The Last Dingo Summer

by Jackie French

  ‘What’s to explain?’ She wheeled herself into her bedroom, dumped her bag, wheeled back and hauled one of Leafsong’s pumpkin and Camembert quiches from the freezer. Dinner for one, she thought, putting the oven on low to thaw and heat it. Cinderella’s pumpkin coach is now chopped up and the handsome prince no longer wanted . . .

  The handsome prince gazed at her from the sofa as she checked the fridge’s contents. ‘I haven’t moved in with Barbara.’

  ‘Well, you can’t, can you?’ Barbara lived with her parents. ‘I don’t really care where you’re living now.’ Which was not quite true.

  ‘Scarlett, Barbara was just sex. Only twice, and it didn’t mean anything. Or not to me,’ he added honestly.

  ‘You’ve known me long enough by now to know that you using a woman who likes you for sex — even if she’s a woman I don’t much like — is not going to recommend you to me. “Only twice” or not.’ Scarlett hadn’t known she could be so hot on the inside but sound so calm. ‘And that isn’t even the real problem.’

  ‘Truly. I do love you.’

  ‘You love my unit, having your food bought and cooked for you, and having Olivia do the housework. She even changes your damn sheets each week.’

  He stared. ‘You could have asked me to change my own sheets. Or do the housework.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have had to!’ And she had been too afraid of losing him to ask.

  Alex shook his head. ‘Can’t you see the sex wasn’t important?’

  ‘No, I bloody can’t.’ Scarlett had never sworn before.

  ‘Scarlett, this is the Age of Aquarius. All that monogamy and nuclear family stuff —’

  ‘I like monogamy.’ Not that she’d had a chance to try it. ‘It’s not that you slept with Barbara. Or half of bloody Sydney for that matter. Not just that anyway. It’s that you never slept with me. And don’t give me that might-hurt-you business. You know enough anatomy to know you wouldn’t have.’

  He hesitated. ‘Consciously, yes. Subconsciously?’

  There was something he was not saying. Probably because, yes, he did love her. But he was not attracted to her physically, either because she was a cripple, or looked too small and childlike, or . . . or who knew what else. And she had known it. Deep down had always known it. Even that magic dance had really been giving ‘poor little Scarlett’, who had never danced before, a treat, not the start of the physical relationship she longed for. It still felt like a knife had sliced her in half. Cripple, cripple, cripple. Even Alex . . .

  ‘Well, there we are then.’ Her hands trembled as she put the kettle on, grabbed a mug and a teabag.

  ‘Scarlett . . .’ Alex loomed behind her. For a moment she was nervous, unsure of him in this mood, then his lips came down on hers. Warm, moving, tentative at first, then firmer. His hands stroked her arms. ‘Let’s try,’ he whispered.

  She almost let him. The kiss was sweet, her body ached, and he was the most beautiful man she had ever met and, yes, she had loved him . . .

  Had, she realised. Because once respect was gone, love vanished too.

  She pulled away. ‘No.’

  ‘Scarlett . . .’ He lowered his mouth to hers again. She turned her head, shoved him, then, when he didn’t move, pressed the motor switch on the chair, unused for months. It jerked forwards.

  ‘Ow! That was my knees.’

  ‘It’ll be more than your knees if you don’t get out. Now.’

  ‘But, Scarlett . . .’

  I want more than ‘let’s try’, she thought. I want a bloke so mad with passion he can’t see straight. Someone who doesn’t think being in a wheelchair or on crutches some of the time defines me. Jed said she never thought of me as crippled. I bet Nancy and Michael and Leafsong don’t either, because I’m not. Even when I couldn’t feed myself, I was just me, and I always will be, in a wheelchair or not. And if I wasn’t in a wheelchair — had never fought my way to the freedom of being in a wheelchair — I’d never have grown the strength and determination Alex loves.

  And Alex could not see it. She did not want a man who couldn’t see beyond the wheelchair, see how the wheelchair had created the woman who would not be held back by it, this handsome man who probably subconsciously expected similar conventional beauty in his partners.

  ‘If you leave now, we can meet and exchange pleasantries about dissecting corpses and the epidemiology of the herpes simplex virus. If you don’t, I’m going to call triple zero and get the police to put you out.’

