A Far Country

by John Fletcher

  ‘He says no-one’s been this way.’

  Blake said derisively, ‘How can he see in the dark, anyway?’

  Gavin looked at Hector. ‘Where did you say the man went?’

  Again the vague gesture. ‘Over there …’

  ‘And you saw him by the barn door?’

  Hector nodded.

  ‘Then he must have come this way. Tell him to look again.’

  ‘It’s too dark,’ Blake said.

  ‘Be quiet.’ Gavin was in no mood for Blake.

  Again Mura looked, eyes scanning the ground. He walked forward a few steps, crouched down, examined the ground, then repeated the process until he had covered the whole area. He stood. Without looking at Jason he threw a few words into the air.

  ‘Well?’ Gavin demanded.

  ‘Nothing.’

  Hector said, ‘I saw him, I tell you. Bloody black don’t know what ’e’s doin’.’

  Perhaps recognising the contempt in Hector’s voice, Mura took a few steps to one side, pointed forcibly at the ground—there and there—spoke again.

  Jason told Hector, ‘He says the only person who’s been this way tonight has been you. You came down this way from the hill and went behind the other buildings.’

  Gavin stared at his supervisor. ‘Is that what you did?’

  ‘There was someone here, I tell you. Where’s he supposed to have gone?’

  ‘Perhaps he hasn’t gone anywhere,’ Jason said.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Jason stared deliberately at Blake. ‘If there really was someone, it means he’s still here.’

  ‘What the hell’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ Gavin decided. ‘I’m going back to bed.’ He turned away.

  ‘Ain’t we goin’ after ’im?’ Blake demanded.

  Gavin shook his head. ‘Too late now. If there was ever anyone here at all he’ll be long gone by now. As you said earlier.’

  He went back into the house and slammed the door.

  Blake sidled a step, threateningly, towards Jason. ‘You don’ learn to shut your mouth, one o’ these days I’ll be shuttin’ it for you.’

  Jason looked him up and down. Blake was bigger than he was but he was not frightened of him. ‘Sure you haven’t tried it once tonight already?’

  ‘Why you …!’

  Blake gathered himself to spring. At once Hector backhanded him viciously and he fell sideways. He shook his head, twisted as quick as a cat and was about to spring up again, then paused as Hector raised a ham-sized fist.

  ‘You done enough all ready tonight!’ He was shaken how close he had come to killing his own son; would have done so, had Blake’s reflexes not been so good. He turned to Jason. ‘An’ you get back in yer box, too, if you don’ want a taste of the same.’

  And stood there, as big and solid as one of the buildings, until the tension went out of the air and they obeyed him.

  FOURTEEN

  A month later, in the relative peace that followed the departure of the drays loaded with fleeces, Asta sat in the open doorway of her house and stared unseeing across the stump-pocked ground that flowed away towards the distant sea. Her mind was peopled with images.

  A white face as she had first seen it: grimed with dirt, heavy with suspicion, eyes shuttered against her. Jason, she thought, my consolation and my cross.

  Jason’s companion, stick-limbed, heavy-featured, eyes and teeth a white glare against the dark skin.

  The two figures, white and black, were set against a kaleidoscope of other images: grass bending before the wind as storm clouds surged across the vast and empty plain; rain marching in grey columns across the land and rebounding a foot high from earth dry after months of sunshine; lambing, shearing, crutching, fencing, the repetitious shift and stir of life on a sheep run. Too much rain followed too little; whirlwinds stamped their trails of destruction through the crops and scattered the panicked flocks in empty-headed confusion; the natives, invisible but ever-present, waged spasmodic war against them.

  Sheep speared. A shepherd’s hut burnt. A second unsuccessful attempt to kill Cato Brown. Frontier country.

  Blake Gallagher was constantly nagging Gavin to mount another expedition against them.

  ‘Sort out the bastards once and for all …’

  Blake grew taller and harder with every day. He dominated all but Gavin himself and his dark eyes were filled with hatred for the black people whose land they had taken.

  Not only for the black people, perhaps.

