Tapestry

by Fiona McIntosh

  TWELVE

  Uluru, December 1978

  Jane was staying at a motel that squatted in the shadow of Uluru, and the rock towered above it like an ancient sleeping beast. The motel operator — who’d introduced himself as Baz — had told her as he took her breakfast order, in an accent she had to really concentrate on to understand, that the government was ‘doing away with’ the accommodation she was currently enjoying.

  Enjoying? Jane had never stayed anywhere so basic. Then again, though not glamorous, her room was spotlessly clean and tidy. She was comfortable and had, in all truth, slept her first peaceful night since the attack; her sleep hadn’t been disturbed and she had no memory of dreaming. It was also the first morning since Will’s attack when she’d woken and remained dry-eyed. The night had been clear, cold and lit by a billion stars glittering against a velvet dome. Most importantly, it had been silent, save the scuttle of small creatures outside and the odd haunting call of a bird. Yes, it might well be basic — this was, when all was said and done, one of the most remote tourist outposts in the world — but Jane genuinely had no complaint. Besides, she had her eye focused on the prize alone and didn’t care what it took to win.

  ‘Yeah,’ the owner murmured, as he came back to slam down a thick, squat cup containing weak-looking coffee that she just knew was going to taste awful. ‘They’re building a big new complex — a bloody village, they’re calling it,’ he continued. ‘A resort with swimming pools and the like, and bloody fountains and staff in uniforms, but get this …’ He paused dramatically so he was sure he had her complete attention. ‘It’s fourteen kilometres away! None of this stepping outside and nearly breaking your neck looking up at the Rock. We’ll have to bus you lot in from bloody miles away!’

  She shrugged, and said, ‘It’s not a bad idea to turn it into a national park,’ before realising her comment was likely to fan the fires of discontent. She hastily added: ‘Because it’s so, so beautiful here.’

  ‘Yeah, well, can’t stop progress, can we?’

  She shook her head. He wasn’t shifting. She blinked and waited, sipping her coffee, and it was every bit as horrible as she’d anticipated. The air conditioner thundered in the background like a jet. She was one of only four people in the dining room and the laminated tablecloth beneath her elbow felt sticky from last night’s meal; she didn’t want to check.

  ‘Most people don’t come at this time of year,’ he continued, scratching his belly. ‘It’s a bit too bloody hot right now — be careful, it can get up to forty on the Rock midsummer. I’m surprised you’re here, although maybe I shouldn’t be. You Poms pull off your clothes to sunbake when it’s bloody fifteen degrees.’ She smiled faintly, unable to translate from Celsius to Fahrenheit, but she grasped his meaning. ‘You climbing today; is that why you’re up so early?’

  She nodded. ‘I want to sign the book at the top.’

  ‘Yeah, righto. But it’s much harder than it looks. I’ve done it loads of times and I can tell you it never gets easier. Take my advice: you hold on to that chain for dear life. But I’m not even sure today’s the day for it.’

  Jane frowned. ‘Oh? Why’s that?’

  ‘Storm brewing. Probably hit later on.’

  Jane pressed a paper napkin the colour of egg yolk to her lips, realising only now as the cheap tissue stuck slightly to her mouth that it had been chosen to match the plastic daffodils in their fake terracotta pot just near the faux-crystal plastic salt and pepper shakers on her table. ‘How much later on?’

  ‘Ah, winds’ll probably hit this arvo or maybe midday, they reckon, although I don’t think it’ll wait that long. And we’ve got some rain coming.’

  She looked crestfallen. Why hadn’t she thought to check on the weather? Wasn’t it always ridiculously sunny and drought-ridden in Australia? Wasn’t this a desert? ‘When is rain forecast?’

  ‘Tonight, they’re saying. Maybe early tomorrow.’ He gave her a faint look of sympathy as he began to clear her plate. ‘It’s the wet season, luv. You gotta expect it.’

  ‘So, windy this afternoon, stormy tomorrow?’

  He shrugged. ‘That’s what the bureau is saying, but those clowns never get it right. My arthritic knees can warn me better.’

  She tried to smile. ‘And what do your knees say?’

