Chapter 22 - A Barren Wildness
When Isabelle woke the next morning the sun was just above the horizon. The air was still cool but she knew it would soon be hot. Mark was sitting on a rock looking over the creek, writing in a small book with a battered cover. She rose quietly from her bed and walked over to him with her softest feet, stepping carefully to avoid the crackling of twigs and leaves.
She loved walking with her bare feet. It was a memory from her earliest childhood in the mountains, taking her shoes off and running free. Since she had come to the tropics, she wore sandals when needed but the rest of the time she had bare feet. Her feet were so hardened that the boss at the pub told her she had feet like a blackfella. She could walk on sharp gravel without flinching, though in the midday the melting road bitumen was too hot even for her.
Mark seemed unaware of her. She approached without noise, taking pleasure in her total stealth. She put her hand on his head. In one second she was standing above him, the next he was not there anymore, but was towering over her, hands poised to strike. It was a blur and for a split second she was immobilised with fear. Then his face recognised her and he relaxed.
She found herself laughing, she could not say why; it was a sort of nervous relief. “My God, she said, “it is like a Foreign Legion movie, one second you are sitting, the next is like a tiger strike. I am glad you knew me before you killed me.”
Now Mark was laughing too. “Sorry I scared you. You gave me a start. I never heard you coming. I didn’t know anyone could walk that quietly.”
“I just came to say Good Morning. I am sorry I startled you but you were so absorbed with your writing. What is it, a diary?”
He went to close it quickly, as if embarrassed. She placed a hand on his arm. “I am sorry; I did not mean to pry. When I was a little girl I walked in the mountains with my goats. I took a book to write my thoughts and poetry. I described the things and people I saw, the way a falcon would dive for a rabbit, the way the sun lit the hills. I did not have many friends but my thoughts and writing were my company. Perhaps your writing is something like that.”
Mark looked at her with intense eyes as if amazed at her insight. “You read me like a book. I am often alone. This is the place where I keep my thoughts; all those words inside my head that I never get to say instead get written here. I write poems and tell little stories which amuse me.
“I was writing about meeting you last night, how it was the third time and how I knew your shape before I saw your face. Then, as we came away, you asked me whether I believed in a God. It seemed an important thing, your question, not my answer.
Isabelle sat down on the rock where he had been sitting. She wrapped her arms around her knees. She looked up at him towering over her. She reached out, took his hand and pulled it down.
“I would like it if you would sit down and finish your writing, then read it back to me, just the bit about me. I have never had anyone write a story about me. I would like to see myself through your eyes. I will not try to see what you say. I will look at the scenery and try to imagine what your words might be. Then, when you read it back, I will see me as you see me.”
She could see Mark hesitate for a few seconds, torn between his wish to keep a private world and a desire to share. She tugged his hand again, more insistent, “Come on, try it.”
He nodded and sat alongside her, almost touching but not quite. He closed his eyes, as if lost in thought. Then, when he opened his eyes, he began to write.
Isabelle looked away. There was a small, red coloured bird nearby in the creek, moving from branch to branch. She turned her attention to it. It was flitting here and there. She imagined it was her, jumping from place to place on a barren mountainside, flashes of light, like a bright butterfly. She felt a wonder in its moving freely, the way these creatures could.
She realised Mark’s writing had stopped. She turned to him.
He looked towards her, saying, “Would you like me to read something I wrote about you?”
“Yes,” she replied.
He began, “Hair dark, back turned to me, at the bar. She sees me not, absorbed in work. I know her, the curve of her neck, that shape of her shoulders as they move with grace. She looks around, dark eyes sparkle in faded light, face bright with smiling delight. She sees, knows me, familiar in a land of strangers. I say come with me. She hesitates but agrees.
