by Jennie Jones
Dan grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him to his feet. ‘That’s just a meet and greet, mate. Next time I hear you badmouth anybody, you stay on the ground.’ Dan clenched his teeth, attempting to hold on to his anger. ‘And if I see you or any of your buddies in my bar, you get thrown out. In fact, if you’re seen within a five-kilometre radius of town I reckon you’ll have more than my fist to deal with. We look after our own. And you’re not one of us. Now get going. You’re not needed.’
Dan turned and headed for the makeshift tent the rescue team had erected hours earlier. A five-minute breather would help settle his fears and clear his mind. He wouldn’t be any use to Ted or Charlotte if he lost his focus now.
He looked up as a shadow crossed in front of him. Josh, headed towards the temporary tea and tucker table Mrs Tam had set up.
‘What’s got into him?’ Josh asked, jutting a thumb towards where Dan had walked and obviously thinking Dan couldn’t hear him.
‘He’s in love,’ Mrs Tam said.
Dan stepped back into the shadows. Did everyone know? And how long had they known? And why had it taken Dan so long to figure it out?
‘He’s what?’ Josh asked. ‘With who?’
‘Charlotte.’
Josh paused for a long time. ‘When did that happen?’
Mrs Tam tutted. ‘Where have you been, Josh?’
Twenty-One
‘Oh, bugger.’ Charlotte aimed the torch at Lucy, who barked and twirled as though she were doing some sort of rescue dance. If the dog had found Ted, it didn’t look good. Not for Ted or Charlotte.
Charlotte told herself to be calm. The eerie night and the damp air sucked heat from her flesh after the trek down the hill and along the heritage trail in the dark. She picked her way to the edge of the uneven granite pathway and shone the light on the rubble in front of her. Thousands of pebbles the size of chicken eggs and rocks like watermelons covered the rest of the naturally hewn trail, halting her journey.
Lucy yapped again and Charlotte lifted the torch. Beneath the excited barking, another cry punctured the otherwise quiet night.
‘Ted!’ Charlotte called.
Again, a muffled, woebegone human voice.
‘Ted! It’s Charlotte. I’m coming.’
Charlotte moved carefully, inching her way over the rubble. She stopped and shone the torch upwards. Earth, grassy tufts and rocks littered the steep incline of the hill that should be sheltering the trail. The rain had been hard but she wouldn’t have expected the vibrations to create such a slip. Angling the torch up further, she saw the large, craggy shadows of a tree root. A big snow gum, like the one in her garden. It had obviously once crowned the top of the hill but had fallen on its side, uprooted during the rain, and now looked like a shipwreck on a mudslide. A creek ran down the side of the landslip, bark and branches bobbing in the fast-running water.
‘Hello.’ Ted’s voice.
Charlotte focussed on her pathway. ‘I’m here. I can hear you.’ But she couldn’t see him. ‘Where are you, Ted? Keep talking so I can find you.’
‘I’m down a blasted hole.’
A smile of pure relief touched Charlotte’s lips. If Ted was annoyed it meant he wasn’t too badly harmed.
Lucy barked, only a few metres away. Charlotte moved to the dog, shoved her backpack off her shoulder and stretched herself out on the wet, dirty, stony ground. She peered into a narrow hole, shining the torch.
‘It’s pretty dark down here,’ Ted said.
Charlotte rotated the light and found Ted. He was on his back, about a metre-and-a-half down. The roof of his cave sat so low it only allowed Charlotte sight of his feet, legs, hips and waist. She couldn’t see his face.
‘I’ve twisted my ankle or something,’ he said. ‘Can’t move an inch without feeling a bit of pain.’
‘I’m so sorry, Ted. Please stay still.’ Charlotte sat the base of the torch on the ground and pulled the bottled water out of the backpack. ‘I’ve got water, Ted. I’m going to reach down and see if I can pass it to you. Will you be able to turn or lean forwards and take it from me?’
He grumbled indistinctly. ‘No,’ he said at last.
Damn. ‘Okay, don’t worry. I’ll think of something else.’
She flashed the torchlight over the mound that enclosed Ted. It looked like a natural cave. A huge, flat, rectangular boulder served as a roof and from the moss in its cracks, it had been there for decades. She didn’t have her phone and it was too late to regret that.
