The Last Dingo Summer

by Jackie French

  Jed actually laughed. ‘Listen for the small birds. They hate browns and tiger snakes because they eat eggs and baby birds. They yell a warning call above the snake. If it moves, the birds move too, yelling above it.’

  ‘So there aren’t any red-bellied black snakes here?’

  ‘Lots. They like the river. But mostly they pretend to be a stick unless you sit on them. I’ve only known one that was aggressive.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Ran. People can run faster than snakes can slither, though not faster than they can strike. But it was only passing through. I haven’t seen it again.’

  ‘You mean you know all the snakes around here?’

  Jed hesitated. ‘I used to. Pretty much, anyway — there are always snakes coming through, or young ones. But I haven’t been out much for a while.’

  A good answer, thought Fish, both true and exact. She was beginning to like Jed. ‘What made the billabong special for you?’

  Which was probably a ‘none of your business’ question. But Jed answered anyway.

  ‘I’d had a bad time before I came here. The whole of my life had been bad. I felt as if the world would probably be a better place if I had never existed. I’d almost lost the will to keep on going. But a truckie dropped me off near the billabong, and an old swaggie fed me sausages and made me look at the world again. And it was beautiful,’ said Jed, smiling faintly at the memory. ‘As lovely as today. And with bread and sausages in my stomach, I had the strength to face Matilda, the dragon of Drinkwater, who turned out to be my great-grandmother. And from there things just got better, until Sam . . .’ Her voice died away.

  ‘Why did you fall in love with him? Tell me to shut up if you want to,’ Fish said. ‘I ask too many questions. And tactless ones too.’

  ‘I think maybe that’s a good question,’ said Jed slowly. She glanced over at the river, smiling as if she was seeing something more than the water flowing endlessly along the sand. ‘Sam made me happy. I know that sounds simple, but it’s not. Sam had the strength to do what he loved and he loved everything he did. Even swimming in the river with Sam . . . he’d think of nothing else but the joy of the water and being together. He taught me to feel the same. Not scared of tomorrow or next year, just seeing the beauty of today.’

  ‘Except you’re not doing that now.’ Fish flinched away from something long and black. But when she looked again, it was a stick.

  ‘No,’ said Jed slowly. ‘I’ve been acting more like I was before I came here. Tucking myself away from life because it hurts. I . . . I just can’t face the thought that I’ve lost him. Every day I wake up and hope his face will be next to mine, or his boots outside the back door. Every time I walk into that hospital room I hope . . .’ She paused, then shrugged. ‘I just hope. I need him and can’t have him, and yet he’s still there and it’s not fair. But life isn’t fair. Fair is a human concept, to help us deal with each other. I know it’s irrational to feel betrayed because Sam is . . . is somewhere I can’t reach.’

  ‘Sam is the love of your life?’ asked Fish, carefully stepping over a fallen log in case there was a red-bellied black on the other side.

  Jed snorted. ‘You are far too intelligent to subscribe to clichés like that.’

  She really did like Jed. ‘Then so are you. He isn’t?’

  ‘I’d been in love before,’ said Jed quietly, looking at the river again. ‘I fell out of love too. His name was Nicholas. He’s now preparing to do vet science, and he and his wife are waiting for the birth of their first baby. Felicity had a miscarriage not long before this pregnancy,’ she added, ‘so they are extra anxious. Not that there’s any reason to be.’ She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself of this too. ‘Our love was the shallow kind that was never going to get any deeper. But Sam is — good. It was a slow sort of love that just kept getting richer. He made me totally happy and I kept getting happier too. Then suddenly he was gone.’

  ‘Then you can fall in love again,’ said Fish.

  Jed looked at her in sudden fury. ‘How can you say —?’ She stopped and swung her head to her right, almost as if interrupted. She shook her head, then resolutely gazed at the water glinting between the flame-darkened trees.

  ‘Maybe,’ Jed admitted at last. ‘Emotionally it feels impossible that I could ever love another man. Intellectually . . .’

  ‘George Bernard Shaw says that people who’ve had a happy marriage will want to marry again.’

