Lost Girls (20 page)

It was now the
heat of midday and Isabelle was yawning. Mark suggested she have an
afternoon siesta in her room. Somewhat reluctantly she agreed. In
the cool and dark of the room she had barely laid her head on the
pillow before she fell into a deep sleep.

When she woke
the sun was low and Mark was sitting on the verandah outside his
room sipping a beer. He offered her one and she declined, thirsty
for a glass of water. He suggested they spend an hour seeing the
sights of the town now the day’s heat was easing. They visited the
boab prison tree, a tree shaped like a bottle with strange scraggly
branches that almost looked like it had been uprooted and placed
upside down with its roots waving in the breeze. This particular
tree had a huge cavity hollowed out of a massive trunk which was
reputed to have served as the local jail in the town’s early
history.

After this they
walked out on the wharf. This place was said to have the biggest
tides in Australia, up to twelve metres Now the tide was low and
the walk carried them far out over what seemed to be miles and
miles of mudflats. They watched birds feast on tasty morsels as fat
mudskippers bounced across the mud.

They returned
to the hotel in the dusk and both showered and changed for dinner.
Isabelle found a fresh light dress which she wore with sandals;
Mark wore light coloured calico pants and shirt, in the style of an
English safari suit.

She though him
very handsome and said so. He admired her too, but it was in a
friendly, almost asexual way.

They ordered a
selection of courses from the menu and the food was good. Then they
played pool in the bar with some others for a while until a country
and western duo sang some songs of the outback. The audience joined
in. At first Mark was silent but Isabelle sang with gusto and
encouraged him to sing with her. She found he could sing well, if a
bit hesitantly at first. She liked the way their voices blended
together.

Then softer
ballad music came on and she got up to dance. She asked him if he
would join her but he was reluctant. Now another man came up and
asked her for a dance. She agreed; she felt like dancing. As she
took to the floor she turned back to look at Mark, she would have
rather been dancing with him, although this man was a good dancer
and had her flowing around the floor in an effortless way.

Mark had turned
his body away. It seemed deliberate and she felt disappointed,
wondering if she should go back and stay with him. At last the
dance ended and the man asked her to continue. But she decided she
would rather go back to sit with Mark, even though she loved to
dance.

He was still
looking away so she walked right up in front of him, forcing him to
look at her.

He looked up
with a lopsided half smile. “I thought you would be dancing yet for
hours,” he said.

She answered,
“The man wanted me to. He is a good dancer and I love to dance. But
I decided that I like your company more, so if it is OK I will come
back and sit with you.”

Now he gave her
a genuine smile. “I would like that,” he said.

An hour later
it was Mark who was yawning. Isabelle picked up his hand and
brought him out into the clear night air. “Now it is you who needs
to sleep,” she said.

She led him
back to his room and opened the door. On tiptoes she kissed him
lightly on the cheek, her body slightly brushing his.

Mark ran his
fingers through her hair as she stood there. She felt a great urge
to push her body up against his. Just as her mind decided that it
would be good and right he pulled away and went inside.

After his door
closed she sat on a chair on her verandah, looking across to his
room, hoping he would come back out and give her an excuse to join
him. She felt a great desire to tap on his door and ask him to
bring her in with him. But it was just her and the dark night. At
last she too was yawning and went to bed.

The drove off
early in the morning, just as the sun was striking its first shafts
on the scraggy trees alongside the road, lighting them with orange
light. They drove through featureless scrub that sometimes crossed
open grass plains, their edges dotted with scattered boab trees. It
seemed to Isabelle the trees were watching as upside down
sentinels.

The dirt road
was flat and straight and they roared along with a cloud of dust
following, passing an occasional opposite way car with which they
exchanged dust plumes. After an hour Mark took a turnoff to the
north, declaring it was time for breakfast and a cup of tea. He
followed minor tracks until he came to the banks of a tree lined
river with dark silty water, the May River. A dry creek with
freshwater pools ran into the river at one side. Birds flitted down
to its water to drink as the morning heat grew.

Mark put two
folding chairs side by side and indicated to Belle to take one,
handing her an icy can of lemon squash from the fridge. She sat in
the shade and sipped her drink while Mark gathered dead branches.
Soon he had a fire going under the next patch of shade.

As she watched
brightly coloured birds flitted above the water, seemingly darting
hither and thither in some random pattern. One landed on a twig
near her for a minute. It had the most amazing colours, a mixture
of blues, greens and golds. It was so small she could have cupped
it in the palm of her hand.

Mark looked up
and she pointed to it. He nodded and grinned. In a second it had
flitted away. He said. “It is a rainbow bee eater, beautiful isn’t
it? They catch small insects on the wing over pools of water.”

Soon the billy
was boiling. A pan of bacon and eggs followed quickly. They sat in
the shade eating bacon and egg sandwiches, their seats now turned
to face the big river below them. It was a time for eating and
watching, not talking. As they were finishing eating there was a
small splash in the river below. Mark put his finger to his lips
and Isabelle looked towards the sound. Slowly a head emerged and
two eyes surveyed its surrounds. After a minute of stillness the
eyes came towards the bank. From the water emerged a creature of
scaled markings. It was about as long as she was tall. She knew
this was a real crocodile, every shape and pattern of its form
arranged in picture book symmetry. It wriggled itself around in the
sun until it had found the right place, then lay still. Bella
watched in fascination, it was so immobile. After a couple minutes
it opened teeth covered jaws to smile at the sun.

Mark nodded,
pointed at the car and smiled, enjoying Bella’s wonder. He began to
stand up. As he moved the crocodile scuttled down the river bank
and disappeared from whence it had come.

