“No. How could I? I wasn't...”
“Of course not, Clifford. Now lift your feet and help a little. We haven't far to go. Out on the Nullarbor Plain so bright, we're so happy we could be tight. I'll help you and you'll help me, and we'll go forward with hearts of glee. Didn't know I am a poet, did you?”
“I ... I want to find the caverns and the doctor, Inspector.”
“Not now, Clifford. We're on the Nullarbor. Not in, but on Australia, the real Australia known by the aborigines, the old
time sundowners, the stockmen and waifs like us. For people in cars who follow the roads, for politicians who come inland only when winter coolness is here, Australia puts on a disguise. You and I see Australia without any disguise, see Australia as it really is. You have a great deal to be joyful about.
“Come on, lift your feet. That's better. You will come to love Australia, as I do. You have to get down on your stomach, press your face into the sand and against the hot gibbers, smell the land and feel through your empty belly its closeness to you, woo it with a voice clogged by the lack of saliva. And then, Clifford, as with many men, this naked fair Australia will become the great love of your life.”
How far! What was that the Inspector said. What?
“What have you in your hand, Clifford? Show me.”
A blessed halt, and Maddoch opened his hand.
“See, you have already captured the veritable Australia. Don't you know that scientists, writers and photographers travel around Australia in trucks and caravans, and never ever see, let alone hold in their hands, a kangaroo mouse. You lucky, lucky man.”
Chapter Twenty-two
THEY trudged in line abreast to prevent delay like that occasioned by Maddoch. At the beginning of the trek it had been essential to follow-my-leader to minimise risk of injury. Then it became necessary for the leader to set a pace to outwit possible pursuit, and, when that menace lessened, speed remained an important factor, as the food and water supplies were so limited.
Maddoch's condition compelled them to camp for one day in the shallow depression where, fortunately, Lucy had found water. After the day's rest, Maddoch was well enough to proceed, and the new order of march, although slower, was conducive to the maintenance of morale.
Bony persuaded them to sing, and when they tired of this, he induced Brennan to act the sergeant-major by calling the steps. This suited Brennan. Riddell grumbled incessantly. Jenks now and then hopped over a bush instead of ploughing through it, and his nimbleness prompted Bony to ask if he had done any tap-dancing.
“Not the real thing,” replied Jenks. “Me old man usta think I'd make a fighter good enough to keep him in whisky, and he paid gym fees and lost his dough and drank himself to death 'fore I could get into real class. Still, I learned how to take care of meself against the Liverpool Irish, and they're the boys what make a man step lively. What d'you reckon, Joe?”
“You ain't so bad, Ted. T'hell with these flies.”
In the afternoon of the next day, Bony was relieved of anxiety by a faint blue knob of high land, far to the west, and he was confident that his general line of progress was accurate. At sun-down, when they had to camp on the open
Plain, the knob was banished by the glare, but after the sun had gone, it stood in bold relief and was identical with the mental picture retained of its shape.
The following morning, therefore, he altered course and steered due south for Bumblefoot Hole.
The wind came, but not with the fierceness of the storm that disintegrated the straw wall. It blew from the west and filled the sails of small individual clouds, and sped their shadows over the silvered floor of the Plain, emphasising the insecurity of the nebulous world.
“We should reach Bumblefoot Hole today,” he told his companions. “We'll then be about halfway home. We'll be able to camp there for two days, rest and repair our footwear, bathe and wash clothes, and generally prepare for a good start on the second leg of the journey.”
“That sounds glorious to me,” said Myra, who was walking beside him. Although he carried her swag and he had maintained her blanket footwear, she was excessively tired, but unflaggingly spurred by the attractive carrot of fame dangling before her eyes.
“We could miss Bumblefoot Hole,” Bony warned. “Although much bigger than that other hole we camped in, we could pass it by within a quarter of a mile especially on a day like this when the cloud shadows are moving so fast. So keep your eyes open, all of you.”
“When ought we to come to it?” pressed Myra, and Jenks the sailor snarled:
“Caw! Give the Inspector a chance. You take a bearin' on that queer sort of rock on the skyline, Inspector?”
Bony replied that he had.