  He has always been trouble, Asta thought. He always will be. I said he was a mad dog and so he is, too strong for the bars of convention and discipline that presently contain him. God help us all when he breaks through them.

  God help Jason, in particular. He and Blake had hated each other from the first. Gavin had told her little of what had happened during the raid on the camp—which told her a good deal—but she had heard how Blake had almost killed both boys when he had come across them in the bush after the raid.

  Asta eventually heard other things, too, that several of the natives had been killed, women and at least one child among them.

  ‘Why?’ she had screamed at her husband, her anger and despair beating like the wings of birds against the walls of the wooden house. ‘What had they done to us?’

  The dead child in particular haunted her, bringing back the sharp-edged agony of Edward’s loss.

  ‘My gift from the sea,’ she said now, mimicking savagely the fulfilment and delight she had felt when first she had seen Jason’s face among those of the returned men. A gift polluted by blood.

  ‘A house built in blood will be destroyed in blood.’

  She uttered the words to the sloping land, the penned sheep, the rumbling and invisible sea. They had stained the land with blood and, some day, blood would be demanded of them in return. She knew it as she knew that tomorrow the sun would rise in the east; it was inevitable.

  Asta’s thoughts moved to the place on the cliffs, a hollow in the crumbling rock where a seep of water nourished a profusion of moist growth: ferns and creepers, lichen staining the rocks in patterns of brown and green. She had chanced on it on one of her rambles, a cool grotto shielded from the sun by a rocky overhang.

  She had told no-one of its existence. It was private, the one place that brought her a measure of peace. After rain, the seep trickling audibly over the broken stone, she liked to sit there alone, eyes shut, ears and senses opening like the petals of flowers to the coolness, the trickling sounds of moisture, the damp exhalations of the green plants, and imagine herself back in Norway, the cliffs black and welcoming above her head, the white-painted houses reflected in the dark waters of the fjord.

  She had found a large, flat stone. She placed it on other stones, an altar crowned with greenery that she replaced on every visit. The water flowed across the stones like a libation.

  I am the high priestess, she thought, the guardian of honour, love, decency. If I try hard enough, perhaps the light will still conquer the dark. Was not forgiveness a feature of civilisation, too?

  Sitting now in the open doorway of the house, Asta’s thoughts returned to Jason. So far forgiveness had not been a characteristic of Jason’s attitude to her, to any of them. He had been sullen, resentful, and Gavin, predictably, had grown sick of it.

  ‘What do you want him for?’ he had demanded for the hundredth time.

  Gavin had put away from him the remorse he had felt after the raid on the native camp; indeed, after the niggling rash of attacks, the deaths of precious sheep, he would not have undone the events of that night even if he could.

  ‘I’ve half a mind to let him go,’ he told her. ‘And he can take that black mate of his with him. The others don’t want them around, I’ll tell you that.’

  ‘I suppose they would feel happier if you killed them, too,’ Asta said, stiff back, stiff words, bleak and snapping eyes.

  Gavin grew angry, feeling und
er attack. ‘Maybe in Europe people can take time to argue about right and wrong. We can’t. This is survival country.’

  ‘Kill or be killed,’ Asta said. ‘Very civilised, I am sure.’

  ‘It’s the way life is. If we keep them we’ll live to regret it.’

  Echoing Ian’s words.

  Gavin was a harsh man but until now the harshness had always been tempered by an underlying gentleness. Now his eyes were like grey ice, his face set in planes of uncompromising determination, and Asta saw that the gentleness was gone, stolen by this land of fire and stone in which, it seemed, there was no place for kindness or compassion or humanity. Even the youth she had thought would in time come to replace her own son remained as unrelentingly hostile as the land in which they had found him.

  Since his arrival she had tried without success to make friends with him. Now Gavin wanted to be rid of him. From his point of view she could understand that but would never agree. She had set her heart on the boy. There were dangers for her in doing so; if she could not win him she would be alone as never before. Yet without him she faced a future filled only by heat and isolation. In the truest sense there would be no future.

  She would not accept it. Her lips set in an implacable line.

  No.

  No.

  She shouted her defiance into the brazen shimmer of the sky.

  ‘NO!’

