by Lucy Walker
‘Learn to spell it correctly before you draw it, Kim,’ he commended. ‘It ends with an “i”. Who but a typist would have been so mundane as to think of saving our lives with a Thermos of tea?’
‘Myree would have thought of a bottle of soothing oil for our faces too.’
My, even in this grave hour she was being a meanie again! The words had popped out ‒ well, unexpectedly ‒
‘Yes‒’ John said taking a swig of the tea which now had a fine cream of dust on top of it. ‘Myree would undoubtedly have thought of everything. But everything!’
He said it so seriously that Kim decided he wasn’t punishing her. He was thinking in his sandy isolation of Myree ‒ safe with all her brains and beauty ‒ back at Base with a whole host of men, all of whom would be making a play for her attention.
‘All except Stephen Cole,’ Kim reflected. Funny how she was so sure of him. He hadn’t once looked at Myree with interest, but only at her ‒ brainless Kim ‒
‘It’s a wonderful thing,’ she said, out of context and after a long silence. ‘It’s a wonderful thing to have someone who likes you. Who thinks you’re attractive.’
John drained the dregs of his tea, asked for some more, then helped himself to a handful of biscuits from the box.
‘Meaning what exactly?’
‘Well, we’ve nothing else to talk about so I might as well talk about me. I feel grateful to Stephen Cole. He likes me. It sort of softens me ‒ specially at this moment when burial by sand might be imminent.’
‘I’m glad of that,’ John commented briefly. ‘About your gratitude, I mean. Not about Stephen Cole. Now suppose we consider that imminence of which you spoke. It might bear mentioning now, that other matters are quite trivial compared with it.’
‘The storm’s nearly gone, hasn’t it? At least the worst of the noise has. The dust will die down sooner or later ‒’
‘Later than sooner, by the look of the sky out there. We’re marooned in a series of sand dunes that didn’t exist two hours ago ‒ in case that fact interests you, Kim. Worse ‒’
‘What could be worse? The sand’s red, I know. When we were children we used to like playing in the sand dunes along the beaches.’
John was silent. Kim had a feeling she’d been making gaffes all over again, the way she did at home.
Suddenly her spirits dropped. She ought to have been serious about this predicament. She ought to have talked gravely about it.
‘You won’t navigate us out of here, Kim,’ John said more quietly. ‘There’ll be no sign of our jeep tracks. Probably no sign of the far track back to the old station.’
Kim could see well enough that they wouldn’t be able to get the jeep out of this mess. As the heaviest of the dust subsided in the wake of the big blow she could see sand was built up feet high completely covering most of the low scrub trees. There were dunes that were absolute barriers against the passage of a four wheeled vehicle.
She must think of earnest things. For instance what would Myree ‒ and the men back at Base ‒ say about them being marooned together like this?
Worse, what would John fear they might think?
She mustn’t say anything funny, or silly about it. She could see, under his coating of dust and sand, that John was being very serious indeed.
‘I guess I might as well go to sleep as sit and worry,’ was all she said aloud, sorry that her voice croaked instead of sounding dulcet.
John’s only answer was to rest his head in his hands again, and his elbows on his knees.
‘Then go to sleep,’ he said in a disinterested way. ‘I intend to do the same myself. There’ll be heavy work ahead of us to-night, or to-morrow ‒ whenever this raking dust dies down.’
Kim did indeed sleep ‒ from sheer exhaustion. Her muscular efforts in packing the stores in the jeep against the wind had really beaten her. She slept first in a sitting position with her head in her arms, then finally keeling slowly over till she was rolled round like a kitten, bang against the canvas behind her.
When she awoke it was night. The dust storm, with all its hangers-on of air drifts and willi-willis, was gone. It might never have happened except that the landscape had changed its form, and the moon high in a hazy blue-black sky was rosy pink, with a glorious halo, instead of being merely pale gold. John was up and about.
