Recuperation

19

Recuperation

    Cassie threw herself into my arms with a burst of tears, so that was pretty much all right. I hugged her tightly. “It’s okay, Cassie, they let us go,” I said feebly.

    “Thought—gaol!” she sobbed.

    Gavin was very big-eyed. “Yeah, we thoughtcha were gonna end up in gaol, Alex! ’Cos see, ya did shoot ’im on purpose, didn’tcha?”

    Beside me, Perry winced. “Yeah, all right, little mate, we all know that, but we don’t say it, see? You don’t talk about it to anyone at all, geddit?”

    Jim had opened the door to us and since it led straight into the sitting-room of his largely open-plan house, that was where this conversation was taking place. “Only to the people in this house, plus Junie, nobody else at all, mate, geddit? Unless ya want Alex to end up in clink and Cassie and Perry to go with him, as accessories after the fact.”

    “That means we knew and deliberately covered it up,” put in Perry, very dry. “Bloody Wilson wasn’t convinced, mind you,” he added to Jim.

    That worthy sniffed slightly. “He wouldn’t be. Well, up his, there’s no proof, if everybody sticks to their stories.”

    “I WILL!” shouted Gavin, very red.

    “It’s all right, Gavin, of course you will,” I said quickly. “You were great. You said all the right things.”

    “Yes,” said Cassie groggily. She sniffled.

    “Have my handkerchief,” I said, reluctantly releasing her and offering it.

    “Thanks,” she said soggily. She blew her nose and announced fiercely: “The only good snake is a dead snake! Of course we’ll stick to our stories!”

    “Good-oh,” said Jim comfortably. “Come and sit down. You could probably do with a drink.”

    Beyond the breakfast bar we could see Paula busy in the kitchen. Now she bustled out, carrying a big jug tinkling with ice.

    “Yes; I’ve made some Planter’s Punch!” she beamed. “Well, all the recipes seemed to be different, but they all had rum and most of them had lime juice, so I used Bundy and squeezed some limes and added some sugar and orange juice and a bit of pineapple juice. One of them looked pretty: the recipe said it had Grenadine in it, but we haven’t got any of that, whatever it is when it’s at home, but anyway, it still tastes okay!”

    “Yes,” said Cassie, producing a smile, to my huge relief. “It’s lovely. We had a few tastes to kind of get the balance right, eh, Paula?”

    That would explain the flushed cheeks on both sides, then, though I was hoping Cassie’s might also have something to do with me.

    Paula agreed: “Yeah. It looks a bit dark, but it’s lovely and sweet! I think the Bundy makes it a bit darker than in most of the pictures.”

    Er—it would do.

    “Sounds okay to me!” said Perry breezily. “I’ll be with you in a tick, I’ll just give Junie a bell.”

    “Yes, of course,” Paula replied. “—Sit over here, Alex: that’s right. –If only we knew earlier, Junie could have come to us!”

    “Yeah, but little Tanya’s probably had enough excitement for one day,” said Pete easily. “Lemme take that for ya, pet.” He took the jug.

    “Thanks, Pete!” she beamed. “Now, you have that big chair. Cassie, you come and sit beside Alex on the sofa, that’s right. Gavin, dear, would you like to go and play video games with Brian?”

    “Can’t I stay here?”

    Paula just nodded and said: “Okay, dear. You sit beside Alex, then. Would you like another juice?”

    He looked fixedly at the jug from which Pete was now dispensing colourful fluid. “Coulden I—”

    “No, alcohol isn’t good for growing minds and bodies,” she replied firmly. “You can have orange or pineapple juice.”

    “Orange juice,” he decided.

    “‘Please’,” Cassie prompted with a sigh.

    “Please,” he agreed.

    “Righto, then, dear!” She bustled over to the kitchen area again.

    Gavin sat down beside me. “See, they got, like, bar stools,” he confided. “They're neato, eh?”

    Not if you were that short, I wouldn’t have said. “Mm.”

    “That’s like, a breakfast bar,” he continued.

    “Mm? Oh—yes.”

    “Say you asked Mr Mincey, I bet he could—”

    I came to. “I really don’t think we need a breakfast bar at Trethewin: the kitchen’s very big, isn’t it?”

