by Nevil Shute
He stood looking over the wide, blue expanse of forest with her. “This is another reason why I love this country,” he said quietly. “It is a little like my own home, in Bohemia.”
She turned to him. “Do you get homesick, Carl?”
He shook his head. “Not now. I would not ever want to go back there to live. So much is changed, and I have changed so much myself, also. But I remember how it was at home when I was a schoolboy, and this is like the forests are at home a little, and so I am happy to be here.”
He glanced down at her. “Do you have big forests such as this in England? You do not have them, do you?”
She shook her head. “Not now. It might have been like this in England two hundred years ago, but it’s not now. If this was England it would all be cut up into farms, with roads and filling-stations and villages and towns, and people everywhere. There’s nothing like this at home.”
“Is it too big for you?” he asked. “Does it frighten you?”
“It’s strange,” she said. “It’s very, very lovely, but it’s strange. If I lived here I should have to get to know what you do in a big forest, if you should be lost. Once I knew that, I don’t think I’d be afraid of it.” She paused. “It’s not as if it was full of lions and tigers.”
He smiled, “Only flies and mosquitoes, very many of those, and a few snakes. But you are right; in these forests there is nothing much to fear but your own ignorance.”
He turned back with her to the utility to take her basket, and she saw that he had put a flabby newspaper parcel on top of her basket of food, and that he had brought a grill with him. “What’s that?” she asked. “Meat?”
He said, “I brought some steaks with me, to make a fire and grill them in the way of this country. Have you done that? They are very good.”
She said, “I’ve never done that, Carl. But we’re going to have far too much food.”
He smiled. “If there is too much, we can take it home, or give it to Billy Slim.”
“Can we make a fire in the forest, Carl, without setting everything alight, at this time of year?”
“It is necessary to be very careful,” he said. “At the Howqua, by the river, there are stones built up to make a fireplace, and there Billy Slim allows a fire to be made. The fishermen cook steaks there sometimes; I have done that myself.”
He would not let her carry anything, and they set off down the track through the woods into the valley. As they went he told her Billy Slim’s story of the match that had burned blue down in the open paddock in the valley, and the fire that jumped. “I have not seen that in the two summers I have been here,” he said. “One might work in the woods for fifty years, and never see that thing. Yet, I think that it is true.”
“That was the fire that burned the town that was here?” she asked.
He nodded. “One of them. I will show you where the town was.”
Presently through the green aisles ahead of them, and below, they saw a turn of the river, and then another. They dropped down into the valley flat and came out on an open sward beside the river where no trees were growing, a meadow of perhaps five acres along the river bank. On the other side of the river, in among the trees, there was the iron roof of a weatherboard house. “That is where Billy Slim lives,” he told her, “the forest ranger.”
He put the basket and the grill down under a tree that stood alone in the meadow, not far from the river. “This is where the town was,” he said.
She looked round, startled. “Where? Here?”
“Here where we are standing, in this flat,” he said. “There were many houses here fifty years ago, and in the trees up the hill, where we have come.”
There was absolutely nothing to distinguish the place from any other natural glade in the forest, no sign of any habitation but the forest ranger’s house. “It seems incredible that it has gone so completely,” she said, “and so soon. How many houses were there here?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “A hundred — perhaps more. There were three hotels.” He moved a little way from the tree. “Can you see the line here, the rectangle? And here, another room, and here, these bricks? This was the Buller Arms Hotel, that Billy Slim’s father kept. Here came the girls to serve as barmaids to the miners, the naughty girls, if that old Irishman was right.” He paused. “Only fifty years ago, and now all is gone.”
She had great difficulty in believing it. She said, “Carl, how have the trees recovered so quickly? These trees are very big, some of them. Have they all grown up since the last fire?”
“Fire does not kill the gum trees,” he told her. “All other trees die in the forest fire, but not the eucalypts. After the fire when everything is burned to blackened stumps, you think the forest will be spoiled for ever. But next spring the gum trees shoot again, and in a very few years all is as it was before.” He turned and showed her blackened streaks upon the bark of the tree they stood under. “You can see — this one has lived through the fire. Only the gum tree can live through the fire like that; all other trees are killed. I think that that is why these forests are all eucalypts.”
“Where is the cemetery?” she asked.
“It is a mile down the river, perhaps a mile and a half,” he said. “There is a path that leads to it, but it is very overgrown. Also, it crosses the river three or four times, and it is necessary to walk through the water. Would you like for me to ask Billy Slim if he can lend a horse for you? It will be easier for you so.”
She laughed. “I’d fall off a horse, Carl. I can’t ride. How deep is the water that we’ve got to walk through?”
“I do not think it will be deeper than your knees.”
“Well, that’s all right. I don’t mind getting these shoes wet. It’ll be rather nice to paddle on a day like this.” The sun blazed down upon them as they stood; it was unthinkable that wading in the river could be anything but pleasant.
