The Call of the Pines

by Lucy Walker

  What if one or both had broken a leg, or something, in their drop from the tree-hung plane?

  Tracy broke through the bushes into the clearing.

  ‘Of course I’ve ruined my slacks,’ she said.

  Cherry was torn between admiration for Tracy’s casualness and a hysterical inclination to laugh. She would think about Tracy and what was, after all, a form of controlled bravery, later.

  ‘Will you mind Peter if I go back and see if the men are all right?’

  ‘They are,’ said Tracy. ‘I could hear them breaking through the bushes behind me. And swearing.’ Tracy sat down on the dried leaves in the clearing and took a comb from the hip pocket of her slacks and meticulously did her hair.

  ‘One likes to look respectable, even in the middle of a jungle,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t even know we had jungle in this part of the north,’ said Cherry weakly.

  She drew Peter to her and looked earnestly down into his face to see how much or little he was suffering from this terrible adventure.

  For once Peter was not interested in Cherry. He gazed round in wonder and curiosity at his strange surroundings, then put two fingers in his mouth and began to suck them reflectively. He was mentally digesting this new experience.

  Cherry felt inclined to be tearful at his philosophic resignation at the turn of events but she knew that Tracy would scorn her for any display of weakness. Tracy’s posing had become a welded part of her nature so that she not only appeared to feel undisturbed, Cherry was inclined to believe she actually was undisturbed.

  The two men broke through the wall of bush. Beneath the scratches, bruises and general dishevelment they were unharmed.

  Stephen looked first at Peter then herself.

  ‘Peter all right?’ he asked.

  ‘A hundred per cent,’ said Cherry.

  ‘And you?’ Without waiting for a reply he turned to the other girl. ‘You all right, Tracy?’

  Tracy put the back of her comb between her teeth while she pressed shape into her hair with her fingers. She nodded.

  Suddenly Stephen smiled.

  ‘A hundred out of a hundred to you, Tracy,’ he said. ‘You’d never have hysterics, that’s for sure.’

  Cherry felt a little dashed. After all, she hadn’t had hysterics either. But then she was only the governess and governesses never had hysterics and never let their charges have them either. Nor nursemaids, for that matter.

  Alan Donnelly sat back on his heels and reached in the pocket of his shirt for cigarettes. He held up the packet first to Tracy then Stephen.

  ‘We’ll smoke mine first,’ he said. ‘We might need yours to-morrow. We’ll give the bus five minutes to blow up and if she doesn’t we’ll go back and salvage the gun. We’ll all need to eat.’

  He looked across the clearing at Cherry.

  ‘You made a nice save of that youngster, Miss Landin. Thank you for behaving so well; and apologies for landing you on the wrong airstrip.’

  Cherry’s heart warmed to Alan because she saw that under his carefully casual comments he understood himself to be responsible for their predicament.

  ‘I think a thunderbolt is an Act of God,’ she said brightly. ‘I know my mother and father could insure their house against everything, except an Act of God. The company said that was something outside human safeguard.’

  Alan Donnelly gave her a rueful smile across the distance.

  ‘We’ll see what our insurance company says about the plane,’ he said. ‘Maybe they’ll think it was a matter of human judgment ‒ flying into that cloud.’

  Stephen was the only one not sitting. He had taken a cigarette and stood smoking it, looking into the bush beyond which that plane lay straddling a brace of giant trees. If it blew up, they were indeed in a predicament.

  Tracy lay back on the leafy ground, her hands under her head. She stretched her legs and arched her insteps, so that her toes pointed ‒ a favourite exercise when she was otherwise relaxing.

  Stephen turned his head and glanced at her. Once again he allowed himself a smile.

  Cherry wished she herself could feel as irresponsible as Tracy looked this very moment. Having achieved safety, Cherry now thought of something else. Peter would need food more urgently than any of them. And water too.

  An hour later it was clear the plane would not blow up though a little earlier it had settled down into the trees with a terrible crash. This latter made foraging raids easier.