    “Ye-ah… But that means there’ll be plenty of room for it!”

    So it did. At this point Pete poured me a generous glass of Planter’s Punch and winked at me. I smiled feebly, thanked him, and took a grateful gulp. Whew! Rummy, it was. Oh, well, so much the better!

    “Wouldn’t there, Alex?”

    “Mm? Well, yes, but we don’t need it. You see, Jim and Paula have got a breakfast bar instead of a breakfast table: it saves space in the kitchen.” They also had a good-sized dining area, with a table and six chairs, but I was hoping he wouldn’t remark on this point.

    “Aw… yeah.”

    “That nice big shelf that your gramps has fixed to Cassie’s kitchen wall to make a narrow table is almost like a breakfast bar, isn’t it?” I ventured.

    “Ye-ah… I know!” His eyes gleamed horribly. “Say Gramps moved it up the wall, see, then we could have proper bar stools and it could be a real breakfast bar!”

    Oh, dear. Poor Fred. I looked round wildly for help but none came. Pete was grinning meanly over his Planter’s Punch, Perry had finished his call to Junie and had taken another armchair and was looking horribly bland over his Planter’s Punch, Jim, on a second sofa, was manifestly trying not to laugh, and at my other side Cassie was merely sipping her Planter’s Punch and looking dreamily into space. Paula had let Pete pour her a glass but had gone back to the kitchen, where she was now busy at the stove, from which an enticing aroma began to remind me how insufficient those chips had been.

    “Um, that’s an idea,” I said feebly,

    “Yeah! I’ll ask him tomorrow!”

    Fred could, I mused, say No. But then the nagging would start up… Oh, well. –Why was it, I mused, sipping my Planter’s Punch, that in fiction the noble hero, having shot his man stone dead, usually after being overcome by a sly trick and at the last minute struggling free and having to use his gun as a last resort, was greeted on his triumphant return by the luscious lady of his choice, with whom he then fell into bed, whereas in real life— Well, real life impinged. Yes: impinged.

    “What?” said Gavin.

    “Mm?”

    “Whaddidja say?” he asked uncertainly.

    “Er… I don’t think I did. This is certainly an excellent rum punch. I think I’ve had something similar in the Caribbean.”

    “Um, where?”

    “The Caribbean. You know: Guadeloupe, Mustique.”—He was looking blank.—“Jamaica.”—Blank.—“The tropical island where James Bond goes,” I offered.

    “Aw! Yeah! Keen! He’s got a Walther PPK! What sort is your gun?” he asked avidly.

    “It’s not my gun, it’s Perry’s, a Walther PPK/E that—”

    “Far—OUT!”

    “As I was saying, that throws slightly left.”

    He looked puzzled.

    “Instead of shooting absolutely straight,” said Pete kindly. “Let’s change the subject, eh? Ladies don’t want to hear about guns.”

    “Only if they kill snakes,” said Cassie viciously. “I just wish it had been horrible Tony that you shot, Alex!”

    I jumped. “Er—yes.” Oops, her glass was empty and she was more flushed than ever. “Um, rude question, but how much of this punch have you had, Cassie?”

    “How mush have you?” she retorted strongly.

    “I—” Oops, my glass was empty.

    Pete collapsed in sniggers.

    “Ooh, is it very strong?” gasped Gavin.

    Jim’s shoulders were shaking, but he got up and said: “It is, little mate, ’specially if you’ve been tasting it for the last half-hour. I think Paula’s forgotten about your juice; I’ll get it. Can you eat a rice thingo with bits of chicken in it?”

    “Um, yeah.”

    “Good-oh. It’s kind of a West Indian recipe, talking of which,” he noted, going over to the fridge, “but with luck she’ll’ve left out the Scotch Bonnet chilli.”

    “Don’t be silly, dear,” said Paula placidly from the stove. “It hasn’t got any chilli in it.”

    “Er—lady’s fingers—uh, okra?” I ventured uneasily.

    “Not in it, mate, no. She’s got a secret recipe for those.”

    “I was joking, Jim,” I admitted weakly.

