The bush boy leapt into the pool. Peter followed. Together, they grabbed at the paralysed fish, tossing them out of the water, on to the rocks. Within sixty seconds a couple of dozen yarrawa were squirming their lives out, on the smooth, sun-hot granite.
The bush boy was jubilant. Climbing out of the pool, he gathered the fish together, in a twisting, glistening heap, playing with them, trickling them through his fingers like a miser worshipping his gold.
There were so many fish and they were so slippery, that when the boys wanted to take them back to the camp site they couldn’t carry them. Not until Peter took off his shorts. Then, in these, they wrapped the yarrawa up, and carried them back in triumph.
When the children had eaten – three fish apiece – Peter refused to put on his shorts. There was quite a scene.
‘Feel them,’ the little boy said. ‘They’re horrid and scaly. Full of fish.’
‘Wash them, and put them on,’ his sister ordered.
‘Shan’t!’
Peter eyed her defiantly.
It was the bush boy who settled the argument. He was ready to move again; the yarrawa were too valuable to be left behind; he rolled them up in the little one’s shorts and tossed the bundle to the lubra.
‘Kurura,’ he said.
And so they began the fourth day of the walkabout.
The going was easier than on the plateau: down the lower reaches of the valley then out across the plain – the vast, lonely, and limitless plain that rolled on and on, a flowering wilderness, silent as sleep, motionless as death.
Over the level ground the bush boy moved quickly. Too quickly for Peter, whose cold made him short of breath. Soon the little boy was panting. After a couple of hours his nose started to stream. The midday halt – in the shade of a group of golden casuarinas – was never more welcome. But it only lasted a couple of hours. Then they were walking again. Across the endless plain. On and on.
Half-way through the afternoon, as they were crossing a monotonous belt of scrub, there came a diversion : as welcome as it was unexpected. The children were walking in their usual order – the bush boy first, Peter next, Mary in the rear – when suddenly the bush boy stopped: stopped dead: like a pointer, one foot off the ground, nose forward, an arm flung behind him for balance. For perhaps half a minute he stayed motionless.: frozen; then he crept quietly forward, to where a low bank of wattle-bush formed a screen of scarlet around a tiny clearing. Expectantly the others joined him. Together they peered through the wattle leaves.
They saw a bird. An ordinary rather sad-looking bird, with big eyes, pointed beak and long, straggling tail. He was scratching about for grubs. To the white children the scene looked very prosaic: an anti-climax. But the black boy was obviously enthralled; he signalled to them to be quiet, and so they knelt close up to the wattle-bushes: motionless: expectant. And after about ten minutes their patience was rewarded.
Quite suddenly the bird raised his head; he drew himself erect and, with a stiff-legged goose-step, strutted into the centre of the clearing. Then he started to sing. And in an instant all his drabness was sloughed away. For his song was beautiful beyond compare: stream after stream of limpid melodious notes, flowing and mingling, trilling and soaring: bush music, magic as the pipes of Pan. On and on it went; wave after wave of perfect harmony that held the children spellbound. At last the notes sank into a croon, died into silence. The song was over. But not the performance. For now came a metamorphosis too amazing to be believed. The drab brown bird with its tatty, straggling tail disappeared, and in its place rose a creature of pure beauty. The drooping tail fanned wide; its two outmost feathers swung erect to form the frame of a perfect lyre; and in between spread a mist of elfin plumage, a phantasmagoria of blue and silver, shot with gold, that trembled and quivered with all the beauty of a rainbow seen through running water. Then, hidden behind his plumage, the lyre bird again burst into song. And as he sang, he danced; prancing joyfully from side to side, hopping and skipping to the beat of a high-speed polka. And every now and then his song broke off, was interspersed with croaking chuckles of happiness.
Then, as suddenly as his performance had begun, it ended. The feathers drooped, the polka came to a halt, the singing died. And he was just another bird, scratching the earth for food.
The children walked on. The sun dropped lower. The western sky glowed rose and gold.
At the first breath of the sunset wind they made camp beside a group of eucalyptus. There was no water; but the fish alleviated their thirst.
