Wings of the Storm

by JH Fletcher

  He slipped, dangled from one hand, managed somehow to swing back, to seize hold upon a section of cliff that had been splintered over the years by the probing root systems of the tree. Hung in desperation, feeling strength and resolution leaking through his cramped fingers, while below him a hundred feet of air sucked ravenously.

  Somehow his boots found a place upon which to stand, if only temporarily. A minute’s rest before once again, teeth clamped, eyes squeezed almost shut, he forced his way upwards.

  And upwards.

  Time had no meaning; his own draining strength had no meaning. A hand reached out, took hold, the legs and body convulsed, the muscles raised him an inch or two higher. Again. And again. Eyes tight, blood crying shrilly in his head.

  He felt the first blow of sunlight. Opened his eyes. Ten feet above him, a ledge beyond which nothing was visible.

  He clung, breathing deeply, feeling the shirt wet with sweat against his chest. He reached out again, heaved upwards, again upwards. The lip of the cliff grew nearer. Could at last reach it. The stone was warm beneath his hands. With a final convulsive effort, he hauled himself clear. Lay, more unconscious than not, in a blood-red swirl of utter exhaustion.

  Dawkins, the pilot of the rescue chopper, repeated his question.

  ‘You sure they gave no clue which way they were heading?’

  Jock was not much for talking at the best of times. In particular, hated being questioned and showed it.

  ‘Moomba,’ he managed. ‘That’s where.’

  Dawkins stifled a sigh. Others had questioned the old man and got nowhere. Why should he have thought he might have better luck? Yet perverseness made him keep on.

  ‘They never mentioned anywhere else? Anywhere they might have stopped off on the way?’

  ‘They was talkin’ ’bout the Gammons. Hennie said he’d been there before.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Dunno nuthin ’bout that.’

  The pilot was not so sure. There was something about Jock’s look, the way his eyes flickered. Yet why should he lie? No one was blaming him for what had happened. Perhaps he thought they might. In which case …

  He pressed him. ‘You sure?’

  Was already turning away when Jock lashed out vehemently, spraying spit. ‘I say sumthin, next thing you’ll have me in that machine of yours.’

  Shit. Dawkins turned back.

  He said, ‘Where?’

  ‘You ain’t takin’ me up in that thing …’

  ‘No one’s taking you anywhere.’ Silence. Jock sucked gums, nervously.

  ‘It might save their lives.’

  A cackle. ‘After six days?’

  ‘Just tell me, okay?’

  Jock dithered. Patience imploded. Dawkins grabbed the old-timer by the shirt, shaking.

  ‘Where?’

  Eventually Cal mustered enough strength to stand. Beyond the tree, the ground opened up. A scattering of tea-trees, a litter of dead trunks flung down by ancient floods upon a bed of gravel and boulders. Beyond the trees, the stern ranges, mottled russet and green, stretched away.

  He fished out the compass, took the reading, allowed for deviation.

  ‘Straight ahead,’ he told the air.

  Into the unknown.

  He looked at the landscape ahead. The peaks closed in about him, he could no longer see far enough to have any clear idea where he was going. It made no difference. All he could do was continue.

  Again he forced his body to obey. Step by lurching step. At some stage found himself discussing life and love with Kathryn, who was his life and love.

  After I’d finished ‘Coastal Sequence’, I knew I had to move on. ‘Sequence’ had been good, I shall always be proud of it, but it was safe. It broke new ground when I did it, but now it wasn’t new any longer. I couldn’t go on doing the same thing. I always have to try and do what no-one else has ever done. To paint the wind, the heat, the heart. Not like Picasso or Braque, taking things to pieces like clocks to see how they worked. I want to paint what lies beneath. The spirit, if you believe in spirits. The force that drives and unites all things.

  Walking beside him in the desert of stone, Kathryn asked, How can you paint what you can’t see?

  The question made sense, yet Cal remained confident.

  With vision, it might be possible.

  The contours of the valley bore away to the left across the foothills of the imprisoning peaks. He had to make an effort to work out what that meant. North, he decided, it’s taking me north. Not that it mattered. Direction mattered no more than distance, now. He was weaving like a drunk, following the valley mindlessly, no longer thinking about anything but the inner dialogue that had taken up residence in his mind.