  ‘George Bernard Shaw lived apart from his wife for almost their entire relationship,’ said Jed dryly. ‘I’m not sure my idea of a happy marriage is the same as his.’

  It was excellent to talk to someone who didn’t think mentioning a dead playwright’s views on marriage was weird. Someone who seemed, miraculously, to have the same deep need for truth as her.

  They walked in silence for a while. ‘I think it’s academic anyway,’ said Jed at last. ‘I love Sam. He’s still the heart of my life.’

  Will he still be, in a year’s time, or even in ten years? thought Fish. She’d heard of people being in comas for years before they died. If Sam McAlpine’s life remained restricted to that hospital bed, would Jed stay anchored to it too?

  But there was a more important issue now. Fish decided to risk it. ‘I want to prove neither you nor Sam could have killed that man,’ she said abruptly.

  Jed didn’t even stop walking. ‘I suspected you did.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Why else come and visit me?’

  ‘I like you,’ said Fish.

  ‘But you hadn’t even met me and didn’t know you would. And you said you wanted to talk about Sam.’ She looked up at the branches, then back at Fish. ‘Sam only matters to the people who love him now, or who think of him as a medical problem. You’re not in either category.’

  ‘Sam matters to the police now too,’ said Fish quietly. ‘They want a nice easy solution for their case.’

  ‘And Sam is an easy target because he can’t defend himself?’ Fish could hear the restrained anger in Jed’s voice.

  ‘Yes. But you can defend him. I can too.’

  ‘Maybe you should have called yourself Shark, not Fish. Here’s the billabong.’

  Fish looked. An uneven pond about the size of a long backyard mirroring the sky, dappled with leaves and floating casuarina needles.

  It wasn’t ‘pretty’, probably hadn’t been even before the fire left scars on the tree trunks and stubby branches shooting out with bushy clumps of green leaves instead of a tall canopy. But it was beautiful.

  The water flickered blue and gold; the river shone silver over a low sandbank. In a strange way the reflected light seemed to go on forever here. Which was stupid because all light kept travelling . . .

  All at once, desperately, Fish wanted to paint this, not the place, but the light and colour. Paint how trees and tussocks and water could lead you to eternity . . .

  And suddenly Jed McAlpine-Kelly was smiling. ‘Pull up a tree,’ she said. ‘Joke,’ she added as she saw Fish didn’t understand. She sat with her back to a broad trunk. Fish lowered herself next to her, with a careful look for red-bellied black snakes, spiders and scorpions. The ground felt warm and, strangely, as comfortable as an armchair.

  They sat in silence. The breeze whispered, muttered, snickered, licking at the perspiration on her face. Fish felt some of the last week’s anguish seep out of her, as if the wind was carrying it away.

  Could you paint wind too? Of course you could, in the movement of the leaves. Maybe one day she could even paint its song . . .

  ‘I used to think there were ghosts here,’ said Jed at last. Her voice almost sounded peaceful.

  ‘Why?’ Surely Jed didn’t think that leaf rustles and river quivers were the echoes of dead people?

  Jed hesitated. ‘I put it in my book, the one I’m supposed to be revising. It was easier to make it fiction than write it as fact. Do you know “Waltzing Matilda”?’

  ‘Of course.�
�

  ‘This is where it happened. The swaggie stole the sheep, but he wasn’t just a swaggie, he was a union organiser, and the sheep was a tame poddy. It was a set-up to try to stop the push for a basic wage and workers’ rights, but it went wrong and he died. And his daughter was there too. Matilda.’

  ‘You mean the song is true?’

  ‘No. The song was a lie, to cover up the truth. But, yes, it’s based on a real event.’

  ‘There’s no daughter in the song.’

  ‘No,’ said Jed. ‘History usually doesn’t mention the women. But they are there. It’s one of the things I’m really writing about, the women history ignores . . .’ She stopped. She had not been writing, of course.

  ‘So the swaggie’s ghost really does haunt the billabong, just like the song says?’ Which was impossible, but Fish was curious.