“We drive into the night. Our talk is of Gods and the Universe. She asks me where God lives. I try to answer truthfully and tell her things I have not told others. Her mind is like a soaring eagle looking from on high. She moves like a wallaby, leaping from rock to rock, tiny flashes of bright light reflect. Yet she is silent like a cat. A strange gracefulness is hers, moving over life’s surfaces without ripple.”
He closed the book and looked up at her, questioning, uncertainly in his eyes.
She said, “Such words are to be treasured. They are of me and of you. I like the way you tell it. Tomorrow I would like to write something of you, perhaps it will be in French. The music of that language will speak of your essence, stillness which blurs into movement.”
Soon after they were packed and drove on. They came to Derby after an hour. Over breakfast Mark pulled out a map and explained the route he had planned. He told her he wished to go to a place where few others go, a rough and barren place, a place where rocky mountains join a sparkling sea, a place where hills hold their own treasures as yet undiscovered.
He said he wanted to go there before he started his next job. If she could spare two weeks he would bring her there. The place was deep in the rugged Kimberley Coast, and they would go via the Mitchell Plateau, a place of spectacular waterfalls and a wealth of wildlife. From there they would head up to the area near where a crystal creek ran out to the sea and spend their days fishing and exploring around the coast.
It was something Mark had always wanted to do. He told her he had worked on the Mitchell Plateau helping biologists do fauna surveys a few years ago. Then he had flown over much of the area in a helicopter. It had whet his appetite, as he had never explored further north on the ground. Now he wanted to return and spend a week exploring this new area. The travel there and back would take the rest of the two weeks as the road was slow and bad.
While lots of tourists visited Mitchell Falls to see aboriginal rock art from antiquity and the wonderful waterfalls, cascading over three levels to the river below, very few made it right up to the coast, other than by boat or helicopter. Now, at the start of the build-up season, with its ferocious heat and humidity and with huge thunderstorms gathering where the moisture of the sea met the heat of the land on the far north horizon, the tourists had dried up to a trickle.
So Mark expected to have this place almost to empty of others which suited him fine. He did not want national park rangers or tourist guides trying to direct where he could and could not go. So they would travel unobtrusively and park the vehicle out of sight from the air once there. Then they would use their feet to explore both the rough and barren hills, creeks and the seaside below. They would bring fishing lines and a light rifle to help support themselves by living off the land and sea. But first today they would stock up on provisions from the town. Tonight they would spend a last night of civilisation before departing early tomorrow on their trip.
Isabelle agreed to come with delight, it sounded like a wonderful adventure and two weeks away would not matter.
After they finished breakfast Mark booked two rooms in the Spinifex Hotel, a local Derby icon. He insisted on paying for a separate room for her, even though she said that if they were travelling together they might as well share, and the room had a second single bed. Then together they visited the store where they filled up a shopping trolley with food and other necessities.
It was now the heat of midday and Isabelle was yawning. Mark suggested she have an afternoon siesta in her room. A bit reluctantly she agreed. In the cool and dark of the room she had barely laid her head on the
pillow before she fell into a deep sleep.
When she woke the sun was low and Mark was sitting on the verandah outside his room sipping a beer. He offered her one and she declined, thirsty for a glass of water. He suggested they spend an hour seeing the sights of the town now the day’s heat was easing. They visited the boab prison tree, a tree shaped like a bottle with strange scraggly branches that almost looked like it had been uprooted and placed upside down with its roots waving in the breeze. This particular tree had a huge cavity hollowed out of a massive trunk which was reputed to have served as the local jail in the town’s early history.
After this they walked out on the wharf. This place was said to have the biggest tides in Australia, up to twelve metres Now the tide was low and the walk carried them far out over what seemed to be miles and miles of mudflats. They watched birds feast on tasty morsels as fat mudskippers bounced across the mud.
They returned to the hotel in the dusk and both showered and changed for dinner. Isabelle found a fresh light dress which she wore with sandals; Mark wore light coloured calico pants and shirt, in the style of an English safari suit.
She though him very handsome and said so. He admired her too, but it was in a friendly, almost asexual way.
