by Joss Hedley
‘Little one,’ she whispers. She kisses him again, then gently unfolds his grip from her hair and turns to her brother.
‘Colm,’ she says. ‘You must get some sleep. We’re leaving early.’
She smiles at Marla and takes Colm’s hand. Brother and sister walk up the stairs together and cross quietly through the house, leaving the coolness of the basement and Marla with the babe Turi at her breast.
CHAPTER
4
Colm and Lydia are on their own again, their packs replenished, their bottles filled with brew. Joe is a day behind them at Marla’s, content, it would seem, to stay there indefinitely. The morning is quiet and hot.
They leave the road, work out the way by map and compass. They’re keen to avoid Midgin and the neighbouring towns and so head east for a time. East and then they will turn north again.
Walking through the low grey scrub, past mounds of red rock, under electric blue sky and with not another soul in sight save his sister, Colm thinks that he could be back at home in the valley where he grew up. The landscape, new and strange yet achingly familiar, presses itself upon him so that he is dreaming as he walks. He thinks about the first time his father took him to the top of Lambeth Pass, a day’s journey through tea-trees and dry grasses, a hard climb over jagged rocks and along a narrow ridge which dropped down sharply on either side into nothing. It was exhilarating, he remembers. The danger, the fear. He remembers looking at his father’s broad back, at his strong calves, at his sure and steady step. He remembers his father stretching out his hand to help him over the last steep lip of rock, how he was pulled up as though he weighed nothing, how his father stood with his arm resting around Colm’s shoulders, how the brown land stretched out in front of them, and behind, stretched out in every direction as far as the eye could see.
’Currumburri,’ said his father, and gestured with his arm to the south. ‘And Jiluka.’ They turned slowly, westward and north, as his father separated the areas below them with names and with the straight line of his arm. Nindewang, Bulanari, Wirrina, Coorain, Berramindi, all the way out to the Great Southern Desert.
The Great Southern Desert. Colm has seen pictures of this place in books. Vast oceans of red dirt and sand, rippling for miles, broken with mounds of rock cut in the shape of huge ruddy beasts resting under the sun. The pictures showed a gentle covering of grasses and shrubbery, of stretches of shining water breaking up through the sand, of cool succulent fronds holding veins of green moisture – but his father had told him it was not like that now. There was nothing left, his father had said. There was nothing but the sand, blowing, blowing, and the rock, hot and dry and spare. Once, when his father was a young man, the desert had been a place that people would flock to, that tourists would arrive at in airconditioned coaches, where restaurants and resorts were located so that all could experience the wilds of the Centre, get a taste for the enormity, the vastness of the country, dabble a little in the idea of a spirituality of isolation, of aloneness. Now, though, no one ventured out there. It was a death wish, his father said. Not even the wildlife had stayed.
Colm breaks from his thoughts and turns to check on Lydia. She smiles at him.
‘I was thinking of Father,’ she says. ‘I was thinking of the first time he took me to the top of Lambeth Pass.’
‘So was I,’ replies Colm. ‘It must be the country. So like home.’
They walk on. The afternoon air settles and stills. There is no breeze. They stop and take small sips of water from their flasks. They lean in the slim shade of rocks, hoping for relief.
As the sky becomes crossed with slivers of pink, then of gold, their ears attune to a sound apart from their weary trudge, their heavy breath, their thick and heated blood. A whirring sound, it seems, high-pitched and distant. They shift their packs and lengthen their stride and cross the stretch of open country to the base of a small hill. The sound changes as they approach, softens, deepens, becomes slowly melodic. They follow it around the base of the hill till a rough dirt track opens before them and the sound becomes edged with sadness. Their eyes prickle and itch, but still they follow.
At last it is only a bank of dry shrubbery that separates them from the sound. Even though they are close now the sound is still not loud. They peer through the twigs and see beyond a small clearing. A woman sits, her head and body cloaked in grey, her hair falling in grisly strands from beneath her hood. Her mouth is open and it is from her throat that the sound is coming. Her song continues. She pours it over the small brown bundle that is before her, spills it gently into the hole she is working in the ground with her hands. The children watch her scrape the dust carefully aside and place the bundle into the hole, all the while singing her strange whirring song.