Scrabbling in the backpack, she found pen and notepaper. She wrote a hasty note, describing where she was as best she could. Any of the townspeople would know this area. They’d find her and Ted.
‘Lucy, come here, girl.’ She folded the note into a concertina and tucked it into Lucy’s collar, twisting it under and over and lacing the end securely in the silver buckle, the way she had any number of times. For additional emphasis, she unwrapped one of the bandages in her first-aid kit and tied that to Lucy’s collar too, making a big white bow. The note wouldn’t be immediately visible, but they’d see the bandage and wonder why the dog was wearing it. She took the dog’s warm face in her hands and kissed the top of her wet nose. ‘Go find Daniel, Lucy. Where’s Daniel?’
Lucy perked up, her lithe body taut, expression alert.
‘Go find Daniel.’ Charlotte had used the words over and over, every time she sent a note to Daniel. Lucy only had to make a minute’s journey from the house to Kookaburra’s, but she’d never failed. The dog loved working. And Lucy wandered these hills every day on her own. She’d know the way back to town— or to wherever Daniel was.
Lucy bounded into the night, the rubble and muddy earth hardly bothering her nimble legs, and a few seconds later she was gone.
Charlotte peeled her jacket off, then her long-sleeved jersey. It took only moments to find a broken tree branch tall and sturdy enough to shove into a softened-earth part of the track. She braced the branch and secured it by piling rocks and rubble around the base, then took off her white sports singlet. The cool air nipped and brushed at her naked torso. She re-dressed in the jersey and the jacket, and then secured her singlet to the top of the branch, tying the shoulder straps to the top and making a flag. Please find us soon, she prayed silently. It would be an hour or two, maybe a lot longer. What she planned next would be hard. Hardest thing she’d ever done or was likely ever to do again. She had no option.
On her stomach once more, she threw the fastened backpack into the cave, making sure it skimmed the wall and slid down to land by Ted’s right leg. His left leg was bent as though he’d found the most comfortable position for his injured ankle. She reached down and put the torch onto a ledge in the cave, jutting out like a shelf. She waited, her hand on the torch to ensure it wouldn’t fall from its resting place, then she squeezed through the narrow aperture.
‘Ted,’ she said. ‘I’m coming in with you.’
By Dan’s reckoning he and Josh were about an hour and a half from the area where Mrs J said Charlotte was headed. They’d left Ray to find Mrs J and skirted around the hill behind Top Field farm, running most of the way, relying on their torches to spot potholes in the sloping fields. They’d slowed the last half-hour as they hit the heritage trail from the northern end and were taking it at a fast stride.
Small landslips and fallen rocks told Dan what to expect about the state of the trail further south. The rain had been heavy and the closer they got to the denser middle section of the trail, the more he realised the danger Ted could have got himself into. Charlotte was working that section, and whether she’d found Ted or not, she’d be having a tough time.
Give the woman some credit, Mrs J had said. Dan would be happy to, as soon as he found her. She wasn’t used to the area like he was. She wasn’t as physically strong as Dan, and who knew what she was in the middle of if she’d found Ted.
‘I’m holding up a sec, Dan,’ Josh said behind him.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Bootlace.
’
Dan stopped as Josh hunched down to attend to his unlaced boot. ‘Take the chance for a drink, too,’ he said. ‘And eat a chocolate bar.’ He turned to the trail again and looked through the misty darkness as he grabbed his own water bottle from his backpack and took a slug.
Why was Charlotte so special to him and why hadn’t he understood before now? God only knew what he was to her, but to him she was light on water. Without her light, he wouldn’t see the ripples on the surface or know how deep the water was. Wouldn’t know where the shore was. If she left, the images of her might disappear, leaving him only an essence to hold on to, coming to him at the oddest moments in his day. Opening the doors of the bar. Pulling a pint. Running the hillside, trying not to squash the newly sprouted wildflowers.
He bent and plucked a flower off a wild geranium tumbling along the verge. A weed, although his mother had kept pots of the plants outside the front door of his childhood home. It meant gentility and esteem. He knew, because Charlotte wasn’t the only thing he’d Googled. Yeah, he thought, as he pocketed the flower. What he hadn’t researched were his own reasons for loving Charlotte.
