by Joan Phipson
She shared her son’s conviction—indeed, she had passed it on to him—that Fate had been unusually, abnormally, hard on the Nicholsons and that society owed them more than a little. Mr. Nicholson’s ill health, Terry’s failure to find a job, her own constant effort to make the money stretch far enough was all due to the callous behaviour of “them.” One should fight ones’ own battles, and so she told Terry.
“We need that bit o’ land, Terry,” she said one day. “Your dad’ll never be well as things are. We got to have it somehow.”
He only nodded and left the house. The latent feelings within him were beginning to be latent no longer. When he thought of his father now he was astonished to discover that he had actually begun to feel sorry for him. What his mother had said had been the green light. Mr. Lovett might have called it a trigger. But it had been released in a way that was new to him. And now he proposed to act. His mother and justice were both on his side. He summoned Joe again, and this time when Joe went away he went with a rather white face and eyes that no longer met the eyes of other people.
Chapter 18
In the second week of Rupert’s activities the weather began to change—almost imperceptibly at first but more noticeably as the days went on. On the first day the only indication was the very thin film of cloud that slowly began to spread over the bright blue of the sky. It was so thin that the sunshine was hardly dimmed—only a little of the brightness had gone from the day. There was no wind. On the second day the film of cloud was slightly thicker, and Catherine, settling herself out of sight behind the hide that Rupert had erected, said, “There’s less sunlight today. Will it make photographing more difficult?” Rupert said that actually it was rather better, so the still-insubstantial veil of cloud was regarded with approval and forgotten.
Rupert was satisfied with the work they were doing, but he wanted to investigate every place that Catherine had marked out for him. So each day they went farther afield. Sometimes the distance that separated them from the town was not very great, but the business of negotiating the many ridges and gorges that made up the district took them by long and circuitous routes. Often the places Catherine had marked out were at the bottom of gorges, where the water was. Sometimes it was by a cliff edge where it was possible to photograph the big, straggling nest of a wedge-tailed eagle. Generally speaking, the birds of prey took them high and the little birds took them down into the gullies. Either way it seemed inevitably to require much travelling.
As the cloud cover thickened the temperature grew warmer. There was no wind, and a gathering stillness was everywhere. Up to now Catherine had been as happy, as contented, as she had ever been in her life. But as the days grew quieter an increasing restlessness took hold of her. At first she hardly noticed it. There was only the intermittent feeling that if they waited too long in one place for one particular bird they were wasting time and should be trying to photograph some rather more accommodating bird. Now and then she would say, “Rupert, do you think we had better move on? I know the bird came once, when I found this place, but will it come again? Perhaps I frightened it away.”
Rupert remained unaffected by the weather or anything else. Catherine had done her job well for him and he was finding rather more material than he had expected. He was never in a hurry and was always prepared to wait indefinitely for some elusive bird. He was satisfied with the progress he had made. The light was still adequate for his pictures and he did not even notice that the weather was undergoing a subtle but quite definite change.
But Catherine noticed it, and the uneasiness in her grew. The days were too warm. The sky for too long had been veiled by this formless but enveloping cloud that seemed to have come from nowhere and to be going nowhere. It just hung there, not in the nature of normal clouds. And for day after day there was no wind at all. There was a strange stillness about that increased as the time passed. All the bush sounds were muted. Insects stopped humming, birds that chattered and sang constantly remained silent, even the running water in the bottom of the gullies seemed to flow more quietly. Only the noises made by men—the hammering, the sawing, the various combustion engines and the everlasting highway roar continued as before. And because there were so few other noises they seemed louder by comparison. She could feel a tingling inside her and she had the strange feeling that everywhere about her as they went deep into the bush there was a tingling too. The hush about her was not the hush of sleep, of rest. It was the hushed tension of waiting. The whole bush, the birds that flew silently, the brown butterflies that sat, poised on a leaf, the trees that held their branches steady over the steep slopes, all were waiting for something to happen. And as time went on, Catherine found herself waiting also.
She was glad when they got home every night. At home all was normal. They were always made welcome when they returned and Diana hung, breathless, on their descriptions of the day’s work. Mr. Hartley came and went as his business took him, Mrs. Hartley pursued her normal course, with shopping, golf, bridge and bouts of cooking. Diana without urgency continued to read the Positions Vacant in the newspapers. There was noise and chat and no sense at all of anything being out of the ordinary. Increasingly it was good to come home.
Then one day Catherine knew that it had invaded the house. No one else seemed to have noticed anything out of the ordinary, but before she went to bed on that particular night she felt again the profound but unspecified apprehension that she now felt constantly out there in the bush. That first night she slept eventually because there was no reason for feeling as she did, and in the end she convinced herself it was only over-stimulated imagination. Even if it was not the best of reasons it allowed her to sleep. The second night more specific pictures came into her mind. This was not the vague unease of the daytime. This was something clearer and more definite. The pictures were of Mr. Lovett and his garden and, somewhere in the background, of Terry and a cloudy vision of the thin strands of the bridge. And in her mind’s eye she saw the strands looped over the gully beneath, swinging, frail as a cobweb between the concrete pylons. Pictures only, and no clear thoughts came into her mind at this time. But she told herself that as soon as Rupert’s job was finished she would go and tell Mr. Lovett all about it as she had promised.
