What the crocs do, see, is grab you and pull you into the water. They thrash round till you drown, and then they wedge your body under a log for later. They're cunning bastards and they can move like lightning if they want to."

  I said briskly, "We probably won't even see a crocodile."

  We didn't. The Daintree River vehicle ferry took us across opaque army-green water apparently innocent of hazardous reptiles, although this didn't stop Hilary from peering hopefully into the murky depths.

  In Vince's enthusiastic care, we ricocheted off the Daintr
ee ferry and bounced onto the unsealed road that led to Cape Tribulation.

  The canopy of the rainforest formed a ceiling so thick that we seemed to be moving through a gigantic green cave filled with hot, moist air. Great buttressed tree trunks loomed, their trunks decorated with coiling lianas, tree orchids, lichen and mosses.

  "Up there," said Vince, pointing through the roof of the Toyota, "the rainforest is like a roof garden. Ferns and orchids and strangler figs — I'll show you how the strangler works when we stop — and birdwing butterflies eight inches across. That's where the ringtail possums and little sugar gliders live, but they only come out at night and they never come down to the ground."

  The Toyota growled as the incline became steeper. To our right the land dropped away in a slope so steep that the tree trunks seemed to be hugging the earth as they struggled to reach the light. Mr. Moto's camera whirred as he filmed the precipitous fall; Otto, after one horrified look, squashed me by leaning hard to his left, obviously working on the theory that his considerable weight would provide a counterbalance should we teeter on the edge.

  This amused Lee. She turned around to smile at him. "We wouldn't go far, Otto. The trees would stop us."

  Suddenly, dazzlingly, there was a break in the canopy. We all blinked in the glare as Vince jerked the four-wheel drive to a halt at the top of the incline. "This place's called the Window because you can look out and see the world outside the rainforest. See, back there... that's where we've come from. There's the Daintree emptying into the sea.

  To me the lush vegetation seemed to seethe in a relentless struggle for existence. Trees, vines, ferns, palms, scrabbled for space and light. Insects hummed, the moisture rose like a palpable mist, the very earth seemed voluptuously alive. Far below us was a narrow coastal plain and then the brilliant aquamarine of the Coral Sea, blurring where the green snake of the Daintree River blended with it.

  Otto exclaimed as a huge butterfly, a flash of brilliant electric blue, dipped and swerved in the sunlight. "That's a Ulysses," said Vince. "Watch it when it settles. It'll disappear."

  Like a living sapphire, the Ulysses glided, banked, floated — as though deliberately displaying its beauty — then sank down towards a blossom, closed its wings and became virtually invisible as the dull brown underside blended with the background.

  A small bird with a curved bill and a deep yellow breast darted into the clearing. "The butterfly!" said Hilary.

  Vince patted her arm. "Relax. It's a sunbird. Eats nectar, not insects. That's a female, and she's pretty, but wait till you see her mate."

  The little bird gave a high-pitched hissing whistle, and as if on cue another sunbird appeared. His wings and back were olive, and part of his front was yellow, but he had a bib of a brilliant metallic purplish-blue. Joining the female at a bush covered in red blossoms, hovering with beating wings, he plunged his beak into a flower.

  I looked at Lee. She was watching the birds, a smile lighting her face. My body reminded me I'd kissed her last night; my mind issued a sharp warning.

  We started off again, reentering the closed, shaded environment of the rainforest. Vince was filled with proprietorial pleasure as he parked the Toyota beside a sign announcing the Marrdja walk. "Right!" he said, waving his arms until we formed an obedient group in front of him. "Marrdja means rainforest in the local Aboriginal language, in case you were going to ask. Keep to the boardwalk and don't go tramping round off the track."

  The forest floor was patterned with moving patches of light as the sun searchlighted through breaks in the roof of vegetation. "Look up there," said Vince, pointing. I was amused to see how we all followed his instructions, tilting our heads to gaze at the huge palms with fronds shaped like open, fringed umbrellas. "Those are rare Fan Palms — only found in this area."

  After we'd spent the required time in admiration, he set off again, explaining why the floor of the rainforest, apart from succulent plants and ferns, was so surprisingly clear. "Leaves, twigs, branches — they're falling all the time, and in this climate the layers just rot away and turn themselves into soil. Most plants need more than the dim light you get here at ground level. When a rainforest tree falls and the sun shines in through the break in the canopy, things spring up and fight for the light — and the ones that win block the hole with their foliage, so the losers die."

  With the toe of his boot he disturbed the surface near a rotting log, uncovering a huge and indignant cricket. "A king cricket," he said to Hilary, who had drawn back with a muttered exclamation. "And if you think it's big, you should see the cockroaches we get here — you could throw a saddle over them!"

  Lee stopped by a gigantic tree, its trunk a massive tangle of thick root-like protrusions that formed an elaborate criss-cross pattern. "What's this? It looks as if its trunk's been braided."

