Fall Girl (12 page)

‘Someone has to decide what's true and what's not.'

‘No, Della.' She leans across the counter and touches my hand, something she rarely does. ‘I don't think so. Anyone who thinks they can make that decision for someone else is not to be trusted. And anyway, if there is someone who's so perfect, so right, all the time, that they get to decide what's true; well, it won't be you. It's not up to you to dictate who will believe what. It's your job to open a doorway. It's up to him if he walks through it.'

‘I thought you were a sceptic,' I say. ‘Apart from the slimming tea.'

‘I am a sceptic. I'm just not a cynic. I don't think there's a human alive who doesn't believe in something that would be impossible to justify by logic alone, and sometimes people like us are actually the most susceptible to being taken. Possibilities are hard-wired into our brains. I've met people who believe in nothing, and you know what? I'd hate to be one of them. The most sour-faced, bitter, humourless people on earth. If it's a thousand-to-one shot that I'll lose weight because of drinking tea, I'll take the chance. Lottery tickets have longer odds and they're more expensive. Also, I like tea.'

To prove this she drains her cup and rinses it, leaves it on the edge of the sink. Back in my room I take off my gown, drape it on a hanger on the front of my cupboard and climb into bed. In the half light the gown could be Ruby, floating in space, watching over me.

I am leaning against my nondescript borrowed Toyota in the overnight car park at Wilsons Prom National Park and I can hardly keep my eyes open. It's Friday midday and I've slept around fifteen hours since Monday night. This morning I left home before dawn to drive for hours. I have already been to the ranger station and filled out the appropriate forms, given them Dr Ella Canfield's details for a camping permit and a fake emergency contact in case one of us falls off a cliff. This is compulsory for anyone staying overnight in the park and did not present any difficulty. I feel so securely Ella that this paperwork took no thought at all.

I'm wearing long khaki pants that I've stained with mud and olive oil, and a white T-shirt one size too small that Greta chose for me. I have a long-sleeved shirt over the top to keep the sun off my arms. A baseball cap and thick socks. My glasses of course, although if I had known at the beginning this job would be a long con I would never have started wearing them. Heavy hiking boots, bought just before the shops closed last night and roughed up with dirt and scratched with stones from the driveway around midnight. The clothes are all new. Somehow I had always pictured that my biggest ever job would take place in a ballroom at the Ritz, with me in a crushed velvet evening gown the colour of sapphires, and involve a minor member of European royalty who looked like Cary Grant. After this job these clothes are going straight to the Salvos. I have a rucksack for me and one for Daniel, also new, dirtied up. If he doesn't arrive soon I'll curl up on the back seat and have a kip.

Just when I think he's not coming, the BMW pulls into the park next to mine. He gets out and stretches like a cat, arms over his head, triceps flush against his ears. He's dressed for camping too, but he's made no attempt to artificially age his outfit. He looks like a model from an adventure store catalogue.

‘So,' he says. ‘When I finish this, will I get a merit badge?'

‘You'll get a merit blister. It's ten kays walk in, steep, with a full pack. Are you sure you're up to it? I can't carry you out when you've had enough.'

This is silly, of course. He'd be half my weight again and looks like an athlete.

‘That won't be necessary.' He raises one eyebrow. ‘Though I'd like to see you try.'

Before I lift my own pack on to my shoulders I need to fit his. I have packed it as heavily as I can, with the bigger tent and sleeping bag and more than half of the food, because of course it's my own stamina that concerns me. I am not accustomed to a long walk over hills with heavy weight. Daniel has brought a small bag of clothes and personal items that fits neatly on top of his pack. When he has swung the pack up like it weighs nothing and it is resting on his shoulders, I need to adjust it so that the weight is carried by the frame instead of his spine. My brain is full to bursting with everything I've learned about camping from the staff at the adventure store and advice I've found on the internet. I am so busy thinking about which straps to pull and where the pack will sit that before I realise it I am standing directly in front of Daniel Metcalf, whose arms are raised, with my arms around his chest so I can reach the straps at the back.

