The Godson (23 page)

Patrick fixed his two compatriots with an expressionless gaze. ‘He also said that if he does come, he'll be bringing Logan Colbain and Tom Mooney with him.'

‘Oh Christ!' said Robert again.

F
RIDAY MORNING DAWNED
bright and clear at Cedar Glen with the dew glistening on the leaves and the calling of countless birds. A few tufts of cloud were being scudded towards Mount Warning by the light sou'wester, but it was beautiful for August, with no sign of rain. Les was up around six-thirty. The previous night he'd found an old deck of cards and they had a few games of gin rummy while they talked and Peregrine demolished his two bottles of Great Western while Les made an awful mess of his case of Fourex. Consequently neither of them had much trouble sleeping, in fact the only thing Norton could remember about getting to bed at ten was the coolness and
moisture in the air and an owl hooting in a tree close by when he came downstairs to his room.

Peregrine had his dressing gown on and was in the kitchen when he went upstairs.

‘G'day, mate,' Norton said brightly. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘Not too bad, actually,' was the reply. ‘I slept rather well.'

‘That's good.'

‘I don't know about your chilli beans though. They certainly keep one regular, and warm up the old date somewhat, as well.'

Norton laughed and walked over to the stove. ‘That's how a Mexican knows when he's hungry, mate. When his arsehole stops burning. Anyway, there's still plenty left. I might warm 'em up for breakfast.'

‘Oh God. Here we go again.'

Good or bad, Peregrine still had a large plateful plus coffee and toast while they listened to the radio. Les suggested that seeing it was such a peach of a day outside and they were both feeling so good they should get into their army clobber and check out the farm, then drive into Yurriki afterwards and get some food and more drink. Peregrine said why not, and he'd see Les downstairs in about twenty minutes.

‘Sir,' snapped Norton, clicking his heels together and giving Peregrine a brisk salute as he walked into the barbecue area.

‘As you were, corporal,' smiled the Englishman, returning Norton's salute.

Peregrine's army clothing fitted him perfectly, right down to the cammies tucked into his combat boots. His forage cap was at a slightly more rakish angle than Les's but both men looked identical, as if they'd just stepped off the cover of
Gung Ho
or
New Breed
magazine.

‘How do I look?' asked Peregrine.

‘Terrific. Like something straight out of the battle of Balaclava. Your cousin Lewis would be proud of you.'

‘Thank you, corporal.'

‘You're welcome, sir.'

Peregrine gazed around the property in front of them then up to the mountain range behind them. ‘Where do you want to start?'

‘Well, according to that rough map Eddie gave me, there's a dam up there somewhere.' Les pointed slightly to their right then directly up behind them. ‘But I reckon we ought to start at that gate there, and take that trail through the horse paddock
and follow it up round that ridge. Might be a bit of a slog, but it won't do us any harm. Not in this air anyway.'

‘Very well. You lead the way.'

Norton adjusted an army sheath knife on his webbing belt. ‘Righto, mate. Let's go.'

They clambered over the gate and steadily began climbing, following an uphill trail. There was an old barbed wire fence choked with lantana on their left and the horse paddock fading away on their right. Les didn't put the speed on too much but kept up a steady pace; Peregrine didn't fall behind at all and even appeared to be enjoying the bit of a hit out.

After about fifteen minutes, Les looked back and could barely make out the property two kilometres or so below them. The trail levelled off at an old wire gate in a clearing then went left with a narrower, steeper one going right. They crawled through a gap in the old wire gate and took the left trail. The track got noticeably steeper for at least another kilometre. The bush was dense on either side of the trail and thick with eucalypt and gum trees, but it wasn't long before they began to notice dozens of huge stumps, most over ten feet tall and wide jutting up on either side of the trail like rows of rotten teeth.

‘God! Look at the size of these stumps,' said Peregrine. ‘They're enormous. What on earth are they?'

‘Probably old cedar trees,' replied Les. ‘Legacies from our so-called pioneering days, when we lost seventy-five percent of our rainforests and half our animals.'

