I drove, squinting against the glare, as Tad attempted to construct some sort of defence for Scanlon.
‘Don’t misunderstand him. The man’s a total innocent. The man is a boy. He just says what he thinks. And does what he thinks.’
I remembered the hand on my back: ‘You don’t have to tell me that.’
He smiled: ‘His intentions aren’t malicious.’
‘I’m not interested in intentions. I’m interested in effects.’
‘Know what I think, chérie? I think you are peeved that Bill hasn’t asked you to spend the weekend with him.’
Tad had a weird sixth sense for these things.
‘Rubbish,’ I said. ‘I hardly know him.’
He began whistling a half-familiar opera tune. It was probably intended to have some sort of significance; if so it escaped me. I didn’t know the words, and decided not to ask.
The road narrowed as we climbed; I found myself driving a little more quickly than necessary, but didn’t seem able to slow. I was anxious to see Scanlon, goaded by anger — the same force that had driven me to seek him out before. I was goaded further by the small whimpers of terror that Tad uttered from time to time as I rounded a corner too quickly, or overtook a slow truck.
‘You’ll kill us both,’ the descendant of Cossacks squeaked, and screwed shut his eyes.
‘So much for genes,’ I told him.
He didn’t hear. His ears were trying to shut out the world also.
5
An hour into the mountains we turned off the main road, bumping down a rutted side track that quickly dropped away into a lush valley.
‘Are you sure this is it?’
‘Perfectly. Now can we please slow down?’
Forest enclosed us; mountain ash, thick scrub, ferns. The track inclined steeply; we seemed to be moving down a darkened green tunnel, emerging suddenly into dazzling sunlight, onto a small, flat clearing. A perma-pine cabin squatted at one end. Heather Sims, the zoologist, was sitting on the verandah; Scanlon was underneath a basketball ring attached to a verandah post, bouncing a ball.
‘You didn’t tell me she was here.’
Tad smiled, beatifically: ‘I wasn’t certain.’
The cabin had the look of something assembled from a kit, an environment that suited Scanlon, in his jeans and beard and army shirt — a man who might have been built from cheap kit parts himself. Several small sheds were clustered to one side of the clearing; and a row of large, fine-meshed cages. The chairs and table on the verandah also had a build-it-yourself look; a cask of wine and various odd-shaped glasses sat on the uneven surface.
As the car bumped across the clearing several plump dodos lumbered squawking out of its path. Scanlon turned, one arm shielding his eyes against the light. I climbed out; he greeted me, smiling:
‘Professor Fox.’
‘Professor Scanlon.’
Sims said nothing. She was bent over some kind of papoose, or knapsack, strapped to her chest. I felt a surge of curiosity at the exact nature of their relationship, curiosity pricked through with something else, something a little … sharper.
‘You’re a long way from home,’ he said.
‘Could we talk?’
That wide-eyed, direct gaze: ‘Sure. Want to shoot some baskets?’
‘In private?’
Tad had emerged from the car, hoping for fireworks, but Heather Sims intervened: ‘Don’t you want to look at our baby first, Mara?’
A small, furred dog head poked from the mouth of the papoose, suckling at a baby’s bottle: the head of a cuckoo grown too big for a Devil pouch. I had last seen Truganini as an embryo: an embryo carried on the outside, marsupial fashion. Then, undifferentiated, she could have been anything: kangaroo, woolly mammoth, dodo, even human. Now she was definitely a puppy; although the blunt nose, big eyes and big head were still to some extent the shared proportions of all animal young.
‘What do you think, Mara?’
‘Very nice. About our talk, Professor Scanlon … ’
‘What do you mean, nice? She’s beautiful. Come and have a cuddle.’
‘I’m allergic to animals.’
Sims rose and unstrapped the papoose: ‘You can’t be allergic to something you haven’t been exposed to before. Here, sit down.’
My anger would have to wait. I sat on the verandah at her feet; Sims eased the papoose gently over her head and shoulders, and slipped it across mine. The bundle, warm, and heavy, came to rest between my breasts.
Tad was already tapping himself a drink from the wine cask: ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘It’s the Marsupial Woman.’
