Cherry Bates felt shaky and unwell. Half the night she’d spent fighting with her sheets and pillow, trying to get comfortable, and the other half in complicated dreams of great urgency: she had to get somewhere, she had to do something, and everything was conspiring to stop her. Because of this she was ready far too early. Although she had plenty of time for tea and toast, she was so nervous she couldn’t eat anything. After Bill left – he was going to pick up Les Turnbull’s boat and take it round to the jetty to collect the children – she put on a sundress and her make-up and headed towards the lagoon. Probably looking as if I don’t have a care in the world, she thought; amazing what a nonchalant stride and a bright red lipstick can do. In her beach bag were sandwiches and a towel. While Bill didn’t know it yet, she’d decided to accompany him on this boating expedition.
Passing by Ilona’s cottage, she heard voices from inside. Ilona was shouting something in her foreign lingo and Zidra called back in her high clear voice. Cherry slowed to a leisurely walk and looked around. The sky was opalescent and the air was cool and fresh. The early morning light accentuated the folds of land forming the northern headland, which crumbled down into the sea, frilled at the cliff base by white foam. The morning was so still that between the thudding of breakers she could hear the faint hissing of waves. Tranquillity everywhere except in her head. There’d been no peace there since Ilona had told her about the boat trip and that was a few days ago now. Yesterday Cherry had mentioned it very casually to Bill and he’d laughed at her. Asked if she wanted to pack a hamper for the kiddies. When she agreed he said Ilona was going to do it and told her to spend a nice relaxing Sunday with her feet up. As if.
There were several dinghies moored at the jetty but no sign of anyone yet. She sat on the railing and glanced at her watch. Twenty-five past eight. The lagoon water slapped and sucked at the underside of the boats and a black cormorant stood on a spit of sand at the beach end of the lagoon. It had spread its wings out to dry, like a rampant eagle on some flag she’d seen, a Russian or German flag perhaps, or a flag from one of those other European countries that she was never going to visit.
At last she heard the sound of voices. Turning, she saw Zidra and the Cadwallader boys running down the hill, followed at a slower pace by Ilona. Then the putt-putt of a motor and there was Bill rounding the bend of the lagoon in the launch. He didn’t see her at first, didn’t see her till he’d tied up the boat. Then his smile faded.
Looking away at once, she glanced at Zidra’s bright little face aglow with excitement. She glanced at Andy’s freckled face squinting up against the glare, and at Jim’s darker face that looked almost guarded, as if he didn’t want to be here either. Giving his shoulder a quick pat, she smiled and said, ‘Rather be sleeping in, Jimmo?’
Seeming more like the carefree boy she was used to seeing running about the place, Jim smiled back. ‘I’ll wake up once we get going,’ he said. Then he looked at Zidra and she saw the smile erased from his face like a chalk drawing wiped off a blackboard. He was worried about something, that was clear. It couldn’t have been much fun having Eileen for a mother, so up herself she was unable to see what a terrific hand life had dealt her. That boy would be out of here as soon as he could. Scholarship lined up to a boarding school in Sydney, and Cherry wouldn’t be surprised if he never returned to this dump of a place after that. She wished she could get out too.
But Bill would have to be dealt with first.
She looked around her, at the points of light dancing on the surface of the lagoon, at the unsurpassable loveliness of the morning, and felt a sudden emptiness.
Turning to Ilona, she said, ‘I hear you’re going to provide the music for the Christmas dance.’
‘Mrs Turnbull asked me. I am delighted at this honour,’ Ilona said in that funny way she had of speaking. But she wasn’t stuck-up like Lady Muck from Woodlands, who spoke as if she had a fishbone wedged in her throat. With Ilona it was just that she hadn’t got the hang of the language yet. ‘Daphne Dalrymple and I will take it in turns to play the piano, so that in between we can dance. If we are asked. As well, somebody from Burford is coming with an accordion.’
