As Far as You Can Go (32 page)

‘What are you grinning about?’ she asks. He shakes his head.

‘This water weighs a ton,’ she says after a while. ‘It’s hurting my shoulder. Let’s drink some.’

‘I’m not thirsty yet.’

‘But if we drink it it’ll be inside us. We’ll be hydrated so we won’t get thirsty. I bet it’s better not to get thirsty than to wait till you are.’

‘But then we’ll sweat it out and then it’s gone.’

‘But if we drink it it’ll be less heavy and we might sweat less.’

He stops, shrugs. Who the hell knows. ‘But not too much,’ he says.

She unscrews the top of her carrier, tilts it back and drinks. Some of it spills down her chest, sticking her white T-shirt to her skin.

‘Don’t waste it.’ He has a drink from his bottle, tepid and tasting of polythene.

‘You shouldn’t really drink from plastic containers,’ she says, ‘it could affect your sperm.’

He splutters a laugh, water running down his own chin.

They walk on in silence for a while, single file between the deeply channelled ruts. ‘If you had a million quid,’ she says, ‘what would you do?’

‘Cass!’

‘Just trying to pass the time.’

‘Save your breath,’ he says.

*

Cassie gives up trying to talk. She watches the toes of her trainers swapping places, over and over, becoming quickly caked with red and black. Better than looking into the distance. Graham walks ahead, head down, water container bumping on his hip. She can hear the water sloshing with each step.

It makes your eyes go funny if you do look into the distance, everything swimmy and uncertain in the rising heat. There is still the sound in her ears, like a sort of echo of a heartbeat. Not sure if she can hear it with her ears or with some other sense. Oh, think about something else. If only they could get out of the blackness, the burning smell. Incredible that underneath there are charred seeds waiting to unfurl, that in a few months’ time it will all be green and filled with flowers, carpets of them, like the pictures.

She remembers a darkened hotel room, a slide show. Australia’s famous flora. Tries to remember the names: banksia, boronia, everlastings – of course – kangaroo paw, parakeelya, desert pea. No. Think about English flowers, soon snowdrops then crocuses daffodils and those tulips, red with black middles. In the earth in her own garden the bulbs would be coming back to life, poking up through the heavy soil. Dizzying thought, so far away, new life starting obedient as clockwork.

What if we don’t make it?
Of course we will, of course we will. She stumbles over a rock.
But if we don’t?

Graham stops and looks back. ‘OK?’

‘Fine.’

‘Look –’

She catches him up and sees that they’re approaching a kind of crossroads, or at least a couple of exits from the main track. There’s even the stump of what might have once been a signpost. If only it still was.

‘This must be where we went wrong,’ he says. He takes off his hat and scratches his head. ‘Fred must have turned off – come to think of it there was a turning –’

‘But that must have been miles back!’

‘No.’

It must have been
, she thinks.

He walks round the signpost, lifting his hand and squinting each way. A kangaroo comes inquisitively close and bounds off again.

‘Which way did he turn then?’

She could cry, so obvious from his face that he doesn’t know. And nor does she. He looks baffled, but chippy, a false, confident little jerk to his chin, as he turns this way and that.
You haven’t got a clue
she thinks. She looks herself, always terrible with directions, always thought it a laugh before, almost a lovable weakness. But it has never been life or death before.
A life-or-death situation
. Funny how even that can be a cliché.
English Couple Perish in Outback
. She can see it in the
Observer
, spread out on a duvet on a Sunday morning, smeared with butter, sprinkled with croissant crumbs.
Poor things
, some other woman will say and yawn and turn the page.

‘This way,’ he says, pointing.

‘Yeah?’

‘I know we turned right once – remember him swinging out. But then we turned right last time, so I think it’s left here. That’ll take us north.’

Cassie pauses, ‘Sure you’re not thinking of the way back?’

‘What?’

‘Well, if he’d turned right on the way back then it would be left now.’

He bites his lip. Red dust has stuck to his suncream so he looks like he’s made of bronze. She takes off her sunglasses and wipes them on her T-shirt.

‘The sun’s there, east, so that is north,’ he says. ‘We’re heading north to the highway so it must be this way.’

‘Oh – yes.’

‘Listen!’ He holds up a finger and she listens. She can’t hear anything at first then maybe a low moan.

‘What?’

‘I thought I heard a road train. Gone now. But keep listening.’

