LANCE DILLON was climbing out of a spiral pit of darkness. The climb was slow and painful, full of checks and reverses. Sometimes he fell dizzily into emptiness. Sometimes he groped against a solid hand-hold and felt on his eyeballs the weight of a light he could not see. Sometimes he was cold as death, sometimes burning in a black furnace.
The darkness in which he moved was alive. Bat-wings brushed his face, black hands reached out to hold him, spear-points pricked at him, water dripped in maddening monotony, the palpitant air lay over him like a blanket. There were voices too, talking without words, uttering words without sense. Some of the voices were strange, some vaguely familiar, like faces seen in a fog.
Even in this blind world there was a perspective, a sense of extension and relation. But the perspective was always changing – now rocketing away into infinity, now contracting on him like a concertina. The sounds swelled in wild climaxes then died into haunting cadences, elusive as whispers in a twilit street.
In the galactic darkness he seemed to have undergone a strange metamorphosis. The small core of himself was the same, but the rest of him, the conformation of trunk and limb and feature, seemed to have slipped out of mould and into fluidity. He might have been a snake in a hollow log, a wombat in a tunnel, a chrysalis in a cocoon, for all the certainty that was left.
For a long while the darkness was absolute, but then a light began to show, blurred and transient, always a long way beyond the reach of his groping fingers. Later it solidified, stayed a little longer, haunted him with its suggestion of an outline. By now he was higher in the pit, sensible of some faint progress – though towards what he could not tell. Then, at one moment in the timeless continuum, the light took form and he found himself looking into Mary’s face. He tried to reach for her, but made no contact. He tried to call to her but no sound came, then her face melted into light and the light was snuffed back into blackness.
For a long time afterwards it seemed that he hung suspended near the peak of the spiral, a breath away from some kind of revelation. What it was he could not guess, nor even care greatly, being weary from the long climb out of nowhere. Finally, without knowing how, he drifted out of limbo and into sleep; and when he opened his eyes, he saw a man bending over him, a black-haired fellow with stubbled cheeks and a wide grin and a stethoscope dangling from his ears. Dillon was still fumbling drowsily for his name, when a raw cheerful voice said:
‘So you’re awake, eh? They breed ’em tough on Minardoo.’
It was the voice that jogged the wheels of memory into motion. Dillon tried to grin back but his lips were numb and his own voice issued in a husky squawk.
‘Black Bellamy! the mad doctor! How am I doing, Doc?’
Doctor Robert Bellamy took the stethoscope out of his ears and hung it round his neck. He sat down on the edge of the bed, chuckling:
‘By rights you should be dead. I’ve never seen such a bloody mess.’
Dillon struggled to sit up, but pain broke out over his body and he lay back, sweating, on the pillows. Bellamy cocked a cynical eye at him and grinned again.
‘Let that be a lesson to you; take it slow and easy. You’re burnt raw, back and front. You’re full of formic acid, and there’s still enough sepsis in that shoulder to kill a bullock. You’re going to be with us a long time yet.’
Dillon blinked away the pain and asked thickly:
‘How long have I been here?’
‘This is the third day.’
‘How did I get here?’
‘Neil Adams found you. Your wife brought you in.’
‘Mary…’ Just as he had come to the end of his groping, the darkness was clouding in on him again. ‘Mary…where is she?’
‘Resting. She’s been with you night and day since you came. You’re going to rest yourself now. Then you can talk to her.’
He felt the prick of a hypodermic in his arm, saw the dark stubbled face ballooning into a fog above him, then the blackness swallowed him up once again.
Doctor Robert Bellamy frowned and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a khaki handkerchief. He had had a rough week, two hard deliveries, an outbreak of measles in the aborigine settlement, one punctured lung after a brawl in the bar and a smash on the Darwin road that added up to a crushed arm, a ruptured spleen and some quick, if unbeautiful, plastic surgery. And for the last three days Dillon had been fighting a drawn battle with death while they pumped penicillin into him and had Gilligan screaming up to Darwin for fresh supplies.
Now, it seemed Dillon had won his battle. But it was a partial victory at best. Every auscultation confirmed it. The human heart is the toughest organ in the body, but Lance Dillon’s had taken one round of punishment too many. He would recover. He could lead a normal, temperate life. But his hard-driving days were over. He had ridden to his last muster, thrown his last steer. And Black Bellamy wondered how he would take the news.
