Clancy of the Overflow Read online

  Nancy shrugged. ‘No idea. All I know are the stories Gran told me. Maybe no one knew — there were a lot more deformities about back then, and even when I was kiddy.’ Nancy glanced at her watch, then stood up. ‘I’d better pick Tom up from cricket practice and put dinner on. Or call in at the Blue Belle and pick something up. Same time tomorrow? Clancy! Stop that!’

  The boy paused, camera in hand. ‘Why?’ he demanded.

  ‘You can’t take pictures of people in —’ Nancy stopped, as if uncertain how to phrase the rebuke.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Jed tiredly. ’Sam wouldn’t mind if you took photos of him.’

  Maybe, one day, Mattie will even like to have them, she thought. They might evoke the only memories she’d have of her father, this still figure in the bed. Sam, who’d swum with her through moonlight as the platypus ducked and fed unafraid of either human on the other side of the river, whose warm embrace had made this miracle, a child. Who had left them . . .

  But he hadn’t gone. Sam was still there. She gazed at him, suddenly stricken. Was Sam McAlpine refusing to let himself die until his wife released him?

  ‘Book!’ said Mattie hopefully. Adults often responded to that word by giving her cake or ice cream, a toy giraffe or in this case food when she wanted it. ‘I want book book now.’

  Jed reached into her bag and handed her daughter a banana, pulling down the peel. ‘Okay, small one. Nappy change, then home.’

  ‘Hey, Mum, could we have pizza for dinner? They’ve got frozen ones at the supermarket now. With pineapple!’

  ‘We had pizza two nights ago.’

  Clancy looked at her: that was clearly no conceivable reason not to have pizza again.

  Jed grinned at Nancy. ‘Give in. And please, I’d love to hear more tomorrow.’

  ‘Even about the Honourable Flora?’

  ‘Especially about Flora. I never thought about Honourables in Australia.’

  ‘Oh, I could tell you some stories. I probably will . . .’ Nancy pressed a kiss onto Jed’s forehead, another to Mattie’s cheek, then followed Clancy from the room.

  Dribble sat on its brown bare acres above the river between Drinkwater and Overflow. Cicadas yelled. Gum leaves hung limp. Even the tussocks were brown now, in this second year of drought. But it was hers. Matilda had given her both house and land. (‘If possible, every girl should have her own house,’ said Matilda firmly, Matilda who had lived in her own log hut at twelve, with no running water, no power and no security — but her own.) Sam had planted the orchard, dug the vegetable garden that Broccoli Bill now tended for her, and built her new study at the end of the old house.

  Sam. Everywhere Jed looked she could see Sam. But the scent of him was gone. That fresh sweat and essential Samness . . .

  Jed parked in the carport and hauled Mattie out.

  ‘Batbat! yelled Mattie happily, pointing at the fat brown creature that had ripped up the doormat yet again. ‘Carrots for Batbat?’

  ‘Huffhuffhuff,’ said the wombat, only slightly threateningly, its eyes on Jed’s vulnerable ankles.

  Jed sighed as she hefted Mattie up onto her hip. She had accepted the orphaned wombat from Sam’s veterinary cousin. ‘He’ll be company for you,’ Felicity had assured her. ‘It’s impossible not to grin when you see a wombat.’

  Felicity however had not warned her that Batbat would demand carrots every afternoon, and make his displeasure known if he didn’t get them.

  ‘Yes, carrots for Batbat.’ Jed lugged both nappy bag and daughter into the kitchen.

  ‘Woof!’ Maxi leaped up from her dog bed, embarrassed that she hadn’t heard the car. The old dog was half deaf these days. She obviously hoped that a loud woof would make Jed assume the Doberperson had been alert and on guard all day.

  ‘Good dog,’ said Jed, putting down the nappy bag and stroking Maxi’s greying ears. She put Mattie in her high chair, then threw two carrots to Batbat. She was just opening the fridge to the sound of carrot crunching, Maxi looking up hopefully at the cold chicken, when the phone rang.

  ‘For crying out loud . . .’ Jed grabbed a halved avocado and handed it to her daughter, then ran to the phone in the front hall. ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me, my sweet, your patient publisher and friend.’

