by JH Fletcher
They climbed through the opening Luke Shaughnessy had made in the rockfall. Jacqui pointed the torch, her muscles tight as she tried to see, and not to see, ghosts and bodies and snakes.
Nothing.
They shuffled slowly down the hollow tunnel of torchlight, hearts thundering in the space that men, long dead, had years before chiselled through the rock. They could feel the weight of the mountain above their heads, the darkness closing tight about them.
They reached the point where a side gallery led off to the right.
‘Which way?’
Listen to the hollow echo of their voices! Jacqui had heard about children who’d got lost underground; always it had happened because they had left the main tunnel and disappeared into a maze of workings, never to be seen again.
‘Straight on,’ she said firmly.
That way they couldn’t get lost. Could they?
Trouble was, they soon ran out of tunnel.
‘Another fall!’
But the torch showed that this time they were faced by solid rock. They had reached the end, with not a single gold nugget or jewel to show for it.
There remained the side gallery.
‘That or nothing,’ John said.
Right.
‘We’ve got to be careful …’
For once her fears were unfounded; in no time they were out in the light again. Below them, the air and distant trees sucked. They stared at the ledge that disappeared around the corner of the cliff.
‘I wonder where it goes?’ John said.
Jacqui didn’t care where it went. ‘Probably nowhere.’
It seemed likely but John shoved his way eagerly past her.
‘Come on!’
Stomach cringing, brain cringing, Jacqui inched out above the abyss. The cliff pressed her outwards, the depths swirled beneath her feet. She shuffled on; she knew, if she stopped, fear would anchor her. Her fingers clung to the rock wall that rose above her head. Hang on or fall, her instincts prompted her. Hang on or fall …
John had already disappeared around the corner of the cliff. For the moment that was the last thing she cared about, yet she was determined not to be left behind.
Eventually, sweating, half blind with terror, she made the corner and crawled around it, while the tops of the distant trees wooed her from below and the muscles in her feet crept.
She felt the ledge widen. At last she dared look down. She would have to face the same ordeal going back but, for the moment, she was safe. Ahead of her, John was staring at the cliff wall as though he, too, had been turned to rock. Something about the tension in the dark body made her hasten to his side.
‘What is it?’
‘Look …’
Jacqui turned and saw images watching her from the stone. There were animals and men, eyes amid a halo of golden fire, the revelation of the past watching her in the present.
‘Who are they?’ Barely audible, the question crawled over dry lips.
‘Figures of the dreaming …’ John’s words, too, barely grazed the stone-struck silence in which they stood and stared back at the faces watching them from the depths of the honey-hued rock. ‘Wandjina,’ he said. ‘Spirits.’ He moved further along the gallery. He nodded at the slender images that were men, yet not men. ‘Quinkans …’
The images frightened him. She could sense the fear because she felt it, too. Some of the spirit figures, eyeless and capering, looked cruel, horrible. There were other images, one on top of the other. They were separate, yet together they formed a whole.
‘Look! A goanna!’
So there was. A fish swam, its bones exposed. A bird, perhaps an emu, danced. Some images were buried deep behind others. They floated, emerging from the depths of the rock or disappearing into it. Disappearing into the past. At the furthest depths was another figure, larger than the rest yet so faint that it was only with the greatest difficulty that Jacqui could work out what it was. When she did so she discovered the greatest mystery of all.
She seized John’s arm. ‘See …’
It was the mask of a tiger: lines carved deep into the surface of the stone and later painted. The black and white stripes, faded by age, could still be seen through the dissolving waters of the centuries. In school they’d been taught that for millions of years Australia had known no great cats, that in all that time there had been no leopards, no tigers. Yet here the image was. Perhaps the history books were wrong. Or perhaps …
Perhaps this, perhaps that: too many alternatives for her to assimilate. The image was beyond explanation, yet its reality was undeniable, and the only thing that mattered.
John looked, too, then turned to stare at her. ‘But …’
Exactly. But there it was.
‘What shall we do?’ Jacqui asked.
‘What about?’
‘The paintings. Do we keep quiet about them? Or tell someone?’
‘We can’t just say nothing,’ John said. ‘These paintings are part of my heritage. My people’s heritage. I can’t keep quiet about them, can I?’
Of course he couldn’t, yet something inside Jacqui wished it might be so. She wanted this discovery to remain their private secret forever. The images seemed like the Cloud Forest itself, part of the mystery of everything. If Brett’s dad was doing things she was scared might mess up the forest, what was to stop other people doing the same thing to the paintings? The paintings, the mountain, the Cloud Forest: all of it was special, or none of it was. She could never have put her feelings into words, yet knew instinctively that, once people knew about them, the paintings would serve purposes the original artists had never intended. They would no longer be just themselves but would mean different things to different people. They would be used. She did not want that yet understood that it was unavoidable. John was right; they couldn’t keep what they’d found to themselves.
John said, ‘I’ll speak to my auntie. She’ll know what to do.’
2
Jacqui had hoped there might be an easier way of getting back but there wasn’t. Fortunately the return trip didn’t seem as bad as the outward journey and it seemed no time before they were clambering through the opening in the rockfall.
