The solitary call came again, but still there was no answer. If only she could howl too, scream at the unfairness of life.
But Michael might hear, and it would worry him. Darling Michael. She was so blessed to have him to go back to, warm and safe and strong, while the dingo must howl alone.
Finally she felt clean enough to walk back to the house to her husband and her sons.
Chapter 7
Do Ya Think He’s Sexy?
Rod Stewart Wooing Down Under
British superstar Rod Stewart is in Australia on his Blondes Have More Fun tour, and getting a hot welcome too. At this stage he’s only playing in all the major Australian cities, but if we ask nicely, he might just preform in Gibber’s Creek . . .
FISH
‘A nice long bicycle ride? That’s a fine idea,’ said Joseph heartily the next morning, displaying exactly the sort of relief Fish had expected. Fish knew the Greats spent each morning sitting with Sam at the hospital. Had they been afraid that she would want to come too, or that their time with their son would be eroded by having to find something for her to do?
Joseph was eating muesli, on account of his high cholesterol, but Great-Aunt Mah had made her and Gran omelettes stuffed with mushrooms and parsley and other green stuff Fish didn’t know but liked. Mum had not rung, nor was there any news of Dad, but at least she had a brill breakfast and something real to do today, and the Greats could continue their own lives without bothering about her.
‘I’ll pack you a lunch if you like,’ said Great-Aunt Blue, only slightly too eagerly.
‘Thank you,’ said Fish politely, spreading plum jam on toast. The food here was totally fab. Mum wasn’t much of a cook, and she and her friends were always on a diet of some kind and expecting Fish to be on one too, like half the girls at school. Or maybe all of them. At least Dad’s meals had been delicious, even if it wasn’t Australian food, even if he didn’t like Australian food, like toast and Vegemite. He’d even been condescending in a nice sort of way about Gran’s roast lamb . . .
‘Don’t forget to wear your boots,’ said Blue.
Fish shoved the pain from thinking about Dad away. ‘I don’t have any. Why do I need boots?’
‘Snakes. You need footwear that goes up over your ankles. Mah’s boots should fit you.’
‘Are there many snakes around here?’ Fish asked carefully.
‘Browns and copperheads and red-bellied blacks, and tiger snakes if you head up into the hills. And pythons, of course, but they aren’t venomous,’ said Joseph.
‘We had a python living in the roof for a few years,’ added Mah. ‘I’m a size seven. That okay?’
‘In the roof?’ Fish inspected the ceiling for fangs. ‘Yes, I’m a size seven too,’ she added.
‘Did a great job keeping the rats under control. No possums either while the python was up there. Haven’t seen it for ten years or so though,’ said Great-Aunt Mah regretfully.
‘Can snakes bite you on a bicycle?’
‘My word, yes. They can rise right up to strike. But only the browns are really aggressive around here at this time of year.’
‘Are there lots of browns?’
‘Yes. Don’t worry, they can’t bite through boots and thick jeans.’ Great-Uncle Joseph looked out the kitchen window at the trees and trickling creek. The snake-infested trees and creek . . . ‘Lovely day for a ride. You’ll enjoy it.’
Fish silently vowed never to go off the bitumen. At least she could see the snakes there. Or were black snakes camouflaged on black bitumen like the soldiers’ uniforms had been in the Vietnam jungle?
‘Is there anything else dangerous here?’ she asked casually.
‘I told you about the funnel-webs,’ said Gran. ‘Not quite as deadly as the Sydney ones, but closely related.’
‘And scorpions — but you hardly ever see them,’ Great-Aunt Mah reassured her.
Joseph laughed. ‘The most dangerous animal anywhere is the mosquito.’
Fish looked at him in alarm. ‘Malaria? Here?’
‘No. But there’s Murray Valley encephalitis — we had a case just last year — and that Barmah Forest virus CSIRO have just identified.’
Neither of which she had ever heard of. She’d have to find a library and look them up, or maybe in one of the medical books in the living room. But not right now. Fish carefully forced her mind away from deadly wildlife. ‘So town is to the right once I get to the proper road, and Drinkwater, then Dribble, then Overflow to the left?’
