Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (16 page)

He got up, collected his notes and locked them in a drawer. He switched off the light and went to his bedroom. He was weary but satisfied with his solution. The grey of early morning was visible in the sky. He felt a great relief that after all he would not have to get rid of Crofts altogether—he would not have to contemplate the possibility of being trapped here alone with his wife and son for ever. As he took off his clothes and climbed into his bed he said quietly to himself, ‘I'll test him.' And he smiled as he slid at once into a deep dream-filled sleep that took him back to his childhood where nothing yet was settled.

Beyond the western wall of the room that Ward Rankin had just left and across the passage, its doors open to the night air at either end, Ida lay on her bed watching the reflection of the pre-dawn sky in her tilted mirror.

When Crofts had walked into the Springtown hall she had known at once how right she had been not to go to his fight. She had not asked him if he had won or lost. It had happened without words: the realisation that they trusted each other. He had offered to help with the supper arrangements and they had worked side by side among the other people. Every now and then they had looked up and smiled at each other, enjoying the intense privacy of their new understanding. That was all.

A faint eucalypt scent, which had gathered during the day along the creek, drifted now through the house as the air stirred before the dawn. She thought of him less than a hundred yards away in his quarters—which she had never seen—and wondered if he were lying awake too. She would ask him at breakfast if he had smelled the gum trees, and they would both know what was meant by the question. Whatever else, they
would
be friends—she could not bring herself to imagine them becoming lovers. It was too much to consider now that it had become a possibility, it was too big a break with the way she had led her life until now.

There would be no need to offer resistance to anything, she assured herself. And from down the track beyond the stockman's hut she heard the rooster crow.

•

Dressed only in his pyjama shorts Gil came out onto the verandah and stood gazing through into the kitchen where Ward Rankin, freshly showered and dressed, was making toast and frying bacon. The radio was much louder than usual. An operatic duet.

‘How many rashers?' Rankin shouted above the music.

Gil went into the kitchen and stood frowning at the radio. Rankin sang snatches of the song, in tune.

‘Where's the Eno?' Gil growled.

Gradually the others drifted out sleepily, roused by the music and the smell of frying bacon. Rankin made breakfast for each of them. It was Tuesday, and Gil would be returning to Gympie on Thursday. He wanted to go pig hunting today. No one seemed interested in his plans.

‘Robert'll be in it,' Gil said.

‘Robert's going to be too busy for pig hunting today,' the station owner said cheerfully, and everyone looked at him. He wiped up the last of his egg with a piece of toast and washed it down with coffee.

Ida said evenly, ‘But today is a holiday, surely.'

‘Not officially,' Rankin replied without looking at her, lighting a cigarette and getting up from the table. He went out through the screen door and down the steps. The duet was reaching its embattled climax. Gil got up and turned it off. ‘Jesus Christ!' he said. The skin around his right eye was purple and swollen.

Robert Crofts woke from a dreamless sleep and stared at the grey tin of the unlined ceiling above him. It was stifling in the hut and he realised it must be very late. Habit prompted him to get up at once, but as he swung his legs over the side of the bed he checked himself and lay down again. Suddenly the idea of physical work seemed to him repulsive—in fact, he found it hard to imagine ever being enthusiastic about such work again.

He put his hand up to his cheek. It was tender and puffy. His body ached all over as if each one of his muscle fibres had been stretched to its limit. It was not an unpleasant sensation, but it made lying down seem a desirable and luxurious thing to do.

He began to plan his day. He must see her alone, not up at the house with all the others hanging around, but down here on the path where he could really look at her and see again the expression in her eyes. They could stare at each other for a while. He would lie here until she came by to collect the eggs. A while later he heard someone moving around in the grass outside and his heart jumped. He got up and went on to the verandah. Ward Rankin was filling the dogs' bowls with water from a plastic bucket. He and the two dogs looked up as the stockman emerged.

‘Good morning, Robert. How's the bruise?' Rankin asked and turned away, starting back up the path towards the shed and calling over his shoulder, ‘I'll see you over here in a minute.'