  ‘That she’ll be blowing earlier than this afternoon.’

  Jane glanced out past the stiff net curtains hanging across the window close to where she sat. It was closing on 5.45 and dawn was easing her way across the sky with bright pink fingers of light that reached toward the hulking shadow of the still sleeping Uluru. ‘What about the others?’ she said, nodding toward his guests.

  ‘Film crew from Tokyo. They won’t climb. They’re interested in the ancient rock paintings. They’ve got a blackfella guide arriving any moment.’

  She flinched. Obviously it was acceptable in Australia to speak about Aborigines this way … or at least in the outback. She could just imagine the outcry if the same expression were used in London.

  She weighed up the odds of his caution. ‘It’s still so early. I mean, the sky looks happy enough to me.’ Her mouth twisted as she wrestled with the dilemma. ‘You reckon it’s an hour up and another hour back?’

  He shrugged. ‘Depends on how fast you climb and whether you hang around at the top, but that’s about right. Someone once did the ascent in seventeen minutes.’

  She looked again at the serene skies, which had lightened in the last few moments while they talked. ‘I’ll take my chances. I’m used to trekking around Snowdonia.’ He looked unmoved, clearly ignorant of where in the world that was. Jane didn’t think she’d mention Wales and open up a new conversation; she stood instead. ‘I’ll head out as soon as dawn breaks and be back before nine.’

  ‘I’m headed to Erldunda, but don’t worry, I’ll have them put the kettle on at nine for your morning tea,’ he said with a wink. ‘Oh, yeah, I promised the kitchen I’d ask: will you be wanting lunch? It’s just that the Japs won’t eat here and that leaves only you.’

  Japs! Jane shook her head, giving him the answer she knew he wanted. ‘I won’t either, though thank you. I might try and stay ahead of that rain and head back to Alice Springs when I return from the Rock.’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘That soon? Okay, no worries. Climb carefully. Drink lots of water.’

  ‘I will.’

  She nipped back to her room to grab a light waterproof jacket and filled an old soft-drink bottle with water, which she then thought better of carrying with her. She drank half of it instead, gasping at the volume of water. She was dressed in shorts, stout sneakers, a T-shirt that covered her arms to avoid sunburn and a hat with a flap to protect her neck. She remembered the block-out that Baz had recommended when she checked in, and smeared some of the white zinc paste onto her nose.

  Jane felt energised, excited even, as she clambered into her rental car to drive to the car park, from where a path led to the spot where all climbers began their ascent.

  ‘This is it, Will,’ she murmured at the wheel as she unhurriedly guided the car into a parking space. She knew she was well ahead of the tour buses, which would arrive in about one hour’s time. She wanted to be on the summit before anyone else, wanted no distractions, no other voices to interrupt her peace — especially while allegedly on the ley line that connected with the vortex that was Uluru.

  She turned off the engine and stepped out of the car, immediately struck by the powerful silence. Uluru waited for her, still clothed in its purple robe of night. Even though she shivered in the pre-dawn shadows, Jane could already sense the tiptoe of warmth across the desert. Any moment now the sunlight would steal across the dark brown earth, urging it to red, and Uluru would stretch, shake off that robe and glow in the first of the morning rays.

  Jane saw a large gecko with striped, scaly skin skitter across the sand nearby. It paused as if listening, waiting. She watched its tongue slip out to wipe its large, bulbous eyes. She returned her ga
ze to Uluru and decided that photos she’d seen did not do it justice. She began to appreciate Will’s fascination; it really did appear to rise majestically — and somewhat incongruously — from the flat earth, as though magically conjured.

  From a distance it looked perfectly smooth, but the edifice had folds and creases as well as intriguing weathering marks showing curls and striations. Jane fancied that the elements had battered the Rock in order to write their stories on its canvas for the Dreamtime people to interpret and pass down from generation to generation. She wondered if the ley line that crossed this point passed through her as she stood here; she hoped it did. Hoped she was standing right on it, and that it would connect her with Will’s lost mind.

  ‘Find your way back,’ she said, imagining his spirit latching on to the ancient straight track into her soul. They were old souls — he’d said that, hadn’t he?