Soon they were
packed up and driving on. Mid morning they came to a turnoff
signposted, ‘Windjana Gorge and Tunnel Creek’. They turned south
following the sign. Now rocky hillsides rose to the east, the start
of the broken hill country of the Kimberley, Mark told her. They
passed by the turnoff to Windjana Gorge, Mark promising to return
this way as it was a good place to stopover and camp for the
night.

It was
ferociously hot when they emerged from their air conditioned car at
Tunnel Creek, looking across to a sheer red-orange and black cliff
face that bordered the road they had driven along. Mark filled a
backpack with two torches, water and things for lunch. He led the
way to Tunnel Creek cave which he said would be much cooler and was
a good place for lunch. After the car park they came to a place
where the dry sandy creek bed plunged down into a series of clear
pools of water with a huge cave entrance coming into view. As they
came into the shade of the rocks it was suddenly cool.

Mark put down
his pack, took off his T shirt and strode into water up to his
chest, then plunged under coming up with water streaming down his
face. He said, “God the feels good, why don’t you come in?”

She waded in up
to her knees. She was wearing a T shirt and shorts, she had
dispensed with her bra in the heat. There was no one in sight and
she felt self conscious, alone with him in this place.

She asked,
“Should I get my bathers, they are in the car?”

He shrugged,
“Up to you, but I would take off your shirt and keep it dry as it
is pretty cold deeper in the cave. I won’t mind if you come in
topless and there is no one else here to see at the moment.”

She took a deep
breath, feeling both prudish and shy to expose her body, yet not
wanting to walk back in the heat to the car. She shrugged in reply.
In for a penny, in for a pound
, she thought.

She pulled off
her T shirt with her back turned, then decided it was silly to be
shy and removed her shorts, now only wearing a pair of plain black
knickers. She thought of taking them off too, part of her wanted
him to see her fully naked, but caution rose, she would be giving
him a good eyeful anyway and some modesty was required,
particularly if others arrived.
Well it is now or never,
she
thought. She turned to face him.

As she walked
towards him she felt self conscious that her breasts were small,
she was sure he liked women with bigger breasts.

She could feel
his eyes on her as she walked into the water and found herself too
self conscious to look up. She kept walking, her body tingling as
the cold water rose to cover her hips and knickers. Now she was in
water up to her waist and she looked up.

He was gazing
at her intently, his eyes savouring her. He looked at her breasts
and she felt her nipples tingling under his gaze. Even more self
conscious she lowered her whole body into the water, the cold of
the water shocked her and she stood up again. Now her nipples were
tingling even more and the cold had brought them into sharp points.
She looked up and Mark was looking intently at her. She gave him a
self conscious shrug. “I am not used to this sort of thing,
swimming without clothes. I feel embarrassed to have you see
me.”

Mark grinned,
no need for embarrassment. “All I can say is you look sensational,
the body of a mermaid.”

He splashed her
and she splashed him back, now laughing with relief, it felt fine
to be here with him like this. She flung herself at him and grasped
him around the waist, trying to pull him off balance. He went with
and dunked them both. They came up spluttering and still
laughing.

Now he was
standing right in front of her, his body almost touching hers. He
reached down with his hand. He touched and caressed a nipple. She
crushed her body against his, pushing her thighs against her
leg.

Then he pulled
back. “I promised not to try and seduce you, just to let you come
along for the ride. Here I am, wanting to do the sex thing with you
when our trip has barely begun. I don’t want to spoil our trip and
friendship by going there unless it is something you really want
too.

She did not
want him to stop touching her that way. Yet she also understood
what he meant. Their friendship was something very precious and
might become much more complicated if this kept going.

Now the spell
was broken and she nodded. “I like you touching me that way. But
perhaps you are right, the friendship is more.”

He nodded
turned away and then dived under the water surfacing at the
opposite side of the pool, where he climbed out, shook himself to
dry and then walked to where his T shirt lay and put it back
on.

She came back
to the place of her clothes and dressed too, feeling an ache within
that was frustrated and unsatisfied. She was on the point of
calling out she had changed her mind, that she wanted it all now,
not to wait for an unlikely better time.

The words were
on the tip of her tongue, ready to call out, when she heard a
distant noise. It was another car coming into the car park. In five
minutes another couple had arrived and the moment had passed.

These people
were friendly New Zealanders and after a chat about their
respective trips, they all found a shady place beside a pool where
they spread out and shared their lunches. It was somehow a relief
for her to have someone else to break the tension of the moment and
distract her. She guessed that a part of Mark felt the same.

The day passed
exploring the fantastic cavern, almost a kilometre underground
where the creek had carved a huge tunnel through the limestone.
Their torch revealed stalactites and stalagmites in an rainbow
array of colours from the softest whites to the deepest purples and
almost everything in between. Along the bottom ran a clear icy
creek. As the cave air was cool they had little desire to plunge
in, toe dipping sufficed. They shared the exploration with the Kiwi
couple and in the process became friends with offers to meet again
in the Shaky Isles. They parted in the car park to go their
separate ways.

That night they
returned to Windjana Gorge and watched dozens of crocodile eyes in
the remaining pools of the river that flowed through the gorge, now
a late dry season waterhole. “They are only fresh water ones which
are not dangerous,” Mark assured her,

Next morning
they headed off into the true wilderness of the rugged broken hills
of the Kimberley. Mark said where they were going but for now it
was just words, he talked of a place called the Mitchell Plateau,
sheer red gorges, lots of unique Australian wildlife and incredibly
ancient aboriginal paintings, dotting the caves and rock faces of
the area.

After that she
understood they would head up to the coast, following a track known
to only a handful of locals. Mark told of a cliff top paradise,
where a spring fed creek cascaded over the broken hills into a
sapphire sea below, so clear you could see every fish, a place of
huge crocodiles which could be surveyed in safety from the cliffs,
a place of innumerable other treasures and delights to explore.