by Joan Lindsay
Presently he dropped off into a wakeful dream in which the ring of the Arab’s hooves on a loose stone was the housemaid throwing back the shutters of his room at Haddingham Hall. Still only half awake he hoped Annie wouldn’t pull up the blinds yet, and awoke to the black, closely-drawn curtains of the Australian night. He fumbled for the matches and saw for a flickering moment the face of his watch beside him on the ground. It was still only ten o’clock. Wide awake now and aching all over he threw a broken branch on to the fire and lay watching the crown of dry leaves flaring up in showers of sparks reflected in the pool.
When the first glimmer of daylight showed up he was already boiling the billy for tea. Gulping it down with a morsel of dry bread which some sugar ants were endeavouring to drag bodily into their hole, he gave the pony the last of the chaff and was ready to start. Many days later, when Bumpher was firing questions at him all over again, he realized that he had no definite plan of action when he had crossed the creek and begun walking towards the Rock. Only a compulsion to go back to the little bush with the flags and begin the search again from there.
It was another glorious morning, warm and windless as yesterday. After the endless wakeful night it was a positive relief to be forcing his chilled body through the waist-high bracken. The stunted laurel was easily located by the scraps of paper, now limp with dew. A parrot flashed through the trees ahead where magpies were gurgling in full-throated morning joy. Veiled in lacy green of fern and foliage, the formidable buttresses of the Hanging Rock were not yet in view. A few yards from where he had stopped to extricate one foot from an apparently bottomless cleft a little wallaby came hop-hopping out of the ferns on a zig-zag course that suggested some kind of natural track. There were certain things that animals knew more about than people – Mike’s cocker spaniel for instance was aware of cats and other enemies half a mile away. What had the wallaby seen, what did it know? Perhaps it was trying to tell him something as it stood looking down at him from a ledge of rock. There was no fear in its gentle eyes. It was easy enough to hoist himself up on to the ledge but not to follow the little creature’s leaping progress through the scrub where it disappeared. The ledge where he now found himself abutted on to a natural platform of striated rock ringed with stones, boulders and clumps of wiry fern, shaded by straggling eucalypts. Here he was forced to rest, if only for a moment, his leaden legs. His head on the contrary was less like a head than an air balloon, tethered somewhere above his aching shoulders. The well drilled body accustomed to its hearty British intake of eggs and bacon, coffee and porridge was loudly complaining, although its owner was not conscious of hunger – only beset with a windy longing for gallons of ice cold water. A sloping rock offered a meagre shade. He laid his head on a stone and fell instantly into the thin ragged sleep of exhaustion, waking with a sudden stab of pain over one eye. A trickle of blood was oozing on to the pillow. The pillow was as hard and sharp as a stone under his burning head. The rest of his body was deathly cold. Shivering, he reached out for the coverlet.
At first he thought it was the sound of birds in the oak tree outside his window. He opened his eyes and saw the eucalypts, their long pointed silver leaves hanging motionless on the heavy air. It seemed to be coming from all round him – a low wordless murmur, almost like the murmur of distant voices, with now and then a sort of trilling that might have been little spurts of laughter. But who would be laughing down here under the sea . . .? He was forcing his way through viscous dark-green water, looking for the musical box whose sweet tinkling voice was sometimes behind, sometimes just ahead. If only he could move faster, trailing useless legs through the green, he might catch up with it. Suddenly it ceased. The water grew thicker and darker; he saw bubbles rising from his mouth, began to choke, thought, ‘This is what it feels like to drown,’ and woke coughing up the blood that was trickling down his cheek from the cut on his forehead.
He was wide awake and stumbling to his feet when he heard her laughing, a little way ahead. ‘Miranda! Where are you? . . . Miranda!’ There was no answering voice. He began running as well as he could towards the belt of scrub. The prickly grey green dogwood tore at his fine English skin. ‘Miranda!’ Now huge rocks and boulders blocked his path on the rising ground, each a nightmare obstacle to be somehow walked around, clambered over, crawled under, according to size and contour. They grew larger and more fantastic. He cried out: ‘Oh, my lost, lovely darling, where are you?’ and raising his eyes for an instant from the treacherous ground saw the monolith, black against the sun. A scatter of pebbles went rolling down into the chasm below as he slipped on a jagged spur and fell. A spear of pain jabbed at his ankle, he got up again and started hauling himself up on to the next boulder. There was only one conscious thought in his head: Go on. A Fitzhubert ancestor hacking his way through bloody barricades at Agincourt had felt much the same way; and had, in fact, incorporated those very words, in Latin, in the family crest: Go on. Mike, some five centuries later, went on climbing.