  Jed hesitated again. She so obviously wanted to say no. ‘No’ was the sensible answer, the sane answer. At last she said, ‘Yes. I think Matilda is here too in some way, and Tommy — her husband, my great-grandfather — and Fred, the swaggie who helped me. Not ghosts as in woo-woo and sheets. I . . . I don’t even really know what a ghost is. Sometimes it feels,’ and again the honesty came hard, ‘like a crack in time I can look through, or walk through. It means a person doesn’t vanish entirely with their death.’

  ‘Will Sam be here when he dies?’ Fish regretted the question the moment she asked it.

  Jed said nothing, did nothing, just sat with her back to the tree and her face to the water. At last she whispered, ‘Maybe.’ Tears ran down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she grinned. ‘Look!’

  Fish looked. A monster stood on the other side of the billabong, a giant fuzzy rock with four tiny legs and small, evil eyes glinting at them as the head bent to drink. She prepared to run. ‘What . . . what is it?’

  ‘Sir Cedric.’ Jed wiped the tears away, then blew her nose. The monster ignored her, still drinking his fill. ‘He’s a feral ram. He’s been on the loose for six years now. No one can catch him.’

  ‘So that’s all wool!’ said Fish, horrified.

  ‘And twigs and leaves and dirt that have been caught in it. Sheep aren’t supposed to be able to survive by themselves — if they had been, Australia would have feral sheep by now, just like we have feral camels. Sheep who don’t get shorn get fly strike or go wool-blind. But sometimes you get one like Sir Cedric . . .’ Jed sounded almost admiring.

  ‘Shouldn’t we try to catch him?’ Fish wondered again if sheep bit humans.

  ‘Be my guest. The best way is to tackle him from behind and grab a hind leg. That way you only get dragged along the ground, not headbutted. No, I’m joking, it’d take at least two people, sheep yards and a dog who really knows what to do if anyone is going to catch Sir Cedric.’

  ‘You like the fact he’s free, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. I think Nancy and Michael secretly admire him too. Other sheep just do what they’re told. A bit like people.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How many people really have the courage to live the kind of life they want? Sir Cedric would be more comfortable shorn every year and in a paddock. He could head back to the paddock any time and be let back in. But this is what he’s chosen.’ Jed looked at the water again, as the afternoon sun sent a sheet of gold flashing across it.

  ‘What about you then? What do you want now?’

  ‘Sam. But I can’t have him, can I? No matter how quietly I try to sneak through reality, he won’t suddenly be there around the corner. I suppose I want a happy life for Mattie. The sort I had for a little while, family and friends and writing and Dribble . . .’

  ‘They’re all still there,’ said Fish at last.

  ‘I know. I . . . I just forgot.’

  More silence. Good silence. The best silence Fish had known since she made such a mess of things at home. Across the water Sir Cedric gave a kind of snort and trotted into the trees, the brown dapples of his matted coat soon hidden in the shadows.

  At last Jed looked at her with eyes full of calm intelligence. ‘I need to live again. Live well. I hadn’t realised how much I’d been failing Mattie, or Blue or other people I love.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Fish. She wasn’t quite sure what Jed meant about ‘living again’, but it sounded better than what she’d been doing lately.

  ‘So how do you think you or anyone else can prove neither Sam nor I had anything to do with Merv’s death?’

  Fish took a deep breath. She had done right speaking honestly to Jed. And if she could solve this one too, then . . . then it meant she was good, not a monster, not cruel and callous and telling only truths that could wound or kill.

  ‘Because other people were murdered too. And you and Sam might have hated Merv, but neither of you is likely to be a mass murderer.’

  Chapter 10

  What a Scream: New News Show Shows Shouting

  If, unlike us here at the Gibber’s Gazette, you prefer your news televised, Chanel Nine has brought out a currant affairs program, called 60 Minutes.

  With well-nown journalists George Negus, Ray Martin and Ian Leslie, the show shows a range of tropical topics affecting society today. The first topic tackled? How to stay sane in these modern times. Accordian to Mr Negus, one in four Aussies suffer from some kind of psyckeriatrick (Note: check spelling) disorder, trying to cope with the ‘rat race’.