  Stephen was the natural leader for he knew and understood the bush and Alan Donnelly did not.

  Cherry had always been intrigued by the strange quality both Hugh and Stephen Denton had of being easy and measured in their movements one minute, and the next being able to act with great pace and authority.

  It was Stephen of the two men now who went into action at top speed. With an almost unnatural strength and no wasting of time in explanations he proceeded to cut some sort of a path from the clearing through to the plane wreckage. From the emergency hatch of the plane he first retrieved a hatchet, the gun and cartridges and a portable tool-box.

  He directed and Alan co-operated. Tracy too came in for her share of work for Stephen did not hesitate to give her orders now. She was handed, small loads at a time, such things as the airline company’s rugs, the linen covers from the seats, small packages of food such as biscuits, tea, and instant coffee. Two tins of dried milk had most blessedly been found for Peter.

  Meantime Cherry was detailed off to mind Peter and at the same time to dig down into the roots of a nearby tree where Stephen hazarded an informed guess they might find water.

  Cherry had never dug at depth before, much less with the small spade they found amongst the plane’s emergency gear. It was hard going and dirty work but she dug with a will.

  As soon as the first supplies arrived at the clearing Stephen had ordered that Peter be fed with some of the biscuits, and a little lemonade found amongst the plane’s food supplies. He was then put to sleep on the bundle of rugs.

  Then Cherry had to get on with her digging.

  By the time the men had salvaged the essentials from the plane, and cut an easier path through the stretch of jungle, Cherry had dug deep enough to discover the earth was very moist around the roots of the tree Stephen had selected as the water-indicator.

  ‘Good!’ Stephen said, smiling encouragingly as Cherry emerged from the hole with this news.

  She guessed she was a fearful sight for this dank earth here amongst the trees was black, and heavy with rotten tree droppings and fungus from the surface roots. Her wayward hair kept falling forward across her brow into her eyes. Constantly lifting her hand to brush it back had left wood and earth stains on her face. And there was no clear water to wash in.

  Her slacks, she decided, would never come clean again. Both girls were grateful that Stephen had seen that their clothes were rescued from the plane.

  Later when Stephen obliged by giving them a ten minute break from the chores, Cherry, though beginning to feel very exhausted, thought she would slip into the trees and change those slacks. A blouse too if she dared such an extravagance at this stage. So far no ten minutes had been allowed.

  It was nearly sundown when Stephen called a halt to labours.

  After Cherry’s discovery of very moist earth in the water-hole Stephen had taken the spade and deepened and widened the hole so that it now stood at about five foot depth. At the bottom, water began to seep into it.

  The food was rationed at sundown. Dried milk and biscuits for Peter; one biscuit and a bar of chocolate each with a good strong cup of instant coffee for the others. The plastic cups and plates used on the plane had all been brought to the clearing.

  Throughout this hard day’s work, very little had been said by anyone. All had worked quickly and in near silence.

  Alan had said that he was reasonably certain the plane would not catch fire at this stage but they had to guard against eventualities. The petrol tanks had burst and the petrol poured
everywhere. It was evaporating fast but was obviously a danger until time or a heavy rainfall had rendered it ineffective. Hence the pace at which the essentials for camp life had to be retrieved from the plane.

  Alan further expressed the opinion that the wreckage could not now be seen from the air. It had settled right down into the trees.

  Stephen, even after hours of hard manual work, was still indefatigable in his labours at sundown. He built a small camp-fire in the middle of the clearing while Alan went back to the plane to see if there was any chance of repairing the wireless contacts.

  It wasn’t till dark, when Peter was finally put to bed for the night in a low-hanging hammock made from one of the rugs, that they all sat down round the fire and had time to take stock of what had been done and what they might do on the morrow.

  Through the flickering firelight Cherry could see Stephen’s partly shadowed face, thoughtful but seemingly unconcerned.

  ‘Sorry you’re all on short rations to-night,’ he said over the cups of coffee. Water had been taken cup by cup from the hole and boiled and strained into one of the tins that had held dried milk. The former contents had been carefully packaged in a plastic bag that had held biscuits.

