The Grass Castle (3 page)

Cameron seemed to hesitate and Abby’s brave moment faded.

‘I suppose you need to write this up,’ she said, assuming his silence meant no. ‘I noticed you looking at your watch.’

Cameron laughed. ‘The watch is a habit. Part of being a slave to time. The life of a journalist. But actually I’m not in a rush to get back. I’ve already done my columns for tomorrow, and I’m going to write your interview as a feature, so no pressing deadlines. I wouldn’t mind seeing the hut . . . might give me some ammunition for another story.’

‘It’ll be nice to get out of this wind,’ Abby said. ‘But it’s a bit of a walk. Do you have a warmer coat?’

Cameron shook his head.

‘I have a blanket you could toss round your shoulders,’ Abby suggested.

‘That’ll be fine.’

She opened the back of her work truck to fetch the blanket then she turned to Cameron as another idea occurred to her. ‘Are you hungry?’ she asked. ‘I was planning on staying back tonight to check my radio-collared kangaroos, so I brought along a roast chicken and a few bread rolls for supper. I’m happy to share.’

Cameron smiled. ‘Sounds great. And I have a bottle of wine in the car. Left over from dinner last night with some workmates. Do you have anything we can drink from?’

‘A couple of thermos lids,’ Abby said. ‘They’re not quite wine glasses . . .’

‘But they’ll do,’ Cameron said.

Abby shoved everything in a backpack, gave Cameron the blanket, and they set off, weaving their way among the wind-whipped tussock grass.

2

The old slab hut, huddled on the valley floor, was Abby’s hideaway where she often took shelter in bad weather. It was a wonderful old building, oozing history, and laden with fragments of the forgotten lives and faded voices of the families who had settled the region.

Usually she closed herself behind the latched wooden door and listened to the hollow moan of air scooping around the walls. The outside world seemed to dissolve and she became a presence among ghosts. Sometimes, as she sat cross-legged on the battered wooden floor, she thought she could almost hear snatches of conversation swirling in the stone fireplace and mumbling under the eaves. Beneath the peeling wallpaper that lined the hut were sheets of yellowed newsprint from another era. She pictured shadow-people snuggling against the colder wetter weather of those times. She thought of snow in winter. The smell of burning wood, sodden timber, woollen clothes drying on nails. The snort of a horse in the yards.

On calmer days, she sat outside on the grass, boiling water to make tea, and she imagined men in dirty trousers working the land, felling and ringbarking trees. There wouldn’t have been fences, and cattle would have roamed the valley and slopes, crashing through undergrowth, stripping bark from trees with their muscular tongues. She liked to think of the settlers, and she wished she knew more of their history, how they had changed the land, inadvertently paving the way for the mobs of kangaroos she was now studying.

But today she was distracted by Cameron’s presence. She was excited to have another human being sharing her valley, someone who seemed interested in her and her kangaroos. On the rattly boards of the veranda she dug into her backpack, pulling out the roast chicken, the crispy bread rolls and Cameron’s bottle of wine.

He watched her lay out the food on plastic plates. ‘Do you do this often?’ he laughed. ‘Seems I’m in the wrong job.’

She gave him a withering look and ferreted the thermos cups from her pack, plonking them unceremoniously on the deck. ‘Only the best for this scientist,’ she said. Then she held up the wine. ‘It has a cork,’ she said, dismayed. ‘And I don’t have a corkscrew. I thought corks went out with the ark.’

‘I have one.’ Cameron jingled his car keys at her, displaying a sheathed silver corkscrew. ‘Sign of a true wino,’ he said. ‘Always prepared.’ He detached the corkscrew and handed it to her.

She made a mess of the cork, embarrassing herself, until Cameron reached over with a casual arm and took the bottle from her. With fingers long and fine as a pianist’s, he eased out the broken cork remnants and poured generous portions of wine into the thermos lids, passing one to her. ‘It’s a pity to drink out of plastic, but hey,’ he bumped his cup against hers, ‘who am I to complain?’

She drank, flushed with a strange jittery sense of anticipation, while the mountains watched on.

