by Lucy Walker
‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she cried excitedly. ‘Stephen! Look at the birds. There must be millions of them. Where did they come from?’
Hearing her voice Stephen straightened up and turned round. He did not look at Cherry. He stood looking across the lake where one could see only small patches of water between the flocks of birds.
Even as they watched, red-legged hens came out of the water and began to run over the stony ground, hunting with their beaks for grubs they appeared to find in plenty.
‘That is how the natives learn to find food,’ Stephen said casually. ‘By watching the birds.’
‘And the natives eat grubs, of course.’
‘Yes. I’m thankful we haven’t had to resort to it ourselves. Well, come along, we’d better get back. Alan will be parched out with waiting.’
He stooped and picked up Peter. On the beach he sat back on his heels trying to get Peter’s clothes on without fumbling.
‘Give him to me,’ said Cherry, reaching forward for the child.
For a moment it looked as if Stephen would protest, but it was clear, even to him, that there was a mystery about a child’s clothes and a further mystery as to how to get them on over a wet body.
He surrendered Peter to Cherry who immediately demonstrated that the mystery was no more than the know-how married to experience.
‘Very clever,’ Stephen observed. ‘And quick too.’
‘I’m being quick on purpose,’ Cherry said, finishing Peter up to his linen hat. ‘I stayed too long in the water and it might be sundown before Alan gets here.’ She looked up at Stephen anxiously. ‘He would never find his way back in the dark, would he? I mean, you’ll come with him, won’t you?’
Stephen stood up. Cherry was now holding the wriggling Peter in her arms and Stephen put out his hands to take the child.
‘I’ll carry him,’ said Cherry. ‘You’ve made this trip twice to-day already and you have to come back with Alan.’
Stephen took Peter from Cherry without her permission.
‘Don’t be foolish,’ he said as he turned and began to climb up the rocky bank of the lake. ‘You can’t climb and carry a heavy child. You might slip and then Peter would be injured.’
Unburdened, Cherry sprang nimbly from rock to rock and now stood a few feet ahead of the man and child. She turned and looked at Stephen angrily.
‘I would never injure Peter,’ she said. ‘And though you are quite right to worry about him first, it’s not very chivalrous of you to fail to consider I might be injured too.’
Stephen stood quite still and looked at the angry girl. He very nearly laughed. Cherry stood astride two boulders, her slacks were damp where she had drawn them on over her wet body. Her blouse clung to her firmly. Her hair, still wet, looked slightly more urchinish than usual.
It wasn’t altogether the angry impish figure she cut standing there, so much as the lack of logic in her way of thinking, that brought forth that old tantalising half-smile of Stephen’s.
‘My dear child,’ he said, looking Cherry up and down and through. ‘One minute you insist you can carry Peter safely, the next minute you are indignant because there is no sympathy for such injuries as you yourself might sustain in a fall.’
Cherry felt deflated. Moreover, she was suddenly physically conscious of the odd figure she made. How unlike Tracy, he was undoubtedly thinking. Tracy came back to camp sparkling clean and every hair of her sophisticated head in place.
Cherry turned about and went on scrambling up the rocks.
‘I’m sorry. I’m crabby,’ she said. ‘It’s the excitement. And worry too. I’m afraid Alan won’t get here in time.’
‘He will. I’ll show him how to find the blazed trail and Tracy can take him through safely. I’ll let them have the torch and two batteries in case sundown beats them.’
Cherry stopped again.
‘Aren’t you going with him?’ she asked anxiously.
‘No. He’s a grown man, and Tracy knows the way, approximately.’
‘But Tracy ‒’
Cherry had been going to say that Tracy would be incompetent in such a task but she knew one woman must never speak disparagingly of another woman to a man. Especially when the other woman had a special interest in that man.
‘But Tracy,’ she finished lamely, ‘is going to cook the dinner.’