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ he said uncertainly. And then, ‘You would?’

  ‘Of course I would.’

  ‘I’ll go. But could we try again sometime? Please?’

  ‘No.’ It was done. A hundred small irritations had built up — not just the sheets, or helping himself to her money or expecting dinner to be prepared for him, but the casual expectation that someone else would provide for him.

  Alex was the only person she knew who had never worked. Even the twins at Overflow fed the poddy lambs each morning before the school bus. Alex had never even had a part-time job.

  He loves me, she thought. I am lovable. And yes, in a way, I love him still. But I will never love him that way again.

  Nonetheless, because love was love and she had loved him, and was suddenly deeply sorry for all he wasn’t and probably never would be, she said, ‘Would you like some dinner before you go? Quiche and salad, with ice cream and stewed peaches after. But that’s all. Then you go.’

  The smile broke through, the gorgeous, dark-eyed movie-star smile. ‘Yes. Thank you. I’ll set the table.’

  He had never set the table before. Was he hoping she might change her mind? She watched him, vaguely sad but mostly feeling free. No more Alex. No more desperate need to prove she could be loved either.

  Suddenly she had no wish for love, not that kind of love, not now, when Jed needed her, and university was so interesting, and a few more months of exercise might mean she could actually walk unassisted, at least on level surfaces and away from crowds. But later, yes, she wanted love. Finally she had no doubt that it would come.

  She turned around to get a lettuce and tomatoes from the fridge.

  Chapter 53

  It’s Zucchini Time by Broccoli Bill Smith

  Sweet and Sour Zucchini

  Ingredients: 10 small zucchini, 1 bulb garlic, peeled, 1 large onion, 4 tbsp olive oil, 4 tbsp wine vinegar, 3 tbsp water, 1 tbsp sultanas, 1 tbsp pine nuts.

  Sauté chopped onion and garlic in the oil till the onion is soft. Add the finely sliced zucchini and stir for three minutes; add other ingredients except for the pine nuts and simmer for ten minutes. Add the pine nuts and serve hot.

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT RODRIGUES

  It was time to get serious, bring the threads together. Detective Rodrigues was fairly sure he had them all now.

  He leaned on Bill’s workbench. Constable Ryan stood inconspicuously taking notes by the workshop door. He hadn’t told the young man he’d pretty much worked out the case. Too much risk he might warn people.

  ‘So you’re sure Sam McAlpine wasn’t out of your sight the whole drive from Rocky Valley to Dribble?’

  Bill still held the spanner he’d been using on the motorbike repair. ‘Told you before, last time youse were here,’ he said firmly. ‘All of us were together, the whole time.’

  ‘Well, that clears that up.’ Detective Rodrigues nodded to Constable Ryan to put away his notebook. ‘Must have been a hell of a day,’ he added conversationally to Bill.

  Bill sagged a little in relief. ‘Too right. Either of you like a cuppa? Hey, Marg!’ he yelled into the office. ‘Put the billy on. Any banana cake left?’

  Marg muttered something, presumably an affirmative, as Bill wiped the grease from his hands. He sat on one of the old wooden benches and gestured for the other two to do the same. ‘We’d been at it about thirty hours straight. Air was thick with ash. That was one of the reasons we came back over the fire trail. Headlights aren’t much use on a day like that. T
oo dangerous on the highway.’

  ‘Been fighting fires long?’ asked Detective Rodrigues casually.

  ‘Ever since I was twelve. Yeah, I know fires. Know what they’ll do in country like this too. You need to know a place before you can really fight a fire. Ta, love,’ to Marg as she handed him a mug of tea, already sugared, and a quarter-kilo slice of banana cake, then offered tea and cake to the others. ‘But I’ve never seen anything like that. Once in a lifetime, I hope.’

  ‘I hope so too.’ Detective Rodrigues stirred his tea. He took a sip. ‘I heard that Fire Control had ordered you to take the tanker to Sydney.’

  ‘Yeah, well, Tubby told them where they could put it,’ said Bill indignantly. ‘Take the tanker to Sydney when our own town was burning? They need their heads read.’

  Detective Rodrigues nodded sympathetically. ‘Don’t suppose any of them have ever seen a fire like that.’

