Fall Girl

by Toni Jordan

  ‘And don’t forget to unbuckle your pack. You don’t want the weight of it to drag you to the bottom, if you fall.’

  I freeze for a moment and stare at him. He shrugs. ‘I saw it on Discovery Channel. “Minutes from Death”, it was called. But of course I don’t need to tell you about hiking safety.’

  I snort. ‘Of course not.’

  He gestures to a section of the creek near where he crossed. ‘I think it’s shallower here,’ he says. ‘You’ll get across without your pack getting wet.’

  ‘Good,’ I say. ‘Now turn your head.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Turn. Your. Head. This is not Men’s Gallery. In fact, turn right around and face the other way.’

  ‘You’re shy,’ he says. It’s not a question. I can see from here he’s frowning, like he doesn’t understand.

  ‘I’m shy for a normal person. I’m extroverted for a scientist. Of course, an extroverted scientist is one who looks at your shoes when speaking to you. Now turn around.’

  He laughs, but he does it. The circle of campers guess what’s happening and laugh too. Some ostentatiously turn their backs, others peer at me more closely now they know it’s forbidden.

  The sooner this is over, the sooner my dignity can begin to repair. I might check the first-aid kit. There’s Stingose for stings, and burn cream for burns. Dignipatch, perhaps, for my wounded pride. One more deep breath, and my trousers slip off in a quick movement. I stretch my shirt down to cover my undies, a pointless attempt that only makes me feel even less graceful. At the first step into the creek I almost jump out again. The water is fiercely cold, something Daniel failed to mention. He was right about the shallowest way across, though. I am shorter than him but the water doesn’t reach the bottom of my pack.

  ‘Going all right?’ he calls.

  ‘Just don’t turn around.’

  The cold water brings all my consciousness to the skin of my thighs. It tickles. Finally the sides of the creek begin to slope upwards. I dig my toes into the sand for better purchase and haul my legs out. The drag of the water makes walking hard. On the other side of the creek I shake my feet and water sprays off them like diamonds.

  ‘Can I turn around now?’ he says.

  ‘No.’

  I stand directly behind him so I can’t be seen and rest one hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Single file, and don’t look back. Off you go,’ I say.

  He grunts and walks along the beach a little way. I can see the circle of campers more clearly now. I was right: they’re backpackers, northern Europeans by the look of them, a mix of handsome girls and boys, some just back from a swim, some dozing under broad hats and others drinking. It must be nice not to work all the time, not to spend every moment thinking about this job or the next one or honing skills for the one after that. As we pass them, we nod and they wolf whistle us both, offer us wine and a towel. We decline.

  Julius and Greta are kneeling in a small clearing in front of four bright blue tents. This campground is a flat ledge in the side of a hill; the pit toilet is at the top and the creek is barely visible through the scrub at the bottom. The clearing they have selected for the tents is at far end of the campground and except for Julius and Greta it is deserted. There are no other tents or people in sight.

  The trees around the clearing are gums, tall and clean like the masts of a ship, with smaller scrub beneath them. The effect is a protected terrace that is at once cosy and exposed. The tents are huddled in a half circle around a long-fallen tree that is the right height for sitting on or resting a lamp. The tents are chest height, taut fabric made igloo-shaped by flexible plastic poles threaded through sleeves in the nylon. We practised in the backyard at home but they never seemed to work the same way twice so we decided it was best for Julius and Greta to hike in earlier. They could take their time and put up the tents without Daniel watching, in case things didn’t go as smoothly as we’d hoped. Julius and Greta look hot and ruffled. I dread to think how long this has taken them.

  There was also too much equipment for them to carry, so Beau and Anders walked in earlier this morning as well with the rest of the gear, everything that we could scrounge or steal or buy in the last few days. This was a thankless job for our poor packhorses.