‘We’ll attend to that if Alan hasn’t done something about it already,’ Stephen said. Then after a few more steps upwards which now took them to the jungle edge, ‘In case you doubt Tracy’s capacity to take care of Alan Donnelly in the bush you are underestimating her by a long distance. Tracy, in spite of her stage and ballet training, was reared on a station. On horseback, in a bullock muster, and in the jungle, Tracy is quite superb.’
‘Oh …’ said Cherry, then added to show she was sporting about another girl, ‘she was superb in the plane too. Before it crashed, I mean. It’s just that, well, being a girl she mightn’t want to make this trip twice.’
‘She won’t kidnap Alan, if that is what you are afraid of.’
Cherry flushed again. There was a tang to Stephen’s words and she thought they meant to imply that Cherry herself had claims on Alan.
Cherry could have, that moment, in spite of her heavenly swim and all the wonderful adventure of the homing birds, cried with the frustration of being a woman. A girl can never satisfactorily answer a man back. Her dignity and her private loves were always at stake. Men like Stephen always got the better of one.
‘In addition,’ said Stephen, plunging into the jungle a yard ahead of Cherry, ‘there is the inviolable rule ‒ we work in mixed pairs. One man and one girl. That way lies safety when lost in the bush.’
‘Then I will come back with Alan,’ said Cherry impetuously.
‘And neither of you really knowing the way? Just show me the way we should turn now after we work our way round this old cabbage tree.’
Cherry looked about her. She would have given anything to catch sight of one or some of those broken twigs.
She had to give in.
‘I don’t know,’ she said helplessly.
‘This time it’s the ground you look at,’ said Stephen. ‘The ground is clearer under the tree so I simply kicked a sand path through the leaves.’
‘All right, you win,’ said Cherry. ‘I won’t make any more suggestions.’
‘Tracy saw me making all the tracks,’ said Stephen in a placatory voice. Then suddenly his tone changed to one of teasing. ‘Besides, you would hardly leave Peter to my tender mercies, would you?’
‘Only for some of the time,’ Cherry conceded.
They reached a point when they were pushing their way through thick vines, side by side.
She turned her head and caught Stephen looking at her again with that slightly ironic gleam in his grey eyes.
‘What are you laughing at?’ she asked. There was a hint of challenge in her own blue eyes. She ceased tearing apart the lower bushes while she turned to look into his face.
‘You,’ he said. ‘So earnest, so incompetent when it comes to parting bushes without cutting yourself ‒’
‘At least I’m trying ‒’ said Cherry, indignant.
She let the bush stems fall back, and pushed the hair out of her eyes with the back of a green-stained hand.
‘Granted,’ said Stephen. ‘Now if you were Tracy you’d let me do it with my heavy boots, like this.’
He had great and easy strength for he trod the bushes down at their bases so that they parted and leaned sideways, leaving a passage for the intruders to pass through.
‘Like that!’ he said, as if demonstrating something very simple to a child.
‘If I were Tracy ‒’ began Cherry, exasperated, then stopped.
‘Well what?’ asked Stephen over Peter’s shoulder.
Cherry nearly tossed her head.
‘I would own a station, and a beautiful town house by the ocean down south. And I would marry a tall, rich, ungallant stranger �
�’
‘Why ungallant, and why a stranger?’
‘Well, he wouldn’t be those things to Tracy,’ conceded Cherry. ‘Please, Mr. Denton, if you wouldn’t mind continuing on with those big boots of yours, I’ll pretend ‒ for the time being only, of course, that I’m Tracy. I’ll follow where you lead.’
‘Good,’ said Stephen. ‘Now we’ll be able to make better progress.’
Cherry looked at Stephen’s back as he preceded her through the scramble of trees.
She wished she could laugh, but somehow, that was just what she couldn’t do. She wasn’t Tracy, and nothing she could do about it would alter that fact.
Chapter Nine
They went on their way back through the jungle in silence and truce. Cherry was sorry for her momentary pique because underneath her general crossness with Stephen she was admiring him very much. His bush-craft had been quite staggering and his resourcefulness unlimited. Moreover, in all fairness, she had to admit he was quite right to attach so much importance to his responsibility for the little boy.
