by Jem Poster
I have to confess to being gripped, as I watched him disappear from view among the trees, by a spasm of something close to panic. With Preece at our side, I had barely given a thought all morning to the wide and increasing distance between us and the civilised world, but in that instant I saw with disquieting clarity just where I stood. I mean, literally so: out on that open slope, surrounded by the bush and its wild denizens, under the blank glare of a cloudless sky. I felt my legs trembling beneath me, and it was a moment or two before I felt able to join Bullen and Billy at their work.
They had divided our baggage into three units, two of which had been bound with leather strapping and thick twine to form bulky packs. Bullen was working on the third, while Billy was attaching an array of smaller items to the other two – a kerosene lamp, a cooking-pan, an iron ladle, a length of coiled rope. What had seemed a modest enough load when conveyed by other means now appeared intimidatingly large and cumbersome.
‘Do we really need all this?’ I asked.
Bullen raised his head and fixed me with a cold stare. ‘If we didn’t,’ he said, ‘we wouldn’t have brought it. Give me a hand with this strap.’
Once the packs were ready, Bullen sent Billy to fill the water-canteen. ‘Your pack,’ he murmured, leaning in close as the boy moved away, ‘isn’t as heavy as it looks. I’ve taken care to distribute the items appropriately.’
‘Appropriately?’
‘You’ll be carrying less weight. There’s no point in wearing you out.’
‘Then your own pack—’
‘Billy’s pack, Redbourne. Billy will take up the slack.’
‘You mean he’ll carry the heaviest load?’
‘Exactly. It’s what we’re paying him for.’
‘He’s here as our guide, not as a beast of burden.’
‘Guide and porter, Redbourne. That’s what he signed on for.’
‘Even so, he’s a young lad, and not strongly built.’
‘The very point I was making yesterday. “Give him a chance to prove his mettle,” you said. Well, he has his chance, and we’ll see what he makes of it.’ He glanced up as Billy began to walk back towards us. ‘Best to say no more about this,’ he whispered. ‘With any luck, he won’t even realise.’
Billy lashed the canteen to one of the packs and tugged tentatively at the straps. ‘Not that one, Billy,’ said Bullen. ‘This is yours.’
It crossed my mind that I might, by a sleight Bullen would be obliged to ignore, exchange my pack for Billy’s, but the boy was already squatting down, wrestling his burden on to his narrow shoulders. I saw him stagger as he rose, his thin frame taut with strain, and I stepped forward to steady him.
‘It’s all right, Mr Redbourne. I’m stronger than I look.’ He straightened his back a little and took a few careful steps. ‘I’ve carried heavier loads.’
‘You’re to tell me if it becomes too much for you. Do you hear me, Billy?’
He glared up at me from beneath his dark fringe. ‘I’m not a child,’ he said. ‘There’s no call to fuss over me.’ It seemed best to drop the matter. Bullen and I shouldered our own packs, and the three of us set off, moving cautiously down the slope towards the shadowy edge of the scrub below.
19
Bullen seemed particularly ill-humoured that afternoon, and I quickly tired of his company. Wherever the track narrowed I would drop back and slow down, hoping that he would press ahead, but on each occasion he simply matched his pace to mine while Billy, trailing some twenty or thirty yards behind us, did the same. From time to time, guiltily conscious of the weight the boy was carrying, I would turn to make sure that he was bearing up. He would nod or raise his hand in casual acknowledgement, but he made no attempt to close the gap.
Late in the afternoon we reached an open space, a small clearing where the wall of rock above us curved away from the path in a wide, irregular arc to create a flat arena of rough grassland. Bullen stopped and looked around. ‘Perfect,’ he said. ‘We’ll set up our base here.’
I stepped off the path and immediately found myself ankle-deep in soft ooze. ‘We can’t camp here,’ I said. ‘Look at this.’ I stood on one leg, extending my muddied boot towards him.
Bullen gave me a patronising smile. ‘Not in the swamp,’ he said carefully, as though speaking to an obtuse child. ‘I meant over there.’ He indicated a point a little further on, where the curve of the cliff wall brought it back to the edge of the track.
