Watching the Climbers on the Mountain (8 page)

Ever since she could remember, Gil had careered from one short-lived enthusiasm to another, discarding along the way an expensive array of giant toys, from drum sets and electric guitars to powerful hunting bows. The most expensive of these, acquired last year just before he had set out for Gympie and the butter factory, had been a made-to-order western roping saddle and a quarter horse stallion. If anyone else had displayed such an interest it would have been contemptuously dismissed by his older brothers as, ‘Big gun pseudo-Yankee bullshit,' but in Gil they found it enthralling, even discovering in themselves a taste for the hobby. Apparently Gary, the eldest by quite a few years and the one least inclined to experiment, was riding the horse and using the ‘alien' saddle! Clearly Gil would have no further use for these things now that he had taken up the
serious
business of trophy shooting and had joined the Gympie Rifle Club.

The episode was typical and it was why eccentric side-interests abounded among the otherwise conservative members of the Sturgiss family. Being the last child by a long way had presented Gil with opportunities the others had only dreamed about. And they had begrudged him none of it, but had pored over catalogues with him in the evenings, encouraging him to indulge his every whim, and supplying some from their own fancies, pretending they were his. They had all had a lot of fun through Gil. He had brought the unexpected into their lives.

As she lay there gazing at the familiar reflected view of the distant hills in the mirror, her thoughts drifted to recollections of her own childhood. The view in the mirror was one she knew to be infinitely variable. This afternoon the dazzling white plumes of thunderclouds had begun soaring vertically thousands of metres into the sky and were now beginning to cast their huge shadows over the black basalt-capped spires of Ka Ka Mundi. She wondered if a storm would roll out of the ranges and sweep down the valley between the escarpments tonight. In that event, she thought—her mind turning to more practical considerations—the roads would be impassable and there would be no carnival. She wanted the carnival to go ahead. Not only because she had a share of responsibility for it, but also because of the incident on the verandah.

She watched the clouds rising and conjured up the cool damp wind after storm rain, imagining its passage through the house, the creaking and subsiding of wood and iron—as the heated fabric of the place released its stored tensions. She must have dozed then for the banging of the screen door roused her. She looked at her watch; it was almost four o'clock. She lay still listening. The house was silent. And at last she slept, her body relaxed. A sheen of sweat glistened along the contours of her tanned skin and glided down in runnels here and there to dampen the sheet beneath her. Her breathing was slow and even and she seemed at peace with herself. But still something within her resisted, and she dreamed a kaleidoscope of brief and disconnected images; images that withdrew in the first moments of waking, tantalising her with their evanescence. Then she remembered the excursion to the creek and dismissed them, looking forward at once to a refreshing plunge into the cool depths of Toby's Hole.

As she pulled on her bathers and gathered the things she would take to the creek she wondered about the outcome of the incident at the lunch table. The prospect of watching Robert Crofts fight in the tournament marquee in Springtown tomorrow evening was giving a surprising lift to her day; it was something out of the ordinary to look forward to. She was taken a little off-guard, and felt pleasurably guilty at the same time, to discover the keen element of voyeurism in her reaction. But, aside from this, she was intrigued by the prospect of seeing the stockman in a situation where he would be forced to abandon his solitariness and reveal himself.

She laughed as she took a final look at herself in the mirror; and as she left her room she felt uplifted by a lively sense of enjoyment, almost of irresponsibility. Changes in her life seemed about to take place. She felt ready for them. It was not a matter of calculation but of feeling, of expectation and inner excitement. It had been with her for some time. Perhaps six months, or even longer. In some ways, she recognised, it had always been with her, down there underneath the everyday feelings, working its way slowly up to the light. Now here it was, suddenly, today, visible to her at last, focused inexplicably on the fight the stockman was to have tomorrow evening at the Springtown carnival. Calm and self-assured, she now carried this feeling of excitement within her like a precious secret.

