They Found a Cave (8 page)

‘Umn, can't say! They're mad enough now, and if we don't come to heel like a whistled dog tonight…Reckon rain will come first, though, and we haven't finished beds nor nothing. Come on, Brick.'

The three clattered out again, leaving Cherry thoughtfully cleaning a frying-pan for action, while Nigel gazed moodily over the valley, staring without seeing them at two hawks who were screaming at each other in the blue sky. Suddenly he spoke without turning around. ‘Cherry, Pa made out—he said that—that Jandie's dead.'

She was putting lumps of dough in the hot pan when the words were uttered. It seemed a long, long time afterwards when she found she was still mechanically lifting out dough and still had said no word in reply—only thought and thought about Jandie…Jandie dead? No! Oh,
no
!

‘I couldn't tell you in front of Nippy. Of course I don't believe it, either. Still, she must be pretty bad, mustn't she, or she would have written.'

Cherry wetted her dry lips and got her voice into control. ‘No,' she said, ‘I mean we wouldn't know if she had written. Remember my letters that they opened and destroyed?'

‘Yes, but that's some time ago. If she's all right wouldn't she wonder why she didn't hear from any of us? You know what Jandie is. She'd do something about it. Oh, she'd make a frightful fuss. Write to the Post Office in the village—you know, the place Tas calls “The Township”—Valleeroo they call it—or write to a friend to come and see how things were and report to her. Or else she'd come back herself and make an awful shindy.'

‘Look out! They're coming in with another bed, and I wouldn't tell the others yet. Don't worry. She
must
be all right. You know what Jandie is.'

There was a great clatter and she found herself firmly pushed aside. ‘Look! Burnt tucker again, Cherry! Here,
I
'
ll
cook them.' In the scrimmage which followed until she regained the rights of a cook, Nigel's news was also pushed aside. But it lay in her mind, fretting her like a blackberry thorn in the hand.

The tea was approved after all, and they stuffed themselves with hot dampers spread with honey. There was no more butter until Cherry had collected enough cream from her pans to make some; and since the meat was almost finished, too, Tas promised to trap some mountain parrots for them next day.

‘Parrots are good-oh in a stew s'long as you cut the tails off first,' he explained. ‘You have to cut away the grease bag. Old Mad Dad Williams showed me how.' And as they ate he gave them a lesson in cooking jays and other wild birds, and told them how to make a rabbit taste less like a rabbit by frying with onions and then cooking slowly in milk. ‘But go easy on the onions till we pinch some more,' he added.

 

That night the wind swung from west to north, blowing directly into the uncomfortably wide mouth of the cave, and swirling fine ash from the hearth over everything.

Cherry was lying awake when the first gust swept in. Her sleep had been bothered by silly dreams about birds who asked to be cooked in their feathers, and who shouted ‘Jandie!' angrily at her when she touched them.

She felt ashes on her face and struggled out of bed, trying to cover up the pans of setting milk by the poor light of some dying embers. As she padded about her feet grew cold on the chill floor, and suddenly she felt lonely and utterly miserable. ‘It's horrible, this living in a cave,' she told herself furiously, as she stubbed her toe against her own stone table in the dark. ‘I would never have come if I had known what it would be like!'

The wind mockingly whirled in and tossed hair into her eyes, then it went on to blow down a pile of bark and have more fun with the ashes. ‘Ough! Get out!' muttered Cherry, cross and shivering in her thin pyjamas.

‘Hullo?' The saplings of Brick's bed creaked as he sat up. ‘What's the matter?' he whispered.

‘M
ATTER
!' Cherry raged, standing on one foot and nursing the other. ‘Can't you see—I mean
hear—
what's the matter? The milk all spoiled with ashes! Of course nobody cares but me—and the lot of you just snore away.' She knew this was not true, since there had been no sound from the other beds, but now she didn't care if she woke the whole lot. ‘And I'm cold, and I've hurt my toe—oh, no!
Nothing
'
s the matter!
'

A burst of laughter greeted the end of her woeful tale. ‘Ha! ha! Poor old Cherrystones. She must have trodden on a thorn. Go on, then, spit it out and you'll feel much better.' This together with other ill-timed advice.