He folded his stethoscope, shoved it into the pocket of his bush shirt and walked across the dusty little compound of the hospital to the grey iron-roofed bungalow that was the nurses’ quarters. He pushed open the screen door and walked into the cool dim lounge with its rattan furniture, its piles of old fashion magazines and its pots of struggling cactus and trailing creeper. Mary Dillon swung her legs off the settee and stood up to greet him.
‘Sit down, Doctor. I’ll pour you a drink.’
She walked to the kerosene refrigerator in the corner and brought out a bottle of beer and two glasses. As she stood pouring for him and for herself, Bellamy watched her with hooded speculative eyes. In the last three days, she had grown visibly older – no, older wasn’t the word; maturer, that was it. The skin was still young and unlined, the figure firm, the walk springy and confident. But the lines had hardened, somehow. The skin had tightened over the bones of her face, the mouth had thinned a little; the eyes looked into farther distances: there was an air of deliberation and control about her, as if she were walking a little strangely in a new estate.
She handed him his glass, carried her own to the settee and sat down. They toasted each other ritually and drank. She questioned him calmly.
‘How is Lance?’
Bellamy took another long draught of beer and refilled his glass before he answered:
‘Pretty well, considering what he’s been through. The infection’s under control. The broken rib will mend in time. The burns are clearing up, slowly. We’ll have him up and about in a few weeks.’
‘Is that all?’ She was watching him over the rim of her glass, her eyes, shadowed with weariness and want of sleep, probing him.
He hesitated a moment. Then shrugged and gave it to her bluntly.
‘Not quite all. There’s a certain amount of damage to the heart.’
‘How much damage?’
‘Well…we’d need more tests than I can make to establish it fully. But in general terms, he’ll have to slow down. No heavy work, no violent exercise. A regular routine, as little anxiety as possible. On a careful regimen, he could outlast both of us.’
‘Can he still run Minardoo?’
Bellamy shook his head.
‘Not the way he’s been doing it. With a good manager and a good foreman, maybe, yes. But I understand you’ve been having a rough time lately?’
‘We’ve been short of money, yes.’
‘And now you’ve lost the bull.’
‘Yes.’
‘That makes it very rough. I wouldn’t like to see Lance going back to that.’
Her eyes were cool as ice.
‘Any other suggestions, Doctor?’
He cocked his head on one side and spread his hands in a comical gesture of deprecation.
‘Cut your losses. Get out. Get Lance a desk job with the pastoral company, handling other people’s mortagages ’
‘That would kill him quicker than anything.’
‘It probably would at that.’
‘Have you told Lance?’
‘Not yet. I’d like to wait till he’s stronger. It’ll give you some time to think things out too.’
‘I’ve already done that. We’re going to carry on Minardoo. I’ll run it myself until Lance is well. Then we’ll share it.’
His bushy eyebrows went up in surprise, and she gave him a little ironic smile.
‘You don’t think I can do it?’
‘I didn’t say that. I’ve confined too many women not to know how tough they are.’ He chuckled and buried his nose in his drink; then he quizzed her shrewdly. ‘One small point – what will you use for money?’
‘I called the pastoral company and asked for a new loan.’
‘What did they say?’
‘They refused – at first. Then I told them they could foreclose any day they wanted, provided they could get someone to work the place. And I’d plaster the story all over the country about how they put a returned serviceman off his land because the blacks had killed his bull and damn near killed him.’
‘And they took it?’
‘They took it and liked it, Doctor. They’ll give us another three years and enough capital to see us through.’
For a moment he stared at her in amazement, then threw back his dark tousled head and laughed:
‘For God’s sake! That’s the best damn story I’ve heard in years. But you…you of all people! The city chick chirping up to the crows and the bush-hawks. Lord love you, girl, I didn’t think you had it in you! I remember the first night Lance brought you to a dance at Ochre Bluffs. I thought it and I said it: “Give her eighteen months and she’ll be scuttling home to mother!” ’
‘A lot’s happened since that night, Doctor.’
The tone of her voice, the chill appraising look in her eyes, choked off his laughter and reduced him to blushing embarrassment. He mumbled an apology, finished his beer with indecent haste and went out, wondering.
Strange things happened to the folk who lived in the naked country. What had happened to Mary Dillon in the three years of her marriage, in the five days of her search and vigil for her husband? And what would happen to the husband when the soft hands of the city girl took over the reins of the power?