  I can’t allow myself to stand still. I’m not the only artist out there. Gerard, van Myssen, Alexander Smith. They aren’t going to wait for me. I have to move on.

  The business with Gianetta had been bad, no doubt about it, but maybe the way I reacted served a purpose, too. Perhaps all this time I’ve been waiting for something to jolt me into a new way of thinking, of seeing.

  Kathryn, he said, your uncle believes it was Wagner who turned the key.

  A laugh hacked the dry air, derisively.

  Let me tell you something. I’ve heard the Ring a dozen times. I love it, but it’s not new. It wasn’t Wagner got me going again; it was you. I don’t know why. You’re not an artist. I’m not sure you even understand what art is about. Yet the fact remains. It was you.

  He knew he was straying, meandering. Could do nothing about it. He fell, repeatedly.

  Do you believe in God? he asked her, the iron hills. The God that destroys and creates? The God that lives in the dust storm and the drought, that is more dangerous than either? Do you believe in that? If you do, you must strip yourself naked. Humanity must be naked, mustn’t it? Naked before God?

  Look at me, the stripped and naked man in the stripped and naked hills. Moses, too, went into a high place to meet his God, the god of fire speaking to him out of a bush of flame. It is in the deserts, the citadels of stone, that we come closest to him. That’s when we’ve got to watch out. That’s when things get dangerous.

  In the sea, drowning, feeling eternity … Which is surely God?

  Yet it is also true that God is in my hand when I paint. The image has to come from somewhere. The line emerges on the page. No use asking where it comes from, or why. It is so, that’s all. No one knows the answer. The unknown is also God.

  * * *

  Dawkins raised Moomba on the radio.

  ‘I’m going to take a look further south. The old man claims that Hennie said something about a waterhole. Somewhere east of Mount Serle, he said. Although God knows that covers a lot of country.’

  There were a hundred places; it wasn’t easy, having so many to choose from.

  Dawkins set his jaw. ‘The bastards have got to be somewhere.’

  Searched; failed. Searched; failed.

  Cal stumbled on, past and present inextricably entwined. The truth was that his past life no longer had any significance. The fact of the crash, ineluctable and conclusive, meant that everything that had happened before, everything in the world, had ceased to be of account. Nothing — neither lover nor dinosaur nor painting — had existed before the crash. Now all was new and attainable. Or possibly not, in which case nothing in his life would have been achieved at all. It was true that his paintings would remain, but what of all those he would have painted, had he been permitted?

  He told Kathryn, I have seen photographs of the rock art of Africa, the stick-like figures of bushmen running in almost-movement upon the walls of cave and shelter. Their paintings were the membrane that connected their physical and spiritual worlds. In those mountain valleys the colours of the long-dead artist still enable the eland and rhinoceros to pass from that world into this.

  I have also seen a reproduction of a rock painting discovered in a shelter on the banks of the East Alligator River, in our own
far north. A prehistoric marsupial tapir, extinct for tens of thousands of years, brought by art glowingly into the present.

  If it is possible for art to open the gateway between the present and the past, perhaps it can also link us with the future. Can we use art, which is to say magic, to fly from the cage of what is into the intoxication of might be, could be, into the extra dimension? Where we can walk, and be one?

  Cloaked in longing for Kathryn, Cal staggered, and fell, and crawled.

  More images came. The uplifted arms, the long hair, Stella’s figure crucified upon a rainbow arch of spray. He had betrayed her, seeking her out only to abandon her. Had betrayed her husband, had been unable even to keep the relationship secret from the man who had been his friend. Had betrayed Kathryn, his love. In so doing, had betrayed himself.

  Forgive me.

  Knowing forgiveness was impossible while he himself did not forgive.

  And so the spastic, weary dance continued, while around him the rocks neither reproved nor judged, but observed in silence. Anything less than eternity was nothing. As the man and his sense of guilt, the man himself, was nothing.

  In mid-morning her mother came soft-footed to the room where she sat behind drawn curtains staring at the wall. Upon which her visions, too, were now almost too faint to see: the far pinpoint of the eagle spiralling above red cliffs, the prostrate figure of the man.

