Yarns Without Threads 

... Already the sun was warm; her dress was dirty and clammy with dew; and the water looked cool and crystal-clear: cool and crystal clear and tempting. She looked carefully around. Peter was asleep; there was probably no one else within a hundred miles. Impulsively she kicked off her sandals, pulled her frock over her head, stepped out of her panties and ran naked down to the water. The finches darted away. She had the creek to herself.

She found a shallow pool, immediately below a miniature waterfall. Here she slid into the water watching the ripples lap slowly higher, over her knees, thighs and waist. She was breast deep before her toes touched bottom. Looking down she could sec her underwater-self with startling clarity; could ever see the bruise on her hip - where she'd crashed against the side of the plane - standing out darkly against the white of her skin. She ducked down till only her floating hair showed on the surface: her long golden hair, the colour of ripening corn, which she started to swirl around and about her like the muleta of a matador. She laughed and splashed and hand scooped the water over her face, and forgot she was hungry.

Beside the outcrop of rock, her brother stirred. Half-asleep, half-awake, he heard the plash of water. He sat up, yawning and rubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes. For a moment he couldn't think where he was. Then he caught sight of his sister.

'Hi, Mary!' he yelled. 'I'm coming too.'

He scrambled up. Sandals, shorts and shirt were flung aside as he came charging down to the stream. With a reckless belly-flop he arrived beside the girl in a shower of drenching spray.

Mary wasn't pleased. Seizing him under the armpits, she plonked him back on the bank.

'Peter, you ass. It's too deep. Look, you're full of water.'

'I'm not. I spat it out. Besides, I can swim.'

He belly-flopped a second time into the pool. But Mary noticed he kept to the shallows now: to the sandy-bottomed shallows where the rivulet widened and the banks flattened out. Watching him, she suddenly became conscious of her nakedness. Quickly she scrambled out of the pool and struggled into her dress.

Peter surveyed her critically.

'You're all wet,' he said. 'You ought to have dried yourself first.'

'Stop chattering, Peter. And get dry yourself.'

She helped him out of the pool, and rubbed him down with his shirt.

Though the edge had gone from his hunger, Peter wasn't altogether at ease. He kept looking nervously at the surrounding bush. He had a strange sort of feeling: a feeling of being watched. Several times he looked up quickly, certain there was someone there; but the bush slept on in the heat of the sun: silent, motionless, apparently deserted. Unconvinced, he sidled back to his sister.

'Mary!' he whispered. 'I think there's someone here!'

'Someone here! Where?'

Disbelieving she swung round. The quondong fell to the grass. Only by snapping her teeth together did she stifle a scream of fear. For there, less than four feet away, so close that she could have stretched out an arm and touched him, was a boy. And he was ebony black and quite naked.

The girl's first impulse was to grab Peter and run; but as her eyes swept over the stranger, her fear died slowly away. The boy was young - certainly no older than she was; he was unarmed, and his attitude was more inquisitive than threatening: more puzzled than hostile.

He wasn't the least bit like an African Negro, His skin was certainly black, but beneath it was a curious hint of undersurface bronze, and it was fine-grained: glossy, satiny, almost silk-like. His hair wasn't crinkly but nearly straight; and his eyes were blue-black: big, soft and inquiring. In his hand was a baby rock wallaby, its eyes, unclosed in death, staring vacantly above a tiny pointed snout.

All this Mary noted and accepted. The thing that she couldn't accept, the thing that seemed to her shockingly and indecently wrong, was the fact that the boy was naked.

The three children stood looking at each other in the middle of the Australian desert. Motionless as the outcrops of granite they stared, and stared, and stared. Between them the distance was less than the spread of an outstretched arm, but more than a hundred thousand years.

Brother and sister were products of the highest strata of humanity's evolution. In them the primitive had long ago been swept aside, been submerged by mechanization, been swamped by scientific development, been nullified by the standardized pattern of the white man's way of life. They had climbed a long way up the ladder of progress; they had climbed so far, in fact, that they had forgotten how their climb had started. Coddled in babyhood, psycho-analysed in childhood, nourished on predigested patent foods, provided with continuous push-button entertainment, the basic realities of life were something they'd never had to face.

