Unknown (21 page)

‘Oh, no!’

‘Oh, yes, unfortunately for us. I have a good eye for water, and I believe when I check, which is going to be now, that that creek is going to be too deep for us to cross.’ He had got out and gone down to the creek edge, and as Georgina watched, he walked in. He was right about the level. It was not deep for him, but it was too deep for a jeep, even a special bush waggon made for contingencies like these.

‘What do we do?' asked Georgina, vexed with herself, for if she hadn't expressed a wish to see the river this wouldn’t have happened. ‘Do we wait till it goes down again?’

‘That could take days. No, I’ll have to find another route.'

‘I’ll help you.’

‘You’ll stay in the jeep, Brown. That’s an order,’ he said harshly.

'I don’t blame you,’ said Georgina sensitively, ‘I have messed things up.’

He looked at her and shook his head. ‘I’m angry,’ he admitted, ‘but perish the thought that I’m angry with you. I wanted to go to the Lucy, too. It’s just bad luck that this has happened at this precise moment. Ordinarily a wait here could be pleasurable with the right companion, and you’re a right one, Brown, but just now ’ He frowned.

He repeated his command that she stayed by the jeep, then he took the compass and started to scout around for a possible detour. While he was away Georgina got a fire going so that the billy was boiling when he returned.

He was glad of the tea, but he had no glad news. The creek still stopped them from crossing, he reported, yet cross they must if they were to get back.

‘One thing,’ said Georgina, ‘we can’t die of thirst.’

‘If that’s supposed to be clever ’ he snapped.

‘It wasn’t, sir. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right, Brown. I’m a bit touchy. To be held up by that apology—well, it is an apology after the Lucy—for a string of water.’

‘Perhaps if you try the other direction ’

'Yes, I will. You stay put, as I said. Without the jeep we won’t be any good.’

This time he was gone longer than before, which Georgina decided might be good news. He must have found a patch that the waggon could manage, but, typical of Roper, he was double-checking first, just as he had with the nickel.
Georgina sat and waited.

The time went on; she estimated it was early afternoon now. She closed her eyes for a moment, or so she intended, then half slept, but it must have been half-sleep, for the shadow across her semi-shut lids sent her eyes opening widely. At first she could see nothing unusual, it was just the same as before; then, in the shadow of a rock, she saw a man. On ochre-coloured man, naked except for a loincloth, and he was watching her.

Georgina got up and put out her hand to him. He did not come, yet he did not go away. She wondered if there was a tribe with him; there were few tribes left now in the west, they had gone to the towns and the missions, but some of the aboriginals still travelled the desert, still lived as their forefathers had lived.

He looked quite splendid standing there, a straight spare figure carved in dark red ochre. Possibly, yet not probably, he had never seen a white person before. Most certainly he would not have met many.

She went towards him, hand still out, speaking to him, though she knew that if he had had no white contact he would not understand a word. He was not afraid of her, though, and she was unafraid of him. The dark eyes, black eyes with a touch of red somewhere in them, were extraordinarily gentle. But then they were a very gentle people, she knew.

She came up to him and smiled, but he did not smile back. He took a few steps away from her now, then he turned and beckoned her with quiet eyes. That was all Georgina could have called it, a beckoning.

She went across. As soon as she reached him, he moved again, beckoned with his eyes again. This happened four times, then after that Georgina got the message. He wanted to take her somewhere, and she had a fair idea why. Larry must have come to some mishap, she thought, and the native had seen him and come, or been told to come, to fetch her.

All at once the terrain altered. It had been flat ever since they left the Lucy, but abruptly the creek that the man and Georgina had followed disappeared underground again, leaving a narrow crossing, squelchy-looking and actually with algae growing in places, but still negotiable, Georgina judged. So where was Larry?

She looked to the aborigine, and he did the beckoning act again, so she followed and saw what had happened. A narrow cleft opened up no more than ten yards from the possible crossing, opened up without any warning. At the bottom of the cleft, not deep but certainly deep enough to inflict an injury, lay the mighty Roper. He must have been looking around to see if there were any other ways through without the squelch and mud, in his absorption not looked where he was going, and dropped suddenly, just as that drop of water from a rock at the top was dropping now.