    “Yeah? You’re in Oz now, Alex. The things grow like weeds up in Queensland and the Territory. I grant you they’re not popular, but see, she’s found a really nice greengrocer’s—one of the last,” he noted, “that has highly exoteek veggies at only sixty times the normal price. Liddle purple potatoes, too: had them?”

    “Er—sweet potatoes? I’ve had several varieties in the Carib— Um, somewhere,” l finished lamely.

    “Yeah. –Give ’im another one, Pete,” he advised. “With luck he may become totally incoherent.”

    Grinning, Pete got up and poured the last dregs from the jug into my glass.

    “Don’t worry, there’s more in the fridge,” said Jim airily. “—Not sweet potatoes, no, actual poms dee tair. Hideous.” He opened the big fridge and produced a carton of orange juice and another large jug of Planter’s Punch. It looked darker than the first lot, so unless my eyes had gone fuzzy, which I wasn’t ready to maintain was not the case, it probably had more Bundy in it.

    … Yes. Not bad at all. Cassie’s verdict was: “Ooh, yummy!” I looked limply at Jim, who had poured the refills. He eyed me steadily. Er… Oh.

    Quickly I agreed: “Yes, isn’t it nice? Drink up, and then we’ll have some lovely, er, chicken and rice.”

    “Sort of a jambalaya,” she said earnestly. “Only she’s combined a couple of recipes. I think one was mainly from the Aussie Women’s Weekly, ’cos it had pineapple in it.”

    I managed to say: “I see,” in response to this one, but it was very faint.

    “Yeah,” said Jim, setting his glass down and getting up. “Come through to the study for a mo’, Alex.”

    Help, what now? I followed him out in trepidation.

    “We think this room mighta been meant to be a den, but she won’t use the word,” he explained airily, as we went into a small room which contained a desk and some bookcases against darkly panelled walls, most unlike the big, airy main room, which was merely painted in an unobtrusive light cream.

    “Er… yes?”

    He made a rueful face. “I just wanted to say, mate, that the more grog we can get down Cassie, the better. She’s been in a bit of a state.”

    Oh, Hell! “No wonder. I shot the bastard right in front of her eyes, Jim. It must have shocked her terribly.”

    “Not that, ya nit! They say the female of the species is deadlier than the male and in my experience it’s true. Women may not turn into serial killers, that’s a male kink, but they’re bloody ruthless. No, she was afraid you were gonna get copped for it, mate.”

    “Oh!”

    He smiled a little. “Yeah, oh. –The kid was pretty much in shock. Paula wanted to pop him into bed—there’s a spare bunk in Brian’s room—but he wouldn’t go, so we didn’t insist.”

    I sighed. “Bloody Andrews Senior had a knife to his throat, Jim.”

    “So I gather. Like father, like son, eh? What a shit. So where was he standing, exactly, when ya shot him?”

    “Uh—oh, I suppose no-one’s really explained? We caught up with both of them in the garden and the father bolted. Pete dashed after him but evidently he bashed him on the head.”

    Jim nodded. “Yeah, Pete told us that bit, mate. What about the bloody son? All Pete could tell us is that he musta got away.”

    “Yes: seized his moment while Wilson’s inept young constable was fumbling with his handcuffs and made a run for it towards the far side of the house. Perry and Wilson headed that way in case he meant to get over the wall there via the dustbins, but I went round the other way in case he’d got through the side gate to the front. It was open, so of course I thought he had, and dashed through. When I got to the road Andrews Senior was side on to me, on Gavin’s side of the car. He’d bashed in the window and was in the act of pointing the knife at the boy’s throat. I yelled and he spun round to face me. That’s when I got him in the thigh.” I shrugged. “It wasn’t enough: I got him in the fleshy part, but missed the bone. He was down but far from out, and he still had the knife. He managed to half sit up and was about to throw it.”

    “Goddit. So ya shot ’im again. Good on ya, mate.”

    “Thanks, or something,” I replied ruefully.

    “Never mind, he’ll be away for a good stretch. And with any luck some of the fingerprints on that Semtex will be his!” He grinned.

    This was the first I’d heard of any fingerprints. “What? Fingerprints?”