‘It does seem a better system,’ I said. ‘Giving birth to something the size of a goldfish: no pain, no trauma.’
I found myself looking towards Scanlon. For approval? I hoped not. He was standing some distance off, eyes closed, face to the sun, dreaming. Perhaps it was only his silence that drew me to him, wanted to make him pay attention.
‘No arrested labour,’ I said, too loudly. ‘No forceps, no big, stuck heads. Minimal involvement.’
I had thought this over, off and on. The joke notion that marsupial intelligence might have evolved in Australia, given time. The clear advantages of Marsupial Woman. Obstetrics would be so much easier: uterus becomes marsupium, a pouch womb worn on the outside, easy to get at. No need for ultrasounds or amniotic probes; antenatal checks would be as simple as lifting back the lip of a pouch and glancing in.
As for Termination of Pregnancy: open the pouch, and pluck the tadpole from the nipple. Or was that infanticide?
‘Strictly speaking,’ Heather Sims said, ‘if intelligent life had developed in Australia it would probably have been a monotreme, not a marsupial.’
She also was addressing her words towards the small figure of Scanlon as she spoke, as if for approval. His thoughts were still elsewhere.
‘You’ve lost me,’ I said. ‘Strictly speaking.’
‘Us,’ added Tad.
She turned away from Scanlon. Her voice seemed to be talking down towards me, a tutor’s voice: ‘Monotremes. Egg-laying mammals.’
‘The platypus?’ I said.
Truganini was scrabbling in my lap, trying to find the dislodged teat.
Tad emitted a high-pitched laugh: ‘Duck-billed humans?’
‘Probably ant-eating humans. The nearest thing we have to chimp intelligence on this continent is the echidna.’
‘Porcupines?’ from Tad, incredulous. ‘Porcupines are our most intelligent species?’
‘Not porcupines. Echidnas. Spiny anteaters.’
She glanced towards Scanlon; he was shooting baskets in the sunshine again, possibly half-listening. I sensed, humiliated, that the two of us — two women who were both years older than him — were entering into some kind of competition for his attention.
‘Three-pointer!’ he muttered to himself: some sort of private triumph. The ball swished through that low-altitude ring.
Sims pressed on: ‘Echidna brains are among the biggest of all mammals, relative to size.’
Tad was unconvinced: ‘You’re joking!’
She shook her head. The two curtains of straight-combed hair that framed each side of her face, released from the usual ponytail, flapped from side to side.
‘In Hobart we used to run them through mazes.’
‘Run them?’
‘Well, walk them. Strictly speaking.’
The tiger cub whimpered; I slipped the teat back into an eager mouth.
‘What about this one?’ I asked.
‘She’s no Einstein,’ Sims said. ‘But she’ll get by.’
‘We just want her to be happy,’ Tad said.
Everyone laughed; Scanlon included. He dropped his basketball and stepped up on to the verandah: ‘Maya, you wanted to talk?’
‘It can wait,’ I said. The pup was suckling again; I felt an odd, unfamiliar contentment. Was this all it took?
‘Then let’s eat, guys.’
A gas barbecue wa
s standing to one side, he wheeled it into the open, and lit the gas. Sims disappeared into the cabin, emerging shortly with a jar of vegetable oil and a platter of odd-looking food. Three dodos came waddling across the clearing; she tossed them a few scraps of food.
Tad approached the barbecue: ‘What’s on the menu? Endangered species? Dodo drumsticks?’
‘Soy fritters, tofu, salad.’
He wrinkled his nose: ‘I’ve driven all this way for a vegetarian barbecue? Who’s in charge here? I demand to see the manager.’
Scanlon was no vegetarian, I knew. He ate anything that fitted the dimensions of his mouth. Heather Sims was clearly in charge of the catering arrangements. The unfamiliar food began to hiss and splash onto the oil. I sat stilled, becalmed; feeding the tiny, wide-eyed occupant of my marsupium. The ungainly dodos raked their top-heavy beaks through the dust at my feet, the warm sunshine spilled over me. Remembering that moment now — sitting here, setting it down in black and white — I’m not sure what to think. Were my reasons for seeking out Scanlon that easily brushed aside? Shove something small and cute into my arms and turn up the sunshine and everything else is forgotten?