  The solution: scream therapy. Some people are spending thousands of dollars on this radical new treatment. The experts here at the Gazette reckon that all you need to do is to go down to the Royal Hotel on Friday night. You’ll see many patrons participating in just such an activity for the low price of a schooner (or five).

  FISH

  ‘Mass murderer?’ asked Jed carefully.

  Fish nodded. ‘A serial killer. The young constable —’

  ‘Will Ryan? He was at school with Scarlett, though a few years ahead of her. He’s nice.’

  ‘Yes, him . . . he let it slip. Great-Uncle Joseph said there were two other bodies, much older, found at the same time. Constable Ryan said there were more.’

  ‘How many?’ demanded Jed.

  ‘The constable didn’t say. I heard the detective tick him off for mentioning it as they left. I think no one is supposed to know.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Fish shrugged. ‘I suppose they don’t want people to panic, thinking there’s a mass murderer on the loose.’

  She watched Jed absorb the news that there had been other victims, not just the man who had tormented her — though she didn’t seem worried about a mass murderer. ‘Isn’t it going to be difficult to find out who murdered these other people if you don’t know who they are?’ she asked at last.

  ‘No,’ said Fish eagerly. ‘When someone disappears, people usually miss them. Especially in a place like this, I think.’

  ‘No one missed Merv. And police will have already looked at missing person records.’

  ‘Merv was a stranger, so he wasn’t missed. And the police haven’t even been asking about the other bodies, so they mustn’t realise that the person who killed them probably killed Merv. I’m going to ask all the old people around here if they remember people who disappeared. If they want to know why I’m asking, I can pretend it’s a history project for school.’

  Jed blinked. ‘I suppose it’s safe enough asking if anyone went missing decades ago.’

  Fish glanced at her. The whole point was that if there were more bodies, there might have been much more recent murders. But Jed was still talking.

  ‘You really think people will answer you?’

  ‘Yes. People do answer if you ask the right questions. But most people are too embarrassed to ask.’

  ‘Possibly with good reason,’ said Jed.

  Fish flushed. ‘I know.’

  ‘Have you asked too many wrong questions lately?’ She turned to look at Fish more closely. ‘You have, haven’t you?’

  ‘Of
ten,’ equivocated Fish.

  ‘I am also very good at telling the truth but not always telling the whole truth,’ said Jed calmly. ‘It takes one to know one. What have you said?’

  Fish was silent.

  ‘Very bad?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Too bad to talk about?’

  Was this what it felt like when she questioned other people? Did they want to run too, just to escape that implacable voice?

  ‘Okay,’ said Jed. ‘Your business.’ She grinned at Fish’s expression. ‘I mean it. You can cross-examine me about my . . . my marriage, query whether or not I’m a mass murderer, but I won’t ask you why you’re here and not at school.’

  ‘The headmistress agreed that I didn’t need to go to school for a while.’

  ‘And you don’t want to?’

  Fish shrugged. Which was easier than explaining that she couldn’t face questions at school, like why she was living with Gran and not with Mum. It had been bad enough suddenly being Vietnamese, a sort of new Australian, not an old one. She was Australian, no matter who her father was . . .

  ‘It’s not as bad as you think, you know,’ said Jed gently.

  ‘You don’t know what it is!’

  ‘But I know what was in my past. Bizarre things. Horrible things. Things I thought would turn anyone who knew about them away from me forever. But they didn’t,’ said Jed softly. ‘Not one single person.’ She stood up. ‘I’d better get back. Mattie needs feeding.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘My breasts ache. Are you really going to ask about missing people?’

  Fish nodded. ‘Unless you think I’ll make things worse.’

  ‘I don’t think things could be worse,’ said Jed frankly. ‘There’s no way I can prove that Sam or I didn’t kill Merv, and people aren’t covering up for us. Who else would want to kill him?’

  ‘A psychopath. Someone who just kills for the feeling it gives them.’

  Jed suddenly looked tired again. ‘At least that makes more sense than me or Sam murdering Merv.’

  They began to walk back. Fish glanced at Jed. At least she seemed to be really seeing the world around her again, watching a small grey bird hop under the bushes. She was intelligent too. So why hadn’t she realised what all this meant?