Cherry returned to bed nursing both her toe and her wounded dignity, and lay watching Brick blow on the embers till he had a cheerful blaze. Nigel, although he had laughed the loudest at her, did his best to close the cave mouth a little from the gale with a pile of bags and bundles, and was also the one to light a precious candle. He even found a warm stone on the hearth which he wrapped in a scarf and offered to her to warm her feet. She cuddled down with it and her bad temper vanished.

‘Now,' said Nigel, settling down himself, ‘since Cherry has managed to wake everyone but Nippy we might as well talk.' He played with the candle spiked to a board as he spoke.

‘Blow out first, then. We can talk in the dark, can't we?'

‘Yes, but I'm watching to see if Nippy wakes, Tas. I don't want him to hear.'

‘Oh,
Nippy
! Nothing ever wakes
him
!'

Almost as Tas spoke there came a sudden curious creaking, and Cherry noticed that the night was quiet again. The wind had died almost as quickly as it came. By the time Nigel had told his news about Jandie, the creaking sound came again even louder. Then there was a sudden roar, and a violent
CRASH
outside, followed by complete silence.

‘Air raid I suppose?' called Brick, a trifle hoarsely.

Cherry tried to make a little joke, too, for they all struggled against a nameless fear. ‘I do believe Nippy's awake at last,' she said feebly.

‘What's happened? Time to get up?' he asked, and they were able to laugh more freely.

No further sounds came from outside, and Tas, who was investigating with the aid of the candle, called back that it was raining softly. ‘It's what I thought,' he said. ‘A big gum-tree has gone over right bang in front of the cave. Wasn't it a crash!'

‘Glad it wasn't our cave collapsing, anyway.'

‘Yes, Nig, I made sure the roof was falling in.'

They chatted away to restore confidence, peering into the misty night and round the stone walls where the guttering candle threw grotesque shadows.

‘Funny thing,' said Tas, ‘trees almost never fall in a gale of wind in Tassie. It's the cold still nights of winter what bring them crashing down. Reckon the wind loosens the roots, and then later on the frosts complete the trick.'

‘Look out for yourself! Do you want to go over, too?' called Nigel. ‘Can't you wait till morning to see what's fallen in our basement?'

To this they all agreed and went back to bed at once, except Cherry, who peeped first to make sure the goats were not disturbed in their cave beyond.

Cherry rolled over sleepily and heard Nippy feeding his cat, and the other three boys talking at the mouth of the cave. Sunshine bathed the top of the valley, and some small clouds were still tinted by the dawn with the unreal pink of a birthday cake.

‘Come and look,' she heard Tas call, and instantly remembered the events of the night. Springing out of bed, she ran to join them.

It was a huge gum-tree which had heeled over and crashed its length head-down towards the valley. It had fallen at such an angle that only its base, covered in clay in which stones were embedded, and the vast roots which clutched the air like the many arms of an octopus, could be seen from where they stood. A discussion began about how to dispose of it.

‘Why not cut the branches and haul them into the cave for winter firewood?' Brick suggested.

‘Might, later on,' Nigel yawned. ‘Lots to do first.'

‘Crikey, no! It must be cut green or it'll be like iron,' Tas informed them, ‘only I think we'd best not touch it at all. If we make chips round, it's like writing our name on a door-plate for Pa, if he should happen to come this way. Leave it be!'

‘Quite the best idea of all,' agreed Nigel heartily. ‘What sort of a gum is it, anyway?'

‘Oh, just a gum, what they call white gum or manna gum.'

‘Is that all? No other names?'

‘Oh, yes,' Tas grinned, ‘Mad Dad calls it “Viminalis” too. Leastways, he'd say this one wasn't quite true. See the blue bloom on its leaves? They grow like this up here on the sandstone. Reckon if there are six hundred kinds of gums, like Mad Dad says, they mostly look alike.'

So eager was each one to get on with his own affairs that no one bothered to go down by Giant Steps and have a close look at the fallen tree. Its roots soon became an accepted part of the landscape, and certainly no one noticed what an excellent grandstand they made for seeing into Capra Cave.