They ordered a selection of courses from the menu and the food was good. Then they played pool in the bar with some others until a country and western duo sang some songs of the outback. The audience joined in. At first Mark was silent but Isabelle sang with gusto. She encouraged him to sing with her. She found he could sing well, if a bit hesitantly at first. She liked the way their voices blended together.
Then softer ballad music came on and she got up to dance. She asked him if he would join her but he was reluctant. Another man came up and asked her for a dance. She agreed; she felt like dancing. As she took to the floor she turned back to look at Mark, she would have rather been dancing with him, even though this man was a good dancer and had her flowing around the floor in an effortless way.
Mark had turned his body away. It seemed deliberate and she felt disappointed, wondering if she should go back and stay with him. At last the dance ended and the man asked her to continue. But she decided she would rather go back to sit with Mark, even though she loved to dance.
He was still looking away so she walked right up in front of him, forcing him to look at her.
He looked up with a lopsided half smile. “I thought you would be dancing yet for hours,” he said.
She answered, “The man wanted me to. He is a good dancer and I love to dance. But I decided I like your company more, so if you are OK I will come back and sit with you.”
Now he gave her a genuine smile. “I would like that,” he said.
An hour later it was Mark who was yawning. Isabelle picked up his hand and brought him out into the clear night air. “Now it is you who needs to sleep,” she said.
She led him back to his room and opened the door. On tiptoes she kissed him lightly on the cheek, her body slightly brushing his.
Mark ran his fingers through her hair as she stood there. She felt a great urge to push her body up against his. Just as her mind decided that it would be good and right he pulled away and went inside.
After his door closed she sat on a chair on her verandah, looking across to his room, hoping he would come back out and give her an excuse to join him. She felt a great desire to tap on his door and ask him to bring her in with him. But it was just her and the dark night. At last she too was yawning and went to bed.
The drove off early in the morning, just as the sun was striking its first shafts on the scraggy trees alongside the road, lighting them with orange light. They drove through featureless scrub, sometimes crossing open grass plains, their edges dotted with scattered boab trees. It seemed to Isabelle the trees were watching as upside down sentinels.
The dirt road was flat and straight and they roared along with a cloud of dust following, passing an occasional opposite way car with which they exchanged dust plumes. After an hour Mark took a turnoff to the north, declaring it was time for breakfast and a cup of tea. He followed minor tracks until he came to the banks of a tree lined river with dark silty water, the May River. A dry creek with freshwater pools ran into the river at one side. Birds flitted down to its water to drink as the morning heat grew.
Mark put two folding chairs side by side and indicated to Belle to take one, handing her an icy can of lemon squash from the fridge. She sat in the shade and sipped her drink while Mark gathered dead branches. Soon he had a fire going under the next patch of shade.
As she watched brightly coloured birds flitted above the water, seemingly darting hither and thither in some random pattern. One landed on a twig near her for a minute. It had amazing colours, a mixture of blues, greens and golds. It was so small she could have cupped it within the palm of her hand.
Mark looked up and she pointed to it. He nodded and grinned. In a second it had flitted away. He said. “It is a rainbow bee eater, so beautiful isn’t it? They catch small insects on the wing over pools of water.”
Soon the billy was boiling. A pan of bacon and eggs followed quickly. They sat in the shade eating bacon and egg sandwiches, their seats now turned to face the big river below them. It was a time for eating and watching, not talking. As they were finishing eating there was a small splash in the river below. Mark put his finger to his lips and Isabelle looked towards the sound. Slowly a head emerged and two eyes surveyed its surrounds. After a minute of stillness the eyes came towards the bank. From the water emerged a creature of scaled markings. It was about as long as she was tall. She knew this was a real crocodile, every shape and pattern of its form arranged in picture book symmetry. It wriggled itself around in the sun until it had found the right place, then lay still. Bella watched in fascination, it was so immobile. After a couple minutes it opened teeth covered jaws to smile at the sun.
