by Lucy Walker
‘’Cause then I wouldn’t have made it meself,’ replied the puzzled station owner. ‘What’s the good of anything you can’t make yourself?’
Stephen looked at him across the fire which was now springing well into action.
‘I think you’ve got something there,’ he said thoughtfully. Then he turned teasingly to Cherry. ‘This young lady seems to prefer a self-made home in a jungle to a man-made one in more civilised places.’
Cherry smiled back at him through the smoke.
‘I would but you wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘You like the last thing in what’s what. Look at that house down there in the Street of the Pines. All modern conveniences. And of course glamour and sophistication in your womenfolk.’ She turned to their rescuer. ‘Please, Mr. Kunder, does that radio send out as well as receive? Could you work it for us?’
‘Just getting around to that, lady. Besides, I gotta let my brother know what I found. Ringin’ bells, I found some funny things on this station in my time but I certainly never found a man and a girl and a kid before. Not all together and not white, anyway.’ He got into his car and began to dicker with dials that no one would have known were dials if Alex Kunder hadn’t mentioned the fact.
Stephen abandoned the tea-making to Cherry and got into the car beside him.
What a strange pair they made, Cherry thought. Stephen, even though his clothes had been spoiled by jungle hunting, his shoes muddied and scratched, his hat rendered almost shapeless, still looked distinguished. Alex Kunder, unshaven, not scrupulously bathed, looked like the rock of ages with all that rock’s historic accretions still evident. Yet that was just what he was, Cherry thought. The rock of ages. The eternal friend who had goodness next door to his heart and knew the answers to anything that man could do with his two hands, and limitless willingness to help.
‘When we’ve got through,’ he was saying to Stephen, ‘we’ll lap up a billy a’ two of tea and we’ll tie them two nags on the back and we’ll get back to old Pannikins the drover as soon as the nags ’ull let us. Second thoughts can go one better. We’ll tie their reins to their stirrups and give ’em a whack behind. They’ll catch up with the old bloke of their own accord. Sooner than later, ’cause they’ll go after water.’
All the time he was talking he was juggling with the radio and getting a discordance of statics.
‘Then we’ll pick up them other two,’ he went on. ‘Man and a girl, you say? An’ we’ll shoot through to Timor Bay. Tell you what, feller. I never been in a town since I was a kid. ’Bout time I went to Timor Bay. ’S only four hundred miles on. Could do it by mornin’ in this bus.’
‘We’ve got a child with us,’ Stephen said with caution.
‘Safe as a homestead in this bus. ’Sides I got plenty of tucker for him. Old Pannikins ’ull have more. How’s he go on steaks?’
‘Reared to them by this time,’ said Stephen with a grin.
The air seemed suddenly to clear and Alex Kunder was talking to his brother.
‘You wouldn’t believe it but they’re all alive,’ he said joyously. ‘Yep, yep … you git through to Timor Bay. See as how you kin git them stations farther south an’ west. Maybe they’ll git word through to Yulinga before they do from Timor. Got it? Well look, boy. You’ll never guess. I’m goin’ to drive ’em to town. Yes, me own true self. An’ I don’t know what a town looks like ‒’
Stephen got out of the car and came towards Cherry. She was standing up by the fire. Peter was still sound asleep in the shade of the scrub trees.
Stephen spread his hands in a gesture of finality.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s all over, bar getting to Timor Bay. Hugh and Betty, your people ‒ they’ll all know within half an hour.’
‘And Alan’s people too,’ said Cherry quickly. ‘He’s been worrying about them.’
‘Of course.’
Stephen sat down on his heels, bushman fashion, and lifted the billy from the fire with the help of a short thick stick.
‘What sort of people is Alan worrying about, do you know, Cherry?’ He was thinking of Alan’s general love for the ladies.
She shook her head.
‘I wondered. He never said anything very much. Has he got a girl friend do you suppose, Stephen?’
Stephen lifted his head and looked at Cherry.
‘Don’t you know that?’ he asked.
‘No. He didn’t talk about one. Only lots.’