    “Yep, just got the tip-off from me contact this arvo,” said Jim happily. “Two sets, he heard.”

    “Er—but Jim, wouldn’t there be a record of his? He was convicted, you know.”

    “Doubt it. Back in the Seventies, interstate, mate,” he reminded me. “Anyway, they’ll be sure to run them against his now, eh? They’ll throw away the key if they match: the Adelaide cops have got a real down on terrorists with bombs. Didja know one of them bombed one of their ruddy buildings not that long back?”

    “What?”

    “Yeah. Don’t think that was the central station, think it might have been another building where the anti-terrorist mob hang out,” he said, horribly dry. “One of their blokes was killed, if I remember rightly.”

    “Good Christ.”

    “Yep. Fingers crossed, eh?”

    “Yes,” I said, sagging.

    “Too right. Uh—there’s a bottle in here, if ya fancy a slug straight, to take the taste of that flamin’ fruit cocktail away.”

    “Er…”

    Jim went over to his desk, got out his bunch of keys and insouciantly unlocked a drawer, to produce a bottle of Bundy and a shot glass. He poured, and held the glass out suggestively.

    Oh, what the Hell! “Thanks, Jim.” I drank.

    “Better?” he said, grinning.

    “Mm. Can we avoid a rehash over the dinner table?” I asked uneasily.

    “Yep: been there, done that. Well, the kid might start up again but we’ll tell ’im the subject’s closed, oke?”

    Very much oke. “Yes. Thanks, Jim.”

    He eyed me thoughtfully. “Feel a bit wobbly, do ya?”

    “No,” I said tightly. “Very annoyed that it wasn’t Andrews Junior in my sights.”

    “Thought that might be it. Have another belt.” He poured.

    I drank…

    After that I vaguely recall eating something ricey and delicious, with bits of chicken, thin slices of chorizo sausage, red peppers, tomato, that sort thing, and washing it down with very cold lager. I don’t remember going to bed at all.

    I woke up in the wee small hours. My heart gave a jump as the filtered light from a distant street lamp showed a shadowy figure lurking in a corner of the room. Then I realised where I was and recognised that the figure was only Paula’s dressmaking dummy. I was in the spare room, Cassie was in their absent daughter’s room, and Gavin of course was sharing Brian’s room.

    I wasn’t too sure what had woken me. Had I heard something? Yes—there was a cry and then a voice saying something. I shot over to the door and opened it.

    Young Brian was in the passage, looking desperate. “What’s up?” I whispered.

    “It’s Gavin. He’s having a nightmare!” he hissed. “I was gonna get Mum.”

    Oh, God.

    “I’ll come.” I hurried into his room. In the lower bunk Gavin was tossing and turning, muttering.

    “He won’t wake up!” hissed Brian uneasily.

    “Uh-huh.” I bent down, put an arm round him and lifted him upright. “Gavin, wake up!” I said clearly but not loudly. “Gavin! It’s all right, you’re safe, wake up!”

    “Nightmares?” said Paula’s voice from the doorway.

    “Yes.”

    She came over to us. “That’s right, Alex, hug him, stop him thrashing around. And it’s best to wake him up. Does he usually sleep soundly?”

    “Very, Cassie said. –Gavin! Come on, you’re safe! It’s Alex! I’ve got you! You’re safe now!”

    The muttering stopped and he said groggily: “Alex. The baddie had a big knife.”

    “Yes, but I shot him, remember? He can’t hurt you now.”

    “He was gonna stick it into everybody. Me, and Cassie, and Gran and Gramps, and you, and ole Ring-a-Ding.” A tear slid down his cheek.

    Damnation. I held him tightly. “He couldn’t do that. He’d take one step onto the property and Fifi and Figgy and Ken’s Fang’d be on him, wouldn’t they?”

    “Mm,” he said, sniffing.

    “Yes. And anyway, he’s in hospital with a bullet in him. He’ll be stuck full of tubes and unable to move for weeks.”

    “Gramps had tubes when he had his op,” he allowed, sniffing again.

    Er… doubtless. What op? Possibly better not to ask. “Yes, that’s right. And there’ll be a policeman sitting right beside him.”