Alone in the dim room, Mary Dillon poured the last of the beer into her glass and drank it slowly. She had behaved like a shrew and she knew it – regretted it too, because she had always felt a softness for Robert Bellamy, bush doctor, old Territory hand, and kindest of souls this side of the sunset. Yet she could not help herself. It was as if she had called up every last reserve – of pity, gentleness, courage – to bolster her decision to stay with Lance. Now there was nothing left, just the hard stone of resolve set where her heart had once been and no love or laughter or tenderness left to spend on anyone.
The feeling terrified her. It was as if she had signed her own death warrant – or vowed herself to a closed convent while the sap of youth still ran sweet. The future stretched before her, bleak as the Stone Country under a dry moon. Why had she done it? Not for the moralists with their pointing fingers. Not for guilt and penance. You can live with the guilt and there are twenty rougher substitutes for a hair-shirt. Why then?
She could answer it now, in the wintry calm of decision… Because it takes a tougher woman than Mary Dillon to sit with a man – any man – for three days and two nights and watch him battling for breath, battling for life, to hear him call your name while the microbes are eating at his blood and the poison is clotting in his heart muscles, to hold his hand and feel it grip yours as if it were the life-strand, to watch death take hold of him and see him fight his way free – and then take your own table-knife and cut his throat. There’s a whore in every woman, but there are things even a whore won’t do for love or money. So you sit here, sipping your beer, a brave little woman taking on a man’s job, bargaining with the bankers, bullying the stockmen, bolstering a husband old before his time and wondering what it will feel like when your womb dries up and the callouses grow on your hands and there’s leather in your voice and the sour taste of disillusion on your tongue…
She could answer it now and know that, right or wrong, it was the only answer for her. Lance might have a different one; Neil Adams too. But this was another lesson she had learned; you live with a man for breakfast and dinner and the Sunday roast. For eight hours of bedtime you love him or loathe him. But the only one you live with twenty-four hours of a day is yourself. And for so much of living you need so much of self-respect if you’re not going to hit the bottle or run crazy with a meat-cleaver.
The glass was empty now. She put it down on the table, lay back on the settee, closed her eyes and thought about Neil Adams.
She had seen him once and briefly on his return from Minardoo. He had come to the hospital and found her sitting at Lance’s bedside, screened from the rest of the ward. He had made solicitous inquiries, he had held her hand for a few furtive moments. They had kissed, quickly, without passion. Then he had gone, too quickly, with too little regret. She did not blame him. It was too much to ask of the most devoted lover to enjoy an embrace at the husband’s death-bed. But he had not come to her since, whether from decency or discretion – and there had been moments when heart and body cried out for the comfort of his arms. Had he urged differently she might have decided differently about her future with Lance; but he had not spoken and when the choice was made there was a kind of stale satisfaction in the thought that she wanted him still, but needed him not half so much.
Soon it would be her turn to go to him. But not yet. Not for a little while. Until the words were spoken, he belonged somewhat to her and she to him. She had earned the right to dream a space, hold a mite longer to the last illusion. The weariness of the long vigil crept in on her and she slept, dreaming of Neil Adams with the moon on his face and his arms reaching up to draw her lips to his.
In the fall of the afternoon, while the shadows of the bluffs lengthened across the dusty town, Sergeant Neil Adams sat in his office writing the last pages of his report on Lance Dillon and the kadaitja killing. It was a neat piece of work and he was proud of it. The facts were laid out in order – all facts that headquarters needed to know – dates, times, places, the simple sequences of physical events. It leaned – but not too emphatically – on the action taken by the officer in charge. It lingered – but not too long – on the reasons for the action, the fortunate outcome, the preventive diplomacy which was a guarantee against further trouble with the tribes.
It would read well in Darwin. It would read better still in extract on the Minister’s file in Canberra. And the memorandum scribbled on the margins would read best of all. ‘Action approved. An efficient and farsighted officer, with profound knowledge of the area and its indigenous peoples.’ These things were important to an ambitious policeman. They would be read and noted and recalled when the names went into the hat for appointments and promotions.
It was equally important to know what to leave out. Many a good servant of the State had died in obscurity because he had a garrulous pen. Many a promising man had written his own epitaph when he lapsed from fact into speculation. Neil Adams had much to ponder in the case of Lance Dillon and his wife, but he was too canny to commit it to paper.
So he wrote on, slowly and thoughtfully, until a shadow fell across his desk and he looked up to see Mary Dillon standing over him, pale but composed, a little smile breaking on her lips. He cast a quick sidelong glance at the window but there was no one to be seen, except Billy-Jo sitting by the veranda-post whittling a stick. He stood up and took Mary in his arms. Their lips brushed, and then, gently but firmly, she disengaged herself.