‘Okay, let’s go,’ Josh said.
Dan concentrated on the way forwards as they got back into their pace quickly, but his thoughts were still on Charlotte.
Look after Red, Mum. Look after my girl until I get to her. Charlotte encompassed the gentleness he’d been missing since he’d lost his parents. So maybe it was his mother’s turn to tap his resolute shoulder. Maybe he could make Charlotte understand the connection they shared through flowers after all. Along with his own damned foolishness, because the geranium also meant stupidity.
Would Charlotte ever know how sentimental he’d turned? Half of him hoped so, and the other half preferred to retain his masculine and sceptical outlook. It felt like words were being spoken from the heavens, or the afterlife—or whatever the hell went on that wasn’t of this earth. Or maybe Dan was just going crazy, not knowing where his girl was. Not knowing if she was in trouble.
Charlotte had never wanted to know how it might feel to be incarcerated in a submarine, but she was getting a taste of it now. There was hardly room to do much more than shuffle herself into a slightly different position in order to ease the pain of the rocky floor jabbing into her hips and back. Which was more than Ted was able to do, with his heavier weight and throbbing ankle.
Charlotte had slipped the silver first-aid blanket over Ted’s torso. At least his arms and body would be warmed.
‘I’ve been doing a lot of thinking while I’ve been lying here,’ Ted said. ‘About my space research.’
‘Just lie still.’
‘I am still. Can’t move in this place. Especially with you in it too.’
Charlotte turned her laugh into a cough. ‘Well, I’m not leaving you, so you’ll have to put up with me.’ She unscrewed one of the water bottles and offered some to Ted, holding the plastic bottle to his mouth. ‘Just a sip.’ She didn’t have much first-aid knowledge and regretted not having done a course or something. She’d bet all the townspeople knew first aid. They’d have to, living so remotely from clinics or doctors.
‘How did you get down here?’ Charlotte asked, hoping the conversation would eat into the time it took for the rescue people to find them.
‘Don’t know. Woke up and here I was. Think I might have slipped, although I don’t know how I managed to get in head first. I remember a heavy crashing noise.’
‘That must have been the tree uprooting above us, on top of the hill.’
‘It’s the rain. Makes some parts of Top Field farm more like a creek of shingles.’ Ted paused. ‘Miss Simmons—’
‘It’s Charlotte, Ted. Call me Charlotte.’
‘I’ve been re-evaluating my priorities. My wants and needs.’ He cleared his throat. ‘I’ve been concentrating on my space studies too much as a way of ignoring what’s really happening. I’ve been deceiving myself. It’s all down to environmental factors, you see, and times have been a touch hard.’
Charlotte patted his hand. ‘Don’t worry about that now.’ He’d been down here for hours in this cramped quarter and must have had nothing to think about except his troubles.
‘It’s time I came back to earth and gave my attention to the women in my family. And it’s not that I’m discounting the possibility of life outside our universe, but I no longer have a desire to be taken by anything considered alien. I don’t think it’d be pleasant.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to be taken. What would the town do without you? Or the ladies in your family who love you?’
‘That’s a kind observation, Miss Simmons.’
‘We’re stuck in a cave together, Ted, I think it’s okay to use first names.’ She grinned at him.
‘Doesn’t seem right. I haven’t been the friendliest or most hospitable, have I?’
Charlotte patted his large hand. ‘I don’t blame you. I charged in like a shot from a pistol with all my ideas.’
‘Oh, that you did. Stirred us up alright.’
‘Will you accept my apology?’
‘If you’ll accept mine first,’ he said with staunch politeness.
Charlotte squeezed his hand.
‘Best turn the torch off, Miss Simmons. We need to conserve the batteries in case they don’t find us.’
‘They’ll find us.’ Charlotte aimed the torch at the opening and flicked the light on and off rapidly. The night sky lit up in pockets of white light. Then she switched the torch off and took a gulp of the darkness. ‘And they’ll find us before daybreak,’ she told Ted.