With the help of a king-sized torch ‒ also rescued earlier by Kim along with the picnic basket ‒ he found the hurricane lamps, the miniature butane-gas stove, and one of the larger kits of tinned food.
Kim did the cooking while John cleared the gear out of the back of the jeep and made up a camp bed for her there. Eating wasn’t as much fun as it might have been, for they were both hungry but their throats were sore. The raspy vocal chords precluded conversation too. This Kim thought was a good idea. In a state of compulsory silence she could not possibly say the wrong thing again.
When they had painfully eaten tinned salmon, a few fry-pan scones and a small tin of apricots, John set to work by the light of the lamps to unhitch the life-saving canvas from the rear of the jeep and set it up as a proper camp.
Here he rigged up his own sleeping bag, hung up one of the lamps, and set to work examining those precious specimens which he had dug out of the ground, roots and all, while Kim had run for the jeep. He had forbidden her to wash up the dishes or the fry-pan.
‘We have a certain amount of water,’ he said perfunctorily in his very husky voice. ‘There’s no reason to be prodigal with it. Till daylight we can’t even begin to guess how we’ll get out of here. Let alone how long it will take us to do just that.’
Kim did what the aborigines did. She cleaned everything with sand. The fact that the plates and the mugs would not have a polished appearance, and remained stubbornly sticky, was a matter she decided not to waste her conscience on.
Later they slept again. John under the canvas and Kim in the back of the jeep. They were unaware of the utter silence of the night, or the bright pink coloured stars and halo-ed moon. The old old land was so still. It was timelessly indifferent ‒ for thousands of haunted miles around.
In the morning they surveyed their surroundings. This might have been the Sahara except that here and there a rock, or the leafless top of one or two of the taller trees, peered above the sand dunes. As far as they could see the only noteworthy thing in all the world was that the miles of dunes all around were red instead of yellow.
‘Not a bit like the beach,’ Kim said trying to be bright. ‘That reminds me. How do we wash?’
‘We don’t.’
At this Kim really was aghast. They had a small tank of water ‒ but water was more than diamonds and rubies if they didn’t get out of here soon.
‘Well … just our faces and hands …’
‘Not even those. Do with them, and the rest of yourself, what you did with the plates and mugs last night. Use sand. You’ll be redder but you’ll be clean.’
‘Like using sandsoap?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Except it’s out of fashion since detergents came in ‒’
I must stop this, Kim thought soberly. I’m trying to be way-out again. It doesn’t work with John any more.
With one of the long tent poles John rigged up a mast above the jeep and from this hung a towel.
‘That will have to be my land mark,’ he said. ‘I’ll go off in all four directions. One at a time, naturally. When I reach the point short of no return, I’ll come back. I’ll see what is to be seen of any track.’
It was two hours before John had done with his voyage of non-discovery.
‘Nothing!’ he said. ‘We’ll have to strike a course by the compass ‒ which, thank heaven, has no dust in it.’ This was one cause for relief, for their only other way of finding direction was by their watches and both were dust-clogged and had stopped.
John took out the map and pondered long over it. Finally he carefully drew a route on it.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now I have to test th
e depth of the sand in that direction. When I come back we’ll see if we can move the jeep.’
Even with a four wheel drive they’d never get the jeep through the sand. Kim knew this. He was trying to keep up her morale by doing something.
‘When I’ve tested the sand drifts,’ John went on, ‘we’ll search out the spots where a bit of shrub or greenery is showing. Next we shovel sand away from those trees and shrubs. Even spindly bushes. Finally we fall to tree cutting! Have you got the message, Kim?’
‘You mean we’ll build a fire as a sort of beacon? Peck and Bill would be the nearest human beings likely to see us, but they’d be miles and miles and miles …’
A shadow crossed John’s face.
‘They were going north ‒ as from the old station. Very nearly in the opposite direction from us,’ he said quietly. ‘We cut saplings and as many tree branches, or even stems, we can find. We corduroy them. That is, make holding rafts under the jeep’s wheels.’
‘But we’d only move a few yards at a time that way ‒’
Kim broke off.