‘I’m getting too fond of Peter,’ Cherry thought. ‘I’m getting possessive. That would be fatal. I must do something about being objective.’
Her toughest obstacle in achieving such an end was young Peter himself. He was so delighted with being fresh and clean, the joy of splashing in clear water was still with him. When they got back to the camp he held out his arms to Cherry and Stephen had willy-nilly to give him up. There were men’s chores to be attended to and now was the moment when Cherry, nursemaid or governess, whichever she was, was paid to take over.
Alan had a good coal-fire going preparatory to cooking the ducks.
‘On a spit? Or cover them with hot coals?’ he asked Stephen. ‘We can’t afford to spoil the dinner by the cooking.’
‘Leave it to me,’ said Stephen. ‘I’ll give Cherry a lesson in bush cooking and after that she can take over as camp cook.’
‘Bit tough on Cherry,’ said Alan protectively. He glanced at Cherry and it was clear from the expression on his face he thought Cherry had her hands full with young Peter, and Stephen was asking too much.
‘The rest of us are going to be busy other ways,’ Stephen said dryly.
Tracy came out from the rug camp, holding a bundle of her clothes.
‘I suppose I go with Alan?’ she asked lightly. ‘Well, he can wash his own shirts, but, darling ‒’ this was to Stephen, ‘I’ll manage yours with pleasure, since you so cleverly found the water.’
‘Take the two canvas waterbags,’ said Stephen. ‘It might be pleasant to have more drinking water here too.’ He handed Alan the torch and added, ‘Light too, if you stay dallying with water too long.’
When they had gone Stephen set about mixing some of the boiled water they had in hand with red earth from the edge of the clearing.
‘It’s like a paste,’ said Cherry, watching.
‘That’s exactly what it is.’
He encased two of the birds with this clay paste so that not one part was left bare, then dug a shallow hole under the coals of Alan’s fire. He placed the birds in the hole, put over them the last of the clay and then scraped back the coals for a topping.
‘The earth under the fire is hot,’ he explained. ‘The coals on top will keep it that way. Important thing is to keep a fine scraping of hot cinders on top. Otherwise you can forget them. They’ll be cooked fine and succulent by the time the others return.’
Cherry was impressed. She knew this was the manner in which the aborigines cooked their game but she had never seen it done and did not dream a white man would follow the example.
The short dusk and early night came down on the bush. The only light was from the flickering flames of the camp-fire. Stephen, Cherry and Peter were all tired from the day’s excitement and activity.
Stephen said he refused to be worried because Tracy and Alan were not back from the lake.
‘They had no chance of being back before early evening,’ he said. ‘If they miss the way, even with the torch, they’ll sit down and wait till morning.’
‘But Stephen ‒’
He turned his head in the fireglow and looked at her. Cherry was sitting farther round the fire from him. Neither of them was very near it for it was a warm tropical night and they only needed the fire for light and for cooking.
‘Nobody,’ he said tersely, ‘certainly neither you nor I, would have a chance of finding them in the dark. Don’t forget they have the big torch. They’re grown-up and sensible. They won’t wander about in the bush at night either.’
‘It might be embarrassing for them,’ said Cherry out of Mr. and Mrs. Landin’s old-fashioned background.
Stephen looked at her again. His voice held a mixture of surprise and annoyance.
‘Beggars can’t be choosers,’ he said, ‘and neither can two people lost in the bush choose their company.’ He stopped, then added, ‘For that matter you and Peter and I can hardly be held responsible for the company we’re choosing right now.’
‘Of course,’ said Cherry, but she would have liked to pick up a broken piece of tree branch and throw it at him.
Anyway, it was only human to worry about the other two. Stephen didn’t appear, on this subject, to have even the rudimentary virtues of the human heart.
They sat in silence for some while. Cherry did notice that Stephen did not give himself the treat of the evening cigarette. At least in that respect he had more generosity than Tracy who had kept her own private cache. Stephen was in charge of the pooled resources of the small camp and he might very easily now have taken his own share. He didn’t do this and Cherry felt she had considerable respect for his discipline and his sense of honour on the point. He would wait until Alan Donnelly and Tracy were here to share, and by the pitch blackness of the bush all around them now, Cherry guessed it would be a long wait until morning.
