Doug had gone round to Sel’s place that morning and said he wanted to go for a ride. He had taken his saddle with him, which Sel said looked like it had been cleaned up a treat, maybe oiled not so long ago. Daphne remembered Doug pulling the saddle out from the shed just the week before. It had seemed a bit strange at the time, but Daphne had figured it was part of his healing process, to retain some links with their rural life. He’d muddled around looking for saddle soap then foamed it up and cleaned off the mould that had crept over the saddle. After that he’d gone out and bought a new pot of neat’s-foot oil from the produce store. She’d watched him smooth it over the saddle to make the leather dark and supple again. She hadn’t suspected he’d been planning something.
Sel said Doug had gone out for a ride, but wasn’t sure where, maybe on the old property if he could find a way in. But Daphne knew you couldn’t get into that country anymore, because the gates were all locked.
As soon as Sel was off the phone she rang the police. She was worried there might have been an accident. Doug could have taken a fall or crashed the truck. The police were helpful, but said maybe Doug was still on his way home, and that she should call them later if he didn’t show up. Daphne sat tight in the lounge room and watched the news play out, but she didn’t hear a thing. On the kitchen bench, the steaks were waiting. At eight o’clock she put them back in the fridge.
Another hour dragged by, and Daphne was exploding with tension. Nine o’clock came and she couldn’t wait any longer. She decided to go out to the old farm and find him herself. She rang Pam, who wanted to come too, but a great urgency had planted itself in Daphne’s chest and she couldn’t delay. She took a coat, hat and torch and plunged into the night.
The road to the valley was dark and quiet, not another car passed her by; she was alone with the halo of her headlights shining on the branches of the roadside trees that reached eerily overhead. She began to wish she had waited for Pam; the night had become huge with dreadful possibilities. She kept returning to Doug’s strangely elated mood that morning, and she wondered what he had been thinking. She hadn’t thought to check the gun cupboard before she left. What if he had decided to remove himself the same way he finished off the sick dog? But she didn’t think he was the sort to shoot himself. And yet how well did she really know this changed man who was her husband? Before they came to the city, she thought she knew him, but he had evolved into someone else. She didn’t understand the new darkness that he wore inside him like a cave, and it frightened her to consider that he might have hurt himself. She wanted him home and safe.
As she neared the valley, turning off the main road, the tightness in her throat increased. She rattled the car over the cattle grid into the park, winding through the shadowy forest and dodging a wallaby that leapt onto the road, dazzled by the headlights. At the entry track to the old homestead, she found the gate open, the chain snipped by bolt-cutters. She drove through the gateway and followed the track downhill, kangaroos bouncing out of her way like crazy wind-up toys. Straining to see ahead, she could just make out the shadowy silhouette of the homestead. Then down by the yards, her car headlights illuminated another shape—a large hulking shadow. Closer, she could see the reflection of tail-lights: Sel’s truck.
She pulled up and swung out of her car. It was dark, quiet, nobody around. Wind sang in the grass and, out across the valley, a kangaroo barked. She cast the beam of her torch into the night, but it penetrated no more than five metres and all she could see were two rabbits bopping among the tussocks. She figured Doug must have ridden out from here, and she peered into the blackness as if expecting that he and the horse might suddenly loom from obscurity. She cooeed and hallooed, waiting for a reply. But all that came back were echoes, faint sounds bouncing from the boulders on the ridge.
The search began the next day. Parks and SES vehicles headed up into the wilderness, and people in fluoro-orange overalls combed the valley while helicopters buzzed over peaks. Near the homestead, Daphne waited with the director of operations and Pam and Pam’s new boyfriend Ray, who had kindly come along in support. It seemed many hours elapsed before Sel’s horse was found up high near Mount Bimberi, the saddle still on its back, skewed but intact. A stirrup was missing. And so was Doug.