‘That’s it,’ said Great-Aunt Blue. ‘The road’s pretty level — Broccoli Bill bicycles up it every week with his vegetables. There’s a turn-off to a billabong a few miles past the Drinkwater front gate.’ Fish automatically translated ‘a few miles’ into kilometres. Old people never seemed to have noticed the country had gone metric more than a decade ago. ‘You might like to picnic there. It’s beautiful, by the river.’
‘Haunted,’ said Great-Aunt Mah, reaching for the jam.
‘Mah, of course it isn’t.’
‘Of course it is! At least six people have heard Matilda’s ghost there —’
‘After a long night at the pub, stopping to drink a few last stubbies by the river.’
‘What about the Harrison girl?’
‘Just an excuse to stop young Hamish going too far.’
‘You’ll like the billabong,’ said Joseph firmly.
‘I’m sure it’s lovely,’ said Fish. And snake infested. Snakes ate frogs, didn’t they? A billabong would be full of frogs. And mosquitoes. And possibly scorpions too.
She had no intention of visiting it. Fish knew exactly where she was going today, and it wasn’t for a picnic.
Chapter 8
Australian Crew to Overtake Boat People in Bigger Boat
Fatima International, a Catholic aid organisation, have bought a large boat called the Tung Ni. But although bought for love, this won’t be TV’s Love Boat, and its crew won’t be swigging Blue Lagoons and scoffing prawn cocktales. Instead the Bung Ni has been bought to find refugees in unseaworthy boats, pick them up and make sure they’re medical needs are attended to. Because they are not allowed to bring them back to Australia, the crew will drop the refugees off in the New Hebrides. (Note to Editor: where is this pls?)
FISH
Heat shimmered above the bitumen as Fish bicycled down the road between the paddocks. This was much easier riding than the slopes of St Lucia back in Brisbane.
There was the Drinkwater homestead, its neat, rectangular paddocks like a Cubist artist had painted them, and yes, that must be the track that led to the billabong. Fish rounded the corner and saw a roughly painted sign on the gatepost: Dribble. Abandon irrational preconceptions all ye who enter here.
Fish suspected she’d like someone who’d make a sign like that. Jed?
The lawn was as shaggy as a sheep and much the same tan colour. The car in the carport looked dusty, the windscreen splattered with dead moths, and the roof covered with white drips from a muddy bird’s nest in the rafters above it. A ramp led up to a white-painted veranda (boring) and front door. Fish heard a child wail as she knocked.
A dog barked. Footsteps pattered away from the door, not towards it. The dog barked again, as if irritated that its warning hadn’t been heeded. The crying changed tone, but didn’t stop. Fish knocked again.
More footsteps, towards the door this time, as if the occupant had realised you couldn’t pretend not to be home with a baby yelling.
The door opened. A scent of soaking nappies and the disinfectant stuff they had to be soaked in, and all the other odours of a house that was too closed up, though not exactly dirty.
‘Yes?’ The person in the doorway stared at her, or at least at her pink hair.
So this was Jed McAlpine-Kelly, the one who coped so wonderfully with everything, including her husband in a coma. Thin, white faced, barefoot in jeans that were too big for her and a faded man’s shirt that fell to her knees. The baby held against her shoulder in
creased her howling. A grey-jowled Doberman stood by Jed’s legs, watchful, as if deciding whether to bark at Fish, or bite.
Add dogs to the ‘dangerous’ list, thought Fish.
‘I’m Fish,’ she said quickly, before the dog decided to attack. ‘Your cousin once removed by marriage. I’m staying with the McAlpines.’
‘Yes?’ asked Jed again. Both tone and stance said, ‘Go away.’
‘Um, can I come in?’
‘I’m sorry, I’m working.’ The baby grabbed Jed’s hair and howled even louder, as if to prove this wasn’t so.
‘Please,’ said Fish.
Jed stared at her. ‘Why do you want to come in?’
‘Um, because I don’t believe in irrational preconceptions?’
‘Look,’ began Jed angrily, then stopped as the baby’s wails changed from frustration to pure distress.
And suddenly it was impossible not to speak. Jed McAlpine-Kelly was not ‘managing wonderfully’. She was not coping at all. The world would feel crooked until the truth was made whole.
‘You need help,’ said Fish simply.