‘That’ll be Billy the Fish. Used to be a fisherman until he lost his foot to a shark in a freak accident. Pulled the shark on board and it snapped his foot right off at the ankle and swallowed it whole.’ Cherry saw how shocked Ilona looked, and added, ‘There aren’t any sharks in the lagoon though. And Billy’s got a lovely pink plastic foot that he’ll show to anyone who asks him and some who don’t. Ruined his fishing career though. He works in the fish and chip shop now. Getting his own back on the sharks by chopping them up and battering them.’
Laughing as if she didn’t believe Cherry’s story, Ilona climbed onto the jetty railing to sit next to her. ‘Are you going on the boat too?’
‘Yes,’ Cherry said loudly.
‘First time you’ve mentioned it,’ said Bill, looking up at her. His eyes were a hard blue, like the sky on the hottest of summer days.
‘It’s such a lovely day and we never go out together,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘I thought it would be a nice surprise for you.’
‘No room for any more than four,’ he said at once.
How could she not have thought of this? She inspected the boat. He was right. Deliberately he’d hired a boat that would only take four and for an instant she wondered if he knew of her discovery in his study. No, that was impossible; she’d left everything just as she found it that day.
Maybe yesterday she should have told him she was going to accompany them; she’d agonised about that countless times, but she’d known he wouldn’t let her; that was precisely why she’d left it to the last minute to announce she wanted to go. Now it was too late, she could see that. It had never occurred to her that there wouldn’t be enough space on the boat.
‘Bad luck, old girl. If only you’d told me yesterday that you’d wanted to come. Then I could’ve tried to get hold of a bigger boat.’
Then you would have done nothing of the sort, Cherry told herself. She glanced at Ilona, who didn’t appear to have noticed anything.
Bill added after a moment’s thought, ‘Otherwise I’d love to have the old girl on board, but we can’t spoil the kiddies’ fun now, can we?’
‘So good of you to take them out,’ said Ilona. ‘You must be a bugger for punishment.’
The children laughed while Cherry began to chew one of her fingernails.
‘A beggar for punishment,’ Zidra said. ‘You mustn’t use bad language. You know it isn’t nice.’
So excellent was Zidra’s mimicry you might have thought Miss Neville was on the jetty with them. Cherry gave the girl a sharp look but she saw on Zidra’s face only amused affection for her mother.
‘It’s a long time to be out on the water,’ Ilona said anxiously.
You might have thought she’d only just noticed it was going to be a long day. Cherry wondered again if she should warn Ilona; if even now she should try to call a halt to the day’s outing. No, she couldn’t. What could she possibly say, here on the jetty with Bill listening to her every word? She should have made a stand earlier. Days ago she could have said something to Ilona. It needn’t have been about Bill; it could have been about the weather or the heat or the bushfire threat. Playing up any one of those dangers might have been enough to stop the trip.
What could possibly happen when the Cadwallader boys were going along too? She clung to the thought that the children would be together all day. No harm could possibly come to them then. ‘Keep an eye on the younger ones,’ she whispered to Jim. She meant Zidra of course. Keep an eye on the little girl. ‘You all stick together.’
‘We’ve got Mr Bates to look after us,’ said Jim, loudly enough for Bill to hear.
In that stupid way of his, Bill grinned. ‘We’ll be back by five sharp,’ he said to Ilona. ‘And I’ll make sure we spend some of the time in the shade. We won’t get too hot then.’
‘You will keep your hat on, won’t you, darling?’ Ilona said, but Zidra wasn’t listening any more. Chased by Andy, she was racing up and down the jetty and the entire structure shook with their motion. ‘You will keep your hat on!’ Ilona cried out again.
‘Yes, Mama,’ Zidra shouted.
An overexcitable girl like her mother was how Miss Neville described her. Bright but slightly spoilt. She was wrong though. For a fleeting moment Cherry felt a pang of envy for Ilona. A lovely daughter and no husband; she could go anywhere; she could choose what she did with her life. Quickly she pushed that mean-spirited thought away. You couldn’t envy someone who’d been through what Ilona had. Taking Ilona’s arm, she squeezed it, as if to apologise for her unstated thoughts. Ilona looked surprised but pleased too, and squeezed Cherry’s arm back.
‘Your husband is so kind,’ she said. ‘I worry about so much.’