The SES troops shifted the focus of their search to higher country where they raked the high tops and alpine meadows, the crooked snow-gum forests, walking in formation across the landscape, seeking evidence, looking for something, anything. But the day passed into night, and there was still no Doug. As each hour ticked itself off, an awful clarity settled in Daphne’s mind. She was certain he was dead, that he had wandered off into his country as he had always wanted to.
Three days into the search, the missing stirrup was found near a pile of granite slabs. The search crew scoured the area, but Doug was never found. After a week, the search was called off. Doug was declared missing, presumed dead. Over time, the stirrup found its way into Daphne’s box of special mementos along with the stockwhip and Gordon’s jumper and the stone artefact.
‘Do you think it was an accident?’ Abby asks.
It’s a good question, Daphne thinks, but how can they ever know? The police are asking this too, and the forensic scientists who have been poring over Doug’s skull, searching for clues. Did he fall from the horse, or did he attempt to ride over a cliff? Apparently the early findings show evidence of trauma, a crush fracture over the temporal region, and it doesn’t look like foul play, possibly blunt contact with a rock during a fall. There are plenty of rocks up in the mountains, Daphne thinks, and whatever the final report summary comes up with, she is sure Doug went out there to die. He gave himself to his country, offered his bones to the skies.
She explains this to Abby, who nods in understanding.
‘They asked me what I want to do with the skull when they’ve finished with it,’ Daphne says, ‘and I told them I want to have it cremated.’
‘No more skull collections?’ Abby says with a guilty smile.
‘No more skull collections,’ Daphne says. ‘There’s somewhere I’d like to spread his ashes.’
‘Can I take you there after the operation?’ Abby asks.
Daphne nods. ‘My family has a small cemetery, hidden in the hills.’
36
A scattered flock of chickens is pecking its way along the roadside verge, oblivious to the fast-spinning traffic that whooshes past. There are about ten Rhode Island Reds, russet-feathered, with their fluffy bottoms up, fossicking for fallen seeds among the slashed dry grass. Daphne sees them on her way to hospital for her operation. The chickens have never been here before, and their presence seems like an omen—life continuing, despite the mountain that stands before her. They have given themselves over to fate too; if one of them strays onto the road it will be squashed. Perhaps she should follow their philosophy: if the chooks aren’t worried about their future, neither should she be.
She wonders if the chickens may have been here previously without her noticing them. It’s certainly possible; this past week she has been noticing many things she normally overlooks in the rhythm of daily life. Yesterday she sat outside for an hour and listened to birds in the garden: wattlebirds clacking, magpies warbling, rosellas chiming. She watched as the birds fed and drifted between bushes and trees—tiny little wrens hopping among shrubs, currawongs flapping across the sky. And the clouds were amazing: fine shreds of cotton skidding across a backdrop of pale blue.
It’s a pity this sense of immediacy and awareness can’t be preserved in pretty bottles to be sniffed in small quantities like perfume, she thinks. Her new-found alertness is probably due to the approach of her surgery. It’s no secret she might die—the surgeon said as much, and she’s old for this kind of thing. If all goes well, she may still have a few good years left in her, but she also has to consider that this might be it. When they administer her anaesthetic tomorrow, her life may end. It’s a levelling thought. Every waking moment seems deliciously poignant.
Eventually Pam appears, hurrying along the footpath. She grabs the handle of Daphne’s suitcase and makes a charge for the door. Daphne follows more sedately. Poor Pam has been very fluttery and nervous these past days. She’s put all child-minding on hold and has been so attentive Daphne almost wants to bat her away.
When they find the designated ward, a friendly nurse shows them to a private room which is like a ship’s cabin: all slick linoleum and clean surfaces and a bathroom too small to swing a cat in. It’s more than adequate, and Daphne is happy not to have to share. At her age, she prefers to tend to bodily functions alone and without witness.
