Girl Alone: An Australian Outback Romance

by Lucy Walker

  ‘Thank you, God, for that,’ she said. ‘Please excuse me if I don’t say any more prayers just yet. I have to think. You see, he might be bleeding inside. Or have a broken neck. I have to think how to do it, I mean fix him up. You know … move him … you do understand, don’t you?’

  Mardie had never thought of herself as being friendly with God before. She hadn’t even been sure whether He was someone up there, way out beyond other galaxies, or not. Or whether He was just a word for Goodness. She had settled for the fact that an ant would never understand a Diesel engine, let alone a Jumbo Jet aeroplane. So how could she, Mardie Forrester, understand about God? Or even try?

  Now, suddenly, she was on friendly terms with Him. She was able to talk to Him … in between talking to and advising herself.

  ‘Inch by inch, Mardie. Carefully now … If you’re just Goodness … or maybe only Will Power … then stick around, won’t you? I need you … because I … the only one here. Well … there’s Digger and Dingo Pup.’

  There had to be the … well, what was it called?

  ‘You know, the gear everyone had to take in case you were lost in the outback, or something ‒’

  Every muscle and bone hurt but somehow she hefted herself into the rear end behind the seats. Yes. It was there. Shovel, trencher spade. Canned food, biscuits. An axe, but better ‒ far, far better, a saw. And a First Aid Kit. Food and a can of water! A bush rug.

  Her hands and arms were cut with broken pieces of windscreen and sharp tree spikes by the time she’d sawn that branch in two. Pain no longer mattered now because she had achievement.

  ‘There you are. I told you so! Will Power!’ She stopped and wondered: ‘Who did I say that to?’

  She talked and she worked. Sometimes she said rude things to Digger and Dingo Pup because they had too much to say for themselves. Digger had a marathon barking spree. Dingo Pup let out an unearthly howl every now and again.

  She worked at getting the sawn branch free of the cabin. She thought kindness might be more effective with the animals, after all.

  ‘There, there, my pets,’ she said. ‘I love you too and I’m glad you’re alive … like Jard is. He’s breathing but he’s not kicking up your kind of racket about it because … you see … he’s only just breathing.’

  Somehow ‒ and she thought it took hours, but wasn’t sure ‒ she got the tree branch out. Then, because Jard was freed, she pushed, pulled, dragged, prayed and finally at last had Jard out on the ground.

  She didn’t know whether or not helicopters could blow up because of spilt spirit the way aeroplanes could. But she thought not because the engine was stone cold now anyway. But she wouldn’t take chances.

  So inch by inch she pulled, pushed, drew Jard along the ground over low-growing bushes towards another grove of trees about a hundred yards away.

  She bathed his head. ‘Thank you up there for the can of water.’ She felt Jard’s pulse. She felt all his bones and every inch of his so dear body. It belonged to her now, didn’t it? Because she was caring for it. She could find nothing outwardly wrong. Even his head didn’t seem to have a crack in the cranium where the branch must have hit him when it came through the canopy. It was just as if he were asleep ‒ only just breathing. Very pale.

  Every now and again his body seemed seized with a rigor of shivering. Then he would lie still, as if dead. But he wasn’t dead. He breathed ‒ very shallow. And she could feel a faint but even pulse.

  He was alive. She had this strange feeling about him being hers. Belonging.

  Funny, when you have to care for someone … when they’re totally dependent on you … that somebody becomes your own. Your very own. Like no one on earth had ever been like that before.

  Her mother had belonged to everybody. So had her father … specially to his new wife. Only she, Mardie, had been alone in the sense that no one really belonged to her. Now she had this near-stranger man. That is till help came, of course. He was her own, and she was not alone.

  She brought the animals out of the helicopter, opened a tin of meat and fed them. She gave them the tiniest reasonable amount of water because she supposed it might be quite a time before they were found. It was blistering hot now, but when the temperature fell in the night it would be bitterly cold. The book of instructions with the calamity kit said to spread a plastic sheet on the ground so that condensation would gather a few thimblefuls of water.

