The Golden Soak (33 page)

‘Do you think he's found something?' My voice sounded strange, a dry croak, my eyes riveted.

He nodded. ‘I reck'n.'

I reached for my shirt and shorts and put them on, the plane still circling. He did the same, and we stood in the sun watching it, our eyes screwed up and the minutes passing. Then it was coming back, still a speck and climbing. It was flying high and fast as it passed over us, the sound of it barely audible. ‘Must be near 10,000 feet,' Kennie said. It was slightly to the south and took no notice of us. We watched it until it had disappeared, a speck high in the sky to the west.

I got into the driving seat and started the engine. The position over which it had been circling was not more than 10 miles away and the tracks led straight towards it. Half an hour, an hour at the most. The engine couldn't overheat in that time, not with the breeze beginning to blow, a hot little wind from the south-east. We got going, following the tracks in four-wheel drive, the breeze increasing until sand was flowing like a tide towards us along the desert floor. This wasn't the normal heat wind. This was more like a gale and in an instant the tracks were gone. One minute they were there, the next they had vanished, overlaid by the wind-blown drift of the sand. Kennie leaned towards me. ‘Bedourie,' he yelled. ‘Sandstorm. No wonder that pilot was in a hurry.'

Away to the south the horizon was blurred, the white of the sky turning sepia. In moments the sand had lifted from the surface, rustling against the bonnet of the Land-Rover, millions of grains on the move, a drift waist high and the broken twigs of dry shrubs blowing against the windscreen. And then it hit us, the sky darkening, the desert world turned suddenly brown. I stopped then. I couldn't see a thing only the sand like brown smoke the howl of the wind, the noise rasping at the aluminium panels like the sound of a train as I cut the engine. Nothing to do now but sit in the tightclosed Land-Rover, handkerchiefs tied round our mouths and nostrils, wrapped in the hot protection of our blankets, the noise indescribably vicious. And nothing visible through the windscreen but the sand pouring like a sea, the occasional wreck of desert vegetation uprooted and whirling by.

We didn't talk. We just sat huddled there, desperately trying to breathe, while the sand got into our nose and ears, into our clothes, and the floorboards were gradually covered inches deep with the brown wash of the storm. The noise.… I don't know which was worse, the clogging, insufferable sand or the noise. And it went on and on, the hot wind blistering and abrasive, the minutes dragging into hours. To look at it was to get one's eyeballs seared with grit, and as we sweated, the sand clung to our bodies, a perpetual irritant.

It lasted all day, and then died in the evening as quickly as it had started. From nil visibility and daylight drab as a nut-brown night, suddenly there was stillness, the sun showing as a faint pale circle there in the west and the desert taking shape around us. It was like breaking surface after being half-drowned in the brown tide of a swollen river. Another moment and everything was still, not a sound in the world, and the air becoming crystal clear in the slanting sun. Far away to the north anvil tips of cu-nim showed above the horizon.

We shook ourselves out and had some water, the first we had had for over six hours. We were dried up, desiccated, exhausted by the battering. The tepid water cleaned our mouths, but did little to refresh us. We opened a tin of baked beans and wolfed them cold. I would have given anything for a bath. Kennie's skin was coated red with dust and sweat. I was the same and we couldn't even wash our faces. Instead, I lit a cigarette, my nerves crying out for it more than food, even though my nostrils were still clogged with sand.

It was then, as I inhaled the first long drag of that cigarette, staring at the clear, impersonal hostility of the desert, that I saw it. Away to the north-east, just short of the horizon, like a rock awash in a petrified sea. I thought it must be the Winnecke Rock and I called to Kennie, who had started clearing the sand out of the back of the Rover. But then I realized it couldn't be the Winnecke. We were half a dozen miles at least beyond the Winnecke. The sun was slanting, a softer light, the desert golden red, the white heat of the sky paling to an ephemeral blue, and my eyes were tired. ‘That's not a rock,' he said. And in that instant I saw it for what it really was, a vehicle hull-down below a ridge of sand, just the rectangle of the canopy showing.

I moved to the driving seat, but he stopped me. ‘Better top the rad up first.'

