Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (24 page)

There no longer seemed much point in trying to conceal herself. Her plan even began to seem rather silly. If he wasn't working, she asked herself, what was he doing? What had he been doing up here all this time? She walked down the narrow hard-packed cattle track that led to the waterhole and emerged a moment later at the edge of the rock shelf. She saw him at once. She had not been able to see him from the bluff because he was deep in the shade of the overhang. He was naked and lying on his back on the smoothly contoured rock, his clothes rolled up and used as a pillow, his hands clasped loosely across his stomach. He appeared to be asleep. Careful to make as little noise as possible, but not wishing—if he
were
awake—to seem to be sneaking up on him, Ida walked down onto the rock shelf and went round and stood in front of him. His eyes were closed. His breathing was deep and regular. She watched him for a moment then slowly sat down and leaned against the rock. His feet were near her and the big toe on his left foot twitched, like that of an animal. His strong legs were relaxed apart, and his penis lolled across the smooth muscle of his thigh. There was an oily sheen, she noticed, on the fine stretched skin that ran in a dark line down to the hard globes of his testicles, which moved slightly as she watched them, in the rhythm of his sleep.

Ida let out a long silent breath. He's too young for me, she thought for the hundredth time. She didn't know
what
to think! Her gaze moved over his body, lingering on the seductive naked curves and hollows of his groin and stomach and smooth hairless chest. The contradiction of his remoteness and his availability made her dizzy. He was so open and strong and seemingly without guile. She found it nearly impossible to believe that he had deliberately deceived her. But there was the evidence! She
had
heard him talking to Ward about himself. She knew, however, knowing it now for the first time, that she would never be able to dislike him. Hate him she might,
that
was a possibility. She half hated him now. And last night she had hated him, while he was in there talking and she had been waiting, feeling the pressure of it all building up around her in the air. She felt the anger rising in her again at the thought of it. There was no possibility, she felt certain, of an innocent explanation for the way he had behaved.

At that moment Crofts opened his eyes. He saw Ida sitting at his feet staring at him coldly and for an instant he thought that he was still dreaming. He sat up. ‘Hi.'

‘What did you tell me all those stupid lies for when we were supposed to be really close and honest with each other?' she said with a rush of resentment. Her heart was beating rapidly and she took a deep breath, afraid that she would lose control and smash him in the face with a rock. She felt overwhelmed by the injustice and needlessness of all this, but there was a violent energy in her that she felt could take charge any minute.

Crofts rubbed his face vigorously with his hands and gave his head a shake. He blinked at her. ‘Did
he
tell you?' How else, he was wondering incredulously, could she have found out so quickly?

‘You
did
lie then, didn't you? All that stuff about flowers and music and your mother playing the piano, it was all lies, wasn't it?' She half turned away from him as if she meant to get up, then faced him again.

‘What was the point?'

He pursed his lips and stared at her.

‘I don't trust you,' she said, and now she did get up.

He scrambled to his feet. ‘You're right,' he said. ‘None of it was true. But it wasn't lies either.' How could he express it, he wondered, so that she would understand why he had invented all that stuff for himself, for both of them, really? But he knew there was no way for him to put it that she would understand, not at the moment anyway. ‘You were talking about us with him then?'

‘Don't be ridiculous!' She was scathing.

‘How did you know then?'

‘I overheard you.'

He didn't believe her. He was still reeling from the shock of his awakening. He had been dreaming about some sort of anguished struggle which matched the present moment almost too exactly. Ida had been in it somewhere, but he couldn't recall any of the details. The warm air circulated gently over his body in the shade of the rock. He squinted into the reflected glare of the sun from the flat white surface of the sandstone and watched her walk to the lip to look over into the pool. There was a big brown leaf hanging off her shirt, caught there by a skein of web. He wanted to go over and pick it off and show it to her. She was sweating, and her shirt was stained. He thought she looked more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen. With his desire his jealousy came rushing back. Despite himself he said. ‘Ward reckons you used to do it with all the stockmen.'

She turned away from watching the slow circling motions of the big old fish and looked at him. She frowned. ‘What?'

He shrugged uncomfortably, wishing he had not said it, but feeling a mean kind of self-righteousness all the same. ‘I can't help what he said.'

She came towards him. ‘What are you talking about, Robert?' she asked steadily, something menacing in her voice. She stopped in front of him, her right hand gripping the satchel.

He swallowed anxiously. What had Ward actually said? There had been too much jealousy in his thoughts since last night for any clarity to have remained, too many fearful fantasies entangled with his wish to be close to her again. She was standing in front of him waiting. He looked into her eyes. He felt certain that if he said the wrong thing she would hit him. He noticed the satchel and the way she was gripping it. Still, he had to know, to hear, if need be, an incredulous denial from her. He readied himself to deflect a blow from the satchel and said, ‘Ward said you'd done it before, with other stockmen.'

Nothing happened.

Then she said, very precisely, leaning forward a little, ‘But Ward doesn't know that
we
have “done it”.' She paused. ‘So how could he have said that?'

The silence grew strained between them as she waited for him to reply. He heard a loose rock clattering down the face of the bluff a hundred yards or so behind them, sending minute cracking echoes back and forth across the creek.

‘Done it!'
she said with disgust. ‘Ward doesn't say things like that.' She shoved him aside and went to walk past him back up the path. He grabbed her arm. ‘Wait!' he said. She turned quickly, and with all her strength hit him on the nose with the tightly clenched fist of her left hand.

The blow caught him completely off-guard. He let out a sharp cry of pain and his head jerked back with the force of it. For an instant he let go of her and covered his face with his hands. Before she could get quite out of his reach, however, he lunged after her and grabbed her arm. She didn't try to get away. She felt ready for him. He made no attempt, however, to strike her, only to restrain her. But she seemed hardly to notice this and fought him furiously, a mad, joyous pent-up excitement rushing through her blood. She had risen above any kind of calculation or fear and was carried forward by her desire for combat. They struggled together onto the glaring apron of the white sandstone ledge, her excited, triumphant yells echoing from the prow of the bluff behind them.