‘OK.’ They drink some water and trudge off down the chosen track.

They walk on. The sun creeps across the sky until it’s overhead. Every now and then they stop and sip some water. Cassie squats down to pee.

Out of the corner of his eye he watches her, wondering if it will make her dehydrate quicker.
Don’t
, he wants to say but doesn’t. They don’t talk much. Not a lot to say. Or not a lot there’s any point in saying. His feet ache and a blister smarts on his heel. He tries to concentrate on other parts of his body to keep his mind off it. His stomach growls, affronted noises, not used to going without its breakfast. Not far off lunchtime now.

At last they come to an end to the blackness. Been walking hours, covered a fair few miles – must have been some conflagration. They walk across a strip of bare red. Absolutely bare and flat with creamy rocks rising from it, rounded like giant pebbles. A couple of dwarfish thorny trees. Something different to look at at least. Sometimes a bird passes. An aeroplane high, high overhead. People sipping drinks, scoffing peanuts, watching a movie. Or maybe looking down and marvelling at the nothingness. A flock of small green parrots creak and squawk past low.

‘Shall we sit down?’ Cassie catches him up, points to a stone beneath which is a lip of shadow.

‘Shouldn’t stop.’

‘Gray, I’ve
got
to sit down.’

They take off their shoes and sweaty socks, pour some water – just a drop – over their aching feet. They drink, scrunched into the shade of the stone. It’s a strange shape, globular like a gigantic melted drip of stone. He rolls a fag, breathes in, savouring the bite of the smoke right to the bottom of his lungs.

‘Remember these rocks?’ she says.

‘Yeah,’ he lies. ‘Not long now.’ Truth is he remembers nothing. The truth is that with every step he takes, he gets less sure where they’re heading. The track, hard to discern any more in the flat land, must be swerving round, the outlook changing till it seems they must be going back on themselves. If they only had a compass.

‘Got another plaster?’ he asks.

She rummages in her bag and helps stick it on the raw oval on the back of his heel where the blister has burst. They put their socks in the sun to dry and close their eyes. It would be too easy to drop off. The stone has a hot salty smell. He forces his lids up to meet the eyes of a small lizard, egg-yolk bright. Eyelids so heavy, head throbs, stomach growls. Should not have stopped. How is he ever going to start again?

He puts his hand in his pocket and meets the two pebbles from Ziggy. ‘Hey,’ he says, giving her the painted one. ‘I forgot. This is for you.’

She takes it. Looks puzzled. ‘Funny time to give me a present.’

‘It’s a bus,’ he says, points out the wheels, steering wheel, windows.

‘Wish it
was
a bus. Ta.’

She looks at it a minute and puts it in her bag. He holds the other pebble in his palm. Warm, smooth, ridged. Friendly. He rubs the ball of his thumb over the ridges, shuts his eyes.

‘I was thinking about Mara,’ Cassie says. ‘What she said, I mean it’s pretty weird – Graham?’

He doesn’t reply, breathes heavily as if he’s dozing, not far off
dozing but mustn’t. Mustn’t doze, mustn’t think, not about Mara, not about anything. He hears Cassie moving, through his lashes sees her putting on her shoes and socks, getting up, vanishing from view.

After a few minutes she calls him from a little way away. ‘Hey, come and look.’

Reluctantly he eases his feet back into sun-crisped socks and shoes, wipes his shades and puts them on – heavy and achy on his nose and ears – and stands up, steadying himself against the stone. On the other side the glare of sun almost blinds him.

‘Look.’ She points out a white painting, stick figures, arrows, a commotion of scratches. ‘Looks like a battle, doesn’t it? And look, here’s a funny hedgehog thing.’ Despite everything he finds a small spurt of energy for interest. They wander amongst the rocks a bit, discovering more painting.

‘Hey.’ Cassie looks round nervously. ‘Suppose there are Aborigines about?’ This might be a reservation for all we know. We might be trespassing. They might be watching us.’

‘Nah,’ Graham says, looking over his shoulder. ‘Anyway, that would be good. They’d point us the right way.’

A beat is missed at this acknowledgement that they are lost. She turns away from him, looks into the distance, then turns back. ‘Isn’t
that
amazing!’ She points to a frieze of men and beasts – a desperate kind of smile on her face.

‘Better get moving.’