  Stephen drew the gun towards him, and rested his hand on it.

  ‘To-morrow, we’ll hunt,’ he said. He looked at Tracy. ‘How about it?’ It was an invitation with a smile and once again Cherry admired him for his capacity to turn this into something of a pleasure instead of what it was, sheer necessity.

  Tracy nodded languorously. She had been working hard carrying things from the plane and this she was not used to doing. All her energy when on the station had been directed towards improving her muscle control when dancing.

  ‘Long as I don’t have to cut another path through that jungle; or swing from tree to tree like the monkeys,’ she said.

  ‘We don’t have any monkeys in Australia,’ Stephen said equably. ‘Pity. They would have been useful.’

  ‘For eating?’ asked Tracy, wrinkling up her nose.

  ‘Better than nothing,’ said Stephen dryly. ‘But to get on with plans for to-morrow. I think we’ll operate in pairs. Keep that as an inviolable rule, will you?’ This last he addressed to them all. ‘Tracy and I understand the bush better than you and Cherry, Alan. I think I’ll make you camp commissariat officer. Cherry will have her hands full with Peter. By the way, he must not be left for an instant. You understand that, Cherry?’

  She agreed. As if it was necessary to tell her! But then, that was like Stephen.

  ‘You can fill in your spare time getting as much water as possible. Keep the fire going and boil the water as you get it. It probably won’t be more than a pint at a time.’

  Cherry nodded.

  He paused, then added: ‘If anyone has cigarettes, aspirins or tablets of any kind, chocolates, et cetera, it is necessary to pool them. I think you all understand why. That way we can share them equally.’

  Alan drew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and tossed it across the space to Stephen.

  ‘Here it comes,’ he said. ‘I think you got that half carton we found in the plane earlier?’

  Stephen nodded.

  ‘Any booty, Cherry?’ he asked her.

  ‘A small packet of barley-sugar in my handbag,’ she said.

  She went to the place near the tree fringe where the girls had been given some rugs to make a private dressing-room. She came back with her handbag, opened it and took out the packet. She held it out to Tracy to pass to Stephen.

  The packet had been opened before the plane crashed and Tracy now helped herself to a square of barley-sugar then passed the packet on.

  She arched her eyebrows and looked slightly superior as she did this.

  ‘Payment for a hard day’s work,’ she said.

  Stephen smiled.

  ‘In that case I think we’ll have one each all round. We’ve all worked hard.’

  The barley-sugar was handed round.

  Tracy made no contribution on the grounds she never had headaches and so never carried aspirin. She said nothing of cigarettes.

  Stephen, getting up lazily from the fire, added the barley-sugar to the other booty in the fork of a tree.

  ‘I’ll do the rationing,’ he said equably as he came back to the fire. ‘Alan, you stand guard during my absence. Right?’

  Everyone nodded.

  ‘How dishonest do you think we all are?’ Tracy said haughtily.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Stephen. ‘Everyone knows where the store is kept but if we’re some time in being rescued we’d be foolish to expend our luxuries unwisely. I think we all deserve one more break to-night. Alan, here comes your packet of cigarettes. Hand them round, will you?’

  Cherry was the only one who didn’t smoke so she shook her head.

  ‘Go ahead. Have one,’ Alan Donnelly said with a grin. ‘To-night is a luxury and a treat. You might as well join in.’

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Cherry again. ‘Not that I wouldn’t like to join in but that would be a tragic waste. In a day or two someone might wish they had the cigarette I’d smoked to-night.’

  Alan had not unwrapped his piece of barley-sugar. He leaned over to pass it to her.

  ‘Then you take this,’ he insisted.

  Again Cherry shook her head.

  ‘You’ll need that for energy,’ she said. ‘It’s not a treat, it’s almost medicine when one gets tired and there’s not too much in the stomach.’

  ‘Quite right,’ said Stephen. ‘We’ll find some other way of giving Cherry a treat to-morrow.’ He changed the subject brusquely. ‘Is everyone clear about to-morrow? Tracy! Sun-up and you come hunting with me? Right?’