    “Good,” he said sleepily.

    “Yes. So we’re all quite safe and when we get home you can have Figgy in your room all the time, if you like.”

    “Ace,” he murmured groggily.

    “He’s drifting off again,” whispered Paula. “Put him down now, Alex, dear.”

    Obediently I laid him down again and she pulled the light blanket up over him. –The house of course had fully ducted air conditioning and the bedrooms were at a comfortable temperature for sleeping.

    “Come on,” she whispered, and we all crept out, Brian included.

    Paula closed the door gently and the boy whispered anxiously: “Will he be okay now, Mum?”

    “Mm, I think so, dear. Come on in the kitchen, we’ll have a warm drink, shall we?”

    In the kitchen she promptly made us what was presumably the Australian mother’s stand-by for crises: a hot chocolatey drink called Milo. Well, in similar circumstances Mum would have produced Bourneville cocoa or Ovaltine, true.

    “So did the bloke actually point a knife at his throat, Alex?” asked Brian.

    “Yes—well, he was starting to when I got there.”

    “Gee,” he said, obviously trying to imagine it and not quite succeeding. “No wonder he’s having bad dreams.”

    “Yes, poor little mite,” his mother agreed, sighing. “Um, they may recur for quite a while, Alex: I think you’d better be prepared. Are he and Cassie in their own house?”

    “Yes—well, more or less. We’ve all been having our meals up at Trethewin—the big house.”

    “Mm. I think it might be a good idea if they slept up there. Then the dogs could guard all of you at the same time. The awful son’s still at large, remember.”

    “Good one, Mum!” said Brian hoarsely. –His voice had broken but was still at the husky stage.

    “Yes, excellent,” I agreed.

    “Um, there is one more thing, Brian,” said Paula cautiously. “When kids that age are very stressed, they sometimes wet the bed. If it happens, dear, just pop the sheets in the machine and come and tell me quietly. We don’t want to embarrass him, do we?”

    Brian was rather red but agreed gamely: “Righto, Mum.”

    “And Alex, maybe his grandparents could come up to Trethewin, if that’d be all right with you.”

    “Er, yes; but, well, Stella will try to wrap him in cotton wool.”

    “I think he may need that, Alex. When Brian was hit by a car—”

    “Mu-um!” he hissed, writhing in agony.

    Ignoring this, his mother continued: “He was only eight. Both legs were in plaster, so he was in bed for ages. He couldn’t get to sleep unless I read him a story and he had his old bear with him.”

    “Honestly, Mum!” the puce-faced boy hissed.

    “I’m not surprised,” I said mildly. “Trauma does that. One sort of regresses. I was the same when I fell off a horse—well, the worst time. Concussion, a broken arm and leg and several cracked ribs. I was eleven, quite a bit older than you were, Brian. I missed months of school. Dad had always been the great bedtime story reader in our house, and he had to read to me until I fell asleep. I cringed for years afterwards at the thought of the thing I made him read, but it eventually dawned that it was a regression to an earlier childhood state where I felt safe.”

    “What was it?” he asked, his eyes on stalks.

    “One of the Christopher Robin books. –No? You might have seen the Disney version: the stories about Pooh Bear.”

    “Heck!”

    “Yes,” I said wryly. “There you are. Regression.”

    “Yeah, you’re right,” he discovered. “You didn’t want your teddy bear, though, didja?”

    “Er… Very well, I’ll come clean. My Eeyore. –The donkey, Pooh’s friend.’

    Brian broke down in delighted splutters.

    “There,” said Paula comfortably. “We’re all weak at times, dear. You’d better pop off to bed again.”

    “Um, but what if he has another nightmare?”

    “Well, swap with Alex. –It is a full-size bunk,” she assured me.

    Brian was looking at me hopefully, so I agreed limply to take the top bunk in his room. Ten to one I’d wake up, forget where I was, and break my leg falling out of it.

    Paula saw him off, smiling, and then said to me in a lowered voice: “Was that true?”

    “Mm,” I admitted wryly. “Down to the Eeyore. I’ve still got him: he was a present from a friend of my grandfather’s, a great old guy. He’s a bit battered, but game. He sits on my bedroom windowsill in my London flat and ladies who don’t admire him don’t get invited twice.”