‘The kids will have a lovely day,’ Cherry said. ‘Don’t you worry about a thing.’ It was herself that she was reassuring though. She added, ‘Jimmo’s going too and I think we can rely on him, don’t you?’
When she winked at him, he didn’t wink back although he smiled again. For an instant she wondered if he was humouring her but put that idea out of her head. My worries are over, she told herself, at least for the time being. There isn’t anything Bill can get up to, provided the kids stick together, and they’ll have to. They’ll be together all day in the boat.
Zidra sat in the bow facing backwards, so she could wave at Mama and Mrs Bates. Mama’s hand went from side to side and Mrs Bates’ up and down. Then Zidra felt silly sitting backwards and swung her legs over the bench so she was facing forward. Her sandaled feet rested on the damp coil of rope. Once around the bend in the river and out of sight of the jetty, she took off her hat.
‘Hat on!’ shouted Andy.
‘I can do as I please.’
‘You promised,’ said Mr Bates, but nicely though. ‘And I promised your mum too. She’ll never forgive me if I take you back looking like a boiled lobster.’
‘I don’t go red,’ Zidra said, but she put on the hat again and secured the elastic under the hair at the nape of her neck.
‘You go a lovely golden brown,’ said Mr Bates. ‘You’re so lucky to have olive skin in this climate, you and Jim both. Poor Andy and I are the ones who should have been left behind in northern climes.’
‘What are climes?’
‘Northern parts,’ said Jim, keen as always to show off his knowledge. ‘Europe, where we all came from.’
‘All except the coons,’ said Andy.
‘Don’t call them that. They’re Aborigines,’ said Jim crossly.
‘Don’t snap my head off. Otherwise we’ll dump you ashore, like they used to do with people who mutinied, didn’t they, Mr Bates?’
‘They shot some of them,’ said Mr Bates. ‘But I don’t think we need to do that with Jim just yet.’
‘How come you never had any kids, Mr Bates?’
‘Not allowed to say how come,’ said Zidra. ‘You’ve got to say “How was it that you never had any kids?”’
Mr Bates didn’t seem interested in such distinctions. ‘Never happened that way. Wasn’t meant to be. I’m very happy when I’m allowed to borrow other people’s, but.’
‘Probably best,’ said Jim, who seemed to be thawing at last. ‘Then you can send them back home to their parents when you’ve got sick of them.’
‘And you don’t have to feed them either,’ said Andy. ‘Mum said kids are a terrible expense. Eat you out of house and home. Did you bring any lunch, Mr Bates?’
‘We’ve got lunch,’ said Zidra. ‘Mum made enough sandwiches for everyone. On proper white bread from the baker’s and with Burford Cheddar.’
‘I’ve brought along a cake too,’ said Mr Bates. ‘A proper bought cake from the baker’s, none of your homemade stuff.’
Although Zidra loved bought cake, she bristled on Mrs Bates’ account. ‘Mrs Bates makes lovely homemade jam,’ she said. ‘And Mrs Jones out at Woodlands makes yummy homemade biscuits.’ Mentioning Woodlands shut everyone up for a bit. She’d noticed this before. Just drop the name into the conversation and no one could think of anything to say.
Remembering Woodlands made her think of Philip and his toys, and that led naturally to the little green elephant that she’d given Lorna. Putting one hand in the pocket of her shorts, she felt for Lorna’s pale pink shell. She missed Lorna, whose absence had left a great empty hole in her life. Wherever she was, Lorna would still have the elephant with her. It had gone into her pocket that fast when Zidra gave it to her; the best gift ever, she’d said.
Last night after midnight, Zidra had woken up feeling as if Lorna were right next to her in the bedroom and trying to tell her something. She’d turned on the light to check if Lorna had somehow managed to get into her room but there was no sign of her. Nothing under the bed apart from an old hairball and nothing in the little wardrobe either, apart from clothes. She’d gone into her mother’s room. Although Mama said she never got any sleep, she was in the deepest of slumbers. At first Zidra hadn’t wanted to wake her but she did in the end. If she didn’t tell her mother she knew she’d never get back to sleep again.
