by Margaret Way
“Ava, Ava… I will be very careful, you understand?” He put the torch down and came to her, taking her face between his hands.
“But it could be dangerous, Varo,” she protested. “Dev hasn’t gone all that far.”
“Well, I intend to go a little further,” he said, bending his head to kiss her not once but several times—tantalising little kisses promising much more. “It’s in the nature of things, mi querida.”
“Well, please leave me out!” Ava wrapped her arms tightly around him, revelling in his wonderful physicality. “As I told you, I’m more than a bit claustrophobic.”
“But you must come with me,” Varo insisted. “My concern for you will control my actions. I’ve done risky things. I’ve taken chances. I am a man, after all, and I will tell you I am considered a fine mountaineer. In my university days I led a team up one of the unexplored peaks of the Andes near the Chilean border. It was an unbelievable experience. I have made the ascent of active volcano Volcán Villarrica several times over the years. Thrilling, and not what you would consider safe. Climbers have fallen into lava pools and crevasses.”
“Ugh!” Ava shuddered. “All in a day’s climb?”
“Australia is different. You do not have our Andes, which as you know connect with the mighty Rocky Mountains.”
“No, but we do have our Great Dividing Range,” she reminded him with a smile. “I think it’s the third longest in the world. I know it bears no comparison with the mighty Andes or the Rockies, but I still say exploring our cave system might be a tad dangerous even for you.”
He traced the shallow dent in her chin with his fingertip. “I swear to you, Ava, I won’t do anything foolish. Why would I? I will have you waiting for me.”
The critical voice inside her started up again. It could be dangerous.
The problem was Juan-Varo de Montalvo wasn’t your everyday man. A man of action, it would be nigh on impossible to stop him.
* * *
As a safety measure they had packed hard hats. Outside the cave the sun was at its zenith, blindingly hot and bright. Inside the cave the temperature had chilled. Varo donned his hard hat, shining the powerful torch around the cave. The great crocodile seemed to be slithering across the roof. The stick figures had picked up their dance.
It was quite spooky, Ava thought, shining her own torch. God knew how many tonnes of rock were over their heads. She couldn’t help thinking of Joan Lindsay’s famous story, Picnic at Hanging Rock. The hill country was ancient, its peaks eroded over millions of years. The thought of losing Varo, the man she knew she loved and her guest, sent waves of terror through her. Her heart was even bumping against her cotton shirt.
Varo looked down at her with brilliant eyes. “Give me your blessing.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but no sound came out.
“Do not worry. I’ll be fine. One kiss before I begin.”
“You’re crazy,” she whispered.
“About you.”
They kissed open-mouthed. His tongue traced the lovely shape of her lips. He stroked her cheek reassuringly and then moved away to the neck of the tunnel, bending low to make his entrance. She already knew there was a long narrow passageway, leading to a chamber where a tall man could stand up with his head clearing the roof by about a foot. Dev had told her that. She also knew cave systems could go on for miles. And that highly experienced cave explorers could and did get lost. But this was a man used to high adventure. Clearly their cave system intrigued him.
She sat down on the sand, her back against a smooth unpainted section of the wall. It took her several moments to realise she was holding her breath. Around her was absolute silence. She couldn’t hear Varo at all. Knowing so much about the aboriginal people and their legends, their sacred places and their taboo places, she began to wonder if the all-powerful spirits thought of them as trespassers. She knew if the cave turned pitch-black she would scream her head off. Maybe she and Varo would never leave here, like the party of schoolgirls who had simply vanished from the face of the earth.
Get a grip, Ava, said the voice in her head. Too much imagination. No harm had come to Dev, although he’d admitted he hadn’t been too keen on exploring all that far. For one thing their grandfather would have been furious if he’d ever found out Dev had made the attempt. Quite simply, Dev had been the most important person in the world to their grandfather. Even then the planned heir, over their father.
* * *
Varo wasn’t feeling Ava’s apprehension. Body and mind were set on establishing what lay ahead. He had spent a great deal of time exploring rocky caves and slopes. Here it didn’t seem especially dangerous, although the air smelled strange—as though it had been trapped in the cave system for millions of years. And the entry tunnel was easily negotiated, even if it seemed to go on too long. He realised he was on a descending slope, going deeper into the bedrock. Twelve minutes by his watch and he was able to clamber out into a large cave, with tumbled boulders like devil’s marbles acting as giant stepping stones to the cave floor. This was Dev’s cave.
He trained his powerful torch on the roof of the cavern. No rock paintings here. The roof looked quite smooth, as did the walls. The action of water over the millennium? Who knew? There had been an inland sea at the centre of this great continent in prehistoric times. Surely proof was in that rock drawing of the great crocodile, the fish and the sea creatures? He was a bit disappointed, however. He wanted excitement, achievement.
The atmosphere had turned several degrees colder. He pointed the torch downwards. The sand beneath his feet appeared speckled with gold.