 

Cherry's round began with an accepted routine. First a race to the tarn with a rather grey towel held round like a shawl. A place well below the drinking-water spring had been set aside for a wash-place. Here Nippy had arranged a neat soap-box of stones with a rush lining, and had spread rushes for a bath mat over the oozing mud. In fact, as Brick had pointed out to him at the time, he did everything except use the place to wash himself. Nippy had smiled sweetly as he ran a black hand through his curls and answered that he
liked
doing things for other people, especially Brick. Words had so nearly passed to blows that Cherry, much shocked herself, hastily referred the matter to the High Court, which was Nigel. Oddly enough he didn't seem nearly as upset as he should have been, Cherry considered.

‘Does he wash himself every day?' asked the Court.

‘Oh, no. He bathes in the lower end of the tarn if it's a hot day and he happens to feel like it, that's all.'

‘Clean his teeth?'

‘No, I don't clean my teeth,' shouted Nippy himself, rushing in. ‘Why should I? Fluffles doesn't use a toothbrush. Whoever heard of a cave-man with a toothbrush?'

The High Court, sitting trimming a stick with a knife, selected a long splinter from the heap and held it up. ‘Perhaps a cave-man shaved off this sort of thing with a stone axe and used it,' he suggested. ‘All right, Nippy, if you can make your own teeth gleam as bright as your cat's with one of these…'

And then the High Court, with decision apparently reserved, had pointed out to Brick and Cherry that the goats were getting too near the drinking water, weren't they? Dismissed, they had gone off grumbling that Old Nig always let Nippy do just what he liked. Cherry privately resolved to speak to him alone sometime, and point out his responsibility.

Her chance had come one milking time when Nigel strolled up and began to fondle Lily.

‘Er, Nig,' she had plunged in hastily, for Nigel had a way of looking past, as though you weren't there, if he didn't want to answer a question, ‘I wanted to ask you something. What about Nippy? We oughtn't to let him—I mean what would Dad say? He wouldn't like him to be dirty, would he?'

‘No,' he turned and smiled slowly at her, still fondling Lily's ears, ‘but I'll see he's not
that.
'

‘Well,' she said, gazing thoughtfully at the foam on the milk, ‘he gets out of everything by saying
you
told him he needn't use a toothbrush. And I was so careful to bring his with us. And he ought to!'

‘I told him savages certainly had the best teeth. Now he wants to try cleaning his with only twigs and things. He'll soon find out that the old toothbrush saves a lot of time, I think. Anyhow, does it matter?'

‘Yes, it does,' she replied with some heat, recalling bitterly her own lengthy washing at the tarn before the sun rose, and the waste of all this good example. ‘Haven't we all been brought up—you know what I mean, Nig. What about our Good Habits like Brushing Teeth and all that? (I say, pass Lily the pile of cherry-tree, will you? I've finished milking.)'

He fetched the green boughs from the rocky shelf and held a piece for the little goat to nibble daintily from his hand. At last he said slowly, ‘I wouldn't worry Nippy with all the old rules and regulations up here if I were you, Cherry. They belong to the old life, don't they?'

‘But Nig, what would Mother think if we let him grow up just a young savage?'

‘Well, that's what he is, isn't he? Stealing food and living hidden in a cave? You see he doesn't whine if we have to go short, and does his fair share of work without growling, and—oh, don't be a nagging old woman! Let him be happy. We don't know how long this is going to last.'

Cherry nearly let the milk-pail fall in her surprise. ‘Why, Nig,' she gasped, ‘I believe you want—I don't believe you care how long we have to stay up here?'

His face relaxed into the old grin. ‘Suits me,' he answered, and made off before she could get in another question.

 

That incident was a week old now, yet she thought of it every time she went to wash. The matter of Nippy's conduct still troubled her at times, though she left him rather pointedly to Nigel, and carried out her own routine just as before. First the chilly wash, then the throwing on of her clothes in the shelter of the wattle thicket, then teeth, and lastly the run back to the cave, aglow with virtue and returning warmth.

Today the pink sugar clouds had turned into white swans, and the sky was deep blue as she looked about her. The kids, Rufty and Tufty, were chasing each other comically in and out of a cave, and a twist of smoke was stealing out, as though from a chimney. It gave her such a happy feeling that she jumped all the clumps of sword grass on the way back and shouted at the entrance, ‘Who's next for the bathroom?'