The Middle of Nowhere Read online

  “I had to say there was a war,” she explained. “I had to stop the Blighs visiting. They are noxious, you see. And they would have spoiled everything.”

  Mr. Boyce looked around him in dismay and wondered if there was anything at Kinkindele left to spoil.

  He telegraphed at once to correct the error.

  DISREGARD UNTRUE RUMOUR OF WAR

  But it was too late to stop the troopers, who were already aboard their train and heading north, uncontactable. But they would find out when they got to Oodna. There would be the happy fact of a telegram waiting: DISREGARD UNTRUE RUMOUR OF WAR

  “Not if they take the Calgo Spur,” said Herbert.

  “Then we’ll telegraph the place,” said nice Mr. Boyce, moving towards the machine room.

  “There’s no wire to Calgo.”

  Comity said it was not a problem. “I can go to Calgo Crossing, and if the Army come there, I can tell them I made a mistake.” She had begun to sense panic in the room, but could not quite join in with it. She was far too happy. After all, her father had escaped being poisoned! Quartz Hogg had caused his own death! The Devil-Devil was not going to come bursting through the wall in shoes of bloody feathers, and rend Herbert Pinny limb from limb! Her father did not need to kill her to cover up his guilty crimes, because he had not done any crimes. Besides, there was no war. She went to get her parents’ wedding photograph, to see if nice Mr. Boyce was in it.

  Herbert, speaking under his breath, took the chance to ask his friend, “What do you think the Army will do when they arrive?”

  Mr. Boyce had been asking himself the same question. Unless the officer in command did receive a telegram recalling him, he would arrive like the wrath of God. Even a complete lack of brandished spears, flying bullets or bodies in the street would not be enough to deter an army ablaze with righteous indignation and spoiling for a fight. The cattle ranchers in the Bush, the nervous folk in the cities would expect it. Wherever the rumours of war had reached, fear and bigotry was bound to be rife. This would be the perfect excuse to expel the unChristian cameleers, the perfect excuse to persecute the Aboriginals.

  “What will they do?” said Mr. Boyce. “Hang a few Aboriginals. Burn down Calgo. That’s my guess. Something. Anything rather than have a wasted journey and look stupid. They’re on a punitive mission: they are bound to find something to punish.”

  In the doorway, Comity dropped the framed photograph she was holding, and its glass cracked. “But they cannot! What about Moosa?”

  What about Moosa’s little sisters and kind mother? What about the thoroughbred Australian camels and the mosque hung with embroidered cloths; the washing lines where long robes fluttered in the breeze like rows of angels.

  “The fellahs have done nothing! There is no war!”

  And yet Fred had done nothing, and Quartz Hogg had still shot him.

  The boards propped up between graves and house fell over one by one. The wind, with snarling ferocity, was circling Telegraph House. Perhaps, like the Devil-Devil, it could smell guilt – Comity’s guilt. She had told a lie, and the lie had grown: from the size of a telegram to the size of a war. The seven graves in the yard were nothing. Wait till the Army had finished with the menfolk of Calgo Crossing and the Kinkindele mob.

  The same wind had overtaken the troop train. The windows had been shut tight, but the sand still came in through the coachwork, glittering gold in mid-air, but settling into a rime of grit on every seat, uniform, kitbag and crate of ammunition. The driver and stoker in the cab drew their headcloths over their eyes and were able to see only the glowing shape of the furnace door through the fabric. Now and then the iron-rimmed wheels slipped on rails covered in sand and sent a shudder down the length of the train. The soldiers cursed all ghans and blackfellahs for choosing to live in this ashtray of a land.

  Nice Mr. Boyce sent a reassuring message down the Wire to his wife. At least he hoped it was reassuring. Morse messages have no tone of voice. It was something he had often found regrettable: that he could not lend the words an encouraging upbeat or a soothing softness.

  Suddenly the door of the machine room pushed open and he was confronted by a woman demanding his clothes.

  “Dirty man smell,” said the woman. “Give shirt.”

  Loud Lulu had come for the washing. Entirely forgetting she had been dismissed by Smith, she had arrived, zealous as ever, at Telegraph House and had already pulled the tablecloth off the living room table, scattering empty bean cans. “This place stink bad,” she said.

