The creek was narrower through here than it was in our clearing, about a metre and a half wide and as much as sixty centimetres deep. The bottom was all stones, but smooth and old ones, not too many with cutting edges, and anyway my feet were getting tough these days. There were quite a few dark still pools that looked very deep, so I avoided them. The creek just chattered on, minding its own business, not disturbed by my creeping progress. It had been flowing here for a long time.
I followed it for about a hundred metres, through many twists and turns. The beginning of the journey had been sweet, like most new journeys I suppose, and there was the hope that the ending might be sweet also, but the middle part was getting tedious. My back was aching and I’d been scratched quite sharply on the arms. I was starting to feel hot again. But the canopy of undergrowth seemed to be getting higher, and lighter – here and there glints of sunlight bounced off the water, and the secret coolness of the tunnel was giving way to the more ordinary dry heat that we’d had back in the clearing. I straightened up a little. There was a place well ahead where the creek seemed to widen for ten metres before it turned to the right and disappeared into undergrowth again. It spread out into a wider channel, because the banks were no longer vertical there. They angled gently back, and I could see black soil, red rocks, and patches of moss, in a little shadowy space not much bigger than our sitting room at home. I kept wading towards it, still bent-backed. There were little blue wildflowers scattered along the bank. As I got closer I could see a mass of pink wildflowers deeper in the bush, back from the creek. I looked again and realised that they were roses. My heart suddenly beat wildly. Roses! Here, in the middle of Hell! Impossible!
I splashed along the last few metres to the point where the banks began to open out, and sploshed out of the creek onto the mossy rock. Peering into the wild of the vegetation I struggled to distinguish between the shadows and the solid. The only certainty was the rosebush, its flowers catching enough sunlight through the brambles to glow like pieces of soft jewellery. But gradually I started to make sense of what I was seeing. Across there was a long horizontal of rotting black wood, here a pole serving as an upright, that dark space a doorway. I was looking at the overgrown shell of a hut.
I went forward slowly, on tiptoe. It was a quiet place and I had some sort of reverential feeling, like I did in my Stratton grandmother’s drawing room, with its heavy old furniture and curtains always closed. The two places couldn’t have been more different, the derelict bush hut and the solemn old sandstone house, but they both seemed a long way removed from living, from life. My grandmother wouldn’t have liked being compared to a murderer, but she and the man who lived here had both withdrawn from the world, had created islands for themselves. It was as though they’d gone beyond the grave, even while they were still on Earth.
At the doorway of the hut I had to pull away a lot of creeper and some tall berry canes. I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to go in there. It was a bit like entering a grave. What if the hermit was still there? What if his body was lying on the floor? Or his spirit waiting to feed on the first living human to come through the door? There was a brooding atmosphere about the hut, about the whole place, that was not peaceful or pleasant. Only the roses seemed to bring any warmth into the clearing. But my curiosity was strong; it was unthinkable that I could come this far and not go further. I stepped into the dark interior and looked around, trying to define the black shapes I could see, just as a few minutes earlier I’d had to define the shape of the hut itself, from its wild surroundings. There was a bed, a table, a chair. Gradually the smaller, less obvious objects became clearer too. There was a set of shelves on a wall, a rough cupboard beside it, a fireplace with a kettle still hanging in it. In the corner was a dark shape, which gave me palpitations for a minute. It looked like a sleeping beast of some kind. I took a few steps and peered at it. It seemed to be a metal trunk, painted black originally but now flaking with rust. Everything was like the chest, in decay. The earth floor on which I stood was covered with twigs and clods of clay from the walls, and litter from possums and birds. The kettle was rusty, the bottom shelf hung askew, and the ceiling was festooned with cobwebs. But even the cobwebs looked old and dead, hanging like Miss Havisham’s hair.
My eyes had adjusted to the murky light by then. There was no body on the bed, I was relieved to see, but there were the rotten remnants of grey blankets. The bed itself was made of lengths of timber nailed together, and still looked fairly sound. On the shelves were just a few old saucepans. I turned again to look at the chest and hit my head on a meat safe hanging from a rafter. It struck me right on the temple with its corner. ‘Hell,’ I said, rubbing my head hard. It had really hurt.
I knelt, to look into the chest. There seemed nothing else in the hut which would offer more than it had already shown me. Only the inside of the chest was still concealed. I tried to lift the lid. It was reluctant, jammed by dirt and rust, and I had to pull then shake it to get it a few centimetres open. Metal ground against metal as I slowly forced it up, warping it so much that it was never going to close neatly again.
My first reaction when I peered inside was disappointment. There was very little there, just a pathetic pile of tattered odds and ends at the bottom of the chest. Mostly bits of paper. I pulled everything out and took them back outside into better light. There was a belt made of plaited leather, a broken knife, a fork and a few chess pieces: two pawns and a broken knight. The papers were mainly old newspapers, but sheets of writing paper too, and half of a hardbound book called Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. A large black beetle came crawling out of the book as I opened it. It fell open to a beautiful colour plate of a boat penetrating the jungle. It was actually two books in one; there was a second story, called ‘Youth’. But the other papers were too tattered and dirty and faded to be of any interest. It seemed that the Hermit’s life was going to remain a mystery, even now, so many years after his disappearance.
I poked around for another ten minutes or so, inside and out, without finding much. There had been other attempts to grow flowers: as well as the roses there was an apple tree, a sweetly scented white daisy, and a big wild patch of mint. I tried to imagine a murderer carefully planting and cultivating these beautiful plants; tried, and failed. Still, I supposed even murderers must have things they liked, and they must do something with their spare time. They couldn’t just sit around all day for the rest of their lives and think about their murders.
After a time I picked up the belt and the book and waded back into the creek, for the hunchbacked shuffle through the tunnel to our camp. It was a relief to emerge back into sunshine from that gloomy place. I’d forgotten how hot the day was, out in the sunlight, but I almost welcomed its fierce glare.
As soon as I appeared Homer came striding over.
‘Where have you been?’ he said. ‘We’ve been getting worried.’ He was quite angry. He sounded like my father. It seemed I’d been away for longer than I’d thought.
‘I’ve been having a close encounter with the Hermit from Hell,’ I answered. ‘A guided tour will leave soon; well, as soon as I’ve found the Iced Vo-Vo’s. I’m starving.’
Chapter Fifteen
After our inspection of the Hermit’s hut we kept working on into the evening. Lee, being less mobile, got to do the paperwork, in particular a system of food rationing that would preserve our supplies for close to two months, if we had the self-control to stick to it. Homer and Fi and I made a few little vegie gardens, and when the long day at last cooled we put in some seeds: lettuce, silverbeet, cauliflower, broccoli, peas and broad beans. We didn’t much fancy eating those all the rest of our lives, but ‘we need our greens’, as Fi said firmly, and with Lee’s cooking skills, broccoli could be turned into chocolate chip ice cream, and cauliflower into a fairy coach.