My first instinct is to back away. This astonishes me. It's so foolish. This is what I should be encouraging, this accidental touching. Intimacy creates a sense of obligation so there'll be no doubt of my getting that cheque. Yet I cannot bring myself to do it. It's a sensation of being repelled, as if Daniel Metcalf has a force field. I keep my eyes on the pack, my mind on the job. The most important things here, more important than competence, are confidence and speed. Procedural memory is easy to obtain with a little time and focus, and convincing someone that you have any particular skill is more process than outcome. As I pull each strap and adjust the pack I curse once or twice, at people who don't look after equipment, at the design of the pack. I act like I know what I'm doing, even when I don't. On no account do I look up at Daniel's face.

Eventually we are done. I lift my own pack on to my knees and then around to my shoulders, as I was taught in the shop. The weight hits me like a falling piano. If I can carry this for ten kilometres without dropping dead, I'll have earned the money.

‘And whose did you say this was? The pack?' Daniel says, as we head down the path.

This is the kind of thing that can get you into trouble. I can't confess that the pack is new, bought from an adventure store at the Mall. I am an outdoor person apparently, and I don't have much money. It fits that my friends are outdoor people so it is more likely I would borrow a pack than buy one. But this is a man's pack, a tall man's pack at that. If I have borrowed it from a friend of mine, it reveals I have a tall, broad male friend whom I know well enough to hit up for expensive gear. This is counterproductive to fostering a feeling of intimacy, or impending intimacy, in the mark. This is also an example of why I am perpetually exhausted. Every simple thing is a calculation.

‘I borrowed it. From a friend of my brother's. He's an idiot.'

‘Because he trusted you with his pack?'

‘Of course not. I'm absolutely trustworthy. My brother's friend is a little geeky, but fine. It's my brother who's the idiot.'

‘Ah.'

Where possible, the rule says, stay close to the truth.

The first hour is hot and we don't speak much. Mostly he just looks around; he's new to all this outdoor business. He asks the occasional question about evolutionary biology in general. Nothing I can't handle. The life of Darwin, a bit about the theory. I tell him little factoids, like Darwin waited for twenty-one years before publishing
On the Origin of Species
because, although he believed in his theory, he did not have enough proof to satisfy himself. If not for the pressure of Wallace's imminent publication of the same theory, Darwin might never have gone to print. Darwin believed, but he knew the difference between belief and science.

Sometimes when I was a child I wished I had gone to school instead of being taught at home by Ruby. On Monday, when I saw those students in the food hall, I even wished I had gone to university. I know that this is just an abstraction, the idea of an intellectual life rather than the reality of seeking knowledge. In my career I have learned more about a wider range of subjects than any graduate. I speak enough French and Mandarin to get by, I can play competition tennis and golf, and crew a yacht competently. I have a better-than-working knowledge of the law and banking and financial planning, could pass as a geriatric nurse and I can back a semi-trailer around a corner although I don't have a licence. Ancient history and philosophy, my father's specialities, I know backwards. I have read many of the classics but only those my father favours, where helpless people are oppressed by the wealthy and powerful— Dickens, Gorky, Solzhenitsyn.

As we walk I think of those books and Daniel's inherited wealth and I'm happy I loaded up his pack with the heavy things.

The bush is odd here. This part of the park was burnt out by fires and the hills around the track are an eerie desecrated moonscape with black trunks stuck in the ground like angry spears. Along the edges of the trunks and the forks of the branches are flashes of new growth, iridescent green, and sprinkled along the black ground are long tufts of leaves, each cradling a perfect white native orchid. Once I almost stop to admire the scenery, then I realise I have seen this so many times that I barely notice anymore. In this section the path is wide and gravelled, and apart from the first steep hill where I thought my boots might slip, I saunter with just the right amount of nonchalance. I'm keeping up, and I'm not labouring. That's what matters.

By the end of the first hour, things aren't looking so good. I've already stopped for water twice, telling Daniel I'm concerned for him, stressing the importance of keeping up his fluids. He nods, but he doesn't seem as red in the face as I'm sure I am. I can't find the breath to speak. It must be over forty degrees.

