by Margaret Way
Sheltered by the sandstone outliers that surrounded it was a chain of small pools of an entrancing smoky blue that in the Wet became one large deep billabong. Now while it awaited the full onset of the rains the fresh water billabong had dried out to four shallow waterholes some distance apart. Rocky ledges formed a natural amphitheatre around the banks, the sandstone studded with chips of quartz that sparkled like semi precious gemstones in the sun.
Such a lovely place to rest! The ubiquitous pandanus lent a wonderfully cool feeling to the site. Many of the trees had sent down prop roots deep into the water. Others fanned their picturesque spikes over the ancient stone benches softening the contours of the weathered rock. Elsewhere flowering grevilleas, hibiscus and delicate eucalypt flowers stood out brilliantly against the rich greens of the vegetation and the curious blue of the water that nevertheless was so clear it was easy to see the sandy bottom scattered with more chips of quartz.
Joe got the Billy going in no time while Matt prowled restlessly around the area trampling bright displays of little pink and white storm flowers under his heavy boots. At intervals he stood staring off into the wilderness with a rather fierce expression on his face. What was he thinking? At one point David went over to speak to him. Isabelle sat quietly observing without appearing to, watching Matt's thin face break into a smile. He shook his head at something David had to say and Isabelle found herself reluctantly empathising with Matt's position. Clearly he was very much in love with Samantha, a feeling Samantha definitely did not share. She wondered how Samantha's trek with her brother was working out. Well she hoped. She thoroughly approved of Samantha.
In some strange way Matt reminded her of Blair. Blair had that same tension inside him, the fear of being a failure, of being passed over. Blair had been plagued by a manic jealousy which culminated in violence. She just hoped nothing would happen to mar their trip. Not that Matt stood a chance of asserting himself over Ross or David. That would be like comparing a cub with two full grown lions. It was tenderhearted Samantha he might threaten. He only had to get her alone.
Isabelle breathed a sigh, watching David return. He made directly for where she sat on the stone ledge, making a sweeping gesture with his arm.
"I could be here a year or more and never run out of sites," he said with the greatest satisfaction. "Everything is progressing so well. I have high hopes for this series." He moved back to sit beside this beautiful creature who would have made the most common place surroundings seem like heaven. "Thank you again for sitting and standing so patiently while I photographed you. It couldn't have been all that easy, especially not in the humid heat though you always look as cool as a lily."
"Well thank you, David." She dipped her head. "But goodness I'm used to it. I was born here. I'm a Territorian."
"And it shows. You're so much at home here. Yet you left it for the city. I can't imagine it was easy to replant you. Then again you were embarking on a new life."
"Yes," she agreed quietly, knowing he was desperate not to hurt her by saying the wrong thing. "At the beginning I settled in well." Blair had not revealed his true nature until much later. "It was a very social life. We were out pretty well every night of the week." Hadn't Blair been hell bent on showing her off like some trophy? "I wasn't used to that as you can imagine, having spent my life on North Star. After a while I have to say all the
partying became wearisome. A lot of it was quite meaningless. People can be very insincere. Then again I seemed to antagonise my mother-in-law and because of her Blair's whole family. I know Mrs. Hartmann had already picked the right girl for Blair to marry."
"One no doubt she could manipulate and control," he answered rather grimly.
She looked at him in surprise. "It sounds like you've met Mrs. Hartmann?"
He shook his tawny head. "I have to admit I've heard a lot about her."
"Then you've also heard a lot about me." She had to accept it.
He smoothed over this. "Listening to gossip isn't high on my list, Isabelle. I've told you that."
"Nevertheless I fear you've heard something. You've been so nice to me, David. Going out of your way to comfort me."
"I'd do anything to help you, Isabelle. When I first met you, you seemed to be just coping with the pain. Nowadays you appear stronger."
"I feel it," she said. "I was like someone frozen, but the sun has warmed me through." The sun and you. He was always calming her in his powerful benign golden presence. Somehow he had given her back a sense of her own identity. Not Blair Hartmann's abused wife. Isabelle Sunderland as she had once been.
His sense of urgency grew. Could she intuit his powerful desire to hold her close? Day after day it got harder not to take her in his arms. He had never with his passing lovers experienced such a rush of emotion.
For a moment Isabelle felt almost transparent under his topaz gaze. As if all the agony with Blair she had kept so secret, so hidden, might be there for him to see. Somewhere close a bird called. It seemed to be the only sound in this paradise. "I find myself very anxious to correct any false impressions, David," she said. "Your good opinion means a lot to me."
"Hello?" He couldn't help himself. He caught the point of her chin with his finger turning her beautiful poignant face towards him. "Don't you know you've got it."
Of their own accord tears glistened in her eyes. "I've already told you my marriage wasn't working out, David. At least the gossips were right about that."