Georgina did not waste a moment; she leapt, then slid down the cleft.

Larry
was
lying quite straight, thank heaven, no fear from entwined arms or twisted legs. In fact everything about him seemed quite normal.

She leaned over and regarded him, then she edged his head on to her lap. What should she do? Go back for the first-aid kit? Yet what did she have in the kit that he needed? There appeared to be nothing broken, nothing cut.

What about mouth-to-mouth respiration? That, she knew, was the only obvious treatment. She took a deep preparatory breath, then leaned over.

‘Oh, no, Brown.' His voice came clearly up to her. Td like that as much from you as you'd like it from me. Now if you were a girl instead '

‘You—you are all right?' she asked, startled.

‘A bit knocked out, that's all,' he responded.

‘Why didn’t you let me know?' Relief brought a querulous note to Georgina's voice. ‘Why, I might have—I might ’

‘That’s why I did let you know just now,' he grinned, and added: ‘In the nick of time.'

‘If this is your idea of a joke ’

‘It’s not. I
was
knocked out. A good winding, as I had, is as bad as a thump on the skull. But your intent look brought me to, quick-smart.’

‘You’re unspeakable!’

‘Then don’t speak.' He shut his eyes, and she wriggled his head from her lap on to the ground and waited for him to recover fully. He did so quite soon.

‘Your lap was more comfortable that the hard earth,’ he said feelingly, ‘even though I would prefer more padding. What a pity you’re George, George Brown; girls are much more accommodating.'

She did not comment on that. She looked around for their Adam in ochre, but could not see him.

‘No,’ said Larry, following her look, ‘he’ll be gone.’

‘Can’t we find him? Thank him?’

‘He wouldn’t understand that, I mean he wouldn’t comprehend a need for thanks. It was simply something that had to be done.’

‘Did he show you the way across?’ Georgina asked.

‘No, I found that myself, but I knew he was watching. He had been watching when we arrived. He followed me here. I knew as I fell that it would be all right, that he would find and bring you.’

‘But he wouldn’t know where I was,' she protested.

‘They always know.’

‘Where has he gone?’

‘Probably to his tribe. There are very few single nomads. Thank heaven for them all, anyway. This could have been tricky, George.’ Roper had got to his feet now, and Georgina saw that he swayed a little before he could steady himself enough to climb out of the cleft. He must have felt her eyes on him, for he said sharply: ‘I’m all right.’

‘Of course,’ she agreed.

They walked back to the jeep, and all the way Georgina watched him obliquely. He was not as well as he was trying to make out he was, she thought: he spoke normally, though, as he said their dark friend would be far away by this, as they would be, too, very soon.

‘How far away?’ Georgina asked.

‘Home,’ he said simply.

‘Roper’s?’

‘Where else is home?’

‘But I thought we were a long way off,’ she protested.

‘Once we’re on the other side of the creek, as we can be now, we should make it by sunset. You see we’ll be cutting off a great hunk of terrain with this detour. You’ll be navigating, Brown.’

‘Yes, sir.’

They wasted no time in leaving. Roper concentrated on the task of crossing the mud, but it caused only a little trouble. Some canvas under the wheel and a push and they were on firm ground.

Navigating, too, was no worry. Roper told Georgina what he wanted and she was able to give clear directions; in fact the only concern was the driver. Taking care not to let him see her checking, Georgina noted that Roper was tiring. When he made several poor judgments, such as failing to detour over gibber patches, not avoiding a tree until it was almost too late, she looked at him more openly. His eyelids were drooping, his mouth was slack. He had a late reaction, she knew. But she could not take over both the driving and the navigation as well, so she let him fumble along until she saw a first landmark, one of the bores of the outer edge of Roper’s, a long distance from the homestead, but she knew she could find her way from here.

She spoke quietly but firmly to the man, and told him to stop. While he still fumbled on, she knew he hadn’t heard her, he was beyond that, and he was driving as an automaton might have driven. So Georgina put out her hand and braked the jeep herself, then she killed the engine. She got out and came round to the driver’s seat and edged Larry gently into her seat. He didn’t resist; in fact by the time she found something to put at the back of his head, he was asleep.