They left the basket of food hung up on a branch of the tree, and started off along the meadow by the river, a clear trout stream running rippling over water-worn stones with alternate runs and pools. Presently the path led them down to the water, and was seen emerging from the river on the far side, among the bushes. “Here is the ford,” Zlinter said. “I will go first; I do not think it will be deep.”
He walked into the water and turned to look back at her; she followed him gingerly. The water was cool and refreshing about her ankles, plucking at her slacks; she stooped and rolled them up above the knee. Her blouse sagged open and he saw the soft curve of her breasts, because in that hot weather she had little on; he let his eyes rest for a moment in enjoyment, and then quickly averted them in case she should see him looking. She finished with her slacks and stood erect, and found him studiously looking up the river, betraying himself; she knew what he had seen and coloured slightly, but she did not mind; her own eyes had rested once or twice on his brown chest and arms with secret pleasure. She followed him across the river; as it grew deep she reached out and took his hand, and he guided her across. In the thicket on the other side he said, “It would be better to put down your trousers now, or you will get your legs scratched,” and she did so, slightly turned away from him.
He went ahead of her on the narrow path, forcing the bushes aside where they grew thickly and holding them back for her to pass. The path wound along through the forest by the river, a narrow track used only by the forest ranger on his horse and by an occasional fisherman on foot. Presently they crossed the river again, and then a third time, and a fourth, as the path changed from side to side to avoid spurs and rocky outcrops.
It was very quiet in the forest. The sunlight fell in dappled patches on the undergrowth through the sparse foliage of the gum trees; an occasional parrot squawked and flew away ahead of them, but they saw no animals. They went on till they came to a red stone bluff on the north side of the river; the path wound round this, and Carl Zlinter stopped. “It is somewhere here,” he said. “There must have been a road here at one time, from the
town, but there is nothing to see now. I think the stones are over there somewhere.”
Jennifer said, “What’s that — over there, by the white tree?”
“That is right. That is one of them.” He guided her through the undergrowth of bracken and tea tree scrub, and they came to the three stones that were still standing. He stooped beside the furthest one, and rubbed the surface of it. “This is the one.”
She stooped beside him, and read the inscription. She had never doubted his story, but it was a satisfaction to her to see the carved letters with her own eyes. “Charlie Zlinter and his dog,” she said quietly. “It was nice of them to bury the dog with him.”
He looked at her and smiled. “That old Irishman, he said the priest would not have allowed it, but he did not know.”
“Do you think he was a relation of yours, Carl?”
“Perhaps,” he said. “I would like to think he was. I would like to think that someone of my family had been here before me, and had liked this place as I like it. I think he must have liked it here, because he had his cabin here somewhere, not in Banbury. You would think a bullock team driver who drove every day between this place and Banbury would have had his home in Banbury where there was a railway and more life, but it was not so. He had his home here.”
She looked up at him, smiling. “Would you like to have a home here?”
He nodded soberly. “I would like that very much. For many years I have now lived in camps, always with other men, and for at least another nine months I must still live so. I would like very much to have a little cabin in the woods by a trout river, like this one, where I could come and live at the week-end and keep some books and be alone a little. I would like that very much indeed.”
“You wouldn’t be lonely?”
He shook his head. “I have seen so much of other men, all the time, in all the camps.”
“You won’t want a cabin in the woods in nine months time,” she said. “You’ll be off somewhere qualifying to be a doctor.”
He shook his head. “I do not think that I shall be a doctor again. It costs too much, and three years of study is too long. I do not think that I shall be a doctor.”
“What will you do when you leave the camp, then, Carl?”
He smiled. “Perhaps I shall not leave the camp. Perhaps I shall go on as a lumberman.”
“That’ld be an awful waste,” she said. “You ought to do something better than that.”
“It is a good life,” he replied. “I like living in the woods, I like that very much. If I had a cabin on the Howqua here, as Charlie Zlinter had, that I could come to at the week-ends, I could be very happy as a lumberman.”
“Until the lumber camp moved on, and it was too far for you to come here for the week-ends,” she said.
“That is the danger,” he said. “I have already thought about that. I think we shall be at Lamirra for another two years, but after that the camp may move.” He got to his feet and helped her up. “I have shown you what we came to see,” he said. “Charlie Zlinter and his dog, who fell into the water and got drowned. Only fifty years ago, and practically forgotten now. I wonder if anybody in Pilsen ever got to hear about it?”
“Somebody would have written, surely?”
“Perhaps. I do not know. Now, I have shown you what we came to see. Let us go back to the centre of the town, and I will take you to the restaurant, and we will see our steak cooked on the grill.”
She laughed with him. “A silver grill.”
“No,” he said. “In this place it would be a gold grill.”
They walked back by the way that they had come. At the meadow by the river he showed her the rough fireplace of a few stones heaped together, remote from any inflammable scrub. He gathered a few dry fallen branches from the gum trees and a handful of bark, and laid the fire and put a match to it; she was amazed to see how quickly and how easily a fire was made in that hot summer weather. He laid the grill across the stones, sprinkled the steaks with a little salt and laid them over the fire; in ten minutes from the time that the fire was lit they were ready to be eaten.