The bundle is covered now with dirt, a small red mound blistering the earth. The woman pats at its surface, her singing softening further, her singing finally ceasing. She leans forward and presses her lips to the mound, holds them there for a long time, then stands slowly, her joints popping, her hips grinding like glass on glass. She shakes the dirt from the folds of her clothes and moves off, her bare feet leaving powdery footprints in the dust. The children wait, uncertain.
‘She looks nice,’ says Lydia. ‘She looks like she might be kind to us.’
‘She’s grieving,’ says Colm. ‘That’s her baby in the ground.’
’Doesn’t mean she won’t be kind to us.’
Colm is unsure but he shoulders his pack. ‘All right,’ he says, and they trace the woman’s footprints with their own. The tracks take them further around the base of the hill and out across a plain. The air is cooling now, the sun slipping down the sky. The tracks become harder to see in the lowering light, become impossible as darkness settles, so the children stop and eat a small supper of figs. They curl up in hollows in the earth and sleep with night as their only covering.
In the morning they wake and look for footprints, but the wind has blown them away. They walk slowly, examining displaced twigs, crushed leaves, in the way their father has taught them. Their clues lead them at last to a narrow path which quickly becomes a sturdy track then a gravelled road, wide enough for them to walk side by side. And then they are upon a small village, more like a campsite really, with makeshift huts and shanties set out in a vast ring. In the centre of the circle is a large mound of rusting mechanical parts, relics from a not so distant age when fuel was available in seemingly abundant supply, and power at the flick of a switch.
There are few people about. A child sits beside the mechanical mound pushing a small piece of tin through the dirt as though it is a car. ‘Bah bah bah,’ says the child, a little boy with a face lined like that of a middle-aged man. ‘Bah bah.’ Opposite him a very elderly man sits quietly on the stump of an old tree. He has a pipe in his mouth which appears to be unlit, but he draws back on it nonetheless and sends out his breath with such eloquence that Colm is uncertain whether there are plumes of smoke to be seen in the air about him or not. A woman in grey appears in the doorway of one of the shanties and looks across the bare patch of common earth to where the child is playing. She is shielding her eyes with her hand, but when she drops it to call the boy, Colm recognises her as the woman they have been tracking. He feels almost overjoyed to have found her.
‘Brae!’ the woman calls in a dry thirsty voice. The boy stops his game and goes over to the woman. There is an exchange, just a brief one, before the boy follows the bidding of his elder and enters the shanty. The woman remains outside, her arms folded across her chest, her face lifted to the sun. The light finds its way into the creases of her skin, deepens and sears them further. Colm and Lydia walk forward, shy, for they have seen the woman in her grieving. But she turns to them now and smiles.
‘Welcome,’ she says. ‘What currency do you trade in?’
‘Currency?’ asks Colm. He is about to say that they have silver and copper pieces but remembers in time what Joe said about people finding out that they have money and stops himself.
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br /> ‘Figs,’ he says boldly, and withdraws a handful of the dried brown fruit from his pack. The woman takes one and breaks it in two. She hands half to the old man, who places it into his mouth and begins to work at it slowly with his warm saliva and his gums. She herself sniffs at it, first with caution and then with appreciation, before running her tongue over its corrugated surface and tearing off a small segment with her teeth.
‘Good,’ she says after a moment of chewing. ‘What do you want?’
‘Water,’ says Colm, ‘or directions to where we can find some.’
‘Ten of those fruits,’ she says, ‘for two cans of water.’
‘Six,’ says Colm.
‘Eight,’ says the woman.
Colm counts out eight figs into the woman’s hands. She smiles again and gestures for them to step inside her hut. The boy, Brae, fills their empty water bottles from a clay urn. Colm and Lydia drink carefully, evenly.