Stephen gazed thoughtfully into the fire. Cherry too was sitting down now. She wrapped her arms round her knees and contemplated the flames of the fire.
‘It’s silly, I know,’ she said. ‘But I feel half sad as well as half glad, now that it’s all over.’
‘Thinking about the jungle camp again?’
‘Yes. And about everybody who was in it too. Now we each and all go back to the people we belong to. For a little while we belonged only to one another.’
‘Call it a flash in the pan, Cherry,’ Stephen said. ‘It’s over now, and finished. If Alan’s got a special girl friend somewhere then it’s the right thing for him to go back to her. If not … why, then I don’t think he’ll walk right out of your life as if nothing had ever happened. He’s not that kind. On short acquaintance I imagine he’s a man of honour.’
It dawned on Cherry that Stephen had put all her nostalgia for the camp down to some special feeling she might have for Alan Donnelly. She was so surprised she said nothing for a few minutes.
But then haven’t I got some special feeling for Alan? she asked herself.
Her mind went back to their companionship, his many little acts of kindness. She sat in silence dreamily thinking of Alan Donnelly and all the good things about him.
‘You know,’ she said softly, at length, ‘I think I was very lucky to be plane-wrecked with the people I was plane-wrecked with. And not least of them Alan. All the same, as I said before, the only boy friend I’ve got, that I know of, is young Peter. I think I’ll have to go back home when this little jaunt is over, Stephen. I’m afraid I’m getting too fond of Peter. Sooner or later that is heart-break for someone. Me, Peter or Betty.’
‘If you stayed on the station permanently,’ Stephen said carefully, ‘it wouldn’t matter how fond you became of Peter. Or he of you.’
Cherry jumped up.
‘You know I can’t do that.’
Stephen stood up. He stood beside her, looking down at her.
‘You can mend a cracked heart on Yulinga as well as anywhere else,’ he said. ‘I think, however, you might find that Alan has ideas of his own.’
Cherry was furious now. How dared he keep referring to Alan that way? Couldn’t he see it wasn’t like that at all? It was other things, other people. She couldn’t tell him there was himself, Tracy, even Hugh and Betty Denton to make life complicated for her if she stayed too long on Yulinga. Besides, there was always her duty to go home some time or other.
As Dad had said ‒ some day he and Mummy would grow old. They had no other children. They had taken her, Cherry, a penniless orphan, and they had made her their own. They had given her everything a father and mother could possibly give to a well-loved child. There was only one way to repay them. She must be on hand against that time when they would need her as badly as she, a baby, had needed them. Duty was a cold word but in this case it had gathered something of warmth to it. There was a call in those singing pines down there by the ocean shore and it wasn’t only the call of duty. There was a music in the treetops when the wind blew in them.
The easiest way of going was to let Stephen think what he thought. In that way she would not sound a self-sacrificing prig. It had been priggishness he had laughed at that day he had come to the house in the Street of the Pines.
‘Please don’t say anything to Alan,’ she said. ‘Promise me. You would embarrass him horribly. Me too. In any event I am going back to the Street of the Pines. I promised, and I’ll keep that promise.’
‘Cherry, you were very inexperienced before you came
up here. Don’t go back to someone you don’t really love. Forgive me giving you advice on the subject, but I’ve nearly fallen into that error myself but grown out of it ‒’
‘Please don’t talk about it any more. Oh, here comes Mr. Kunder. Let’s have our tea now, then I’ll wake Peter.’ She smiled up at Stephen. ‘In ten minutes we’ll be on our way.’
Stephen turned away to ask Alex Kunder what news he had gleaned from his radio talks.
A quarter of an hour later the horses had been dispatched to find their own way to the droving camp, Cherry and Peter were packed in the back of the overlander and Stephen was seated in the front with the station owner. The brake was off, the gears were shifted and the clutch let go. The car rolled forward, the engine contacted and they gathered speed over the floor of the cattle track that led first to the drover’s camp at Mulga’s End and then on, four hundred miles, to Timor Bay.