•

It was with reluctance that Ward Rankin had made the phone call to enter the stockman as well as Gil Sturgiss in the boxing tournament. He had been obliged to after the lunchtime incident that had intrigued each member of the Rankin family, without striking any of them as particularly crucial. It was only slowly, and with the unreal certainties of hindsight, that this incident came to be viewed by at least one of them as a turning point. Many years afterwards Janet Rankin would look back on this Christmas lunch as establishing the moment which irrevocably bound the stockman to her family. And she would always carry with her the troubling conviction that she had foreseen the significance of it all at the time. Though of course she had not.

Even the positions of each of them at the lunch table remained clear in her memory. She was sitting opposite her father, his slim, slightly hunched figure sharply silhouetted against the streaming light at the head of the table. The smoke from his cigarette rose in a cloud around him and his expression was hidden in the dark shadows of his face. To her left was Gil Sturgiss and next to him, on her father's right, Alistair. On her father's left sat her mother and between her mother and herself was the stockman. Lunch was well over and a fourth round of charades was faltering for lack of enthusiasm. It was Alistair's turn and they were waiting for him. All was quiet; the alcohol, the heat and the rich meal had weighed them down into a state of contentment, each of them induced to private thoughts despite the social nature of the game. Alistair's remark cut through the mood and caught them unawares. Looking at the stockman, he said, ‘Are you going to fight tomorrow Gil?'

For maybe two or three seconds everyone accepted the question as having something to do with the performance of his charade; then what he had said dawned on them and, with the exception of Gil Sturgiss, they all looked at Crofts. The stockman blushed and looked down, scraping at an imaginary remnant of plum pudding in his dessert bowl. Gil Sturgiss reached across the table and picked up the station owner's brass lighter, flicking it with his thumb. The Rankins were all waiting, their attention on the stockman and Gil; and in Alistair Rankin's eyes there was a peculiarly intense light.

‘We'll bring home the golden eagles,' Gil Sturgiss announced confidently, touching the flame to one of the thin Ritmeester cigars that Alistair had given him for Christmas. He leant back and blew out a huge cloud of smoke, aiming it up at the glass balls dangling above his head and making them twist and dance on their threads.

‘Robert's not fighting,' Alistair pronounced abruptly, and they all looked at the stockman again.

‘Well what's this charade you're going to do for us?' Gil Sturgiss asked, puffing a spurt of smoke into the young boy's face.

‘Ask him yourself!' Alistair persisted.

‘That'll do now,' Ida Rankin admonished gently, and there was an uncertain pause.

‘Robert'll have a go,' her brother said then, backing up his new friend and making his trust in the stockman clear to all of them in order to silence their doubts.

Ward Rankin recognised the stockman's fear the moment Crofts blushed and started fiddling with his spoon. The sight gave him a sharp and unexpected pleasure; it was another precise connection between them. He knew the stockman's fear well; he had grown up with such a fear and had carried it with him into adulthood until the incursions of middle age had finally eroded it. This was the same fear from which his English master had offered him a refuge at school: the very private fear of the boy who has never had a fight with another boy and who dreads the inevitable day when he will be left with no way out and will be forced to fight, or—if he has managed to elude the business for so long—to prove himself at last against another man. This was Crofts' unenviable situation now. Rankin recognised the isolating dread which afflicts the lives of all boys—unless they belong to that minority who not only overcome the fear but who discover in themselves a sadistic pleasure in fighting and who seek out opportunities for it.

Ward Rankin heard his son cross-examining the stockman now, and he misunderstood the boy, thinking him to be simply pinning Crofts down because of his own nervousness about this business. ‘You don't have to go in for the tournament, Robert,' he interrupted. ‘No one has to fight if they don't want to.' But even as he was saying the words he realised that they sounded foolish and that to the others it must seem as though he were really asserting the opposite. How could it seem otherwise? Old age is the only secure refuge from manhood. So he attempted to amend his words and explain himself to Crofts, but succeeded only in further alienating the stockman. In that eternity when he had believed he was about to die, just before his hand closed over the pig's hard foot, when the heat of his hatred for Crofts was compressed into a brief fierce flame, he had understood the limits of his own fear and had passed beyond them. The intensity had receded, but the understanding had remained with him. ‘You've never had a fight, have you, Robert?' he said.