  If it were her destiny to live out her days in this harsh and unforgiving land it would not be because she was the sacrifice for other people’s ambitions. That would be intolerable. She would decide her own destiny.

  Jason would stay.

  She stood, brushing dust from her black dress. There was food to prepare. While she was doing it she would consider what must be done about Jason, the future.

  Resolutely she turned her back on the sunlight and went into the house.

  The empty drays returned from Adelaide, bringing with them the news that the wool clip had fetched a price more than three times Gavin and Ian’s most optimistic predictions.

  ‘Fair snatched it off the waggons,’ Luke Hennessy said. ‘There was clippers lined up all along them new wharves they’ve built down at the port. Counted ten of ’em alongside or anchored out in the bay. Never seen nuthin like it.’ And sucked his teeth, remembering the scurry and bustle, so strange after the emptiness of the bush.

  Gavin sent word to Ian and the next day the Bungaree contingent rode in. They were all hungry for news and were not disappointed. There were tales of settlers moving into the empty land to the north of them, of farms and even towns spreading like a rash across the Adelaide Plains on the far side of the gulf, of inns and staging posts lining the route to the city where before there had been nothing.

  ‘That mine done it,’ Luke said. ‘The one they call the Monster. They say it’s the biggest copper mine in the world. There was drays full o’ copper all the way to Adelaide.’

  ‘A long haul,’ Gavin said, remembering the drays they had passed on their way north.

  ‘Not for long. They’re opening up a trail to Port Henry at the head of the gulf. Save ’em weeks, they reckon.’

  Gavin frowned. ‘Port Henry? When we came up that way, I didn’t see anywhere that would serve as a port.’

  Luke cackled. ‘It ain’t much. No more’n a creek a few yards wide. They bring the barges as close inshore as they can at high water and wait till the tide goes out. Then the drays go alongside and they put the copper on board before the tide comes back in again.’

  The two cousins went into the house, opened one of the remaining bottles of wine to celebrate their good fortune, looked awkwardly at each other.

  ‘Quite a moment,’ Gavin said.

  A month ago they’d had the two runs, the sheep and the clothes they stood up in; now money was running out of their ears. It was hard to get used to the idea. A few more seasons like this and they would be rich, not that either of them was about to tempt providence by saying so.

  Both of them felt that one or other of them should say something to mark the occasion but what was there to say, after all? You did the best you could. Sometimes the hard work paid off and sometimes it didn’t. This time, it seemed, it had. Nothing to make speeches about.

  Ian raised his drink. ‘Here’s to next year.’

  He tipped the contents of the glass down his throat.

  ‘Cheers …’ Gavin followed suit.

  They stood side by side in the doorway and stared out at their property, seeing not only the paddocks running away from them up the hill, the creeks swollen with water from the rains that continued to fall, but the invisible rise and fall of their land stretching from the coast to far beyond the skyline and southwards towards the tip of the peninsula.

  ‘Maybe we should think about getting more land,’ Ian suggested.

  ‘Doubt there’s any available,’ Gavin said. ‘Be a steep price if there is.’

  ‘We can afford it.’

  ‘I was thinking of something different.’ Gavin topped up his glass and gazed at it reflectively. ‘Luke talking about the Monster Mine reminded me. There’s a German fellow, Walter Lang, owns a copper mine down Kapunda way. Neu Preussen, he calls it. He wrote to me when we were still living outside Adelaide. Said he was looking for an investor to help him develop the mine. We didn’t have any money so I did nothing about it. Maybe I should get in touch with him again, see if he’s still interested.’

  ‘What do we know about mining?’

  ‘We know there’s money in it. Dutton and Bagot were making a killing out of the Kapunda Main before we left Adelaide and by the sound of it this Monster Mine is doing even better.’

  ‘Mining’s a risky business,’ Ian said.

  ‘Show me something that isn’t. We could all be dead tomorrow if the blacks turn nasty. Besides, it spreads the risk. Where are we if the price of wool collapses?’

  That night, as the light was beginning to go, Mura made his way from the well head to the cluster of farm buildings. He and Jason had nearly finished the new well—hard work with all the rain they’d been having—and he was tired, his body aching from the effort of swinging a spade in the confined space at the bottom of the shaft.

