The Outback (11 page)

‘That’s impossible,’
said Matt. ‘Jupiter doesn’t glow and there is no way that it can be bigger than
the stars around it.’

‘It isn’t bigger than
the stars, but it is closer – many light years closer. That is why we can see
it. We would need a powerful telescope to make it out clearly, as from here we
can only see the glimmer of the sun’s reflection across its surface.’

Matt was impressed. He
had never before been able to identify a constellation let alone being able to
spot a planet.

‘What else is up there?’
he asked.

He put his bottle down
on the ground, as his head was now permanently craned upwards in awe. Drinking
would be nothing more than a distraction.

‘Do you see that thick
band of stars over there?’ she pointed high over his shoulder. ‘That is the
Milky Way. Well, technically all of the stars around us are in the Milky Way,
but that really dense bit is the centre. We are nestled within a spiral arm on
the outer rim of the galaxy looking in.’

Matt was trying to
mentally plot what the Earth’s relative position within the galaxy must be,
when Paul decided to add some elaboration of his own.

‘If you look into the
Milky Way really closely you can see the Great Emu,’ he said.

Jenny was instantly
curious.

‘An emu in the sky –
show me.’

Paul moved along the
bench until their shoulders were touching. He pointed with his arm directly
between the two of them, affording them both the same perspective on the
direction of his fingertip. Matt was not best pleased about the close proximity
of the pair, but he also knew that Paul posed no threat.

‘That dark spot there is
the head,’ said the Aboriginal, tracing his arm across the sky. ‘If you follow
it along to the left you can see its body. The fact that it is so clear is
because now is the time when the emu’s lay their eggs.’

Jenny’s brow furrowed.
Matt was beginning to notice the subtleties of her facial expressions more and
more.

‘So you can keep track
of the seasons by following the stars?’ she asked.

Paul relaxed and much to
Matt’s relief, he also shuffled back along the bench a little, putting more
space between him and the girl.

‘The stars tell us
everything we need to know.’

‘What do you mean
everything?’ asked Matt, determined to reassert himself in the conversation.
‘Surely they can only help with plotting geography or as you already said;
keeping track of the seasons. You cannot gain knowledge from them.’

‘The stars hold many
stories,’ replied Paul. ‘I think that in your country there are churches with
painted windows; is that right?’

‘Yes, they are called
stained glass windows.’

‘And what is the purpose
of them?’

Matt had been drawn into
the conversation and was not even aware of the apparent shift in tone.

‘The paintings usually
depict scenes from the bible. When you have a series of pictures together they
can sometimes tell a story.’

Paul swept his arm
across the sky.

‘Well, what you see
above you now is no different. To my people, these are our stained glass
windows.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said
Matt. ‘Do you mean the constellations?

Jenny was not finding it
so difficult to keep up and tried to explain it a little easier for Matt to
understand.

‘It is like Greek
mythology,’ she explained. ‘Surely you know that the constellations take their
names from ancient Gods and legends such as Andromeda and Orion.’

‘Of course, I know all
that,’ he said. ‘So what you’re saying is that Aboriginal people have similar
myths and legends that they tell based on the stars.’

Paul was not impressed
by his choice of words.

‘Not myths, the stories
and songs that are passed on are not for entertainment, but contain truths and
knowledge that are essential to our way of life.’

Matt did not intend to
be disrespectful, but he found it impossible to accept what he was hearing.

‘How can they be real? I
mean, that doesn’t make any sense. We know how the universe works from science
and the fact that shapes in space resemble animals is just a coincidence.’

Paul had heard the
arguments before.

‘Our songs and stories
have successfully helped my people and our ancestors to survive and prosper on
these lands since the beginning of time. How much more real can you get?’

‘He has a point,’ said
Jenny. ‘The Aboriginal culture had not changed for over thirty thousand years
before colonials arrived in this country. Even the great empires of Rome and
Greece could manage only a fraction of that time before they were consigned to
the history books.’

Matt looked to Jonas and
Hiro for support, but received none. The German merely shrugged his shoulders
and it was unlikely that Hiro even knew what they were talking about. Matt was
at a loss for words.