They sat on the porch, looking across the valley towards the shadowy ridge. ‘Peaceful here, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I didn’t know all this was so close to the city.’

Abby loved the emptiness, the ravens cruising overhead. ‘Hardly anyone comes here,’ she said, ‘just a few bushwalkers; sometimes some rock climbers up on the ridge. Mostly I have the place to myself.’

‘You don’t get lonely?’

‘No. I have things to do. Work’s busy. It’s not all about picnics and wine.’

There was a short silence during which they both sipped from their cups and reached for food; then, just as Abby was beginning to feel awkward, Cameron broke the quiet. ‘Is your family from round here?’ he asked.

This shift in topic wasn’t quite what Abby desired, but she had to go with it. ‘They’re in Victoria. Mansfield.’

‘Hey, I love Mansfield,’ he said, smiling enthusiastically. ‘We used to ski Mount Buller in my teens. Was it a good place to grow up?’

‘It’s a typical country town,’ she said. ‘It has a nice feel to it, and it is beautiful country: the mountains and the bush, the rivers. But it’s a small place—people living in each other’s pockets.’

He laughed: a musical tone that floated under the eaves. ‘Isn’t that what you call community?’

She thought of her father living on the farm with his pushy, possessive new wife. ‘Being nosey is the same wherever you are. And it’s not my definition of community.’

‘Canberra then?’ His eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘Is that your idea of community?’

She couldn’t suppress a grin. ‘Maybe if you’re a politician or a journalist.’

He smiled. ‘Why did you come here?’ he asked. ‘Why not Sydney or Melbourne?’

‘I was offered a scholarship here.’

‘Not too far from home for you?’

‘I’m twenty-three,’ she said. ‘Old enough to fly the coop. And home’s not what it used to be. Mum died when I was thirteen. Dad has a new wife.’

‘Tough losing your mum,’ Cameron said.

‘Yes,’ she said, and shivered. ‘How about you?’

She was hoping he wouldn’t notice her discomfort when it came to talking about herself. He picked up a bread roll and started gnawing on it, and she was relieved when he took hold of the conversation and carried on.

‘I’m from Melbourne,’ he said between mouthfuls. ‘Inner-suburban city boy. Man of neon lights, cappuccinos and nightclubs.’ He stopped chewing to scoff at himself. ‘Private-school educated, of course.’

‘I went to Mansfield High,’ she said. ‘No other options.’

He took a morsel of chicken and popped it in his mouth. ‘My parents are wealthy, so it’s all about options. Theirs, not mine. A government school would have been fine for me, but my parents wouldn’t have it. They wanted to stamp the renegade leftie out of me. So it was Melbourne Grammar then Melbourne University. They’re barristers, both of them. They wanted me to tread the same track they did. Journalism is all I ever wanted to do. But they slotted me into law. It didn’t last, of course. I hated it. I was going to drop out of uni altogether, and they couldn’t cope with a bum for a son, so they agreed on a compromise, a shift into literature. It was terribly humiliating for them—a son with a classic career-less Arts degree, but at least it was at the right univerity, and they supposed it might lead to something. Soon as I finished, I took the first cadetship I could sign up for. The
Herald Sun.
Not exactly my political line, but it was runs on the board. You need those before you can get ahead. I was born a journalist. I just had to make my parents believe it.’

‘And they believe it now?’

He tore another bread roll into pieces which he arranged in a circle on his plate. ‘I don’t have much to do with them. I’m a disappointment. When I go to Melbourne I mostly stay with friends. It’s easier that way. My parents are busy. I take them out to dinner or the opera. Then I’ve done my duty and I can do my own thing. I catch up with my journo mates, and we drink and tell stories and talk politics. It’s fun. Journalism suits me—despite what my family thinks.’ He laughed derisively. ‘I can tell you this much: my family isn’t normal.’

Abby held his gaze. ‘There’s no such thing as a normal family,’ she said quietly.

‘Hell no,’ he agreed. ‘But I bet mine’s less normal than yours.’