Pam inspects the room and organises Daphne’s things into drawers. She explains to Daphne how to use the TV remote control, as if Daphne has never encountered one before. It astounds Daphne how infirmity in the aged brings out the patronising streak in others, as if being old means you lose flexibility in your brain as well as in your joints. While Pam explores the bathroom, Daphne sorts the remaining items in her bag: a crossword book and pen, her glasses, a dictionary and a novel. She figures there will be time for sitting and contemplating on her own. Pam might intend to stay, but she will soon become bored, so Daphne is armed for the filling of space once Pam departs.
The afternoon is punctuated by visits from a string of nurses requiring information and signatures, or blood for tests. Pam seems to be reassured that Daphne’s facts and figures are checked and cross-checked many times, but Daphne loses count of how many times someone takes her blood pressure. A new individual from a rotating shift of nurses comes every hour to check on her. They come during the night as well, and it’s most disruptive, not at all restful.
Once Pam is gone, Daphne pads out time reading and watching TV, but there’s nothing interesting on the box, despite the fifty-something channels. And there’s no view from the window either. A private room is more like solitary confinement, she decides. The woman next door seems to live on the telephone into which she shouts as if she’s trying to speak to someone in the street. She can’t be very ill if she has all that energy for talking.
Pam returns in the morning to sit with Daphne till she’s taken away for surgery, but she’s not much use as company. She pads around the room, tidying, and looking nervously out the window until Daphne tells her to sit down. Then she perches on the edge of a vinyl chair and pokes a finger at her bun. ‘It’s quiet at home without you,’ she says.
Daphne looks pityingly at her daughter. Surely Ben wins the prize for racket.
‘You’ll be all right,’ Pam says, leaning forward to grip Daphne’s arm too tight.
Daphne pats Pam’s hand. ‘Yes, I’ll be fine.’ It’s ironic that she is sitting here reassuring her daughter when she is the one going under the knife.
‘Are you scared?’ Pam asks.
‘No,’ Daphne says . . . although that is not what the nurses tell her—they say her blood pressure has climbed today. Even though she feels a degree of outer calm, inside she must be doing back-flips. But there’s not much she can do about it now. She has signed all the forms and passed all the tests. The surgeon and anaesthetist both visited this morning and they will be waiting for her when the time comes. She has to put her trust in their hands.
She smiles at Pam and gently strokes her daughter’s hand. ‘You’re so good to me,’ she says, hoping this conveys everything she wants it to.
Pam squeezes her hand and Daphne sees bright tears welling in her eyes.
They sit together for a while, holding hands and saying nothing until the nurse comes in to check Daphne’s blood pressure again. Not long after, they help Daphne into a wheelchair and cart her away.
Daphne is riding in the wind. She is racing up the valley, Doug close behind. The horses’ hooves slash the ground. They lurch over tussocks, flounder through bogs. Daphne looks back and sees Doug’s beard pressed flat by rushing air. His teeth show white through the bushy mass of hair.
The image fades and then she sees his face again, this time twisted with grief. She is held tight to his chest. They are clutching each other, weeping for Gordon. The two of them are broken—they have holes in their hearts where Gordon has been torn out. They will stitch themselves together but they will never be the same.
Doug disappears and lovely dark-skinned Johnny Button is there, beckoning. He is on the mountain tops in the swirling shifting mist. He is pointing to the rock slabs, the rough walls of granite where the moths live. A Bogong moth wafts its wings in his hand. Daphne sees her two stones from the rock shelter: one white and round, the other sharp and black.
Then fog descends. Doug is wandering on horseback through the forest. He weaves among snow gums, reins hitched in one hand, the horse moving beneath him. Higher he rides, and higher, into cloud. She sees his shape fading—man and horse merging with the fog.
Now she sees water flowing through the hills. It begins in high alpine meadows, trickling from soaks and pools and thick boggy ground, then merging with other trickles to become rivulets that gurgle downhill along the path of least resistance. Rivulets meet, becoming creeks and then streams. The water flows, clear and sweet. It gushes down gullies, diving over rocks, plunging through cracks, surging, eddying. Lower, it widens and slows, becoming a lazy river as it wends through a valley. Then it picks up again, gaining momentum, suddenly losing altitude, meshing with another watercourse.