They were going to a new place next day, where Catherine had previously seen a flock of little lorikeets feeding off one big, flowering eucalypt. It was down near the big gorge that was encompassed by Mr. Lovett’s look-out, but farther south, and the dirt road to the nearest point was long and tortuous. They planned to get there as soon after daylight as they could, when birds and animals are most hungry, and to remain there all day if necessary.
It was still too dark when they left the car to know what sort of a day it was going to be. They had a longish walk and there was no time to waste. On these days of great stillness and opaque skies it was not easy to calculate exactly when daylight would come. It was unusually warm as they set off. The air was soft, languid and heavy. Humidity down in those deep gorges where they were going would be very high and unpleasant. So far, however, there was little noticeable change from the past week—just a creeping intensification of what had gone before. They climbed down the narrowing path and Rupert, still oblivious of all things except his own object, was in excellent spirits. Sometimes he sang, sometimes he whistled, and sometimes he conversed with Catherine over his shoulder. Because everything was going well Rupert showed no sign of impatience or irritation. It seemed that nothing could disturb his good spirits. Yet Catherine was careful there should be no hitch in their plans. She had never kept him waiting again, and when sandwiches were needed they were always ready. So that he should not be disturbed she put everything else, every worry, every fear, behind her, and she managed to match his unbounded good cheer with a quiet happiness of her own.
They reached the bottom of the gully and now Catherine led him downstream, following the hurrying water until they came to a widening of the creek bed, where the water spread out, lost its impetus a
nd gently lapped a small patch of grass, behind which, against the steep slope of the gully, towered one single white-trunked eucalypt. High above, the branches were all in blossom and among the blossoms they could hear already the chattering of small parrots. Broken blossoms and twigs kept tumbling down on to the grass.
“Will it do?” said Catherine.
“Perfect,” said Rupert in a whisper, and began to prepare for his usual long vigil. It was not possible to erect a hide, but the grassy patch was surrounded with undergrowth and he set himself up behind the thickest bush he could find and Catherine, as usual, settled herself comfortably and unobtrusively while he did so. Her part was over for the day, and in a way, this was the time she liked best, when the birds regained confidence, became used to their presence and behaved as if they were not there at all. At first Rupert had been apologetic that once she had guided him to the places where he took his photographs there was little for her to do but wait, sometimes, as now, all day. But even when it had not been necessary for them to take the car, where she could have walked back and let him follow when he was ready, he found that she preferred to stay.
“It’s not necessary for you to wait,” he had said more than once. “I can find my way back from here. It’s so boring for you, just sitting there.”
But she had always said she liked watching the birds and would prefer to stay with him. Now, when they had come so far, it was not possible for her to return, even if she had wanted to.
She did not want to, though as the days had gone by and this surreptitious thickening of the cloud cover had persisted, she had found the peace she had formerly felt somehow leaching away as the cloud developed. She tried to recapture it, willing herself to relax, telling herself that as Rupert did not feel it too, it must be all her imagination. She sat now down near the water where the grass was longer and leaned against a boulder. From here she could see both up and down the gorge. The steep and rocky slopes towered over her on either side and it would be some time yet before the sun was high enough, if it intended to shine at all today, to penetrate this deep cleft in the land. But downstream, where it was possible to see the flat-topped hills still with the deep blue haze of the gullies dividing them, the light was brighter, though even there the sun did not shine. She looked upstream. The sides of the gorge seemed to reach into the sky, almost overhanging the narrow cleft through which the water ran. Across the gap between them crows, currawongs and sometimes a magpie flew, and the crows cawed in the desolate way that crows do, as if there were no hope in the world anywhere. Here and there a towering bastion of rock jutted out into the empty space and on one of them, with a sudden thud of her heart, she saw the new look-out. Now that her attention was attracted and held she found that she could see the old look-out with its stone parapet just behind it. Behind the look-out would be the garden, reaching up the slope, its tall trees quiet in this silent early morning. And somewhere among them would be Mr. Lovett. But from here she could not see the garden.
The unexpected sight of the look-out, so remote, yet in distance so near, affected her oddly. It was as if, suddenly, all thought of Rupert and his birds and even this place were wiped from her mind. She was back again in the garden, and it was enveloping her, holding her, trying to pass into her what it knew, and there was fear everywhere. She did not know that she had shut her eyes, that her hands, pressed to the ground on each side of her, were clutching at tufts of grass as if they were a lifeline to sanity, or that she had begun to breathe quickly and shallowly as one does in shock. The mists in her mind cleared, pushed back by strong, violent thoughts entering in their place, and the thoughts were of filed-through bolts and of fraying wire rope, and she knew exactly why this was so and almost, but not quite, she allowed herself to feel a sudden exultation that somehow, somewhere, she would be revenged. Then she knew that it was Terry and what was going to happen very soon unless she could stop it. Against the invading pulse of violence in her mind she cried out silently, “Mr. Lovett, Mr. Lovett. Take care.” And she let go the tufts of grass, sprang to her feet and, with her eyes fixed on the look-out, began to run upstream, towards the look-out, the garden and her old friend.