‘Sit down, Neil.’ Her voice was calm, but remote. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’
He hesitated a moment, but she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back in his chair. Then she sat down opposite him, hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on his face. He said gently:
‘It’s nice to see you, Mary. I’m sorry we couldn’t get together before; but it didn’t seem wise. This is a small town. People talk.’
‘I understand that.’ There was no rancour in the level tone. ‘But we had to talk sooner or later, didn’t we?’
‘Of course. How is your husband?’
‘Doctor Bellamy says he’s out of danger now.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
‘Are you, Neil?’
He had not expected to be cornered so quickly. He flushed and stammered. ‘Well – you know what I mean. It’s…it’s the thing you say…’
‘What did you really mean, darling?’
‘I’m glad for him – and sorry for us.’
‘Why sorry, Neil? If we love each other, we can still arrange things – one way or another.’
‘It’s not as easy as that. Don’t you see…?’
His face was troubled. His eyes fell away from hers. Her heart went out to him in his humiliation and perplexity but she still pressed him brutally.
‘Neil, answer me one question. Do you love me?’
‘You know I love you, Mary. But…’
He could not complete the sentence. The single word hung between them like a suspended chord of music – minor music lost and plaintive. She knew it was no use hurting him or hurting herself any more. Everything had been said. The rest was postscript and dispensable.
She stood up, took his face between her hands and kissed him full on the lips. There were tears in her eyes but her voice was steady.
‘I love you, Neil. Not as much as I did. Not as much as I could. But wherever I am, whatever happens, there’ll still be a corner of my heart that belongs to you. Goodbye, darling.’
She turned away and he sat like a stone man, watching her go. With her hand on the door-knob, she turned back:
‘I almost forgot to tell you – I decided before I came – I’m staying with Lance. I’ll be running Minardoo from now on.’
Before he had time to think, he was half-way out of his chair, and the words were on his lips:
‘Are you going to – tell him about us?’
For a long moment she stared at him, shocked, silent and contemptuous, then she opened the door and walked out into the sunlight. Neil Adams sat down heavily at his desk, buried his face in his hands, and for the first time in his life found grace to be ashamed of himself.
Three days later, Lance Dillon lay behind white screens and wrestled with the black imps of despair. Bellamy had given him the verdict, calmly, precisely. Then, wise fellow that he was, had left him to digest it in privacy. His first reaction was to reject it utterly. He was getting stronger every day, healing as a healthy man should. A fellow was half-way into the grave when he could not sit a horse and plug round the herds and hold a yearling under the iron for a mere five seconds.
Then cold reason told him that Bellamy had no cause to lie. He knew better than any the loads a man had to carry, with the bankers yapping at his heels every step of the way. If Bellamy said it, it was true. If it were true, he was a cripple for life, and this was a cruel country for the halt and the maimed.
Then the whole hideous irony of it broke on him. He had survived so much – hunger, thirst, the spears of the black hunters, the terror of death in a dark place. Now he was reduced to this – a young-old man, nursing his heart in the shade, while herds wheeled under the whips and came thundering home through the paper-barks. It was too much for one man to take. Soft curses came bubbling out of his lips. Tears forced themselves out from his shut lids and trickled down the raw new skin of his cheeks.
Then Mary came in, an unfamiliar figure in jodhpurs and a starched shirt. Her hair wind-blown, her face tinged brown from the afternoon sun. She kissed him lightly on the forehead, wiped the tears from his cheeks and sat down beside the bed. She said gently:
‘So Bellamy told you?’
‘Yes…’ He caught at her hands and his voice broke in desperate appeal. ‘I can’t take it, Mary. It’s too much. I can’t…I can’t…!’
‘Listen to me, Lance!’ The command in her voice checked him abruptly. He stared at her, puzzled, vaguely afraid. ‘You’re going to take it: because it isn’t half as bad as it looks. When you’re out of here, we’re going back to Minardoo. We’re going to run it together.’
‘Together?’ The word seemed unfamiliar to him. ‘You – you don’t know anything about the cattle business, and besides, we’re broke…flat broke.’
For the first time she smiled at him, an odd, secret smile.
‘No, Lance. We’re in business. I’ve got us a three-year extension and some extra working capital to get us going again. You know where I’ve been this afternoon? Down at the stockyards watching an auction.’
‘My God, Mary!’ Panic made him seem for a moment like his old self. ‘You didn’t buy anything?’
‘No.’ She patted his hand in maternal assurance. ‘But I learned a lot. I’ll learn more and quicker as time goes on… If you want me to, that is.’