  ‘I don’t have a thimble to measure,’ she said, still talking to herself. It was the only way to pass time. Not to worry.

  She needed all her wits and had to stay calm. Any minute now she might be afraid or she might start talking to the ants, even the bardies gnawing their way in the branch axles of the trees.

  ‘If we run low on food,’ she told the animals, ‘I can start feeding you on the bardies. They’re only worms but I know the aborigines eat them. So no complaints from you.’

  Mentioning aborigines reminded her of something. Jard had said he’d drop down by Mister Falldown’s camp to deliver the pup early. It was past mid-afternoon now. Mister Falldown trusted Jard. He would know Jard would keep his word. So he would know something had gone wrong when Jard didn’t arrive on time.

  Who else would know?

  Mardie was unsure about that. At the Dig-in they would think maybe Jard had gone back to the out-camp. He was known to be a ‘loner’. He operated as a ‘loner’ … for reasons still unknown to Mardie. And which reasons didn’t matter any more for now.

  At The Breakaway there had been suggestions she might be invited to the Mansell homestead. The Richies could think she was there and might not contact Mansell till the Session on the transceiver. After sundown. Then it would be too late to find anyone at all before morning. Night was very dark in the outback when there was no moonlight. And it was new-moon time, so there wouldn’t be any light to speak of. Except for the stars. They were very bright ‒ the stars in the outback.

  And there would be Mister Falldown.

  Mardie went to the ’copter and brought out the one and only bush rug and the one sheet of plastic she could find. When the heat went out of the land she would put the rug over Jard, and spread out the plastic sheet, pinned down by stones to catch those thimbles of water. Just in case …

  All the time these activities ‒ and Mardie’s think-talk processes ‒ were going on, she had kept at intervals feeding little drops of water into Jard’s mouth. She mustn’t allow him to dehydrate. She knew that much though where she had learned it she did not know.

  At the back of her mind she thought about ‘shock’ too. Where had she heard or learned that you treated patients suffering from shock by keeping them warm? ‘Warmth is imperative!’

  Those occasional rigors Jard kept having must be something to do with shock.

  ‘Well, not to worry,’ she told Dingo Pup. ‘The heat is still on the land so the Boss is warm enough right now. I’ll maybe have to double the rug over him come night. Maybe I’d just better massage his limbs more often. Just in case it does some good. I don’t really know …’

  Somehow admitting this to herself, let alone to the wild dog, was suddenly the last straw. She was sitting on the ground beside Jard and she bent over, put her head on her knees and cried. Her mind had been behaving stupidly, like a child’s. But then she’d been hit on the head too. She thought probably she was a little out of her mind. Do minds hurt the same way as bodies hurt? Because her body hurt everywhere, anyway.

  ‘It’s a pity tears are salt,’ she said ten minutes later ‒ this time to Digger. ‘Otherwise we could use them for water some time next week if we run short.’

  She was, of course, not admitting they’d still be here, lost, one week hence. She wasn’t admitting anything except her very real pain. Her limbs seemed to keep on paining and aching. She would like very much to have a little lie down and go to sleep. She couldn’t afford to do this, of course. She had to look after … after …

  But she did.

  Suddenly without volition
she slowly rolled over on the ground beside Jard. And fell instantly into a stupor kind of sleep. She was utterly, completely finished. A state beyond her control.

  The sun went down and Dingo Pup howled. This was because night was his natural talking time. Digger had crept over and curled himself up in the hollow of Mardie’s back. He was laying claims for a warm spot against the cold of the night. And it was the cold that woke Mardie. Some time in her half-sleep she had tucked the bush rug in tight around Jard.

  Now she reached for the can standing by the tree trunk and dripped more water in Jard’s mouth. She wished she had tried to use that smashed up two-way speaker in the helicopter again. Yet she knew in her heart it had been broken beyond repair.

  She was dressed only in cotton clothes and the cold was beginning to chill her skin. She opened another small tin of meat and shared it with Digger and Dingo Pup.