Peregrine gave one of the stumps a kick and a great piece of rotted, rust-coloured wood broke away. ‘Good Lord! What must have it been like up here years ago with all those huge trees?'

‘Before they raped and pillaged it? Paradise, I imagine.' Norton shook his head at the aftermath of destruction around him. ‘Between the Japanese and the sawmills, they're still doing their best to fuck what's left now. Come on.'

They continued to climb steadily till the ridge levelled off again into the clearing full of native shrubs and blackboys. Through a gap in the trees they stopped to take in the magnificent view over the valleys and mountains right across to Mt. Warning, blue in the distance. The strain of the climb, plus the chilli beans must have begun to tell on Peregrine. Not long after they stopped he broke wind with a crack that sounded twice as loud as it was in the silence of the surrounding bush. By sheer coincidence a flock of at least twenty Red
Crowned Cockatoos took off from a nearby gum tree at the same time. Norton turned to the young Englishman and gave him a look of utter contempt.

‘You filthy disgusting pig,' he sneered. ‘You just frightened away all those beautiful birds.'

Peregrine was completely flummoxed. ‘I…'

‘A bit of decorum, please, if you don't mind. You're not back in bloody England now.' Norton shook his head and sniffed disdainfully. ‘Come on. And make sure you keep down wind.'

‘I…' Red with embarrassment, Peregrine fell into step behind Les, firmly convinced it was his fart that had scared all the birds.

They followed the trail further till they came to another clearing on the ridge dotted on either side with dozens and dozens of blackboys of all sizes.

‘I say, what are those things, Les?' asked Peregrine.

‘Blackboys. They're all hundreds of years old, you know. Oddly enough they flourish in bushfires. Look great, don't they?'

‘They certainly do. Look at that one there.' Peregrine pointed to a particularly tall one next to another one with two spears sticking up and a number of little ones around them. A flowering vine had taken root in the bushy green top of the tall one and from where they stood it resembled a wig woven with flowers. ‘It looks like a skinny black woman with flowers in her hair.'

Les and Peregrine caught each other's eye and as if on cue they both started singing.

‘Flowers in her hair. Flowers everywhere. I love a flower girl.'

Then they both burst out laughing.

‘Come on,' said Les. ‘You're carrying on like a bloody hippy.'

But as he looked back Norton could just picture how the Aborigines must have started their legends and tales. The tall, black native plant did look like an elegant woman with flowers decorating her hair and the one next to it could be the warrior with his two spears guarding the valley and the little ones around them were their children. Hippies, Aborigines, no matter what. It was still a lovely sight.

The trail rose then and they came to another clearing with a yellow mark carved into a tree with numbers on it and two arrows pointing in either direction. Les figured that must be the boundary. He also figured they'd come a good five kilometres and a glance at his watch said they'd been gone the best part
of an hour. The trail leading on over the ridge was good but the one going back down towards the property narrowed into a mess of lantana; Les decided against it.

‘Well, Pezz,' he said. ‘We may as well head back the way we came. I don't fancy bashing my way through all that lantana.'

‘Yes, it does look rather thick.'

Although Peregrine was puffing and sweating profusely his eyes were bright with excitement and even if he was doing it tough it was obvious he was enjoying every minute of it.

‘How about this time you lead the way?' said Les.

‘All right then,' replied Peregrine enthusiastically.

Seeing it was downhill, Peregrine clapped on the pace thinking he was running the legs off Norton. Les deliberately fell behind a little but he did have to keep his finger out to keep up; for a fellow less than half his size and one that didn't train at all, Peregrine was showing quite a bit of stamina. They double-timed past the clearings, the stumps and the blackboys, and in what seemed like no time were scrambling through the old wire gate from where Les could see the house and the property in the distance.

‘Don't go straight to the house,' said Norton. ‘Cut across that field down the bottom and we'll get onto that other trail and see if we can find the dam.'

‘Righto, old boy.'