8
It was a new sensation for Albert to be troubled by anything beyond his own immediate affairs and he didn’t care for it. Riding home over the mountain on Friday evening his thoughts kept reverting to his friend alone all night at the creek. The poor bastard wouldn’t even know how to make himself comfortable on a bed of bracken by digging a hole for his shoulders. Or how to light a fire with a handful of bark when the night turned cold, as it did quite early on the Macedon plains, even in summer. No doubt about it, something had got under Mike’s skin. Just what, Albert didn’t understand, but there it was. Perhaps all the nobs like Mike’s family in England were on the barmy side. Or was there really something in all this flamdoodle about looking for the lost sheilas that made sense? Albert himself had once known an unreasoning urge to go to the Ballarat Races and put a whole five pounds on an outsider that came romping home at forty to one. Perhaps Mike felt like that about finding the sheilas. For his part he was bloody well sick of the sheilas . . . probably dead long ago, come to that. . . . He hoped Cook had kept something hot for his tea tonight. And what in Hell was he going to say to the Boss? Thus uncomfortably musing Albert trotted slowly home on a loose rein.
Darkness was filling the avenue with fragrant glooms and mysteries when he turned in at the gates of Lake View. After unsaddling Lancer and hosing him down in the stable yard, he made his way to the kitchen, there to be cheered by generous helpings of warmed-up steak and kidney pudding and apricot tart. ‘Best go and see them inside,’ Cook advised. ‘The master’s in a regular state with you being so late and all – what have you done with young Michael?’
‘He’s all right. I’ll go when I’ve finished me tea,’ said the coachman, helping himself to more tart. It was after ten o’clock, and the Boss was alone in the study playing patience with the French windows open onto the verandah when Albert coughed loudly and knocked on the leaded pane.
‘Come in, Crundall. For God’s sake, where’s Mr Michael?’
‘I have a message from him, sir. I –’
‘Message? Didn’t you come home together? What the blazes has gone wrong?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ said the coachman, frantically seeking the appropriate fib which he had been concocting while he was eating the apricot tart, and now eluded him under the old boy’s accusing blue eyes. ‘How do you mean, nothing? My nephew never told us he intended to be out for dinner?’ At Lake View being absent for a meal without due notice was almost worthy of capital punishment.
‘He didn’t intend to be out that long sir. The fact is, we left it a bit late starting for home and Mr Michael reckoned he’d stay the night at the Macedon Arms and ride home tomorrow.’
‘Macedon Arms? That miserable little pub near the Woodend Station? Never heard such nonsense!’
‘I think, sir,’ said Albert, gaining confidence as all good liars do, ‘he thought it’d save any inconvenience this end?’
The Colonel snorted. ‘Considering Cook has been keeping his dinner hot for a good three hours
.’
‘Between you and me,’ Albert said, ‘Mr Michael was a bit done in after that long ride in the sun this morning.’ ‘Where did you go?’ the Colonel asked. ‘A fair way. It was really me put the idea into his head to take it easy and stop the night in Woodend.’
‘So it was your brilliant idea, was it? ‘The boy’s all right, I suppose?’
‘Right as rain.’
‘Let’s hope the Arab’s properly stalled for the night – if they have a stable down there – very well, then, you may go. Good night.’
‘Good night, sir. Will you be wanting Lancer tomorrow?’
‘Yes. I mean no. Dammit. I can’t make any arrangements for Saturday until I’ve seen my nephew. We’re expected to tennis at Government Cottage.’
