by Jem Poster
She was flustered and dishevelled, her eyes hollow in her pale face and her hair standing out from her head in absurd tufts and spikes, yet her beauty remained somehow inviolate, too deeply seated, it seemed to me, to be dislodged by the accidents of life.
‘I wanted to see you before you left,’ she said. ‘To say goodbye. I couldn’t bear not to.’
I should have liked to tell her of my own desolation, earlier that morning, at the thought of leaving without sight of her, but the words wouldn’t come. ‘Your father told me you were keeping to your room,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you up and about.’
‘Keeping to or kept to?’ she snapped, her eyes flashing anger. ‘There’s a difference.’ And then, more mildly: ‘I’m sorry you’ve been witness to so much disturbance over the past few days, Charles. It must have been distressing for you.’
‘I suppose it has been. Listen, Nell, I need to understand this clearly. Your father—’
‘Not now.’ She drew back with a little shake of her head. ‘One day, perhaps. In any case, it’s all done with.’
‘And Merivale? What was I witnessing there the other night, at the foot of the stairs?’
‘Oh, that.’ She shrugged. ‘William has been stealing kisses from me since we were children. He knows it’s not appropriate any longer, but that doesn’t stop him trying. I was telling him it’s high time he went out and found himself a wife.’
‘And he, I imagine, was telling you – maybe not for the first time – that he’s already found what he wants, here on his doorstep.’
I saw from her expression that I had hit the mark, but there was no embarrassment in her reply. ‘He needs to look further afield,’ she said. ‘It would be better for him.’
‘And you?’
‘I’ve never entertained the idea of marrying William. Even if my heart had been in it, it wouldn’t have done. He sees his future here, in the valley. I can’t tell him why that’s impossible for me.’
I felt a faint exhilaration, a lightening of my breath as though some weight, far down, had eased or shifted, and at that moment I heard Bullen calling out to me from the terrace.
‘You may have to go down and fetch him’ – Vane’s voice, curt and clear on the still air.
Eleanor pressed herself back against the dense mass of the shrubbery and gripped my sleeve. ‘Go,’ she said, tugging feverishly at the fabric. ‘Quickly.’ I brushed her fingers gently with my own, just once, and then stepped out to meet Bullen.
15
I had told Bullen that, short of coming across a significant rarity, I wasn’t anxious to add to my collection that afternoon, and we set off on foot without any particular destination in view. I had in mind a few hours’ gentle rambling in the immediate vicinity, allowing us to arrive back in good form for our departure on the following morning, but Bullen seemed to find the idea unappealing, and we were soon striding along with our customary briskness, though rather more convivially than usual.
Bullen deflected my questions about Eleanor’s illness but offered instead, with uncharacteristic frankness, a series of glimpses into his own life. I learned for the first time of the disciplinarian father who had bought himself out of his Lancashire regiment in order to begin a new life in Queensland, only to succumb to fever within a year of his arrival; the haphazard upbringing by a mother whose beauty was once a local legend but whose fondness for drink had drawn her progressively deeper into an underworld that had eventually destroyed her; the unfinished education provided at the expense of one of his mother’s admirers and the hunger for success in a world that seemed repeatedly to balk his best efforts. It was a tendentious and sometimes disjointed account but I felt, by the time we turned and began to head back towards the villa, that I had gained a considerably fuller picture of the man fate had chosen for me as my travelling companion.
We had walked considerably further than I had intended, threading the narrow paths into the heart of the valley, and the afternoon was well advanced by the time we reemerged on to the main track. As we crested the rise the breeze hit us, not cool exactly, but a welcome relief after the heavy stillness among the trees below. Bullen set his hat to the back of his head and wiped his sleeve across his brow.
‘Best foot forward,’ he said, ‘and we’ll be back in time for dinner.’
I think I was the first to see them, just off the track a couple of hundred yards ahead of us, three figures squatting in the shadow of a sandstone outcrop, their heads turned in our direction. As we drew near they rose to their feet, and the tallest of the three stepped out on to the track and hailed us.