“Fantastico!” he breathed aloud. He knew Dev had felt he had to call a halt on his exploration at this point. He intended to go further, but without putting himself at risk. He was acutely mindful of Ava’s anxieties. This entire area that the family called the Hill Country—the aboriginals would have another name for it, like all indigenous people—he knew to be honeycombed with caves.
He trained his torch on the next narrow opening. It would be a tight squeeze for a man his size…
* * *
Ava thought of going in after him then rejected the idea. She hated confined spaces. She didn’t even like travelling in an elevator on her own. Even the best had problems. She had to trust Varo’s judgement just as she had trusted Dev’s.
But it was close on forty minutes now. How long should she wait? She wondered how much trusting she could fit inside her chest. Men and their adventuring, always tilting at death. Women spent more time considering the dangers and the consequences. Women were much more careful. Women wouldn’t start wars.
She completely ignored the fact that she had given the tough game of polo a go. Her grandfather had protested on the grounds that it was not a fitting game for a female. Not because she might injure her precious limbs. Oh, no! She hadn’t complied. She’d been rather good at polo, although naturally down some levels from the top notch. She loved horses and they loved her. She didn’t think there was a horse she couldn’t ride.
A bird—a hawk—swooped, and then flew into the neck of the cave. She let out a strangled screech that matched the predatory bird’s, but in the next moment it had flown out again. She jumped to her feet because she was so agitated.
Sounds came first. Then the beam of the powerful flashlight.
Thank God! Varo was coming back. Her emotions were bobbing up and down like a cork in a vat.
He all but swam out of the cave. Clear of the tunnel wall, his arms shot out sideways, as if he were taking wing.
“Varo!” Her cry was both relieved and anxious.
He was swiftly on his feet. He didn’t even stop to catch breath. If a man’s face could be called radiant, then it was his. “You have to come back with me,” he said, yanking off his hard hat and thrusting a hand through
his tousled jet-black waves. “It’s fantastico!” He caught at her hand, the skin of his face as cold as if he’d been out in a snowstorm. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Like what?” Despite herself she felt caught up in his excitement.
“I won’t tell you. You must see. I should tell you first there’s a narrow passageway that turned out to be a bit of a squeeze for me, but you’ll slide through it.”
“Am I free to refuse?” she asked, with humour and a trace of real fear.
“Of course. But there’s no danger. I don’t know about further into the cave system. There could be real danger there. One would need the proper equipment. But so far so good, as they say.” He reached down to pick up her hard hat. “Here—put it on. You will be safe with me, my love. Bring your torch. You can’t say no, Ava. You will be missing something.”
He sounded and looked as exhilarated as she imagined Howard Carter might have looked and sounded when he opened up Tutankhamen’s tomb ninety years before.
Ava took the hard hat from him, settling it on her head. With Varo beside her she could conquer her fears one by one.
“Lead the way,” she invited.
* * *
In the “squeeze” passageway she felt a split second of overwhelming claustrophobia. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t have enough air in her labouring lungs. What did the air smell of anyway? Bizarrely, she thought of shingle at low tide. Salt, sand, a whiff of fish and sea creatures. How crazy was that?
Just as she was about to fall flat on her stomach and stay there a minute or two, the passageway opened up.
Varo was through, reaching back for her. He pulled her out with as little effort as he might expend on a child. They were standing on a huge slab of limestone roughly ten feet square—one of many flat slabs descending to the cavern floor. To Ava’s astonished eyes the huge area looked like a theatre, held up by fabulous twisting pillars The sight was so fantastic, so surreal, it almost hurt her to look. Yet she felt quite secure.
She pushed her shoulders back. Her breathing eased. Varo’s strong arm was locked around her. She felt there was no space between them. She had fallen so madly in love the other versions of herself had faded into the past. This was the start of a whole new Ava.
“Vaya! Well?” He unfastened his headgear, then hers, dropping the hard hats on the huge slab.
His vitality was like an electric field. It sent charges sizzling through her. “Oh, my God!” she murmured, her awe mixed with reverence. “This is utterly fantasmagorical—if there is such a word.”
Stalagmites, stalactites—she wasn’t sure which was which—marvellous curtain-like draperies, giant toadstools apparently formed from ochre mud, others the shape of the water-lily pads that grew in such profusion over Kooraki’s billabongs and lagoons, all filled the grand space. In one area there was an organ like structure she thought might thunder if it was ever played.
The smell of the sea inside the cavern was even stronger, yet there wasn’t a visible drop of water about them. No shallow pools. Certainly no underground river. They were, however, over the Great Artesian Basin. The cave was as dry as ancient bones.
“These are natural heritage objects, are they not?” Varo asked, turning his lustrous eyes on her.
She nodded in wonderment. She was finding it hard to process all she was seeing. They were holding two powerful torches, but the brightness inside the chamber was hard to explain. She looked up. The sun might have been shining through a hole in the roof of the cavern, except of course it wasn’t.
“Protected by law,” she confirmed. “One can’t break even the tiniest piece off. Which are the stalagmites? I should know.”
