Alone on a Wide Wide Sea (7 page)

Marty started singing
London Bridge is Falling Down
then, softly at first, then I joined in, and soon we were bellowing it out over the bush.

I kept asking Marty questions, the most important first. “Where are we going? Which direction?”

“Away,” he said. “Anywhere just so long as it’s away.”

“You been planning this? You never said anything.”

“That’s because I didn’t think of it until punishment parade yesterday evening,” he said. “It was while he was hitting me. I knew I’d be next, that he’d go after me just like he did with Wes. If I’d stayed he’d have killed me. Sooner or later, he’d have killed me. I know he would. Then I just got lucky. I saw Ida by the stables just before lock-up, told her what I needed. She didn’t even have to think about it. She did say one thing though: I had to remind you about your lucky key, to be sure you took it with you. Hope you have, because I’m not going back, not for all the tea in China.”

My heart was in my mouth. I hadn’t given it a second thought. But I felt in my pocket, and there it still was. “Got it,” I told him.

“That’s good,” Marty said, “because we’re going to need it. We’re going to need all the luck we can get.”

It was fear of getting caught, and sheer exhilaration that we were free, that kept us going that night. We knew that we mustn’t stop, not for a moment, or even slow down, because Piggy would be sure to be coming after us just as soon as he discovered we were missing, and that would be at roll call at dawn. We had until then to get as far away as possible. Big Black Jack didn’t want to trot for long, but he plodded on steadily, never tiring, and we sat up there the two of us, rocking our way towards the grey light of dawn. We were just so happy to be out of Cooper’s Station. We talked a lot as we rode, and we laughed, laughed as hard as we could. I remember I felt cocooned by the night, swallowed up in its immensity, protected. At one point we saw some lights on the horizon. It looked like a settlement of some kind, so we kept our distance. We sang to the stars, all the millions of them up there. We sang
For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow
till we were hoarse with it. They seemed so close those stars, close enough to hear us.

It was cold, very cold that night. We had no water. We had no food. But none of that worried us. Not yet. We were too happy to be worried. Not even the cry of the dingoes bothered us. Only when the sun came up, and the bush came alive all about us, only then did we begin to feel alone
in this wild and unfamiliar place with nothing but scrub and trees for miles around in every direction. We’d been following a dried-up creek for a while when I felt the first heat of the sun. That was when I first thought I wanted to drink. We had stopped talking to one another now. There was no more laughter. I was beginning to realise just how vast this place was and just how lost we were. I didn’t like to say it though. Big Black Jack was walking on, purposeful and surefooted as ever. He seemed to know where he was going, and that made me feel better.

When finally Marty did say something though, it just confirmed my own worst fears. “I don’t like this,” he said. “We’ve been here before, when it was darker. We were coming the other way then. And I keep thinking something else too, something Wes told me once, and Wes knew all about horses. He said that a horse will never get itself lost. It’ll always know the way home. I think maybe Big Black Jack is taking us back, back to Cooper’s Station.”

How easily we fell into despair, the two of us. As we left the shade of the gum trees how quickly the heat of the sun sapped our strength, and our spirits too. The desire for water was fast becoming a craving. The need to find it became obsessive. Within just a few hours all we could talk about, however hard we tried not to, was water. I didn’t care any longer if Big Black Jack was walking straight back to Cooper’s Station, right up to the farmhouse, nor if Piggy
Bacon might be tracking us down and coming after us. Every shimmering watery horizon we saw raised our hopes, but we soon found we could not trust even the evidence of our eyes. Mirages mocked us time and again. We tried our best to ignore them. But a mirage is only a mirage once you’ve discovered it’s a mirage. Until then it’s a pool of cold clear water just waiting for you, a pool of hope. More than once this cruel hoax set Marty and me arguing with one another. But in the end we didn’t even have the energy for that.

The deep gully we were following was sandy, but up on the banks there were patches of brambles and scrub, and here and there clusters of stringy bark gum trees. Where there were trees, we thought there must be water. Little did we know. So we rode down the dried up gully, hoping all the while to discover a hidden pool in the shadows, but everywhere we found nothing but earth turned to dust. There wasn’t a sign of moisture. And all through this futile search the sun rose ever higher, blazed hotter.

