‘The man’s dead.’ Jili spoke very calmly, as though the event had already cast its shadow—or as if it was written on his forehead.
‘Who told you?’ He frowned. ‘Did one of the other stations contact you?’ News got around, even in the remote Inland. On the other hand Jili had the uncanny occult gift of tribal people in foretelling the future.
Jili rocked back and forth slowly. ‘Just knew what you were gunna say before you said it. That was one helluva man. Good and evil. Plagued by devils, but devils of his own makin’. We know that, both of us. I honoured your fine, wise grandad, and your dear dad. A great tragedy when he bin killed in that rock fall. But they’re with their ancestors now. They look down from the stars that shine on us at night. I have strong feelings for your family. You bin very kind to me. Treat me right. Lot rests on your shoulders, Bryn, now Humpty Dumpty has gone and fallen off the wall. What I want to know is this—is it gunna change things for Jacob and me? Are we gunna lose our jobs?’
Jacob Dawson, Jili’s husband, also part aboriginal, was a long-time leading hand on the station—one of the best. In Bryn’s opinion Daramba couldn’t do without either of them. And Jacob would make a far better overseer than the present one, Roy Forster, who relied far too heavily on Jacob and his diverse skills.
‘It all has to be decided, Jili,’ he said, with a heartfelt sigh. ‘Charles will inherit. I can’t speak for him. He can’t even speak for himself at the moment. He’s in deep shock.’
Jili looked away, unseeing. ‘Thought his dad was gunna live for ever,’ she grunted. ‘Seems he was as human as the rest of us. How have the rest of ’em reacted?’ She turned to stare into Bryn’s brilliant dark eyes. They were almost as black as her own, yet different because of their diamond glitter.
‘Some are in shock,’ he said. ‘Some are in surprisingly good cheer,’ he added dryly.
‘Well, wait on the will,’ Jili advised. ‘See if he try to put things to rights. There’s an accounting, ya know.’
Bryn didn’t answer. In any case, it was much too late now. His grandfather and his father were gone. He came to stand beside her, both of them looking out at the quicksilver mirage. They both knew it was the end of something. The end of an era, certainly. But the fight was still on.
Jili was watching him. She thought of Bryn Macallan as a prince, grave and beautiful; a prince who acknowledged all his subjects. A prince who was ready to come into his rightful inheritance. She laid a gentle, respectful hand on his shoulder. ‘I promise you it be right in the end, Bryn. But a warning you must heed. There’s a bad spell ahead. Mind Francey. That cousin of hers is just waitin’ to swoop like a hawk on a little fairy wren. Bad blood there.’
Wasn’t that his own fear?
He changed up a gear as he came on a great sweep of tall grasses that covered the flat, fiery red earth. Their tips were like golden feathers blowing in the wind. It put him in mind of the open savannahs of the tropical North. That was the effect of all the miraculous rain. The four-wheel drive cut its way through the towering grasses like a bulldozer, flattening them and creating a path before they sprang up again, full of sap and resilience. A lone emu ducked away on long grey legs. It had all but been hidden in its luxuriant camouflage as it fed on shoots and seeds. The beautiful ghost gums, regarded by most as the quintessential eucalypt but not a eucalypt at all, stood sentinel to the silky blue sky, glittering grasses at their feet. It was their opal-white boles that made them instantly recognisable.
A string of billabongs lay to his right. He caught the glorious flashy wings of parrots diving in and out of the Red River gums. Australia—the land of parrots! Such a brilliant range of colours: scarlet, turquoise, emerald, violet, an intense orange and a bright yellow. Francey, when six, had nearly drowned in one of those lagoons—the middle one, Koopali. It was the deepest and the longest, with permanent water even in drought. In that year the station had been blessed with good spring rains, so Koopali, which could in flood become a raging monster, had been running a bumper. On that day it had been Carina who had stood by, a terrified witness, unable to move to go to her cousin’s assistance, as though all strength had been drained out of her nine-year-old body.
It was a miracle Bryn had come upon them so quickly. Magic was as good an answer as any. A sobbing, inconsolable Carina had told them much later on that they had wandered away from the main group and, despite her warnings, Francey had insisted on getting too close to the deep lagoon. With its heavy load of waterlilies a child could get enmeshed in the root system of all the aquatic plants and be sucked under. Both girls could swim, but Francey at that time had been very vulnerable, being only a beginner and scarcely a year orphaned.
Could she really have disobeyed her older cousin’s warnings? Francey as a child had never been known to be naughty.
When it had been realised the two girls had wandered off, the party had split up in a panic. He had never seen people move so fast. Danger went hand in hand with the savage grandeur of the Outback. He had run and run, his heartbeats almost jammed with fear, heading for Koopali. Why had he done that? Because that was where one of the itinerant aboriginal women, frail and of a great age, had pointed with her message stick. He had acted immediately on her mysterious command. Yet how could she have known? She’d been almost blind.
‘Koopali,’ she had muttered, nodding and gesturing, marking the word with an emphatic down beat of her stick.
To this day he didn’t know why he had put such trust in her. But he had, arriving in time to launch himself into the dark green waters just as Francey’s small head had disappeared for probably the last time. That was when Carina had started screaming blue murder …
So there it was: he had saved Francey’s life, which meant to the aboriginal people that he owned part of her soul. Afterwards Carina had been so distraught no one had accused her of not looking after her little cousin properly. Carina, after all, had been only nine. But she could swim and swim well. She’d said fright had frozen her in place, making her incapable of jumping into the water after her cousin.
It had taken Bryn to do that.
‘Thank God for you, Bryn! I’ll never forget this. Never!’ A weeping Elizabeth Forsyth had looked deep into his eyes, cradling Francey’s small body in her arms as though Francey was the only child she had.
Carina had been standing nearby. He had already calmed Francey, who had clung to him like a little monkey, coughing up water, trying so hard to be brave. That was when the main party had arrived, alerted by his long, carrying co-ee, the traditional cry for help in the bush. All of them had huddled prayerfully around them. Catastrophe had been averted.
‘How did you know they were here, Bryn?’ Elizabeth had asked in wonder. ‘We all thought they’d gone back to the main camp.’ That was where a large tent had been erected.
‘The old woman spoke and I listened.’ It had been an odd thing to say, but no one had laughed.
Aborigines had an uncanny sense of danger. More so of approaching death. The old woman had even sent a strong wind at his back, though such a wind blew in no other place in the area. When everyone returned to the campsite to thank the old woman she’d been nowhere to be found. Even afterwards the aboriginal people who criss-crossed the station on walkabout claimed to know nothing of her or her whereabouts.
The wind blew her in. The wind blew her out.
‘Coulda been a ghost!’ Eddie Emu, one of the stockmen, had told them without a smile. ‘Ghosts take