"And you're blaming yourself?" Reluctantly he dropped his hand.
Her eyes were fixed but blurred. How much could she expose of herself? She felt such shame. Would he feel disgust? "It seems to me I am to blame," she said sadly. "Small wonder Blair's mother hates me."
He stepped up his defence. "You had nothing to do with his death."
"I know that with my head." She touched a hand to her temple. "In my heart there's a lot of guilt. Blair turned out to be different from the man I thought I'd married. Sometimes I think he only married me to spite his mother."
He frowned at the absurdity of that. "Surely not. I've been told he was passionately in love with you."
"Not me," she said quietly. "Not the real me. I, in turn, was quite different from the woman Blair thought he had married. There was a lot of pain in our marriage. Especially towards the end."
"You sound like you felt trapped?" He studied her closely, trying to see through the layers and layers of defences she had set up to protect herself.
"I was trying to find a way out of it."
Suddenly she sounded greatly determined causing him to hesitate. This wasn't what he had thought. It was more in keeping with the general view. Her husband had adored her. She had denied him her love. The Ice Queen was the label that had been thrown around. Was it possible? For all her beauty and charm something about her sent the message not to reach out and touch her. "You never spoke to your father or Ross?" he asked.
His eyes rested on her like a warm golden glow. "The damnable sin of pride."
Pride and vanity. He had seen little evidence of it.
"I've shocked you." For a moment her very soul was naked.
"Hardly shocked, Isabelle," he said. Something far less certain and subtle. An inclination to question. Get to the bottom of it but he had no right. "Unhappy marriages aren't terribly unusual."
"You're doubting that I tried?"
Those appealing eyes couldn't have been more alluring. "I'm sure you did. Nevertheless you've been allowing your feelings of guilt to grow."
"Now why did I start on this?" she asked, a tremor in her voice.
He caught her hand and just barely stopped himself from carrying it to his mouth. "Obviously you need someone to talk to. I think you've learned to trust me."
"In a remarkably short time." Her voice was barely above a whisper.
"And what you might tell me you've never told another soul?"
She winced. "You make it sound like I have terrible secrets."
"Do you?" It was worse not
knowing. He had to remember she had been abandoned by her mother as a child. That had dire consequences. A replay of the pattern? She had grown up in an all male household albeit a loving and protective one. Her husband, her lover, had failed her. She had failed him. How?
"I daresay all of us take some things to the grave." She looked up as a flight of pure white corellas landed in a stunted acacia covering the branches like so many large floppy flowers.
"I don't think you could have experienced anything that bad?"
Misery that only ended with Blair's death. Misery she found she couldn't possibly share. Not even with David. She had to hide the things Blair had done to her though they would stay with her forever. A normal person would consider her either a masochist or a coward. She was neither. Put simply, it was just she had been in such a state of shock, of denial, to cope with Blair when he turned on her.
David could see her withdrawal to a quiet place in her own soul.
"I have to deal with things by myself," she said, turning her head and looking into his eyes. "I have to start a new life. I have started. I'm much better being active. This trip is working its own magic. I'm glad I came. I'm honoured you wanted to put me in your photographs. I think I was a little more than the subtle human element, wasn't I?" She couldn't help but know he had used her as a focus, the element that drew the eye rather than a background figure.
"Ah, so you noticed!" His deep voice was selfmocking. "You're a very beautiful woman, Isabelle. The camera loves you. Plus you have close ties with this landscape. In fact I'm mesmerised by the way you move about in it. The easy grace and the confidence. The way you listen for sounds. Sounds of danger, sounds of pleasure. When I asked for a certain pose today-not easy when you're not a professional model-your concentration was absolute. You worked with me to get the best shot possible. That means a lot. You even consented to wearing this outfit." He raised a fold of her skirt slightly so the sunlight shone through it making it shimmer. Desire closed in. He had to grapple with that like he had to grapple with a monster. "Not your usual safari gear," he commented lightly. He hadn't wanted that look, but something flowing and feminine which still blended with the wild environment. She had chosen wonderfully well. An ankle length skirt and a matching loose top that nevertheless clung to the contours of her body and showed the beautiful
shape of her breasts. The material was semi transparent when the sun shone through it, the fascinating black, brown and burnt umber design on the sage green fabric had aboriginal motifs which were outlined in dots of yellow. On her feet she wore ethnic type sandals with the thin straps wound around her elegant legs to mid calf. With her long centre parted raven hair tumbling down her back he couldn't have had a more stunning subject.
Isabelle's blood raced and her heart tingled. He had perfected a lightness and calmness when he was with her but she knew in her heart it was carefully cultivated. Perhaps he felt exactly as she did? "And less hot." She smiled. "But the sandals aren't good for tramping. Are you going to shoot more film today?"