***

The contest in the dining
room was starting to heat up. The drinking game had escalated into a more
direct competition as Pierro insisted on taking on the three Irishmen in a
straight race. Fortunately for his opponents, his judgement was not at its
sharpest.

‘So you think that you
can neck a bottle of beer quicker than any of us, do you?’ asked Colin.

‘I don’t think so, I
know so. Any of you girls that think you are up for the challenge are welcome
to bring it on,’ Pierro sneered.

Colin turned to his
compatriots.

‘Did you hear that,
lads?’ he asked them. ‘Who wants to go first?’

‘I don’t mind giving it
a go,’ said Niall, stepping forward to meet the challenge.

Niall was the lightest
drinker of the three, but that did not matter. Winning was not something that
he even considered. The two men unscrewed their bottle tops and eagerly waited
for the signal to begin.

‘On the count of three,’
instructed Colin. ‘One, two...’

Everybody leaned in to
keep a closer eye on the pair.

‘Three...’

Pierro did not even
swallow as he emptied the liquid from the almost vertical bottle into his
gullet. He then held aloft the upturned bottle to prove its contents had been
completely drained before Niall was even half way.

‘Too easy, mate; is that
the best you’ve got?’

Colin passed the Italian
his second bottle and then opened one for himself. This contest went much the
same way as the previous. As Pierro celebrated another victory, Colin turned
towards Stephen.

‘This is the dumbest ape
that I’ve ever come across,’ he said. ‘If we keep him drinking at this rate
he’ll be out cold in no time.’

Stephen was too
distracted to pay attention to his friend. He was staring across at Pierro and
Celeste, who were embroiled in a passionate embrace. The Italian lifted his
girlfriend’s petite frame up from the ground and was spinning her around as
their lips locked.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t let
his ego run away with itself,’ he said.

As Pierro returned to
the table the Irishman placed down two pint glasses and began to fill them from
the bottles. He did this with all the precision of a professional barman,
carefully producing the perfect head for each glass.

‘Bottles are one thing;
let’s see how you can handle a man sized drink.’

Stephen knew that the
natives of Queensland, like New South Wales and the Northern Territory,
preferred to drink from a schooner, which was substantially smaller than the
traditional imperial pint glass. He thought it unlikely that the Italian would
be used to imbibing such a quantity at once.

‘Ready when you are,’
said Pierro.

This time they did not
wait for a countdown. Instead, they stood facing each other like gunslingers in
a Wild West stand-off. The silence lasted for a full minute before being
broken. It was Pierro who made the first move. In doing so he clumsily tipped
the glass too far and got a nostril full of beer, which sent him reeling
backward gasping for air. Stephen, meanwhile, remained calm and collected as he
swiftly downed the fluid in just seconds. It was an action that he had performed
many times before.

Colin slapped his hands
together.

‘And Stephen pulls one
back for the Irish!’ he exclaimed.

‘Fuckin’ pricks,’
shouted Pierro, wiping the froth from his face. ‘You got lucky, that’s all.
Let’s see how you handle the hard stuff.’

The Italian removed a
set of keys from his back pocket and headed into the kitchen. Colin followed.
The kitchen was fairly sparse and was stocked with only the basics, but it was
exceptionally clean. It was apparent that Pierro took some pride in his work.
He unlocked a storage room and entered only to return moments later with a
bottle of vodka. The store room door was left open behind him.

***

The evening was getting
late and it was almost time for Paul to go home. The young Aboriginal had
arranged for his father to pick him up at midnight.

‘Thanks for inviting me
over tonight,’ he said. ‘It has been good to finally see where you guys live.’

‘I am sorry that the others
were not more sociable tonight,’ replied Jenny. ‘It has been a smaller
gathering than I anticipated.’

She felt most let down
by Rose. She thought that her sister could at least have made an effort to
spend more time with Paul on his birthday.

‘No worries,’ said Paul.
‘I’m sure I will see them all at work on Monday and however they spent tonight,
I expect they had fun.’