Mark nodded, pointed at the car and smiled, enjoying Bella’s wonder. He began to stand up. As he moved the crocodile scuttled down the river bank and disappeared from whence it had come.
Soon they were packed up and driving on. Mid morning they came to a turnoff signposted, ‘Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek’. They turned south following the sign. Now rocky hillsides rose to the east, the start of the broken hill country of the Kimberley, Mark told her. They passed by the turnoff to Windjana Gorge, Mark promising to return this way as it was a good place to stopover and camp for the night.
It was ferociously hot when they emerged from their air conditioned car at Tunnel Creek, looking across to a sheer red-orange and black cliff face that bordered the road they had driven along. Mark filled a backpack with two torches, water and things for lunch. He led the way to Tunnel Creek Cave which he said would be much cooler and was a good place for lunch. After the car park they came to a place where the dry sandy creek bed plunged down into a series of clear pools of water with a huge cave entrance coming into view. As they came into the shade of the rocks it was suddenly cool.
Mark put down his pack, took off his T shirt and strode into water up to his chest, then plunged under coming up with water streaming down his face. He said, “God the feels good, why don’t you come in?”
She waded in up to her knees. She was wearing a T shirt and shorts, she had dispensed with her bra in the heat. There was no one in sight and she felt self conscious, alone with him in this place.
She asked, “Should I get my bathers, they are in the car?”
He shrugged, “Up to you, but I would take off your shirt and keep it dry as it is pretty cold deeper in the cave. I won’t mind if you come in topless and there is no one else here to see at the moment.”
She took a deep breath, feeling both prudish and shy to expose her body, yet not wanting to walk back in the heat to the car. She shrugged in reply. In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought.
She pulled off her T shirt with her back turned, then decided it was silly to be shy and removed her shorts, now only wear
ing a pair of plain black knickers. She thought of taking them off too, part of her wanted him to see her fully naked, but caution rose, she would be giving him a good eyeful anyway and some modesty was required, particularly if others arrived. Well it is now or never, she thought. She turned to face him.
As she walked towards him she felt self conscious that her breasts were small, she was sure he liked women with bigger breasts.
She could feel his eyes on her as she walked into the water and found herself too self conscious to look up. She kept walking, her body tingling as the cold water rose to cover her hips and knickers. Now she was in water up to her waist and she looked up.
He was gazing at her intently, his eyes savouring her. He looked at her breasts and she felt her nipples tingling under his gaze. Even more self conscious she lowered her whole body into the water, the cold of the water shocked her and she stood up again. Now her nipples were tingling even more and the cold had brought them into sharp points. She looked up and Mark was looking intently at her. She gave him a self conscious shrug. “I am not used to this sort of thing, swimming without clothes. I feel embarrassed to have you see me.”
Mark grinned, “No need for embarrassment. All I can say is you look sensational, the body of a mermaid.”
He splashed her and she splashed him back, now laughing with relief, it felt fine to be here with him like this. She flung herself at him and grasped him around the waist, trying to pull him off balance. He went with and dunked them both. They came up spluttering and still laughing.
Now he was standing right in front of her, his body almost touching hers. He reached down with his hand. He touched and caressed a nipple. She crushed her body against his, pushing her thighs against her leg.
Then he pulled back. “I promised not to try and seduce you, just to let you come along for the ride. Here I am, wanting to do the sex thing with you when our trip has barely begun. I don’t want to spoil our trip and friendship by going there unless it is something you really want too.
She did not want him to stop touching her that way. Yet she also understood what he meant. Their friendship was something very precious and might become much more complicated if this kept going.
Now the spell was broken and she nodded. “I like you touching me that way. But perhaps you are right, the friendship is more.”
He nodded turned away and then dived under the water surfacing at the opposite side of the pool, where he climbed out, shook himself to dry and then walked to where his T shirt lay and put it back on.