“It’s awfully quick this way,” she said. “And they’re delicious.”
“It is the best way to cook meat,” he said, “especially in this country. The fire is easily made, and the smoke of the gum tree adds a little to the flavour, also. We cook many steaks like this in the forest when we are at work.”
They ate in silence, sitting on the grass in the shade of the big tree where Billy Slim’s father had kept his hotel, where the naughty girls came to work as barmaids, where the bedrooms worked day and night and where small bags of water-worn gold once passed across the bar in payment for drinks and other recreations. In the tree above their heads a ring-tailed possum peeped down at them shyly, wondering if these two intruders into his domain meant danger to his nest.
They lay smoking on the grass when they had finished eating. “Carl,” the girl said at last. “You promised last night that you’d tell me about your strange idea.”
He raised himself on one elbow, laughing, noting the soft curve of her neck with quiet delight. “I have nearly told you that already.”
“What have you nearly told me?”
“That I want to build a cabin for myself, here in the Howqua valley.”
“I know that. But what’s the strange idea?”
“You will say that it is sentimental.”
She raised herself and looked at him, wondering what was coming. “Of course I shall, if it is. It may not be any the worse for that. What is it?”
He looked down at the grass. “It was a stupid little fancy,” he said. “It was nothing.”
“Tell me?”
He raised his head, laughing a little in embarrassment. “It was just this. Here have been many houses, a hundred perhaps, and three hotels at least. I would like if I can to find where Charlie Zlinter had his house, and build mine there on the same place.”
She smiled. “Why do you want to do that, Carl?”
“I do not know,” he said. “I just want to do it. I think we are of the same family, and I have to build my cabin somewhere. I think that I would like to build it there.”
“I think that’s rather nice, Carl.”
“You do not think it stupid?”
She shook her head. “Not a bit. But how would you find out where Charlie Zlinter lived?”
“I would like to go and have a talk with Billy Slim presently,” he said. “But I do not think that he will know, because he was not born at that time. I think it is more likely that I would learn something from Mary Nolan.”
She smiled. “One of the naughty girls.”
He laughed with her. “Yes, one of the naughty girls. But she will not be naughty now. She must be over seventy years old.”
“She’s sort of sterilised.”
They laughed together. “That is right.”
She rolled over and looked at him. “She wouldn’t talk about that time, would she?” She hesitated, trying to choose her words. “I mean, Carl, if she was a naughty girl when she knew Charlie Zlinter, she wouldn’t want to tell people about it when she’s seventy years old.”
He stared at her, perplexed. “I had not thought of that. You mean, she might know things about him, but she would not say, because of what they did when she was young?”
She nodded. “I should think you’d have an awful job to get anything out of her. She’d have to know you very well before she’d talk, especially to a man.”
He lay staring over the rippling lights of the river running over stones towards a dark pool. “It is not about personal things that I would ask her. Only about any papers that he might have had in his cabin, or about what happened to his papers and his property after he was dead.”
She smiled. “If she hadn’t been a naughty girl she couldn’t know anything about the inside of his cabin,” she replied. “She probably does know, quite a lot. She might tell another woman possibly, but she’d never tell you.”
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He turned to her. “Would you come with me to see her? Perhaps she might talk to you.”
She laughed. “I meant another woman of her age, Carl. Not a young one like me. Not unless I was a naughty girl like she was. You’d want another woman of her age.”
“You are pretty and young, as she was when she knew Charlie Zlinter,” he said simply. “I think she might talk to you when she would not talk to me.”
“I don’t mind going to see her with you,” Jennifer said. It would mean another of these delightful days, if nothing else. “It’s just possible she might open up with me, but I don’t think it’s likely. What exactly is it that you want to know?”
“About any papers that would tell us who he was,” he replied. “If there was a passport, or identity document, or letters, or photographs of home — anything that would say who he was. What happened to those things after he was dead. And where the cabin was.”
“She’d never be able to tell you that now,” she remarked. “The place has changed so much. Billy Slim might be a better bet.”
“We will try him presently,” he said. “We will go across the river and ask him. But will you come with me to see the old lady, one day soon?” If nothing else, it would mean another one of these lovely days with Jennifer.
“Of course I will, Carl. You mean, to Woods Point?”
He nodded. “That is where she lives.”
“How would we get there?”
“Perhaps Jack Dorman would lend the utility again, if I pay for the petrol.”
“You’ll need all your money to pay the fines if you go driving about the country without a licence.”
“I would not mind that, if I could find out the things I want her to tell me.”
She considered for a minute. “We’d better go on Saturday,” she said. “She’s a Catholic, so Sunday might not be a very good day.”
He hesitated. “You would not mind to do this for me?” he asked, a little shyly.
She turned to him. “Of course not, Carl. I’d like to go and see her with you.”