  She looked over her shoulder as a breeze ruffled her hair. A few clouds, newly gathered, were illuminated pink like pillows of fairy floss, attesting to the bureau’s forecast of rain on the way. However, for now they looked harmless enough.

  Pink sky at night, shepherd’s delight; Pink sky at morning, shepherd’s warning, she heard in her mind. An old adage her grandmother had been fond of quoting.

  She wasn’t worried. The clouds were far away and she was too close to Will’s salvation to let grumpy skies turn her back. Walk, she told herself. Don’t linger another moment. Tiny birds chirruped and flitted and she could hear the prattle of insects as they woke up. Tiny footprints were impressed on the fine, glistening sand. Lizards, birds, mice, snakes … they’d been on this old, old seabed long before her.

  Jane realised the dawn chill had disappeared. It felt like a perfect temperature now — neither hot nor cool. It had reached her blood’s warmth, bathing her in a womb-like sense of peace. She fancied she could hear Uluru sighing at her approach, wanting to commune with her. She knew the locals preferred that tourists not clamber on their sacred site.

  ‘Just me,’ she whispered selfishly. ‘If not for Will’s and my names at the top, you’ll hardly know I’ve been here,’ she promised to whichever Aboriginal spirits were listening.

  At the base she stared up at the fiery, pockmarked sandstone, at its clefts and folds, which looked like part of a thick rock blanket that Uluru had pulled over the ancient knowledge it hid.

  Since she’d arrived at Alice Springs, people had been sharing warnings.

  It’s nearly three hundred feet high.

  You’re too light — if the wind’s high, you could get blown off.

  The climb will fool you. I hope you’re fit.

  Don’t disrespect the Anangu. Would you clamber over your local church’s altar?

  Take a pen.

  Well, she had her pen and she’d made peace in her mind with desecrating a holy site, through the rationale that she was saving a life. Jane was sure the indigenous people and their spirits would forgive her.

  There was nothing more to consider. She began her ascent, emptying her mind of everything but Will and her desire to bring him back to her. Somehow, between taking off in London and the present moment, the notion had slotted into her mind that this trip was her salvation too. Hopefully she would return a changed person, with a new attitude to Will and being in love.

  Jane soon passed a cluster of red boulders that were no doubt the ‘chicken rocks’ Baz had joked about the previous evening.

  ‘Chicken rocks?’ she’d repeated.

  He’d grinned. ‘Yeah, they’re where most people chicken out … long before they even reach the chain!’ he’d chortled.

  Now she pushed past them, determined not to be like most others. The chain was there for a very good reason, Jane discovered, after about ten minutes of using it. Uluru was deceptively steep and smooth enough that she didn’t feel entirely secure even with the traction her sneakers were giving her. She found that she was relying heavily on the thick, solid metal chain to haul herself up each slow step. The sun was smiling fully now, and despite the effort it took to climb, it felt empowering to be here in the desert with only its creatures and its spirits for company. The breeze was pleasantly cooling and Jane felt strong for the first time in what felt like an eternity of misery. She cast her thanks to Robin and Geoff for their encouragement.

  Jane knew that the ascent was over one and a half kilometres long, but even so she was taken aback when she finally reached the end of the chain at the close of what was presumably the toughest section, only to find she had covered what looked to be merely a third of the climb. The edifice was taunting her, it seemed, and had hidden most of itself when she looked up at it from the base.

  The breeze had stiffened at this height too — she felt exposed now — but for the moment she revelled in its cooling of her damp face. She paused to pull off her waterproof windcheater and tie it around her waist and wished she had thought to bring the water, but took a deep breath and headed upward. This section definitely wasn’t as steep, but she was wearier now and suspected she would have to maintain her pace and energy for a long way yet. She knew from her treks around Snowdonia not to look up. The trick with climbing was to focus just on the next step, placing each foot carefully and securely, covering the distance steadily but surely.

  She could hear the whoosh of her blood thumping rhythmically near her temples. Her breathing was coming harder, but she smiled: the exertion made her feel alive again. She should, however, have tied her hair back, she realised; the wind was having fun whipping it around her face. She paused again to tuck it inside the back of her T-shirt. Not terribly effective, but it would have to do.