“Well, then, Myra, how in 'ell d'you think the Inspector can tell you what time he'll reach port when there ain't nothin' for him to take a cross bearin' on? Look, if we hit this Bumblefoot Hole he'll be a ruddy marvel, that's what he'll be.”
Brennan tentatively suggested that they should head for the land, meaning the rock of high ground.
“Bad country, Mark,” Bony explained. “Low scrub trees, sand, saltpans, desert, without water, nothing for two thousand miles, and then the Indian Ocean.”
They were resting in the mid-morning when Brennan insisted they should make for the high land, and so get away from the Plain, speaking with a sharp quaver in his voice. When Maddoch firmly reiterated what Bony had said, Brennan knocked him down. Whereupon Riddell took Maddoch's part, and Jenks sprang to his feet. The girl said, irritably:
“That's right, tear each other to bits, you whiskery baboons, you unwashed heroes. Plenty of fight, but full of moans and groans at having to do a little walking. Shut up! You make me sick!”
“You'd of been sicker by this time in them caverns with old Doc Havant,” yelled Jenks, whose whiskers, instead of lying respectably close to his face, stood out like the quills of an angry porcupine, and Bony was thankful that there were no baboons in Australia. He said, as though directing rebellious children:
“We'll confine our energy to lifting one foot, then the other, and repeat the movement. That's the way.”
An eternity later the sun said one o'clock, and, when a cloud threatened, they camped an hour for lunch, bodies aching and nerves ragged, and as the afternoon wore on, even the prospect of Bumblefoot Hole, with all its promised amenities, failed to rouse them from a mood of sullen silence that no amount of cheerful urging by Bony could even penetrate. The shadows worried him, presenting an additional problem, for often he was obliged to stop to assure himself that a shadow was not actually Bumblefoot Hole.
Then at four o'clock when they were resting, Brennan's nerve broke. He stood up, focused the blue rock of the distant upland, and walked off towards it.
“Where the hell you going?” shouted Riddell.
“Come back here, you cranky lunatic,” yelled Jenks.
Brennan turned and shouted abuse. He went on, walking towards that land of terrible certainty, of death.
“Quiet,” Bony ordered. “Wait. Just watch him.”
Brennan had gone a hundred yards, and as they waited and watched, he covered the second hundred yards. Two hundred yards isn't far on the Nullarbor Plain, where you believe you can see for fifty miles. Bony, on back-tracking the vanished Maddoch, found that he had been only a thousand yards from the place where he was missed, yet none had seen him.
Watching Brennan at two hundred yards, they saw the edge of a cloud shadow race upon him, seemingly engulf him, and in the comparative blackness of the shadow, he abruptly waved his arms wildly, and fell on his chest.
“Now what's wrong with him?” Jenks demanded aggrievedly.
The shadow left Brennan and pounded upon them. Dust was rising near the prostrate man. Wisps of saltbush about him appeared to be flung upwards.
“Remain here. I'll fetch him,” Bony said, and when halfway to Brennan, he turned to be sure they were obeying him.
Brennan had dug little holes for his fingers to cling to. He was lying flat, and the toes of his rag-protected feet were dug hard into the earth. His face between the reaching arms was pressed against the dust. His head was to the west, toward yet another cloud shadow racing to them.
“Brennan! Get up!” ordered Bony. “Come, Brennan! On your feet.”
Brennan scrabbled harder against the Plain, and Bony thudded a fist between his shoulders.
“No ... no!” Brennan shouted without lifting his head. “Get down ... get down quick ... you'll be spun off into space.”
“No chance, Mark. Sit up. It's all right. It's only the clouds making the world seem to spin. Now get up! Bumblefoot Hole is only just ahead.”
With a swift motion, Bony tossed Brennan over upon his back, as he might a turtle on the beach. Brennan's eyes were closed and he refused to open them. Lucy came and licked his face, and that did open his eyes. He was panting, less from fatigue than terror, and Bony assisted him to his feet, supporting him while his eyes slowly lost their glaze. Presently he could stand without support, and for a little while passed a hand to and fro across his eyes, and looked at Bony with puzzled dismay.
“God! That was the chips, Inspector. I couldn't hold on. The earth was going overboard faster and faster. I can't tell you.... You don't know...”