    “That’s very clear!” she said with a giggle. “Well, we’d better pop off. Nighty-night, Alex.”

    “Nighty-night, Paula,” I replied, smiling very much.

    Oddly enough I didn’t fall out of the bunk but I was very surprised next morning to find myself in it. So was Gavin.

    “Were you up there?” he said groggily.

    “Mm. Brian and I swapped. You had a bad dream so Paula thought I’d better be on hand in case you had another one.”

    “I don’t remember that.”

    “Good.”

    “Do you ever have bad dreams?”

    “Sometimes. Everyone does now and then.”

    “Do you think dogs dream?”

    “Uh—I believe the experts claim they do. Well, if you watch Figgy sleeping you’ll see his paws often twitch. My theory is he’s happily chasing rabbits over the fields in his dreams.”

    “Yeah! Or maybe treeing a possum.”

    “Yes. So you have lots of opossums in Australia, do you?”

    “You mean possums,” he corrected me. “Yeah, millions. Don’t you?”

    “No. In England?” I croaked. “No. They’re marsupials. Native to Australia. Animals developed differently in the northern hemisphere, you see,” I said, avoiding any mention of Gondwanaland, continents separating, or associated concepts, in case that’d provoke more nightmares. It was terrifying, when you thought about it, but of course the process had been so slow that a human being could never have been aware of it. I didn’t think, however, that that point would register affectively with a ten-year-old.

    “Um, is that why we haven’t got lions and tigers?”

    “Yes, exactly.”

    “Or bears?”

    “That’s right. They’re not marsupials.”

    “Bears’d be good,” he said on a regretful note.

    “They’re very dangerous, I believe; they only look cuddly.”

    “Yeah, I know. Like, a grizzly, if it attacked, you’d have no chance!”

    Damn, was this going to be the stuff of further nightmares? “There aren’t any here, so you don’t need to worry about them, do you?”

    “Nah. –We got crocs,” he offered hopefully.

    “Not in South Australia,” I replied firmly.

    “Um, can we still go up to Uluru?”

    I’d forgotten all about that plan. “Well, the police might want us to stay here.”

    “But they can’t make ya! –Can they?

    “Not without good grounds, but— Oh, the Hell with it. We’re entitled to a nice break, aren’t we? If Perry agrees, we’ll go!”

    “He’ll agree!” he beamed. “C’n I ride in the campervan?”

    “You’d have to ask them. Uh—Perry was making noises about hiring a four-by-f— I mean a four-wheel-drive, for me to drive.”

    “That’d be keen! Is Pete gonna come too?”

    “Well, uh, if he wants to, I suppose.”

    “He’ll want to! –Ya not allowed to climb it any more, ya know.”

    “Er—no?”

    “Nah, ’cos it’s an Aboriginal sacred site, see, and ya gotta respect it.”

    “I see. In that case I wouldn’t dream of climbing it.”

    “Nah, me neither.”

    That seemed to be that. Was it the natural resilience of the young, or was he burying the trauma, or… I had no idea. One could only, I supposed, stand by in case the nightmares did recur. Er, and get his grandmother up to Trethewin, yes.

    The planned trip went ahead—yes. We had the rest of the week up at Trethewin, however, with Stella firmly taking charge. Perry, Ken, Pete and the dogs patrolled conscientiously, but there was no further sign of trouble. I wasn’t at all convinced that Brodie Andrews might not try something to avenge his father, but if he did have anything like that in mind, he at least wasn’t doing it yet. Wilson and his minions pestered us, of course, but none of us could—or would—add anything to what they’d already got. And Stella was marvellous at fending off their incessant phone calls.

    Down in Adelaide Jim had his people investigating “them two gays” at Asphodel House in order to ascertain just how and when the Andrewses, père et fils, had got involved with them, and in the hope of tracking down Harry Andrews’s studio in order to prove he was the art forger. I didn’t think anything less than his fingerprints or DNA in the paint of one of the forgeries would do it, but I agreed Jim should go ahead.