At the same time in the kitchen of the Nicholsons’ house Terry banged the flat of his hand on the table. “Birds, bloody birds. I can’t get birds out of my mind.” And he ran clawing fingers through his pale hair. “I got to think. I got to think. Did I do everything? Can I trust that Joe? What did I forget?” But the room was empty. There was no one to hear him and in any case his words were quite silent. “I only got to wait. Sometime—soon—it can’t be that long—it’ll happen. It has to happen.” But in spite of himself, in the end he got up, left the kitchen and went out of the house, down the back, towards the garden.
Catherine’s mind was no longer full of birds. It was full of Terry; Terry’s anxieties, Terry’s hopes, Terry’s fears, his rage, his lust for revenge. And fighting it all was the thought of Mr. Lovett, who was her friend and who had no help now but hers. She ran on, stumbling over stones, splashing through the water as she crossed the creek over and over again. Sometimes she fell over, for her eyes were on the wall of rock that rose beside her. Somewhere there must be a way up and she must find it. She pushed her way through patches of scrub that scratched her legs until they bled. She clambered over rocks that tried to block her way. She struggled on, forcing herself forward, forcing her failing breath to keep her going. She had no time to notice that the cloud cover, still formless and opaque, had come lower. Above the harsh sound of her own breathing she could hear no bird calls. But even if she had been able to she would have heard nothing, for no bird was singing now. Even the crows were silent. The stillness had thickened until it was almost palpable and all the land waited.
It was when she came across the first possible route up the side of the gorge that she heard it first. At some time long ago in a season of heavy rain part of the slope must have slipped down so that for some distance up its angle was less steep. Tumbled rocks of all sizes formed a kind of scree, rough but manageable, and as far as she was able to see the slope above it was broken up into ledges rather like rough terraces on which grew straggling trees that might offer a handhold. She started up the scree and under her feet the stones slipped and rolled. When she could balance safely she stopped to get her breath. Then she heard it—a very distant, very low rumbling sound. It might have been her imagination, but it somehow filled all the empty spaces of the land and very slowly it grew louder. Whatever it was had started far away and, although it was still so soft, blanketed all other sounds. And it was coming towards her. She stood still, not knowing what she should do, and it came rumbling up the gorge. It seemed to pass her by, and as it passed she thought the stones slipped again under her feet so that she staggered and had to find another foothold. A small breeze seemed to have brushed through the trees on the terraces above, for she saw their leaves tremble for a few seconds and then hang still again. Looking up the gorge where the sound now died away she saw a large piece of rock detach itself from one of the outcrops high up near the crest and fling itself down into the creek below. It rolled over slowly as it fell and what seemed a long time afterwards she heard it crash as it hit the rocky creek bed.
The strange sound died away. Everything was as it had been before, and she went on up the slope as fast as she could.
Chapter 19
Terry chose a corner of the garden that was concealed by a clump of trees and climbed through the fence. He heard the sound too, but assumed it was traffic on the highway and thought nothing of it. His mind was full of conflicting thoughts, as his body was full of conflicting emotions, and when he unaccountably fell over as he got through the fence he thought no more of that, either, except that he had been more than usually clumsy. And for that he blamed the sudden gust of wind he had heard in the trees above his head. He was not clear what drew him on. But he knew that he must go, and perhaps he hoped for the fulfilment of his plan, for there was no other reason that he knew
of to drag him forward.
The climb was hard and almost too steep for Catherine to negotiate. For what seemed an endless time she concentrated on putting one foot before the other, clinging to whatever handholds offered on the way, and during this time she did not once look up. She knew only that she must hurry. At last she reached a point where she must consider what alternatives were offered. She stopped and looked up and found to her surprise that her way had led her right under the new look-out. Her choice was to make her way up the narrow gully that separated the two look-outs, or to climb almost vertically up the increasingly steep slope she was on. The terrace she had been using had brought her already half-way up the side of the gorge and now only the clifflike rock face that supported the look-out was left to her. She began to climb up the gully. It was so narrow that when she stood in the middle of it she could almost touch both sides at once. She would have liked, somehow, to have climbed one of the sides—anything to get her nearer to the garden and to Mr. Lovett. But there was no way except up the bed of the tiny creek that had, over so many million years, so patiently formed it. When she stopped to get her breath she looked up again. High above her head, spanning the gap between the look-outs, was the bridge. It looked no more than a plank’s width and it seemed to her that it was swinging gently. But it might have been herself that swayed, for a kind of blackness kept covering her eyes and she knew that she must rest. Yet there was no blackness in her mind and she saw quite clearly the filed-off bolt, the frayed rope; the slender bridge seemed to her no more than an instrument of death, and she struggled on. Somewhere, she knew, was Terry and soon there would be a meeting. What would happen then she did not know—only that it would be final and conclusive.