by Lucy Walker
Her chin went up. She pushed her hat over one eye. The Wentworths were worth where they went!
She hoped her back view, as she trudged over the sand dunes, would pass muster. Myree’s backside view would be much more entrancing.
Forward Kimberley Jessica! Into the pale yellow gauze of the north-west sky! Take a bearing on that distant rock peeking out of the sand hills now and again ‒ just to be sure.
She was a good navigator. He trusted her to get there!
She loved him for that.
Did she say ‒ loved?
Chapter Nine
Kim forgot how many days she had been walking. Maybe it was three. Maybe four. At night she slept when she had to; and only where she could half lie, half sit propped-up so she could keep her hat on her head.
She had by-passed the stand of banksia trees, but she still had a third of her water in the canvas bag. She’d gone on very short rations indeed. Yesterday, fearful of forgetfulness, she had begun saying over and over again ‒ I must not put my compass down, even at night. I must keep my hat on my head!
When she realised she was repeating these words every few minutes she became worried for fear this was a sign of desert-happiness. Or was it desert-haziness? Maybe just other names for ‘sun-struck’. She must ask someone sometime. Whichever, it was a sickness that began with throwing away one’s clothes, then all possessions. Finally one’s hat. After that ‒
She must think about interesting things. And people. Like the other members of the Expedition, for instance. She would think about George Crossman coming over the sand dunes to rescue her. Next she would think about Myree, and about beautiful things packaged together with Myree. That would be to show she was not desert-happy. Just magnanimous.
She went back to her litany. I must keep the compass in my hand. I must keep my hat on my head. I must remember not to have another drink till sundown. I must begin thinking of George and Myree and Stephen ‒
Stephen’s eyes reminded her of the worst part of the sand storm. Red and brown, all mixed up. One day, back at Base, she’d gone to George Crossman’s caravan and found Stephen leafing through George’s notes while the other man was away with a field party. Stephen had laughed off his presence by saying he was looking for a reference to an important text ‒ Key to West Australian Wild-flowers. Kim had offered to lend Stephen her own.
Now, walking mile upon mile over red-brown sand dunes she realised she hadn’t believed Stephen that day. Not really.
What had he wanted in George’s notes?
It was time to say her litany again. She put her hand on top of her head to make sure she had not yet thrown away her hat.
Her feet told her she was suddenly walking on clearer ground. It was hard and firm. She wasn’t lifting her knees waist-high to take each step. She looked down and noticed for the first time that through the sandy overlay small plants and shrubs were dustily showing their heads. She was out of the sand dunes. She looked up again.
Mirage lay across the middle distance shrouding the horizon with its back-haze. Through the dazzle of gold and deep yellow and red she could see the dark distorted figure of some moving creature coming towards her. Dingo, emu, kangaroo, or man!
This black thing was foreshortened. It gangled with strange horizontal lines like the TV set when it went wonky.
Next the figure seemed vertical, yet shapeless and mystifying. Then it came out of the mirage into the near-distance.
It was a man. It was Stephen Cole.
Kim felt crying time was due at last, except she never cried on principle. What’s more she only wanted to cry because it was not George Crossman. She had decided ‒ somewhere on the long walk ‒ that she loved George Crossman. Well, she had to love someone, hadn’t she? He was the best and the nicest and the dearest ‒
She put her hand on her head again. Her hat was safely there. She didn’t have to try any more. She could give up, as from here.
She smiled, just that much cheerily, not noticing she had dropped the water-bag, and the supply-bag, and the compass. But not her hat.
Stephen came on over the sand-strewn distance. Then he broke into a run. Kim stood still.
After all she was dreadfully tired!
Stephen waved both his hands over his head as he came loping fast across the wounding ground to where Kim stood ‒ shock-still ‒ like the bare-leafed, wind-whipped sapling tree nearby.
He came to a halt in front of her. And stared. He took in a deep breath and shook his head as if, for one moment he was wordless. Then he straightened his shoulders.
‘So!’ he said mustering a grin from a near-stunned face. ‘The lost is found! I have you all to myself again, Petso.’