‘There wasn’t any gold,’ John said regretfully.
‘But we found something better.’
The paintings might be more valuable than gold, yet in some ways Jacqui wished they had never found them at all. It had been exciting at the time, even wonderful, but the responsibility of what they had found was too great. When she had first seen the paintings she had wanted to keep quiet but now she couldn’t wait to talk to someone about them. Do that and the responsibility would be taken away from her. She would be free again.
‘Who are we going to tell?’
John was emphatic. ‘My auntie. No one else. They belong to the Aboriginal people.’
‘I’m gunna tell Judy.’
‘No!’ He glared at her.
It was the first time his Aboriginality had been an issue and Jacqui was not going to give way. ‘Those paintings belong to everyone, like the Cloud Forest.’
John’s scowl showed what he thought of that. He marched down the slope ahead of her, squared shoulders indignant. It made her unhappy. It was a side of him she had never seen before.
To talk to Betty meant going first to Frances’s house, but when they got there they found that neither Frances nor Betty was there.
‘They must’ve gone shopping. Let’s go and see if we can find them.’
If they couldn’t, she would tell Judy what had happened. If John didn’t like it, tough.
The way things worked out, they were able to do both; they found Betty and Frances in the main street, climbing into Judy’s sports car on their way to have a cup of tea with her. Three women in a tiny car made for a tight fit.
Judy looked knowingly at Jacqui. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘We discovered something.’
‘We’re going home,’ Judy said. ‘If you want to come
and tell us about it, you’ll have to walk.’
And was gone in a snarl of twin exhausts. They watched as the red shape flew nimbly between the lines of solemn shops that for the most part, like their owners, remained lost in a dream of the 1930s.
They walked down the road. The closer they got to the house, the heavier grew the weight of what they had discovered. At the gate, John stopped. He looked at her.
‘We don’t have to tell them if we don’t want to.’
It was his way of saying sorry for how he’d been earlier. It was nice of him but she knew it was impossible.
‘We’ve got to,’ she said.
Inside the kitchen the three ladies sat like a jury, cakes and cups on the table in front of them.
‘What you been up to?’ Betty said. ‘That’s what I want to know.’
‘Would you like a cake?’ Judy offered. ‘There’s Coke in the fridge, too, if you want to help yourself.’
It didn’t take long to get themselves organised. Coke tins in their hands, mouths stuffed, they chewed and gulped.
Judy waited until they had finished. It was one of the many good things about her: even if you were a kid, she still permitted you your space.
‘You say you’ve discovered something?’
Jacqui glanced sideways at John. He did not look at her but they had agreed what they must do. She drew a deep breath.
‘It was in the mine —’
‘I knowed it,’ said Betty.
Now she had started she found it easy to go on. She told them about the tunnel —
‘Knew from the first you was up to no good.’ Betty had the pleased indignation of one whose worst fears had been justified.
— and how it had been blocked by a fall of rock, a little way inside the entrance.
‘So we didn’t go any further. But today we went up again. We found that somebody’s dug a hole through the rockfall.’
‘Maybe the rock just slipped?’ Frances suggested.
‘No. It had been moved. There was a big pile of stones, where someone had shifted them.’
‘Luke Shaughnessy,’ said Frances. ‘You saw him, remember?’
‘You got no business poking round those places,’ Betty told them. ‘Asking for trouble, the pair of you.’
Judy’s eyes watched and watched. ‘You found something, you say? What was it?’
And Jacqui told them.
3
‘I would never have believed it,’ Judy told Arthur that evening. ‘When those two kids told us about the paintings, Betty shut up like a trap. You know how she’s always moaning about the bad things that are going to happen? I thought she’d be the same this time, tell us how finding the paintings would bring twenty-five years’ bad luck —’
‘Tutankhamen and the curse of the Pharaohs?’
‘That sort of thing. She didn’t. She didn’t want to talk about it at all. As soon as she could, she took off, dragging John along with her.’
‘Secrets matter a lot to them,’ Arthur said. ‘Men’s business, women’s business, truths known only to the elders … Maybe she thought this might be one of them.’
‘You’re not saying she knew about these paintings before?’
‘I doubt it. I’ve never heard anyone mention them.’ He glanced at her. ‘No danger the kids are making it up, I suppose?’
‘Never. It was burning them, even before they’d said a word.’
‘A pity …’ Arthur sighed and shook his head.
‘A pity …’ Puzzlement creased Judy’s forehead. ‘I thought you’d be as excited as I am about it.’
Arthur’s voice was a long way from excitement. ‘Think what it means. Betty will tell the elders. Before you know it, everyone will be in on the act. What will it do to Rainforest Rendezvous? Get someone like Josh Richards involved, it’ll kill it stone dead.’
‘Isn’t that what we want?’
‘Yes, but not everyone thinks the way we do. It’ll divide the town.’ He shook his head heavily. ‘I tell you what I think. I think those paintings mean trouble.’
4
There was an article in the local paper about Rainforest Rendezvous. Jacqui read it.