As we advanced, I realised what had attracted his attention. The section of the cliff he had pointed out to me was extensively eroded, undercut from a height of about ten feet to form a shallow recess. I could see at once that the protection afforded by the overhang, though limited, would be useful. Moreover, I noticed as we reached the spot that the sandstone floor of the recess projected forward from the line of the cliff, a platform of firm, dry ground raised a little above the level of the swampland. There was no sign of running water in the vicinity but, that apart, the site seemed ideal.
Bullen slipped the straps from his shoulders and eased his pack to the ground. ‘We’ll set up a lean-to against the rock,’ he said. ‘Just there, where the undercut’s deepest.’ He turned to Billy who was labouring up the path towards us. ‘You hear that, Billy?’
The boy dropped his burden and squinted up at the rock face; then, without a word, he was off, picking his way along the margin of the swamp until he reached the platform of solid rock that fronted the recess. Bullen shot me an irritable glance.
‘It’s not intentional,’ I said. ‘He’s tired. You can see it in his face.’
‘What I see in his face,’ said Bullen sharply, ‘is insolence. Sheer insolence. What’s he up to now?’
Billy was standing beneath the overhang, peering from side to side, his face close up against the sandstone wall. I saw him reach up and place his palm against the hollowed surface, then step away and stumble wearily back to rejoin us.
‘Good enough for you?’ asked Bullen sardonically. ‘Do you think you’ll be comfortable?’
‘Not here,’ said Billy. ‘I’ll find us a better place.’
‘Better than this? Where?’
‘A little further down the track.’
‘How much further?’
The boy shrugged. ‘About an hour,’ he said vaguely. ‘Maybe two.’
‘It’s getting late,’ said Bullen, glancing up at the sky. ‘We’re staying.’
‘Not here,’ insisted Billy, stubbornly. ‘We mustn’t stay here.’
‘Mustn’t? What the devil do you mean by that?’ Bullen swung round to face him, flushing with anger.
Billy shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, his head averted. ‘This place belongs to my mother’s people,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s a gathering place.’
Bullen looked up and down the track in exaggerated dumb-show. ‘I don’t see any sign of a gathering,’ he said. ‘Do you?’
‘They’re here whether we see them or not. The ancestors, I mean. People from the faraway time. Except they’re not people, not exactly. They’re …’ He faltered and turned towards me, holding out his arms in silent appeal, as if he thought I might be able to explain or amplify his halting phrases for Bullen’s benefit.
‘Listen, Billy,’ I said gently. ‘Mr Bullen thinks this is a suitable place, and I have to say that I agree with him. The stories your mother told you when you were a child shouldn’t be allowed to govern your life now that you’re growing to manhood. When we’re young we’re entitled to indulge our fancies, but maturity entails a more stringent vision of the world.’
‘But the stories are true stories. My mother said so.’
Bullen gave a snort of exasperation. ‘We’re stopping here,’ he said, ‘and that’s the end of it. We need poles, Billy, a dozen strong poles. Ten of them about my height, and a couple of longer ones. Take this’ – he tugged his hand-axe from his belt and held it out – ‘and see what you can find.’ Billy hesitated for a moment, standing stock still, his eyes fixe
d ferociously on the ground in front of him; then he reached out, snatched the axe and strode back down the track the way we had come.
‘It seems to me,’ I said, as soon as I judged the boy to be out of earshot, ‘that the matter will require careful handling. Billy clearly believes—’
‘I don’t care what he believes, Redbourne. He’s in our employ and he’ll do as I tell him. It’s as simple as that. You can see he’s been indulged by his father – all these sulks and silences when he feels he’s been thwarted or put upon – and it’s about time someone took him in hand.’ He drew out his knife and began hacking savagely at the scrub, cutting from the base of each plant and piling the stems and branches alongside the track. ‘We’ll need plenty of this,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’d be good enough to help me?’