‘That was telepathy,’ Mama had said at once, almost as if she’d been waiting for an opportunity to bring out this word. ‘One person communicates with another without their being anywhere near each other.’
‘Like a telephone?’
‘Just like a telephone. Only without the handset. Mental communication. Your Papa and I sometimes felt we’d communicated telepathically, but that was before he had become so cut off with his illness.’
Zidra didn’t want to hear of Papa’s illness again; it made her feel uncomfortable and sad. She wanted Mama to focus, to pay full attention to what she was saying. Then Mama added, ‘Perhaps it’s because of Lorna’s move. Mr Jones said she’s moved from a humpy to pickers’ quarters on a farm. I expect she’ll turn up soon and no one will tease her any more, because she’ll be able to wash herself like all the other children, in a proper bathroom instead of in the river. You’re probably worrying too much.’ Mama put her hand on Zidra’s forehead as if she might have a temperature. ‘Perhaps you felt this telepathy simply because she was thinking of you, and thinking that she loved you.’
Zidra shut her eyes and concentrated hard to send a message back. Lorna, I love you. Lorna, I love you. After that, she started to feel better: Lorna loved her enough to telepath her and she’d telepathed back. She snuggled up to Mama, who put her arms around her and held her tightly. Eventually she carried her back to her own bed again and stayed until who knew when: she must have dropped off to sleep not long after.
Now, cruising up the lagoon, these thoughts of Lorna fluttered again across the surface of her mind, like the flickering sparks of light that danced across the surface of the water. She sighed. The day was lovely but it would be better with Lorna here.
The boat puttered past the Cadwallader boathouse. The doors were firmly shut and a new and very large padlock held them together. Maybe the boys had told Mr Cadwallader that she and Lorna had been hanging around the boathouse. She turned around to check on the others. Mr Bates was staring straight ahead. Andy and Jim were sitting side-by-side on the middle seat. Andy was leaning over the side of the boat and trailing his hand in the water while Jim was staring into the distance with that faraway look he got sometimes. ‘That boy is a dreamer,’ Mama had said of him. ‘And practical at the same time, but I do not think he will follow in his father’s footsteps. A butcher he will not become.’ Zidra rolled the last sentence around in her mouth. She would love to have spat it out in Mama’s voice but, without Lorna here, there was no one she trusted enough to tell. The only person who was allowed to laugh with her at Mama was Lorna.
‘Would you like to steer for a bit, Zidra?’ Mr Bates called out. She clambered down the length of the boat and sat next to him. ‘Put your hand on the tiller like this.’ Resting his hand on top of hers, he showed her how to pull the tiller to the left or the right, so that the rudder moved and changed the flow of the water. It was easy to do. Although she hoped Mr Bates would move his hand from hers, he didn’t. His skin felt calloused and his palm slightly sweaty. Glancing down she saw, between the freckles, golden hairs covering the top of his hand and running right down to the first joint of each finger. Hurriedly she looked at the river lying ahead. Eventually she said, ‘I’ve got the hang of it now. Can I do it on my own?’ Laughing, he moved his hand away.
After a few minutes, when Zidra had negotiated the next bend of the river, Mr Bates whispered to her, ‘You haven’t told anyone our little secret, have you? You taking the boat out when you shouldn’t have.’
‘No,’ she said, her voice quavering. She coughed, so Mr Bates would think it was hay fever rather than nerves, and wished he hadn’t raised this, especially with the two boys in the boat. They’d agreed it was to be their secret and here he was whispering about it with Jim and Andy only a few feet away. But she added, ‘Did you see the boathouse is padlocked now?’
‘Can’t say I did. It’s a good thing if it’s going to stop certain people from taking the dinghy out and nearly drowning themselves, but.’ He chuckled a bit at this, but not loudly enough to be heard by the boys over the puttering of the motor.
‘Maybe Mr Cadwallader saw us. Or Jim and Andy told him.’
‘Probably just coincidence. They didn’t see anything and I didn’t tell anyone. It’s just a secret between you and me.’
‘You and me and Lorna.’
Just then Jim turned around. ‘Can I have a go now please, Mr Bates?’