  The equipment is spread around the campsite in piles, looking real; not like a stage set. Much of the equipment was borrowed from the Zoology Department store room and looks convincingly abused by decades of students: surplus night vision goggles that might have been antique when originally acquired by the Third Reich; dinky wooden frames of various sizes—I assume to make casts of tracks; another set of frames with mesh of varying sizes that stack one on top of the other, with the largest mesh on top; plastic toolboxes filled with zip-lock bags, gloves, brushes, labels and trowels; a leather pouch of what looked like old dentist’s picks; one pre-Cambrian SLR camera with the film compartment held closed by a rubber band; old field guides of tracks and scats with stained covers and dog-eared pages. Julius and Greta turn around as we approach.

  ‘Well,’ says Greta. She is dressed conservatively this time: neck to wrist to ankle, her hair in an unflattering high ponytail that stretches the skin of her eyes and will probably give her a headache by sundown. No makeup. It’s not until I see her and feel a flood of relief that I realise I was worried about this. She looks us up and down; we are still dripping in our underpants. ‘You go girl.’

  ‘Ella had an overwhelming desire to get naked, so we stopped for a quick skinny-dip,’ Daniel says. ‘The water was so cold I’m now a soprano.’

  ‘The creek was up and we didn’t want to get our packs wet,’ I say. ‘There was no skinny-dipping involved. We were clothed, except our trousers. That’s all.’

  ‘Mr Daniel Metcalf sir,’ Julius says. He also looks perfectly crumpled and student-like, which must hurt. He has borrowed clothes from Sam which were already pre-creased and pre-stained. He rushes forward and helps Daniel off with his pack. ‘On behalf of my colleague and myself may I mention what a pleasure it is to see you again.’

  While Daniel is distracted I whisper to Greta about the campers on the beach.

  ‘We’ve spoken to them already,’ says Greta. ‘They arrived an hour ago. They’re German backpackers, very friendly. They’ve brought in wine in plastic bags. Lots of wine. They’ve already asked us down for a few drinks. I’ve told them we’re working. They’re just here to relax and swim. They won’t disturb us.’

  Wine in plastic bags sounds like a good idea. Shame I didn’t think of it, but it doesn’t really matter since all the bottles were in Daniel’s pack. I turn my head. Legs now dry, Daniel is stepping into his trousers.

  I suppose if I looked at it objectively, he would be attractive. If he wasn’t, as Beau would have it, a battery hen. A mark. Greta gives me a smirk. My face feels hot; I pray I’m not blushing. I’m glad the backpackers won’t give us any trouble. I am feeling quite disturbed enough as it is.

  I do not come from a family of savers. We are grasshoppers, not ants; we do not put something aside for a rainy day. You might get hit by a bus tomorrow, my father often says, so all of us revel in our surpluses now without heed for the future. But now I must ration. I know only as much science as I could acquire with no formal training in four days in a library. It must last the whole weekend.

  ‘Dr Canfield,’ Julius says. ‘We have walked quite a long way today and set up the camp. As keen as I am to begin work, I fear missing some small but crucial detail through fatigue.’

  ‘It wasn’t that far Joshua,’ I say. ‘You’re used to this.’

  ‘It’s almost dark,’ Greta says.

  ‘It isn’t,’ I say. ‘There’s hours yet.’

  ‘By the time we unpack all our equipment it will be,’ Greta says.

  ‘I’ll help,’ says Daniel. ‘It’s no trouble.’

  I make a show of looking at the sky, at my watch, then I regard my feckless subordinates. ‘All right. I’m tired and sweaty from the walk too. Let�
�s just relax this afternoon. We’ll start work bright and early tomorrow.’

  Julius and Greta rejoice at this, as though I am usually a hard taskmaster and free time is unexpected. Daniel frowns.

  ‘Not on my account,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to disturb you. I want to see you in action.’

  ‘There’s plenty of time for that tomorrow,’ I say. ‘For now, let’s unpack, have a swim, a nice dinner. Relax.’