The desert sun streamed down. The children stared and stared.

Mary had decided not to move. To move would be a sign of weakness. She remembered being told about the man who'd come face to face with a lion, and had stared it out, had caused it to slink discomfited away. That was what she'd do to the black boy; she'd stare at him until he felt the shame of his nakedness and slunk away. She thrust out her chin, and glared.

Peter had decided to take his cue from his sister. Clutching her hand he stood waiting: waiting for something to happen.

The Aboriginal was in no hurry. ... He turned his attention to the white boy's clothes.

Peter was by no means perturbed. On the contrary he felt flattered; proud. He realized that the bush boy had never seen anything like him before. He held himself very straight, swelled out his chest, and turned slowly round and round.

The bush boy's dark tapering fingers plucked gently at his shirt, following the line of the seams, testing the strength of the criss-cross weave, exploring the mystery of the buttonholes. Then his attention passed from shirt to shorts. Peter became suddenly loquacious.

'Those are shorts, darkie. Short pants. You oughta have 'em too. To cover your bottom up. Haven't you any shops round here?'

The bush boy refused to be diverted.

When they were out of sight Mary came down to the chain of pools. Soon she too was laughing and splashing under the waterfall. But she listened carefully for sound of the boys' return. As soon as she heard their voices, she scrambled out of the water, and quickly pulled on her dress.

The boys' arms were full: full of worworas. They were carrying at least a dozen each; and they were, Mary suddenly noticed, both of them quite naked. She picked up her brother's shorts from beside the edge of the billabong.

'Peter,' she said, 'come here.'

He came reluctantly across.

'Gee! I don't need no clothes, Mary. It's too hot.'

'Put them on,' she said.

He recognized her strict governess's voice.

A week ago he wouldn't have dreamt of arguing. But somehow he felt different here in the desert. He looked at his sister defiantly, weighing the odds of revolt.

'O.K.,' he said at last. 'I'll wear the shorts. But nothing else.'

A week ago the girl wouldn't have stood for conditions. But somehow, for her too, things were different now. She accepted the compromise without complaint.

They cooked the yam-like plants in the reheated ash of last night's hearth. They tasted good: sweet and pulpy: a cross between potato, artichoke, and parsnip.

During the meal Mary watched the black boy. They owed him their lives. His behaviour was impeccable. He was healthy and scrupulously clean. All this she admitted. Yet his nakedness still appalled her. She felt guilty every time she looked at him. If only he, like Peter, would wear a pair of shorts! She told herself it wasn't his fault that he was naked: told herself that he must be one of those unfortunate people one prayed for in church - 'the people who knew not Thy word': the people the missionaries still hadn't caught. Missionaries, she knew, were people who put black boys into trousers. Her father had said so - 'trousers for the boys,' he'd said, 'and shimmy-shirts for the girls.' But the missionaries, alas, evidently hadn't got round to Australia yet. Perhaps that's why it was called the lost continent. Suddenly an idea came to her. A flash of inspiration. She'd be the first Australian missionary .

Missionaries, she knew, were people who made sacrifices for others. While the boys were scattering ash from the fire, she moved to the far side of the cairn, hitched up her dress, and slipped out of her panties.

Then she walked across to the bush boy, and touched him on the shoulder.

She felt compassionate: charitable: virtuous. Like a dignitary bestowing some supremely precious gift, she handed her panties to the naked Aboriginal.

He took them shyly: wonderingly: not knowing what they were for. He put the worwora down, and examined the gift more closely. His fingers explored the elastic top. Its flick-back was something he didn't understand. (Bark thread and liana vine didn't behave like this.) He stretched the elastic taut; tested it; experimented with it, was trying to unravel it when Peter came to his aid.