It was his tone, rather than the request itself, that irked me. ‘In a moment,’ I answered coolly, moving away. I was reminding him, of course, that whatever authority he had assumed in his dealings with Billy he exercised none over me; but I was also genuinely curious to see what had aroused the boy’s interest. I made my way to the rock face and scanned the shadowed wall beneath the overhang.
It took me a little time, but once I realised what I was looking for, I saw them everywhere: delicate handshapes outlined with a haze of reddish pigment, the fingers spread wide. They were concentrated in a ragged band around chest height, but some could be seen as high as the curve of the overhang, and several within a couple of feet of the platform. Where, at one point, the rock had been differentially eroded in such a way as to form a narrow shelf just above ground level, I found two hands aligned as though stretching towards one another on its horizontal surface.
‘Bullen,’ I called. ‘Come and look at this.’
He clearly shared none of my excitement. ‘I’ve seen such things before,’ he said brusquely, turning away without a second glance. ‘It’s their idea of art.’
I should have liked to know more, but it was apparent that Bullen wasn’t the man to ask. ‘You wanted my help with the brushwood,’ I said.
‘If you can spare the time.’
The insult was delivered almost casually, and it seemed best to let it pass without comment. I took out my pocket knife and set to, working with a vicious energy that doubtless owed something to my resentment, and by the time Billy returned, trailing two slender saplings, topped and trimmed, I was drenched in perspiration and breathing hard. He dropped the saplings at the edge of the platform, and was moving off again, without a word, when Bullen called out to him: ‘Billy, those aren’t straight.’
Billy stopped in his tracks and turned back. ‘The shorter ones are better than these,’ he said, ‘but nothing grows straight in this part of the forest. These are as good as you’ll get if you want the length.’
‘Those are the long ones? They’ll need to be longer than that. The shelter has to be wide enough for the three of us.’
Billy shook his head. ‘Just for you and Mr Redbourne,’ he said. ‘I’ll not sleep here.’
Bullen shrugged and stooped to his task again but Billy, who had evidently been brooding on the matter, broke out in sudden fury: ‘You think you know best, don’t you? You think you can do what you like out here, trampling and cutting and breaking things down without thought of the spirits you’re disturbing, without please or thank you or sorry. And you won’t listen. You hire me as your guide but you won’t be guided by me.’
I saw Bullen stiffen. He straightened up slowly and wiped his knife-blade twice across the rough fabric of his breeches. His voice, when he eventually spoke, was thick with suppressed anger. ‘I hired you to show us the way and carry our kit, not to instruct us in the superstitions of a dying race. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll do the job you’re being paid to do and keep your opinions to yourself. Do you hear me?’
‘You’ll see I’m right, Mr Bullen. You’ll find out.’
Bullen lurched towards him but I was there first, seizing the boy by the elbow and steering him back towards the track. ‘I’ll help you carry up the other poles,’ I said quickly. And then, under my breath, feeling the resistance in his trembling arm: ‘Don’t argue, Billy.’ Only when I felt him fall into step with me did I consider it safe to relax my grip. We walked on for a minute or two in uncomfortable silence.
‘If my father had known Mr Bullen was going to treat me like this,’ he said at last, ‘he’d never have let me come.’
‘I think,’ I said judiciously, ‘that Mr Bullen might have behaved better. But the same applies to you, Billy. You must to learn to curb your anger.’
‘If I’m angry, it’s his fault. And anyway, it’s not just anger. I’m frightened too.’
‘What are you afraid of?’
‘The ancestors.’ He came to a sudden halt and glanced nervously around as though expecting ambush. ‘I’m afraid for you and Mr Bullen if you build the shelter where you shouldn’t. I’m afraid for myself if they think I’m to blame for bringing you here.’
Now that we had stopped walking, the trembling of his body was more noticeable and his face, as he turned towards me in the shade of the trees, looked drawn and grey. I reached out and gently touched his shoulder. ‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I said. ‘The dead won’t harm us.’
