It was still dark when we rose the next morning, but by the time the ponies had been watered and loaded up the light was beginning to filter through the mist. Billy appeared to have dressed up for the occasion, in a pair of fawn-coloured breeches, frayed but neatly pressed, and a startlingly white shirt or blouse of unconventional cut, loose-fitting and wide open at the neck. Flitting ahead of us as we set off down the track, he seemed to shimmer and dance on the air, more spirit than substance.
The mist drew off with remarkable suddenness, exposing a serene sky, clear blue overhead but stained towards the west by a long, flattened band of mauve cloud. The sun was still low but it touched the tops of the eucalyptus trees, making the red tips of the leaves glow like fire. Preece and Bullen appeared to be in sombre mood, but I was in a state of strange excitement, my mind alert and all my senses heightened. Everything delighted me – the beaded threads of gossamer strung among the shrubs, the drone of a passing insect, the wet shine of the fern-leaves, the fragrance exhaled from the freshened earth. Every so often I would stop to examine the plants growing beside the track, not with a botanist’s interest but with the curiosity of a child. Running my hand lightly across a cluster of vivid blue florets, I was struck by the thought that I had no name for the plant that bore them, nor for any of the other small plants whose flowers glowed in the muted light beneath the trees. In normal circumstances my ignorance would have irked me, but that morning I took a deep pleasure in the very namelessness of the things around me and I remember wondering, not entirely playfully, whether Adam’s fall might have begun not with the eating of a fruit but earlier, with the arising of the desire to catalogue the animals and plants in his teeming paradise.
The air quickly grew hot but we pressed on without stopping, and a little before midday we emerged on to a tract of more open land, a long slope of grass and low brush punctuated at intervals by small sandstone outcrops. From somewhere higher up, I heard the mellow warbling of an unseen bird and, closer at hand, the faint trickle of water. Preece led the ponies a little uphill, hugging the shade, before bringing them to a halt and beginning to disburden them.
‘Is this it?’ asked Bullen.
Preece gestured obliquely across the slope below us. ‘A couple of hundred yards on, where the scrub thickens again, you’ll start to take a line along the cliff face. It’s not as dangerous as it sounds, but it’s no route for a pony, laden or unladen. Nor,’ he added with a wry smile, ‘for a man with a gammy leg.’ He tugged a bundle clear of its fastenings and handed it to Billy. ‘We’ll just get this done, and then we’ll see about lunch.’
Looking back, I invest that meal with a significance it could hardly have held for me at the time. The sweetfleshed fowl we shared, the bread we broke, the clear water lifted in cupped hands from the trickling rill, all appear now as emblems of untainted wholeness, and our eating and drinking as a valedictory ritual. But then? I was, quite simply, impatient to get on. I remember moving away from my companions as the meal drew to a close and gazing down at the faint line of the track ahead, eagerly tracing its meandering course, its sudden drop and disappearance into the scrub.
‘A word with you, Redbourne,’ said Bullen, stepping up alongside me.
‘What is it?’
‘The boy’s fee. Preece is asking for payment now.’
‘Of course.’ I fumbled in my pocket for my purse but Bullen drew close and gripped me by the arm. ‘Offer him half now and half on our return,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘That way we’ll be sure of the pair of them.’
Something in his words, in his absurd conspiratorial posture, filled me with disgust. ‘For God’s sake,’ I said, shaking myself impatiently free of him. ‘If we can’t trust people like Preece and Billy, who can we trust?’
‘For my part,’ he said coldly, ‘I trust no one. You may do as you like.’ He turned on his heel and stalked off.
I called Preece over and paid him the modest fee he requested. He resisted my attempt to give him an additional sum for our food and lodging, observing, with a turn of phrase that would have done credit to a man of a far higher station in life, that he had been amply rewarded by the pleasure of my company and required no other recompense for his hospitality. ‘And this,’ he said, shifting ground before I had time to pursue the matter, ‘is where it begins in earnest. You’ve a testing time ahead, no doubt of it.’
‘You seemed earlier to be making light of the dangers.’
‘I said that the route’s not as dangerous as you might imagine, but it’s no Sunday stroll either, and you’ve more baggage than I’d recommend for the journey. Go carefully. And please’, he added, glancing up anxiously, ‘look after Billy.’
I smiled. ‘I thought Billy was here to look after us.’