After Mr Bates agreed, Zidra changed places with Jim. Watching the dark green water slip slowly past, she started to feel hungry. Perhaps they could have some of Mr Bates’ cake soon.
Andy must have been thinking along the same lines. He said, ‘Where are we going to have lunch?’
‘There’s a nice little beach further upriver,’ Mr Bates said. ‘I thought we could stop there and have our lunch on dry land, and maybe have a bit of a swim after our lunch has gone down.’
‘Mama says you should wait at least an hour after eating before you swim. Otherwise you get cramps.’
‘Then that’s what we’ll do,’ said Mr Bates. ‘We must do as your good Mama says.’
Jim made a sort of snorting noise. Zidra looked at him closely to see if he was making fun of her but he was staring over her head at the river.
Ilona, sitting in the old cane chair on the side verandah of her cottage, heard a squawking and looked up from the book she was reading. Half-a-dozen grey and pink cockatoos flew over the backyard and swooped around the eucalyptus tree before joining a larger flock heading south along the river. Flying low, they soon vanished, hidden by the fringe of dense forest. By now the birds would be flying over Zidra, and she too would be watching them.
Ilona’s watch showed one o’clock. Nearly four and a half hours since the boating trip had begun, and only ten minutes since she had last checked the time. Perhaps her watch had stopped but it was still ticking when she held it up to her ear. It was almost impossible to concentrate. It was not that the book she was reading was dull, but more that she was distracted by other thoughts. The heat and the folly of allowing Zidra out for so long, and whether or not she had given Zidra a big enough bottle of cordial to drink.
Putting the book on the verandah floor, she went inside and turned on the radio. Too late for the one o’clock news but just in time for the local weather forecast. A fine day. Temperature expected to reach ninety-two degrees Fahrenheit. The bushfire danger level was high and a total fire ban was in force right across the state.
At least Zidra would be safe from fire in a boat. Water water everywhere. No fire danger there.
Hoping to find some music, Ilona twirled the dial of the radio. A church service was being broadcast from somewhere in Sydney. The singing was appalling, far too slow. Although the organist was playing at the right tempo and the choir following the organ, the congregation had a mind of its own and en masse was lagging behind.
She retrieved her book, but knew she would not be able to concentrate on it. A niggling little anxiety gnawed away inside her. Even the beauty of the lagoon, coruscating in the sunlight, could not distract her. It was not really the heat or the fire danger that was worrying her. It was Zidra’s sadness, which seemed to date from when Lorna had left, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Last night, when Zidra had slipped into her bed and talked about communicating with Lorna, Ilona had remembered how she used to feel that she and Oleksii communicated by telepathy when they were apart. Just as Zidra claimed she did with Lorna. Her own communication with Oleksii had been nothing concrete, of course; just a sudden deep feeling of warmth and understanding. A sudden intuition that Oleksii was thinking of her with affection, with love. He too had claimed he felt it, that there were times when he had felt that she was transferring her thoughts to him.
But that was a long time ago. That was years ago now.
A fly landed on her nose and she brushed it away impatiently. She should face it; her marriage to Oleksii had ended long before his death. One had to be realistic and confront the truth. One should not pull the wool over one’s eyes.
Sighing, Ilona picked up her book again, and the sheet of paper and pencil that she always kept to hand when she was reading English. There were so many words whose meaning she did not yet understand and she refused to skip over any of them. She gathered them in sets of five nowadays, although to begin with it was in sets of three, and then consulted the dictionary. Today she had deviated from that practice to look up one single word. Sunstroke: collapse or prostration, with or without fever, caused by exposure to excessive heat of the sun.
Again she hoped she had not been unwise in allowing Zidra to spend all day out of doors. If anything happened to her daughter, she didn’t know what she would do.
Jim saw the cockatoos screeching over the strip of bush lying between the lagoon and the ocean. Their noise drowned out the conversation of the others as they flew closer. Before heading in the direction of Burford, they traced out a wide semicircle overhead – a mass of pink and grey and white.