Myree would not have said that. Myree would have known that that was the only way to move a vehicle across sand-dune country.
John was too busy uncovering the axes, a shovel and small spade; all clipped by stanchions on the bonnet of the jeep, to reply.
‘You,’ he said, turning round once, ‘might make some tea. And don’t waste the water by warming the teapot first.’
To this last Kim took deep exception. Tea was made in a billy can. Not a teapot. He was being sarcastic at her expense. She refrained from saying anything more at all. She did some thinking instead.
Cut down trees! Build a raft! Move the jeep forward a few yards! Remove the raft in the hideous heat that was already descending on them with the high noon sun. Then place the raft, corduroy fashion, in front of the jeep again! Then move the car on another few yards!
‘If we work all day and half the night,’ she thought, ‘we might move the jeep a few hundred yards in twenty-four hours! We must be fifty miles from help!’
People did die in the desert. One often read about it.
As two days and two nights followed one upon another, they soon fell into a routine of each to his own job.
The thing that Kim minded most was John’s insistence on the right to ration the water for tea-making. As if she wouldn’t be careful herself! Kim, at this stage, had no idea that the heat beating on the galvanised iron of the water tank had been causing evaporation. Neither had she known why John had carefully covered the radiator of the car with thick layers of the bush blankets. There were many questions she didn’t ask, because John was not in an answering mood. He was lost in a world of his own silence as he worked.
Dear God, how he worked!
On the fourth day he told her.
When they finished their breakfast he insisted that Kim had an extra mug of tea.
‘You’ll need it to-day. You’ve a long hot job in front of you.’
‘Something new?’ she asked brightly; anything to change the monotony of their back-breaking work.
‘Yes,’ he said shortly. ‘Take your drawing materials out of that carry-bag of yours. Cover them well against the normal dust blow, and leave them in the jeep. Next fill your bag with the tinned stuff I’ll put out for you.’
‘There isn’t so very much left.’
‘Enough for our separate needs,’ he said dryly. His face was expressionless.
She wasn’t sure what he meant, but she did as he ordered. It was a long time since she had had any inclination to question or even talk. Conversation had ceased to exist ‒ as such. They were saving their natural body juices for their labours.
John put several small tins of fruit and two tins of milk and a packet of biscuits in the bag, then hung it on her shoulder and asked her how it was for weight.
‘Not too bad,’ she said. ‘But why?’
Instead of answering, he took the canvas water-bag and filled it from the tank. Kim noticed the last of the water pouring into the bag came only at a slow flow.
‘It’s almost empty!’ she said staring at the tank. Then her eyes came back to his face. The immediate facts of life hit her. Hard!
‘Not quite empty. Now listen, Kim. And listen carefully.’
He searched her eyes, but he read only puzzlement, then a strange cheerful fearlessness. She understood now.
‘Last night, after you went to sleep I went out. We’ve only brought the jeep to an area of deeper sand troughs. I later went over the map. I’ve made this new one. You know how to use the compass. You must carry the bag of tinned stuff on one shoulder, the water-bag on the other, and your hat on your head. Remember, whatever happens ‒ first, last, and all the time ‒ you keep your hat on your head. Do you understand?’
Kim stared at him. The grey eyes, dark-fringed, were unwavering.
‘You are our chance of rescue, Kim, if you keep your hat on your head.’ As he said these last words a sudden almost tender shadow crossed his face. Then he went on, ‘Sunstroke is your worst enemy. Sooner or later you will come to a stand of banksia trees. We didn’t leave them so many miles behind.’
‘John. I’m staying with you!’
His face was as craggy as the worst rock outcrop they’d seen since Base.
‘You will do as you’re told, Kim. When you come to the banksia trees ‒ if you’re short of water ‒ you dig down to the root tips. You suck them. They contain water. That is how the aborigines survive this stretch of country ‒’
‘You’ve put the last of the water from the tank in my water-bag!’