  We change and walk down to the sea. At the last moment I wear my dirty T-shirt over the top of my swimmers—if anyone asks I will say I burn easily. I go first, with Greta, to keep her eyes front. Daniel and Julius follow. The backpackers nod and wave as we pass. The sea here is not like the bay back in Melbourne, which is a dull grey like Soviet milk. Here it is almost alive, sometimes green and sometimes blue, deep, and quiet. The sand is white, spread like sugar, so fine it squeaks under our feet. Greta and Julius wade only up to their ankles before squealing like children.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ says Greta. ‘I’m not going in there. That water must be straight from Antarctica.’

  ‘I too have gone far enough. I am African. We are hot-climate people.’ Julius nods at the backpackers. ‘Only Scandinavians or Germanic peoples would swim in this water.’

  ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’ Daniel says, and he runs, splashing, until the water is deep enough for a shallow dive. He comes up shaking his hair, gleaming like an otter, and dives under again.

  I glare at Julius and Greta, they glare back at me. ‘Go on,’ I say. ‘Dive in.’

  ‘You dive in,’ they say together.

  ‘I’m the supervisor of this expedition,’ I say. ‘It would look very weird if we three hardened campers were scared of a little cold water while Mr Toorak was swimming. Dive in.’

  Greta squats a little and dips her elbow in the water. ‘Not even for a quarter of a million dollars. I’d get hypothermia.’

  ‘And I’d freeze my balls off. Greta’s right. That current’s straight from Mawson Base,’ says Julius. ‘Anyway boss, it’s your project.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Thanks. Thanks very much.’

  I wade out further and I will not call out or even squeal but my face is away from them and they cannot see me grit my teeth. Finally the water is over my shoulders and it feels warmer now that I am all under, and now I am glad I have done this. I will sleep better tonight cleansed of the sweat and dirt of the walk, I tell myself. My tired muscles will feel better. Then I look up and see Daniel, floating on his back, lazily kicking. I look back and see Greta and Julius, shivering and complaining.

  All at once I know why I do not like to touch him, why I have not been flirting with him as I normally would. There is something wrong with him, something I should have seen before. Daniel Metcalf is lying.

  It is morning now and I have thought about Daniel Metcalf most of the night with an intensity bordering on obsession. I have turned everything over in my head. The night was long and cold. Sleeping bags make your legs feel pinned and your arms trapped. The tent was a thin membrane hardly sufficient to block out the world. It is difficult to imagine that people do this on purpose. Camping is like a celebration of poverty designed for people nostalgic for the Great Depression.

  I must figure this out, I must. I won’t be made the fall girl if this operation goes south. I have leafed through the pages of my memory for everything he has said, every expression I have seen on his face. There are times his face becomes set, determined, in response to some inner thought, but these are rare. At these times he rolls his shoulders and rubs them, like the weight on them is more than he can bear. Other times his face is soft: he is an innocent and this is all a lark. Surely we’ll have to take our pants off. Sweet as a schoolboy. Mostly he is cynical, sarcastic, wry.

  Yet he did not turn around when I told him not to. Did he not want to see me in my underpants? Perhaps he does not find me attractive? Nah. Perhaps he is gay? That would explain this feeling that he is lying. No; I know this is not true. Even if I missed this, it is not a mistake that Greta would make.

  I should have realised earlier that something was not right. My father said it first when I told him that Daniel had asked me a technical question in our first interview. It’s a rare millionaire who will reveal his ignorance on any topic. And here he is, our rare millionaire. He swims in freezing water without hesitation when we three professional con artists shiver in our bathers. He carries a heavy pack for ten steep kilometres, not only without complaint, but with solicitous care. He offers me his hand to climb over rocks and considers my welfare at all times but is also sarcastic and cynical. There is clearly something wrong.

  I have known many millionaires and there are two types. The first are those who have made their own money, whether by hard work or luck or talent. These are a varied mix of people and their behaviour cannot be predicted. The second group are those, like Daniel Metcalf, who received their money without a drop of sweat from their brow and are proceeding, quickly or slowly, to lose it. And they do not behave like this, that much I know. They were born to wealth; they know no other life and they consider those who are not wealthy to be somehow flawed. They do not have his flippant air.