‘Never seen galahs this close to the sea before,’ Mr Bates remarked. ‘Must be the dry weather driving them east.’ The four of them were sitting, in the shade cast by some she-oaks, on a tartan rug that Mr Bates had spread out on the grass. Andy and Zidra were still munching apples; they were such slow eaters. Below their picnic spot lay a narrow strip of white sand and beyond that the boat lay anchored several yards from the shore. ‘Those birds are almost as noisy as the schoolyard at lunchtime,’ added Mr Bates. ‘We can always tell when school’s out by the din.’
‘That’s what Mum says about the pub,’ said Andy, who was getting a bit overexcited. ‘You can always tell when it’s closing time by the racket.’
Laughing, Mr Bates stretched himself out full-length on one end of the rug with a hat over his eyes. ‘Reckon I’ll have a nap for a few minutes,’ he said. ‘All this sunshine makes an old cove like me pretty tired.’
Jim was beginning to get a headache and, much as he disliked being close to Mr Bates, decided to stretch out on the other end of the rug. That way he’d kill two birds with the one stone: keep an eye on old Batesy and maybe get rid of the headache at the same time. Zidra and Andy scrambled down onto the beach and started to play in the sand, constructing a castle with a moat around it.
The sunlight, glittering through the leaves above, made a dancing red pattern on Jim’s closed eyelids and he sat up again. Mr Bates appeared to be asleep and the moat the others were constructing was becoming larger. Taking the tea towel in which the fruit had been wrapped, he folded it into a little rectangle, cool and slightly damp. With the folded towel covering his eyes, he lay flat on his back and listened to the soothing sound of the breeze whispering through the she-oaks and the lapping of the river water against the little beach. And the faint murmuring of Andy and Zidra as they endlessly talked.
When he awoke, he was alone in the glade. Thinking for a brief moment he’d been left behind, he sat up too suddenly and, through swimming eyes, saw that the picnic things were still scattered on the rug and the boat was anchored just a few yards off the beach. The sun had moved over though; the trees cast longer shadows across the grass and the beach.
He stood up, and at once felt even dizzier. The trees and the sky twisted around and he nearly fell over. Grabbing hold of the gnarled trunk of a she-oak, he waited until the surroundings stopped shifting before shouting, ‘Andy! Zidra! Andy! Zidra! Mr Bates!’ There was no response. His heart was racing so fast he could feel blood drumming in his ears. What a fool he’d been, he should never have fallen asleep when charged with looking after Andy and Zidra, never. Wherever they were now, he had to catch up with them and fast.
There was a narrow, rather overgrown path at each end of the glade. Quickly pulling on socks and sandshoes, he took the southerly direction, upriver away from Jingera. Occasionally stumbling, he ran along the path, which became even more overgrown the further south he got. Now he started to wonder if it was a path at all, rather than a slight bending back of the long grasses and low bushes that might have been made by the passage of animals, kangaroos perhaps. Slowing to a walk, he fought past the increasingly dense bush. The river he made sure always to keep in sight; it wouldn’t do to end up getting lost himself. Just as the point when turning back seemed the only option, he thought he could hear distant voices. Rounding a thicket of low-growing wattle, he saw ahead, in a clearing by the water not five yards away, two bodies lying on the ground.
He gulped and stood still, and his heart seemed to stop beating. Then the bodies moved. The bodies of a man and a woman. On a tartan rug that was not dissimilar to Mr Bates’, they lay entwined and red-faced, and staring at him in surprise. He didn’t know them though; they must have come downriver from Burford. It was the kissing rather than embarrassment that brought such a rosy glow to their faces and he felt himself blushing on their behalf.
‘Have you seen anyone?’ he asked, staring resolutely towards the river, where a small motorboat was moored. Out of the corner of his eye he observed the woman pulling down her dress and the man sitting up awkwardly.
‘No, can’t say we have,’ the man said. ‘Apart from you, that is. Are there many more of you wandering around?’
‘Yes. A man and two kids. Have you seen them?’
‘We’ve been here an hour or two, and we haven’t seen a soul.’
‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Jim muttered, feeling even more awkward. ‘They must have taken the other path.’ He turned and started walking back the way he had come.
Once out of sight, he started running again, hammering along through the undergrowth. His headache was returning, a relentless thump-thumping in his temples. High in the tallest trees, a group of magpies carolled, their clear wailing calls distinct against the thrumming of the cicadas.