A little later Stephen got up and retrieved the shotgun from its place along the lower branch of one of the bulky trees on the edge of the clearing.
‘I’ll send up a shot to let them know we’ve noticed their absence,’ he said.
He discharged one barrel into the air.
Peter, who was dozing, woke with a cry.
‘I ought to feed Peter,’ Cherry said. She couldn’t mention the fact that for a long time she had been wondering about those ducks under the embers, and every time she wondered her mouth watered. The thought of food made her more hungry than its relative absence had made her during the preceding two days.
‘We’ll crack one of the birds,’ Stephen said. ‘The other we can leave for breakfast.’
He raked aside the embers and with a stout stick levered out of its bed one of the hard clay-encased ducks. He took a sharp-edged stone to crack the case. It fell apart in two pieces. There, steaming, succulent, and emitting the most glorious smell, lay the perfect roasted duck.
‘The aborigines do it with the feathers on,’ said Stephen, ‘but I spared you that.’
Cherry brought one of the plates salvaged from the plane and Stephen tipped the duck on to it, carefully retaining the tiny residue of fat and meat juice in the bottom of the clay cup.
‘That’s for Peter,’ he said.
‘But it’s fatty,’ warned Cherry.
‘But still very good for him. On this point I’m the best judge.’
‘But you don’t know anything about children’s stomachs. He’s still a baby.’
‘So are the aborigines when they start taking this kind of soup.’
Cherry in her anxiety to see that Peter was fed rightly had almost forgotten her own hunger.
‘He can suck some of the bird flesh ‒’ began Cherry.
‘And spoon up this meat juice too. Fat and all. I never heard such a lot of nonsense as you women think and talk when it comes to a child short on the food ration and virtually lost in the bush. Does it occur to you Peter has probably lost a pound weight in the last fifty-six hours?’
This was unfair, for Cherry
had given Peter most of her own bird soup as well as his own ration. He was the only one to have the powdered milk and the biscuits. She could say nothing of this, of course.
She wished she could give in gracefully to Stephen on the point but her judgment was all against the fatty meat juice and she had Peter’s well-being at stake.
‘He can have my share of duck,’ she said almost aggressively. ‘As a matter of fact I don’t like duck anyway. I never did ‒’
Stephen was standing quite still above the gently smoking dinner. He looked through the firelight at Cherry. His silence made her nervous and therefore talkative.
‘You know, when we have it for Christmas dinner sometimes, instead of turkey, I always have to pretend to eat it, and pretend to like it … for Mummy’s sake. But really ‒’
‘Big children, as well as little children,’ said Stephen evenly, ‘will eat what’s set before them when there’s a food shortage. Hunger is a good healthy antidote to faddism.’
Cherry flushed. The warmth and fire had dried out her clothes and she stood before him, the collar of her self-dried blouse sprouting out from under her chin like an angry frill. Her slacks, alas, had shrunk an inch or two; her vagabondish haircut ‒ so badly in need of a trim ‒ hung wispishly in her eyes. Her feet were firmly planted apart and Stephen had the illusion he was facing a small feminine tornado about to break loose.
He bent down and carefully put the clay bowl with its precious residue of meat juice on the ground, then straightening himself up he walked round the dish of roast duck and with quiet deliberation took Cherry’s shoulders in his hands. Holding her firmly, he looked down into her face.
‘People get a bit touchy in these situations,’ he said quietly.
Alan Donnelly had said that earlier in the day and for one deflated moment Cherry wondered if she was turning out to be one of those people who ‘just couldn’t take it’.
Tracy’s relaxed and apparent indifference to the oddness and the rigours of the experience were evidently the correct fronts to put on in these circumstances.
Cherry admired Tracy for that bored calmness. So, evidently, did Stephen and Alan.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cherry but her lips trembled and the words choked a little in her throat.