‘Not if we treat them as we should, no. If you respect them, they’ll look after you – keep you from danger, guide you home when you’re lost. But if you anger them …’ He paused, staring beyond me into the shadows, and I took advantage of the moment to shift ground.
‘Those decorations on the rock face,’ I said. ‘The hands. When were they made?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘A hundred years ago. A thousand. What does it matter?’
‘I’m interested, that’s all. It’s natural to be curious about things we don’t understand.’
‘Maybe. But you might have to learn to understand them in a new way.’ And then, his tone softening: ‘You know how it’s done?’ He opened his mouth and mimed the placing of some object or substance on his extended tongue; then he held his left hand in front of his face, palm outward and fingers splayed, and blew softly against it. And just for a moment he seemed to draw away from me, his entire being concentrated in that mimic act, and I glimpsed fleetingly – a filigree of roots extending endlessly through subterranean channels – his dark, inexplicable connection with his mother’s land.
I had imagined that I should have to spend the evening keeping Billy out of Bullen’s reach, but the boy took matters into his own hands, slipping silently away as soon as he had brought up the last of the poles. Bullen, for his part, seemed barely to notice his absence, preoccupied as he was with the building of the shelter. He worked steadily and with uncharacteristic concentration, lashing the poles firmly together to form an irregular box and filling the sides and the sloping top with a taut lattice of twine before weaving in the strands and clumps of cut brushwood. He gave particular attention to the roof, selecting the densest vegetation and packing it as thickly as the slender framework allowed. At intervals he would rap out a curt instruction – ‘Hold this’, he’d say, or ‘Tie that’ – but he showed no sign of wanting to involve me more fully in the operation.
The finished structure, sited beneath the overhang but projecting a good three feet beyond it, looked neither neat nor entirely stable, but Bullen assured me that it would meet our needs for the next few days. ‘Of course,’ he added, stepping back to survey his handiwork, ‘it may be more than we need, but up here the rain can sweep in so fast you hardly see it coming. It’s as well to be prepared for the worst.’
‘And Billy?’ I asked. ‘What protection will Billy have from the rain?’
‘Billy has made his choice. If it proves to have been a foolish choice, that’s not our fault. I want to make this clear, Redbourne: we’ve not brought the lad along for his benefit, but to make the journey easier for ourselves. And let me warn you now against taking his side against me. I’ve noticed it on more than one occasion, and yo
u can bet your life he’s noticed it too.’
I was stung by the accusation. ‘I’m not taking sides,’ I said heatedly. ‘It’s natural to have some concern for the boy’s welfare.’
‘He’s a sly one, Redbourne. If it serves his turn, he won’t hesitate to set us at loggerheads. Just bear that in mind next time you’re tempted to stand up for him.’ He broke away and strode over to the edge of the platform. ‘Bedding,’ he said tersely, squatting down above the ooze and hacking savagely at the marsh-grass with his knife. ‘Give me a hand with this.’
By the time we had finished our task the light was fading. I was more tired than hungry, and I stretched out on my grass couch while Bullen lit a fire and boiled water for tea. I must have dozed off for a minute or two: I remember sitting up with a start, momentarily disorientated, then scrambling to the doorway and looking out.
I wonder now what it is about that scene that keeps it so vividly present in my mind: Bullen stooping redfaced over the flames while the eucalyptus twigs spit and crackle, his right arm extended as he tips tealeaves carefully from a screw of white paper into the steaming pan; behind him, the looming mass of the bush and, above that, the deepening colours of the evening sky. It has something to do, I suppose, with the incongruity of that little ceremony out there in all that unimaginable vastness; but I think, too, that the scene offers me a way of rehabilitating Bullen – of visualising him not simply as an invasive presence in a world too subtle and delicate for his clouded understanding, but also as the improbable heir of those aboriginal rock-painters, a keeper of the human flame in a dark, inhuman wilderness.
He glanced up as I emerged. ‘Tea, bread and jerked beef,’ he said. ‘Not on a par with Vane’s dinners, but good enough for now. Given a reasonable day’s hunting, we’ll no doubt eat better tomorrow evening.’