  ‘And you shut up!’ she cautioned Dingo Pup. ‘Any howling from you in the night and I’ll up and wallop you, even though I am getting a bit soft-hearted about you. It’s not much fun for you, tied in that sugar bag, all except for your head sticking out. But it’s not much fun for the rest of us either. I’m a lot colder than you are. I’ve nothing to wrap round me. You’ve got that bag.’

  She lay down beside Jard again, curling into his body as Digger curled into hers. She remembered reading somewhere, before she’d ever come up north, that the ground temperature at night could drop as low as nineteen degrees in the inland at this time of the year.

  Jard wouldn’t mind her curling into him, tight, sharing a little bit of the rug with him ‒ because he wouldn’t ever know, would he?

  It was cold. Then, much later, it was colder and colder and colder.

  She was shivering herself but every now and again Jard’s rigors were stronger than they had been in the day time. And it had been hot then. These rigors must be shock symptoms getting worse. She crawled right in under the rug with him and put her arms round him. She held him tight to her so he might get the warmth from her body.

  A little rivulet of tears ran down her cheeks. He was here. Yet he was a stranger. Here in this moment of time she had to care for him. Keep him warm. Save him.

  In the small hours of the morning it became yet colder still. Jard was shivering all the time now.

  Mardie took one moment to think, then stopped thinking because she knew that thinking of what she was about to do would frighten her into a cold grave ‒ with or without Jard, Digger and Dingo Pup.

  She took off Jard’s shirt. Stripped herself of all her clothes except her panties, and drew Digger in under Jard’s feet to add his warmth. Then gently, almost lovingly because he was injured and she was caring for him the only way she knew possible, she curled herself, skin to skin, around him. She could do better. She would provide him with the greatest warmth possible. The human warmth of two bodies, and not even the warmth of her breath wasted.

  She turned him over on his near side so his body, against her body, lay in her arms. His face and head lay in the curve of her neck and she clasped him tightly to herself.

  Nothing between them. But caring.

  She did not think of anything except: This is the only way ‒ my warmth for him.

  Exhaustion came to Mardie’s aid at long last. She fell asleep.

  Mardie did not know what aroused her in the false dawn before morning. It was not the real dawn but only that grey light that preceded it, which would later give way to the heralding flags of the rising sun.

  Then she realized what had woken her. It was the sound of crushing sticks and bush leafery under boots.

  She lifted her head.

  They were standing a few yards away. Two bush-whacker types. Beardy and rough-dressed. They stared down at the girl and man lying cradled together under the rug.

  ‘Hell’s bells ‒ it’s Hunter,’ said one. ‘Who’d have bloody-all thought it. Grounded with a dame!’

  Because of the light they would not have seen the wrecked ’copter in the trees a hundred yards away.

  The pains and aches of yesterday were agony today, Mardie realized. She could have cried out as she sat up. Help at last. That was all she thought

  The aches made her awkward, clumsy. She fumbled the rug and it fell off.

  The two men stared as if they were seeing throw-offs from Mars.

  ‘For crying out loud!’ the first man said again.

  ‘Help … please. We’re hurt …’ Mardie began.

  The second man laughed, disbelieving.

  Mardie realized they could not see the fallen helicopter. She tried to explain.

  ‘We had an accident. A crash …’ she began, almost piteously, hardly aware of anything but the searing pain down her back.

  ‘We need help …’ she began weakly.

  The first man was staring at Jard Hunter. Mardie saw that they both carried rifles. They were probably hunters … dingo-shooters … or something. The first man looked startled and he jerked the butt of his gun into his mate’s ribs.

  ‘Out of here, mate,’ he said. ‘Smart. Hunter’ll recognize us.’

  The second man switched his stare from Mardie to Jard.

  ‘You said it, boy,’ he almost snarled. Or did Mardie dream it?

  They turned and went off fast through the bush with boot treads like the thundering of herds.

  ‘Please!’ Mardie called. ‘Please … please wait …’

  She threw the rug aside and tried as she half rose to drag her clothes up from somewhere round her feet.

  The men were going, and going fast.

  ‘Please get help! Please get help!’ she called. She tried to get to her feet.