Kim could not smile any more because it hurt her sunburn too much.
He slipped his arm round her and let her lean against him.
After a while Stephen stood her off from him.
‘Listen, sweetie. Are you registering?’ He searched her unclear eyes with his red-brown ones. ‘Where have you left John? Remember him? Boss-cocky of the Expedition? Where’s the jeep?’
Kim shook her head, too tired at the moment to remember.
‘He stayed behind ‒’ Her throat was cracked and dried and it hurt her to talk. ‘He’s with the jeep, and ‒’
‘And with his specimens? Is that it? They were too important a find for him to leave? Good heavens! Just how important were they, love? Can you remember?’
Kim shook her head. This was because it buzzed and whizzed. The skin was burned off her nose and forehead. Her hands and arms too.
Then she remembered she had to tell Stephen that John Andrews was roughly three to four walking days away in the sand dunes. And she didn’t know anything about specimens.
Only about rusty radiator water which was all John had to drink. It was more important anyway.
She was desert-happy all right because it took her a long time to explain the exact direction. She’d noted the land marks.
Stephen took her by the shoulders and stared deep in her eyes again.
‘Listen, sweetheart,’ he said. ‘I need to rescue John, the records and the specimens. Okay? Can you do one thing more? My Land-Rover’s hit the bomb over to the right. It’s useless. George is with his own Land-Rover six hundred yards over the rise to the west. Can you make it?’
She nodded. ‘I can make it ‒ if you go for John. Now.’
‘I’m going for John, Kim. I’m fit and can go way-out faster through the sand dunes than any girl. And you’ve given me the land marks. I’ve my ski sandshoes along with me. George has a pair with the rescue kit too. Tell George I’ve gone on ahead because it’s urgent. I’ve my own water-bag. Are you receiving, Kim?’
She nodded.
‘Right. Tell George to bring the Desert-Rescue kit for Man and Vehicle. He’ll know what that is. The sandshoes will halve his travelling time. With the rescue kit and its nylon matting we’ll bring the jeep out. I’ll get there before George, so tell him I’ll check on the gear. Specimens too.’
Kim nodded again.
She supposed saying ‘yes’ to everything ‒ even the bit about John’s specimens ‒ was all right now.
She couldn’t think of anything else to say anyway.
She was desert-happy all right.
‘Get going my Petso,’ Stephen said gently. ‘Six hundred yards over the rise. Can do?’
She nodded.
He was going for John. That was all that really mattered.
Six hundred yards! To Kim it was the hardest stretch of all.
She walked stiffly up the rise, then down over the other side to where she could see the Land-Rover in the distance. George was kneeling beside one of the wheels tightening the nuts on the hub. She was almost up to him when he turned his head and looked over his shoulder.
Then stood up ‒ as if seeing a mirage himself. Kim stopped and gazed at him vaguely. She was really here? She wasn’t sure, but she thought she had made it.
His face seemed to cr
ease up. He looked as if he might be the crying one. The spanner dropped from his hand with a clang. Then he held out his arms. Wide.
Without a word Kim trudged on, straight into them. He wrapped his arms round her and held her tight.
‘Dear little sweetheart Kim ‒’ he was saying, a note of incredulity in his voice. He kissed the top of her head.
‘That’s awfully nice ‒’ Kim thought. ‘George kissing me ‒’
He led her to the shade side of the Rover and sat her down on the ground. He then dragged the vacuum cooler from the back of the car and, opening it up, mixed her a drink of tinned milk and egg powder. He put into this a tot of rum from the First Aid box. Then he sat down on the ground beside her, holding her hand round the mug so she would not drop it: his other arm around her.
When she had finished the drink she sighed. For five silent minutes George cradled her against his shoulder watching the new life creep back into her poor sun-ruined face. When she opened her eyes he was amazed to see them alight with a sort of determined will.
‘You must go for John ‒’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Of course.’
‘It’s important ‒ you see ‒ he has special specimens ‒’
George’s eyebrows went up. ‘He has to be found for his own sake, Kim.’
