The Great Gatenby (8 page)

‘I know where we are,' said the Rat brightly.

‘OK, where?' we challenged him.

‘We're lost,' he answered with an air of finality, then ran and hid behind a tree. Gradually we all started getting discouraged, and arguing.

‘We should go that way, ‘cos the sky's blue that way,' said Sam Downey.

Finally Dunne took us firmly in hand. ‘Now James, where do you think we are?' he asked Kramer. James studied his map and compass long and hard.

‘We're over there, sir,' he said at last, pointing to a sharp rocky ridge line about five kilometres away.

Mr Dunne started getting angry. ‘What's that little ‘SP' on the map mean?' he asked.

‘Sign-post,' we all chorused.

‘But sir, there's no signpost round here,' said Adam Marava.

‘Isn't there? Try using your eyes.'

We hunted around for a bit before David O'Toole realised that the tree Rat was hiding behind had a whole lot of directions chiselled into it, including an arrow pointing the way to The Pimple. So off we set and just as my legs were starting to feel like tree trunks we hit the campsite. It had been a long day, but a good one. After I got my pack off I walked round for a few minutes feeling light like a moonwalker, floating five metres with each step.

There was another group of hikers at the campsite — four adults. They seemed OK. We talked to them for a little while.

‘You actually do this stuff for fun?' I asked them.

That night was quite spooky. Round about dusk we could hear howling noises in the distance.

‘They're feral dogs, wild dogs,' Mr Dunne explained. As darkness fell they seemed to get closer. We all huddled in around the fire, and Mr Walker chose that moment to start telling a ghost story.

‘This is a true story,' he said, but then they always say that. ‘As a matter of fact it happened only eight years ago. I was living near a village called Valley Reefs, where there used to be a lot of mining. At the end of my road was an old slate quarry that hadn't been worked for forty or fifty years. It's a bit of an exaggeration to call it a road though: it was an old dirt track that wound down to the quarry, round a lot of hairpin bends. My house was on one of these bends and it was the only house on this road at all, apart from a little weekender further up the hill that never seemed occupied.

‘Now there were a lot of semi-wild cats living around this house when I moved into it. They'd been pets of the previous owner. In fact it was hearing the dogs tonight that reminded me of this story. I got into the habit of going out and feeding the cats at about dusk every night; not because I like cats — I don't, I can't stand them — but I thought that if I fed them they'd be less likely to kill birds and wildlife. I should have shot or trapped them I suppose, but I didn't have the heart. So anyway, I'd go out there with these scraps, and the tamer ones would take food from my hand, but most of them just watched from a safe distance until I was back in the house. Then they'd come out and take the food away.

‘But some nights while I was doing this I'd become aware of a strong smell of pipe tobacco coming from a patch of shadows under a tree opposite the house. And I'd become aware of someone standing there — a person standing under the tree, smoking a pipe. I could feel his presence there, even though I couldn't see him and I knew it was impossible that anyone could be there. This was a dead-end dirt track. It was miles from anywhere and it led nowhere. No-one ever came down that way.

‘Anyway, this went on for a few months. I'd have to say it didn't worry me greatly but I did feel uneasy when this presence was around. It didn't seem like he was aggressively hostile but he certainly didn't seem friendly either.

‘But one night I found myself at the Valley Reefs pub, having a drink with an old miner named Len Bishop. Len was about eighty I'd say, and had lived in the area all his life. He pottered around with a metal detector most of the time, looking for gold, but I knew that way back in his youth he'd worked in the slate quarry. So I told him about these strange episodes with the pipe-smoker in the darkness at the bend in the road.

‘“Oh,” said Len, “that'll be Jimmy Withers. You're not the only one to have run into Jimmy, over the years.”'

‘“Who's Jimmy Withers?”' I asked.

‘“Well,” he told me, “Jimmy worked for the quarry, same as me. Jimmy was the bullocky. He and his bullock train would bring the blocks of slate up the hill. Up where your road meets the Arkleigh Road there was a processing plant, see, where they'd split the blocks up in sheets. There was a railhead there in those days, and they'd load the sheets straight onto the rail. You can still see what's left of the plant and the rail down at the corner there, near Riley's place.

‘“Well it was a long haul up that hill, see, and a lot of weight for those bullocks. ‘Course Jimmy, he never fed 'em properly anyway. So he'd stop 'em half-way up on each trip and give 'em a breather, and he'd have a pipe himself. And half the time he'd have a nip as well. He liked the grog, Jimmy did. It was your corner he stopped at each time. Those bullocks were like a milkman's horse. After a while they pulled up there automatic, whether they were going up the hill or down it. They wanted their smoko, and so did Jimmy.