At Mulga’s End the party was received with whoops of joy from Alan Donnelly, and the first real spontaneous smile Cherry had ever seen Tracy wear. Alan and Tracy were mooching round the advance camp waiting for the rest of the drover’s plant to arrive, and for the sight and sound of bullocks at sundown.
Alex Kunder had made a wide circle of the mob so as not to rush them but old Pannikins the drover had sighted the car’s dust cloud and not being able to spare his stockman had sent Stopper the blue heeler to find out what went on.
Truly, Cherry thought, that dog had as much understanding as a human being. He raced along beside the car and when nipping at its rear tyres did nothing to attract attention to himself, passed the car, wheeled round and made running charges at the front left-hand tyre.
Everyone saw Stopper at the same time. There were cries of recognition and the car was pulled up. Since Alex Kunder did not read and write and since neither Cherry nor Stephen was carrying writing materials, they dispensed with the usual form of sending a note. A knife was brought out and a lock of Cherry’s hair tied to Stopper’s collar.
‘That’s from you,’ said Alex.
Stephen gave up his belt and Kunder put the empty packet of his cigarette papers in the dog’s mouth.
‘That’s from the lot. The kid goes without saying,’ said Kunder. ‘That’ll tell old Pannikins I’ve picked up the lot. All right, Stopper old fellow, get to it. Home, boy!’
The dog shot off, a blue streak across the plain, straight as an arrow for his master on the eastern flank of the bullock mob.
Alex Kunder revved up his car again, they gathered speed and went on to pick up Tracy and Alan at Mulga’s End.
Cherry thought that long car journey to Timor Bay would never end.
Now that the news was through to the authorities that the plane’s passengers and pilot were safe there was no real urgency in getting to journey’s end but somehow no one wanted to camp again. Any other kind of night camp would be an anticlimax. The adventure was over already and everyone wanted to go home. Kunder himself, having made up his mind he was going to change his way of life and visit a town couldn’t get there quick enough.
Through the night there were periodic stops for refreshment ‒ particularly for Peter ‒ and to change places in the car.
Stephen and Tracy had ridden in the front with the driver for a hundred miles. After that Stephen took over the wheel of the car while Alex Kunder had a nap in the corner back seat. Cherry occupied the other corner with Peter sleeping in a box from the drover’s camp lined with some sacks and an old bush rug at her feet. For a long part of the journey Alan sat in the seat between.
There was little said for everyone was partly excited and partly tired. Cherry dozed on and off all the way. She was terribly tired now. That horse ride, though it had not encompassed so many miles, had taken its toll of her. She was stiff everywhere. Small scratches and skin punctures she had from her adventures in the jungle began to make themselves felt. Her one-time injured ankle ached.
Worse, for some unexplainable reason, her heart ached too.
She felt greatly comforted by Alan sitting silent beside her. What were his thoughts? And was his heart sore too?
How absurd! She must turn over on to her other side and go to sleep again. Thank heaven Peter was such a wonderful sleeper. Each time they stopped he had to be roused to be fed.
‘Perfect child,’ Cherry mumbled to herself, dazed with tiredness. ‘He’s too good to be true.’
Perhaps that was why her heart was aching. Peter would no longer be solely hers.
Twice in the early hours of the morning they stopped and changed drivers but Cherry, half asleep, shook her head to proffered refreshment. She would rather sleep, and sleeping forget that to-morrow she would give Peter up. She was sure it was losing Peter that was acting as a weight on her heart.
Stiff and sore she turned round to her left side again and borrowed a shoulder to lean on.
It didn’t matter whose shoulder it was, it was a shoulder. That is to say, it gave security and comfort. She turned her face into someone’s warm neck and slept.
At daybreak she woke to find it was Stephen’s shoulder. He was sitting in the centre seat, one arm round her, his head resting on her head. Long since, it had become Alan’s turn to take the driver’s wheel. Tracy was still in the front seat, asleep on his shoulder. Alex Kunder dozed in the far corner beyond Stephen.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Cherry said, opening her eyes and straightening up, trying not to show the effort was painful.