  ‘Too right. And that wind! We had to stop eight, nine times to chainsaw our way through just to get back. We thought we’d made it when crash, this great walloping tree came down just in front of us just before we got to Dribble. Covered in half-burned wonga vine, it was. That stuff’s murder on a chainsaw. Would’ve taken us an hour at least to cut our way through it.’

  ‘So what did you do?’ asked Detective Rodrigues, even more sympathetically. He glanced at William Ryan to make sure he wasn’t going to signal to the man to watch what he was saying. But for once the young constable was impassive.

  ‘Well, we had two choices, see?’ said Bill earnestly. ‘We could stay there and work our way through it, or try to find our way round it. But if we couldn’t find a way, then we’d have wasted the time we should have spent cutting.’

  ‘So what did you do?’

  ‘We had to think on our feet. That’s what the blokes in Sydney can’t understand,’ said Bill. ‘You can’t just follow procedure in a bushfire. Sam knew Overflow better’n any of us — he’d worked there most holidays since he was a nipper. He took the truck through the paddocks while the rest of us hoed into the tree —’ He stopped, suddenly aware of what he’d been saying.

  ‘Did he find a way through?’ asked Detective Rodrigues quietly.

  Bill glanced at Constable Ryan as if for advice, then nodded helplessly. ‘Yeah. About twenty minutes later. No,’ he added quickly, ‘make that ten. He’d had to cut through two fences . . . but it was no time at all, really. And we could hear the truck the whole time.’

  ‘Even with the wind?’

  ‘Even with the wind,’ said Bill stubbornly.

  Detective Rodrigues stood. ‘Maybe you could show us where the tree came down? And the fences Sam cut?’

  ‘They’ll be repaired by now,’ said Bill swiftly.

  ‘Even so,’ said Detective Rodrigues.

  Constable Ryan’s face was impossible to read.

  Chapter 54

  The Best of Times or the Wurst of Times? Conficting Unemployment Figures Leave Experts Hungry for Answers

  Two federal agencies released conflicting figures about unemployment in Australia this month. The Bureau of Statistics (BS) says unemployment is up by 19,500, alleging the national number is 396,000.

  However the Commonwealth Employment Service has announced that the opposite is true; that the number has fallen by 4,762, taking the unemployed total to 3,388,616.

  If you’re confused, you’re not alone. The Minister for Employment and Industrial Relations, Mr Street, has allowed that the numbers are confusing — ‘the figures are not encouraging’.

  The Leader of the Opposition also acknowledged that the figures were disappointing, suggesting that ‘the government’s economic measures already are proving far more severe than had been anticipated’.

  SCARLETT

  Scarlett heard the phone ring with annoyance. Alex again.

  No one did brooding hero like Alex, tall, dark, handsome and heartbroken. Nor was she prepared to discuss with anyone from uni exactly why she had ordered him out, not with Barbara indignantly telling all and sundry she’d been there all innocently that night . . .

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Jed! What’s happened?’

  ‘Constable Ryan just rang to tip me off. The detective thinks he knows who killed Merv. The inquest isn’t going to be just identification and then an adjournment. I’m going to be called as a witness. You too.’

  ‘Has he arrested anyone?’ Scarlett’s mind scrabbled after the implications.

  ‘No,’ said Jed.

  ‘Why not, if he knows who did it?’ The implication sank in. Sam. Wonderful, helpless Sam, who could not defend himself.

  ‘Scarlett, I’m scared.’

  ‘Me too. Look, I’ll be down as soon as I can. You shouldn’t be by yourself.’

  ‘I’m not. Half the district’s coming to dinner. Carol’s idea, I think. Everyone’s bringing a plate.’

  Scarlett didn’t ask who ‘everyone’ was. ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said.

  Chapter 55

  Correction: Australia’s unemplogment figures should have read 388,616, not 3,388,616. This was a typesitter’s error.

  FISH

  Plates, bowls and platters filled the Dribble tables and benches — potato salad and tabouli, zucchini fritters, vegan sausages (mostly zucchini), sliced rolled shoulder of lamb stuffed with apricots and spiced rice, coleslaw (only partly zucchini), sausage rolls, zucchini cheese bread and much, much more, a continuous rotation on washing up and making cups of tea or brewing pots of coffee.