Crofts looked at him sharply, hurt and embarrassed. His miserable secret was out. ‘Of
course
I have!' he claimed too vehemently as he glanced around nervously at their faces, scoffing at Rankin's impossible suggestion. ‘Heaps of times!' he added scornfully, compounding his wretched lie. Then he looked again at Rankin, who was still watching him. He was puzzled and angered by his boss's words but startled, too, that such a well-concealed secret could be guessed. He averted his eyes. Rankin's searching gaze disturbed him. The stockman felt suddenly oppressed.

Gil Sturgiss leaned forward onto the table, carefully clearing dishes aside to make room for his elbows, and pointed his cigar accusingly at the station owner. ‘And even supposing he hadn't had a fight, Ward,' he said deliberately, everyone's attention on him, ‘it doesn't mean he won't be good at it when he does have one.' He paused, allowing time for his meaning to sink in, nodded once at Ward Rankin and then sat back. ‘Take a look at him,' he added significantly. They all looked at the stockman and saw the truth of Gil's remark. ‘You just give Waterhouse or whatever-his-name-is a ring, Ward, and me and Robert'll fight whoever they put up to us.' Gil turned to Robert Crofts for the first time. ‘What do you weigh, about twelve and a half?'

Crofts nodded, ‘Just under.' He swallowed with difficulty and avoided looking directly at any of them.

•

Toby's Hole was beyond the second bend in the creek, downstream from the house, a quarter of a kilometre or so below the grove of lime trees that grew along the edge of the horse paddock. Ward and Ida Rankin drove there in the jeep with the Li-Los and the banana lounges and the rest of the gear. The others walked along the top of the creek bank. Gil Sturgiss and Crofts were together in the lead; Gil carried his new rifle in its smart canvas case with the bright badges on it and Crofts had the old .303 slung over his shoulder. Alistair kept close to Gil, never more than a step or two behind him, listening carefully to his every word and observing his gestures—it was clear that his uncle represented for Alistair the most desirable condition of manhood he could imagine. He cradled his single-shot .22 in his arms, imitating Gil, and across his shoulder was slung an old army rucksack containing a supply of ammunition for each of them. A good twenty metres or more behind Alistair, Janet Rankin sauntered along on her own. She was the only one of this party without a rifle.

After they had been walking for about ten minutes Gil led them out onto the point of a bare promontory overlooking the first bend of the creek and he pointed out to the stockman the spot where they would set up their shooting match later on. Twenty-five or so metres below them a large flat area of worn river stones ended against a high bank of stratified silt, which had been undermined by floods and cut away into a vertical cliff-face. It was a perfect butt, Gil claimed, as there would be no ricochets to worry about, and they might even be able to dig out some of their spent bullets from the silt afterwards and examine them. ‘You always learn something,' he assured Crofts when the stockman asked casually why they would want to bother doing that. Janet's laughter, as she drew level with them, made them turn and look at her.

‘What's up with you, skinny legs?' Gil called, grinning at her. But she only laughed again, continuing beyond the promontory where they stood and along the top of the bank for a distance.

Then she called back to them, ‘You should see yourselves!'

Gil looked at the stockman and raised his eyebrows meaningfully. ‘She's put on a nice bit of condition since I was up here last year,' he said appreciatively, and turned and gazed after her again.

Alistair glanced uneasily at Crofts.

‘What d'you reckon?' Gil persisted when the stockman did not say anything. ‘You'd get the urge for it wouldn't you?'

The three of them stood together gazing after Janet Rankin's retreating figure. Her red and white striped dillybag swung from side to side, a bright spot in the dry flat bush and beginning to look vulnerable out there now. Gil Sturgiss' unanswered question hung in the silence between them, signifying an awkward disjunction of perceptions that could destroy what was left of the Christmas goodwill. And the crudeness of the innuendo was magnified by the stockman's inability to make light of it.