Stephen opened his eyes. They, too, were hazy with tiredness. He had driven far into the small hours of the morning. The only muscles on his face that moved were those round his mouth. It was that old half-smile, amused but this time kindly.
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I liked it.’
‘As long as you were comfortable‒’ Cherry explained.
‘I was.’
Again they had to change places and it was Stephen who drove them triumphantly into Timor Bay. Alex Kunder, never having been in a town since childhood, didn’t understand about negotiating cross-roads and corners.
On the outskirts of the town were a dozen cars and a local policeman. Tired and white-faced though they all were, they were escorted triumphantly by the jubilant citizenry to the Road Board office on the northern ocean beach.
After that all was chaos.
People were milling around, officials from the airline company were wringing Alan Donnelly’s hand. It seemed that it was a unique feat for him to land a plane the way he did, pancake land on treetops, especially after it had been struck out of action by a bolt of lightning. Furthermore, they felt reassured that as the plane had not gone up in fire they would be able to salvage it. How modest he had been, Cherry thought, a little dewy-eyed. He must have known it had been a wonderful ‘land’.
Reporters asked questions, lights flashed as photographs were taken and delightedly the centre-piece of them all was Alex Kunder, the man who had never been to town before and was now hailed as the rescuer.
Somehow, out of this mêlée Tracy and Cherry were rescued by the wife of the resident magistrate and they were taken home and put to bed.
Cherry would not part with Peter and he had to go home with her and be put to bed in a basket in her room.
Cherry was too tired to notice anything except it was broad daylight, Peter was bathed, fed, played with and put to bed again; the local doctor put coloured paint on all the scratches on all the limbs of the entire party, gave Cherry and Tracy a pill each to swallow and said the girls were not to be disturbed for the rest of the day.
Her bed was beautiful with a foam-rubber mattress and Cherry, after a glorious soaking hot bath, another cup of tea and a last glance at Peter, sank thankfully on to it.
The only thing wrong was that the party was now divided. They had had to stay in pairs, back there in the jungle. One man and one girl. Now authority, kind friends and civilisation, had parted them.
They weren’t together any more ‒ five against the world. Maybe that was why she fe
lt sad when her head went down on that foam-rubber pillow on that foam-rubber bed and someone came in and pulled chintz curtains over the open shutters of the tropical house.
She was in strange pyjamas and someone had put a sheet over her. After that the doctor’s pill did its work and Cherry went to sleep.
During the afternoon Cherry’s kindly hostess, the magistrate’s wife, brought in a bowl of water with scented soap, a soft flannel and towel, and sponged Cherry’s face and hands for her.
‘But I’m not sick …’ said Cherry.
‘No, but you will be if you don’t rest now. You won’t get a chance to rest once everyone gets here to welcome you.’
‘Everyone?’
‘Yes, the world and his wife will want to see you. For five days the whole Australian public has thought you all dead. Your pilot turns out to be quite a hero for pancake landing a plane on the top of trees and achieving the survival of his passengers ‒ as well as the plane.’
‘Do they really?’ exclaimed Cherry. ‘Oh, I’m so thankful. He was so modest. And so full of concern for his responsibility.’ Her eyes were like stars.
‘And the other man too. Stephen Denton from Yulinga Station. He led you out of the jungle. That was a feat. Most people never get heard of again once they get in there.’
‘Everyone was wonderful,’ said Cherry.
‘So I’ve heard. Now I’m going to bring you some tea and then you go off to sleep again. Round about sundown there might be a pleasant surprise for you.’
‘For me?’
‘I’m not telling. Now do as you’re told. Tea and another sleep. My daughter’s got Peter and he’s perfectly safe and happy.’
Cherry had really had all the sleep she needed but the hot soporific atmosphere worked its chemistry on her. She dozed on and off, too lethargic to get up, for the rest of the afternoon.
It was shortly after sundown when the harsh light had gone out of the sky and grey shadows were stealing in through the shutters across the room that she heard the sound of a car coming up the drive of the house. Presently there was a banging of car doors, men’s voices, other voices strangely familiar, heavy steps on the veranda and yes ‒ Stephen’s laugh.