Angel Rock

‘Yep. I’m all right.’

‘Drink plenty of water,’ he said to her, and refilled her water bottle from the waterbag slung across his back.

‘Thanks.’

They soon left the river-flat paddocks behind and started along a track that wound up into the hills. Pop reckoned that if the boys had taken a wrong turn they might have ended up along there somewhere, but there was no answer to their calls and cooees and no one saw any sign that they had been that way. They continued along the track for another hour before Pop signalled a rest. He refilled Grace’s water bottle and then he climbed up onto a little rise, took out his binoculars, and scanned the valley. Away across the river he could see one of the other search parties and further still, down to the south, the sun twinkling off car windscreens in Angel Rock’s main street. He put down the glasses and rubbed his eyes and muttered a quick invocation to St Anthony and any of his mates who were handy and had nothing better to be going on with.

By mid-afternoon Grace was nearly spent, but she hid it from her father as a matter of honour. She followed him wearily in under a stand of tall gums. It was cooler in their shade and she immediately felt less faint. She glanced behind her to see if there was any time for a rest before the other men caught up. They were fairly close behind and she sighed inwardly. The six of them were walking in single file across the spur because the bush on each side was too thick. The man immediately behind her, Mr Meaney, a stocky farmer with very crooked teeth, gave her a shy smile but it was the man following him whose eyes she saw flick from her bottom, up to her eyes, back to her bottom again. She turned and stared at her father’s back. Two words sprang into her head and jigged around like butterflies. He’s looking. He’s looking at me. Darcy’s father. Mr Steele.

Her bottom suddenly felt enormously big and round and she tried to walk like a boy, keeping her buttocks clenched and her hips as straight as possible. A red flush of indignation lit up her cheeks, neck, and the tips of her ears. She wanted to spin round and tell him to stop but she knew she wouldn’t.

They crossed the spur and the bush opened out again and the track ended at a gate in a fence. A creek continued along the flat and three of the men crossed it and spread out along the opposite bank. Pop walked along the near bank and Grace saw with a start that Mr Steele was now between her and him. She tried to count the men she could see but they kept appearing and disappearing behind trees and then she saw Pop direct her a little further out. She was about to protest, but then marched away when Mr Steele began drawing closer. She could hear the others calling the boys’ names and she kept her head forward, watching the ground in front of her. She could just see Mr Steele out of the corner of her right eye, although he seemed intent now on the ground before him and didn’t even glance in her direction. They continued in the same manner for a quarter of an hour until the trees became more dense and she couldn’t see him any more. She kept walking. The calling voices of the others grew fainter and finally seemed to die out altogether. She stopped and listened. Maybe the sound was catching in the trees. She started to walk again and thought she heard Pop shout, but then for a long time there was nothing. The sun dipped in behind a cloud and the stand of trees around her suddenly seemed very dim and eerily quiet. She nearly panicked then and was about to run when a man stepped out from behind a tree, just ahead and to the right of her. At first she thought it was Mr Steele but, as her heart began thudding in her chest, she saw it was someone else, someone she didn’t recognise at all. He was long-haired and dirty and his eyes were wide. They stood, staring at each other, and then Grace heard Pop’s voice, away off to the left, calling her name. She glanced away from the man for barely a moment, but when she looked back all she saw was a brief glimpse of his back as he darted away through the trees. She ran to Pop, her heart racing and her legs trembling.

‘You all right, sweetheart?’

‘Yeah, I …’

‘Any sign of the boys?’

Grace shook her head.

‘All right, stay by me now,’ he whispered, his hand on her shoulder. ‘We’re nearly home.’ She nodded, so relieved at the words that she didn’t know whether she was about to cry or hug him.

They stopped for a cuppa before covering the last stretch into town. Grace thought it was about three or four o’clock. The crooked-toothed farmer already had the makings out and had built a small fire of twigs underneath a billyful of creek water. Pop squatted and looked at the map with another man and Grace sat down at his side, exhausted, and watched the fire flare into life. The tea-maker handed her a mug of tea when it had been made and smiled at her.

‘Thank you, Mr Meaney,’ she said and as she did she looked about, her proximity to Pop fuelling her confidence. She wanted to tell him about the man behind the tree, but then Mr Steele came into the clearing, talking to Artie McKinnon.

‘Percy,’ said Mr Meaney.

‘Pardon?’

‘Percy. Call me Percy.’

‘Oh. Thank you, Percy.’

Percy beamed.

‘Percy?’

‘Yes?’

‘There was no one else searching with us, was there? Just the six of us?’

‘I believe so. Why?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

Grace glanced across at Mr Steele as she sipped her tea. He was looking straight at her, a cigarette only a little thicker than a matchstick in the side of his mouth, a slight grin on his face. She frowned at him and turned away, but when she looked back a little later he was grinning even harder.

It took another hour to get back to Angel Rock and Grace stayed close to her father the whole way. They traipsed wearily into the park and stood around the war memorial just as the sun was sinking behind the Rock. The other search parties were as tired and grubby as they and had found nothing either. Not a thing. While Pop wrote down the names of those available to search the next day Grace walked very slowly back to the station house with her head down. The little kids playing in the street stopped their games for a moment and watched, wide-eyed and silent, as she walked by. Back in the station house her fearfulness during the day seemed almost silly, and she didn’t tell Pop about the man that night, or the following day. She pushed the image of him right to the back of her mind and it sat there, almost, but not quite, forgotten.

5 (#ulink_55d34423-214a-53f9-8d9a-1a236ea9b8c8)

The gully was cool when Tom woke and he shivered a little as he walked down to the water to drink. When he’d filled his belly and cleaned his face he jumped around to get the blood flowing. He felt better and more optimistic than he thought he should be. He set off up the creekbank, water sloshing in his empty stomach, grimly determined to find Flynn, and confident that he would.

He followed the creek for a half-hour or so and then he rounded a long bend and saw Flynn curled up fast asleep in the middle of a stretch of bare rock. He ran over and looked down at him, his relief rendering him speechless. Flynn sniffed in his sleep and then moaned. Two candles of yellow snot sat under his nostrils. Tom bent down and shook him. Flynn opened his eyes sleepily and looked up at his brother.

‘What were you doing?’ Tom shouted down at him, all his worry suddenly venting itself. ‘You got yourself bloody lost!’

Flynn started to cry and Tom dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms round him and held him tight.

‘Did you see him, Tom?’ he said, when his tears had subsided a little.

‘Who?’

‘The kangaroo.’

‘Yeah, I saw him! Didn’t you hear me calling?’

‘Yeah, and I called back, but you didn’t come.’ His dirty little face creased and he began to cry again.

‘It’s all right,’ Tom said, unable to shout any more. He patted Flynn’s shoulder. ‘You’re found, and we’ll be all right now. We’ll walk back up to the road and find a farm.’

Flynn nodded and wiped his nose with his forearm.

‘Tom?’

‘What?’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘Yeah. So am I. Come on, the sooner we go, the sooner we’ll eat.’

They set off downstream, Tom holding Flynn’s hand tightly in his and talking about anything to keep their minds off their predicament.

‘You know Ham, the chimpanzee?’ Tom asked his brother. ‘The one they sent up to space in a rocket?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, you do. I’ve told you about him enough times.’

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Well, when he landed in the sea and they opened up the hatch on his capsule, do you remember what he was doing?’

‘No,’ said Flynn, shaking his head.

‘He was eating an apple. He was sitting there at his flippin’ flight deck eating an apple.’