  ‘There is someone …’

  Kathryn came silently.

  ‘I wanted to see how you were …’

  Stella.

  ‘I am fine.’

  ‘You don’t mind me being here?’

  ‘I came to you, first.’

  ‘That was before —’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Nor did it.

  They sat, and sat.

  Stella said, ‘I told him Hennie was a cowboy.’

  Kathryn almost nodded. She had nothing to say, and said it.

  ‘Do you hate me?’ Stella asked.

  To Kathryn it was a question without meaning. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘I came close to hating you. I’d thought maybe, with Cal, I might have a life. He made me feel, you know, special. But Hennie …’ She thought about it. ‘He’s not a bad bloke, but I should never have married him. It was the idea of me he wanted, not me. He was never around. Then Cal turned up.’ She shrugged. ‘I was lonely. He was worse than lonely. Halfway to cutting his throat, I reckon. We … comforted each other.’ She turned in appeal to the younger woman. ‘Is that so bad?’

  Kathryn did not answer. She wanted neither to hear nor think about it, would say nothing to encourage this stream of intrusive confidences.

  Stella said, ‘Then, one day, I knew I’d lost him. That was you, though I didn’t know it at the time. Men are bastards,’ she burst out. ‘They get you to care, then they move on. But you can’t just switch off, can you? When Moomba phoned to say they’d gone down, it was like he’d kicked me in the stomach. Because I warned him, see, and still he went. Bastards!’ she repeated, savagely.

  Again there was silence. Into which Marge Fanning stuck her beak, bringing a tray of tea.

  ‘I thought you might want something …’

  Would have stayed, but Kathryn gave her an eye. Went off again with a miffed look, martyred mother banished by her ungrateful daughter.

  Who, the door safely shut, wondered, ‘That shrine you showed me …’

  ‘It wasn’t really to bring him back. I knew there was no hope of that. But to ask that someone, somewhere, should look after me.’ Now tears sprinkled the words. ‘I need that more than anything. Someone strong, someone I can rely on. I never found anyone like that. Only the sea.’ She smiled, wryly. ‘Some things even the sea can’t do for you.’

  ‘You told me you’d made it for Cal.’

  ‘I did say that. Not because I wanted to hurt you…’ She paused, then sighed. ‘I’m lying. Of course I wanted to hurt you.’

  ‘Because of Cal?’

  ‘Because you’re young.’

  ‘Then why come here today?’

  ‘I need to be with someone who knows what I’m going through. I thought you might feel the same.’

  Kathryn did indeed need the comfort of someone to share the waiting, now her mother had failed the test. She did not believe this woman had given up hope of winning Cal back, but would handle that when the time came. In the meantime, she felt kindness towards Stella for her courage in coming, her willingness to share grief.

  She had no words but stretched out and took Stella’s hand.

  ‘The sixth day,’ Stella said.

  Kathryn tightened her clasp on Stella’s thin fingers, shaking them with the intensity of her ardour.

  ‘They will be safe.’ Vehemently she proclaimed her faith. ‘Safe!’

  Stella at last had gone. The sixth day was half over, yet still they had heard nothing. Kathryn returned to the cliffs. Stared across the wild and crying sea.

  ‘We don’t measure life’s achievement by success,’ Cal had told her, speaking of the wall that might block the way to achievement. ‘Success is nothing. Failure is what matters. To achieve anything, there must be failure. You have to seek always to go beyond what is known. Often that will mean failure, and suffering, and an endless striving for renewal.’

  Alone yet not, she walked with measured steps along the cliff top, bearing in every stride the imprint of the arid hills, the stones casting their painful javelins of reflected light. The harsh gasping of the man’s breath tormented her, the spastic weaving of his feet tore her heart. The ranges stood high above her. We must climb them together, she prayed, through rock and bush, the endless agonies of heat, of thirst, the long rituals of death. We must reach the ridge, touch the texture of the sky, look out upon the other side where salvation, perhaps, may be found.