  Jed sat on the telephone stood. ‘Julieanne, darling, please don’t nag. Not today. I’m bushed. And I really am working on another book. Nancy’s been telling me all about her grandmother. Well, we haven’t got to her Gran yet, but . . .’

  ‘It’s okay, my love. I know you’ll get it done when you can. There’s no point hurrying a good book. No, I’m calling about the Sydney Writers’ Festival. Guess what?’ Julieanne paused dramatically.

  ‘What?’ asked Jed cautiously.

  ‘One of the authors has appendicitis! They’d like to put you on a panel with Thomas Keneally!’

  Thomas Keneally! She’d actually meet Thomas Keneally! And a whole festival talking about books, and people wanting to talk about HER book too. But . . .

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d have loved to, but I can’t.’

  ‘I’ll babysit Mattie.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Jed shortly.

  ‘Honey, Sam’s not going to wake up suddenly and not find you there. If there’s any change, the hospital will call you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then why won’t you come?’ Julieanne sounded carefully not exasperated at all.

  ‘Because he’d be there if it was me. Always. And because I want to be there. What if he’s locked away in a motionless body and the voices around him are all he has?’

  ‘Blue and Joseph will take over for you,’ said Julieanne softly.

  ‘They already do their own times. So do Sam’s mates from the firetruck and the factory. Julieanne, Matilda’s Last Waltz is selling okay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, extremely well. But it would sell even better if its author pitched in to publicise it.’

  ‘I . . . I’m sorry.’

  Julieanne sighed on the other end of the phone. ‘That’s okay. I just thought, maybe . . .’

  ‘That being on a panel with Thomas Keneally would tempt me away from Gibber’s Creek for a few days?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Julieanne.

  ‘Book!’ yelled Mattie impatiently. ‘Mummy! Want book! Book now!’

  Maxi peered out of the kitchen as if to say, ‘I have saved our house from burglars, nefarious cats and possums all day. Where is my dinner?’ A scratch at the door indicated that Batbat had eaten the carrots and wanted more.

  ‘I think I’ve got all the life I can cope with just now,’ said Jed hurriedly. ‘Sorry, I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll be down next weekend. That still all right?’

  ‘Of course, if you don’t mind a sofa bed in a study crammed with books. Scarlett will be here too.’

  ‘My ideal house will be built out of books, all properly catalogued, silverfish proofed and sealed against the weather. Take care, Jed, my love. See you soon.’

  Mattie was finally in her new bed, which had been quickly borrowed from Overflow once she learned to climb out of her cot at risk to head, legs and fingers. The old house was finally silent. Or rather the old house echoed with the creak of the cooling roof, the call of a mopoke down by the river, the harsh possessive shriek of the old male possum who lived in the lemon tree, and Maxi’s soft pant, her head resting on Jed’s foot as she sat at the kitchen table.

  She had her study, lined with books, and the desk Sam had retrofitted with all the small shelves a writer might need. But since his accident she had taken to writing at the kitchen table, at the heart of the house, where she might still imagine the mutter of the ute coming up the drive or glimpse him out the window ‘making his contribution to the annual rainfall’ on the lemon tree.

  The typewriter stared up at her. So did the blank sheet of paper. She had to write. She needed to write. She needed an excuse to write.

  Please, she thought, let Matilda be a success.
Writing provided an even more secure escape from the world than reading — she had discovered that at age six, hiding crouched in the linen cupboard from her mother’s drunken anger, imagining a story about a horse chased by a ghost, who was frightened, just like she was frightened, but who escaped, as she could not . . .

  Later, her mother asleep, mouth open, lipstick-stained drool, the house temporarily safe, Jed had written the story down, using one of the fountain pens Dad kept leaving around the house and some old blotting paper he’d thrown out. She’d shown it to her teacher, who’d read it to the entire class, and every day after that she’d been allowed to tell the class a story for the last fifteen minutes of school. That had been the beginning . . .

  And now she was a writer, though of course she had always been a writer, but she wasn’t writing and she needed to, even if she later threw away every page she typed that night. Which she probably would, for Nancy’s tale that afternoon probably was not where her book would begin. She’d learned that writing her first book. She’d written five beginnings before she found the one she needed.

