The Plantation - Di Morrissey [2]
‘Who said we are shooting apes? We are hunting for food. Mind your own business, lady.’
She stopped, unnerved by his hostile, threatening manner. She saw the local man moving away, and in seconds he was out of sight. The European moved his rifle menacingly while he stared at her, before he quickly followed his companion into the jungle.
Feeling shaken, the peace and solitude of her surroundings broken by the presence of the two men, she began to retrace her steps. As she approached the small jungle camp carved from the forest at the edge of the river, she saw activity on the tiny landing as the klotok, the village longboat, prepared to head downriver to trade for supplies. Behind it was moored the motor boat she and her husband had travelled in to reach this remote place. She walked on to where he was talking with the village headman. She spoke quietly to her husband, and his reaction was one of surprise and worry.
As soon as he could politely conclude his business, the two of them set off with one of the Iban from the long-house to the place where she had confronted the two men. The tribesman, so at home in this jungle, moved easily, but the husband and wife soon became breathless as they struggled to keep up. The young man quickly lengthened the distance between them. Through the trees in the dim light they saw that he had stopped and had bent down.
The woman reached him first and let out a cry. Stumbling, her hand to her mouth, she turned away to her husband. He reached the scene and opened his arms to his stricken wife, shielding her from the terrible sight before them.
A tangled pile of matted orange fur was covered in blood. The stomach of the creature had been gutted but what distressed them even more was that her head, feet and hands had been roughly hacked off.
‘Where’s her baby?’ whispered the woman.
The young man lifted his shoulders and, looking at her husband, said, ‘Gone, tuan. Sold for money.’
‘Poachers. How utterly senseless.’
His wife buried her face in his shirt as he stroked her hair. ‘You start back, dear. Leonard and I will bury the poor creature,’ he said.
‘How I wish we could catch these people. It’s too distressing,’ said his wife through her tears. ‘It’s just too hard. I want to leave here.’
1
Brisbane, 2009
THE RAIN FELL IN sheets that sliced across the windscreen and shone in the lights of oncoming cars. Julie Reagan was glad she had known these suburban streets all her life as she turned into a driveway which ran with the deluge from the summer storm. She pulled up in front of a beautiful big old house, set high on stumps to allow the cooling air to flow beneath the solid wooden floors. The house was encircled by a wide verandah accessed by sandstone steps and atop its pitched roof sat a small, ornate turret. The old Queenslander had an imperious air, perched above the other nearby homes, with its sweeping views from the verandah, the colonnades of which were smothered in the bright yellow flowers of an alamanda vine.
The young woman turned up the collar of her cotton jacket before racing across the sodden lawn, under a dripping poinciana tree, up the steps and onto the front verandah. She stepped out of her shoes and shook the drips from her hair and shirt. She knew her shoulder-length brown hair was starting to curl in the warm dampness.
Julie opened the carved white front door with its panels of stained glass and paused to hear the news on the TV in the sitting room and inhale the toasty, cheesy smell of something that her mother was cooking. The long, airy hallway with its polished wooden floor, the white wooden fretwork, the floral pattern in the pressed-metal ceilings and the carpet runner that had belonged to her great grandmother – everything was familiar to her.
Bayview had originally been bought by her great grandparents more than one hundred years ago. Her grandmother, Margaret, had lived here and now her parents. Her mother Caroline said that although old Queenslanders were expensive to maintain, she had no wish to give up the comfortable and gracious