Sunlit Shadow Dance (24 page)

He brought them to the
outstation where he lived and showed them to a 2 bedroom cottage
next to his house
. He said this was their new home for as long as
needed.

The house had a telephone so
they could ring the world and a mail plane came to the main station
each week delivering mail. The station cook also went to town once
a fortnight to buy food and
on the next day a delivery was made to his Uncle’s
outstation. In return to for this place to stay he would do work on
the station to help his Uncle fix roads, fences and machinery,
check waters and help with stock work. He wanted no wages, just a
place to stay for him and his family.

Finally Vic felt safe knowing no one could
find them or reach them here. The only people who knew were people
he would trust his life to.

Jane was surprised at the joy she felt in
discovering a new family, Vic’s mother, sister and uncle. They were
all affectionate and kind, wonderful with the children and full of
the stories of the land. She found she could sit and listen to them
for hours.

She loved the fact that they shared Vic’s
blood and some of his looks, their dark skin and dark eyes were
just the same, though each had their own special bits, his sister
had blond highlights to her hair which Vic assured Jane were
natural for some desert people, his mother had beautiful glossy
back skin and hair which shone when she brushed it. His uncle,
Jack, had a tough wiry body so much like her Vic though his hair
was now a grizzled grey.

Vic’s mother and sister stayed for a week,
living next door in the Uncle’s house though in truth they were as
much in her house as his, and Jane loved it that way.

On the third day Uncle Jack appeared with
a quiet horse and led the children around the yard, the next day he
came with two quiet horses for Jane and Vic. They followed him as
he rode around the home paddock, first taking them to a little
rocky hill where the heavy bodied kangaroos, which he called ‘big
boy wallaroo’, grazed. From here they had a panoramic view and he
showed them the lie of the land. They rode on checking the fences
and Jack showed them his special places and the signs of the land,
the sweet open grass flats where cows and calves played, the places
of water along the creek, the places in hidden trees where the
cattle camped, two more little rocky hills where more kangaroos
grazed.

He finished by saying, “Now you
not get lost, but more better you stay inside fence unless you come
with me
.
Don’t want picaninny belong you lost in outside bush, too hot, no
water, big snakes, maybe devil devil man.”

Vic grinned and punched his
uncle on the arm. “Ah, go long with you Jack, devil devil man only
children story, me blackfella too, not get lost. But still we best
be careful
with the children in the bush.”

Jane nodded, she understood Jack’s and Vic’s
warning that this could be a dangerous place.

After a week Vic’s Mum, Rosa
and his sister Jill went back to Alice, saying they had a wedding
to
organize,
giving Jane and Vic a sly wink. Each week Jane rang her parents and
Anne and David and little Annie had now learnt to take turns to say
hello too and tell simple stories like “today the chooks laid three
eggs,” or “yesterday we saw a big goanna”.

Other times Vic rang others to
check on the wedding arrangement, that is what he told
Jane anyway, though
she knew it was a bit more than that. But that was fine, Vic would
tell her anything she needed to know and she trusted him just
so.

One day, when Vic was out fixing a grader
which had broken down on the main station road, there was a knock
on the door. It was Uncle Jack who had been out checking windmills
and was now finished for the day.

He said, “Today Vic not home till late, more
better you come and have dinner with me.”

She followed him to his house
with the children and went to help him
prepare dinner. He shook his head and
showed her to a chair, giving her an album of photos to look at
instead. He said, “I good cook, I fix the dinner. You marry family,
you become family. So this family photo book from great grandfather
to now. You look. That way you know your family.”

So she sat there and began to turn the
pages. First she was looking at old sepia photos, men with big hats
and ladies with long heavy skirts, other men leading and driving
camels, others again with black skin and few clothes with big
spears and throwing sticks, one proud black man carrying a big
kangaroo on his shoulder, then several men riding horses behind
cattle, horse races, old cars and trucks with their proud owners
driving along scrubby roads.

As Jane worked her way towards
the back she recognized the clothes were becoming modern and the
cars were newer looking. She recognized a lady who was a young
Rosa, with three children standing around her and a small baby in
her arms. She looked carefully at each child around her, two boys,
like Vic but different, then the girl, perhaps five or six, she
realized that this was Jill
ie. Vic must be the baby in his mother’s arms.
Rosa looked so proud with her children, particularly her little
baby.

It made Jane smile inside with
pleasure
.
She knew that, but for change of skin color, it could have been her
when she held her babies David and Annie, she knew and owned that
look too. Next page there was a picture of a shiny new helicopter
and a proud young man standing beside it, then a second picture of
a tribe of black kids climbing all over it as the same man watched
over them with huge pride.

Uncle Jack walked over as she
stared at her Vic in the flush of success. “Fine looking boy, heh.
Not bad for a desert blackfella to own that thing. Good thing about
our Vic is he never forgot his blackfella roots, he spent half that
first day taking all the nieces and nephews and the rest of the
town camp
kids for rides in that machine. Only pity was that boy
could have been a football star, so quick and balanced. Could have
played for a top Melbourne AFL team, made lots of money, seen his
name in lights. But his big sister, Jillie, she would have none of
it.

“
She would tell him, “Sure you
could make the big time boyo, but what then? What when you is 30
and is all smashed up?” So she made him stay at school, do his
lessons, get a job and apprenticeship, learn to fly. The day he
bought that machine I had to tell her she was right, but a part of
me always wanted to see him running down the field, ball on a
string, kicking it straight through the centre of the MCG goals,
would have been a pretty sight.”