  While in the desert of the Gammon Ranges, the bubble-brightness of foam rushed onwards, bearing the forms of dolphins. The fiery rocks reverberated with the thunder of the waves; the spray of their glad progress, endlessly repeated, lashed the sky.

  ‘Problem is,’ Dawkins said, ‘the bastards could be anywhere.’

  In any case the endless searching had become pointless. No-one could have survived so long. Stubbornness alone prevented his giving up.

  Arch, his observer, thumbed the intercom switch. His voice hissed in Dawkins’s headphones.

  ‘The Willina Gorge is down there. I’ve been there. No waterhole that I know of, but there’s a creek.’

  Dawkins stared out of the window at the blue sprawl of mountains beneath them.

  ‘Might as well take a look.’

  The chopper swerved out of the sky, descended between high cliffs.

  ‘What’s that?’

  Tangled metal, like the nest of a gigantic steel bird. The cliff wall stained with smoke.

  ‘Shit!’

  They landed.

  Dawkins said, ‘No-one will have walked away from that.’

  Yet when they searched the cold wreckage, they found no sign of occupants. Cast about the area, discovered a patch of sand sheltered from the rain. In the sand: footprints.

  ‘How many?’

  Arch stared, scratching his head.

  ‘Who knows? We need a tracker for this job.’

  Dawkins turned slowly on his heel, surveying the gorge.

  ‘Only one way they could have gone.’

  And pointed to where the gorge turned sharply out of sight, climbing between parallel cliffs.

  ‘How do we track them in that lot?’

  They climbed back into the helicopter. Arch spoke to Moomba.

  ‘We’ve found the chopper. No people. We’re looking further.’

  They followed the gorge up to the ridge and saw nothing. They hovered. Beyond the ridge the valley, gold and green and red in the westering sun, extended into a purple distance.

  ‘Where the hell …?’

  Dawkins shrugged. ‘You tell me.’ Thought, Surely they would show themselves if they were still alive?
It was hopeless. He looked at his watch. Once the sun went down, darkness would come swiftly.

  ‘We’ll come back in the morning,’ he decided.

  He raised the collective control stick, twisting the throttle to increase the revs. The chopper lifted and flew away.

  I don’t trust those herons.

  The impact of water, endlessly wonderful. Upon the bank, the cool and lovely figure of the girl, the sun-bronzed face laughing beneath its cap of short dark hair.

  Come and join me.

  ‘Come and join me,’ Cal cried to the silent hills.

  A ridge danced before him.

  Yes, he thought. Yes.

  Upwards, towards the endless landscapes of the sky.

  Kathryn went back to the house. To her mother, waiting. Who shook her head heavily.

  ‘Nothing.’

  The cameras came, the vulture faces, seeking to tear from her the flesh of her most secret desires.

  ‘What is your relationship?’

  ‘Have you modelled for him?’

  ‘Do you still have hope?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘How can you?’

  ‘Because he is alive. I feel it. I know it.’

  At once the circling vultures closed in upon her. ‘How can you know? Are you saying you are in some kind of psychic contact with him? Do you believe that?’ Incredulity in their voices, the polite and silent laughter.

  ‘I believe it, yes.’ Kathryn knew herself ravished by their smiling disbelief, the silent, materialistic scoffing of those who knew better. Yet still she fought. ‘I daresay you find it strange. But reality is more than what we can see and touch. I am in touch with him, yes. I feel his pulse.’

  ‘You are that sure he is still alive? After six days in temperatures of over —’

  ‘I am sure.’

  Fingernails torn by the unimaginable, final effort to haul himself upwards, to hang onto life, he dragged himself up. Up. About him the air was a scream of pain. Still he would not surrender. One body’s length and then another. A broken lizard, crawling upwards. The rocks cut and bruised him, he was aware of a cauldron within himself in which pain bubbled, rising remorselessly. Like the mound spring they had seen on the southern fringes of the Simpson Desert, it would reach the surface, it would overflow, it would inundate him in its scalding heat. But what was pain? Only the price that had to be paid for the celestial vision that awaited him, that beckoned from the summit of the rocky slope on which he lay, the bronze and red and ochre components of a palette that would never be assembled, the great painting that he would never now compose.