‘It’s all right,’ said Bullen, perhaps misreading my excitement at finding myself, for the first time, face to face with one of the indigenous inhabitants of the country. ‘I know this fellow.’
The man appeared old, his beard and hair almost completely grey, but his body was spare and upright and his movements easy. He was barefoot and bareheaded but dressed in European clothes: a pair of flannel trousers, rolled up at the ankles and tied at the waist with a length of cord; and a threadbare black jacket, patched at the elbows with a lighter cloth. He wore no shirt; the jacket flapped open to reveal an almost fleshless torso, the collarbones prominent and the ribs individually visible.
‘You keeping well, Mr Bullen?’
‘Well enough, Amos.’ Bullen gave a curt nod in the man’s direction but didn’t slacken his pace; barely looked at him. The encounter might have passed without incident if I hadn’t lagged a little, curious to see the man’s companions, who hovered a few paces behind him. They stood shoulder to shoulder, brother and sister, I thought, or perhaps a young couple. Their features were strong and handsome, but their eyes were uneasy, reluctant to meet mine. The youth wore a cotton shirt, loosely tucked into the waistband of his grey breeches; the girl was dressed in a cream blouse, far too large for her slender frame, and a print skirt, evidently home-made, which barely reached her calves. Her hands were clasped in front of her and I saw, around her thin wrist, a bracelet of reddish spines punctuated at intervals by small bunches of bright yellow feathers.
As Bullen slowed, half turning as though to urge me on, the old man thrust his hand into his jacket pocket and tugged out a short-stemmed briar. ‘You’ll take a smoke with me?’ he asked.
Bullen’s face darkened. ‘You mean you want me to fill your pipe for you?’
The old man shrugged his shoulders and held out the briar.
‘If that’s what you want,’ said Bullen aggressively, ‘then why not say so?’
The man took a pace backward, his eyes wary. ‘You have tobacco?’ he asked.
‘I can sell you some.’ Bullen extended his hand, rubbing together his thumb and forefinger. ‘Do you have money?’
A shake of the head. Bullen turned away. ‘No money,’ he said, ‘no tobacco.’
I saw the old man’s face fall. ‘Give him a pipeful,’ I said.
‘I give nothing for nothing,’ said Bullen grimly. ‘It’s a simple policy and a sound one.’
‘The girl’s bracelet,’ I said. ‘Will they let us have that?’
Bullen leaned close, sly, conspiratorial. ‘If we lay out enough tobacco,’ he murmured, ‘you can probably have the girl as well.’
I ignored the remark. ‘Ask him,’ I said. ‘Will they trade the bracelet?’
Bullen peered at the object. ‘It’s made of thorns,’ he said. ‘Thorns and feathers. Completely worthless.’
I could see that the materials were of no intrinsic value, but I liked the brilliance of the little yellow tufts and the way the thorns fanned out against the girl’s dark skin. ‘Items like this have a certain cultural significance,’ I said defensively.
‘Some do. This looks to me like something she’s made herself. These people here’ – he lowered his voice – ‘aren’t the certified goods, if you take my meaning. Neither one thing nor the other.’
‘Even so,’ I said, ‘I should like the bracelet.’ Bullen shrugged and turned back to the o
ld man.
‘You hear? My friend wants the bracelet.’ He leaned forward and grabbed at the girl’s wrist, but she flinched and stepped back out of reach. Bullen tapped his own wrist. ‘Bracelet,’ he said. ‘She gives us the bracelet, you get tobacco. Understand?’
The old man stared up at him from beneath his matted fringe. ‘How much tobacco?’ he asked.
Bullen held up his left hand, fingers extended. ‘Five,’ he said. He reached into an inner pocket and drew out a large wash-leather pouch. ‘Look.’ He loosened the drawstring and removed five small plugs of tobacco, placing them in a neat row on the gritty surface of the rock. The old man considered them for a moment, then shook his head vigorously. He held up both hands.
