‘Everyone has to pay the piper,’ he muttered as he donned his master pearler’s pith helmet, straightened his gold braid and left to find Fred waiting in the car for him outside.
At least, he thought as the car drove off, he was taking his own first step into the future, however controversial.
*
Charlie was fast asleep when he heard a sudden keening sound fill the still air around him. He sat upright, pulling himself into consciousness.
The noise continued – a terrible high wailing, reminiscent of a sound he’d heard before. Still drowsy, he forced his mind to comprehend it . . .
‘No . . . no . . . !’
He sprang from his bed, bolted out of the room and ran through the house, following the sound through the kitchen and out of the back door.
He found Camira kneeling on the ground, kneading the red dust with her fingertips. She was babbling words he could not understand, but did not need to, because he knew already.
She looked up at him, her eyes full of undisguised agony.
‘Mister Charlie, she is gone! I leavem it too late. I leavem it too late!’
*
A pall of misery hung over the house as its two occupants grieved day and night. They hardly spoke, the bond that had once tied them now disintegrating into bitterness, anger and guilt. Charlie spent as little time at home as possible, sequestering himself in the office just as his mother had done after his father had left them. He now understood why – a broken heart ravaged and destroyed the soul, especially when it had guilt attached to it.
Elise, his secretary, seemed to sense that something was amiss, and despite himself, with her sunny smile and her calming presence, Charlie found her to be a light in the dark sea of gloom. At the same time, he resented her naivety, her privilege, and the very fact that she was alive, when Alkina – and their child – was not.
What tortured him most was the fact he would never know how she died, perhaps out there alone in agony, giving birth to their baby.
At twenty-one years old, and one of the richest men in Australia, Charlie Mercer could have been taken for double his age.
The Never Never
Near Alice Springs
June 1929
26
The night was still, the only sound the cry of a distant dingo. The bright white stars and the moon in the cloudless sky above him were his only light source as the horse sauntered over the rocky desert terrain, navigating the low shrubs and bushes which grew close to the ground to protect themselves from the frequent sandstorms. The drover’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light and could pick out the shadows of the rugged earth around him and the dark blue veins in the cliffs. The night air carried the cool, fragrant scents of the earth recovering from the heat of the day, and the air was thick with the sounds of skittering animals and buzzing insects.
He tethered his horse to a rocky outcrop sticking up from the earth like a red stalagmite. He’d been hoping to make it to the Alice by nightfall, but there’d been a skirmish between the local Aboriginal tribe and the drovers earlier, so he’d bided his time until it was over. Pulling off one of his camel-skin water bottles, he took a bowl from his saddlebag, filled it and put it on the ground for the exhausted mare to drink from. Swigging back the last remains of the grog from his flask and rooting in the bag for what was left of his tucker, he lay out the rough blanket and sat down to eat. He’d be in Alice Springs by sunset tomorrow. After restocking his supplies, he’d go east and work the cattle until December. And after that . . .
He sighed. What was the point in planning a future that didn’t exist? Even though he did his best to live from day to day, his mind still insisted he look towards something. In reality, it was a void of his own making.
The drover settled down to sleep, hearing the hiss of a snake nearby and throwing a rock to scare it away. Even by his standards he was filthy; he could smell his own acrid sweat. The usual waterholes he normally used had been empty, the season unusually dry even for the Never Never.
He thought of her, as he did every night, then closed his eyes on the moon to sleep.
He was awoken by a strange shrieking from some distance away. After years in the Outback, he knew it was human, not animal. He struggled to place the familiar sound, then realised it was a baby’s cry. Another soul born into this rotten world, he thought before he closed his eyes and slept again.
He was up at dawn, eager to reach the Alice by nightfall, take a room in town and have his first decent wash since he’d left Darwin. Mounting his mare, he set off and saw the camel train on the skyline. Lit by the rising sun behind it, it appeared almost biblical. He caught them up in under an hour, where they had stopped to rest and eat. He knew one of the Afghan cameleers, who slapped him on the back and offered him a seat on his carpet and a plate of flatbreads. He ignored the mould on one corner and chewed the bread hungrily. Out of all the human life he encountered on his usual route through the Never Never, it was the cameleers he most enjoyed spending time with. The secret pioneers of the Outback, the cameleers were the unsung heroes, taking much-needed supplies across the red plains to the cattle stations sprinkled sparingly across the interior. Often they were educated men, speaking good English, but as he drank their water thirstily, he heard how their trade was in danger from the new railway line that would soon open between Port Augusta and Alice Springs. The plan was to continue it as far north as Darwin.
‘We are some of the last left. All the others have gone back home across the sea,’ said Moustafa listlessly.
‘I’m sure there will still be a place for you, Moustafa. The train line cannot reach the outlying villages.’
‘No, but the motor car can.’
The drover was just bidding them farewell when the strange shriek he’d heard last night started up again, coming from a basket tied to one side of a camel.
‘Is that a baby?’ he asked.
‘Yes. It was brought into the world five days ago. The mother died last night. We buried her well and good so the dingos wouldn’t get her,’ Moustafa added.
‘A black baby?’
‘From the colour of the skin, a half-caste, or maybe a quadroon. The girl hitched a ride with us two weeks ago. She said she was heading for the Hermannsburg mission,’ Moustafa recounted. ‘The others did not want to take her given her condition, but she was desperate, and I said yes. Now we have a motherless babe screaming day and night for its milk with none to give. Maybe it will die before we reach the Alice. It was small to begin with.’
‘Can I see it?’
‘If you wish.’
Moustafa stood up and led him over towards the screeching. He unhooked the basket and handed it to his friend.