Near the bottom they helped each other through the barbed wire fence, crossed about a hundred metres of field, went through another barbed wire fence then down a steep slope onto a sloshy trail of mud that led back the way they'd come but nowhere near as steep. They followed the trail, thick with lantana and wild tobacco plants, for about half a kilometre when out of nowhere on their right loomed a huge shed made from logs and thick wooden beams; it had to be the best part of two hundred metres long. Inside it smelt of must and decay and flocks of tiny swallows flitted amongst the spider webs that encrusted the ceiling.

‘I wonder what this could have been?' said Peregrine.

Les kicked the soil floor which was rich with fowl manure. ‘Probably an old poultry shed I'd say, going by all this shit in the soil.'

They gave it a bit of a once-over then proceeded on their way.

The sound of water trickling over stones into a swampy area on their left told them they were at the dam before they actually came to it. The dam was an enormous natural lagoon over
three hundred metres in diameter that backed onto the start of the mountain range; in the calm stillness of the morning sun it shone like a huge, dark green mirror. Crickets and frogs startled by their presence dived into the water amongst growths of lilies spread around an old wooden pontoon running about five metres out from the muddy shore. Set in metal grills around the edges were numerous citrus trees full of fruit not quite ripe enough to eat. Before long the sounds of countless birds started up again, echoing off the surrounding hills and across the smooth calm water. Peregrine cautiously edged out onto the pontoon but soon changed his mind as it began to sink in amongst the water lilies.

‘I wouldn't fancy falling in,* said Norton. ‘There could be any bloody thing in there.'

‘Quite right,' agreed Peregrine, scrambling back to shore. ‘It looks jolly deep too.'

They hung around a while longer while they listened to the birds and had a drink of water. Les cut a lemon from one of the trees and gave half to Peregrine; one bite was enough to have them grimacing and spitting juice onto the ground. They washed their mouths out and started back towards the house.

Not far past the shed they noticed another muddy trail churned up with tyre marks leading off to the right.

‘May as well check this out, see where it goes,' said Les. ‘What do you reckon?' Peregrine nodded in agreement.

The trail led though more scrub then into a clearing that was obviously the farm tip. Two scooped-out holes were about a quarter full of bottles, beer cans, bursting plastic garbage bags and other junk. To the side an old yellow, box-trailer was rusting silently away in the bush. There weren't all that many flies, but enough for mid-August.

‘Jesus! Be nice here in the summer,' mused Les. Through the bush he spotted another shed on another trail. ‘Let's see what's down there.'

The shed was nothing more than a galvanised iron roof covering some rusty wire mesh nailed to a dozen or so poles. It was choked with weeds and scrub and was probably another holding pen for poultry. Not far away was another shed almost as big as the first one they'd found. As they approached it, a flapping sound almost as loud as a helicopter taking off in the surrounding silence filled the air. To their amazement two huge scrub turkeys flew out of the shed and over their heads in a squawking gobble of feathers and dust.

‘Suffering cats!' said Peregrine. ‘What was that?'

‘Couple of scrub turkeys,' smiled Les. ‘See the size of their backsides? They must be doing all right up here.'

They stepped inside the shed and more swallows and wrens startled by both them and the fleeing scrub turkeys started chirruping around the cobwebs and rusting fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling. Les gave the floor another kick.

‘More bloody poultry,' he muttered.

They gave the shed an indifferent once-over and headed back to the house.

The trail led away from the house and around; a few metres from the shed another small trail led off to the right.

‘Want to have a look what's up there?' said Norton.

‘We're here now,' shrugged Peregrine, ‘why not?'

This particular trail was steep and muddy and bogged them underfoot. It climbed almost half a kilometre through scrub and gum trees before opening out into a perfect circle about twenty metres across ringed with gun-barrel straight white cedars, their delicate green tops towering over fifty feet above their heads. It was oppressively hot and still in the middle of the clearing, around which was a riot of tropical plants — part of a rainforest which pushed up against the ridge above. The sides of the clearing had been packed flat and when they walked over they found dozens of logs beneath the undergrowth stapled together with stainless steel bolts to form a kind of wall.