‘Ten,’ he said.
Bullen glanced sideways at me. ‘Are you sure you want the thing?’ he asked.
The question irked me and, at the same time, hardened my resolve. ‘Of course I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Give him the tobacco. You can trust me to pay you back in full.’
‘No doubt, but there’s an issue of principle involved. It doesn’t do to let these people think they can get the best of a deal.’ He took two more plugs from his pouch and laid them on the rock with the others. ‘Seven,’ he said. ‘No more.’
The old man reached out and gathered up the dark oblongs. He slipped them into the pocket of his tattered jacket and turned to address the girl, speaking in his own tongue.
I could see at once that the transaction wasn’t going to be straightforward. The girl muttered under her breath and backed away, covering the bracelet with her right hand. As the old man stepped towards her, one arm raised, she dodged behind the youth, who half turned to address her. It wasn’t necessary to understand the language: it was clear enough what was going on. I glanced at Bullen.
‘Let’s leave it,’ I said. ‘She doesn’t want to part with it.’
‘Leave it be damned. They’ve got my tobacco.’
‘Ask him to return it.’
Bullen grimaced. ‘The deal’s been done,’ he said, ‘and no one’s going back on it.’ He unslung his rifle and let it hang, lightly balanced, in the crook of his arm. The action seemed casual enough, but something in his expression alarmed me. And then I heard the dull click of the safety-bolt.
The others heard it too. They fell silent and turned towards us again. They might have been waiting for Bullen to speak, but he said nothing. He just stared, gazing into each of the three faces in turn. As he fixed his eyes on the girl, she lowered her head and removed the bracelet; then she placed it on her palm, stepped over and held it out to me.
I am embarrassed to recall the scene. The girl – hardly more than a child, I thought, looking closely at her downturned face – stood before me, hand outstretched, like a schoolboy malefactor awaiting the sting of the master’s cane. I remember the smallest details – the spring and twist of her thick hair, the quick pulse at the side of her neck, her bare foot scuffing the dust. Her expression was unreadable but her arm, I noticed, was trembling.
‘For God’s sake, Redbourne, take the thing.’
I reached out and picked the bracelet gently from her palm. ‘Thank you,’ I said, as though it had been a gift offered in love or friendship. ‘Thank you very much.’
I wanted to catch her eye, wanted to tell her with a glance or a smile that I had meant no harm, but she didn’t look up. Bullen slung his rifle back over his shoulder and turned away.
‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘It’s getting late.’
After dinner that evening I laid the bracelet on my writing-desk and examined it closely. Out there in the light of the afternoon sun, vivid and changeable against the skin of the girl’s wrist, it had seemed a prize worth having; now, staring at the object stretched out in the lamplight against the polished wood of the desk, I wondered what I could have been thinking of. I opened my journal, dipped my pen and wrote, beneath the date:
First encounter with indigenous people. Purchased a bracelet, an unsophisticated affair of red-brown thorns strung on a stout thread and interspersed with tightly bound tufts of yellow feathers. The girl who sold it to me
I set my pen back on the inkstand and took up the bracelet again, letting it swing from my fingers for a moment; then I opened the top drawer of the desk and dropped it in. No point in brooding on the matter, I told myself, ramming the drawer home again, but I was unable to obliterate the afterimage of my last view of the group: the two men retreating together to the shade of the outcrop, leaving the girl gazing after us from the middle of the track, her legs a little apart and her arms folded across her chest, her print skirt lifted and ruffled by the stiffening breeze.
III
16
My first sight of the mountains was something of a disappointment. The modest ridge that rose up ahead of us as we crossed the plain bore no relation to the towering crags and pinnacles created by my imagination on the basis of an earlier conversation with Vane, and I couldn’t help remarking on the fact.