She came back to the place of her clothes and dressed too, feeling an ache within that was frustrated and unsatisfied. She was on the point of calling out she had changed her mind, that she wanted it all now, not to wait for an unlikely better time.
The words were on the tip of her tongue, ready to call out, when she heard a distant noise. It was another car coming into the car park. In five minutes another couple had arrived and the moment had passed.
These people were friendly New Zealanders and after a chat about their respective trips, they all found a shady place beside a pool where they spread out and shared their lunches. It was somehow a relief for her to have someone else to break the tension of the moment and distract her. She guessed that a part of Mark felt the same.
The day passed exploring the fantastic cavern, almost a kilometre underground where the creek had carved a huge tunnel through the limestone. Their torch revealed stalactites and stalagmites in a rainbow array of colours from the softest whites to the deepest purples and almost everything in between. Along the bottom ran a clear icy creek. As the cave air was cool they had little desire to plunge in, toe dipping sufficed. They shared the exploration with the Kiwi couple and in the process became friends with offers to meet again in the Shaky Isles. They parted in the car park to go their separate ways.
That night they returned to Windjana Gorge and watched dozens of crocodile eyes in the remaining pools of the river that flowed through the gorge, now a late dry season waterhole. “They are only fresh water ones which are not dangerous,” Mark assured her.
They sat and talked as they watched their campfire burn down to the merest glowing embers, and above them the stars grew ever brighter. There was something beyond breathtaking in the night sky as they talked and shared all the untold stories of their lives. He told her of many things that he had done, some good, some bad. She told him of her own travels and of the one man who had taken her body and how she felt cheated, thinking there must be something more and better than this.
As she spoke she leaned into him and he rested his arm around her slender shoulders, saying, “Yes, next time you give your body to a man it needs to be truly wonderful, you deserve no less.”
She said, “Much of me wants that man to be you. But you have had so many girls. I do not want to be just another one. Still I think I could trust you. Do you want to try it with me?”
He said, “No man could look at you and not want to make love to you, but that is not reason enough. There is still a part of you held back from being fully ready to trust me. When you do you will tell me, and until then I am your friend. Now you should sleep, tomorrow we have far to go.”
Next morning they headed off into the true wilderness of the rugged broken hills of the Kimberley. Mark said where they were going but for now it was just words, he talked of a place called the Mitchell Plateau, sheer red gorges, lots of unique Australian wildlife and incredibly ancient aboriginal paintings, dotting the caves and rock faces of the area.
After that she understood they would head up to the coast, following a track known to only a handful of locals. Mark told of a cliff top paradise, where a spring fed creek cascaded over the broken hills into a sapphire sea below, so clear you could see every fish, a place of huge crocodiles which could be surveyed in safety from the cliffs, a place of innumerable other treasures and delights to explore.
Mark said he was searching for gemstones. This place was so remote that the looking before had been minimal, just an occasional early foot prospector leaving small abandoned diggings, but now the big companies were interested. They had the Argyle Diamond Mine to the south and they were now lobbying for access to the beautiful and remote coastal country with many competing claims from local aboriginal groups. However he was not greedy, he just wanted to poke around on his own and see what he could turn up, he had found this to be rewarding many times before.
He had a collection of wonderful stones which he showed her. He hoped together they would find something special. If they did half of any find would belong to her as her own special memory of this trip.
So they were off to a wilderness place together, just the two of them, sharing it in friendship and, increasingly she hoped, sharing a much more intimate thing. She would let that happen in its own time, but in her mind she was making up love songs to sing to him and woo him with on her guitar. She would also show him how to dance and let his feet take flight, to know the joy of that flowing movement to music. She would tell of this by writing in his diary and her own little notebook, phrases of the passion she felt, written in her own French words.
She wrote, “Mark, mon ami et maintenant amant. Nous somes ensemble pour toujours avec joie”- together forever with joy.