Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (25 page)

It was not until he had climbed to the first natural terrace that he was faced with the choice of whether to turn left or right, that is up or down the creek, and to follow a lateral course along the line of the valley. To have continued climbing was out of the question: the way up was barred to horses and to stock by the massive splintered cliffs of the main escarpment. He scarcely hesitated before turning his pony's head up the creek. It was his first conscious decision in this ride. He headed up the creek because he felt certain that it was the direction his mother would have taken. He had decided to follow her. He gave his pony its head and it walked along without any further guidance.

It was hot and the smell of the dry bush was all around him. It was a safe and familiar smell to him. Once upon a time, many years ago, when they had been trusting partners, when the hours of one fine autumn day alone with her seemed to last forever and to hold more joy than years; long ago, before the days when he and Janet had discovered the sensuality of each other's bodies, he had sat with his mother upon a sunlit shelf of rock above a clear pool reflecting the sky.

And she had told him, in a voice that seemed like magic, the legend of Mt Mooloolong and its ever-circling, ever-watchful devil spirits—invisible presences which spiralled with the rising currents of the air from the forest below and patrolled the sheer flanks of the cold white pinnacle. And she had told him of how they drew the living to themselves, to death, their voices the charmed ecstatic voices of the dead who had once inhabited the place and now belonged to the white primaeval monolith, seduced by its great beauty and the desire to possess its secret. She told him how in the old times before his own ancestors had come to the Highlands, Mooloolong had been forbidden to all people but the men of the spirit world, men who had been taught the secret of how to master desire, despite the seductive chorus of the circling ghosts; and she had told him of her decision to climb the mountain, how for almost a year she had lived in fear of her decision and had told no one but had gone time and again to stand and gaze at the mountain, returning home each time without approaching it.

He remembered how he had snuggled closer to her then, waiting for what she was about to tell him, holding her knee firmly against his cheek, scarcely daring to breathe. She told him of the day when she had gone out to climb the mountain on her own, knowing she would do it or never come back alive. And he had gone with her in her story, step by step, terrified that she would slip and fall, would die and be lost to him for ever. He imagined them falling together through the air, their bodies turning over and over slowly, falling through the air for ever above the forest, never reaching the ground and never losing each other.

He heard angry excited voices carrying up the hill to him from the creek far below and he stopped his pony with a sudden jerk on the rein and listened. A stone clattered away down the hill and he waited. He kicked the pony forward again and descended through the trees to a level promontory. Here he dismounted, and went forward cautiously on foot. Before he reached the edge he got down onto his stomach and crawled, dragging his rifle beside him. The voices of his mother and the stockman came to him clearly and he hauled himself forward the last few inches to peer over the edge of the bluff. Their voices abruptly ceased. He raised himself a little on his elbows. Far below him on the rock shelf above the pool which he remembered so well, in the dazzling sunlight of the day, the naked stockman and his mother were embracing. They stood still, clasped tightly in each other's arms for a long time, then they began to move. They were too distant for him to see clearly what they were doing, so he brought his rifle to his shoulder and examined them with the aid of the telescopic sight. Crofts was undressing her and she was holding him, both her hands thrust down between their bodies. The fine cross-hairs of the sights followed their movements, inching across their bodies.

Alistair's throat ached with a tension that made it difficult for him to swallow. The tears rolled freely down his cheeks. He watched them lie on the rock in the sun together and make love, his vision blurring through the tears. While he watched he began to realise that he was going to kill the stockman. The decision, he felt certain, was not his own. It frightened him. He felt it occur within him, move slowly into sharp focus from a hazy mixture of images. And it was as final as his mother's decision to climb the mountain. It was not his responsibility. He just had to do it.

He sighed deeply and he drew back the bolt on the .22 and pushed a bullet into the chamber. He was an excellent shot. It was Janet who had taught him the finer points of the skill. He had no doubt he could hit his target from this distance. His loneliness now began to press down on him from all around. For the first time that day he thought about the warm and familiar smell of the bush, and he was glad of it. He blinked rapidly to clear his vision and adjusted the stock of the rifle firmly against his shoulder, unaware of the pain, his elbows resting on the sharp ground, his legs spread to steady himself for the shot. He talked to himself all the time, in a rapid scarcely audible voice: disjointed incantations, half-completed sentences, isolated words of special significance to him, repeated over and over, an accompaniment for himself in his loneliness.

His finger was steady on the trigger.

He had increased the pressure to the maximum and was holding it there. His tears had ceased to flow now that he was engrossed by the requirements of the job. He did not notice the inquisitive, venomous bulldog ant that was inspecting his forearm. He was waiting for the back of Crofts' head to stop moving for a moment. He did not mind waiting. Janet had impressed on him long ago that patience is always essential to any fine shot. What his mother and Crofts were doing together now had ceased to concern him. He was ready. He just had to wait for the right moment and then, without any sudden movement, he would apply the final ounce of additional pressure to the trigger. The consequences were beyond him.

He waited, and was almost happy. As to murder—the horrifying outcome of what he intended to do—he had forgotten that he was contemplating any such thing. He was back in a familiar situation. He was out shooting. He was away in the hills for the day, with Janet sitting up there behind him among the rocks with the ponies and their lunches, waiting and watching, expecting a decent result from him. Her concern was always that neither of them should follow their father's poor example of a series of half-finished tasks, the testimony to his failure. Her dread was almost obsessive that this example might undermine her own ability to do anything worthwhile. So she always set a high standard for them in everything they did together, to cut them off from what she bitterly described as the stupidity and failure of their parents.

