All the Green Year

by Don Charlwood

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The stars had grown faint and there was no moon. A sick light was in the east. Johnno sat in the stern, naked still. We were rising and falling on a long regular swell. I straightened up and looked towards the coast. The Rip was far behind to the north-west with Point Lonsdale lighthouse winking palely. I looked hopelessly about for Gyp.

  “We had him from a pup,” I said.

  Johnno looked up. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Hell, I’m sorry. I should’ve gone in myself, but—Charlie, it was no go.”

  We didn’t say anything more. The light was growing slowly, but the sun was not yet up; the sea was very dark blue. The swell lifted us, then rolled by. We were about half a mile offshore and were moving steadily down the coast towards Cape Schanck.

  “He might swim it,” said Johnno to himself. “He was part Labrador, wasn’t he?”

  “Labrador–Kelpie cross,” I said.

  We sat staring at the sea. “Your clothes have gone,” I said. I had no idea when or where it had happened.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “You’ve got to wear something. Here.” I took off my trousers and handed him my underpants.

  “Thanks.”

  He put them on but they covered hardly any of him.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re drifting that way,” he said. He pointed towards Cape Schanck. The waves there were slowly climbing the cliffs, spray was hanging, then falling back. There were other lower headlands nearer us; on them too the waves climbed slowly.

  “If we get against those we’re caught. We’d smash on rocks and get in the kelp.”

  The sun came up and glared on the water. The sea took on a different shade of blue. Directly over us a Pacific gull soared, moving its head as it looked down. By watching the shore I could see we were drifting fast towards the first headland, but also we were getting nearer the beach.

  “We’ll end up on the rocks,” said Johnno. He looked at me seriously. “Charlie, we’ve got to swim this time, got to.”

  I answered, “We’d go on the rocks just the same.”

  “Swimming we’d be moving to the beach; in this we aren’t.”

  I looked unhappily at the beach. It was clear what would happen: we would be pitched onto the first headland where the kelp and undertow would get us.

  “What about the boat?”

  Johnno looked worried. “Maybe it will wash up all right. If it gets smashed, it’d smash with us in it anyhow.”

  I saw that he was right. There was nothing for it but to swim.

  “We’d better go, then,” I said, taking off my shoes.

  “You go first,” said Johnno. “Make a line for the big dune, then you’ll wash only about half-way to the rocks.”

  We didn’t speak another word. I put off my shoes and went in over the stern and struck with long, slow strokes towards the dune. I could feel the ocean rise and fall under me and the steady side-drag of the current. I glanced back from the top of a wave and saw Johnno still standing in the boat. Next time I looked he had gone.

  He’s going between me and the rocks, I thought.

  I didn’t look again; I only raised my eyes occasionally to check the dune. Already, I was beginning to see less of the west side of it, more of the east. After ten minutes I looked round for Johnno but couldn’t see him. I faced the dune again, and quickened my stroke. It was hardly two hundred yards now to the beach. I threw all my strength into it and quickened my kicking, but when I looked again the whole dune was hidden by tea-tree.

  I found a tree higher than the rest and aimed then for it, but the current now was stronger and my trousers hung like legirons. Next time I lifted my head I heard clearly the roar of surf. I thought at first it was coming from the beach, then I saw I was scarcely a hundred yards off the headland. The water was boiling on the rocks, then drawing back over kelp. I angled sharply away from it, but as I turned I faced into the current. It halted me completely, then began to bear me in its own direction.

  I angled again towards the shore. Then, between me and the rocks, only a few yards off, I saw Johnno, stroking confidently, turning his head sometimes my way, sometimes towards the rocks. Just ahead the waves were rising and turning over for their run to the beach. I caught a glimpse of Johnno picking one up and body-surfing over the last fifty yards. I tried and missed, then tried again and found myself soaring easily, the beach ahead. It almost seemed as if all our troubles were over.

  Johnno ran to the place where I came in. I lay in the white wash hardly able to hold against the drag back. Before the next wave came I crawled to dry sand. Johnno sat beside me, breathing easily, saying nothing. The sun now was well up; the coast was wild and empty.

  “We’d better watch for the boat—”

  “Damn’ the boat,” I said.

  I stood up, thinking to look for Gyp, but my legs crumpled and the sky fell in on me . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  I was lying in speckled sunlight under tea-tree, the surf less loud, Johnno sitting beside me looking worried, his body all streaked with salt.

  “What happened?”

  “You fell over—tripped, I reckon.”

  “I passed out,” I said bitterly. I didn’t ask how I had got there; assumption was embarrassing enough.

  “Listen, there’s Gyp and the boat—”

  “To hell with the boat,” I said irritably. “Why are you always—”

  “Well, Gyp—”

  “I’ll come,” I said.

  He looked at me doubtfully. I stood up, but the clouds spun and the horizon tilted horribly. I dropped to my hands and knees and began vomiting in the sand.

  “Maybe I’d better go.”

  When I didn’t answer, he went away over the dunes.

  I was too exhausted even to wonder about the future. Out of the wind the sun was warm. I lay down again and fell asleep.