Out of the dusk came ants: winged ants: flying in swarms: attracted by the glow of the fire. Mating in mid-air they shed their wings, dropping inter-twined to earth. The bush boy stirred up the flames to move them on. Coils of wood-smoke streamed downwind.
Peter moved farther away from the fire – for the smoke brought tears to his eyes, brought on another attack of sneezing. But his sneezes were neither as prolonged nor as violent as they’d been the night before. For his cold was on the mend. Though they’d again walked close on fifteen miles, he felt reasonably fresh: fresh enough, at any rate, to appreciate the miming.
For now, out of the shadows and into the firelight, strutted the bush boy. In his hands were three leafy branchlets. These he draped about his body, to represent wings and tail. Then he started to dance: to mimic the polka-ing lyre bird. Round and round the fire he strutted, pantomimed, and pranced; then he screwed up his mouth and burst into shrill, raucous singing. His absurdities grew more tempestuous, more abandoned, yet never lost their realism.
At first the white children were simply amused. Then, as the pantomime grew even livelier, even more grotesque, their amusement turned to unrestrained delight. They laughed and laughed, till the leaves fell from the humble-bushes; they stamped their feet and clapped their hands, till the floor of the desert seemed to shake, and sparks from the fire went whirling away, like fairy lanterns, into the night.
Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the middle of his dance, the bush boy sneezed. He sneezed again and again and again (as he’d never sneezed before). Abruptly the pantomiming came to an end.
The sneezing had a curious effect on the bush boy. He seemed to grow suddenly weak. He passed a hand over his forehead, and his fingers came away damp. When he saw this dampness a great fear came over him. He remembered an old man he’d seen in the tribal caves: an old man who had sneezed at the time of the rains, whose forehead had become damp with fever, whose body had been very light when they’d lifted it on to its burial platform. He began to tremble. Slowly, uncertainly, he walked across to the fire. He lay close beside it; close to its warmth; but he couldn’t stop shivering.
The white children looked at the bush boy in astonishment. But neither went to him: the boy because in the last few days he’d witnessed so many incomprehensible changes of mood he’d come to disregard them; the girl for reasons of her own. Soon both brother and sister slept. But the bush boy didn’t sleep. Not for many hours. He lay close to the warmth of the fire, but he couldn’t stop trembling. And quite frequently he sneezed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT was obvious, next morning, that the bush boy had caught Peter’s cold. His nose was running, his eyes were heavy, his muscles ached. Long after sunrise he was still sitting beside the dying fire, too lethargic apparently to think of breakfast. Peter and Mary tidied up the camp, replenished the fire, cooked the last of the yarrawa and offered the bush boy a share –but he wouldn’t eat. Then they waited: waited for him to move.
But he just went on sitting; hour after hour.
‘Say, Mary!’ The little boy was worried. ‘I guess he’s ill.’
‘He looks O.K. to me.’
‘Reckon HI ask him.’
Peter went up to the bush boy.
‘Hey, darkie! You O.K.?’ He eyed him anxiously. ‘ ’Cause if you are, let’s get shiftin’ for Adelaide.’
The bush boy blinked: came suddenly out of his trance. He saw the lubra and the little one looking at him anxiou
sly, and remembered that the valley-of-waters-under-the-earth was still five sleeps away. He got to his feet. Slowly. And without a word struck southward, through the scrub.
All that morning they walked in silence.
A little after noon the bush boy started to cast around, as if unsure of the trail. Twenty-four hours ago he’d have explained to Peter what he was looking for; but he was too preoccupied now. He soon found what he wanted: the claw marks of a food-searching bird. He followed the marks up, picking out a trail that the white children never even saw: a trail of toe-scratchings, odd feathers, and droppings: a trail that led at last to a circular hillock, three feet high: a hillock built by the talegulla (bush turkey) out of earth and decomposing leaves. Inside the hillock, the bush boy knew, would be eggs: the eggs of the bush-turkey: the fowl that knows no broodiness: that lays its eggs and wanders off, leaving the warmth of the decomposing leaves to hatch its deserted offspring.