As if on cue, Paul had
no sooner stopped speaking when they were all interrupted by the sight of a
naked Pierro running across the park with his cupped hands barely containing
his modesty. The Italian was clearly inebriated beyond the point where he would
have any level of control over his own actions. The boys all cheered, but Jenny
covered her face with her hands. Somehow, she just knew that the night was
still far from over.

Chapter 13

Matt removed a beer from
the crate and took a seat at the table. He was joined by both Colin and Niall,
who were still revelling in their earlier triumph. It was half an hour since
Pierro’s streaking stunt and the so-called Italian chef was now sleeping off
his exertions alone in his bed.

‘I take it that the
evening went to plan,’ said Matt.

Colin took a large swig
of beer.

‘It couldn’t have gone
any better,’ he replied. ‘Your man was dumber than we could have hoped.’

‘Did you get what you
wanted?’

The Irishman nodded over
towards the end of the table where there was an empty bottle of vodka.

‘Your man Pierro
finished off that one, but there are half a dozen more that we stashed under
the empty vans. We also got plenty of beer.’

Matt took a drink.

‘And there’s no danger
of being found out?’

‘That’s the best part,’
said Colin. ‘The store was much more heavily stocked than we anticipated.
Everything that we took was from crates at the back, so by the time it is
noticed as missing we will all be long gone from this place.’

Rose and Jenny entered
the dining room and sat down at the table. They had clearly been having a
heated discussion between themselves, but seemed to have resolved whatever the
conflict was. The elder sister took the seat next to Colin and placed her arm
around his shoulders. She looked around the room.

‘Someone’s missing,’ she
said. ‘Is Stephen with whom I think he is?’

‘They both disappeared
right after Pierro passed out,’ replied Niall. ‘We’ll not be seeing those two
again until morning.’

‘There is no accounting
for taste with some people,’ said Rose.

This was not the first
time that she had made a seemingly unprovoked and disparaging remark regarding
the Canadian girl. Matt guessed there was some kind of history there that he
did not know about.

‘What is it with you
two?’ he asked. ‘I mean, Celeste annoys all of us to varying degrees, but you
seem to really hate her.’

‘It’s not natural to be
cooped up indoors on a gorgeous night like this,’ she said, pretending not to
have heard the question. ‘Who wants to go outside?’

Colin rose from his seat
and accompanied her out of the door. Shortly afterwards, Niall followed them
outside, leaving just Matt and Jenny at the table.

‘Did I say something
wrong?’ he asked.

Jenny put a reassuring
hand on his shoulder.

‘There is history
between her and Celeste, but it is a long story. I just had a heated
conversation with Rose myself and now was probably not the best time to go
asking her probing questions.’

‘You had an argument; is
that because of Paul?’

She reached out and
poured herself a glass of goon.

‘I thought that she
should have made more of an effort with it being his birthday and all, but like
an idiot, I had completely forgotten about everything she has been through
today.’

Matt nodded. There was
no need for him to vocalize his understanding as there could be only one thing
that Jenny was referring to.

‘Rose will stand up to
anyone,’ she continued, ‘but getting assaulted like that has shaken her up more
than I thought. It probably sounds pretentious of me, but things like that
simply do not happen where we come from.’ She touched the drink that she was
holding to her lips before pulling it away in disgust. ‘Please tell me that
this vile concoction is not supposed to be wine.’

Matt smiled at her.

‘Now you’re sounding
pretentious.’

***

The party had gradually
fizzled out. After a few drinks, Rose’s mask began to slip and a lot of
suppressed feelings regarding the mugging surfaced. The last place she wanted
to be was in a crowd of people and it was not long before she led Colin away
from the group. As the two of them left, the Irishman pulled Matt to one side
for a quiet word in his ear.

‘Rose is going to stay
with me tonight, so maybe you could, um, you know...’ he struggled with his
words, but Matt could guess what he was trying to tell him.

‘You want a little
privacy, is that it?’

‘I knew you’d
understand,’ he looked over in the direction of Jenny, who was talking with
Jonas and Hiro. ‘You never know; tonight may be your night too.’