We did that and cleaned some of the sand off the engine. Then I turned the ignition key and for a long minute the starter whined and nothing happened. Sand, I thought. My Gad! All this way, and then, just when we'd sighted him … The engine coughed, lost itself, then coughed again and roared into life. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades. Kennie swung himself in beside me, grinning with relief. ‘Bit of luck that.' We were both of us grinning as I put her into gear and headed north-east across the line of the next ridge.

I had forgotten to put her into four-wheel drive and within minutes we were up to our axle in a fresh sand drift. Heat exhaustion slowed us badly and it took a long time to dig ourselves out and get moving again, everything an appalling effort. Kennie drove the rest of the way, the sun sinking to the horizon, the flaming ball of it reddening the desert to the colour of blood, the cu-nim gone from the horizon ahead and the sky to the east taking on that egg-shell greenish tint of evening. It was a Land-Rover all right, stuck halfway up a dune, its bonnet raised and facing east. A canopy had been rigged against one side of it, and as we neared it, I could see a solitary figure in a broad-brimmed hat collecting vegetation for a fire. No sign of anybody else.

We drew up in the trough below the sandridge on which it had stalled and a figure emerged from the lean-to shelter and staggered to his feet. Tall and stooped, he was instantly recognizable. I got out and went to meet him. ‘You, is it?' There was no welcome in his voice, only tiredness, a touch of resentment even. ‘What d'you want?' His voice was slower than ever, a little slurred with the effort of speaking.

‘I came to look for you.'

‘No need. I'm perfectly able to look after myself.'

I glanced at the Land-Rover, nettled by his reaction to our arrival. ‘Trouble?' I asked, nodding at the lifted bonnet.

‘Sand in the fuel line, that's all. I'll deal with it – later.' The weariness in his voice was very apparent, his body swaying slightly with exhaustion and Tom standing defensively a few yards off, the black face below the wide hat wrinkled in a puzzled frown.

The sun was almost gone now, a red wound gaping along the horizon to the west. I turned to Kennie. ‘Better see if you can fix it before the light goes.'

‘Did you send that plane out looking for me?' There was a distinct note of hostility in Ed Garrety's voice.

‘No.'

‘Who did then?'

‘I've no idea.'

He nodded slowly, then looked about him and folded his long thin legs, collapsing on to a bare patch of sand. He said something to Tom, who answered, ‘Yes, boss,' and set about getting a fire going. ‘We'll have a brew-up together, then we'll see,' Ed Garrety murmured. ‘Come and sit down.' He patted the sand beside him. ‘You look tired. Not used to the desert, eh?'

I sat down beside him, both of us silent for a long time. The sun had gone, the sky a lurid blaze of colour, except in the east where it was already darkening to the velvet purple of dusk. There were questions I wanted to ask, but I didn't know how to begin and so I remained silent, and he said softly,
‘You would play upon me – you would pluck out the heart of my mystery.'
He smiled suddenly. ‘But you're no Guildenstern come to trick me. You're honest. Or I believe you are.' He peered at me, still with that tired smile, his face warmed by the sunset colours so that the skin below the stubble no longer had that parchment look. ‘But I don't know your motive, do I? Why are you here?'

‘To get you back home.'

Think I can't make it on my own?'

‘Janet's worried.'

‘Ah, yes. Janet.' He paused

‘I read the letter you wrote her.'

‘That was a private letter.' The hostility was back in his voice.

I told him how one of the boys had woken me in the night. ‘Janet had gone to Lynn Peak looking for you. The house was empty. I read it because I wanted to find out what had happened to you.'

‘And you followed me, knowing I wanted to do this on my own.'

‘Janet was worried,' I said again.

‘And that was all? No other motive?'

‘I was curious, of course.'

He nodded. ‘Of course. You want to know what happened.'

He was silent then, staring into the desert. The colour was fading now, the washed-out look of dusk creeping over the sand. And then abruptly he said, ‘D'you love her?'

I stared at him.

‘My daughter – d'you love her?' He was looking at me very intently, his eyes searching my face.

‘I'm fond of her,' I muttered, my eyes shifting from the directness of his stare, uncertain of myself and what he expected of me.

‘Fond?' He leaned a little forward. ‘You've never been in an Australian desert and you risk your life for an old man because you're fond of his daughter?'

‘There's Kennie,' I said, nettled by his words. ‘He's here, too. Why don't you ask him if he loves her?'