•

From inside the machinery shed, peering through a nail-hole in the corrugated iron, Alistair had watched his mother walking away from the homestead towards the hills. Her figure grew smaller and smaller until his eye had begun to water, and once or twice he lost sight of her in the tall silvery grass. At last she had entered the trees and was lost to his view entirely.

He went back to the silent empty house and stood in the passage listening. Then, as if he were a thief afraid of disturbing a sleeper, he crept into her room. He stood just inside the doorway, his left side reflected in her tilted mirror, not moving his head, but gazing stiffly at his reflection out of the corner of his eye. He was afraid. But he was not so afraid that he did not notice how skinny he was, his pyjama shorts hanging wide and loose like skirts over his bony knees. He was afraid of a great many things but at this moment he was most afraid of the silence of the house itself. He knew that Janet would never come back. Even if she visited for holidays, she would never again
be here
with him. It was over. He was alone.

All his life her voice had been with him. For ever! This was a dead silence. It was the sound of her absence, new and sharp and painful to him. He had lain in bed with the sheet held over his face, and had listened this morning, aching for her to come and speak to him, to ask him to forgive her for her strange cold attitude these past few weeks, to beg him to wish her well, to make him promise to come and see her in Rockhampton.
Or
something!
He had heard every creak of the floorboards, the sound of movement and preparation in the house, the bumping of her suitcases, then the sickening footsteps as they all went down the back steps. There was the sound of the car driving away. She had not come. She had not come for
anything.

These thoughts created a large dull area of discomfort in his mind while he contemplated his mother's bedroom.

He did not know why he was doing this, but Alistair went over to Ida's chest of drawers and began to search methodically through the contents of each drawer. He had no idea what he was looking for, nor what he might find. He turned up the corners of the neatly folded garments, and peered between the layers, not moving anything out of place, so that she would not know he had been here. But in the back of his mind Alistair believed that she would know, somehow, that he had searched through her things. The fact that he found nothing startling or peculiar or mysterious in the drawers did not disappoint him. Her smell was thick and heavy all around him. He felt a slight disgust, a revulsion at the intimacy of this contact with her which had in it nothing decent or reassuring, and which stemmed from an ill-will whose mysteries he was in no position to decipher.

He made certain that each drawer was properly closed, and then he turned his attention to her bed. He stood and looked at it for a few seconds his heart beating quickly, before he bent forward and carefully pulled back the covers, only a little at first, then further until at last he hauled the top sheet and blanket right off and stood gazing at the rumpled bottom sheet, his eyes wide and fixed. The sheet was stained. He knew what it was. He had expected it to be there, though he had not foreseen the consequences of his action. His thin lips were pinched together tightly, his cheeks sucked in hard against his gums. His rather unintelligent, frightened eyes were filled with an intense malicious excitement. Stiffly he bent forward and placed the pad of his index finger on the largest stain. He rubbed the material between his thumb and forefinger then raised his finger to his nose, passing it back and forth slowly from one nostril to the other, sniffing the faintly yeasty smell he had picked up. His penis was erect. He masturbated quickly into his cupped hand, the thin viscous fluid dripped between his fingers onto the wooden floor. He had the look of a frightened cat.

The surroundings in which he had performed this action horrified him. The image in his mind had been of his sister lying on her back with her legs wide open in Crofts' hut miming the action of her father attempting to control a fresh horse—an intense and exact image of her soft pink vagina, warm and aroused, the lips slightly parted, displayed not for his own but for the stockman's fascinated gaze. He felt panic taking hold of him. He made a sudden half-stifled sobbing noise and he ripped off his pyjama shorts and wiped the floor quickly with them, not really thinking what he was doing, before he left the room, forgetting to pull up the covers of the bed. Inside his head a strident voice was screaming at him over and over:
it is all Crofts'
fault!
He ran into his own room and dressed quickly, dragging on his jodhpurs and riding boots and talking rapidly to himself all the while, seeking reassurance in the sound of his own voice.

He urged his grunting pony up the rocky slope, whacking her again and again with a dry stick, and when she failed to respond, reached back and jabbed the sharp end of the stick into the tender skin of her flank. At each jab the pony grunted and heaved herself forward over the loose rocks, struggling to keep her feet and ducking her head with distress. When a large boulder threatened to roll backwards under her hoofs, she stood poised precariously for an instant, the steep ground falling away dangerously below, then regained her balance and lunged upward again. The rider seemed unaware, or at least uncaring, of the dangers, his rifle thumping him on the back in time with the lunges of his mount and his stick never still for a moment.

Alistair wasn't sure what he was doing. He had no plan. Catching his pony and galloping off across the familiar paddocks in the heat of the day was almost a reflex action with him. He had done it before on many occasions, indeed he was inclined to do it whenever a crisis occurred, simply to avoid an unpleasant situation. It was just a matter of getting away from the house, and usually from a specific person. On this occasion he simply didn't want to be alone there any more with the terrible new silence. And he especially wanted to avoid Crofts, should he decide to return early from his work for now Alistair felt vulnerable to the stockman.

He had not set out to catch up with or to follow his mother, and the fact that he pursued exactly the route she had taken earlier was not unusual. He followed, as she had, the easiest path offered by the open country until he came to the rising ground and the shelter of the timber. Only then did it cross his mind that his mother had passed this way earlier and was somewhere ahead of him. And it was more the lie of the land than any plan that caused him to follow his mother; once on the steep slope, it was unthinkable for him to stop or to attempt to traverse the hill.