‘You have come far?’ the woman offers.
Colm is about to speak, to tell the woman that they have come from Hirrup’s Range, south of Nurrengar. But Lydia speaks before him. She names a town Colm has never heard of.
‘Windirup,’ she says. ‘On the west coast.’
The woman shrugs. ‘Never been further west than those hills.’ She gestures to the spine of rocks hidden for now by the rough bark of the walls. ‘Are you going far?’
‘Elan Plains,’ says Lydia, naming the place where Joe’s children had gone.
Again the woman shrugs. The boy approaches and presses himself against her knee. She gathers him onto her lap and he turns his ancient face to her ear.
‘Brae wants to know your names,’ says the woman. ‘He wants to be introduced.’
‘I’m Lydia,’ says Lydia.
‘Colin,’ says Colm.
‘There,’ says the woman to the boy. ‘Now you know.’
Brae nods solemnly, then disappears through the doorway. The woman watches him leave, her lips a sorrowful smile.
‘And I’m Ailis,’ she says, turning back to the children. ‘What are those fruits? Where did you get them?’
‘They’re dried figs,’ says Colm. ‘They’re from home.’
‘Figs,’ says Ailis. Her brow crinkles as though she is trying to remember. ‘I’ve heard of them but never seen one before. They’re very good.’
‘Better when they’re fresh,’ says Lydia. ‘The flesh is thick and moist, the pulp scarlet and crunchy with little seeds.’
‘Windirup is a good place to have such a fruit. Why did you leave?’
‘These are old fruits, prepared a long time ago,’ says Lydia. ‘The crops are thin now. Windirup is like everywhere else in the west. There is little left.’
‘We are lucky at the moment,’ says Ailis. ‘Kangaroos were sighted yesterday at Lake Myra, just north of here. The men have gone there today. We are hoping for a feast tonight.’
The flour bag curtain at the door lifts slightly and Brae appears. His hands are held behind his back and he approaches Colm and Lydia shyly.
‘For you,’ he says, and hands them each a trinket. Small, flat pieces of metal, highly polished and cut into perfect round forms. On Colm’s the image of a dove is etched; on Lydia’s it is the face of a woman, her hair piled high upon her head, her neck strung with beads.
‘These are what our names mean!’ exclaim Colm and Lydia of the images. They want to talk to Brae, to ask him about his work, but the boy’s shyness overcomes him and he stays with his face pressed into Ailis’s bosom. Ailis’s hand works its way over and through his brown strands of hair.
‘He makes those himself,’ she says of the trinkets. ‘He’s very clever. We’re very proud of him.’
‘It is fine work,’ says Lydia.
They examine the discs closely. Each, they see, has a small hole at its edge and they run lengths of twine through these and loop them about their necks. The discs are cool circles against their skin.
The evening air finds its way in through the cracks in the shanty and Ailis extricates herself from Brae’s affections.
‘The others should be back soon,’ she says. ‘I need to start the fire.’
Colm and Lydia stand to go.
‘Thank you for the water,’ says Colm.
‘Stay and eat with us,’ says Ailis. ‘There will be enough for all.’
‘We have few more figs to trade,’ says Colm.
‘Today it is only water that costs,’ says the woman. ‘Come, help me gather kindling.’
The four of them walk out of the hut. They pass the mound of rusting mechanical parts and the old man who sits silently by. His eyes have closed now against the lowering sun; the cloudless pipe hangs from his lower lip.
Lydia indicates the mechanical mound. ‘Why do you have that?’ she asks.
‘There were cars here not so long ago,’ says Ailis, ‘and machines for washing and drying clothes, and for keeping food cold.’
‘Frigidairs,’ says Lydia.
‘That’s right,’ replies Ailis. ‘But they were from my father’s day and we could no longer power them so they became useless. These remnants are all that are left. Every year the pile grows smaller because we use some of the pieces as tools or ornaments or they rust into the ground.’
‘Funny’ says Colm, ‘we had a frigidair at home. It was old but I’m sure it was not as old as your father.’