'Hey, don't undo 'em, darkie! Put 'em on. One foot in here, one foot in there. Then pull 'em up.'

The words were meaningless to the bush boy, but the small one's miming was clear enough. He was cautious at first: suspicious of letting himself be hobbled. Yet his instinct told him that the strangers meant him no harm; that their soft, bark-like offering was a gift, a token of gratitude. It would be impolite to refuse. Helped by Peter, he climbed carefully into the panties.

Mary sighed with relief. Decency had been restored. Her missionary zeal had been blessed with its just reward.

Next morning Peter woke early. He yawned; stretched; looked first at the others - still asleep - then at the billabongs. The water looked cool and tempting. He got up, strolled across to the nearest pool, sat on the edge and dangled in an exploratory toe. The water was delightfully warm; but shallow; barely up to his knees. He wandered upstream, seeking a deeper, more exciting pool.

He found it on the far side of the outcrop of rock: a granite-encircled basin, fed by a miniature waterfall. With a noisy belly-flop, he dived in.

The pool was exactly the right depth: up to his armpits. Working his way to under the waterfall, he revelled in the cascading, sunlit spray. He stayed a long time in the water, soaking every pore of his sturdy young body. He noticed with satisfaction that his body wasn't white any longer; a week's continual exposure to the desert sun had tanned it a rich mahogany - only he hoped it wouldn't get any darker, else he'd be turning into a blackamoor. At last he wandered back to the camp site.

The bush boy was still asleep; but Mary had just woken, and he told her about the rock-bound billabong.

The girl looked at the Aboriginal and saw that he was motionless: apparently fast asleep.

'You stir up the fire, Pete,' she said. 'Can you manage that? While I bathe?'

'Sure I can manage.'

She smiled, glad of his self-reliance, and made her way to the far side of the rock.

The billabong was everything Peter had promised. The river that ran out of Eden couldn't have been more beautiful. The girl took off her dress, ruefully noting its rents and tears, shook loose her hair, and dived into the pool. The water was crystal clear and warm as a tepid bath. Lazily she swam across to the waterfall, and let the spray cascade on to her naked body. She felt relaxed, washed clean of cares and doubts and fears. Sometime, she thought, some distant day or week or month, they'd come to Adelaide (or some other settlement); the bush boy she wouldn't think about; in the meantime the sun shone, there was water to drink, food to eat, and Peter's cold was on the mend. She started to sing: gaily: swirling her hair from shoulder to shoulder.

They lay beside a shallow lagoon, both of them naked - for on their third day in the valley the girl's dress had been torn beyond repair by the claws of a koala. In front of them the reed-fringed water, motionless as glass, went looping away down-valley; behind them the hills towered up, their summits wreathed in cloud; on either side of them the virgin forests, dark as a cathedral vault, sprawled almost to the water's edge. It was midday, and the valley-of-waters-under-the-earth lay motionless, asleep in the heat of the sun.

... Peter ... grabbed the cub by the scruff of its neck, jerked it off its mother's back, and thrust it into Mary arms.

'Bet you never had a doll as nice as that!' he grinned.

The mother bear was far too slow-witted to defend her offspring. But she didn't run away. She hung on to the eucalyptus, blinking her eyes in surprise. Then she started to moan: a low, pathetic, sobbing moan.

Mary's heart went out to her.

'Peter, you beast! She wants her baby.'

She tried to hand the cub back: but its tiny claws were hooked tight on to her dress. The thin material, already rent and worn, gave way. There was a low ripping tear. The dress slid to her feet. The koala sobbed and moaned.

A week ago nothing more calamitous could have happened to the girl. But now, after her initial shock she felt strangely unembarrassed: more concerned with the cub than with her nakedness. Kicking remnants of her dress aside, she bent down and very gently returned the baby to its mother's back. Instantly the sobbing ceased. The mother koala looked round, blinked her eyes, licked her cub, climbed down the last three feet of trunk, and waddled off to another eucalyptus.

'Poor thing!' Mary said. 'You oughta known better Pete.'