Although he normally fell into instant dreamless sleep the moment his head touched the pillow, Albert passed the rest of the night in a succession of disturbing dreams in which the voice of Michael kept calling for help from regions always inaccessible. Sometimes it came drifting in through the tiny window from the lake, sometimes in moaning gusts from the avenue, sometimes almost beside him, close to his ear – ‘Albert, where are you, Albert?’ – so that he actually sat up in bed, sweating and wide awake. For once it was a positive relief when the sun rose, filling his little box of a room with orange light, and it was time to get up, put his head under the pump and see to the horses.
Directly after breakfast and without a word to anyone – not even his good friend Cookie – he pinned a note on the stable door, saddled up Lancer and set off over the Mount for the Picnic Grounds. ‘Home soon’ he had written with deliberate intent to deceive and delay. No sense in getting everyone’s fur flying up at the house when it might well be the truth that Mike at this moment was trotting quietly home within a few miles of the Lake View turn. Reason insisted there was no cause for alarm. Mike was an experienced rider who knew the track yet against all reason a nagging fear persisted.
Moving at an easy canter, Lancer was soon on the soft going between tall forest trees, where Albert’s practised eye noted the damp red surface of the seldom-used track showed no hoofmarks other than their own of yesterday. At every turn he craned forward in the saddle expecting to see the pony’s snow-white crest as the Arab came swinging towards him out of the ferns. On the highest point of the track where the forest thinned out he pulled up Lancer under the same tree where he and Michael had stopped yesterday morning. Across the plain the Hanging Rock rose up in violent contrasts of midday light and shade. Barely glancing at its now familiar splendours, his eye swept the empty shimmering plain for a patch of moving white. The descent on dry slippery grass and loose stones, even for an animal as surefooted as Lancer, was slow. As soon as he had finally slithered on to the plain and felt the level ground under his four feet he was off again like the wind. They had just entered the belt of light timber on the fringe of the Picnic Grounds when the big horse propped so violently that his rider nearly lost a stirrup, at the same time letting out a long rasping whinny that went echoing through the glade like the wail of a foghorn. It was answered by another, only fainter, and within seconds the white pony, without a saddle and trailing a rope halter on the ground, came trotting towards them out of the scrub. Albert was only too glad to sit comfortably back in the saddle and allow the two horses to lead the way back to the creek.
It was cool and pleasant in the shade of the blackwoods by the pool where at first glance everything looked much the same as when the two young men had parted there last night. The ashes of Mike’s fire ringed the stones of the fireplace, his hat, with a parrot feather stuck in the brim, hung from the same overhanging branch. Nearby, the pony’s admired English saddle rested on a smooth stump. (‘Could’ve thrown a bag over it,’ reflected Albert with professional concern, ‘with all them magpie droppings. And why didn’t the bugger have the sense to wear his hat? He’s not all that used to the Australian sun in February . . .’) For some unaccountable reason, Albert’s doubts and fears of the last few hours now gave place to a sense of irritation, even of anger. ‘Blast the bloody young fool! I wouldn’t mind betting he’s gone and lost himself somewhere up there on the bloody Rock. . . . Hell, I shouldn’t have got meself mixed up with all this . . .’ However, mixed up with it he was to the extent of crawling laboriously in and out of the scrub and bracken in search of fresh tracks leading towards the Rock.
There were any number of footprints to choose from, including Albert’s own of yesterday. The narrow imprint of Michael’s riding boots was easily picked up on the loose soil. Trouble was going to start when they faded out amongst the stones and rubble on the Rock. He had only been following Michael’s trail for fifty yards or so, when he noticed another set of footprints, only a few feet away, almost parallel to the others, but coming downhill towards the pool. ‘Funny thing that . . . looks like he went up and come down again the same way. . . . Jeez, what’s that over there?’
Mike was lying on his side, slumped over a tussock, with one leg doubled up under him. He was unconscious; deathly pale, but breathing. He must have tripped and fallen heavily over the tussock – perhaps broken some ribs or an ankle. There was nothing to account for the cut across the forehead, nor the scratches on his face and arms. Albert had enough practical experience of broken bones not to attempt to move him into a more comfortable position. He did, however, manage to pillow the head on some fresh bracken, fetch water from the creek and wipe the dried blood from the pale dusty face. The brandy flask was still in the jacket pocket – he withdrew it gingerly and forced a few drops between the other’s lips. The boy moaned without opening his eyes as the liquid dribbled down his chin. How long had Mike been lying here on the ground, beset by ants and hovering flies? The skin felt clammy under Albert’s hand and altogether the poor bugger looked in such a bad way he decided to waste no more time and go immediately for help.