  Johnno was sitting beside me studying a stick he had put upright on a bit of flattened sand. I started to speak to him, but my throat was so dry that I only raised a croaking. He said, “The shadows are getting longer—it’s past midday—”

  “Find Gyp?”

  He shook his head. “He might have made for home.” He looked away from me. “Charlie, the boat’s jammed in the rocks. She’ll be smashed to bits—”

  I said indifferently, “I don’t care. All I want is a drink.”

  He reached behind him in the shade and handed me a beach bucket half full. “It’s got wrigglers in it—it came from a tank at a house.” He moved his head inland.

  I drank greedily. “Did you see anyone?”

  “No one.”

  I looked at him—cut cheek, black eyes, bruises where his father had hit him about the ribs, nothing more on than my underpants. “Just as well,” I said.

  We were alive and the sun was warm. I could almost have been happy had we had Gyp.

  “Would he try to follow the boat, or would he go for the shore?”

  “The current would take him the way it took us, I reckon.”

  “No tracks near the boat?”

  Johnno shook his head dismally. “No tracks at all.”

  “We could look the other way.”

  I stood up stiffly and we started over the dunes, meeting the roar of sea and a fresh wind from the south. Up the beach I could see the boat jammed on the headland, but the other way there was nothing, not even a footprint. We walked slowly for half a mile, always looking for pad marks and now and then stopping and whistling.

  “He’d never hear us,” I said.

  We were turning back when I saw something that looked like a heap of seaweed darker than the rest. Neither of us said anything, but when I went to walk to it Johnno said, “Maybe we should go back.”

  I didn’t answer him; inst
ead I began hurrying. Well before I reached the place I could see Gyp lying on his side, the way he always lay by our fire. When I reached him and looked at him I saw that there wasn’t a mark on him. I touched his ear, but it was cold.

  I jumped up and cried, “Curse your bloody running away.”

  Johnno stood with his arms hanging by his side, muttering, “Sorry, Charlie; sorry.”

  I dragged Gyp up into the dunes and scooped sand over him. When I stood up I said, “I shouldn’t have said that. It could have been me drowned.”

  Johnno turned away. “I wish it had been me,” he said.

  I didn’t know what I had expected running away from home to be like—certainly not like this, anyhow. Perhaps I had imagined a train journey somewhere and farmers offering meals without asking questions. It was twenty-four hours since the inkwell incident. It didn’t seem to me that we were any better off.

  “They’ll think we’re dead,” said Johnno. We were walking back to our place in the tea-tree. “I didn’t mean to upset my old man and Eileen as badly as that.”

  “Perhaps it’s better that way.”

  “Better?”

  “When they hear we’re alive they’ll be so pleased that nothing will be done to us. What we’ve got to do is wait till morning, then find a telephone—”

  Johnno stopped walking and looked at me, his salt hair standing on end in the wind. “Charlie, if I went back it’d be a reformatory this time.”

  “Your father would be glad—”

  “No, Charlie; not me. No going back—”

  He looked so alarmed that I decided to talk no more about it.

  “You want to go back?”

  “I don’t know,” I said uneasily. “Anyhow, what we’ve got to do first is find food.”

  I don’t know where I thought we would find food. When we went back to the water bucket, I remembered that we weren’t fit to be seen; at least Johnno certainly wasn’t.

  I said, “If I went and asked for food somewhere—”

  “You can’t,” Johnno interrupted. “Gawd, Charlie, you look terrible! People would ask what had happened.”

  “But we’ve got to eat and you’ve got to get clothes—well, trousers, anyhow.”

  He began pouring sand agitatedly through his fingers. “There’s the house where I got the water—”

  “What’s it like?”

  “A week-end house; no one been there for months. But, Charlie, we can’t break in. Everything there belongs to someone else.”

  “What do we do, then? Walk up Point Nepean Road barefooted—you in my underpants?”

  “I don’t know; fair dinkum, Charlie, it’s not the way I expected.”

  “Let’s look at the house, anyhow.”

  He stood up reluctantly, his stomach gurgling with hunger. “All right, then.”

  The house was in scrub not far behind the beach; a small, sad, squarish place with tea-tree branches hanging over it. Its roof was rusted and its windows were covered with salt and dust. On a rack under the tank-stand were three long bamboo fishing-rods. Except for Johnno’s earlier footprints and a few rabbit tracks, there wasn’t a mark to be seen. At the front was a low veranda. We stepped on it and tried the front door, but as we had expected, it was locked.

  “We could try the back.”

  “I tried it before.”

  “The windows, then.”

  We went round the house, pushing at them. “We could smash one,” I said.

  “Do we have to? It’s someone’s house.” I walked away from him and began running my fingers round various ledges. It was no good.

  “Where else would they keep the key?”

  “They probably take it home.”

  “Well, we will smash a window, then.”

  “No,” said Johnno, “No. Not yet, anyhow.”

  He had walked back to the tank-stand and was looking underneath. I heard him say, “This might be it.” He unhooked something from a nail. “At any rate it’s a key.”