  And surely this Flora McPherson was just a distraction, a pretty girl who must vanish somehow before the true love story could begin. Maria was far more interesting. Maria who was kind, who loved beauty, who must always hide her face . . .

  And suddenly the words did come: the young Englishwoman charmed by this vision of affluent colonial life, sunlight after the clouded poverty of her childhood; the handsome man, the sister hiding not just her face but her whole life behind a veil. Jed stopped typing after three pages and took a breath.

  And listened.

  It was always like this. Retreating into another reality made you better able to see your own. The kitchen table had been sanded back and repolished a dozen times but if you sniffed carefully you could still smell the generations of scones and butter cakes, the roasted stuffed shoulders of lamb, the golden syrup dumplings prepared and eaten on it, for when Nancy and Matilda had furnished this house for her it would never have occurred to them that new would be better than solidly made old.

  Jed could almost smell the burned butter of pikelets under the lavender echoes from sachets in the trunks in the attic where the table had rested when it was retired as a growing family needed a larger one. The microwave on her bench was new, but the refrigerator was from Overflow too, now Nancy and Michael didn’t need so much extra food for all the foster children they’d housed and loved on the weekends. And her lino, polished by three generations of house-proud women, glowed a paler yellow along the natural tracks she also took from door, to sink, to back door, to table.

  Throughout the house were objects, beautiful, useful objects, that connected her to now and to the past. The broom handle made of red wood, at least fifty years old even if the bristles had been replaced; the first dustpan Matilda had ever owned, circa 1900, solid still and indestructable; the gadget Tommy had made for taking stubborn tops off bottles. Matilda had even left Jed half a century of fashion by Dior, Schiaparelli and clever Sydney seamstresses who had created imitations from pictures in fashion magazines.

  She would wear one of Matilda’s dresses tomorrow, Jed decided. The most gorgeous day dress in the cupboards . . . maybe that blue linen sheath with the gold dragons on the hem and the tiny draped jacket that went with it. Was it in the selection she’d brought over to Dribble, or still back at the old homestead in Matilda’s elegant dressing room with the bulk of her wardrobe? She’d find it, and wear it for Sam, even if he couldn’t see it; wear it for Nancy, to remind her of the woman who had been her family’s friend all of her life; wear it for the hospital staff to smile at, even if Mattie did smear mashed banana on it. Matilda had never worried about stains either or, rather, had kept a most useful notebook, also passed to Jed, about how to remove them.

  She had forgotten her own dinner. She zapped a slice of Leafsong’s spinach quiche — her extended family now made very sure that the fridge was always full and tempting — grabbed a couple of Blue’s zucchini slices, and took her meal onto the veranda.

  The night air was liquid silk and the moon a yellow balloon popping above the horizon. How many times had she and Sam sat out there and watched it rise? Too many to count, and anyway, counting would imply that there would never be another to add to the total . . .

  Instead she simply watched, heard Batbat scratching his back down among the apple trees, the soft beat of wallaby feet, eating her rambling roses. And slowly joy crept into her, despite her loss.

  She had so much still: love she had never known, never even expected as a child or frightened young woman; security and beauty even in this drought. Her daughter, her family by choice and family by blood, the friends who had cared for her ever since she finally admitted her need for help after Sam’s accident, she who had spent her whole life before Gibber’s Creek without knowing how to ask for help.

  Her mind drifted back to Nancy’s story this afternoon. What could have caused Maria’s face to distort like that? And what was the use of having an adopted brilliant sister at medical school if you couldn’t ask her to find out? She walked back to the phone in the hall and dialled.

  ‘Hello?’ Her younger sister’s voice sounded deeply weary.

  ‘Scarlett, what’s wrong?’

  ‘Jed? Nothing. Well, I’m a bit tired. Very tired.’

  ‘Then rest.’ Third year medicine at Sydney Uni, plus a full social life — William Ryan seemed to be spending every weekend up in Sydney — plus Scarlett’s determination to walk almost everywhere these days instead of using the wheelchair she had been bound to all the time until recently . . . no wonder she was tired. Jed glanced at her watch. ‘Sorry, I probably got you out of bed.’