There were fourteen eggs in the mound, each partitioned off from its neighbours by walls of decaying leaves. One by one the bush boy unearthed them: steaming, pink-tinted, and the size of golf balls. The children roasted and ate them. The firm, nut-flavoured flesh was nourishing; it satisfied their hunger, but sharpened their thirst. Of water there was no sign.
The midday rest was longer than usual; and once again the white children had to coerce the bush boy into making a start. His cold was coming out now; his nose was streaming, his eyes were heavy, his sneezes were interspersed by an occasional cough. When at last he did start off, his pace was slow: as if every step was an effort.
Peter tried to cheer him up, but without success. The Aboriginal had gone into a semi-trance; he moved like a sleep-walker: lost in a world of his own.
‘Say, Mary!’ The little boy was worried. ‘He ain’t well. You do something.’
‘He’s just got a cold, Pete. Like you had. Nothing to fuss about.’
‘But look at his eyes. They’re all queer an’ starey.’
But the girl wouldn’t look at the bush boy’s eyes.
‘He’s O.K.,’ she said. ‘Don’t fuss.’
They walked all afternoon, all evening, and a little way into the night – for the first water-hole they came to had dried up. In the second well the water was brackish and faintly salt, but the children drank it: greedily.
The bush boy wasn’t going to bother over a fire; but Peter and Mary, tired as they were, collected wood, and persuaded the Aboriginal to help them get it alight. Then the three of them, utterly exhausted, lay down to sleep. Peter dropped off at once; Mary after a little while; but the bush boy stayed awake, hour after hour. He felt hot one minute and cold the next. Convinced that he was getting the fever-that-comes-with-the-rains, he kept feeling his forehead. And a little after midnight his fingers came away damp. He started to tremble then. He hoped the lubra and the little one knew how to make a burial platform: high off the ground: so that the evil spirits couldn’t creep out and start to molest his body.
Next day the sun had risen high before the children were on the move. They had no breakfast, and the bush boy was noticeably weaker. But at last they started off, heading south by west across the level plain. In the distance, heat-hazed and very far away, they could see a low range of hills. The bush boy pointed to the hills.
‘Arkooloola,’ he said.
And that was the only word he spoke until their midday rest.
But a little before noon he came – if only for a moment – out of his lethargy.
It was Peter who saw the echidna first: a pair of porcupine-like creatures scurrying between two clumps of yacca. He grabbed the bush boy’s hand.
‘Look! Food! Yeemara!’
The bush boy came suddenly to life. He snapped off a branch of yacca, and leapt after the echidna. They heard him coming; they tried to escape in the only manner they knew; by diving under the ground; by burrowing into the earth as if it were chocolate marsh-mallow. But the bush boy was too quick for them. With a thrust of the yacca he blocked their getaway; with the end of the branch he prised them up to the surface. He unrolled them, skilfully avoiding their quills, and set them down on the sand. In the pouch of the female he found a tiny replica of herself: a frightened, blinking pup, whose quills were soft as chickens’ down. Gently he put the mother down; set her free to tend her young; to raise the pup to a size more suitable for food. But for the male there was no reprieve. His death blow was mercifully swift; his body was tossed to the lubra. They ate him, when the day was at its hottest, casseroled in eucalyptus leaves.
For a long time that afternoon the hills seemed to come no nearer; then, quite suddenly, the children were walking into their shadow.
They found an idyllic place to camp; in the shade of an outcrop of rocks and close to a stream that meandered into a looping chain of billabongs. They drank deeply, kindled their fire and settled down in the shade of a boxwood thicket for the night.
The bush boy’s cold didn’t appear to be any worse; indeed if anything he was sneezing and coughing less. Yet he seemed weaker: increasingly preoccupied: and the children noticed that his coordination was beginning to fail – twice, while making fire, the yacca rolled from between his hands.
Peter was very solicitous. Seeing the bush boy huddled by the fire yet still trembling – he supposed with cold – he took off his shorts and tried to cover him up. And the Aboriginal seemed to be grateful. Peter looked at him thoughtfully: then at his sister. He had a sudden idea.
‘Hey, Mary!’ His cheerful shout echoed back from the rocks. ‘The darkie’s cold. Couldn’t he have your dress?’
The girl’s mouth fell open. For a second she stared at her brother in disbelief. Then she swung round and started to bank up the fire.