There was no one in the glade, but the picnic things were still there and the launch still at anchor. He took the other path, north towards Jingera, along the river edge. Faster and faster he ran, the pounding of his feet in time with the banging in his head. Although beginning to feel slightly dizzy again, he went on, over the unyielding earth, the vegetation becoming dryer as he moved into the sclerophyll forest. Tripping over a rock, he fell hard onto the ground, grazing a knee. It began to bleed but he barely noticed in his haste to carry on. After several hundred more yards, the path opened into another small glade next to the river.
And there were Zidra and Mr Bates, sitting side-by-side on a rocky shelf at the river’s edge, with their feet dangling into the water. Neither of them seemed to notice his arrival. There was no sign of Andy anywhere. Leaning towards Zidra, Mr Bates now put an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close. At this point Jim strode across the grass, which muffled his footsteps, and stood behind them.
‘What are you doing?’ Both Zidra and Mr Bates jumped. Mr Bates had his left hand over Zidra’s, just as he had on the boat.
‘I’m showing her how to attach a sinker to the fishing line.’ Mr Bates removed his hand, revealing Zidra’s small hand that was indeed clutching a fishing line wound around a piece of cork.
‘You’ve been asleep for ages,’ Zidra grumbled, putting the fishing line down on the rock. Her face was tinged with green but it might have just been the light filtering through the trees.
‘Where’s Andy?’ he shouted. ‘Andy, where are you?’
‘Right here.’ Andy emerged from the bushes. ‘Do you want to fish?’
‘No, I hate fishing all the time,’ Jim said crossly. ‘What were you doing?’
‘What do you think? Having a pee, of course.’ Andy grinned. ‘Then I got a bit distracted by the cicadas. Look, I found a Black Prince!’ He held out a clenched fist. Slowly opening it, he revealed the dark locust. Without interest, Jim gave it a perfunctory glance. His head was thudding and he desperately wanted to lie down.
‘If you don’t want to fish,’ Zidra said, ‘you can help me finish the sandcastle. It needs more work.’ She jumped up and stood by his side. Fishing or building sandcastles, he didn’t know which was worse. Puzzled by what he’d seen, he nonetheless didn’t understand why. Batesy was showing Zidra how to fish, that was all.
‘Well, are you going to help me finish the castle?’ Zidra said.
‘Okay.’ He thought of what Mrs Bates had said that morning and added, ‘We should all stick together, you know.’
‘Were you scared?’ asked Mr Bates, standing up. ‘We’d never have left you alone if we thought that.’
At last they were back in the boat and heading towards Jingera. Soon the sun would sink below the escarpment and Jim could hardly wait for that moment. His head was throbbing even more now, and every flicker of light seemed like a spear piercing his skull with a sharp point of pain. The relentless putt-putt-putt of the launch’s motor didn’t help, shattering the peace of the bush and the river, and the stink of the diesel fuel made him feel even sicker.
There was something strange about the way Mr Bates looked at Zidra. He fawned over her too much and he stared at her all the time, as if she was a little doll or something. As if he worshipped her. Might be because he didn’t have a daughter of his own, that could be the reason. Some men wanted daughters rather than sons and Mr Bates didn’t have either.
Jim pulled at the top of a fingernail that had got snagged on his fishing line that morning, and yanked it right off. The pain, as the nail tore off below the quick, distracted him for a moment from his anxiety and nausea.
He was desperate to get back home. A boat was a pretty claustrophobic thing. The others seemed tired too. Everyone had gone very quiet now. Even Zidra, usually so talkative, seemed subdued.
At last the jetty was in sight. Two figures were standing side-by-side, looking out for them. Mrs Bates and The Talivaldis began to wave when they saw the launch. Mrs Bates up and down, The Talivaldis from side to side as if she was royalty. Jim was glad Roger wasn’t on board to make fun of that.
Jim glanced at Zidra just as she glanced at him. In spite of his headache and general irritation, he smiled. He wasn’t going to allow her to think that he might find her mother ridiculous. Or that he was worried about Batesy fussing over her all the time.