Matt waved his friend
away without acknowledging the insinuation. Things were going really well with
Jenny and he was not about to blow all of his good work in a moment of drunken
stupidity. He returned to the others who had come to a dilemma with regards to
the firewood. Namely, there wasn’t any.

‘What’s wrong, guys?’ he
asked.

Jenny turned from giving
Jonas a ticking off to answer him.

‘These two clowns have
burnt up all of our wood. We only had a limited pile, which is why we always
keep the campfire small. Niall has gone to check around camp to see if there
are any more stocks.’

Matt could not see what
the problem was.

‘Surely it is only
wood,’ he said. ‘I mean, doesn’t it quite literally grow on trees?’

‘Do you see any trees
around here? Unless you want to go into town and explain to the locals why you
are tearing up their garden shrubs.’

‘Of course I don’t. We
can send in Jonas for that.’

Jenny smiled and Matt
was glad to see that this latest setback had not dampened her spirits. They
were soon rejoined by Niall. The Irishman was shaking his head as he returned
from completing a circuit of the camp.

‘There’s nothing here,’
he said. ‘Maybe we can scrounge some from work on Monday.’

Matt felt stupid for not
thinking of that himself.

‘Of course, that’s the
obvious thing to do.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up
just yet,’ said Jenny. ‘You still have to hope that Rhett will let us bring
home a load of dead wood on the bus.’

‘Why wouldn’t he?’

Niall and Jenny both
looked at him with their eyebrows raised, sceptically.

‘Because he’s Rhett,’
they answered in unison.

It was easy for Matt to
see their point.

‘What’s the plan for now
then?’ he asked. ‘Do you guys want to stay up a bit longer and use up what
little firewood we have left?’

‘Not me,’ replied Jenny.
‘I think it’s time that we went to bed.’

She walked several steps
before stopping and turning back around to face him.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well what?’ he replied.

She rolled her eyes.

‘Are you coming?’ she
asked. ‘I know what your wretched little roommate and my sister are getting up
to right now, so I am guessing that you need a place to sleep. I must warn you
though, that a place to sleep is all that I am offering.’

This was not exactly
what Matt had been hoping for, but it did signal that he was making progress.
He said goodnight to the others and was careful to make sure they did not see
in which direction he was headed. The last thing he needed was for Jonas to
offer him a high five, which the young German would almost certainly have done
if he knew where Matt was going.

When they reached
Jenny’s van she led him up the steps. It was the first time that he had been
inside and it was a lot cleaner than his own and the ones occupied by the other
four guys in the camp. He guessed this was due to the girls own cleanliness and
not because they had been given more favourable accommodation.

Jenny did not turn on
the light when they entered the van. She needed to change out of her clothes and
the starlight provided more discreet illumination than that of an electric
bulb. Matt turned away as she undressed, but caught a fleeting glimpse of her
back in the wardrobe mirror as she changed tops and slipped out of her jeans.
He noticed that her skin was flawless and tanned to perfection.

‘You can turn around
now,’ she said.

He turned to face her.
She had never looked more demure as she stood lit only by the pale glow of the
starlight shimmering through the window. Her partially obscured silhouette only
served to increase his frustrated desire.

‘I guess it’s time to
say goodnight,’ he said.

His manner was awkward,
yet forcefully reserved. What he really wanted was to take her in his arms and
to feel her warm body against his. As he looked deep into her eyes, she briefly
glanced to the floor, betraying her own awkwardness with the moment.

‘There is one more
thing,’ she began, before gingerly taking a couple of steps forward and taking
a hold of his hands, which she used to lever herself in towards him. ‘It would
be selfish of me not to give you a goodnight kiss.’

She looked up into his
eyes for a tantalizing moment, heightening his anticipation, before pressing
her lips against his, to kiss him first tenderly and then passionately as their
grip on each other tightened. When their mouths finally broke apart, he ran the
fingers of his right hand through her hair, whilst searching her deep brown
eyes for the confirmation that he so desperately sought. She said nothing. She
merely took him by the hand and led him across the room and to her bed.