"More of the sunset," he said, waving back at Joe who was signalling all was in readiness. "They're unbelievably brilliant up here in the Top End. There's something very exciting in the lighting. I'm awaiting my opportunity to capture a midnight thunderstorm."
She smiled at his enthusiasm. "You sound like you have an endless love for your work."
"Love is the poetry of the senses." He gazed down at her for a moment, before taking her by the hand and leading her the short distance over the sand to the waiting afternoon tea.
Maybe one day in the weeks ahead, as they grew closer, she would confide what troubled her and what had caused her to rebel so violently-and she had, for all her reticence-against the confines of her doomed marriage. Only then was he going to do what was in his heart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GREAT flights of water birds, glossy ibises and pied heron passed to the east of them, boring into the swamps, that were ideal sanctuaries. They were out on a broad tributary of the Alligator river, misnamed by an early explorer who mistook the far more dangerous crocodiles for their less ferocious brothers. Samantha was brimming with bravado and it had to be confessed, tingling nerves as though one of these monsters could attack the launch. During the morning's trip up river she saw for the first time in her life, basking in the hot sun, the giant prehistoric reptiles that had outlived the dinosaurs. Their pale yellow mouths were open even though they were at rest, showing their fearsome teeth.
"That's to reduce the effect of the heat on their brain," Ross told her. "It's called thermo-regulating. It's how they retain a body temperature of around thirty, thirty-two degrees C."
He was talking quite nonchalantly, but he was avidly aware of her as she was of him. Passion hummed like a wire stretched taut between them. The rapture of the lovemaking they had shared at the waterfall was the powerful current that fused them together. It kept them awake at night, separated, each in their respective tent, as their bodies longed for release from the never ending pressure of sexual desire.
Now Ross steadied her by the shoulders as she shied back instinctively. "It's okay. We're quite safe."
"I'll have to take your word for it."
He just laughed. As a Territorian he had lived with the presence of crocodiles all his life. Indeed they inhabited his back yard, hidden away in the deep and mysterious lagoons on North Star. No hot and weary stockman out on muster would dream of plunging into one though a visitor in the early 1920s had and paid for it with his life. From time to time horses and even stray cattle had disappeared on the station and the blame was always laid at the jaws of a croc. Kangaroos with their small brains had never learned not to drink from the swamps, lagoons and rivers consequently they often fell prey.
He lifted one hand from her shoulder and pointed as a "big fella" well over twenty feet long began its muddy slide into the water.
"Oh my God!" She shuddered, staring at the huge muscular body with its distinctive gnarled skin. "It's black isn't it? I thought they were grey?"
"Grey, dark brown, close to black like that oldtimer."
"I've never seen anything so frightening in my life. Imagine being taken by one. It would have to be worse than being taken by a shark."
"You can take your pick up here," he said laconically. "The crocs, the estuarine crocodiles, the salties have no predators outside man. They're feared by all creatures."
"Which doesn't come as a surprise." The crocodile she was watching and David at the front of the launch was filming had submerged. Only its yellow eyes and its high ridged nostrils were visible above the surface of the water like some reptilian submarine. "Easy to see how they sneak up on you." Samantha was experiencing both horror and fascination.
"They float, keeping just the right degree of buoyancy to remain hidden," Ross explained. "Among reeds, water lilies and their pads, any floating debris. Then they spring with astounding speed for so cumbersome an animal."
"And eat you on the spot?" She let out an involuntary moan, thinking of the cases she had read about in the newspapers.
"No. Crocs only eat about once a week. They drown their prey in the famous death roll, dismember them and store them away underwater to eat later."
"How gruesome."
"There's a black side to Nature," he said. "A dark side. Magnificent as the Park is, it has it. In the old days crocs were aggressively hunted for their skins. Handbags, shoes, luggage, whatever. These days they're protected though God knows there are enough of them. I'll all for a controlled cull. I think you'd find most experienced bushmen are."
"So where does the expression `crying crocodile tears' come from? Do they actually cry?"
He lowered his head closer to her ear, relishing the fresh scent of her. God only knew when they could be alone again. It couldn't come soon enough so urgent was his need. "Only when they've been out of the water for a long time, like in the Dry. At night in the relative cool they race overland from one dried out pool to find another with more water
. As a sight, it's extraordinary. They cover the ground with incredible speed, holding those log like bodies up high on their short stumpy legs. Their `tears' are only a fluid produced by the glands to protect and lubricate the eye. They're not emotional hence the saying. It's the breeding season right now until about April."
"But we're going on land. Surely that's a huge hazard?"
"Don't worry. We'll pick the right spot and the right time. During the breeding season the crocs just like the perentie you encountered become quite aggressive. Dominant males kill other males or badly injure them. The females attack one another as well. Dads are known to eat the eggs or their hatchlings if they can get to them but the female guards her nest well. The much bigger males back down just as a big man can be intimidated by his little wife."