Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [26]
Next morning Peter woke early. He yawned; stretched; looked first at the others – still asleep – then at the billabongs. The water looked cool and tempting. He got up, strolled across to the nearest pool, sat on the edge and dangled in an exploratory toe. The water was delightfully warm; but shallow; barely up to his knees. He wandered upstream, seeking a deeper, more exciting pool.
He found it on the far side of the outcrop of rock: a granite-encircled basin, fed by a miniature waterfall. With a noisy belly-flop, he dived in.
The pool was exactly the right depth: up to his armpits. Working his way to under the waterfall, he revelled in the cascading, sunlit spray. He stayed a long time in the water, soaking every pore of his sturdy young body. He noticed with satisfaction that his body wasn’t white any longer; a week’s continual exposure to the desert sun had tanned it a rich mahogany – only he hoped it wouldn’t get any darker, else he’d be turning into a blackamoor. At last he wandered back to the camp site.
The bush boy was still asleep; but Mary had just woken, and he told her about the rock-bound billa-bong.
The girl looked at the Aboriginal and saw that he was motionless: apparently fast asleep.
‘You stir up the fire, Pete,’ she said. ‘Can you manage that? While I bathe?’
‘Sure I can manage.’
She smiled, glad of his self-reliance, and made her way to the far side of the rock.
The billabong was everything Peter had promised. The river that ran out of Eden couldn’t have been more beautiful. The girl took off her dress, ruefully noting its rents and tears, shook loose her hair, and dived into the pool. The water was crystal clear and warm as a tepid bath. Lazily she swam across to the waterfall, and let the spray cascade on to her naked body. She felt relaxed, washed clean of cares and doubts and fears. Sometime, she thought, some distant day or week or month, they’d come to Adelaide (or some other settlement); the bush boy she wouldn’t think about; in the meantime the sun shone, there was water to drink, food to eat, and Peter’s cold was on the mend. She started to sing: gaily: swirling her hair from shoulder to shoulder.
Peter, meanwhile, had fanned the fire into a blazing pyre of yacca. And the bush boy had woken up.
He lay on his back, thinking. He wasn’t used to thinking – most of his actions being dictated by custom and instinct rather than thought. But there was something he had to think about now: something vitally important: his burial table. Did the strangers know how to make it: high off the ground: so that the serpent that slept in the bowels of the earth couldn’t creep out and molest his body? The strangers were such an ignorant pair; he couldn’t leave anything to chance; he’d have to make sure they knew what had to be done.
He got to his feet. Slowly. Weakly.
If other things had been equal he’d have talked to the little one – he was on easier terms with him than with the lubra. But he saw that the little one was working: was collecting firewood; while the lubra, to judge from her singing and splashing, was merely washing her body. Tribal custom frowned on disturbing those who were working. And it never occurred to the bush boy to wait for a more propitious moment. He set off to find the lubra.
He climbed the outcrop of rock and saw her a little way below him, bathing in the billabong. She’d taken off her strange decorations, and loosened her hair so that it was no longer scraped up on the back of her head but flowed, long and golden, on the surface of the water. The bush boy had never seen such hair, sand-coloured and trailing like the comet that rides the midnight sky. He thought it very beautiful. He lay down on the sun-warmed rock, and stared. Admiringly.
Quite suddenly the girl looked up: looked up straight into his eyes: into his staring, admiring eyes.
She backed away. In terror. Her hands, sliding along the bank of the pool, clutched at a loosened fragment