  ‘I am in bed. William put an extension through into the bedroom. But I wasn’t asleep. What’s up?’

  Interesting. William Ryan in Scarlett’s bedroom, though not, it appeared, right now. How long had he spent in there? And doing what, if anything, besides installing the phone?

  ‘I wanted to ask you a question. Nancy’s just told me about a great-aunt of hers called Maria. Anyway, when Maria was about six years old, her nose started to collapse till she had only one nostril and a bulging cheek. Have you any idea what might have caused it?’

  ‘Hereditary syphilis? Was she older or younger than Nancy’s grandparent?’

  ‘Grandfather. Younger.’

  ‘Then maybe her father caught syphilis after his son was born, but in time for the sister to be infected. But there are lots of other possibilities. Could be tubercular. Leprosy, of course, but that would have affected other parts of her body. Hands and feet okay?’

  ‘I suppose so. Nancy didn’t say.’

  ‘They’d have known if she had leprosy back then. Everyone was terrified of it, as there wasn’t a cure before antibiotics were invented. She’d have been quarantined. My best guess is a nasal tumour. How old was she when she died?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’d have been in her late teens at the time Nancy was talking about.’

  ‘I’d go for the tumour, but if it was that, it’d probably keep growing, even if it wasn’t malignant.’

  ‘Just getting bigger?’

  ‘And spreading. Maybe putting pressure on her brain, or eventually stopping her from breathing or swallowing.’

  ‘Oh, my word. The poor girl.’

  ‘Look, it’s just a theory. Find out more from Nancy. It might even have been something as simple as an accident to her face. Burns were terribly common with so many fireplaces and long skirts. They didn’t have plastic surgery back then.’ Scarlett yawned. ‘Sorry, I think my brain is tired too.’

  ‘You need to sleep. Good night, brat. And thank you. Sweet dreams.’

  ‘Sweet dreams to you too.’ The phone clicked as Scarlett put down the receiver.

  Jed slowly put down her own receiver. Even as an eight-year-old, too weak to feed herself, Scarlett would spend an hour answering a question, or longer if you let her. Now after years of determination a
nd intense therapy, she only needed a sniff of a medical mystery and she’d be scrambling through old issues of The Lancet. But tonight she had only wanted to sleep . . .

  Something was wrong.

  Chapter 5

  Mrs Ryan’s Strengthening Mutton-bone Soup

  Simmer about 4 hrs: 1kg mutton chops with 175g barley, 10 whole carrots, 6 sticks celery, 10 whole onions, 160g sultanas, 10 cups water. Add more water as necessary. Cool. Skim off the fat. Remove the vegetables and add chopped fresh ones. Salt and pepper to taste. Reheat till the veg are cooked.

  SYDNEY, 1979

  SCARLETT

  Something is wrong, thought Scarlett desperately, lying back on her pillow. She’d even gone back to using her wheelchair to get to lectures, something she wasn’t going to tell Jed, who had enough to worry about.

  Was the mysterious syndrome returning to blight her life now? She’d been born with it, spent her childhood fighting it, and she’d won, she thought, but now . . . There were still no diagnoses for most conditions like hers. No diagnosis meant no prognosis either.

  She had thought — assumed — that getting stronger every year would mean she’d keep all the strength she had gained forever, or at least till she grew ancient. But what if she’d been wrong? What if her strength was only temporary, if there was some so-far-unidentified virus even now flaring up again, to weaken her muscles forever?

  Not going to happen, she (almost) reassured herself. She’d been pushing herself too hard lately, that was all. She’d been studying too hard, going to the movies with William, even the beach. Walking on the sand was harder than a workout at the clinic gym, and waves going back and forth all the time in a seemingly endless ocean were frightening after the predictably one-way flow of the river back home.

  But Alex had been too afraid of her fragility to even sleep with her. She didn’t want William to think of her as a cripple. William was so wonderfully, gloriously strong, all two metres of him, taking after his Maori grandfather. But William was working at the Whole Australia Factory back in Gibber’s Creek during the week now that he had left the police force, helping to design roof modifications for solar power systems. As long as she could walk by next weekend, William would never guess she’d had to use her chair again.