‘“Then one day we knocked off work at 4.30, like always, and waited for Jimmy to come down for his last load, so we could get a lift up the hill. Well, we waited until nearly dark, and there was no sign of him, so we started walking up the hill. And then we found him. He was there at your corner and so were the bullocks. It was a bit hard to say what happened 'cos, you see, he'd been run over by his own bullock team. I always reckoned myself that he'd finally had one grog too many and was stretched out on the ground snoring away. It only would have needed those big bastards to see a good patch of grass and they would have gone clean over the top of him. Poor bugger. No matter how under the weather he was, I reckon by the look on his face that he knew at the last second what was happening to him. He didn't die too peaceful. ‘Course there's not much you can do about it if you've got twenty tons of slate being dragged over the top of you.”

‘“Ever since then, Jimmy's been hanging round that corner. You smell his pipe and you know he's there. Everyone who's lived in your house has had regular visits from Jimmy. May be why none of them has ever stayed there long, though he never seemed to worry any of them much.”

‘Well,' said Mr Walker, ‘after listening to Len's story I was shaken, I can tell you. The next time I went out to feed those cats I felt a bit uneasy. And sure enough there it was again. That smell of tobacco was unmistakable — a sharp, acrid smell in that sweet mountain air. I gave the food to the cats, following my usual routine, then I stood and looked across at the dark ground under the trees, and — I don't really know why — I called out, “Jimmy?” Well, I can't tell you what it was like. There was the heaviest, most complete stillness I've ever experienced. Everything seemed to stand still. Each one of those cats stood there looking at the same place I was looking at, and the hair on their backs stuck up like they'd been injected with something. I called out again, with the last ounce of courage I possessed, “Jimmy? Is that you?” There was a sort of rustle and a shaking noise in the trees, like a quick wind had swept up the gully, the cats gave an almighty howl and shot off in a dozen directions, and that was the last I saw of them, or Jimmy, and the last psychic experience I ever had at Valley Reefs.'

There was a long silence around the fire. I can't tell you how creepy it had been, listening to Mr Walker tell this story in a hushed voice out there in the middle of the wilderness.

‘Sir,' asked James Kramer, ‘is that story really true?'

‘It certainly is,' he replied. There was another long silence.

‘Mr Walker,' said Rob Hanley-White at last, in impressively hushed tones, ‘I swear to God, I'm tanning my jocks here.'

We went to sleep with the cries of the feral dogs cutting through the night.

‘They're definitely getting closer,' James said.

‘Shut up,' I said — I was quite close to getting spooked.

In the morning we awoke to fervent cries from the Rat. ‘Snow! Snow! It's been snowing.' There was a pause and I could hear someone talking to him in low tones, then Rat said in a small embarrassed voice, ‘Oh.'

I poked my head out of the tent. It was pretty obvious that what Rat had thought was snow was the cloud below us, sitting in the valley. It was spectacular but it wasn't snow.

I got out of the tent and started looking around in the soft ground for dog-prints. I couldn't see any, although at breakfast Ringworm swore that he had heard them snuffling around his tent in the middle of the night. Seemed to me that that was more likely to have been Rob Hanley-White.

This was our last full day of hiking. By tomorrow afternoon we'd be back at school, and three days after that we'd be home for the holidays. I felt a sudden intense pain: a deep and terrible desire to be back in those familiar surroundings and a certainty that I couldn't survive another moment without being there. But somehow it passed. I kept going about the routine jobs, doing them without thinking, rolling up the sleeping bag, pulling down the tent, putting out the fire. Then Mr Dunne called us together for a navigation meeting. We had to plot a course up The Pimple, then across something called the Razor's Edge to Box Creek for lunch. We set off in good spirits. The Razor's Edge turned out to be a sharp ridge that we had to straddle in some places to make our way along it. It was good but, as Mr Dunne said, if you fell you'd want to keep your legs together.

We reached Box Creek in record time, without making a single navigation error. It was a kind of boggy place but it was cool and the water was good to drink. After lunch we drifted into the customary siesta but no sooner had we settled down than Crewcut suddenly leapt up with a wild cry.

‘What's the story, sir?' I asked, thinking he'd finally crossed his poles.

‘Damn leeches!' he swore. Sure enough, he had three little black friends clinging to his legs.

‘You can put salt on them or burn them off,' Mr Dunne advised.

‘I'll burn them off you, sir,' I volunteered. ‘Anyone got a blowtorch? This is called the Joan of Arc cure.'

But Mr Scott, that is, Crewcut, must have been in a boring mood because he voted for the salt. It was a bit sad for the leeches. As soon as we shoved the salt on they seemed to turn themselves inside out, disgorging all the blood in the process, then they kind of shrivelled up and died. Mr Scott soon had dried blood marks all over his legs. It was a real smorgasbord for the flies, who quickly moved in to replace the leeches.