  Tracy nodded.

  ‘You shoot, I’ll retrieve,’ she said calmly. ‘That is, if I can retrieve in that bush.’

  ‘And you two stick together,’ Stephen said finally to Cherry and Alan. ‘Don’t get out of sight of one another. Tracy and I will do the same. To be lost in this jungle could be fatal.’

  Towards sundown on the second day Alan Donnelly took two of the linen seat covers and with the help of some splay pins from the plane’s tool-box began to make a shoulder bag in which Peter might be carried.

  ‘Are you married that you know about such things?’ Cherry asked. They had become very companionable in their segregation together. Cherry liked the air-pilot very much. He was pleasant and amusing, full of droll stories about different people he met between flights in outback towns and stations. Cherry noticed they were mostly girls he talked about.

  He shook his head to her question.

  ‘No, but I made a carrying-seat from canvas for my sister who is married,’ he said, then added with a laugh, ‘The advantages of being an uncle, but also a bachelor.’

  Cherry, her hands black with damp earth and decayed leaf droppings, pushed the hair back from her eyes. She had been down the water-hole, pressing for more water.

  ‘If only that other uncle,’ she said, meaning Stephen, ‘would find a creek or something. I’m afraid we rather tussle over Peter. Stephen watches me all the time to see I’m doing the right thing for his nephew but his greatest service would be to find good clear water.’ She paused and looked at Alan anxiously. ‘Do you suppose this dirty looking water might make Peter ill?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s not dirty when it’s strained and boiled,’ he said. Then he looked up. ‘We’ll have to move on, Cherry, I suppose you realise that? No plane has been heard or seen, which means we’re well off the course. That struggle down there in that hole doesn’t really provide quite enough for us all.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Cherry soberly. ‘I daren’t even wash my hands. And the food too. There’s not much meat on those birds, is there?’

  ‘Stephen says the aborigines live well enough on them.’

  ‘I suppose the jungle is too thick for him to catch a kangaroo or wild buffalo?’

  ‘Stephen thinks that too, and he can’t explore far. I
t takes too long cutting a path and he can’t afford to get lost.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Cherry. ‘None of us can afford to get lost from one another, can we?’

  Alan Donnelly lifted up his linen carrying-bag.

  ‘Hence the doings,’ he said triumphantly, showing his finished article with pride. ‘Now someone can carry Peter comfortably.’

  Cherry smiled.

  ‘You’re very kind,’ she said, then added thoughtfully, ‘I don’t think you quite ate your share of bird soup last night.’

  Alan shrugged.

  ‘When you’ve been responsible for a plane crash,’ he said, ‘you kind of go off your food.’

  ‘Don’t say that again,’ said Cherry firmly. ‘Besides ‒’

  ‘Besides what?’

  He was sitting on the ground cross-legged, putting finishing touches to his carrying-bag. Cherry came towards him, knelt down beside him and touched the work he was doing.

  ‘We are having fun, aren’t we?’ she said lightly. ‘It’s quite an adventure. I wouldn’t even be worrying if it weren’t for all the relatives.’

  Alan dropped his work and took her soiled hand, turned it palm up and looked at it.

  ‘Call that fun?’ he said. ‘You’re not the kind that likes dirty hands, Cherry.’

  ‘But we’re all the same,’ she laughed. ‘We’re all dirty. It is rather fun.’

  ‘All except Tracy,’ said Alan, still holding her hand. ‘You’re much the gamest of us all, young Cherry. I can tell.’ He grinned. ‘I know a lot about girls.’

  ‘Oh no,’ said Cherry. ‘We’re all the same‒’

  She withdrew her hand reluctantly because somehow there was something of warmth in this close companionship.

  ‘Two men can look after themselves, especially if one of them is a bushman like Stephen. And Tracy will always see she is looked after. There are tremendous advantages in being an artist like Tracy. She has to be looked after,’ Alan said.