  Jane stole a glance around her, marvelling at how high she had climbed and the boundless view the height gave her of the surrounding desert. She could see the scrubby spinifex grasses, wattle trees and spindly desert oaks that she’d read about in the guide book she’d bought. The wildflowers of spring were long gone, but Jane could imagine how beautiful they must have looked against their burnt-orange canvas.

  She stepped up and onward, emptying her mind again of conscious thought, but exquisitely aware of minutiae: how her muscles were tensed in her calves, how she was perspiring and could feel the prickle of the wet patch on her back, how her normally soft blonde hair was curiously itchy against her skin because of the dampness. She could taste saltiness on her lips and her eyes stung a bit from her sweat. She’d forgotten sunglasses and felt fortunate that so far this wasn’t one of those achingly bright days, like yesterday, when it almost hurt to look up at the sharp, sunny sky.

  The cry of an eagle caught her attention, dragged her from the void of her mind. She shielded her gaze, looking for its dark, distinctive shape hovering overhead. There it was: a wedge-tailed eagle, called walawuru locally, she’d read. Its cry was lonely and haunting, like a woman’s shriek, echoing her own feelings. Odd. Just moments ago she had been feeling so upbeat. Why had this bird’s piercing cry stirred a sudden, inexplicable feeling of dread and dislocation?

  Jane sat down to take a breather. It was warming up fast, and the atmosphere was turning muggy. Totally different from how it had felt on arrival yesterday afternoon. The humidity had been gathering without her sensing it while she’d climbed and she could hear the wind now, like a lion’s roar against a cliff-face. Somewhere below her it was whistling shrilly, as though hurtling through the hollows of the ancient rock.

  The gusty conditions had crept up on her too, and she noticed they were no longer comforting or pleasant. They had strengthened enough that she was yearning for the chain again. But she was close now … too close to consider anything other than pressing on. She touched her pocket, reassuring herself that her biro was there. The eagle was back, its shriek even more ghostly as it challenged the cries of the wind, which had torn some of her hair free from its attempted trapping.

  Desertion in the desert, the eagle called at her as it hovered high, directly above her.

  Jane ignored the fanciful notion that the bird was mo
cking her. She wished again for something to anchor herself to. There was no doubt in her mind any more that the claim of people having been blown off was not a fantasy. Her nine stone certainly felt light enough on this precarious angle that she believed she could be blown away. There would be nothing to grab at, or hang on to, if she lost her footing. She forced herself not to look down or even across the landscape until she was on the summit’s plateau. With each step she planted her feet as solidly as she could, leaning almost at right angles into the wind, which wanted to knock her sideways and tumble her across the face of Uluru.

  You shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t climb our sacred site, the eagle baited.

  Jane trudged on, much more slowly, taking great care to ensure each footstep was secure, hands tensed like claws very close to the Rock’s surface so that she was almost on all fours. She was no longer perspiring. Instead she was cold, cold with fear. Where had that come from? When had fear penetrated? Voices were whispering now on the wind, nagging at her. She couldn’t make out their words. It’s just the wind, she told herself; your imagination is running away with you. This is the right choice. Robin told you to seek the path; this is it. This was the ley line that connected her to Will. This was the vortex that would deliver him back to her and her to him.

  Finally, unbelievably, she scrabbled over the last few feet and hauled herself onto the summit, lying on her belly, panting. It shouldn’t have been this hard. Why was she so exhausted? Her parents had tried to tell her that she was fragile; brittle, her father had said. Her mother had railed that she hadn’t slept, had lost weight, that her body was fatigued and ravaged by grief. Her sister had tried to counsel that, physically as well as emotionally, she wasn’t strong enough right now. But she wouldn’t be told. Had refused their advice.

  Jane had dutifully called her parents from reception on arrival and the connection had been scratchy enough that she was all but shouting down the phone. Still, she’d managed to produce a breezy tone, which wasn’t all feigned, so they were probably feeling secure in the knowledge that she’d reached her destination, even though they didn’t understand her journey or her driving ambition to climb to the summit of a massive rock in the middle of Australia.