‘I know. But his specimens must be saved too. He stayed because of them. And for a record for Myree too. You see, Stephen’s gone for them. The records I mean‒’
George frowned. He sat quite still thinking hard. Then he looked at Kim again, long and thoughtfully.
‘We’re right on the station track, here, Kim. Could you make it in my Rover?’
‘Yes.’
‘Stephen’s vehicle is out of action. We’ll have to make sure we get John’s jeep back, and going ‒’
She nodded again.
‘If you can’t make it back to the homestead, Kim, just park by the side of the track. We’ll come for you sooner than later. There’s everything in the Rover. Water, food …’
She was nodding again, like a little old wise woman who was minute by minute coming back from some distant fantasy place.
He pulled her to her feet and sat her in the car while he removed the gear he needed to take with him to salvage John and the jeep. When he had finished he came round to the drive seat and looked at Kim again.
‘You are right on the station track,’ he repeated. ‘Sixty miles by the speedometer. Can do?’
‘Can do!’ she replied solemnly. She couldn’t smile because the sunburn hurt too much. She started up the engine instead.
She put her head out of the window, the hat-ridiculous funnier than ever. George took her face tenderly between his two hands and kissed her full on her sun-cracked lips. Then he stood back.
‘Atta girl!’ he said. ‘You’ll make it!’
‘I’m on my way.’ She let out the clutch pedal and pushed the gear stick into first. Then on her way she was. Her dust-cloud was like a flag of disdain for all things frightening in the outback.
In the blazing static stillness of sundown, some hours later, Kim drove up to the broken-down station. She braked to a stop, then sat looking at the homestead.
She rested her elbow on the steering wheel and her chin in the cup of her hand and gazed at the desolate skeleton of what had once been a home. Clear-sighted sense had been coming back to her in waves ever since she had left George.
She stared at the straggling letters scrawled in ochre on the wall.
Kim Wentworth Was Here!
and underneath ‒
So Was John.
She cocked her head on one side and thought about that message.
‘Famous words, but not last ones!’ she thought.
At the same hour, six days later, John Andrews drove up in his jeep, alone. Stephen and George had made it out to the dunes in two days and one night. The sandshoes, ski sticks and male strength had given them vastly superior speed to Kim. Then there had been a day or two to fix the jeep, and another day to get it across the dunes.
It was sundown when John dropped out of the drive seat to the gravelly earth. Kim was sitting on the last of the doorsteps of the old ruin. She looked at him with a considering air. It was important, she felt, not to make this moment too dramatic. After all, he was the Boss, and she the Hired Hand. He wouldn’t want a ‘scene’. She would make it casual.
She looked at him as he came towards her, looming in his tall rangy way above where she sat. He looked down at her, not smiling, but not anything else either. Sort of considering, she thought.
Kim picked up a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches from the step and held them up to him.
‘I heard you coming,’ she remarked ‒ very very casually. ‘I recognised the sound as belonging to the jeep. It had to be you because I knew you wouldn’t leave Duboi … What was the rest of that name?’
‘Duboisia,’ he said taking the packet from her and shaking out a cigarette. He lit one, flicked out the match and looked down at her again. ‘You guessed the first thing I’d like would be a cigarette?’
‘Yes. You said you were running short when the sand storm blew up.’
‘It was kind of you to remember.’
John leaned one hand on the door frame and stared past the fallen outhouses to the sunset. A tree with its die-back finger was a black etching silhouetted against a sky so vivid it wounded the eyes.
‘You know ‒’ Kim went on conversationally, after a minute’s silence, ‘we really could have saved a lot of time ‒’
John did not move his position but his eyes came round to hers again.
‘How?’
‘Well! … Apart from sturt pea, mulla mullas and spinfex there’s a clump of Duboisia down the slope behind that old broken-down woolshed. I found it the day before yesterday on one of my walks. It’s probably not the special hopwoodi one. Then again, it could be ‒’
John straightened up as if an electric charge had gone through him. He stared at her.
‘For crying out loud!’ he almost exploded. ‘You didn’t touch it? You didn’t fool round with it? You didn’t ‒?’