Am I really that pathetic? That easily softened, and tenderised?
6
The Tiger went public on a Friday afternoon three weeks later.
A podium was being erected on the grassy verges of the lake as I walked the shore-path to work that morning. Chairs were being unstacked and ranked and filed, various enclosures roped off, a red-striped marquee raised, trestle tables and iceboxes unloaded from catering trucks. The PA shriek carried to me as I climbed the last few steps of the Medical Centre: testing, one, two, three …
I spent the morning in my office, flipping the pages of recently-arrived journals. From time to time I rose and pressed my nose to the window, watching events unfold. The television vans arrived first, disgorged crews, aimed satellite dishes at some high invisible point in the blue. Around noon cars began to arrive: firstly those who drove themselves, in small and medium cars; later the chauffeur-driven, plump men in business suits, mostly, and the occasional power-dressed woman (loops of pearls and high-shouldered linen suits) stepping from the rear doors of lengthy limousines. Drinks were being served in the marquee; its striped canvas sides had been raised and furled like Viking sails. Richard Pfitzner was prominent, moving from group to group. I could almost lip read the words: So Nice To See You Again. So Pleased You Could Come.
Am I too uncharitable? Perhaps forcing yourself to smile is at least better than not smiling at all. Perhaps the fake, if enacted long enough, becomes the genuine. My father liked to tell me that goodness was a bit like that, a matter of habit, a matter of manners. If you pretend to be good, if you act good for long enough, you are good.
Around noon I nibbled at a salad sandwich fetched up from the staff dining room by Alison, and returned to my reading and note taking. And occasional window browsing. I was standing at the window when Tad stuck his head through my office door just before two: ‘Ready?’
‘I’m not sure I’m going.’
‘Of course you’re going. Everyone is going. This is the event of the year.’
‘I’m not good at small talk. Perhaps I’ll come in a few minutes. Once the speeches get started.’
‘I’m not leaving without you, chérie.’
He joined me, face pressed to the window, as Hollis and Mary-Beth Schultz stepped from a long white American car below. A few minutes later something more antique and English-looking — the name Bentley pops into my head from somewhere — pulled up. A small Australian flag fluttered on the bonnet; the State Governor and her husband stepped out.
‘The Governess,’ Tad murmured.
‘Tad,’ I warned.
‘Terrible dress sense,’ he said.
‘Looks fine to me.’
‘You are hardly one to judge.’
Pfitzner was quickly at her side; he appeared, improbably, to curtsy. The Schultzes approached at a more dignified pace, hands were shaken all around, the Vice-Regal party merged into the crowd.
Tad wasn’t finished with the Governor yet: ‘That hat! You could swear the Queen’s Representative is wearing hand-me-downs.’
In the circus tent the drinking continued, the odd flashbulb popped. Pfitzner glanced at his watch, and glanced towards the Medical Centre. The expression on his face was impossible to make out: anxiety? I needed binoculars.
‘The Dean is getting twitchy,’ I said. ‘2 p.m. and still no sign of the Guest-of-Honour.’
‘I’m getting twitchy myself,’ Tad said. ‘We must go.’
‘Just a little longer.’
My own invitation, a gilt-edged card, was leaning against the telephone. A glossy brochure had come with it: an investment prospectus. Sunrise Industry … Genetic Engineering … Venture Capital. I had no intention of arriving early and being forced to trade small chat with merchant bankers and accountants and investment consultants.
At last, nearer 3 p.m. than 2, Scanlon and his team wandered down the steps of the Medical Centre below us. The twins, Heather Sims and Ruth Bogart, carried something cubic and cloth covered between them: a cage, presumably. Heads turned beneath the marquee;
Pfitzner detached himself from the Vice-regal Party. Something dangled from his hand: a necktie. I realised — amused — that he was offering it to Scanlon.
‘I’m leaving,’ Tad threatened. ‘With or without.’