‘Can’t be far now,’ she says. ‘Here,’ she says, ‘have a peppermint.’

They drag on. Sweat soaks Graham’s T-shirt, would take it off but then he’d fry. The sun booms, slams down, the heat actually a weight. So hot and bright, hard to look anywhere but down, but seeing the dusty blur of his moving feet makes him giddy. Walks along with closed eyes to rest them. Foot after foot after foot, throb after throb after throb
of his head. His tongue feels thick and harsh in his mouth, like a doormat.

‘Look!’ Cassie says. He jolts himself out of some dream.
‘People!’
She catches hold of his arm. He follows her finger with his eyes. And it seems there are people, a crowd of them – how distant? – spaced out and moving towards them. Small people, a scattered crowd advancing. They reach for each other’s hand.
People?

‘They’ve stopped,’ she whispers, shrinking behind him. She’s right. They are not moving. They are strange, strange figures. Not Aborigines – what are –?

‘Hey!’ he laughs suddenly, realisation hitting him. ‘They’re not
people.’

‘What
– oh!’ She grins at him, a sudden gappy grin under the speckled shadow of her hat.

He says, ‘Remember Mara mentioning these?’ They drop hands and, laughing with relief, walk towards the scatter of termite mounds, which is like a field of statues.

‘Hope it doesn’t mean we’re walking back,’ Cassie says.

He doesn’t answer for a moment. The plaster has rubbed off his heel, skin too wet to stick, he can feel it scrunched up in his sock. His mouth is dry, head pounding with each step. A buzz of flies follows them, one buzzes against his eardrum and he thumps his own face trying to drive it off.

‘She said they were miles away,’ he says. ‘Remember? Don’t suppose you’ve got any aspirin or anything?’

‘Yeah. Headache? I took some a while back.’ She is amazing, burrowing her hand efficiently into her bag. She will be a brilliant mother, he can see that. She should have that. He must get her back safely so she can, one day, have that. She presses a couple of pills out of a blister pack and he swallows them, huge lumps scraping down his throat.

The termite mounds are the strangest thing he’s ever seen; if he was ever to see Ziggy again he’d tell him that. He thinks of
those cows, parched, mummified round a dry pump. He can believe it. He stares round at the formations, like figures, stalagmites, stumpy vegetal forms, some nearly as tall as Cassie, the same burning reds and ochres as the earth, splattered with white streaks of bird shit. If things were different he would like to draw them. A flock of black cockatoos hop about, suddenly scuttering upwards, flashing scarlet underwings. The mounds cast shadows, the sun has moved, Graham scrabbles his mind to try and work out what that means and draws a blank. Shadows stretch towards them like a hundred fingers pointing back the way they’ve come. But they can’t go back.

‘There must be trillions of ants in these,’ she says, ‘or termites. Or whatever they are.’

But he has to face it sometime. He faces it with the termite mounds looming round him: they are lost. No sign of a track now for who knows how long. They might be going to die. That’s what happens to stupid British people blundering about in the bush. They die.

‘Come on,’ Cassie says.

They walk until the termite mounds are too far behind them to see. They come to a place with withered grey bushes, thorns sharp as darning needles, the leaves like flecks of asbestos. There are bristly clumps of razor-sharp grass and more life, lizards, beetles, birds, a small brown snake printing S shapes in the dirt. A couple of emus stand poised against the light watching them pass, and once they’ve passed they throw up their feathers, shriek and lollop away. What do emus eat and drink?

He doesn’t look at the time. What difference does it make? The sun will go down in the end, whether he knows what hour it is or not – and then what? And so what? A couple of eagles are mauling and scrapping over a kangaroo carcass. He’s never seen an eagle before, always wanted to – as a boy it was one of his ambitions. But these are not like the golden eagles of his
dreams, these are thuggish things, dirty feathers billowing round their legs as their talons and beaks rip into the meat. They aren’t cowed by the watching humans, carry on their dirty business unconcerned.

The light starts to deepen to mid-afternoon and a breeze springs up. They are walking straight into the sun which must mean they’re walking west – but what does that mean? – the dry cogs in his head grind – is that right? Can’t remember which way it was they had to go. His feet lift and fall and every time his right foot falls it’s like a cheese grater against this heel and he forgets for a few steps at a time what he’s walking towards or why. Cassie speaks and he’s surprised, remembering she’s there too.