He quietened, his breathing slowing as he rested. Charlotte blinked up at the opening above her and into the night, full of stars outside. What was this strange sensation rushing within her? A meeting of fear and peace? An amity with the dark? She was enclosed in an extremely confined space—trapped, because she wouldn’t leave Ted, and she wasn’t scared.
‘There. Look.’ Dan pointed into the dark. ‘There,’ he said again as a flash of white caught his eye.
‘It’s Lucy,’ Josh said.
‘Yeah.’ Lucy’s white-tipped tail bobbed as she raced towards them from the southern end of the trail. ‘Luce!’
The dog barked as she bounded for them.
‘Good girl, good girl, Luce.’ Dan bent and undid the bow on her collar. ‘Shine your torch for me, Josh.’ Dan got rid of the bandage and flung it to the ground. He inhaled deeply. There it was. A note.
He unwound it from the collar and opened it, his fingers tingling at the tips.
Have found Ted. We’re in a cave—a landslip. Please call Daniel Bradford if you find this dog.
Dan’s heart swelled. She’d asked for him.
Can’t give position or grid ref as haven’t got a map but we’re southern end of heritage trail. Granite hillside. Big snow gum at top has uprooted and fallen. So sorry for any inconvenience but please get in touch with Daniel.
‘Jesus, sweetheart.’ So damned polite—at a time when she must have been scared, no matter how intelligent and brave her written words were.
Dog’s name is Lucy. She might lead you back to us. 2.45 a.m., Charlotte Simmons, Swallow’s Fall resident.
Dan scrunched the note, shoved it into his pocket and picked up his torch from the ground. ‘She’s found Ted,’ he told Josh. ‘We’re close. They’re by the snow gum on the granite hillside.’
Josh turned to the trail. ‘We might make it in fifteen minutes.’
‘Let’s go.’ Dan took hold of Lucy’s head and tickled her under her chin, the way he always did when he wanted her to take a note to Charlotte. ‘Where’s Charlotte, Luce?’
Lucy didn’t wait to be asked a second time, she yapped and headed back the way she’d come.
‘Ted—listen … It’s Lucy.’
Charlotte grabbed the torch, aimed it at the opening and into the early morning sky, switching it on and off rapidly.
Lucy’s barking got louder and closer.
‘
Charlotte!’
Daniel. Relief rushed through her at the sound of his strong voice. He’d come. He’d found them.
‘We’re here!’ Charlotte called, surprised to find her throat gravelly. She coughed, swallowed a couple of times to get more moisture in her mouth and called out again.
‘Jesus Christ.’
Charlotte flung the torchlight upwards. ‘Oh, Daniel. Thank God.’ So used to seeing the sunlight at his back as he stood in her doorway, Charlotte’s breath hitched at the sight of his head and shoulders above her, haloed in torchlight.
‘Okay, sweetheart, angle the light away. You’re blinding me.’
‘Sorry.’ She swung the beam downwards.
‘Are you hurt?’ he asked.
‘No. But Ted’s twisted his ankle. It doesn’t look broken but I’m not expert enough to tell. I gave him painkillers about two hours ago.’
‘It still hurts like billy-o,’ Ted said. ‘But it’s not broken.’
‘Alright, Ted. We’ll get you out.’
Daniel moved from the opening. Charlotte heard Josh’s voice, answering something Daniel asked him. She breathed deeply, excitement mounting at the thought of being pulled out of here. Two big strong men had come to their rescue because of one beautiful, smart little dog.
‘You need to get Miss Simmons out first,’ Ted called up.
Daniel’s face appeared at the opening again. He swung his torch into the cave, swinging the light around. The torch gave off enough light for Charlotte to see a frown, and his thinned mouth.
‘What we need to do, Ted,’ Daniel said, ‘is get you turned. Charlotte—move so that you’ve got your back to me.’
Charlotte curled her legs up to her body and turned on her side, using her hands and feet for momentum. She bumped her head on the rock of the roof with every movement, but eventually she had her back to the opening where there was room to sit up straight.
‘You know what I want you to do?’ Daniel asked, but Charlotte had already leaned forwards to Ted.
‘I need you to lift yourself up, Ted,’ she said, taking hold of his arms. ‘There’s enough room for you to swivel around on your side. I’ll help by holding your left leg, but it’ll hurt.’