Meanwhile the rest of us were hastily carrying out body searches in the most intimate places to see if we'd picked up any of the little suckers ourselves. Sure enough, the census turned up another half dozen or so, which were dispatched with a mixture of salt and matches. Talk about blood sport! While we were busy disposing of them in SAS style, Mr Dunne lay in the sun laughing at us and telling us all kinds of little scientific details about how leeches have three or four brains, and how they can live for a year or more between meals, and stuff like that. I don't know if any of it was true, but no-one seemed to care much either way.

We didn't hang around there any longer, needless to say, but instead took a bearing on Mt Turnbull and lit out for it. This proved to be a tough afternoon, especially as some of the troops were looking tired. Ringworm looked like he'd died about two weeks ago, and he was starting to smell like it too. We soon came in sight of Mt Turnbull, and an awesome sight it was.

‘Is that Mt Turnbull?' Ringworm asked. ‘Gee it's big for its size.'

Big for its size? What did that mean? He never explained and I never asked. But it turned out to be a tough climb. We started off singing dumb songs, anything, whatever came to mind: ‘Lola'; ‘Climb Ev'ry Mountain'; ‘Father Hear the Prayer We Offer'; ‘Show Me the Way to go Home'. By the time we got half-way up we'd stopped singing and were concentrating on staying alive, panting like asthmatic hippopotamuses. I was glad I'd given up smoking, sorry I hadn't done it when I was ten.

Mr Dunne had this theory that once you start a climb you shouldn't stop until you get to the top, so that was the way we did it, for better or for worse. But a couple of people looked grey by the time we got there and little Paul Watson was crying. I thought he'd have been fitter from so much swimming. But he was pretty small to be carrying that big pack.

From Mt Turnbull we had a view that stretched back over the entire route of our hike. We were quite impressed to see how much ground we'd covered. Our legs were tired, our backs were sore, and our shoulders ached from where the straps of the pack had cut into them. But I was glad we'd come.

The weather was starting to fall apart. We could see clouds building up in the west and the temperature was falling like a dead kite. We dropped down over the crest of the mountain, cracking dumb jokes to keep Paul Watson going until we found the campsite. It was still half-an-hour from there to the water. I didn't think I could ever walk another step in my life but Crewcut said to me, ‘Come on, Erle, we'll go and get some water.'

We emptied our packs, then filled them with water bottles, and with James Kramer went down an old four-wheel-drive track to a creek. I hate it when people make my better nature come out like that. And I hated it when we began the struggle back up to the campsite. God, I'll never forget that climb. Those full water bottles were a dead weight that doubled with every twenty metres of height that we gained. I really didn't think I'd make it. It was only pride that got me there — what I wanted to do was throw myself on the ground, to sob and scream and beat my fists and refuse to take another step, but rather than embarrass myself in front of Mr Scott and James I put my head down and plodded on. Guess they were feeling about the same. The good thing was, when we got back, someone had put our tent up for us, and a couple of people had cooked us our meal, so at least we felt we were appreciated.

The rain swept in as we started eating. I'd never have thought that weather could change so fast as it did in those mountains. We were putting on an extra layer of clothing every ten minutes. From a hot sunny day we went to a mess of sleet and hail and rain and wind, till we started wishing we'd brought our skis. After we'd eaten we just crawled off to bed. I've never felt so good as I did in that warm sleeping bag, watching the tent tug and lift and rattle but knowing it was going to hold. Even though during the night a few gusts of wind woke me with their strength and violence I never doubted that the tent would stay anchored to the ground. Yeah, it was a mighty little tent, and it was still there in the morning, and we were still inside it.

It was pretty easy getting down the mountain after breakfast. The wind did most of the work for us. We struck the road about 11 am. From there it was a two-hour walk to the vehicles. We'd spent four days walking in a big circle, just so we could get back to where we'd started. I said that to Mr Walker and he quoted a poem to me about how the whole idea of exploring was to be able to return to your beginnings and understand them for the first time, to be able to see them with new eyes I suppose. That seemed a cute way of looking at it, but I wasn't quite sure how it worked in practice. Maybe it just happened, unconsciously, whether you wanted it to or not.

We finished off our food, then loaded our packs into the mini-bus and Landie. Mr Dunne and Mr Walker and about a dozen students piled into the bus and off they went. Crewcut and the rest of the kids, including me, got into the Landrover and prepared to follow them. It was at that point, with the dust of the bus still lingering in the air, that Mr Scott realised Mr Dunne had the keys of the Landrover in his pocket. There was nothing for it but to wait and hope that eventually Mr Dunne would start to wonder why we weren't in his rear-vision mirror. It turned out to be a long time before that moment arrived. It was four o'clock before the bus and a sheepish Mr Dunne came back. It was nearly nine o'clock before the vehicles came triumphantly through the front gates of the school. I never thought I'd be so glad to see Linley again.