The stockman watched Ward Rankin walking away then went back into the hut and put his shirt on. By the time the station owner had given him his orders and the stockman was having breakfast over at the house she was downstairs in the shower. He tried lingering but Rankin hurried him along, almost as if he suspected something. Gil came down to the truck with him afterwards and said he would be up the creek looking for pigs later and would stop by for a chat. He remarked that Alistair would not be with him. He seemed unusually subdued.

The stockman drove away along the track in the International without having seen her. The job was just about the worst he had ever come across—another Ward Rankin fencing special, he thought, as soon as he saw it. He found it extraordinary that the station owner had really asked him to start on it today. He stood by the parked truck and surveyed the task that lay ahead of him. It would take him weeks. He was ten kilometres up the creek from the homestead at a point where the steep sides of the valley narrowed abruptly.

Twenty years ago Rankin had fenced off an alluvial flat here with the intention of irrigating lucerne. As with so many other projects he had begun, he had failed to follow up on this plan beyond fencing and ploughing the stretch. The black wattle and dogwood had claimed the flat years ago. Each autumn, when they brought the freshly mustered herd down, calves would find their way in to the enclosure through holes in the wire and would be unable to get out again. Their mothers would get upset and it would take hours to sort out the confusion before they could proceed to the yards. Rankin had been threatening for years to dismantle the tangle of entrapments he had created.

Crofts walked over and kicked one of the leaning posts—there was rabbit netting topped by two plain and one barbed wire enclosing almost twenty-five hectares. He was thoroughly disgusted. In this muggy heat it was a sentence of hard labour. Why? He kicked the post again and suddenly it struck him how bright-eyed and glittery Rankin had been this morning—all juiced up on that mad brigalow energy again no doubt.

He turned his back on the fence and walked away from it. He could not bring himself to touch it at the moment. He strolled on down the track some way, following its meanderings among the great ironbarks. Rankin had packed him a lunch. He scarcely hesitated before going back to the truck for it. He would do no work today. The decision occurred to him without warning and gave him a heady feeling of release; he was surprised that he had never thought of doing this before. ‘I've lost my fascination with old wire,' he explained to the air around him and laughed. He would find a good spot by the creek, have a bath and sunbathe, and he would think of Ida. He yearned for rest and for luxury. The feeling was new to him and he savoured the pleasure of it. Walking past the wattles towards the creek with his lunch he made an impatient noise at the thought of the insect-ridden sweaty horror of struggling with tons of overgrown and entangled fence in there. The idea that he should be sentenced to such an activity seemed beyond all reason.

He found a rock ledge by the bank of the creek that offered both sunlight and shade and which overlooked a deep clear pool where he could see a fat jewfish swimming slowly in wide circles. He took off his clothes and left them with his lunch in the shade and he lay naked on his stomach overlooking the pool. The sun burned his back as he watched the placid black fish patrolling its territory. While he watched the fish he tried to recall in detail the expression he had seen in Ida Rankin's eyes last night when they had been working side by side in the hall. It had inspired in him a thousand questions. How had she survived, he wondered, all those years with Ward Rankin?

Later in the day, when the rays of the sun had grown fierce and he had swum and had eaten his corned beef sandwiches, he retreated into the deep shade at the back of the ledge. With his clothes for a pillow, he lay down on the smooth rock, and after a while went to sleep.

The stockman was woken by a voice calling his name. He sat up and listened, amazed that he was out here by the creek and not in his own bed. He was about to lie down again, to return to his dreams, when he heard Gil Sturgiss calling to him from up near the truck. He was heavy with sleep and he considered remaining hidden. But he thought how stupid he would appear if Gil were to come in search of him, so he called out. A moment later Gil came down the track, leading a horse, his rifle slung over his shoulder, wearing his wide hat and his cowboy boots. He looked irritable and hot.