She said nothing. He couldn’t compete on abnormal, but she let it go.

He reached for the bottle again. ‘What about the rest of your family?’

‘I have a brother, Matt.’

‘What does he do?’

‘He skis, works on a vineyard and shoots kangaroos with his mates.’

Cameron chuckled. ‘Your brother shoots kangaroos and you study them. Ironic, isn’t it?’

‘Life’s ironic,’ she said.

They finished the wine, and chatted into the darkness, talking about politics, music, films and books. Cameron was easy company, talkative without being overbearing, up-to-date on everything. Abby supposed this was part of his job, to be able to talk to people, to make them feel comfortable.

As the chill night air sank from the ridges, she became aware of the inadequacy of his clothing, and when she saw him shiver, despite the blanket, she knew it was time to call it a day.

They made their way back to the cars by the light of her head torch. In the car park he lingered, watching her toss things into the back of her four-wheel drive. She thought perhaps he wanted to say something, that maybe the valley had worked its way under his skin like a splinter of wood picked up from the veranda of the old hut. It was possible he liked it here, that he might ask to see her again. For a moment she felt a flutter of excitement. What if he reached out and touched her? But he held his distance then thanked her and said goodbye. She masked her disappointment as he slotted into his car and took off down the road.

And now he is standing over the kangaroo he hit driving too fast in his sports car. ‘Will it be all right?’ he asks hopefully.

Abby is thrown by the expectation in his voice. He wants the kangaroo to be fixed so it can hop away into the night, but she can’t protect him from the truth. ‘No,’ she says slowly.

His stare is disbelief. ‘Why not?’

‘Legs are broken.’

‘Broken legs can mend.’

‘Not the hind legs of a kangaroo. A joey in the pouch perhaps. But not an adult.’

‘I don’t understand,’ he says. ‘We should call a vet.’

She shakes her head. ‘Nobody will come. Not at this time of night. They’ll tell you to shoot her.’

‘So what will you do?’

He hands over responsibility just like that, and now it is
her
problem. She steadies herself before speaking, draws a ragged breath. ‘The most humane thing is to put her down.’

His eyes widen and his body tightens, then he turns and strides to the WRX, reaches in and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. She watches him flick one out of the box. He puts it in his mouth and lights it with a lighter that has materialised from his pocket. The tip flares red in the night. She didn’t know he was a smoker—he hasn’t smoked all afternoon.

‘Emergency supply,’ he grunts. ‘It’s only moments like these I need them.’

He sucks on the cigarette, his face illuminated in the faint orange glow, deep lines etched around his mouth. He is bent in on himself. He glances blankly at her then swings away and walks down the road into darkness.

She waits by the kangaroo, watching its agonised breathing and the slick of blood on the tarmac. The animal has lowered its head, its life-preserving flight response dulled by pain. The bright eyes are glazed, eyelids drooping. With a shudder, it lays its cheek on the road. Anxiety knots tighter in Abby’s throat. She feels for the poor animal; in its agony it is almost human, she sees the suffering in its eyes.

‘Do you have a gun?’ Cameron has come silently back and is standing in the shadows beside his car, leaning against the roof, his face gaunt, eyes haggard.

‘No.’

‘Then how are you going to do it? We’ll have to find a farmer.’

‘There aren’t any farms for miles.’

‘What do you suggest then?’

She breathes deeply and tries to look strong. ‘I’ll have to do it.’

‘How?’ His voice is blunt and tight. He wants this thing over, she can feel it. He wants her to deal with it so he can disappear down the road.

‘There are two possibilities,’ she says, knowing he isn’t going to like either of them. Neither does she, but she can’t bear the animal’s distress. ‘I have an axe in the car. I can strike her on the back of the head.’ Not really. She can’t do it—her stomach contracts at the thought.

‘What’s the other option?’ He is staring at her, his face taut with a new expression: separation and distance.

‘I can drive over her head and crush her skull.’ She says it flat and quiet, trying not to grimace, her gut twisting.

He regards her coolly. ‘You biologists are hard people.’