Lydia glares at Colm. What? he asks with his eyes. Wait, she says back with hers.
Ailis hands Colm a hessian bag and he and Lydia break from the other two as they search for the dry, crisp leaves that will be the beginnings of the fire.
‘What’s the matter?’ Colm asks. ‘What’s wrong with saying we had a frigidair? And why did you make up that stuff about where we were from? Why don’t you want her to know the truth? I thought you said she looked kind!’
‘First,’ says Lydia, ‘it was rude to make reference to Ailis’s father’s age in that way and, second, I think we need to be a bit more cautious than we have been. We can’t go telling everyone everything.’
Colm shifts about, scuffs his feet into the ground. He thinks of what Joe said, of how he has no common sense. Strange, when their father is so clever, so everything.
Lydia glances at Ailis and Brae walking together some distance away. She lowers her voice.
‘Colm, who do you think those people are who are after us?’
Colm is shocked. ‘I thought you’d think it was just coincidence that we were raided at home and then straight after at Nurrengar.’
Well, maybe it was. But do you really think so?’
‘No,’ replies Colm. ‘I think it’s because of Father.’ He pauses. ‘I think that someone has sent raiders to try to find him, maybe some old members of the Twelve. I think they want Father for the knowledge he has. But I didn’t want you to think that. I wanted to protect you from it.’
‘I know,’ says Lydia, ‘but you have to tell me what you’re thinking. We’ve got a long way to go.’
Colm moves a little away from his sister to where a dry branch has fallen from the tree overhead, and begins to snap the brittle twigs into small pieces. He feels dislocated, unsettled. His father taught him to always look out for Lydia, to care for her and protect her. But it seems that, since they began their journey, she needs his protection less and less. It is disorienting, makes him unsure of how to be with her.
Lydia has joined him at the fallen branch and is gathering into bundles the twigs he has snapped. Colm rallies himself.
‘If we’re being chased because of Father,’ he says, ‘then whoever is after us must think Father is with us.’
‘Maybe,’ replies his sister.
‘So that means Father is safe somewhere else. He could still meet us before long.’
‘We can’t know that. They could already have him. They could want us for some other reason.’
This is not a pleasant thought for Colm, that Father might be captured. He turns his mind to other things.
‘So what did you mean about the frigidair?’ he asks.
‘If people know that we come from a place that had things like frigidairs, it might not be too long before they figure out who we are – or, at least, who our father is.’
‘You’re right,’ says Colm. ‘From now on, we’re from Windirup and we’re on our way to Elan Plains. And no mention of frigidairs.’
‘Or anything else that might give away what sort of life we had in Hirrup’s Range.’
Back at the campsite they help Ailis dig a large hole in the dirt and fill it with scraps of kindling and firewood. They have been able to collect only a small amount, and the bottom of the hole is barely covered.
‘Not many more hot dinners at this rate,’ says Ailis. ‘Another month or two and there’ll not even be enough kindling to boil water for a cup of tea. So to speak. Haven’t had tea in years.’
Colm and Lydia look at each other and are quiet. There was tea growing all along the southern slope of their valley. They brewed pots of it every day, drank it with every meal. Once a year at harvest time, their father would make arrangements for the crop to be packaged and sold. But there was always plenty left over for them to enjoy.
It is late when the men arrive from the expedition. They are exhausted after a day of hunting, but have little to show for their efforts. Ailis keeps Colm and Lydia in the shanty so that the men may freely talk and drink. The children watch them through the gaps in the shanty’s bark walls.
‘The roos had moved on,’ explains one whom the children learn is named Wyn. He is Ailis’s son, a tall man and broad with skin burned brown. He wears a chain of Brae’s polished discs about his upper arm. His muscles move and flex as he throws into the smouldering hole the day’s yield. Two small poteroos are covered first with coals, then with soil, until the hole is filled up again. The coals will cook the meat slowly in the hot earth. The men – there are ten of them – sit together and drink from an odd assortment of metal beakers.