  When Hogg had told the locals to gather him ingredients for liquor, a surprising number had turned him down, saying the ancestors frowned on alcohol. But they were content to keep quiet about the still. Only the laundress “Loud Lulu” had made trouble. Lulu had as ferocious a hatred of strong drink as the Stationmaster. Her son had taken to drinking, spent all his money on it and managed to ruin his life. Finding out about the whisky-still in the stationery store, Lulu had thrown one of her screaming fits, and Smith had fired her then and there, before she could give the game away and ruin the fun for everyone.

  Hogg had also forbidden anyone to speak to Fred, for fear he found out about the still and snitched to the Stationmaster’s daughter. As a result, Fred had been frozen out by his own mob without knowing why. Fred’s own father (a hard-drinking man) had been the first to shun him.

  Chuntering and fuming, Loud Lulu had taken off on a walkabout through her ancestral landscape. There she had recovered her temper, forgotten all about being sacked, and returned to Kinkindele. Where she had been keeping herself till now was anybody’s guess, but here she was, come for the laundry again.

  “Shirt! Shirt! Give me shirt, dirty boy!”

  Mr. Boyce offered her afternoon tea.

  “Can you find your mob?” he asked her, once she was sitting down at the table, the laundry clutched in her lap.

  “No.”

  Comity and her father joined them. For tea.

  “I know they are on walkabout, but would you be able to find them – or get a message to them?” said Mr. Boyce.

  “No.” Lulu’s voice was as loud as a door slamming.

  “We need their help, you see,” said Pinny.

  “Many day far off,” said Lulu implacably. “Many, many, many.”

  “They need not worry about the man who shot the child Fred. Hogg is not here any more.”

  Lulu’s eyes flickered in the direction of the yard. “No. Dead in the ground, him,” she said with some relish. (Not so ignorant of some facts, then.)

  Comity filled Lulu’s cup again. “But his ghost, Lulu. His ghost is making mischief. Big damn mischief,” said Comity sweetly. “Could you maybe ask the ancestors to take a message? The ancestors must know where our fellahs are.” Fred had told her how thoughts could be thrown, like a spear from a woomera, far into the dark places of the world. She would have done it herself had she known how.

  The train slowed to a crawl. The sand flying past the window made it hard to tell if they were moving at all. Vibration and thuds might be the passage of the train over the rails or the wind pitching uprooted shrubs against the wheels. The sand on the floor of the carriage was ankle deep.

  The troopers were of the opinion that the storm must have scotched the war before it had really got started. Surely neither side would even be able to find each other in the dust. The train might as well take them back to Adelaide.

  Their sergeant told them they were not paid to have opinions, and that they were a pack of lily-livered rabbits. The train would be pressing on, come what may.

  Then the train driver sent word that he was stopping: there was an escarpment up ahead and wild camels were herding together on the track, sheltering from the wind.

  There was a certain amount of cheerful laughter. It did not last.

  Mr. Boyce harnessed the trap. Even in blinkers, Starbuck did not want to leave the barn. This was no day to be out-of-doors. A gust of wind struck the cart so hard that it shifted sideways on its w
heels: it would have been better with the weight of two men aboard rather than one. But Jack Boyce knew he was on his own: Pinny was barely fit to stand, let alone make the journey to Calgo Crossing in this weather.

  “Tell your pa to secure his windmill while I’m gone,” Boyce suggested to Comity, who was trying and failing to trap the chickens in the stationery store. “This wind will spin it off its moorings if he’s not careful.”

  Dismayingly, Comity said, “I shall do it. Papa does not go out of doors.”

  “What never?”

  “He is curlew-cursed.”

  “Ah.”

  “Though I do not know why he should be. He never killed anybody’s children.”

  “No! Absolutely not.”

  “Wait while I do the windmill,” said Comity. “I am coming with you. I know some people in Calgo.”

  Nice Mr. Boyce tried to forbid it. He was not an adventurous man and his heart quailed at the thought of driving into a dust storm in the fragile hope of finding a ghantown before the Army did. But the idea of taking along a little girl was unthinkable!