Gathering enough thoughts to decide anything was so difficult. But we did manage to concentrate enough to make one decision between us. We invested in it all our last hopes. We could see the ground ahead of us on one side of the gully
rising steeply into a granite cliff. From the top of this cliff we thought we must be able to see for miles around, that from up there we’d be bound to spot a river perhaps or a pool. But Big Black Jack refused to be diverted from the gully, and we knew already he was far too strong to argue with. He went where he wanted to go and that was all there was to it. So in the end we had to get off him and lead him up the slope to the highest point of the cliff.

The whole of Australia lay before us, it seemed, as wide as the ocean, and just as inhospitable too. We could see the gully winding its way through the bush, other gullies joining it to make one great swathe of sand through the scrub, but there was no glint of water anywhere, not a shimmer to be seen. Now I really was beginning to hope that Piggy Bacon would find us, and take us back to Cooper’s Station. I didn’t care about the beating I knew he’d give us. I thought only of the wash buckets on the verandah, of plunging my head in and then drinking all of them dry one by one.

Marty was not lost in reverie as I was. He had not given up so easily. He was pointing excitedly at what he swore must be a place where there was water, and certainly in the distance there seemed to be a patch of much greener, lusher
vegetation around some very tall trees. It was miles away and did not look at all promising to me. I didn’t say so though. “If it’s green, then there’s got to be water somewhere,” Marty said. “Got to be. Come on.” Even if there had been a convenient rock from which to mount, I don’t think either of us would have had the strength to do it. We could only manage to walk now with the greatest effort. So we led Big Black Jack down the hill and into the gully again.

We found Marty’s promised oasis, but doing it drained us utterly of the last of our will power. There were trees, and it was green, but we could find no water. By now the sun had worked its worst on us. My head was swimming so much I often thought I would faint. I kept stumbling, and so did Marty. Breathing heavily now and lathered up, Big Black Jack wandered away from us into the deepest shade, put his head against the trunk of a tree and rested on three legs. Like us, he’d had enough. He could do no more. He was telling us in his own way that we should do it too, that we should never have ventured out in the heat of the day in the first place.

We lay down nearby. I curled up against Marty’s back for comfort. “We’ll be all right,” he said to me, but I knew how far we were from all right. Even so it cheered me a little to
hear him say it. I tried not to think that if I slept I might never wake up again, but I thought it all the same. Sleep, when it came, was so welcome.

It was evening when I woke and I knew at once we were not alone. They were crouching a few paces away, a dozen of them perhaps, bushmen, men and boys. They were studying us intently, as still as the rocks around them. I shook Marty until he sat up and took notice. “It’s the same ones,” he whispered, “the same ones that brought Wes back. I recognise them.”

“Say something,” I said. “You’ve got to say something.”

“Drink,” Marty mimed it as he spoke. “Water. We need water. Understand?” That was when the tallest of them came forward and crouched down close to us. I recognised him then. It was the old bushman who had come to Ida’s house that day and treated my spider bite. He smiled at me like a stranger you’ve met before who is happy you’ve remembered him. He held out his cupped hands. His hands were full of fruit, red fruit, green fruit, like plums but rounder. We ate them. We drank them. We devoured them. I don’t remember the taste, but I remember savouring the juice of each one, sucking out every drop of it. They gave Big Black Jack some too, which he snuffled up eagerly.

Then they motioned to us to stand up, to mount up. We tried, but they soon saw we couldn’t do it without their help. I was lifted up effortlessly and sat astride Big Black Jack. So was Marty, who was sitting behind me now and hanging on. One of the bushmen took the reins, and led us along the gully. They were all around us, the children among them smiling up at us now. When I smiled back they laughed out loud, and I knew they were not laughing at me, but out of sheer delight. It touches me even now when I think of it. It was a little moment, and at the same time a great moment, one I have treasured always.

“They’re taking us back,” Marty whispered in my ear, “like they did with Wes.”

“Only we’re not dead,” I said.