But the little boy wasn’t put off.
‘Gee, Mary! Don’t be a meany. He’s cold.’
The girl said nothing.
Peter looked at her curiously. Her face had gone suddenly pale; her eyes, once again, were frightened, hunted.
‘I think you’re scared!’ the little boy announced with unexpected relish. ‘Cowardy girl! Cowardy girl’
Mary turned away. She hid her face in her hands. If only he wasn’t so small; if only he was a few years older; then he’d understand.
She saw the bush boy looking at her: watching her. And she shivered.
The Southern Cross blazed out of a cobalt sky; the sundown wind faded to a whisper; and a pair of marsupial rats, their eyes aglow like luminous peas, hopped hesitantly round the camp site. Mary threw a branch of yacca into the flames. The sparks crackled and flew; and the rats, with tiny ping-ponging hops, fled. The stars glowed like gems. The desert, and the children, slept.
Next morning Peter woke early. He yawned; stretched; looked first at the others – still asleep – then at the billabongs. The water looked cool and tempting. He got up, strolled across to the nearest pool, sat on the edge and dangled in an exploratory toe. The water was delightfully warm; but shallow; barely up to his knees. He wandered upstream, seeking a deeper, more exciting pool.
He found it on the far side of the outcrop of rock: a granite-encircled basin, fed by a miniature waterfall. With a noisy belly-flop, he dived in.
The pool was exactly the right depth: up to his armpits. Working his way to under the waterfall, he revelled in the cascading, sunlit spray. He stayed a long time in the water, soaking every pore of his sturdy young body. He noticed with satisfaction that his body wasn’t white any longer; a week’s continual exposure to the desert sun had tanned it a rich mahogany – only he hoped it wouldn’t get any darker, else he’d be turning into a blackamoor. At last he wandered back to the camp site.
The bush boy was still asleep; but Mary had just woken, and he told her about the rock-bound billa-bong.
The girl looked at the Aboriginal and saw that he was motionless: apparently fast asleep.
‘You stir up the fire, Pete,’ she said. ‘Can you manage that? While I bathe?’
‘Sure I can manage.’
The billabong was everything Peter had promised. The river that ran out of Eden couldn’t have been more beautiful. The girl took off her dress, ruefully noting its rents and tears, shook loose her hair, and dived into the pool. The water was crystal clear and warm as a tepid bath. Lazily she swam across to the waterfall, and let the spray cascade on to her naked body. She felt relaxed, washed clean of cares and doubts and fears. Sometime, she thought, some distant day or week or month, they’d come to Adelaide (or some other settlement); the bush boy she wouldn’t think about; in the meantime the sun shone, there was water to drink, food to eat, and Peter’s cold was on the mend. She started to sing: gaily: swirling her hair from shoulder to shoulder.
Peter, meanwhile, had fanned the fire into a blazing pyre of yacca. And the bush boy had woken up.
He lay on his back, thinking. He wasn’t used to thinking – most of his actions being dictated by custom and instinct rather than thought. But there was something he had to think about now: something vitally important: his burial table. Did the strangers know how to make it: high off the ground: so that the serpent that slept in the bowels of the earth couldn’t creep out and molest his body? The strangers were such an ignorant pair; he couldn’t leave anything to chance; he’d have to make sure they knew what had to be done.
He got to his feet. Slowly. Weakly.
If other things had been equal he’d have talked to the little one – he was on easier terms with him than with the lubra. But he saw that the little one was working: was collecting firewood; while the lubra, to judge from her singing and splashing, was merely washing her body. Tribal custom frowned on disturbing those who were working. And it never occurred to the bush boy to wait for a more propitious moment. He set off to find the lubra.
He climbed the outcrop of rock and saw her a little way below him, bathing in the billabong. She’d taken off her strange decorations, and loosened her hair so that it was no longer scraped up on the back of her head but flowed, long and golden, on the surface of the water. The bush boy had never seen such hair, sand-coloured and trailing like the comet that rides the midnight sky. He thought it very beautiful. He lay down on the sun-warmed rock, and stared. Admiringly.
Walkabout Page 6