  But the most telling thing was this: the twenty-five thousand dollar cheque he offered me and said I could keep unless I wanted to try for the quarter of a million. You can keep it, if you like. Or you can hand it back to me.

  I cannot believe I fell for this old trick, one my father taught me when I was not ten years old. Sharp gamblers use it often, allowing their mark to win the first few hands convincingly when the pot is small. My father would have used it in a slightly different fashion: perhaps he sold a mark a hundred shares and offered to buy them back for double the price in just a few weeks. The mark pockets a large profit on a small investment. Then Dad would sell the mark ten thousand shares under the same arrangement and when the time came to buy them back he would have disappeared. This is a variation on what we call ‘bait and switch’.

  The conclusion is simple. Either Daniel has no money or he is trying to con me. But con me out of what? He is no longer just another good-looking mark. Now I find Daniel Metcalf very, very interesting.

  Today the three of us run through the science stuff we have practised all week. I am alert, engaged. I watch Daniel Metcalf ’s every action, mark his every word. When I look at him my pulse races. He is an eagle after all, not a chicken. I cannot confess this to Julius and Greta, whom I have dragged here. I have no evidence and I am culpable.

  Now I see all the things I neglected to do, like obtain a recent estimate of the Metcalf wealth. I took the Metcalf name as all I needed to know, like any foolish mark, when Daniel could be a gambler or an addict or could have spent the fortune a thousand ways. He has a fine house and expensive car and clothes but I of all people should know that these things count for nothing. I did not ask for any proof that he could pay the money he has promised. My father has a friend in the city, a financial journalist, who keeps up with things like this yet I never asked him.

  The science itself progresses well. Despite Sam’s fears, this is not as difficult as it sounds. One must exude confidence, that is all. As you must if you’re being anyone, even yourself. All movements must be sure and dextrous. There can be no hesitation. The work itself is of less consequence than its appearance. Daniel Metcalf will have no idea if we are doing these things correctly.

  We do not wander far from camp. This is not the research project itself after all, just a small taste of what we will do when we are properly funded. We pass stands of impenetrable rainforest, tall open forests, woodlands, ancient Aboriginal middens. We find likely spots, some just off the main track, some at the bottom of the hill near the creek.

  Daniel stands back and patiently observes us working. Julius and Greta squat on a path or kneel on squares of foam rubber as they measure and photograph tracks and collect droppings, a skill we practised with the help of a ranger in the closest national park to our home. In r
eal life, even finding the tracks was harder than I expected: the walking trails are mostly small rocks and hard to distinguish from the bush itself, the forest floor overlain with leaves. Sometimes I think I am pointing at nothing and sometimes I fear I am diligently measuring my own boot-print, but I do it with such authority that anyone would believe.

  Yet after a few hours I begin to see things I could not see before. The smallest pad print set in dust along a dry creek bed, the finest scratches near the base of a scraggly eucalypt. It takes surprisingly little practice to make these things come alive. As I kneel to pick up small white bones I would not even have noticed last week, I instinctively hold my breath so they do not gust away. Once I find a tooth from some kind of animal lying in a pile of dead leaves and peeled bark. It is white and pure and smooth like porcelain and if I did not know it was only an old tooth I would have thought it remarkable. In the palm of my hand it could be an oddly shaped jewel.

  ‘Look at that,’ Daniel says. ‘That might be a tooth from a Tasmanian tiger. You never know.’

  He is right. You never know. I had never thought of science as gambling before but now I see it is a roulette wheel. It is two-up. Gambling is, as they say, a tax on people who do not understand probability theory, but now I see that winning is not the point. The point is that divine moment when the coin hovers in mid-air or the silver ball speeds around the outside of the wheel or just the merest hint of bone is visible above the ground. In that shining moment before anything is decided, everything is possible.

  I could have managed this, if I had gone to school and then to university. This might have been my career. Science, at least this kind of science, is more like a country craft; it is a manual skill, a dextrous one, where the clever hands of clever people make a story from bits of bone and photos of tracks and scratches on trees. Like making a quilt from squares of coloured fabric.