‘I . . . I’m fine.’ But the voice now was admitting to herself how far she was from being fine.
I said the right thing, thought Fish with relief. Not the normal thing or the tactful thing, but the right thing.
And the dog knew it too. It butted its head against Fish’s knees, asking to be scratched behind the ears. Fish obliged.
‘Let me take the baby,’ Fish suggested. Fish liked babies. Babysitting paid for all the art equipment she needed. ‘Her name’s Mattie, isn’t it?’
‘She’ll just cry harder,’ said Jed desperately. But Fish was already reaching out for her.
The baby yelled at Fish, then stopped suddenly. She stared at Fish’s hair and then her face. ‘Book?’ she enquired calmly.
‘That’s . . . incredible,’ said Jed shakily.
Fish shrugged. ‘Babies think I’m strange. I am strange. They’re curious.’ She let Mattie grab her finger and begin to chew it, then brushed past the stunned Jed down the hall into the kitchen and looked around.
No paintings on the wall, and walls a bland cream. Washing-up in the sink. Not much: a coffee mug, a plate, a baby’s Peter Rabbit bowl, some spoons. Two buckets of nappies soaking and none, Fish noted, on the line outside. She looked back at the woman. Jed’s eyes were sunk into her head with weariness and pain.
‘What did you have for breakfast?’ asked Fish.
‘That is none of your business.’ The edge of anger was better than the numbness Fish had heard before.
‘Did you even eat breakfast?’ I sound like Gran, thought Fish. That’s what Gran had asked the first morning at her place. And Gran had been right. The world had looked . . . bearable . . . when she’d had breakfast. Fish suspected that the only thing still linking Jed to the world was her daughter, a child who was probably picking up her mother’s anguish.
She opened the fridge, still jiggling Mattie on her hip. Two bananas, an avocado and a sweet potato. Food for a child beginning to eat solids; nothing for her mother. There wasn’t even any milk for tea.
‘You need to eat,’ said Fish.
‘I’m fine. And if one more person gives me a casserole, I’ll scream.’
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What’s so bad about people giving you casseroles?’
‘Because no pot of apricot chicken is going to give me my husband back,’ said Jed sharply.
‘But food will make you feel better, and you’re obviously not eating enough. I’ll ring Great-Aunt Blue,’ said Fish, closing the door.
‘No!’
‘Why not?’ One thing the Greats were excellent at was feeding people.
‘Because . . . because it’ll hurt Blue to be here,’ said Jed miserably. ‘This is where Sam . . . Sam isn’t.’
‘It won’t hurt her,’ said Fish as Mattie tugged a chunk of pink hair, crowing in delight. ‘It’ll comfort her to be where he was happy. She wants to be with you and Mattie. You’re making her even more unhappy by keeping her away. You haven’t really been writing, have you?’ Fish held her breath, hoping that by some miracle telling the truth again had been the right thing to do.
‘Oh,’ said Jed. She sat numbly on one of the shabby kitchen chairs. ‘I . . . I didn’t know. I didn’t think.’ She blinked at Fish, visibly wondering exactly how Fish had managed to see reality so clearly and so quickly.
Fish was used to that. Her own despair lifted slightly. Maybe . . . maybe if she could help Jed and find the murderer, then maybe she wasn’t a waste of space.
‘I haven’t been writing,’ whispered Jed. ‘I keep promising that I’ll have the rewrite done soon, but every time I look at it I think of Sam, just lying there, of all I never said to him when he could hear me. My brain seems to have turned into cotton wool.’
‘Maybe it’s just too full to let you think about your book. The Greats can bring lunch, then mind Mattie while you and I go for a walk,’ Fish suggested. She needed to talk to Jed McAlpine-Kelly about Sam. That might be much harder than getting her to eat. She suddenly remembered the snakes.
Jed blinked again. ‘Why do we need to go for a walk?’
‘To talk about Sam where his mum and aunt can’t hear. I bet you haven’t talked to anyone about Sam since his accident.’ Fish held her breath.
‘I’ve talked and talked. Doctors, nurses, that neurologist Joseph brought down from Sydney —’
‘Not about his medical condition. About him.’
Silence. The baby tried to suck on a handful of Fish’s pink hair. Fish gently removed her hand.
