Читать книгу Bony and the White Savage - Arthur W. Upfield - Страница 10

The Fishermen

It was strange that, after thirteen years, and his heart heavy with rancour towards Marvin Rhudder for despoiling his daughter, Matthew Jukes should be unable to speak of him without evincing early admiration of the youth.

“Boy’s talk,” he went on. “Us two families were always proud of this place and that mighty rock out there. This coast belongs to us; every rock and stone and cliff and cave, the wind’s never stale, and it’s never hot like it can be inland. Either side that rock there’s room enough, and the water is deep enough, to take a liner. On the inner side of it two liners could pass each other and not touch. At the east entrance there’s a whirlpool what would sink a big ship. A door it is. Nothing afloat ever gets past that door: nothing afloat, no flotsam, no jetsam, nothing, ever comes ashore.

“Marvin put it right when he called it Australia’s Front Door, shut for ever against the foreigners on ships what has to take ’em to Melbourne and Sydney, and other tradesmen’s entrances. You might see a ship passing to left or right of the door, and looking no bigger than one of those gulls on top of it.”

“Could we get closer to it across the sand?” Bony asked, himself caught up by the allegory.

“Too late, Nat. You’ll see in a minute. With the change of the tide there’s a sneaker what comes in with a rush. You’ll see the water to the right side suddenly rise, and know it’s coming. There’s other places where you never know when a sneaker will come, and once it takes you you’re finished. They said it was a sneaker what caught our Ted, but I think it must have been an earthquake-wave because Ted was too cunning to be caught. Pretty dangerous coast this. Which is why nobody comes here to fish. Now look!”

At first Bony could see no change in the water level at the west entrance past the Door. Then it did appear to rise relatively to the coastal rocks. He saw the wave sweeping in behind the Door, coming with astonishing speed to encircle it. It welled upward above the edge of the sand flat, rose many feet and rushed landward so high and so fast as to give him a spasm of fear although he was ten feet above the sand.

“If you was out there, it would knock you flat,” Matt cried. “Ain’t she a beaut?” The sneaker rushed upon their rock, swirled in foam about it, sped on to the cliff base where it seemed to tear at the barrier with futile, frantic rage. The pause preceded the retreat, the mad rush of water speeding back towards the channel behind the Door, and presently the sand flat was again bare. “Fall into that and you’d find yourself at the Door right close,” Matt asserted quite unnecessarily. “I wanted you to see that. Just to prove you can’t ever trust this sea. Looks innocent enough a day like this, but you take your eyes off it, and it’ll get you sure enough.”

“Must be terrific when it’s real rough, Matt.”

“Safer when it’s blowing a gale. It’s so nasty then that no one would take a chance with it. And don’t you, ever.”

Bony, curious about the ode to Australia’s Front Door, asked what happened to it. This brought a chuckle from Matt.

“After he cleared out, the poem came back from a lit’ry magazine he sent it to. They said the poem was too imperialistic. You see, Marvin in the poem said the north of Australia was Australia’s backside pointing at the Asians. Well, we’d better shift off this rock, with the tide coming in, or stay on it like a couple of shags till the tide goes out again. We’d better take some fish home. I know a place where we can get a ute load.”

The wind was in the hair and in the dark eyes of this man who could hate for thirteen years, making of him at this moment a youth who would adventure go. They caught a dozen two-pound blackfish in fifteen minutes, and then climbed the cliff behind the Door. The way was steep but easy for active men. It was a test for the lungs, and the cigarette smoker breathed harder than the addict to the pipe when they reached the top.

Here, too, were the clumps of tea-tree bordering the cliff. Not to be confused with the ti-ti tree, the tea-tree clumps are similar to the Eskimo igloos if painted dark-green. The leaves are small and compact forming a close-knit covering erected by the twisting boughs. Often the clumps were separated, each being a hundred feet in circumference. Some overhung the cliff face; others were joined in larger masses among which an armed man could defy authority for weeks.

The place where Bony and Matt reached the top of the cliff was a confined grassy space, the grass tough and the ground hard. They sat on the cliff verge mainly to admire Australia’s Front Door in its setting of blue ocean reaches either side, and the lazy surf caressing the black rocks as though lulling them into the belief that never again would there be a furious sea onslaught. The gulls were white patches on the summit of the mighty rock, and seals basking on a rocky headland beyond which Matt said was the whirlpool, were hard to distinguish until one ‘flopped’ into the water.

“What d’you think of this coast to hide away in?” Matt asked, and waved at the tea-tree skirting their picnic ground, and then pointing downward. “And the Police Heads in Bunbury thinking all Sasoon had to do was bring his offsiders and arrest Marvin.”

Bony poured tea from the thermos into enamel cups before saying, with a shoulder shrug:

“It could never be done. That is other than with a Trojan Horse. The coast to the west looks to be even more rugged. A frontal attack on this Rhudder problem would certainly fail. Would you know all the caves and warrens in these Cliffs?”

“No.” Matt was grim, but abruptly he smiled. “When old Jeff and me were kids we had to work long hours, and we didn’t have much time to go exploring, or fishing. Not like the next generation what wasn’t expected to do any work outside their schooling. Likely enough Marvin and the gang knew these cliffs and coast a thousand times better than Jeff or me. I’d say that if we searched the place yard by yard, Marvin could be watching from a cave we searched a couple of hours back. He was watching us all the time we were down below, I’ll bet on that.”

“Nevertheless, not being the hermit type he won’t stay here for years,” predicted Bony. “His kind must have the bright lights, and the darkness of ill-lit streets, and unwary victims. With him the stalking and the anticipation are more thrilling than the victory. He could have moved on already.”

“He could have, Nat. More blame to me. I should of told Sasoon about him days before I did.”

“You should have done so but you did not, and it’s useless to look back. We accept the situation as it is and start from the present.” Bony struck a match and lit the cigarette, and when Matt applied a match to his pipe there was no fighting with the wind. “One thing we may be sure about is that Marvin, if still here, is bound to visit his home for tucker and human contact, or someone at the homestead is bound to come out with supplies for him. And that is the link in Marvin’s chain we have to find.”

Matt nodded agreement, and Bony noted the smoke puffed from his mouth rising for several feet before the wind captured it. The explanation was simple. The breeze meeting the cliff-face continued upward beyond the cliff top before being driven inland and by this rotary action drawing inland air forward to the cliff edge. Where Matt was sitting with Bony the air was not quite still, and it brought the waxy scent of the tea-tree, and the scents of the tiny blue flowers sheltering in the tough and taller grass.

“You know of his record, I suppose?” Bony asked.”

“Some of it. Perhaps enough of it to make me ashamed of being a man.”

“Pity all men don’t feel the same, Matt. His second crime in Sydney, or rather the second crime for which he was imprisoned, was stalking a couple in a Sydney park. Public park, you know. Lit with scattered lamps. Time, shortly after ten o’clock. They were an engaged couple, and were planning the house they would purchase. Friend Marvin bashed the man insensible and raped the girl. The stratum of morons in the community declared that the couple were in error in sitting in an illumined public park at ten o’clock on a hot night, and that by doing so they tempted overwhelmingly a mentally sick man.

“Marvin was sentenced to five years’ gaol for rape. He was let out on a bond after three years.”

“Why? You tell me that?” Matt said, fiercely. “Would he have got a longer term if they’d known about our Rose?”

“Probably a longer term, but doubtless he would have been released after serving three years. The psychiatrists all said he was suffering from a moral defect, not a character defect.”

“Well, what’s the difference?”