  Fish filled a plate with falafels and hummus, and beetroot and coriander salad, then took it out to the orchard to eat on one of the blankets spread under the trees.

  The yard was as full of people as the house: the Greats and Nancy and Michael and their sons, a woman called Moira who was some kind of relation too, with half a dozen kids in wheelchairs racing each other along the track and scaring the chooks who’d been hoping for scraps, blokes in beards, women in moleskins or Indian dresses or embroidered overalls, the big girl from the Blue Belle and others she had never seen before. Jed sat under a tree, Mattie on a blanket next to her. People stopped to hug her, comfort her, reassure her. She looked worried, but far from the empty, despairing woman Fish had first met.

  Broccoli Bill strummed a guitar in the shade of another tree. He knew how to play too, not just six chords to accompany bad singing. Fish wondered if he delivered vegetables everywhere around here on his bike. His leg muscles must be like iron.

  Wes sat with a group of people her own age, but he kept looking at her. Fish made sure the blonde wig was straight, hoping he’d come over.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ Gran sat cross-legged next to her, surprisingly limber, a plate piled with cold sliced lamb, a hot jacket potato with sour cream, iceberg lettuce salad and garlic bread.

  Oh, great. No way Wes would come over with Gran here . . .

  ‘Fish, I didn’t want to say this at the house, but if you’d like, I could fly you back home tomorrow. Or you could take a commercial airline from Canberra if you’ve had enough of small planes.’

  ‘I like the Dragon,’ said Fish truthfully. ‘You’d have to fly back by yourself for the inquest on Wednesday.’ Which she wanted to attend, to see if the police had the answers she’d been unable to find. Nor was she quite ready to face Mum yet.

  Gran smiled. ‘I’d have the sky for company.’

  ‘I want to stay for the inquest,’ said Fish. Nor was it just to know who the police believed had done the murder. It would seem silly to say that Jed needed her support, with all the family and friends here tonight. The Greats too were part of a vast interlocking web of love and caring.

  But she had learned this in Gibber’s Creek: a community is made up of individuals, each one making the decision, consciously or not, to take part. She too had made the decision that come what may on Wednesday she would be there, a tiny part of a far greater whole.

  Gran looked at her, evaluating, then finally nodd
ed. Gran was no fool. ‘Good,’ she said. She chewed her lamb in silence for a while. ‘May I give you some advice?’

  Fish smiled. ‘What if I said no?’

  ‘Then I wouldn’t tell you. Unwanted advice may as well be shouted down the drain.’

  ‘Okay. Advise.’

  Gran looked at her seriously. ‘You are your parents’ daughter. Not their friend, despite your mother dragging you to meetings and demonstrations with her. Not their counsellor or guardian. Their relationship, their readjusting to who they are — that’s their problem, not yours. The one great responsibility parents have to their children is to deal with their own emotional tangles and not make their kids help solve them.’

  Fish considered. ‘Does Mum know that?’

  ‘She does now,’ said Gran dryly. ‘I phoned her last night. It’s time someone told that girl some home truths, and who better than her mother?’

  ‘How did Mum take it?’

  ‘Thoughtfully. But it’s really up to you. Don’t get too involved in your parents’ lives. Make them cups of tea, change their nappies maybe when they get ancient —’

  ‘Yuck,’ said Fish, then shrugged. She would if she had to.

  ‘— but let them sort out their own emotional complications. Always remember that it is you who are the child, they who are the parents. Even if they forget sometimes.’

  ‘Are you going to need your nappy changed?’

  ‘Not on your nelly,’ said Gran. ‘I’ll change my own nappies, thank you, or fly into the sunset and vanish with the clouds.’

  Gran was serious, Fish realised. And she was right. If that day ever came, it would be Fish’s job to make a final cup of tea, to say she loved her, to say goodbye, to be the grandchild, not the parent, not the friend.

  ‘I love you,’ she said.

  ‘I love you too, weird and wonderful child that you are.’

  ‘I’m not that young!’

  ‘I’m not that ancient either.’ Gran stood with very little creaking. ‘I’m going to get some pavlova. Like some?’

  ‘Maybe later. Hey, you know something? I’ve only seen a single snake all the time I’ve been here.’