Beryl Fletcher

 

PART TWO: The Music of the Body

 

13

 

 

They rested for a further two days. That night, Hannalore announced that Juno was now fit to travel.

‘We’ll pack up in the morning,’ said Mr Cattermole. ‘Piopio here we come.’

‘Are the horses ready?’

‘In fine fettle.’

 

But that night a violent storm came at them over the tops of the western hills. Torrential rain and raging winds confined them to the hut for days. They did not have the comfort of sitting beneath an iron roof where a multi-voiced fugue played in concert with the musical beating of a drum. Instead, the water poured down the runnels of the nikau palms in dissonant waterfalls. The damp crept into everything. The turfs that lined the fireplace began to fall apart. It became increasingly difficult to keep the fire alight. 

 

Juno had whittled away at Mr Cattermole’s resolve to keep Jacka outside. Like water dripping away on a stone, she would not leave the subject alone. Eventually, Mr Cattermole had professed himself to be on the brink of madness. He hauled the shivering wet wreck inside, and Jacka, looking decidedly furtive, lay with his head down and his paws splayed out on the clay floor.

 

‘Happy now?’ said Mr Cattermole.

‘No.’

‘The wood is getting low Juno,’ said Hannalore. ‘Come outside and help me.’

‘No.’

 

Long silences grew between them. There seemed to be little to say except to bemoan the dwindling food supply and the difficulty of drying enough wood to keep the fire going. Mr Cattermole fed his dog stale damper and allowed him to lick the remains of the pig fat from the tin. Soon, he said, I will need to find meat. Jacka will gnaw his legs off if this rain goes on for much longer.

 

Juno spent most of her time lying on the floor wrapped in Mr Cattermole’s bed roll. Jacka lay next to her. After the first night, she had refused to sleep on the mangemange bed. She complained that something had risen up beneath the bed and kicked her in the stomach. She brought up the subject of ghosts again. Mr Cattermole said hand on my heart and hope to die, there are no ghosts here. Except, of course, for the ones that we carry with us wherever we go. 

 

Juno sat bolt upright. Hannalore was angry with Mr Cattermole for teasing Juno but she was afraid to challenge him. Without his help she knew that she and Juno would never find their way out of this wild place. She tried to comfort Juno by stroking her forehead but Juno would not lie still. She jumped up and fell across Jacka who did not move or utter a sound.

 

Mr Cattermole took a half-smoked cigarette from behind his right ear and relit it with a piece of paper rolled into a taper. The fire had died down to a few dull red embers. He took a drag of his cigarette and blew out a mouthful of smoke.  He did this twice more then stubbed it out by pinching it between his forefinger and thumb. Back behind his ear it went. ‘A few more drags,’ he said, ‘and that’s the end. Unless I roll up tea-leaves or bark from some bitter native bush I will have nothing left to smoke. Rain hail or shine, we must leave tomorrow.’

 

As if some compassionate entity had heard him speak, the weather changed overnight. Rain clouds still scudded low over the tops but the wind had lost its intensity. From time to time fingers of pale washed-out sunlight broke through the grey clouds.  

 

Mr Cattermole had raised his eyes to the heavens when Hannalore had told him that she could not ride. She explained that the women in the settlement stayed close to home and this meant that they had no need to learn.

 

‘Now that everything is changing are you willing to give it a go?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Let’s get moving.’

 

Hannalore assisted him to catch and saddle up the lead horse. She helped him to load their belongings into the two saddle bags on the pack horse. Mr Cattermole was puzzled. She handled the horses and the tack like an expert. He wondered if she had lied to him about her inability to ride but kept his thoughts to himself.

 

Moving Juno proved to be difficult. She lay on the floor of the hut with Jacka in her arms refusing to budge. She said that she had found this little house all by herself and she wanted to stay.

 

In the end it was the dog that saved the day. He stood up and walked to the doorway then turned and faced Juno. She was still clinging to the comfort of the bed roll. He fixed his eyes on hers. The brown eye receded back into his skull while the blue eye seemed to enlarge and glow. He moved towards her in slow motion, lifting each leg with deliberation, keeping his body low to the ground. Juno rose up from the floor without making any further complaint. He gently shepherded her outside to where the horses were waiting.

 

Mr Cattermole gave Hannalore a leg up into the saddle on the lead horse and adjusted the stirrups. ‘No reins today,’ he said. ‘No bridle either. I need to walk in front of the horse and that means I have to use a halter.’

 

He hoisted Juno up onto the horse and told her to hang on to the front of the saddle. ‘Just as well you are both small nippers,’ he said. 

 

He took hold of the lead rope attached to the halter and clicked his tongue. The horse, burdened with the weight of two passengers, began to walk slowly with the old mare Ruby plodding along some distance behind him. 

 

The raupo hut receded into the distance. Hannalore allowed herself a backward glance. The hut seemed diminished, half fallen, in spite of the work that had been done to restore it. She thought she saw a wisp of smoke rising up from the chimney but she blinked once and it was gone.

 

Something seized her throat and tongue but when she tried to control it, all she could feel was the rhythmic rise and fall of the horse beneath her body and the terror of unspoken words that she could not, must not, ever try to understand.