He had never possessed her vision, but Alistair had followed his sister willingly, and together they had constructed a private world in which their own authority—in truth Janet's—had replaced that of their parents. That was where Alistair was now, back there with his sister, and the target in the fine cross-hairs of his telescopic sights at this moment was there more because of Janet's decisions than his own. He did not think about this but he felt it. Janet was the leader; he would do the job and she would see to the consequences.

He must have had a momentary lapse of concentration, for he suddenly became aware that the target was moving rapidly out of the view of his scope. He took his eye from the sight for a quick look and saw Crofts and his mother diving together from the ledge into the pool. He adjusted his elbows and put his eye back to the sight quickly. In making this rapid movement he pinned the bulldog ant by one of its long legs and at once it sank its red-hot pincers into the tender skin inside his elbow. The rifle discharged and Alistair saw through the scope the tiny splash as the hollow-nosed bullet fragmented against the surface of the water two hundred metres away. He dropped the rifle and clutched his elbow as the pain inflicted by the ant's poison built quickly to a blinding peak.

•

Ida swam to the very bottom of the pool, curving her body away from his as they entered the water together. The cool relief on her skin was luxurious. When she reached the bottom she held onto a projecting bulb of scoured rock and looked back. He was swimming towards her, the sunlight dancing off his body. She let go of the rock and kicked out towards him and she saw, spiralling down between them from the surface in a tiny mist of bubbles, what looked like two bright flecks of silver. She reached out to grasp them and the wash of the water slipped them aside and they drifted on towards the bottom. Her outstretched hands met his and they held onto each other. She saw him mime, ‘I love you,' and she smiled and embraced him.

eight

Ida struggled to maintain the appearance of normality in her family and to keep her two lives separate from each other, fearing that if they should meet, everything she desired would be destroyed. She had sworn the stockman to the greatest care in communicating with her. What they had established together she knew was too fragile yet to be risked in a head-on contest with the harder truths of her old life—truths, she understood, which were rooted in many generations; and which, though they might seem peripheral to a stranger, could not be easily ignored: there was much in herself to prove this. For it was not simply a matter of falling in love with the stockman and being loved by him in return; that was only the beginning. As the days went by, however, and it became impossible to find genuine opportunities to communicate with Crofts alone, the strain began to sap her optimism and she became increasingly nervy and worried.

All this time Alistair hovered around her, appearing unexpectedly at the edge of her vision, but refusing to speak to her, slipping away whenever she attempted to waylay him. Without the vigour of Janet to back him up he was like a ghost around the place. He did not look well and Ida felt there was something menacing in the way he managed to elude her. He had become a threat, she was certain of it. His behaviour was so strange and furtive that she suspected him of planning something unpleasant, something possibly quite evil. She now found it difficult to recall a time when she had not disliked him intensely. She was also more than a little afraid of him. She determined to get him off to school in Rockhampton as soon as possible and intended bringing the matter to a head with Ward immediately she saw the chance. She knew it would be a difficult and unpleasant business and she did not look forward to it. No opportunity arose for doing anything about it, however, and the reason for this was principally Ward's peculiar behaviour.

It was as if the great flood she had hoped for all her life had at last swept over the narrow channel of her existence, gathering with it all the rubbish and debris from her past and promising—in that moment of high energy—to carry it all away for ever, to leave for her the clear prospect of a new future. Then the flood stopped in mid-flow. And was threatening to stagnate altogether. After her meeting with Crofts at the pool, Ida suffered five grotesque days and nights. An agony of disbelief and frustration mounted in her. The fierce electrical storms moved down from the ranges into the valley, sudden, violent, and bringing with them an overpowering humidity that seemed to conspire with Ward's startling behaviour to wear her down, defeating her new hopes, in a manner that astonished her.

The shock had not been immediate. When she had arrived home from her visit to Crofts that day, reassured and excited by the events of the past few hours, she was surprised to find Ward already back from Springtown. At first she was amused to see him carrying on in a very odd way. She had watched him with detachment, as if his behaviour had nothing to do with her and could not possibly affect her in any way: the focus of her mind was elsewhere. Like some scrawny old animal that had occupied the same burrow for half a lifetime—a derelict but determined feral cat was the image that came to her—Ward appeared to be moving himself, piece by piece, out of his inner room. In the security of her own happiness, she felt a certain amount of sympathy for him. He had assembled a collection of his precious bits and pieces on the dining table. There were a few books, a box containing glasses and whiskey, two carefully folded bedspreads—she had not seen these items for years but knew they came from a box that had belonged to his mother. She noticed their throttlingly stale smell when she walked in from the fresh air. Beside the table were a small bookcase, two folding chairs and a card table. Most peculiar of all, however, was the presence of a broom and a bucket and mop.

While she prepared the evening meal she observed him roving back and forth, preoccupied with himself. He made the journey several times, apparently changing his mind about including this or that item in the collection before replacing it with something else. It was all clearly of great importance to him. When he was at last satisfied, he carried all his loot down the steps and stowed it, from what she could hear, under the house. He returned upstairs and stood about, apparently at a loose end, waiting it seemed for some signal to begin.

The event had about it all the familiar signs of yet another Ward Rankin project—something peculiar, loosely based on a reasonable idea, which would never be brought to any satisfactory conclusion. In her heart she wished him well and was glad that he had something to occupy himself with, for a while at any rate. These doomed enthusiasms of his, she knew only too well, never survived for more than a few weeks, rebounding from the first obstacle they met with even more vigour than had started them. Someone else would be blamed for the fact that they had failed to bring Ward the fulfilment he believed he deserved from her. She wondered what it was in his nature that prevented him from seeing all this as clearly as she saw it. It was not simply a lack of intelligence. Could he really be moving out? And if he were moving out, where to? Under the house? There was a room there, filthy and filled with junk, which would explain the bucket and mop. The possibility seemed too good to be true—and it was.