Gil tethered his horse, came over to the rock and sat down. He talked slowly for a while about Gympie and himself. Then in the middle of a sentence he said, ‘It's been a funny old Christmas,' and he tossed a stone into the pool, startling the fish. Crofts said nothing. Gil asked him a few questions about England, but neither of them cared enough about the subject to keep a conversation going. Crofts asked Gil if he had shot any pigs and when Gil said he hadn't they let that drop too. After they had sat in silence for some time Gil said, ‘If you're ever down round Gympie don't forget to come and see us,' and he got up.

‘Sure.'

Gil lingered. ‘A really bloody funny Christmas.'

Crofts nodded but did not speak. He felt that if he were to ask for an explanation Gil might stay and talk about himself for hours. But still Gil stood gazing into the pool. ‘What do you really think of Janet?' he asked.

Crofts felt there was some tension in the question and it disturbed him. He had to swallow before answering, ‘How do you mean?'

‘She did a funny thing,' Gil said and paused, still gazing down. ‘There's a fucking big jewie down there,' he said and began to unsling his rifle. ‘D'you reckon I could stun the bastard?'

‘What did Janet do?'

Gil aimed at the fish, following its slow course with the rifle. ‘She reckoned if she could knock six cans off a log in six seconds with her old man's revolver she'd have proved she was a better shot than any of us. I had to agree with her.' He fell silent, seemingly intent on the fish.

‘How did she go?' Crofts asked, his voice tightening for some reason. He hoped Gil would not shoot the fish.

‘She did it.' Gil slowly lowered the rifle and examined something on the end of the barrel. ‘She made me and Alistair promise not to tell anyone.' He rested the butt of the rifle on the toe of his boot and looked down at the seated stockman. ‘You in particular.'

Crofts laughed shortly, aware suddenly of his nakedness. ‘I wonder why?' He was annoyed with himself for feeling guilty.

‘It's a funny thing to do,' Gil said. ‘I just wondered what you thought of her.' His eyes settled unsteadily on the stockman's body for an instant.

‘She's all right,' Crofts said, wishing he did not feel as though he were defending himself. He would have been glad if he and Janet had never played their teasing game. He had not expected her to get so intense about it and imagined she would have forgotten about it by now.

‘She and Alistair have been touching each other up for a couple of years,' Gil said carefully, expressing no judgement, testing for a reaction.

Crofts said nothing. He was shocked. He did not question the truth of Gil's claim. It made sense.

‘So when she said she'd only shoot the cans if we promised not to tell
you,
I wondered what it all meant.' Gil waited. ‘That's all.'

‘I don't know what it all means,' Crofts said. It occurred to him then that he need not be concerned about any of this—it was as liberating a thought as his decision to do no work today. He stretched his limbs, releasing the tension that had crept into his body. He lay back, forming a star on the rocks. ‘What do you make of it, Gil?' He looked up and saw the doubt and mistrust in Gil's face. He saw also that the problem really
was
Gil's, and perhaps Janet's as well, but it was not his own.

‘She'll be heading for the coast herself in a couple of weeks,' Gil said, frowning at the pool, contemplating once more the fate of the fish. ‘Flashing her skinny legs round Rocky, eh?' He resented this, clearly.

Crofts got up and stood with his toes over the edge of the rocks, impatient with the talk. ‘Come for a swim!' He dived, seeing the fish begin to evade his shadow before he hit the water. When he surfaced Gil was standing on the ledge above him looking down, his rifle held across his body. ‘Janet's really terrific,' Crofts shouted. ‘She's great! Come for a swim!' He took a breath and went deep, in search of the fish's lair—and into his mind came an image of Janet and Gil walking hand-in-hand along the main street of an anonymous coastal town. They were both gazing directly ahead, their expressions not revealing or concealing anything. Crofts knew he did not belong to their world. Clinging to a rock at the bottom of the pool he looked up through the clear water and waited, holding his breath, until he saw Gil's heavy shadow move slowly away at last.

For the rest of the day he thought about the moment he and Ida would come face to face. He imagined his way through this meeting in detail many times, discovering each time a more pleasing variation—this seemed a perfect and natural activity. It was still very early when he left the waterhole. He drove as slowly as possible in order to use up time. He was annoyed to see Rankin come out of the house and stand by the truck while he parked it in the shed.