She was unfamiliar with a four-wheel drive, but mechanics had never been a trouble to her. By trial and error she soon found out about it and thirty minutes later she was pulling up at the homestead, shouting out to Mrs Willmott to contact the flying doctor, calling for help from the men to get Roper to bed.

The doctor was there very promptly. He said: ‘You again! ’ to Georgina, and: ‘This is becoming a habit’ to a hovering Mrs Willmott.

As he examined the patient he told Georgina wryly that the two of them, Roper and Brown, must be a bad combination. ‘I’d never been called to attend the mighty Roper, but now you’ve 'come I’ve had two calls in a month. The same as last time: Just watch him and he’ll come round. Can you do that?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Georgina assured him. ‘There’s Mrs Willmott, and I’ll watch after I’ve cleaned up, and there’s Joanne.’

From the other side of the bed Willy said: ‘There isn’t. She’s left.’

‘Left?’ The doctor had gone out to fetch something, but it would have been all the same if he had been there. Georgina could not have contained herself. ‘When?’ she said incredulously.

‘The day that you left.'

‘Then she’s been gone a week?'

‘That’s right,’ Mrs Willmott nodded.

‘But she’s coming back.’ Georgina looked down at Larry Roper. ‘She must be coming back. I mean ’

‘She’s gone. All her things are gone—her clothes, her car, everything. I would say, George, that your stepsister has definitely moved on.’

Left.
Gone. Moved on.

At first Georgina could not get that fact into her muddled head. Mrs Willmott was being fanciful; she never had liked her stepsister and it was just something to say. Why, Joanne never would have moved on, she had too much at stake here. She had Larry Roper—she had Roper’s.

That Joanne would abandon Larry, Georgina might have believed eventually; Joanne had gone through strings of men “before in her young life. But abandoning money, for Roper’s represented that, was harder to accept. That was unless Joanne had found someone else with more money, or the prospect of more, but who was there out here? And it would have to be someone out here, for Joanne had not been in touch with Sydney for weeks. She had said once to Georgina: ‘I’ve turned that page for a new page, let’s hope there’s something more interesting in the print.’

Mrs Willmott was babbling on, but softly, keeping her voice down because of Larry.

Because of Larry. Georgina looked down at the man and felt very near to tears. She did not know how things really had been between him and her stepsister, but she did know that even if Larry Roper would not be hurt then his pride would certainly be toppled. A man’s pride was a very real thing, so Georgina suffered for Larry Roper.

‘A good riddance, if you ask me,’ Willy was mumbling. ‘Always out in that little car of hers “looking at the country”. But a lot of country looking she did.’ Willy sniffed. ‘No,’ she went on, ‘she met
him
.’

‘Who, Mrs Willmot?’

‘That fellow Craig Everson. He caused enough trouble here before, and now he’s caused it again.’

You really mean, Georgina interpreted miserably to herself, that he robbed the mighty Roper of four girls, and now it will be five.

‘If you ask me ’ began Willy again, but she stopped as she saw the doctor signalling her from the door. ‘Pumpkin scones,’ she sighed, but not without pride, and went out.

‘If you ask me,’ said Larry Roper clearly from the sick bed, ‘I’ve been got at.’ He looked up at Georgina and grinned, a grin that soon stretched to a laugh. Then they both laughed.

‘You don’t sound heartbroken,’ Georgina said.

‘I’m not. It never was like that with your stepsister, George. What in heaven gave you such a mm idea?’

Georgina hesitated. ‘Joanne, I suppose. She—was— well ’

‘Possessive? I’ve had possessive females before Joanne, but it never came to anything.’

‘Because they left you as Joanne has?’

‘Because I prefer a different type,’ he returned.

‘Retiring, you mean?’

‘Something like that. Someone who’s encased in a shell.’

‘But then you would never see it ... see her,’ she stumbled.

‘But I would know she was there,’ he replied.

There was a pause.

‘Then your pride isn’t toppled?’ asked Georgina.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, boy, no! The girl came here, I extended the usual western hospitality to her, and there it ends.’ He closed his eyes.