  “Fred and I went there. They do not like mixing the sand and the salt, but Moosa does not mind us. We have to say nice things about his dates and his toothbrushes and his camels. And wash your hands. They are very particular.”

  Boyce looked at the gypsy waif with the matted hair, fixed frown and the panic in her eyes. Momentarily, back there in the house, she had put on happiness, but then she’d been forced to take it off again, like Cinderella robbed of her trip to the ball.

  “None of this is your fault, Comity,” he said.

  She was startled by his stupidity. “Of course it is. All of it.”

  Caught by the wind, the paint can by the door of the house rattled along the verandah. It put white drops of paint onto the toecaps of Herbert Pinny’s shoes as he stepped outside. Reflexly, he tried to wipe each shoe down the back of the opposite trouser leg. Too dizzy to manage it, he leaned on the rocking chair – which tilted him further off-balance. He could have been mistaken for a drugged emu.

  “Drive,” said Comity, climbing aboard the trap. She did not want nice Mr. Boyce to see that terrible moment when her father turned from a stationmaster into a cowering, terrified child.

  The train did not hit the gum tree. The gum tree hit the train, wedging itself under the front wheels. It must have travelled a great distance to do it, because the landscape (as far as anyone could see it) was empty of trees. The stoker said it was a miracle, because, when he got down to cut it loose, he could see that the rails up ahead had been swept away by flash flooding. A minute more and the train would have been derailed, perhaps even overturned. The driver sent word to the officers’ car that he would be reversing, back towards Adelaide.

  But General Gostard was not prepared to be defeated by trees or washouts or a flurry of dust. He ordered the driver to reverse only as far as the Calgo Spur.

  “Calgo Spur? Cannot recommend that, sir. No one uses it. Impassable, like as not. It’s not seen any maintenance for a year or more. Sorry state it’s in.”

  “We shall take it as far as it will take us. If we meet with misfortune, we shall disembark and march cross-country!” the General announced, as though he had been fighting campaigns in this part of the world since he was old enough to pull on boots.

  The troop train did indeed find the flimsy branch line and steam halfway along it but, finding its rails equally strewn with sand, came to a halt in a stony wilderness, rocking on its wheels in the wind. The driver tried to reverse, but the track was so smothered in dust that the wheels rolled quite smoothly off the rails and sank into the ground.

  “Where the devil are we?” asked three hundred men, then answered themselves: “Middle of Nowhere.”

  Only with sundown did the wind relent. Mr. Boyce and Comity stopped at the mound springs when murk turned to darkness, and waited for moonrise in the hope they could press on. The journey from Kinkindele had taken far too long! The Army must surely have arrived in Oodna by now – must surely have received a telegram recalling them and got back on their train, peaceful as lambs. Anything else did not bear thinking of, so, as far as possible, neither of them did.

  The wonderful Land of the Moon was grimy now, with grit covering every flower petal and bird nest – even the water. It was as if Bahloo had neglected his housekeeping and let the dust settle.

  “Fred wanted his spirit to jump up from here and live on the moon,” Comity said. “But it is only rock, isn’t it, Mr. Boyce?”

  Jack Boyce bedded down under the cart. His weary skeleton settled into the contours of the ground. He planned to think through Herbert Pinny’s problems and come up with a solution or two. Instead, he was asleep in moments. Woken by the sound of crying, he rolled out from between the wheels to find Comity sobbing, terrified, pointing a shaking finger at the moon. “Does that mean the world is going to end?”

  The moon had come up as red and glowing as a giant ruby.

  He put a comforting arm round her. “Is that your friend Fred talking nonsense again?”

  Comity was shocked. “No! It is in the Bible! When the moon comes up blood-red, the world is going to end!”

  Nice Mr. Boyce bit his lip. “Or so much dust is suspended in the air between us and the moon that it has coloured-in the gold.” His own heart was swelling at the sheer beauty of the red-tinted night. “It is quite like stained glass, look. The rose window in a cathedral… Should we press on since the wind has dropped?”

  Comity dared not admit just how unwilling she was to press on. For now she was thinking of Moosa’s dream of stained glass in the tin mosque, and how she might have smashed it with one little lie.