Finally there is a clearing at the top of the hill, where we'll stop for lunch: two chicken schnitzel and mayo rolls I bought on the way. We take off our packs and sit on a flat platform in the clearing. Without the weight I feel I could float. The air is thin and fine. We are alone, except for an older couple on the other side of the clearing. Perhaps they are in their mid-sixties. They are fussing around a stand of native trees on the opposite side of the clearing, bird-watching with a borrowed pair of opera glasses. I can't see the opera glasses from here, but I know what they look like. Burgundy enamel, gold trim and a squat little handle.

It must have been a tremendous effort for the two of them to get this far, in this heat at their age. It would have taken them hours. I'm very impressed and humbled that they would go to such an effort. I hope there are no ill effects.

We eat our rolls and after a while the old couple wander over. They nod and smile. We nod and smile, and make room. They sit. The man takes a thermos and a plastic container of biscuits from a worn backpack and pours his wife a tumbler of tea. He is gentlemanly towards her, adding milk, checking it's hot enough, insisting she take a biscuit. I know what they will say, the substance of it, because I wrote their lines myself. They will make it their own; it is up to them how they will begin and the precise words they will choose. But the conversation will come from pages of eye-witness accounts I uncovered in my research, real interviews of people who have seen the animal around here, so this is not actually lying. It is just putting other people's words in their mouths. Ruby was right: who am I to say what should be believed?

‘Biscuit?' says Uncle Syd, holding the container in front of me and Daniel. ‘The wife makes them herself.'

‘This is the life. Thanks,' says Daniel.

‘Nice day for it,' I say.

‘Beautiful, beautiful,' says Uncle Syd. ‘Wonder what the poor people are doing today, heh?' He is wearing a ghastly plaid shirt I've never seen before, the same brown colour as the nearest tree. The fraying sleeves are pushed up to his elbows. He holds up his hands as he nibbles a biscuit, like a surgeon who has just scrubbed.

‘Ooh, there,' says Ava, and she points to a shrub down the hill and reaches for the opera glasses. ‘In that tree. Oh. The small branch. Near the top. It's got a blue head. It's. It's. Oh. It's gone. Never mind.'

Uncle Syd laughs. ‘We're like fishermen, us twitchers, aren't we? Always on about the one that got away.'

‘Spotted much so far?' says Daniel.

‘Always, always,' says Syd. ‘There are short-tailed shearwaters here, if you keep your eyes open.'

‘I wouldn't know a short-tailed shearwater from a vulture,' says Daniel.

‘It's only practice. Young fellow like you, nothing wrong with your eyes. Pays to be observant, sometimes.' Uncle Syd jumps a little, then looks around to check that no one can overhear him. ‘Never know what you'll see around here, if you keep your eyes open.'

A little awkward, I think. Too fast, too forced. Still, Daniel does not seem to notice. He gives me a sideways glance.

‘Simon!' Ava smiles. She looks tired. Her face seems more lined than usual. She's wearing baggy shorts and a white cotton blouse and sandshoes instead of her usual floral house dress, but has kept her striped hand-knitted bed socks. She pats Uncle Syd on the shoulder. ‘Never mind my husband. He lets his imagination run away with him sometimes.'

Syd stretches his arms behind him and leans back. ‘Quite right dear.'

I look at Daniel, and he looks at me. I scan the horizon. I speak slowly, for country people. ‘Lots of bush out there. Miles of it,' I say. ‘Never know what's hiding.'

‘Not wrong there,' says Syd.

‘Simon,' says Ava.

‘Actually that's why we're here,' I say. ‘We're researchers, from the university.'

‘You don't say.' Syd raises an eyebrow.

‘Simon. Drink your tea.'

‘We're looking for people to chat with,' I say. ‘About strange animals.'

‘We didn't see nothing,' says Ava. ‘You're wasting your time.'

‘Too right,' says Syd. ‘Long time ago and that. No sense dragging it all up again. Upsetting everyone.'

This is better. Nothing succeeds like reluctance. Aunt Ava is doing fine—she looks convincing, like she really doesn't want to speak. Her cheeks are rounded and red as if they were rouged. Her eyes are faded.