Jane folded the book closed and
walked over and hugged the Jack. “I suppose being married to Vic
makes you my family too. I like being part of this family and
having and uncle like you. You must tell me all the stories of Vic
as a little boy
along with your own children.”

So they shared a meal and he told her story
after story, most were funny but some sad. As he talked more and
more she felt she belonged, this was her real family now and she
was joined to them.

When the meal was finished he went to a
drawer and pulled out a package wrapped in a tattered piece of oil
cloth. He placed it in her hands.

She unwrapped it. It was an old book,
bound in a leather cover with its edges frayed and marked, tied
closed with a faded red ribbon. She carefully untied the ribbon and
opened it. There was something old and precious in the feel of this
manuscript, its weight, the heavy paper, the marks of all the hands
which had held it. She turned the pages, seeing brightly colored
ink drawings and delicately drawn lettering. She could not read the
writing as characters and words were unfamiliar.

Jane looked at Jack with inquiring eyes.
“What is it?”

He said,
“I do not know, It belonged to
my Grandfather Vikram, it has been passed to each generation for
someone to mind. It should now go to Vic. As you have more
education maybe you could find out the story it tells, does it tell
from where he came, or is it a religious book, like a bible. Now
there is a new generation in our family, it is a thing for you and
Vic to have. But before it passes from me I would like to know what
it says, what is the story it tells. Could you find out for me, so
I can know its story. I have held it in my hands many times. But
its inside is a mystery to me. I do not have the learning to
discover what it says. I would like if you can do that for me.
Then, when I give it to Vic, I can give him proper instruction in
its meaning. I think that is what I should do before I pass it
on.”

Jane nodded. “I am not sure
quite where to begin. But I am sure I can find out. So yes, I will
do it for you. It is best if you keep the book, to keep it safe.
But I will take photos of its pages. That way I can find a person
who can read these words and tell me what it says and
then I can tell you
in turn.”

Next day she borrowed Vic’s
mobile phone which had a camera and carefully worked her way
through this old book, carefully turning each thick
yellowed page, some
smudged with dirt or fingermarks. There were about 150 pages with
writing and a few blank pages towards the end. The writing was like
nothing she knew but a few of the pictures seemed to have a
familiar feel about them, one of a brightly colored parrot. She was
sure she had seen similar flitting through this desert landscape.
There were also a couple of images of men in long flowing garb
leading and riding camels and a couple landscape type pictures,
carefully drawn using a range of ink colors which seemed to be
Australian. There were also drawings of landscapes with jagged high
snow covered mountains and lush valleys. They seemed from another
land, perhaps around the high mountains of the Himalayan
ranges.

However the writing gave no
clues, nothing was in a language she could understand. The script
seemed different from any language she had seen, many letters or
symbols with complex curves and curls. She decided she needed to
talk to a university professor with knowledge of languages from the
Indian sub
continent or Middle East to begin to decipher this
story.

Jacob left Beck behind feeling bemused and a
bit frustrated. The aborted sex had left him full of desire – not
just for Beck but for any raunchy hot young thing between the
sheets. By the end of the night he had satisfied that itch with
another girl he had picked up at the hotel bar, buying her a few
drinks and sweet talking his way into her pants.

But after he had had her a
couple times he found he had little to talk about with her, she was
just a good time girl and was happy to go on her way looking for
more adventure before the night was done.
When she was gone he fell into a deep
sleep.

He woke early, wishing Beck was lying
beside him. He would have liked to start his morning having sex
with her, but more he enjoyed talking to her, her mind was sharp
like his own and she challenged him.

But she was not
there
. He
knew she was now torn about what she had been doing, caught up by a
guilty conscience. He wondered what led to her change of heart, had
she found out something she was not telling him. In the end he
decided that it had been a fair trade, the money for the
information she had given him. Now they could both get on with
their own lives’.

As he showered and dressed he
felt re-energi
zed. He could sense this story was now within his grasp. It
had that feel; his gut instinct told him it was able to be cracked
open. This girl had gone into hiding under another name, he now had
that name, the first name at least, and he had an approximate
location for where she now lived, a coastal town somewhere within a
hundred or so kilometers of Brisbane.

He spent a few hours on the
internet
in
his hotel room, familiarizing himself with the geography of this
area. After his searching he decided that either the Sunshine Coast
or the Gold Coast, or perhaps the very north of NSW were most
likely. There were loads of apartments for rent in the Gold Goat
and also lots of other short term accommodation options,
backpackers, caravan parks and the like.

A backpacker place was also unlikely with
two small children. Her place was unlikely to be the top end of the
market, these would want references and identification, two small
children would also be a negative. That is unless she now had a
sugar daddy and he could not discount this, she picked up the men
easily, some sort of sex and charm offensive. But her new boyfriend
sounded like someone more her age, not a rich dude.

So the bottom end of the real estate
market, the scummy flats which just wanted cash rent and no
questions asked, perhaps a caravan park where she rented a van with
cooking facilities, that felt about right. The Gold Coast had a lot
of these places, but once you went down to the bottom feeders the
pickings thinned out. There were also quite a lot of these places
between Tweed Heads and Byron Bay in the far north of NSW. Then
there were a lot more places in Sunshine Coast, from Noosa south
but overall these were a bit higher class with less chances for
anonymity.