  Vince patted the tree affectionately. "Strangler fig," he said. "Told you I'd give you the info on this one. It starts off when the fruit is eaten by flying foxes or birds, and the seeds drop into the canopy up above us. The fig seed starts to grow in the angle of a branch or in a little hollow — and mind, this is ninety, maybe a hundred feet in the air. And then it begins to send long, thin roots down to the floor where we are, making a curtain around the poor bastard of a tree it's growing on. And when they reach the earth, whacko! Its roots get fatter and stronger and begin to strangle its host, while its leaves at the top screen out the sun, so the other tree dies. And then it's won."

  Vince pointed to skeins of thin vines. "And these are climbing palms or rattans. They never get any fatter, see, and some are hundreds of feet long. They climb using hooks to hang on with." He grinned. "In Australia we call them lawyer vines, because once the buggers get their hooks into you, they never let you go."

  Lee left us to go striding off along the wooden walkway. Suddenly she stopped, then leaned over. She turned back to us, gesturing us to be quiet. I smiled when I saw the echidna, or spiny anteater. It was shoving its long snout into the layers of leaves on the rainforest floor, now and then pausing to rake at the vegetable matter with its impressive claws.

  In a whisper, Vince said, "Suppose the echidna looks like a hedgehog to most of you, but it's not related, even if it has got spines and eats insects. It's a unique little Aussie, along with the platypus — they both lay eggs like a bird, but they're mammals, and suckle their babies."

  Our concentrated stares seemed to impinge on the echidna. It stopped snuffling in the rotting leaves, looked in our direction with tiny black eyes, then rapidly rolled itself into a prickly ball of long brown spines.

  Otto ventured to touch the bristling spikes, but it only rolled itself tighter. As Mr. Moto kneeled to take his inevitable video shot, Lee said to me, "I've known people like that — cute, but they only let you see the prickles."

  I nodded, wanting to say, "Do you mean me?" — but unwilling to run the risk that she'd look at me blankly and say, "You?"

  In the distance there was the long drawn out ringing crack of the male whipbird followed by the female's answering "choo choo" sound. Vince beckoned to us. 'Take a look at this."

  He beamed at us. "Leaf-tailed gecko. Lurks around, looking like a piece of bark — see how its sides are sort of fringed, so it won't throw a definite shadow — till some unwary insect, or smaller lizard, or even a green tree frog, chances by and becomes lunch."

  I've always had a soft spot for green tree frogs. Apart from their brilliant color, they have suckers on their feet and can climb expanses of glass, reminding me of mountaineers gingerly traversing a cliff-face. They also, I'm convinced, have a keen sense of humor. I remembered one incident that must have caused great frog amusement. I'd been escorting a very fastidious Swiss tour operator around Queensland and at one overnight stop at Cape York he had visited the rather primitive bathroom facilities. Rushing back to me with horrified indignation, insisting that I accompany him, he complained that a bright green frog had been grinning at him from beneath the rim of the toilet bowl.

  "
Do they swim in the cistern?" he had demanded.

  "Watch," I'd said as I flushed the toilet. In the swirl of water two green bodies catapulted from their hiding place. I could almost hear them screaming, "Whee!" as they rode the cascade. When it was still, one had disappeared through the S-bend and the other was cheerfully clambering up the smooth porcelain. I was delighted by their feats — the Swiss gentleman had been far less impressed.

  "What are you smiling at?" said Lee.

  "Tree frogs. I'll tell you later."

  Vince was waxing lyrical: "If I had you here at night, we'd go spotlighting, and you'd see wallabies, and tree kangaroos, and flying foxes, and little marsupial potoroos about the size of rabbit, and cuscusses with round heads, no ears and great big staring eyes..."

  We drove on towards the coast and Cape Tribulation, Vince still buoyant with enthusiasm. "Want to know why it's called Cape Tribulation?" It was a rhetorical question. He went on before anyone could respond, "Seventeen-seventy it was, and Captain Cook who was in the middle of discovering Australia, hit a reef just off this headland. The Endeavour didn't sink, but the whole thing caused him so much trouble he called the place Cape Tribulation." He shook his head. "Sailing round the world in those little wooden boats — that took real guts."

  We stopped at a beach where we were to have lunch at the luxury resort nestled in the rainforest. Vince leaped out of the Toyota and made a grand, encompassing gesture. "Reef, rainforest and beach!"

  The lush vegetation balked at the edge of the pink-beige sand, which, deserted, stretched towards a distant headland. Green water washed in lazy ripples, and overhead the arch of the sky held so deep a blueness it seemed to vibrate.

  I was tired, both emotionally and physically. The sunlight was too bright, the beauty too overwhelming. Suddenly I felt the weight of time pressing upon me — the realization that the landscape had looked very like this for at least a million years. Bizarre creatures — gigantic kangaroos, rhinoceros-sized wombats, huge ferocious marsupials — had roamed in primeval forests crowding the shore as the rainforest did now; the sea had teemed with monstrous creations while tiny coral polyps were beginning the foundations of the bulwarks that would become the Great Barrier Reef.