“The ones growing vertically from the cavern floor,” he replied. “The stalactites are the curtains. See how they touch each other, forming the draperies? This wonderful scene was formed by dripping or flowing water perhaps a million years ago. Your famed inland sea?” he suggested.
“It could well be,” Ava said. Her whole being was aglow. “To think it has all been here for probably thousands of years. I should think the early aboriginal tribes would have known about these caves. And the rock paintings.”
“The ones that did know would have died out.”
“But they always passed on their legends. And what about all the sparkles on the floor of Dev’s cave?”
A smile swept his dynamic face. “Fool’s gold?”
She lifted her face to the mighty organ, with shifting prisms of light bouncing off its cylindrical pipes. “Do you think we should be here?” she asked softly. “This could be a sacred site for all I know.”
“Frightened, are you?” There was a pronounced tease in his voice.
“Not with you. We’re together.” She had never said such a thing before. Never felt like this before. “Have you ever heard the legend of Lasseter’s Reef, Varo?” she asked, prompted by the mystery glitter. Opal matrix had been found on the station. But no gold-bearing quartz veins. As yet!
His face relaxed into his devastatingly attractive smile. “I am sorry, but no,” he said gently. He was gaining enormous pleasure from her reactions, and the fact she had conquered her claustrophobia. That was brave.
“Then I’ll tell you the greatest mystery of our gold fields.”
“I’m listening, but let’s go down.” He kept an arm around her, guiding her as they descended the staircase of toppled slabs. Memory was stirring. Something he had read somewhere, some time. That riveting word treasure!
“Debate continues to this day.” Ava was staring around her in a wondering way. What would Dev and Amelia make of this? She couldn’t wait to tell them. “Gold was the backbone of the nation then. There were huge gold strikes all over.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Prospectors came from all over the world.” She crouched over the extraordinary “lily pads”, awestruck. They might have been cast in stone over a living plant. “Harold Lasseter was a young prospector who became hopelessly lost when he was prospecting for rubies in the MacDonnell Ranges.”
“That’s the Red Centre?” Varo asked. He was looking forward to seeing the great desert monuments. Ava had to be with him.
Ava nodded. “It was long ago—around the late 1890s. My family, the Langdons and the Devereauxes, were here, pioneering the cattle industry. Anyway, Lasseter claimed when he was found, starving and dying of thirst, he had stumbled across a fabulous reef of gold and taken samples. An Afghan camel driver actually saved his life. Three years later, restored to health, he went back with a surveyor. They claimed to have re-found the reef, taking bearings with their watches.”
“Only to find when they got back to civilisation their watches were incorrect?” Varo guessed.
“You’ve heard this story,” she said wryly.
Varo only shrugged.
“Other expeditions followed, but it was all too dangerous. Forbidding territory, and the tribes were well equipped to defend their land. Spearing of the invading white man was common, which meant the Government of the day wasn’t keen on sending expeditions into the desert to be killed or die of starvation and thirst.”
“Okay—you tell me this so we can go and find it?” he asked, amused.
“Many people believe the reef is out there.” She was speaking now in a hushed whisper.
They began to pick their way with the utmost care across the floor of the cavern, avoiding all the extraordinary formations. The bone-dry sand crunched beneath their feet.
“This is out of this world!” Ava exclaimed, enraptured by such a spectacle.
“The best news is we are quite alone,” Varo said “Finally. I do like your parents. I enjoyed their company. But I longed for us to be together.” He put out a hand, bringing her to her feet. He tugged gently on the silk scarf that
tied back her hair, releasing it in a flood of gold.
“You want to make love?” she asked, on a long, voluptuous sigh.
“Need you ask?”
The expression of tenderness in his eyes almost brought her to tears. “This could be a sacred place, Varo.”
“What we feel is sacred, is it not?” he asked, very gravely. “You fall in love with me. I with you.”
She expected her inner voice to step in. Only it didn’t. There was nothing to explain this. Nothing to gainsay it either.
All was quiet. The fantastic formations might have been ancient statues, quietly watching on. This was a dream, not a nightmare.
“Come here to me.”
Varo took her torch from her, set it down beside his so the combined lights spread their illumination all through the cavern. There were no dark shadows, only wondrous natural sculptures. Could any woman resist an invitation like this?
Ava buried her face against his chest. “You made me love you.”
“Is that the start of a song?” he mocked gently.
She lifted her head, her heart in her eyes. “Neither of us planned this, Varo. I wasn’t ready for it. It’s all happened so very, very quickly.”
“Can one call destino a bad thing?” His deep dark voice crooned gently against the shell of her ear.
“Destiny?” That was the way she saw it. “I’m in love with you, Varo,” she admitted freely. “I’m in love with a man from another land.”
Emotion made his voice rough. “I will never leave you, mi querida. You will never leave me.”
“How can that be—?” She started to speak, but his mouth covered hers so passionately her heart contracted. She was consumed.
“You understand it will take a little time?” Slowly, almost dazedly, he lifted his head.
“I will be a divorced woman, Varo.” She felt compelled to point that out. “Your parents, your sisters, your family might not approve of a divorced woman in your life.”