‘Oh, he knows the land well enough – I’m not troubled about him on that score. But he’s had very little experience of dealing with people, and Mr Bullen’– he hesitated, lowered his voice – ‘Mr Bullen is a difficult man.’
‘I give you my word,’ I said. ‘Billy will come to no harm.’
‘Thank you, Mr Redbourne. I’ll be waiting here with the ponies five days from now, Wednesday midday. Billy can time it right, just so long as he’s not hindered. Would you see to it that Mr Bullen doesn’t interfere with his planning?’
I looked up to where Bullen and Billy were stooping together over our kit, their heads almost touching. ‘You’ve no cause for concern,’ I said. ‘Mr Bullen will be as keen as any of us to ensure that everything runs according to plan.’ Preece was silent. I had the distinct impression that he was waiting for me to continue, but there seemed nothing more to say, and after a moment we moved slowly back up the slope to rejoin the others.
Preece was not, it struck me as he took his leave of us, a man given to dissembling his feelings: the perfunctoriness of his farewell to Bullen was in marked contrast to the warmth with which he shook me by the hand. ‘I’ll wish you a safe journey, gentlemen,’ he said. And then, without any of the awkwardness or embarrassment I remember my own father displaying on similar occasions, he took his son in his arms and held him close. ‘And you, too, Billy,’ he whispered, releasing the boy at last and turning quickly away. He mounted the taller of the two ponies and, with the other falling into step behind, rode off the way we had come.
I have to confess to being gripped, as I watched him disappear from view among the trees, by a spasm of something close to panic. With Preece at our side, I had barely given a thought all morning to the wide and increasing distance between us and the civilised world, but in that instant I saw with disquieting clarity just where I stood. I mean, literally so: out on that open slope, surrounded by the bush and its wild denizens, under the blank glare of a cloudless sky. I felt my legs trembling beneath me, and it was a moment or two before I felt able to join Bullen and Billy at their work.
They had divided our baggage into three units, two of which had been bound with leather strapping and thick twine to form bulky packs. Bullen was working on the third, while Billy was attaching an array of smaller items to the other two – a kerosene lamp, a cooking-pan, an iron ladle, a length of coiled rope. What had seemed a modest enough load when conveyed by other means now appeared intimidatingly large and cumbersome.
‘Do we really need all this?’ I asked.
Bullen raised his head and fixed me with a cold stare. ‘If we didn’t,’ he said, ‘we wouldn’t have brought it. Give me a hand with this strap.’
Once the packs were ready, Bullen sent Billy to fill the water-canteen. ‘Your pack,’ he murmured, leaning in close as the boy moved away, ‘isn’t as heavy as it looks. I’ve taken care to distribute the items appropriately.’
‘Appropriately?’
‘You’ll be carrying less weight. There’s no point in wearing you out.’
‘Then your own pack—’
‘Billy’s pack, Redbourne. Billy will take up the slack.’
‘You mean he’ll carry the heaviest load?’
‘Exactly. It’s what we’re paying him for.’
‘He’s here as our guide, not as a beast of burden.’
‘Guide and porter, Redbourne. That’s what he signed on for.’
‘Even so, he’s a young lad, and not strongly built.’
‘The very point I was making yesterday. “Give him a chance to prove his mettle,” you said. Well, he has his chance, and we’ll see what he makes of it.’ He glanced up as Billy began to walk back towards us. ‘Best to say no more about this,’ he whispered. ‘With any luck, he won’t even realise.’
Billy lashed the canteen to one of the packs and tugged tentatively at the straps. ‘Not that one, Billy,’ said Bullen. ‘This is yours.’
It crossed my mind that I might, by a sleight Bullen would be obliged to ignore, exchange my pack for Billy’s, but the boy was already squatting down, wrestling his burden on to his narrow shoulders. I saw him stagger as he rose, his thin frame taut with strain, and I stepped forward to steady him.
‘It’s all right, Mr Redbourne. I’m stronger than I look.’ He straightened his back a little and took a few careful steps. ‘I’ve carried heavier loads.’
‘You’re to tell me if it becomes too much for you. Do you hear me, Billy?’
He glared up at me from beneath his dark fringe. ‘I’m not a child,’ he said. ‘There’s no call to fuss over me.’ It seemed best to drop the matter. Bullen and I shouldered our own packs, and the three of us set off, moving cautiously down the slope towards the shadowy edge of the scrub below.