Bullen turned from the window with a thin smile. ‘Just wait,’ he said. ‘I’ve no doubt we shall be able to impress you soon enough.’
He was right, of course. As the train climbed steadily higher, the grandeur of our surroundings became apparent. Where the land fell away from the track I was able to look out across the treetops and see how the forest stretched to the horizon under a soft bluish haze, while sporadic outcrops of grey and ochre sandstone hinted at sterner beauties to come. The occasional farmsteads and trackside settlements served only to emphasise the scale of the surrounding wilderness: watching a flock of cockatoos lift and wheel against that astonishing backdrop, I remembered Vane’s assertion that the country’s vastness made it almost impervious to human activity, and I wondered fleetingly whether I might have been too quick to dismiss the idea.
On alighting at the station we arranged temporary storage of our luggage before setting off on foot. Bullen had been given to understand that Billy Preece lived in a hut just beyond the edge of town, but we had been walking for upward of half an hour, and had left most signs of civilisation some distance behind us, by the time we reached our destination. We heard the cluck and cackle of barnyard fowl and then, rounding a bend in the track, found what we were looking for.
Built almost entirely of overlapping boards, roughsawn and untrimmed, the hut was of a design too primitive to be entirely prepossessing, but I could see at once that it had been soundly constructed and well maintained. The threshold was a good two feet above ground level, and the low doorway was served by a little run of three wooden steps. To left and right of the building, an untidy fence of stakes, branches and brushwood marked what I took to be the front boundary of the property.
‘Holloa!’ shouted Bullen. ‘Is anyone at home?’ The sound of slow, uneven footsteps across bare boards, and then the door swung open.
The man was not above middling height and his body, as he stood there in the doorway, was twisted noticeably out of true, but something in his demeanour suggested power and presence. His hair and beard were grey, but vigorous in their growth, his face thin but strong-featured. He seemed in no hurry to come forward, addressing us from the threshold with an easy familiarity. ‘You’ll be the gentlemen from Sydney.’
Bullen advanced towards him. ‘Billy Preece?’
‘I’m Owen Preece. My son’s round the back.’ He stepped down and approached us with a stiff, lopsided gait, his right hand extended. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, gentlemen.’ His handshake was firm and his gaze, as he looked into my eyes, was clear and direct. He indicated a gateway in the fence and bowed us through with an odd, old-fashioned courtesy. ‘This,’ he said, touching the barrier as he followed us in, ‘is meant to keep out the wallabies. I can’t claim that it’s entirely successful, but at least’ – he turned to me, his tanned face creasing into a smile – ‘it makes them stop and think.’
‘There’s only one way to stop a wallaby,’ said Bullen. He slapped his ammunition-belt twice with the flat of his hand. ‘
Ask any grazier.’
There was a moment of strained silence before Preece brought us to a halt. We were looking down a long, gently sloping strip of land, so completely unlike the surrounding bush that we might have stepped into a different country. Close at hand, vines ran riot over a rough trellis, their arching stems festooned with clusters of small purplish grapes, while further down I could see staked rows of beans, the brighter greens of assorted leaf-crops and the gleam of melons and pumpkins lying in the shadow of their own broad leaves. Half-way down, a boy, barefoot and stripped to the waist, his brown skin glistening, was bending over a patch of freshly dug earth.
It was an extraordinary sight, that rectangle of lush colour laid down among the subtler shades of the bush. I brushed my hand across the vine-leaves, as though I might apprehend their soft lustre through the skin of my palm. Preece glanced sideways at us, waiting, I thought, for our response.
‘It’s a veritable paradise,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine how you maintain such a fertile garden out here.’
‘Oh, it’s simple enough, but not easy. Half a dozen cartloads of dung each winter and bucket after bucket of water raised from the gully throughout the summer. In this weather you might be at it from dawn till dusk. I’d be down there now, only my leg’s been giving me trouble all day.’
‘At least you have assistance,’ I said, glancing down the slope just as the boy turned to look at us.