Of the two horses, the Arab was the freshest. Lancer could be trusted to remain tied up and docile in the shade for several hours. In a few minutes he had the pony saddled and bridled and was out on the Woodend Road. He had only gone a few hundred yards when he caught sight of a young shepherd with a collie dog, strolling across a paddock on the other side of the fence. When the shepherd was close enough to hear what Albert was shouting at him, he shouted back that he had just said goodbye to Doctor McKenzie of Woodend, who had been delivering the shepherd’s wife of a son. With large orange ears flapping against the light, the proud father cupped two red paws together and bawled into a rising cloud of dust, ‘Nine pounds seven ounces on the kitchen scales and the blackest hair you ever did see.’ Albert was already gathering up the Arab’s reins. ‘Where is he now?’
‘In his cradle, I reckon,’ said the shepherd, his simple mind centred exclusively on the lusty babe.
‘Not the kid you fool – the Doctor!’
‘Oh, him!’ The shepherd grinned and waved vaguely towards a bend in the empty road. ‘In his gig he is. You’ll catch up with him easy with that pony of yours.’ Whereupon the collie, to whom life and death were all one on this pleasant summer afternoon, took a playful nip at the Arab’s off hind leg that sent him flying down the road in a cloud of dust.
Doctor McKenzie’s gig was soon overtaken and heading back towards the Picnic Grounds. Michael was still lying exactly as Albert had left him. After a brisk professional appraisement the old man got to work on the cut forehead, producing dressings and disinfectant from a shiny black leather bag. Oh, those little black bags of hope and healing – how many weary miles were they carried under the seats of gigs and buggies, jolting over the paddocks and unmade roads. How many hours did his patient horse stand waiting under sun and moon for the doctor to come out of some stricken weatherboard cottage carrying his little black bag? ‘No serious damage that I can see,’ Doctor McKenzie was saying as he knelt over Mike on the tussock. ‘The ankle’s badly bruised. Probably he’s had a fall somewhere up on the Rock. And a touch of the sun. The important thing is to get him home to bed a
s fast as we can.’ On a makeshift stretcher contrived from the Doctor’s all-purpose buggy rug (one side imitation leopard, the other shiny black waterproof) and two straight saplings Mike was expertly hoisted on to the gig. ‘Leave it to me young man – I’ve had thirty years of experience fitting ’em in so they don’t spill out on the road.’ He was amazingly gruff and efficient, amazingly gentle for one who had been up half the night wrestling with the shepherd’s wife’s reluctant nine-pounder.
Albert mounted the pony and, leading Lancer on a halter, much to that splendid animal’s disgust, rode on slowly ahead of the gig. It was close on midnight when the little procession turned into the avenue at Lake View. The Colonel, to whom a message had been despatched several hours ago from Woodend, was pacing up and down outside the gates with a hurricane lamp. His wife on learning that Mike was safely on his way home had allowed herself to retire to bed. Doctor McKenzie, an old family friend, leaned over the side of the gig. ‘Nothing to be alarmed about, Colonel. Sprained ankle, cut forehead. Badly shocked.’
In the hall a housemaid hovered with cans of hot water and fresh linen. Michael was put to bed with an eiderdown and hot bottles and after a sip of warm milk had opened for a moment a pair of haunted eyes. ‘The boy’s been through hell,’ the Doctor decided. Aloud he said: ‘Now mind, Colonel, absolute rest, no visitors and no questions – at least not until he starts to talk himself.’ The Colonel spluttered, ‘What I want to know is why the Devil Mike was left at the Hanging Rock all night on his own?’ After a day spent in alternating fits of rage and secret fears he was nearing explosion point. ‘Damn you, Crundall, what was all that poppycock you told me last night about Mike staying at the pub in Woodend?’