  Thirty yards ahead of him Jason had already reached the first building. At Mura’s back the bush crouched, dark and dripping with moisture. Something on the path caught his eye.

  Three feathers, black and white, in a group.

  Mura crouched, studying them. He did not touch them. They were oyster catcher’s feathers. What were they doing so far from the sea?

  Mura stood, watching Jason’s back, but his friend did not turn. He looked cautiously about him at the darkly shadowed bush. A glint of white caught his eye. Another feather, seemingly caught in the lower branches of a tree. He stepped into the dripping undergrowth. The shadows devoured him.

  The next morning dawned overcast but by midday the clouds were thinning. The Bungaree visitors had stayed overnight and Asta suggested the three women should all go for a picnic on the cliffs.

  ‘A picnic?’ Alison repeated, delighted.

  ‘We have worked hard,’ Asta told her, ‘now it is time to celebrate.’

  They had indeed worked hard, baking bread, cooking meat and vegetables, preparing great fruit tarts as large as waggon wheels for what would be the first party ever to be held at Whitby Downs. With the news the drays had brought from Adelaide they had something to celebrate, after all.

  Celebration or not, Mary declined the invitation, saying she must stay behind to look after her mare that had started coughing.

  ‘An hour,’ Asta said, ‘maybe two. Surely you can spare that?’

  Apparently not.

  Asta was not prepared to argue. If Mary did not want to accompany them, so be it.

  ‘It will be the two of us, then,’ she told Alison.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Alison asked.

  ‘To the cliffs.’

  They packed a basket—a small cake she had baked especially, a tart
, cold meat, cordial—covered it with a cloth and put on their bonnets and cloaks. As they opened the door of the house the sun broke through the clouds and shed a yellow beam of light upon the grassy slope leading downhill towards the invisible sea.

  ‘The sun,’ Asta said, laughing, lifting her arms towards it. ‘It has come out to greet us.’

  What better omen could they have than that?

  They walked side by side down the hill. The grass-clad slope flowed ahead of them without cover of any kind while to their right the bush along the creek lay dense and impenetrable, a dark cloud against which the sun was powerless. The creek had been brought to life by the recent rain. They could hear it splashing through a series of low cascades on its way to the cliff top and its long, final fall into the sea.

  Asta smiled at Alison as they reached the secret grotto. ‘I have never brought anyone here before.’

  Was not sure why she had done so now but was pleased that Alison was delighted with the place.

  ‘So pretty …’

  Asta picked ferns for the altar to replace those that had died. The rain had increased the flow of water so they could hear the spring above the rumble of the sea one hundred feet below them. Asta watched Alison as the girl listened, entranced, to the restless scream of gulls, the trickle of water, the reverberating crash, crash of the distant waves.

  ‘This is a secret place,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know it was here.’

  ‘Nobody knows it’s here,’ Asta told her.

  ‘Apart from us.’ Alison was delighted with its romantic secrecy. ‘Thank you for showing it to me.’

  They spread the folded cloth on the emerald turf, began to take the food out of the basket and arrange it on the cloth.

  Alison was puzzled. ‘Has Uncle Gavin never come here?’

  ‘He is too busy for picnics,’ Asta explained.

  It had not always been so. Inland the plain stretched for miles to the far coast and the other gulf that lay beyond it. Asta sat on the edge of the cliff, listening to the breaking waves, remembering …

  Shortly after their arrival on the peninsula she and Gavin had gone inland together, riding hard across the wind-rippled grass, the horses’ manes tossed by the wind, Gavin’s hand never far from the rifle holstered by his saddle. It had been a wild, exultant ride. The wind had filled their hair, their lungs, their being. When they reached journey’s end they had made love passionately in the grass on the cliff top. Asta would never forget the feel of the sweet-smelling grass crushed beneath her naked body, flowers stitching the grass with bright threads of red and yellow and blue. She had drawn Gavin down so that lying together on the sun-warmed ground the heads of the grass were above their heads and they lay immersed in a green and rustling sea.