  From somewhere nearby came the belch of a camel in the darkness and Comity was convinced the wild one had come back. Mr. Boyce took the safety catch off his pistol. Best to be prepared.

  The feeling that they were being followed persisted all the way to Calgo Crossing.

  The wind had swept the gossips and goats and washing and children off the streets and into the houses. The place seemed deserted. It all looked so different under a dust-draped sky: Comity could not even identify Moosa’s home. Cane straw drifted into their faces from the roof of the mosque. The silence seemed ominous, but there were no buildings burning, no bodies strewn about. Oh, the relief!

  The Mullah came out at last – the one who had thought it a bad idea to have Comity stay in Calgo. He was thinking it now, too.

  “Allah ho Akbar,” said the Mullah warily.

  “He is risen indeed,” said Jack Boyce. “We have come to avert a small calamity.”

  “Moosa! Moosa Rasul!” Comity, looking over her shoulder and spotting her redeemer through the gloom, jumped down from the trap and ran. Mustapha the camel sashayed nervously sideways. Nostrils closed against the dust, he looked more hoity-toity than ever. “Oh, Moosa! Thank goodness!” She hugged his leg, which was the only part of him she could reach. Everyone was startled: tempers bristled at the sight. Moosa Rasul was more surprised than anyone. For though he had followed the pair all the way from the mound springs, fearful for their safety, he had not expected to be thanked for it.

  His delivery run to Kinkindele Station had troubled him. The mounds like graves, the missing stock, the crates still standing in the yard: they all spoke of trouble. But Comity’s refusal to speak, to look at or even to hear him out had left him powerless to help. Comity had made it very plain he was neither wanted nor welcome.

  “If the Army come here I will tell them it is all my fault!” said the girl clutching Moosa’s leg. “I told a lie! I said there was a war! I am so sorry!”

  The Army had not reached Calgo. They had not even reached the mainline railhead at Oodnadatta. Those waiting to meet them at Oodna worked out that the troop train must have taken the Calgo Spur – bad choice. By now the rails would have been rubbed out by the dust storm. Three hundred men were marooned somewhere in the desert. But where?

  The matter was put beyond
doubt when a messenger arrived from Oodna, on horseback, asking the help of the cameleers to find and assist those in peril of their lives. It was not so much a request as a Government demand.

  So now the menfolk of Calgo Crossing must go and rescue an army sent to punish them for something they had not done! As they mustered and muttered on the main street, the glances they cast at Comity were full of resentment and hurt. Word of her “mistake” had rippled outwards through the town and the gossips had simplified it: the girl had told a lie about the ghans, and summoned the Army to kill them. Women in the doorways narrowed their eyes at her and told themselves how right the Mullah had been: it had been foolish to shelter outsiders, even outsiders in need.

  Moosa Rasul, who had been more kind than anyone, could not conceal his bewildered hurt. “Why?” he said. “Why did you say these things about us? You leave your friends behind as a camel leaves its dung.”

  No one had ever said anything so terrible to her. Tears burned grittier in her eyes than all the dust had done on the ride. It was far too difficult to explain about the telegram, and a poor enough excuse at that. But time was so short! Let them banish her into the Outback to be eaten by wild dogs – but not just yet! Not till she had to put a stop to the war!

  “We have to show the Army that ghans and the fellahs are friends – when you find the Army, I mean. We have to show them ghans and fellahs all getting on as happy as gullahs in a gum tree!”

  Moosa gave a snort of disdain at her absurd wishful thinking. The Aboriginals and the tintowners liked each other about as much as horses liked camels.

  “…except the Kinkindele mob’s on walkabout! Loud Lulu has gone looking for them, but she may forget to look because some days her brains are in upside-down! You got a mob of blackfellahs living round these parts, Moosa Rasul? Any mob! On my bended knees, be kind!” Her voice was so shrill that Mustapha the camel tried to move away from it, circling and circling to shake off the annoying little creature clinging to its girth.

  Moosa Rasul looked down at her from his great height. “You should ask your friend Fred,” he said cuttingly, and rode off down Calgo’s main street.