    And the following week we took off for Uluru, Australia’s great monolith in “the Red Centre”. All of us, except Ken and the three dogs, who stayed behind to guard the property. Two campervans: Perry’s family in one, and Cassie, Gavin, Stella and Fred in the other. The senior Forrests had never been to Uluru, and Stella thought that Gavin might need her… Oh, well. Given that it was still the school holidays, it had proven impossible to hire a campervan, so I’d bought one. After all, it could always be sold, later. Pete and I rode in the four-by-four which on his and Perry’s advice I’d also purchased. You needed something like that on a property like Trethewin, unquote. Certainly it took those damned country roads in its stride. Oh, well, why not?

    According to one of those helpful maps from King Google, the road from Adelaide to Uluru crossed a great deal of nothing at all. Further investigation provided the information that the driving distance was just on nine hundred and eighty-seven miles from the Adelaide CBD, so from Trethewin we’d be travelling a thousand miles. A helpful online facility informed us that the trip from Adelaide took sixteen hours, the road that went most of the way being the Stuart Highway. As Pete, who had made the trek before, pointed out in no uncertain terms, this meant sixteen hours if you were a robot, mate, that didn’t need to eat, sleep or piss. And yeah, eight hours per day didn’t seem so bad, with him and me, Cassie, Fred and Stella, and Perry and Junie all sharing the driving, but we’d at least need to stop for meal breaks. If we didn’t want to arrive at dead of night, completely tuckered out, we’d better do it over three days. Then coming home we could do it in two. Perry and Junie agreed. Fred was pretty sure a mate “down the RSL” had told him you could do it in two, easy, but Stella squashed him. So that was that.

    A thousand very hot miles of largely nothing is apt to pall, especially if one hasn’t reached the age of discretion. Gavin rotated between his family’s campervan, the Hawkes family’s campervan and my four-by-four.

    “There’s nothink out there!”

    Nor there was. Well, a relentlessly blue sky which seemed to press closely down on one like a huge weight, be damned to those literary descriptions of limitless desert skies, plus endless miles of dust, and the highway stretching on and on and on until one became mesmerised, but— Mm.

    Australia, I can now testify, hand on heart, is big. BIG.

    We’d been fantastically lucky to be able to book in at the “Ayers Rock Campground”, not at the Rock, which is within a large national park, but in the relatively nearby township of Yulara. We were told we’d only got a slot because it was the last week of the holidays and into the bargain they’d had a cancellation. Well, after the stresses of the previous week, we felt we deserved some good luck! Yulara was found to be, thank God, only eighteen kilometres from Uluru. Modern campervans, I discovered, need one Helluva lot of plug-in facilities, and this was the sort of camping ground—normal to Australians—that provided these “powered sites.”

    By the time we got there, what with the heat and the dust, we were pretty much exhausted. We drank huge amounts of water, ate enormous amounts of food, and turned in.

    Early next morning we set off for the Rock itself.

    The Red Centre is wonderful, indescribable—well, certainly beyond my poor powers of description. It really is red, a deep rusty shade. Uluru, the great monolith, to which no photograph, however expert, can really do justice, plants itself implacably in the surrounding stretch of flat, rust-red landscape. Afterwards words like “immemorial” might come to mind, likewise, banally, “unforgettable”. Actually there, never mind how many flocks of cars and coaches might be parked in the handy carpark, never mind what cretinous remarks from idiot tourists might be floating on the hot, dry, desert air, one is shaken to the core: one’s entire spirit is taken over by something entirely other, outside all my experience. Sometimes in the great cathedrals of Europe I’d felt something a little like it—but only a little. We were all reduced to utter silence, even the children.

    When we finally turned away from the view and went back to the vehicles, Cassie said in a small voice: “I sort of never felt souls were real, before…”

    If I hadn’t realised before that deep down, where it mattered, never mind the surface differences of age, background and experience, we were fundamentally compatible, I knew it now, for certain. My heart raced.

    “Me, too,” I agreed. “One’s own, and those of every being, human or animal, who’s ever been here, back over the millennia.”

    “It makes ya feel funny, eh?” offered Gavin.

    It certainly did.

Next chapter:

https://deadringers-trethewin.blogspot.com/2025/06/interval.html