  Yesterday’s bruises had set. Her rattled bones were stiff. She only got half up, then dumped and fell back. As she did so her face was turned to Jard again, but her eyes were closed. She was dazed by her own minor agonies. And the pity of it because they had gone. She had not been able to stop them.

  They had not stayed to help. There was a reason somewhere. Something to do with Jard.

  Her lids flew open and looked straight into his eyes. He was looking at her … right into her face … his own not six inches away.

  Then slowly ‒ as if desperately tired ‒ his lids dropped and his eyes closed again.

  Mardie put her cheek against his. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, tears in her eyes. ‘So very sorry. I … I didn’t stop them. I tried …’

  She could not get up quickly enough and run after them. That was not only the stiffness in her whole body, but because she was all but naked. And Jard was that way too!

  She had not wanted him ever to know. For one half-light moment he had been conscious. Would he remember?

  She didn’t know. So she gave in and cried on to his shoulder. It was all too much! She’d done her best. But they had gone away. Just gone! She couldn’t really quite believe it.

  The false dawn became the real dawn and the sun was gold and striped fan-wise against a pale pale blue sky. There was a tossing of tree leaves in the early morning wind. This was the wind that always blew from the east across the desert in the morning. It was also cold. But it did not have the fierce bite in it that the cold of bottom temperatures in the midnight and early hours of morning had. In three hours’ time that land breeze would have dropped and God’s Wrath would fall on the land again, with the blistering heat of hell in it.

  Mardie wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and looked at Jard again. But his eyes were closed ‒ sort of slightly as if the lids wanted to flicker but couldn’t quite make it.

  She sat up, pulled the rug right over them again, and began to pull on her clothes.

  Then she heard yet another sound in the bush.

  Not the thrashing of heavy boots this time. A soft sound, yet a steady one as of someone coming purposefully but with a natural quietness.

  She looked through the trees and blinked her eyes to see the better. The shadow coming through the bush was dark. Old clothes. An old shabby broad-brimmed h
at. A dark face.

  Mardie felt as if it was not the sun that had risen but the whole of heaven that had opened up with glory. A bush angel had come.

  ‘Mister Falldown!’

  She said it softly because of the lump in her throat.

  After that everything was all right.

  Mister Falldown made the kind of bush fire that wouldn’t spread and make a holocaust of the whole area. A fire was that dangerous thing the wind could carry many many miles. Mardie hadn’t been able to make a fire last night because she hadn’t had the strength to lever the spade under the sand and through the gravel to clear a safety break. The ground had been rock hard and the low bushes dry and wire-tough. Her own arms and back had been too stiff with pain ‒ even if they’d had the muscular strength. She had not dared a fire because she knew of that prevailing morning wind. It even reached The Breakaway each morning with the scent of distant border lands, not one, but two deserts away.

  Jard opened his eyes again. Mister Falldown nodded.

  ‘Him come-along all right,’ he said. ‘Bime-bye maybe. You watch him, Missy. I’ll send up this smoke signal ‒ so! Airplane come over maybe soon. Police Land-Rover come bime-bye. You watch ’em. Okay?’

  Mardie sat, arms wrapped round her knees and watched while Mister Falldown did all the things a bushman knew how to do.

  He made a fire in a wide circle of sand, and damped it down with the greener leaves of low trees. He ripped out a floor mat from the ’copter, then proceeded to cover and uncover the gathering flames and smoke of his carefully controlled fire. Sometimes he let a long thin spiral of smoke streak up beam-on straight for heaven. Sometimes he manipulated the mat off and on over the fire so that round clouds of smoke, like grey cotton-wool balls, floated slowly and gracefully upwards, quietly to disperse away westwards as the land breeze carried them off.

  Next he took two of the tins of canned meat and rolled the contents between the palms of his hands into small balls. He put these in the hot sand under the fire coals for a few minutes. When heated and, smelling like heaven, he set them out in a row on a stone. When they were cool he gave some to Mardie. Then he fed Jard, crumb by crumb, watching carefully to see that each crumb was swallowed, and that he did not choke on one. He fed and watered the dogs.