We caught the lift down, and approached the marquee unnoticed. All eyes were on the covered cage, or on the various dignitaries ascending the podium. My gilt-edged pass allowed me into the roped-off enclosure immediately beneath, along with other Department Heads, and the kind of people who had stepped from chauffeur-driven cars. The Tiger Investment prospectus could be seen everywhere, clutched in plump, fleshy hands: schedules of profit, tax write-offs, investment returns.
Tad, much to his chagrin, was relegated to the back stalls. He was a great believer in roped-off areas, provided he was on the right side of the rope. I offered to change places; he ignored me, too proud to accept, or even acknowledge, the offer.
Scanlon sat centrally on the raised stage, looking bored, his uniform of jeans and army shirt augmented by one of Pfitzner’s more conservative ties. The Governor and her husband sat on one side, Hollis and Mary-Beth Schultz on the other. Mary-Beth was wearing a coat trimmed with tigerskin: Bengal, not Tasmanian, but a cute, and perhaps risky, touch all the same.
The speech is an Australian Institution; I learnt this young. Richard Pfitzner, first at the microphone, might have been at School Speech Night, jingling coins and keys in his pocket, savouring his fifteen minute ration of fame. His role was to welcome visiting dignitaries, and introduce the Governor; he managed to pad the required handful of sentences into a filibuster of unfunny jokes and hesitant ums and ahs. At length the Governor was permitted her turn: an uplifting recitation on the subject of Australian initiative and enterprise, before she handed over the microphone to William Scanlon, an American.
Scanlon stood and briefly thanked each member of his team, by name. And Hollis Schultz, for ‘making it all possible’.
As I watched him standing there — uninterested, going through the motions — I saw it for the first time. His heart wasn’t in it. This was not where he lived, to borrow one of his own phrases. I knew, with certainty, that he would never have left Stanford University for this: to clone the Tasmanian Tiger, and announce it at School Speech Night. The Tiger was a temporary distraction, nothing more.
‘Without further ado,’ Pfitzner was saying, ‘the moment you’ve all been waiting for …’
Mary-Beth Schultz unveiled Scanlon’s newest miracle: Truganini. More flashbulbs popped, video cameras hummed. The cub was lifted from her small cage, and prodded along the length of the podium, on a leather leash. In the mountains I had seen only the head, or face, peeping from the lip of a papoose. The front quarters matched that head, recognisably puppy. The torso was more catlike.
There was no sign of timidity. She fed from the hand, cocked her head at the crowd, permitted herself to be cuddled by various dignitaries who queued for photo-opportunities.
Scanlon watched the proceedings, clearly bored; I watched Scanlon. He forced himself to smile from time to time, he fielded the odd question, but as he loosened, then loosened again, the borrowed silk tie that squeezed his neck, his thoughts were clearly far from there.
7
A second invitation was wedged beneath an array of fridge-magnets — plastic pineapples, bananas, avocadoes, part of our ‘fully furnished’ apartment — at home: an invitation to dinner that evening in the White House. This was another source of chagrin for Tad.
‘Couldn’t you sneak me in?’ he said.
‘Department Heads only,’ I told him.
‘It’s not that I’m desperate. I’ve a better offer in Brisbane. I was just curious.’
In fact that invitation was more of a command: a card embossed with times and dress suggestions and RSVP dates, but whose true message was written between the lines. All Department Heads Will Now Make Merry. By Order …
Most obeyed the subpoena. Richard Pfitzner was present, of course: proffering trays of canape’s among the assembled scientists as if he had finally realised his station in life, at least metaphorically. I took a small, silly pleasure in keeping him standing for several long seconds while I chose an elaborate, tiger-striped tidbit.
Peter Raines, the Professor of Surgery, another American import, was a notable absentee. I had met him several times: a little man with an opinion on everything. His absence was oddly conspicuous, given his size. I wasn’t surprised; there had been a mild falling out at the last Research Committee meeting over the issue of the Tasmanian Tiger. He had not even seen an interim progress report, he complained, and suddenly the animal was walking among us. There had been mutters of support, mine among them: the Research Committee should take priority over Publicity Launches, the purists among us thought. His feathers had evidently not yet unruffled.
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