‘How did you know I need to talk about Sam?’ asked Jed at last.
Truth mattered. ‘I didn’t, till you just told me. I wanted to talk about him. But I’m glad you do too.’
‘Okay,’ said Jed slowly. ‘We’ll talk. Where do you want to walk to?’
‘The billabong,’ said Fish in relief, that being the only place she knew to walk to around here. ‘Um . . . are there any snakes there?’
‘Yes.’ Was that a ghost of a smile?
‘Many?’
‘Yep.’
Fish hesitated. She could suggest a bike ride on the bitumen, but you couldn’t talk on a bike. Or not easily.
Jed held her arms out for Mattie. ‘I’d better feed her if Blue is going to babysit. Don’t worry, I can show you how to tell if there’s a snake around.’
‘Really?’ Fish looked at the young woman in front of her, unbuttoning the shirt. But the claim had the feel of truth.
‘Okay,’ Fish said more confidently. ‘We’ll walk to the billabong.’ She headed out to the phone in the corridor.
‘You remind me of someone,’ said Jed’s voice behind her.
Fish turned. ‘Who?’ she asked curiously. She had always assumed she was unique.
‘Me, ten years ago,’ said Jed. And for the first time she looked as if she was truly present in the room.
Chapter 9
Baa-baa Goes Boom!
It looks as though someone’s spinning wool into glod, at least according to the market this week. At this week’s woool auction a whopping 125,486 bales went for a cool $43.22 million — the highest price it’s fetched since 1974. All the wool was bought at the action. There wasn’t a skerrick of a skein left by the close of business.
FISH
Blue and Mah arrived forty minutes later with a box full of Tupperware containers: frozen casseroles, banana muffins, plus a spinach quiche and apple pie both still warm from the oven, with a bowl of salad, with dressing in an old Vegemite jar, and a tub of ice cream wrapped in wet newspaper. Joseph had presumably been left behind to talk to his sister in private. Excellent, thought Fish.
Ten minutes later the table was set, and everyone was eating quiche and salad. Jed reluctantly at first and then as if she was starving, while Mattie sat on Blue’s lap and chewed her car keys as well as pieces of quiche and stewed apple, in between gigg
ling games of boo that delighted both her and her grandmother more than any other event in human history. For the first time since Fish had arrived, her great-aunt seemed truly happy.
Two helpings of apple pie and ice cream later, Jed stopped eating. So did Fish. Blue shooed them out the door, with Fish’s packed lunch and muffins ‘in case you need a snack’, Mattie still gurgling on her hip. The dog stood in the doorway, torn between a walk and guarding the puppy, and also possibly leftovers. Leftovers and the puppy won.
‘Why does Mattie cry with me and not with you and Blue?’ asked Jed shakily as they walked through the dusty garden, Fish keeping a wary eye out for snakes or potentially savage sheep.
‘Well, we’re a novelty,’ Fish said, being kind, and then more tentatively, ‘and because she knows you’re upset. So she’s upset too.’
Jed looked stricken. ‘I thought I was looking after her okay.’
‘You are,’ said Fish quickly, though she wondered what effect so many hours spent in a hospital room with a grieving mother might have on a child. But even she could see that this wasn’t the time to point that out. Jed needed to feel better, not worse. She looked down the hill to the river, flowing docilely between its banks. ‘Which way to the billabong? Do we need to go back to the road to get there?’
Jed looked at her warily. ‘Why do you want to go there?’
And why are you so guarded? wondered Fish. ‘I don’t particularly. But Great-Uncle Joseph said I should see it. It’s a local beauty spot, isn’t it?’ Not that she liked beauty spots. ‘Pretty’ had never worked for her.
‘I . . . I haven’t been there since the fire,’ said Jed slowly. ‘It’s been a special place for me ever since I came to Gibber’s Creek. I didn’t want to see it with burned trees.’
Fish said nothing. But Jed seemed to hear what she’d have said anyway.
‘Yes,’ said Jed. ‘I need to face it. Life does look different after food,’ she added. ‘I should have remembered that.’
They began to walk. Fish looked cautiously at the tussocks. ‘Snakes?’ she reminded Jed.
The Last Dingo Summer Page 6