‘That boy.' He shook his head, the dulled blue eyes still staring at me out of the drawn, tired face. ‘I wonder if you realize how attractive you are to people. It's a quality that's rare. But you have it. That boy, the drillers, Janet – even myself, and I've had a lot of experience of men.' He lowered his head, staring down at the sand. ‘And you want to know what happened.'

‘Not if you don't wish to tell me,' I said.

I saw him smile. ‘That's the trouble. I do. All these years …' He didn't finish, but continued staring down at the sand. There was sweat on his forehead and he suddenly looked very old and alone. Then Kennie called to me that the union to the carburettor was threaded. The moment was gone and he murmured, ‘Later. We'll talk about it again later.'

‘You're a sick man,' I said.

He didn't answer and in the end I got up and went to help Kennie repair the union, while Tom brewed a billy of tea over the fire. We got the engine going in the end and backed the Land-Rover down the ridge, parking it on the flat beside our own.

We fed in the last of the light and then drove on, following in the wake of Ed Garrety's Land-Rover. Tom was driving it and the bearing varied between 100° and 105°. We were held up only once by sand and that only briefly. Otherwise we made steady progress, all in four-wheel drive with two pauses to let the engines cool. Shortly after midnight we stopped. We were just short of the pencil mark on the chart. Ed Garrety's face appeared at my window, lit faintly by the light from my torch shining on the chart. ‘Where did you get that?'

‘From the wall of your den.'

‘You searched the place then.' His voice was strangely detached, no resentment in it.

‘I was looking for the rest of the Journal.'

‘You knew, did you – that it was incomplete?'

‘I guessed.'

‘Does Janet know about that map?'

‘No.'

He seemed relieved.

Kennie leaned forward. ‘We stopping here, Mr Garrety?'

‘Yes. We'll camp here.' His gaze returned to the chart. ‘I should have brought that with me.'

‘I only found it by chance,' I said. ‘It was under the Hamersley Range chart.'

He nodded. ‘I forgot all about it.' He leaned his head in at the window, looking down at it. ‘The mark's still visible.'

‘Yes.'

‘So you'd have come straight here.' And he added, smiling, ‘Well, perhaps it's for the best. I'm not a mining man myself.'

‘This is the position then?'

He gave me a long slow look, then nodded and turned away. ‘We'll have a look round in the morning, eh?'

I got out and followed him as he moved slowly back to his own vehicle. ‘How did you know?' I asked.

We were alone then, midway between the two Land-Rovers, He stopped, a shadow in the gloom.

‘Did McIlroy get as far as this?'

I saw him nod his head, slowly, almost reluctantly.

‘How do you know?'

He didn't say anything, his eyes glinting in the starlight, the outline of his body sagging.

‘And that chart left there on the wall. You didn't need a map to find your way here.'

‘I brought a quarter mil map along.'

‘But you didn't need it.'

‘No,' he said. ‘I knew the way.'

The truth was staring me in the face, but I didn't recognize it. Instead, I thought it was the Journal. ‘The missing pages,' I said. ‘Your father gave the position in his Journal.'

He stared at me and for a moment I thought he wouldn't answer that. But then he said, ‘No, he didn't know that. But everything else. He wrote it all down, everything, just as … as it was told to him. He was a great one for keeping records. He should have been a diarist.'

‘Where is it then?' I asked. ‘Where's the rest of his Journal? Have you got it with you?'

He shook his head. ‘I burned it. When the old man died I burned all the last part.'

‘Why?'

‘Still curious, eh?' He patted me gently on the shoulder. ‘All in good time. Don't rush me.' He stood for a moment in complete silence. ‘Ever been in a desert before?'

‘No.'

Then you wouldn't understand.' And then so softly I could barely hear him, ‘But Christ did. He understood … the peace, the solitude, the immense impersonal hostility that cleanses the soul. I was a young man, hot-blooded, and full of the certainty that justice …' His voice trailed off. ‘Now I'm old before my time, my body worn out by a twist of fate that was equally unjust. In Burma I had a lot of time to think, and death all round me. Since then it's been a long hard struggle, and no time to think. But now … now I want to make my peace.' His hand was on my arm again. ‘We'll talk again – later. I'm a sick man, as you say. Only one lung left and that's going now. Janet doesn't know. She only suspects. I've never told her.'