‘I didn’t do anything with it,’ Kim said coldly, chin up in the air. ‘I was too busy doing the housework. I swept and cleaned ‒ that was quite something, considering the dust that had blown in here. And I have your dinner nearly ready.’
John stared at her.
‘My dinner?’ he asked slowly.
‘Well, yours and George’s and Stephen’s. Why haven’t they come? I don’t even have a triangle to remind them it’s the hour for eating. Of course the sunset ought to tell them ‒
John’s expression was like the one he’d worn at the Mount when she’d first seen him. It could have meant he would like to upend her and smack her ‒ hard. All because she was constantly full of surprises.
A cigarette waiting? And dinner too!
His hand went bade on the door jamb.
‘They’ve gone on north-east from here,’ John said. ‘They’d left the second Land-Rover a mile or two in the sand north of where you were picked up. We fixed it temporarily. Then we found an old wool track. The map showed it led to Bim’s Stopover. That’s a place boasting a radio service, a store, garage, pub, and airstrip.’
Kim nodded. ‘They want to let the world know we’re all well?’
‘That, and to get some replacements for Stephen’s Rover and my jeep. The Rover had pranged the sump box. I’ve lost a tooth from the crown wheel of the jeep.’ He paused. Then added ‒ ‘We’re stuck here for a day or two, Kim. The jeep wouldn’t last another twenty miles.’
Kim stood up now.
‘That’s nice,’ she said as she turned towards the doorway. ‘You can study the Duboisia behind the woolshed, and I can draw it, record it and tag it. All’s well that ends well, because we’ll not be wasting more time, will we?’
‘Where are you going, Kim?’ John asked abruptly.
‘To stir the stew. It’s made of an assortment of tinned
stuff, but not as bad as Peck’s pineapple-and-jam concoction.’
He watched her as she passed him, stepping her way precariously through the broken doorway. He threw his cigarette stub on the ground, put his foot on it, then strode after her.
‘Kim!’ She turned and looked at him for a long second. He held out his hand. Slowly she put her own hand in his.
’Kim?’ There was something dangerous ‒ yet possibly tender too ‒ in his eyes. They were a very dark blue at this moment. Dark as thunder on the mountains. Or pain.
‘Don’t say anything, John. You don’t have to.’
Their eyes met and their hands held.
‘Damn all heretics!’ he said suddenly. ‘It’s like ‒ it’s like taking advantage of a very young, but great-hearted girl.’
He might have kissed her then, Kim thought. A fellow adventurer, as it were. But the ‘very young’ description spoiled it.
‘The water in the trough by the bore is warm, John,’ she said, her eyes unwavering. ‘It’s wonderful that it comes up out of the ground, isn’t it? A sort of built-in hot-water system.’
He dropped her hand and turned away.
‘If I haven’t longed for a bath!’ was all he said, but he slammed his hat back on his head with a certain fury as he went out.
It was not a day or two, but a full ten days, before George Crossman and Stephen came back with one repaired Land-Rover, and some of the more urgent spares for John’s jeep.
Those ten days had been all-heaven for Kim, though she declined to mention this fact to John. She had to appear and behave ‒ as he did ‒ absolutely professionally. This was specially necessary as some more specimens of the less important of the two Duboisia species were found in their natural state in other areas not far distant from the homestead. But, alas, no sign of the prized hopwoodi.
As John hunted and found certain specimens, so did Kim draw and make records for him. Day by day they recovered from their privations. Neither mentioned them again. They had more important things to do ‒ like be real dedicated botanists.
When John went off by himself, knapsack over his shoulder ‒ which he did most of the daylight hours ‒ Kim spent any spare time she had painting in true colours a copy of the sketch drawings she had done for her own private record, from the coast all the way to Manutarra. She brought up to date her notebook, with its drawings of her own interesting but botanically unimportant finds hereabouts. Candle-spiked hakea, the wild lilac hibiscus, yellow-flowered red-nutted illyarrie, the crimson native pomegranate, popflower and the lovely mauve spiked feather-flower.