Judy was out. Having got nowhere with Arthur, Jacqui ran all the way to Frances’s house, bursting in on her with the paper waving in her hand and her eyes standing out in her head.
‘They mustn’t! They can’t!’
Frances came to her at once. ‘Settle down, take a deep breath, then tell me what you’re talking about.’
She did so, eventually, but by then tears had replaced frenzy. Anger, too: she would have destroyed the world if the Cloud Forest could be spared.
‘We mustn’t let them mess it up!’
‘They’re not talking about messing it up,’ Frances said. ‘The paper says it will improve it. Give more people the chance to get up there and see it for themselves.’
‘It doesn’t need improving. Why can’t they leave it alone?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do. It’s because nobody cares.’
‘That’s not true. We all care. I care.’
‘But you don’t do anything to stop it.’
‘Arthur says there’s nothing illegal about it.’
‘He would.’ Jacqui was not on speaking terms with Arthur, who had vetoed her plan of burning down Harley’s house with Harley still inside it.
‘Arthur stays out of things,’ Frances said carefully. ‘He always has.’
‘Why?’
‘You have to remember, your grandparents used to fight a lot. It was quite ugly at times.’
Jacqui tried to imagine a house where people were always fighting. ‘How did you put up with it?’
‘I found myself a good man, ran away as soon as I could. It was harder for Arthur. He wanted a trade, which meant years with no real money. He couldn’t afford to run away, not if he wanted to eat. So he trained himself to switch off, stay out of things. I suppose it became a habit.’
Cross with him or not, Jacqui felt uncomfortable, talking about Arthur like this. ‘People are always asking his advice. How can he help them if he stays out of things?’
‘It’s because he doesn’t take sides that people trust him. Because he knows what’s right and wrong and tries to live accordingly. He sets an example.’
Jacqui was lost in the wilderness between talk and action. ‘What’s the use of that, if he doesn’t do anything?’
5
The following morning Arthur got up very early. He had slept little during the night. Now he went and sat on the verandah, hoping that the bright cool morning might bring peace to a mind sorely in need of it.
He had always known that the forest had an inherent value far transcending the financial enrichment of unscrupulous men, yet he had done nothing.
What had Bernie said?
Wave your banner, will you? March up and down?
And his reply:
I doubt it very much.
Words, he thought. Those I am good at. But when it comes to doing anything? No. Perhaps now is the time to change that, if I can. I must talk to them. Persuade them, somehow.
He owed it to his grandfather, the first member of his family to discover the Cloud Forest; to his father, who came from Europe because of it. To Jacqui, too, and to what was right. He owed it to all of them. Somehow, Warren and Harley must be stopped.
He knew it yet felt none of the hot surge of confidence he would need to carry it through. I must do what I can, he thought. It was a limp determination, at best. He repeated the thought out loud, to make it stronger.
‘Warren and Harley must be stopped. Somehow.’
Judy had come out to him, barefoot and silent. He became aware of her only when she placed her hand on his shoulder and spoke to him. ‘Somehow? How?’
Without turning his eyes from the distant mountain, Arthur raised his hand to cover hers and said: ‘I’ll speak to them.’
‘Will that be enough?’
Both of the
m knew the answer to that but Arthur, not yet willing to face reality, could only repeat his earlier thought.
‘I shall do what I can.’
6
In the bar the air was heavy with the odours of beer, joviality and tobacco. At one end of the long counter, Luke Shaughnessy and Johnno Toms huddled over their beers. Their heads almost touched but their expressions were far apart: Luke, anxious and angry; Johnno, incredulous.
‘Forget it,’ Johnno said.
‘Shouldn’t be that hard, you working in the quarry. I wouldn’t ask if I could see another way.’
‘Mate, I don’ care why you’re asking. I ain’t going to half-inch explosives and detonators for you. Couldn’t, even if I wanted to. That stuff’s all locked up. There’s alarms, security guards, the works; I’d never be able to manage it and that’s dinkum.’
Luke tried to talk him round, even shouted him another beer, which was stretching things by Luke’s standards. Johnno gulped it with the haste of one who feared it might vanish as unexpectedly as it had arrived, but, beer or no beer, was not to be moved.
‘You’ll have to find some other mug.’
Which Luke would have done most willingly, had there been another mug to ask.
Maybe he could bring the tunnel down with a crowbar or something …
He thought he’d better get back to Warren, see what he wanted him to do.
7
Judy sat on the verandah and stared up at the mountain while she waited for news of what she already knew would be a fiasco.
Arthur had gone to see Warren Shaughnessy and Harley Woodcock, to have it out with them, as he had put it. A vain hope, if ever she’d heard one. As surely as if she’d been there with him, she knew exactly how things would go. Arthur’s weapons were words, reason, appeals to decency. None of these would have any potency against men like that. A mate of Warren’s, a man who operated a fleet of charter yachts on the Queensland coast and who thought as he did, had spelt it out for her once, as clear as shouting.
‘I don’t give a damn if the Barrier Reef is dead in twenty years. Why should I? I won’t be around by then.’