He stared at her, unbelieving.
‘You…you’ve changed, Mary. I don’t know how, but you’ve changed.’
Her face clouded. The sparkle went out of her voice. She nodded slowly.
‘Yes, Lance. I’ve changed. I’m going to tell you how and why. I want you to listen. Afterwards, you will tell me what you want to do.’
‘I don’t understand.’ He frowned, searching her face with troubled eyes.
‘I’m going to try to make you understand. Before all this happened, I was going to leave you.’
‘Leave me?’ It was a high note of panic. ‘You mean for good?’
‘Yes.’
He closed his eyes and grappled with the thought. When he opened them again, she saw that he understood. He said gravely:
‘I don’t blame you. I know I didn’t give you much of a life.’
‘It wasn’t the life, Lance. It was you I wanted.’
‘I know that, too. It – it was in the cave…I was waiting to die. Everything seemed suddenly futile. Except you. Did I make you very unhappy?’
‘Yes.’ She was sparing him nothing. ‘You made me want someone else.’
‘Did you find him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you…?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh!’
The word came out on a long whisper of weariness. He closed his eyes again and lay back on the pillow, his head turned away from her. He asked dully:
‘It was Neil Adams.’
‘I should have guessed that.’
‘He saved your life when he could have let you die.’
‘I suppose I should be grateful.’ There was no anger in his voice, only a dull recognition of fact. ‘Why are you telling me now?’
Her eyes were still closed so that she could read nothing of his feelings, but she went on, calm and unhurried, piecing out the theme she had lived and dreamed for days and sleepless nights.
‘Because I’ve learnt something, Lance – and I think it’s important to both of us. You can’t live in this country with a lie. Even if you live alone, you’ve got to face the truth or go mad because the lie festers up and eats at you like a tropical ulcer. When you’ve heard me through you may not want me any more. I can take that. I’ll go away and start a new life of my own. If you do want me, just as I am, I’ll stay and try to make you a good wife, and build you a good property. But not with a lie, Lance. Not with a hate buried somewhere in either of us. We’ve got to look at each other and see everything, the good, the bad, the failures, the virtues, and say: “I’ll take it, just as it stands!” No recriminations, no afterthoughts! If we come together again I want to try to have a child. If we can’t make one of our own, I want to adopt one and rebuild our love around it.’
‘Do you think you can, after all this?’ His eyes were still closed. There was no more animation in his voice.
‘I don’t know. I’ve got to be honest about that too. I think it’s possible, I think we need to try, both of us. Everybody makes mistakes. The lucky ones make them before they’re married and start fresh from there. Others spend their lives regretting the mistakes they didn’t make – and that’s a kind of lying too. People like us – what do we do? Throw it all down the drain and start again? Or take a good long look at the truth and admit that every man’s got a streak of the beast in him and every woman a touch of the tart.’ For the first time her voice wavered and the tears began prickling at her eyelids. ‘I can’t say it any other way, Lance. I’ve used up all the words. I’m sorry, deeply sorry. But I’m not going on being sorry all my life, with every act and every word a repetition of guilt. I want to live again and laugh, and sing sometimes and go to bed happy. There’s a bit of the whore in me. And more than anything else, I want to be able to say one day: “I love you”…and to hear you say it to me. That’s all, Lance…. If you’d like some time to think, I’ll go away and…’
‘No, Mary!’ His hands reached out across the coverlet and caught at her wrist. She looked up and saw that his eyes were open. They were grave and hurt, but not bitter. He said soberly:
‘I don’t know if it will work any more than you do. But a man who’s come back from the dead like I have, ought to know the value of what he’s got. I’m hurt, shamed too. I’ll admit it. If I weren’t tied to this bed, I’d take you out and thrash you…and Mister bloody Adams too. But even while I was doing it, I’d know you were a better man than both of us, Mary Dillon! I need you, girl, more than I ever did. I’m no damn good to any other woman. Maybe it’s a rough justice that you should be saddled with me. I’d – I’d like to give it a try.’
‘On those terms?’
A ghost of a grin brightened his sunken eyes.
‘I’m too tired to think of any others.’ His eyelids drooped and he lay back on the pillows, all the strength drained out of him. They did not kiss. There was no gesture of reunion, but the slight tightening of his grasp on her wrist before he released her. Already he was on the borders of sleep and she was glad for him. Tomorrow would be time enough to care.
She walked out on to the veranda and watched the sun go down, a glory of gold and purple and crimson behind the ramparts of the naked country.