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this, Bernie. You've packed up the camp. Sorry.’
‘Thought a bloody croc must have got you.’
Jimmy came across and squeezed her shoulder, his usual show of affection.‘Too tough for a croc, hey, love?’
She booted him in his backside as he walked off.
Jimmy spun around and shaped up with his two fists, shadow boxing around her until she played his game. Their standing joke, this shadow boxing business.
‘Deck an old man, would ya?’
She looked around in mock surprise. ‘Where is he?’
Jimmy laughed and got back to work checking under the bonnet of his truck, a battered old Army supply Bedford that could take on any country thrown at it, according to the man who cherished it.
‘Bet the water was nice, though?’ said Bernie, indicating Miki's wet shirt and shorts.
She folded the hot damper Bernie handed her into a tea towel and laid it on the passenger seat of her own army-issue vehicle, a four-seater Jeep. ‘For the road,’ she said. She had no appetite for food.
‘You went in,’ said Jamie Richardson, indicating her wet hair. The youth was now bearded, long-haired and calling himself Rasta in honour of the dreadlocks he was cultivating.
She lifted the Jeep’s bonnet and reached for the dip stick, turning to the youth biting off a hunk of Bernie's damper. 'You packed?' She liked the look of young Richardson so much more now than on the night in March and hoped, if there was a Heaven, that his mother would be looking down at her boy and approving the changes in him. She had the feeling the boy’s mother had had more spunk than the awful father, Sir Roland Richardson. She smiled every time she thought of the old boy and what he must think of his son today.
‘Thought you told us it was lethal?’ said the tallest and prettiest of the three youths, the one who had modestly named himself The Force.
She gathered up the pile of hessian bags the boys had tossed over the side of the Jeep when they arrived at the Blackburn’s camp this morning and shoved them at The Force’s chest. ‘In the Bedford with these, hero. Then tie on the water tanks.’ She went back to examining her battery and oil levels, wiping the dip stick with her rag and reinserting it before looking around the side of the bonnet lid to check his progress.
The Force stood looking at her, making no move.
‘Please?’ she added, joining her palms together in mock supplication.
He shot her a Nazi salute and frog-marched across to the truck to deposit the bundle.
She flicked the back of his hairy head with her dirty oil cloth. He took aim and hurled it back at her but she ducked low and dodged it with a grin.
Returning to her engine, she poured water into the radiator, aware Bernie was still trying to read her thoughts, gauge her emotional state. She could stick the biggest grin in the world on her face and clown around with Jimmy and these kids but she knew it wouldn’t fool that woman. Not for a moment. Bernie knew what dread tomorrow night held for her.
‘Okay, let’s move it out, troops! Keep it move’n, hep, two, three, four…’ Jimmy banged the side of his truck several times to get their attention. When there was no instant response, he barked orders again. Louder this time. ‘Come on, you lazy long-haired lay-abouts! Step to it!’
‘Cut the military jive, man. Okay? You’re sounding too bloody Army.’ This, from The Force. On the way up from Brisbane, they had each given themselves concocted names, monikers for their new, lawless lives; The Force, Rasta and Giant.
Giant was the shy one among them.
Rasta and Giant climbed up into the back of the Bedford and settled among the cardboard boxes and the wheat bags.
Bernie stood at the back of the truck waiting to tie things down with her ropes. She gave The Force a hurry-up which he ignored. She looked at Jimmy, gave him a cheeky wink, ‘Gonna miss you, Jimbo.'
'Keep it warm for me, love.'
Miki caught the exchange between husband and wife, saw Jimmy wink back at Bernie and blow her a kiss, one that held a private treaty. Bernie was lucky to have a man who loved her as much as Jimmy did, she thought. It would weigh hard on Bernie while he was gone. After Cooktown, Jimmy’s job was to get the boys onto a Darwin trawler heading to Asia. She knew Bernie would stew about her Jimbo the whole time he was gone, making excuses to the mob, lying about him being down in Cairns, working on a fishing boat. Or gone south for a reunion with his Army mates. Anything to allay suspicion. They were fortunate to have such a good marriage, she reflected as she banged down the bonnet of the Jeep and went across to the mossy stream that ran past the camp.
She scooped handfuls of the icy water up and splashed her hair, her face and then more handfuls across her limbs and down the front of her shirt, welcoming the cooling sensation over her body. The sea water had been itching her since she had returned from the beach and it felt good to be saturated in rainforest water. There was still plenty of heat left in the day and the drive would be a long and sweltering one.
The Force was mid-way aboard the Bedford when he stopped and stared at Miki, making her acutely aware that her wet shirt was clinging to her bra-less chest. She grabbed the threadbare beach towel drying on a nearby branch and threw it around her shoulders.
‘Hey, any girls where we’re going, Pops?’ said The Force, addressing Jimmy while continuing to stare at Miki.
‘Yeah, Mrs Palmer and her five daughters,’ grinned Jimmy as he spat into his right palm, rubbed his two hands together and mimed masturbation before walloping the youth across the back of the skull. ‘Ya bloody tosser. Get in!’
Miki shook the excess water from her hair and heard the embers behind her hiss for a second then die. It was a sad sound but why, she couldn’t say. It just was. Probably because it represented the breaking up of their camp, heading home, mission accomplished. She wasn’t a good one for endings. She was told in the past that it was the melancholy Celt in her.
By the time she snapped out of her reverie she realized there was nothing left of their fire. She gave an involuntary shudder, as if the weather had suddenly turned bitter.
‘Here, let me dry this mop of yours,’ said Bernie, coming up behind her and taking the towel. ‘More hair than a bloody golliwog and just as black. Black hair. Blue eyes. You’re a freak of nature, Caroline Patrick.’
‘Blame my Galway ancestors, Bern.'
Before she had time to protest the rough handling from her friend she found her head buried in Bernie’s bosom beneath the towel.
‘Honestly, you don’t want us to hang around a bit, Mik?’ whispered Bernie. She had Miki in a headlock, the hair rubbing an obvious ruse to question her.
‘Uh, uh. I’m fine. Stop worrying. And ouch, let me go, you bugger.’
Bernie made a towel turban before releasing her from her grasp. ‘There. That’s better, miss.’
‘Ta.’ She was aware The Force was still checking her out.
‘You’re going to last about five minutes up there, man.’ It was Rasta, from under his cardboard and hessian hideout.
‘Wise up, brother,’ added Giant; reddish hair and balding at twenty, a runt who wore John Lennon specs and carried a dog-eared copy of Dharma Bums in his jeans pocket.
She came up behind The Force and pushed him into the truck without apology. The youth reached out and took hold of her arm as she was about to walk away. ‘They’re right, y’know,’ he said. ‘I’m gonna last five minutes up there. Howz about it? A kiss? For the road?’
‘Shut up and get under.’ The suddenness of her temper surprised everyone. There was an uncomfortable silence.
'Joking, alright?'