Rain falls, seething from the sky, splashing off rocks and the silvery skin of the stream, swelling its flanks. Ahead there is a bridge. The stream gathers to charge underneath, but there is a man on a horse pushing cattle across. He is barking at the dogs and the beasts, hustling them as fast as he can. On the bridge, the horse skitters, swings its rump into the needling rain. The man swears, slaps the horse’s sides with the handle of his whip. The tetchy horse rears and jerks, jagging at the bit. Its hooves bite into the wet boards of the bridge, skating, slipping. The man cries out as the horse slams down, crushing him. Then the man is still, his face slack and ashen. The horse thrusts its legs astride and lurches up, standing on the man, heaving him sideways, and the limp body tilts over the edge of the bridge, hovers for a suspended moment, then slumps into the water. The river runs on, melding smoothly around his face.
Daphne fights the sensation of drowning. She is immersed in a heavy sludge, so deep she can’t move. It is dark. There is the sound of breathing, laboured and slow. Flashes of red shoot through the blackness. Voices swim in and out, contorted, unrecognisable. Sometimes she is floating instead of drowning. There is light and she is lofting near the ceiling. She sees an old woman lying on a narrow bed, vaguely familiar, but puffy and irregular, tubes sprouting from her nose and arms and hands. Everything is white.
Pain stabs, like lightning shattering the sky. She sees people bending over her, senses movement, wheels rolling. Faces waft in and out. Machines hover. Day and night dissolve.
She sees Gordon: his small pale face, his dark eyes. They are Doug’s eyes, the same. There are Gordon’s gentle little hands touching his baby sister’s face. He has a quirky smile on his face. And baby Pam’s cheeks screwing up. The red burst of her infantile cries.
Then galloping again, the relentless rhythm of hooves pounding dirt. It is beneath her, beside her, drumming in her veins.
When she wakes, the room seems cloudy, as if mist has stolen unseen through the doors and filled all the spaces. She hears a voice. ‘Daphne, you can open your eyes now. It’s over and you’re all right.’
Her eyelids are heavy. She lifts them reluctantly then lets them slide shut. She is comfortable in darkness, doesn’t want to listen. But the voice is insistent.
‘Come on Daphne. No more sleeping. You’re okay now. Everything is fine.�
��
She tries again, and this time her eyes skip open and light floods in. There is a face, a nurse, leaning over her.
‘Oh, that’s great. You’re awake, Daphne. Can you hear me?’
Of course, she can hear. ‘Yes.’ Her voice is a dry croak that doesn’t belong to her.
‘That’s wonderful Daphne. It’s good to have you back.’
The nurse is smiling. Daphne sees a smooth round face, honey-coloured hair cut in a short bob that tucks with a kink beneath the nurse’s chin. The nurse stands up. ‘I’ll go and phone your daughter to let her know you’re awake.’
Daphne watches her walk away. She is weary, foggy. Around her, she hears the rhythmic pipping of machines. Other patients coughing. Muted conversation.
She closes her eyes and rests.
PART V
37
Abby’s mind was on other things when her supervisor Quentin suggested she go to the kangaroo cull as an observer. She was thinking of Daphne, back at home and recovering from surgery. She was thinking of Daphne’s husband Doug riding into the mountains and never coming back. She was thinking of her brother Matt and his trip to Central Australia—how he too might never have come back.
Sunlight was pouring into Quentin’s north-facing office and gathering around his head like a halo. He was sitting at his desk, hands folded in front of him, saying how important it was for scientists to understand the ramifications of their work. One day as a kangaroo ecologist, Abby might need to propose a cull herself. If she couldn’t see the job through, she shouldn’t recommend it. They need objective observers, Quentin had said, peering at her over his rectangular bifocals. A country girl like you would be ideal. Practical, scientific.
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