Within an hour or so they brought us through some scrubby trees to a hidden pool, a basin of dark rock. A cool evening breeze rippled the surface of the water. We needed no invitation and nor did Big Black Jack. He trotted to the edge and was drinking even before we managed to tumble off him. We were alongside him then, all three of us, one muzzle and two mouths drinking in all we could. Then Big Black Jack was shaking his dribbles all over us, and the bushmen were laughing. They drank too, but they were in
no hurry. They did not gulp greedily as we had. Instead they scooped it up one-handed and sipped. In no time a fire was going. They speared some fish and cooked them. I tried to eat slowly as they did, but it wasn’t easy. And there was more fruit afterwards, more berries. Big Black Jack browsed nearby. We could hear his jaws grinding, his teeth crunching. He was eating well too.

I expected we would sleep then because night was coming on fast, but we didn’t. Instead they lifted us up again on to Big Black Jack, and together we moved on into the gathering dark. When I looked up I found that the stars were up there again filling the sky from end to end. I thought then of the night before, of how happy we’d been to be free, how we’d sung to the stars. And now we were being taken back to Cooper’s Station, and there was nothing whatsoever we could do about it. I wondered why the bushmen were doing it, whether Piggy was paying them for hunting us down and bringing us back. But I thought that couldn’t be right, that after all these were the people I’d seen him driving away from the farm with his horse whip when they strayed too close. I did whisper to Marty that we could try to tell them we didn’t want to go back, but he thought it was pointless.

“They wouldn’t understand a word we said,” he told me. “So what’s the point?”

All night long I dreaded the morning and the first sight of Cooper’s Station, dreaded the thought of standing there on punishment parade, hand outstretched, trying to hold back the tears. The more I thought about it, the more I feared the coming of morning. That was why I took my lucky key out of my pocket and clutched it tight, so tight that it hurt me. I wanted to squeeze the luck out of it, to have all of it now because I needed it now more than ever before in my life.

But I began to worry that maybe even my lucky key would not be enough. So I prayed as well. I thought of Ida, then of all she had done for us, of the trouble she’d be in if Piggy found out she’d unlocked the door for us. I felt for the little wooden cross I wore around my neck. I touched it, remembering her. And then holding it I prayed for her. But if I’m honest, I think I prayed mostly for myself. Whether it was the key or the cross that did it I shall never know. I’ve been trying to work that one out ever since. I still am.

It wasn’t until a few more days had passed that Marty and I could begin to hope that the bushmen weren’t taking us back to Cooper’s Station after all. Neither of us could believe these people were lost. They seemed to know every root, every tree, every gully in this maze of a wilderness. The fruit they found was never a surprise, nor the roots they dug up, nor the pools they led us to. They knew exactly where they were. They belonged in this place.

They found their way through the bush with such obvious ease that it was quite impossible to think they could ever get lost here. So if they were not lost, and we were not being deliberately led around in circles, and if after all this time we had still not yet reached Cooper’s Station, then it stood to reason we weren’t going there. So where were they taking us then? Marty and I asked each other that question more than a few times. But we had no answers.

With every hour that passed, the bush around us looked less and less familiar. We were in much greener country. There were hills about us, and more farms and settlements in the valleys – which the bushmen seemed to want to avoid as much as we did. We knew now, for whatever reason, that they were not taking us back. And the longer we were with them the more sure we became that these people were absolutely no threat to us. They might not talk to us. They might keep their distance. They might still stare at us more than we liked, but there was never the slightest hint of hostility towards us. On the contrary they seemed very protective of us, and as fascinated by us as we were by them. And the children found us endlessly funny, particularly when we smiled, so we smiled a lot. But then we felt like smiling. They shared their food with us: berries, roots, fruit
and baked wallaby once. We had all the water we needed.

Marty did try once or twice to ask where we were going, but was simply given more fruit or berries as an answer. So he gave up. But up on Big Black Jack, as we rode through the night, or resting in the shade, the two of us speculated at length. Maybe we weren’t being taken anywhere. I mean, they never looked as if they were going anywhere in particular. They just looked as if they were quite happy simply going, simply being. Or maybe they were adopting us into their tribe and we’d wander the bush with them for the rest of our lives. Maybe they were still making up their minds what to do with us. Perhaps we’d just wake up one day and find them gone. We really didn’t mind. All we could be sure of was that we were a long, long way from Cooper’s Station now, and further every day. Where we were going wasn’t important. Sometimes at night we’d see lights in the distance, more settlements probably, but we never once thought of running off. We were safe with them. We had no reason to leave them.