‘There is water in the jeep’s radiator. It’s almost full. That’s why I covered it with rugs. To save evaporation.’
‘You knew this might happen?’
‘Of course. I’m not brainless.’
She shook her head.
‘I’m staying with you, John!’
She stood, a small brown dust-covered girl, with unexpected stoical determination in her face: her brown hat at an absurd angle. A shadow passed over John Andrews’ eyes again as he looked at that hat-ridiculous. So much of Kim’s character was in its dentable versatility. Then he pulled down the mask. He was quite cold and impersonal again.
‘Listen, Kim,’ he said flatly. ‘You’d like to survive? In a small kind-hearted way you would perhaps like me to survive? That is very touching of you considering ‒ well ‒ never mind that! Now are you listening ‒ for the last time?’
Her eyes said ‘yes’.
‘I repeat. You are our chance of survival. You, not me. You are a good navigator. You can read a map. Stick to your compass. Stick to your map ‒ and keep that damned hat on your head. You’ll reach the stand of banksias before your water runs out. You’ll be on the track to the old station. Already there has to be an alarm out. We were due to make contact two days ago.’
‘Yes, of course!’
‘Once you’re on the track to the old station you will be found. At the worst you’ll be picked up at the old station. At the best ‒ many miles before that.’
‘But Peck and Bill were leaving! We didn’t tell George Crossman, back at Base, we were going to the old station. We made a deviation from the route ‒’
‘They’ll be looking for us somewhere. They’ll know we were there ‒’
‘How? If there isn’t anyone there to tell them?’
John looked at Kim ‒ right in the eyes ‒ for quite half a minute. Then a slow, half weary, half amused smile flickered over his face.
‘You left a message on the wall. You told the world in red ochre ‒ Kim Wentworth Was Here. Remember?’
She nodded. ‘Underneath I wrote ‒ So Was John. It was only a joke.’
‘A very life-saving joke. It left a message. Now, are you going?’
She nodded.
‘Don’t die of thirst, or sand storm, or snakebite while I’m gone, will you?’ A sandy frog came in her throat. She couldn’t possibly show him real concern. He’d slap her
straight back in her place.
‘I didn’t know you thought so much of me.’ He was almost amused.
‘I didn’t, but I do now. That’s only because I’m leaving you alone in the desert. Why can’t we both go?’
His voice was suddenly sharp.
‘Because there’s enough water in that bag for one to reach the banksias first, even the station track. There is not enough for two. We both go, we both ‒ well, never mind that. Besides, I have my Duboisia specimens to bring in. That is my first consideration. The weight would be an additional burden ‒’
‘Oh no!’
She who loved plants, suddenly raged against them. He could possibly die of rusty radiator water, or another sand storm ‒ but he had to think about his Duboisia! Thirst or no thirst, he would stay with his beastly specimens!
John took her by the shoulder and roughly turned her round facing north-west. He adjusted the compass and put that in her hand. Then he tucked the map, with a pencil tied to it, in the bib pocket of her working overalls. He adjusted the straps of the bag carrying the tinned fruit on one shoulder, and the strap of the water-bag on the other for balance. He gave her a push forward. He might have been sending a reluctant child off to school for the first time.
‘Now go!’ he commanded. ‘And remember. Though the heavens fall ‒ keep that hat on your head. Even when you sleep at night. Sunstroke is your only real enemy. And keep walking!’
She wanted to turn round to wave good-bye. She didn’t because she knew he’d hate it. But there were tears stinging her eyes. And in her heart too. She wasn’t very brave any more.
‘See you later!’ she said without turning her head.
‘See you later!’ he replied. She thought he nearly finished with ‘God Bless!’
Her imagination, of course!
Yet she had not misheard!
The words sang in her ears as her feet sank deep in the sand and she steadily ploughed her way forward. He had said ‘God Bless!’ She fixed her eyes first on the compass in her right hand to take a bearing on a distant rock, then on the sand she had yet to force her feet through. He had said it! Well, he didn’t think her a fool school girl any more ‒