  He tried the back door and it opened unwillingly. An odour met us of rooms a long time shut.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  When the door closed behind us the sea sounded farther off, rolling and breaking in one long roar. We stood waiting for our eyes to become accustomed to the light, neither of us speaking a word. I felt the house listening and watching, just as we were listening and watching. We stood in a long room—a kitchen, living-room and dining-room all in one. A wood stove was at one end and near it a table.

  “I don’t like it,” said Johnno in a low voice.

  “Don’t like what?”

  “Being here.”

  I didn’t answer, but walked quietly round the rest of the house. There was a small bathroom, and two bedrooms each with two beds and mattresses. Blankets were stacked in a wardrobe.

  I came back to Johnno.

  “Look,” he said.

  He was pointing to a map of the Peninsula pinned to a wall. On the beach behind Rye someone had pencilled a cross and had marked OUR PLACE.

  “We’d better find food,” I said.

  Though his stomach had hardly stopped gurgling, Johnno looked at me as if I had suggested murdering someone.

  “I’m going to eat anyhow,” I said.

  He followed me unhappily while I opened cupboards. The only thing in the house was rolled oats—about a pound of it. Once he had seen it Johnno stared at it hungrily.

  “We’ve got to find matches.”

  We began a search, but there were none in the house.

  “You can eat it as it is,” said Johnno, nibbling a bit.

  “Or it could soak in cold water,” I suggested. “My mother soaks it overnight.”

  I took out a saucepan and tipped about half a pound into it. “It’s got worms in it.”

  “They’ll only taste like oatmeal,” said Johnno indifferently. “I’ll get the water.”

  He turned on a tap over the sink. Rusty water flowed for a minute or two, then cleared.

  Johnno watched me trying to pick out worms. “What’s the use?” he asked. “The water’s full of ­wrigglers anyhow.”

  So we mixed the oatmeal and water with a spoon, then I sat back and looked at it, hoping some miracle might turn it into porridge.

  “Well?” said Johnno.

  “You can have first spoonful,” I said.

  He scooped at it, worms and wrigglers and oatmeal, and put them in his mouth.

  “It’s good.”

  I scooped at it with my eyes closed. It was bearable if I didn’t think about it. We ate spoonful for spoonful till we had finished, then we sat looking at the empty saucepan.

  “We’d better save some till morning,” I said.

  Johnno washed the saucepan and spoon and put them away, then we sat at the table trying to pretend we were satisfied, that the situation wasn’t bad at all. Every now and then Johnno got up and studied the map, but each time he shook his head despondently. The light was fading still further and the wind was springing up, setting twigs and branches scraping the walls. The sea was louder and more threatening.

  “It’ll smash the boat,” said Johnno.

  “Ah, shut up about the boat!” I said.

  He fell into a mournful silence, staring at the floor, looking more depressed than ever, gooseflesh on his bare back, his face a mess of cuts and bruises. I began to feel sorry for him and was about to say something when he flung his head up.

  “That was a shot.”

  “I didn’t hear anything.”

  He looked less certain.

  “With the noise of the waves,” I added, “I don’t see how you’d hear it.”

  “Maybe not. They wouldn’t have guns anyhow.”

  “Who?”

  “The police.”

  “They probably don�
��t even know.”

  He looked doubtful, but we settled to uneasy silence again. The sun was behind the tea-tree by this and the room was becoming gloomier and full of sea sounds.

  “It’d be better on the veranda,” I said. “These rooms give me the creeps.”

  We stood up slowly, as if someone had been watching us.

  “Perhaps you’d better wrap a blanket round yourself,” I told him.

  “Well, the blankets really belong to someone else—”

  “Hell!” I cried, “We’ll have to borrow them tonight anyhow.”

  Johnno frowned. “I’m not cold.”

  “It’s the way you look that I’m thinking of—those underpants hardly cover your backside.”

  “No one’s going to see us, are they?”

  I supposed not. We went drearily outside. The veranda faced west and one corner still caught a few rays of sunshine. Out there the sea was much louder, its cries more threatening.

  The veranda was boarded in to about waist height; blinds could be pulled down to make a sleep-out. We leant on the rail, staring at the clumps of tea-tree and blackwood and the open spaces between.

  “There are rabbits here, anyhow,” said Johnno, as if rabbits were going to provide food for us for weeks.

  “We can run them down and eat them raw,” I said bitterly.

  He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Fair dinkum, Charlie, I didn’t mean to get you into this.”

  I was beginning to feel regretful for being impatient with him, when from somewhere behind the tea-tree came the crack of a rifle. At the same instant Johnno fell to the floor, face down. Before I could hide myself a girl appeared about fifty yards off with a repeating rifle in her hand.

  I leant down quickly. “Johnno, are you hurt?”

  He didn’t move. I bent closer in a panic, grasping his arm, “Fred—”

  “Get down or you’ll be seen,” he hissed.

  At that I wanted to kick him. “I’ve been seen,” I answered.

  He groaned quietly, his face to the floor. “It’s only a girl, anyhow,” I said.

  It’s useless to move, I thought; better to be casual.