“Actually I do,” he was assured. “I've felt it too. You are imaginative, like me, and the Plain can make fools of us in countless ways. The imaginative man will more quickly become lost than the unimaginative, but it is men blessed with imagination who climb Everests and cross Nullarbors. Feeling better?”
Brennan nodded. He gazed about as though determined to test himself. Again looking at the slight figure with him, and meeting the blue eyes, he said:
“You're a good bloke, pal. I'm all right now. If I act wonky again, clout me one.”
“I'll heave the water drum at you if I happen to be carrying it, Mark. I knew a fellow once who used to say when things were bad, âNothing for it but hard smoking.' We can say, âThere's nothing for it but hard walking.' By the way, just where were you when Mitski was killed?”
“Me! In the passage to the blow-hole. I told you that.”
“Myra was with you, wasn't she?”
“Yes. She lost her scarf up the blow-hole that time.”
“What were you two doing there?”
“Me?” again Brennan asked inanely. “I was trying to soften her up. What a hope.”
“Why did you go there?”
“Matter of fact, she'd been leading Mitski on a bit, and things weren't too good. Doc dressed Jenks down for something he said. I didn't hear what it was. That was the night before. I told Myra I wanted to talk serious. She went with me, and after I told her where she was likely to get off if she went on making out she liked one better than the rest, she sort of made me think she only liked me. Then when I acted on that, she went crook. That was when we heard Mitski yelling.”
“It was as well I was tossed down among you, Mark.”
“Yair. I'll tell you something, Inspector, although it's not up my alley, and the blokes in Goulburn would call me for everything. The rock Mitski was killed with, Myra found on her bed the same morning. Told me she found it, anyway. I chucked it down Fiddler's Leap.”
He had chucked it down Fiddler's Leapâthe blunt instrument of murder. Just like that. Why? Because the blokes in Goulburn would call him for everything if he aided a police officer. Now for the confidence, when association in hardship and unity of objective was breaking down one loyalty and building another.
“Was there blood on the rock?” Bony asked.
“Yair. A smear in one place. It killed Mitski all right.”
“When did Myra discover the rock on her bed?”
“When, Inspector?” Brennan frowned under compulsion to exercise his mind. “She did say, 'cos I asked her. I know. It was after she'd done the breakfast things.”
“She didn't mention it to me, Mark.”
“I told her not to.”
“Why?”
“Oh, you know how it is. Blimey! You must know.”
“Perhaps I do. Whoever murdered Mitski tried to place the blame on Myra. Unless Myra committed the murder and told you a tale about finding the rock on her bed.”
“Could be either way, Inspector. Why worry at it? Mitski's dead. Body's well down under. Let it lie, let it lie.”
They joined the party and Bony explained that Brennan had been attacked by giddiness. No one said anything, but the expression he caught in the eyes of the girl and Maddoch told him they understood what he meant, and warned him they would need watching.
Forward. Effort without motive. You walk a street and there is a lamp standard ahead to walk to, to pass, to leave behind you. Something is always happening. Nothing happened here save the speeding cloud shadows, and for them you ought to be grateful. You came from nowhere, and you are going to nowhere, for nowhere isn't a place or a thing. You count your steps: a hundred, a thousand, a million, and you are on the same spot you were on in the beginning.
The sun took the road to the highland serrating the western horizon. The clouds dried up, first the little clouds. Human shadows lengthened. Clouds! So what! Shadows! So what! Go on, feet! Go on.... Step over this bloody bush, feet!
Abruptly Bony stopped. Automatically they halted, to find him looking at Lucy. The dog's nose was pointing south of west. Her thin tail trembled. She glanced back, and Bony called:
“Go on ... sool'em!”
Lucy veered to follow the line of her noseâthe scent her nose was registering. They followed, and now and then she signalled with her tail.
The cloud shadows had gone, but another appeared ahead, a shadow which thickened, lengthened.
“What's she sniffin' at?” asked Riddell, and Brennan replied:
“Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and parsnips and brussels sprouts.”
“Could be at that,” sniggered Jenks.
The commander felt obliged to retain respect. He said:
“I have been wondering who would first see Bumblefoot Hole. I thought I would have to point it out, but Lucy saved me the trouble. It's just ahead. And friends of mine are waiting to welcome us. Like Lucy, I can scent them.”